Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 6, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
While I’m traveling from Austin to Urbana, here are three days of devotions from these same dates in 2022 …
October 6, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Don’t make stupid people famous
O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you?
Doesn’t that word STUPID just jump right off the page? Wonder what it looked like in Greek!
Are you so stupid? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?
We enfleshed human beings are inevitably and endlessly tempted to end where we began. Are we so STUPID?
Did you experience so many things in vain?
To describe us, The Amplified Bible uses the words foolish, thoughtless, superficial, bewitched, and senseless. I’ll settle for stupid, myself. The highlight of Pastor Matt’s sermon at Grace Covenant Sunday was when he read a slide that said in big black letters, DON’T MAKE STUPID PEOPLE FAMOUS … and then a second slide added, IN THE CHURCH.
Because no doubt we do that sometimes. Jesus said he didn’t listen to the praise of men, because he knew that kind of praise too often comes from what James called our own “earthly, spiritual and demonic bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.” When we make “stupid” people famous, too often the result “will be disorder and every vile practice.”
And that’s just the way it is, when we forget to look up for “the wisdom from above.”
Sherman’s Lagoon, a cartoon I read every day, slammed it home on Tuesday: the fish are talking among themselves about a new sign planted in the sand.
Here we are! Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary … What is a marine sanctuary anyway? … That’s an area in the ocean that hairless beach apes have set aside to be protected … protected from themselves?
Sherman rolls his eyes and frowns at the little fish asking questions. It’s complicated.
Comments from some of the readers: From Huckleberry Hiroshima, “Actually it’s quite simple, not complicated at all. We do need to protect the environment from ourselves.” And from barksm, “We need to protect everything from ourselves.”
Send them to Galatia, right? Paul has an earful for all of us. Or James, or Jesus. The heroes of the Bible are not special, nor are they stupid. They just pray. They look up, and not out at each other.
Jesus told us about a friend who insisted on knocking on his door at midnight. Are you kidding me? But no, the friend was in need and he would not stop knocking. And if a friend eventually gives in, so certainly does our Father. At least that’s what Jesus said:
So I tell you to ask, and you will receive. Seek and you will find. And knock until the door is opened unto you. For everyone who asks, receives. And the one who seeks, finds. And to the one who knocks the door will be opened.
Jesus doesn’t stop there.
Which father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked (and stupid), know how to give good gifts to your children, well then! How much more will our Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
I am learning this very slowly. But it’s the only thing there is to learn. The One Thing.
(Galatians 3, Luke 1, Acts 16, Luke 11)
(Genesis 2, Psalm 128, Hebrews 2, 1 John 4, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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