Sermons from University Christian Church

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Sarx Search ++ Rom. 8:12-17 ++ June 7, 2009

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/060709.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/060709.ser.mp3

What Pentecost Means ++ Acts 2:1-21 ++ May 31, 2009

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/053109.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/053109.ser.mp3

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

How to Join University Christian Church - video

"Abide in Love" ++ 1 John 4:7-21 ++ May 10, 2009

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/051009.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/051009.ser.mp3

"The Measure of Giving" ++ 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 ++ May 3, 2009

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/050309.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/050309.ser.mp3

"Economics As If People Mattered" + + Acts 4:31-35 ++ 4/19/09

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/041909.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/041909.ser.mp3

"You End Mark" An Easter Sermon on Mark 16:1-8

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/041209.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/041209.ser.mp3

"Hosanna!" Mark 11:1-11

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/040509.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/040509.ser.mp3

"Becoming the Truth" John 3:14-21

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/032209.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/032209.ser.mp3

"Everyone's Fool" 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/031509.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/031509.ser.mp3

"Hope Against Hope" Romans 4:13-25

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/030809.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/030809.ser.mp3

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Printed version of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/sermons/030109.ser.pdf

Audio file of the sermon http://ucc-austin.org/worship/Audio%20Sermons/030109.ser.mp3

Sunday, March 22, 2009

UCC Goals for 2009

Go to the address below for Pastor Kutz-Marks' goals for UCC in 2009

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfwdfhbb_91qqpnvc2

Monday, February 16, 2009

On Becoming All Things
C. Kutz-Marks
Epiphany 5, b, Feb. 8, 2008
1 Cor. 9:16-23

This morning we are going to delve into the heart of truly Christian community by examining the Apostle Paul’s call to us for a deeper commitment to one another, the call to dedicated Christian service.

Now, the word “service” itself brings to mind a story

One Sunday morning, the pastor noticed little Alex standing in the foyer of the church staring up at a large plaque. It was covered with names with small American flags mounted on either side of it.

The seven year old had been staring at the plaque for some time, so the pastor walked up, stood beside the little boy, and said quietly, "Good morning Alex."
"Good morning Pastor," he replied, still focused on the plaque.
"Pastor, what is this?" he asked the pastor.
The pastor said, "Well, son, it's a memorial to all the young men and women who died in the service."

Soberly, they just stood together, staring at the large plaque. Finally, little Alex's voice, barely audible and trembling with fear, asked, “Which service, the 8:00 or the 10:30?"

*

I’m a big fan of the Apostle Paul and his call to Christain service, to evangelism, and to cherishing the Christian community. It is fashionable these days to look down on him because some of his directions to the fledgling Christian communities he founded in those early, heady days of the Christian faith, don’t fit well in 21st century America. True enough, but I’m a fan of Paul’s anyway, because the basic principles that he not only preached, but also lived out, seem so consistent with Jesus’ teaching and living, and the both of them are so challenging to us and our ways.

A prime example is our reading this morning from 1 Cor. 9. But to get the full effect this passage, we need to set it in its context. The struggling small Christian community in the great sin city of Corinth, Greece had a great deal of what we might call “spiritual environmental challenges” to face. Corinth was a port city, a crossroads in that part of the world that celebrated every conceivable vice and was renowned as a traveler’s place to really let oneself go. Gambling was everywhere. Wine flowed freely day and night. Violence of various sorts was the norm not the exception. And visible from the teeming city streets, high up on the hill was the pagan Temple where temple prostitutes welcomed visitors and locals alike.

As you might expect, many of the Christians living there in Corinth had steeled themselves against the lasciviousness of the general culture by developing protective morays that they hoped would keep themselves pure despite the moral decay that surrounded them. To make matters more difficult for these - as Paul calls them -“weak” Christians, those who would be harmed by violating their consciences if they participated in some activities related to the pagan culture, there were other members of the Corinthian Christian community who had latched on to that “freedom in Jesus Christ” motif – that Paul broadcast powerfully and were using that as a license for all kinds of things that made the conservative Christians upset.

For example, the liberated Christians said “Idols are no real gods,” so what possible harm is there in eating meat that had been sacrificed in the pagan temple to those idols? As verse 8 of Chapter 8 puts it, "Food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.”

To these “strong” of conscience Christians Paul warns they dare not harm their “weak” sisters and brothers by exercising their precious “freedom in Christ.” In fact, Paul concludes chapter 8 by saying, “Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.”

Here is a powerful and self-denying principle, that if it need be in order to serve the best interests of my sisters and brothers in Christ, whose salvation is so important, those who are free in Christ from the demands of a strict morality code - the strong in conscience- should be ready like Paul is, to set aside that very freedom that is so dear, in order to do the truly loving thing, “if food [sacrificed to idols] is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat.” And in making that commitment, Paul teaches again that the truth of the Gospel is embodied and demonstrated in relationships rather than propositions or formulas.

It is the momentum of this teaching that carries us into Chapter 9 where that same self-sacrificial theme is expressed in a broader scope:

19 “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”

This is a high and difficult calling Paul offers us as the path of Christian living! “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” Does it mean that Paul has no integrity?

Does it mean that he is spineless and will bend where ever the prevailing religious wind is blowing?

Does it mean that Paul is trying to become a religious chameleon changing his colors in every new place. The truth is a “yes” and a “no.” His external behavior is going to change but his driving internal aim will never.

In his very essence, Paul is an evangelist bringing the good news of the saving power of Jesus Christ in one’s life. He wants everyone to know this news. Paul wants every one to experience this deep inner freedom; this fresh start in life; this powerful purpose & meaning in life that he, Paul, has found. Sharing that Good News is more important to Paul than anything….anything!

Friends, you know the litany of Paul’s life: shipwrecks, imprisonment, flogging, snake bites, stoning, being hauled before one authority after the other, and we could go on. Paul’s life from the outside was one torturous day after another, but he would say that on the inside, nobody was more blessed than he was.

And in this total commitment to his ministry, Paul reminds us of the hymn to Jesus that Paul himself records in his letter to the Philippians (2:5)

“5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.”

Jesus was consistently obedient to God’s leading. I will be, too, that’s what counts, says Paul. It doesn't matter whether I get to live the way I feel entitled by Christ. What matters is that I use my time, my influence, my energy, my freedom to reach people for Jesus Christ in whatever way I can.

As he says in Philippians 1: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” There is no longer a need to protect myself, to make myself look good in the eyes of others. I don’t even need to live any longer. I just need preach & teach & witness& live out this good news that I have experienced as long as this earthly life holds out.

In chapter 8 Paul had admonished the strong in conscience not to make the weak stumble in faith. In that quarrel over whether eating meat sacrificed to idols was right or wrong, Paul’s answer was, “it doesn’t matter.” Paul says the real question is “what is helpful for my brother or my sister. Whatever that is, that’s what you should do.”

This is a strange and challenging ethics he propounds. Chapter 9 is focusing on Paul’s evangelistic mode of fitting in wherever he is led, but if we think that that let’s us off the hook because we aren’t evangelists like he is, well, we’ve missed that point. D.T. Niles, the Indian theologian, says that evangelism is "one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread." By the grace of God, we have found bread here. That places upon us an obligation to share the good news with others.[i]

Tying Chapter 8 in with Chapter 9 there is no way for any of us to escape the challenge that Paul is putting before all Christians.

And we know it. We are the one’s who sang aloud beautifully a few minutes ago “Lord, I want to be like Jesus in a my heart."

When we stop and think about it we deep down know that it is every Christian’s role to play Andrew going to his brother and saying, 'We have found the Messiah,” that is, we have found our Leader, the one whom we can follow and in whom we experience the fullness of life as it is meant to be. And as witnesses of that New Life, we will bring our brothers & sisters & coworkers & neighbors an invitation to experience that same joy that we have found![ii]

**********************************************************
[i] Beginning at this point the sermon as delivered veers totally away from what follows.
[ii] Said in a less pleasant way, St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople at the end of the fourth century, wrote: "Nothing is more useless than a Christian who does not try to save others. . . . I cannot believe in the salvation of anyone who does not work for his neighbor’s salvation.”

Darwin's Gift to Religions

Darwin’s Gift to Religions
Evolution Sunday, Epiphaby 6, b, Feb. 15, 2009
Psalm 8

A couple of years ago former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was talking with a National Public Radio interviewer about his new book entitled, It Takes A Family. The interviewer asked him why in the middle of the book he made such a strident attack against evolution. Why, the interviewer asked, did it matter so much to him?

Santorum responded saying that it is tremendously important. It tells us where we come from. If you and I are just a mistake, an accident of nature, that places a different moral demand on us – or actually it doesn't put any moral demands on us! That's different from us being the intentional creation of a Supreme Being that does have moral demands of us.[i] If we see our origins in a natural process, according to Senator Santorum, the whole idea of morality, he thinks, necessarily becomes some kind of illusion.

Senator Santorum was expressing one of the major obstacles for many on the conservative side of Christianity of Judaism of Islam, all of whom shared the same 2 different stories of creation we find in Genesis Chapters 1 & 2 and all of whom find it very difficult to accept that evolution does, indeed, describe the way life on earth has developed into the estimated 5 to 30 million different species of plants and animals.[ii]

Now, on this 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his publication of the groundbreaking On the Origin of Species[iii], I have no intention this morning of joining the more than 11,000 Christian clergy[iv] around the country on this Evolution Weekend who are trying to convince their congregations that it is possible to be a Christian and also believe in evolution. I'm going to assume that all of you already think that appropriate. And if you aren't yet convinced, I'll have some endnotes appended to this sermon posted online that will do the job.[v] [vi]

No, despite the embarrassingly immature fracas in the Texas Board of Education these days, since it is a settled fact among the scientific community that evolution does describe they way all the variety of life arose, I would rather share with you what some of the implications of this way of thinking are for those of us who both believe in God and also believe in evolution’s descriptive power.

In all our Western religious traditions that have relied on the stories of Genesis to help understand the beginnings of the world, there have also always been mystics, those who understood another aspect of the deepest reality differently. Our ordinary consciousness is an objectifying one. The structure of the world in the state of consciousness that you and I normally live is subject -- object. I, the subject, am perceiving the world and all elements of it, as objects. That which resides within the skin of my body defines me the subject is a being. Everything outside of me is object. As this mode develops further, even our bodies and our own thinking itself can just as well become objects for the Subject that is the center of our universe, the “I.”

But if we reflect on it, all of us have also transcended that subject/object split from time to time. It frequently happens when we are dreaming. It happens in the depths of prayer and meditation and worship. It sometimes happens in the ecstatic moments of union with those we love (which let me add aside, is one of the spiritual benefits of a Valentines Day.) As the great German philosopher Martin Buber clarified in his momentous book I and Thou, this alternate mode of being where the subject/object split temporarily resolves, is the great experiential anchor at the root of our hunger to worship and at the heart of living religions.

Though this experience is rare for most people, it is so powerful that the celebration of what one experiences in them and learns from them can alter the way we understand life itself. These moments give rise to the exalted exclamations in the book of Psalms and elsewhere in Scripture. It is this spirit, this experience of deep unity which sets apart the mystic from other people and from other states of mind in the mystic herself. And further, this experience is consistently described as feeling like a union with all other beings human, animal and plant. All feels intimately connected. There is no me and not me. All is one.

One of the fascinating gifts of a Darwinian perspective is that that sensibility -- that mystical union – that experience of union in the inner world, accurately describes -- according to Darwin -- the way the different life forms actually did develop. We share with birds and crocodiles and gorillas and earthworms and dragonflies and bacteria an un-broken continuity through time back to the very first life form on our planet. Every type of creature developing in small ways from its predecessor over billions of years all from the same source and with remarkable similarity in genetic makeup. 99% of our human genetic makeup and a chimpazee’s, is identical! We all are one. We are all just different adaptations of the same life force seeking wherever it can to express itself, to overcome every resistance to its own living.

Friday I walked with our dog, Moby, out own the trail of a park near our house. Pondering this notion of life striving against the forces that would repress it, I recognized that day -- and I hope you will recognize later on today -- that everywhere I could look there was life overcoming inanimate rock. Here and there you could see some white rock[vii] erupting on occasion, but clearly the vast majority of the space that surrounded us on our walk was covered by trees and grasses and leaves falling from the trees to the ground and vines and birds and worms and crickets and over most of our path a brown soil composted of the remains of all the life that had preceded us and would soon be feeding the next stages of life there. It was hard to find a place where life had not for the moment overcome that which might pull it back into inanimate elements!

I know that this is to some degree an illusion, because if you go beneath the thin top layer of earth the inanimate reigns. If you go very far up in our atmosphere again, the inanimate reigns supreme. But in this vital, robust crust of our earth is the most amazing diversity of life in climate after climate and environment after environment. Life is victorious, victorious, over the forces that would holds us back.[viii]

And here we find another gift to us from the vision of Darwin. Pre- Darwinian thought and those who continue to resist it, would suggest that Almighty God had it in some particular time in the past created ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing, all the universe and each of the species of creatures and plants and microbes that inhabit our planet. Now think of that carefully, if creation was “once and for all,” if there was no clear Darwinian style lineage of life form to previous life form and the ongoing opportunity for more such changes, then we earthlings would be of all creatures most to be pitied.[ix] For as we look around our earth every single day an estimated 35-125[x] species of plants and animals disappear from the face of the earth forever, up to 46,000 species a year, are becoming extinct by changes in climate or changes in competition with other species with which they strove. If creation was once and for all, and not an ongoing phenomena, how long would it be that in our quick elimination of species from the earth that there would be no chance of life progressing or surviving at all? Eventually all species on Earth will come and go, according to Darwinian prospects. Even humanity.

Which leads us to another insight that we humans might take forward from Darwinian thought. As Psalm 8 pronounces for us…

“ …what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet”

So close to the God. So advantaged over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. Darwinian thought would offer this insight: human beings have through genetic progression and cultural advancement taken our particular place in the community of species. We are unique in our use of language and symbolism, far advanced in our cultural life in our moral development and more, but we are still a just one species of the panoply of creatures and certainly not the only one of any value or with potential.

Yet even though Psalm 8 makes it appear that we are currently the pinnacles of creation, Darwinian thought would lead us to expect that something more may be a rising even as we speak. Perhaps some small but significant genetic changes in some humans will give them a new and advantageous trajectory of development. Or perhaps those changes will arise in the chimpanzee genetic makeup, the gorilla, or perhaps the dolphin. In the same way that Roman culture overcame the Greek culture -- even though the Greek culture looked like it would dominate inexorably-- new creatures that will eventually be of a different species than Homo sapiens may take our place at the top of the hierarchy.[xi] As people of faith, rather than recoil from such a vision, we can, instead, see here again is the guidance of God’s evolutionary plan to produce new life forms ever more able to relate thankfully, more worshipfully and more helpfully to God and to the rich web of earthly life.

Scientists now believe that the earliest forms of life began about 4 billion years ago and that earth is theoretically capable of sustaining life for another 4 billion years before our dying Sun destroys our home planet. If the length of time there has been life on earth was a year, human beings have been only around for 31 seconds[xii]and from early Biblical times to our own, a mere 1 sec. We’

With such a long road ahead for us, is it so hard to imagine that another creature similar to us but different and advantaged over us would take our place given that time span? If we are wise and fortunate enough to keep our planet in livable shape, it would seem much more reasonable that there is more positive evolving to come.[xiii]

Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, a Catholic Jesuit priest and paleontologist, in his book The Phenomenon of Man published 50 years ago wrote “The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself…[Humanity] is not the center of the universe as once we thought in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful – [Humanity is] the arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life.[Humanity] alone constitutes the last-born, the freshest, the most complicated, the most subtle of all the successive layers of life.” (pp.221-222)

The goal he envisions is a new permanence of the fleeting world that the mystic dips her toes into, a new stage of formation called Noogenesis – that is a united planetary consciousness.

Let me suggest that this is our emerging challenge, to follow the leadings of the Spirit of God forward beyond merely claiming a common destiny with all human beings – as hard as that it is to do-to a radical new common consciousness with all life itself.

Let us close then with that visionary Chardin’s prayer,
“Lord, we know and feel that you are everywhere around us; but it seems that there is a veil before our eyes. Let the light of your countenance shine upon us in its fullness. May your deep brilliance light up the innermost part of the [shadows] in which we move. And, to that end, send us your Spirit, whose flaming action alone can operate the birth and achievement of the great transformation which sums up all inward perfection and towards the unity for which your creation yearns.”[xiv]

*******************************************************************

[i] The following text is in the article on Rick Santorum at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum
“In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to insert language which came to be known as the "Santorum Amendment" into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools.[22] The amendment, crafted with the assistance of the Discovery Institute,[22][23] would have required schools to discuss supposed controversies surrounding scientific topics, and gave the theory of evolution as an example, opening the door for intelligent design as an opposing theory to be presented in science classrooms.[24] A federal court in Santorum's own state, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis", portraying it as being the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.[25][26][27]
Though not included in the final version of the Act made law, the language from the amendment was included in a report attached to the Act known as the Conference Report. The Discovery Institute and many intelligent design proponents, including two Ohio Congressmen, have repeatedly invoked this to suggest that intelligent design should be included in public school science standards as an alternative to evolution.[28][29]”
[ii] http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/58.html

[iii] Complete text online at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html
[iv] http://theclergyletterproject.org/
[v] Start with www.teachthemscience.org which will lead to a host of sites with convincing evidence on this matter.
[vi]A fine short video by evolution educator Ken Miller makes the powerful case. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk
[vii] Even this rock around Austin is limestone, the sedimentary rock that is deposited shells of formerly living sea creatures!
[viii]In the closing sentences of On the Origin of Species Darwin expressed a similar awe and wonder…
“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. …Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
[ix] An allusion to 1 Cor. 15:19 “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
[x] http://forests.org/archive/general/coolfact.htm
[xi] Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretel that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

[xii] http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/tl1.html
[xiii] We’ve 4 billion years before the sun turns into a Red Giant and makes life on earth impossible. http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/futueart.html
[xiv] The Divine Milieu, p.132

[1] The following text is in the article on Rick Santorum at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum
“In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to insert language which came to be known as the "Santorum Amendment" into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools.[22] The amendment, crafted with the assistance of the Discovery Institute,[22][23] would have required schools to discuss supposed controversies surrounding scientific topics, and gave the theory of evolution as an example, opening the door for intelligent design as an opposing theory to be presented in science classrooms.[24] A federal court in Santorum's own state, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis", portraying it as being the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.[25][26][27]
Though not included in the final version of the Act made law, the language from the amendment was included in a report attached to the Act known as the Conference Report. The Discovery Institute and many intelligent design proponents, including two Ohio Congressmen, have repeatedly invoked this to suggest that intelligent design should be included in public school science standards as an alternative to evolution.[28][29]”
[1] http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/58.html

[1] Complete text online at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html
[1] http://theclergyletterproject.org/
[1] Start with www.teachthemscience.org which will lead to a host of sites with convincing evidence on this matter.
[1]A fine short video by evolution educator Ken Miller makes the powerful case. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk
[1] Even this rock around Austin is limestone, the sedimentary rock that is deposited shells of formerly living sea creatures!
[1]In the closing sentences of On the Origin of Species Darwin expressed a similar awe and wonder…
“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. …Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
[1] An allusion to 1 Cor. 15:19 “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
[1] http://forests.org/archive/general/coolfact.htm
[1] Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretel that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

[1] http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/tl1.html
[1] We’ve 4 billion years before the sun turns into a Red Giant and makes life on earth impossible. http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/futueart.html
[1] The Divine Milieu, p.132

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Casting Out An Evil Spirit

University Christian Church –Austin

C. Kutz-Marks

CASTING OUT AN EVIL SPIRIT

Mark 1:21-28

4th Sunday after Epiphany, b, Feb. 1, 2009

Few of us would question Jesus' authority to teach God's ways, but some of us do squirm with the idea of casting out an evil spirit. It sounds too much like superstition. We'd rather say that casting out of demons was not a miraculous physical healing, but some inner spiritual reversal which freed the person from bondage to sin, to self-doubt, to destructive behaviors. In other words, much of the healing that Jesus performed, much of the authority that he exercised, was in the area of study that today would concern mental health professionals and psychiatry.

Does this mean that we should forget these stories and consign such problems to the secular medical establishment? Should we in the church believe that our faith in God has nothing to do with our physical health or our emotional health? Absolutely not! The Bible clearly testifies that Jesus casts out evil spirits by the power of God. And in Jesus’ name, we are called on to cast out evil spirits, too! But don't think I've flipped. Give me a hearing.

Let us begin to consider this issue by facing squarely what modern medicine is only beginning to learn: that we human beings are a unity of body, mind, and spirit. We are not some robot with interchangeable parts that can be fixed like an automobile. What harms the body affects the mind. What harms the spirit affects the body. What aids the mind's development adds to possible spiritual growth. All these aspects of ourselves are related intimately. Our thoughts can make us sick or well.

Anyone who has ever worried oneself up to a stomach ulcer know that it is true.

Let me suggest for your consideration a point that I absolutely believe: GOOD RELIGION, HEALTHY RELIGION, HEALS THE BODY, AND THE MIND, AS WELL AS THE SPIRIT.

Of course we have to approach this subject with care. We are not advocating replacing medicine with so-called "faith-healing". This is a field where so much damage has been done by spiritual quacks that many responsible people of faith are even afraid to approach the subject. Even as great a man as Mahatma Gandhi was guilty of a grievous error in this regard. Gandhi's wife was severely ill with pneumonia and was fading. Gandhi refused to let her have penicillin, arguing that alien substances should not be introduced into the body. Accordingly his wife died.

It is no lack of faith in God to use medications such as penicillin. Most medications used responsibly are truly gifts of God Think of the suffering we would know in our lives were there no antibiotics such as surely saved Dorman Winfrey’s lift last week and multiple times last year. Think of the numbers of us just within our church who have now longer, better lives because of insulin to control diabetes. Blood pressure medications. Diuretics for heart problems. And we could go on!

Good health is God's intention for our life. Often proper medication helps fulfill God's designs for us.

Sometimes the greatest enemies our bodies have are our own destructive habits. We know, for example, that vigorous aeorbic exercise several times a week will add three years to our life. Excessive worry or stress can subtract those three years, plus one more. Smoking more than 2 packs of cigarettes a day will cost us eight years. Being too overweight burdens our hearts. And I could go on, but I suspect most of us are feeling sufficiently chastised! Right?

We need to remember, that as First Corinthians 6 teaches us,

"… do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." [1 Cor. 6:19-20]

Therefore, first, we must not mistreat these fine temples we are given -- or should I say, loaned.

And not only is trust in God good preventive medicine, there is evidence that there is healing power in faith for our bodies even after they are in some way diseased. Some people when they are given bad news by a doctor immediately cave in and resign themselves to a pitful, pity filled fate.

Such would have been the temptation of famed author Norman Cousins when his doctor reported that he had contracted Marie-Strumpell’s disease, that is, ankylosing spondylitis. The doctor confessed he had never witnessed a single recovery from this ailment.

Immediately Cousins embarked on a program of combining massive doses of Vitamin C with a program of daily laughter. He began with funny films shown on his own projector. Among them were "Candid Camera" episodes and some Marx Brothers' films. "I made the joyous discovery", he relates, "that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me two hours of pain-free sleep." He repeated the procedure as needed. Within months he was free from pain and able to return to his work.

Like Norman Cousins we do well not to give in easily to illness. A key feature of victorious human living derives from our readiness to resist when some dark future or power appears before us. A person of faith, faith in God, does not quickly give in to the negative power of any demon, be it physical or psychological. Like Jacob by the River Jabbok, we are to wrestle that disease, and wrest from it a blessing. The blessing is always there, to those willing to wrestle for it.[i]

For examply, I’m sure many of you read in yesterday’s Statesman the touching commentary by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. It told of what could only be classed a demonic attack in Kandahar, Afganistan of 15 girls who had the bad fortune of being caught going to school by Taliban men who think that girls shouldn’t be educated. So the men threw acid on the girls’ faces to teach them the lesson – stay home.

What should they do? Stay home? Fear another attack? Hide from the world in an even more pitiable retreat from the danger? No! Those girls when healed up enough, went back to school to make something better of their lives. They took the risk of more pain, more hurt in order to live out their potential to the fullest. May God grant those girls the continued strength to persevere, and in doing so, find a healing that is more than just physical.

Because besides helping heal us physically, GOOD RELIGION ALSO HEALS THE EMOTIONS. All of us sometimes reach the breaking point emotionally. We are sick, weak, worn-out even when our bodies seem fine.

There is a story about a monastery in Europe perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air. The only way to reach the monastery was to be suspended in a basket which was pulled to the top by several monks who pulled and tugged with all their strength. Obviously the ride up the steep cliff in that basket was terrifying. One tourist got exceedingly nervous about half-way up as he noticed that the rope by which he was suspended was old and frayed. With a trembling voice he asked the monk who was riding with him in the basket how often they changed the rope. The monk thought for a moment and answered abruptly, "WHENEVER IT BREAKS".

There have been times in my life when emotionally I have been suspended in that basket. How about you? I think most of us come to that moment at some time in our lives, when emotionally we are on the raw edge and we feel uncomfortably out of control. The trouble is that many of us would rather die than show and share our emotions.

This being Super Bowl Sunday, you may see the same thing take place in today's game. John Madden says that some professional football players won't have an injury treated when anybody else is around because they are afraid it will be seen as a sign of weakness, or that the other team's players may find out and try to take advantage of them. Quarterback Kenny Stabler of the Oakland Raiders was like that, Madden says. So was the legendary Jim Brown, who would treat himself at home after a game, rather than let even the team's trainer know that he was hurt.

And even if we might excuse the fears of a professional football player, it is really sad when any one of us is afraid to share her- or maybe more likely- his hurts and pains and fears.

As the big game hits the TV screen this evening, I’ll be rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers, more out of nostalgia than anything else. But if the Arizona Cardinals win, I’ll not be too upset, particularly if it was because of the play of their quarterback Kurt Warner.

Some of you know the story of how Warner courted and married his wife, Brenda, in 1997, even though she was already the mother of two children, one of whom had miraculously survived being dropped by his biological father. Little Zachary was born in 1987 and that fall left him with severe brain damage, retinas in both eyes ruptured, and so much more. Few thought he would live, fewer yet that he would ever be able to the walk or talk, which, yes, he now does.

Both Zachary and his dad, Kurt, are examples to you and me of what a faithful, God trusting spirit can become if we are willing to strive against those conditions and the spirits that seek to overcome us.

Our relationship with God is critical in the healing process. Carl Jung, one of the greatest psychotherapists of our century, stated that every case he had encountered in his many years of practice boiled down to a religious problem-- a problem of trust, or of finding meaning in one's life.

So central is our trust in God and its effect on the way that we look at life, that if attitude is right and our attunement to God proper we’re simply going to be fine. As the Apostle Paul said in Romans 8:

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." [Rom 8:38-39]

Nor can any disease- even should it prove physically fatal- overcome our inner victory in Christ. You may say that statement is too strong. But I stand by it. We cannot fail to be the ultimate winners, if we keep our eyes on the goal and the upward calling of Christ.

Sermons from University Christian Church - Austin