The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

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Jonathan Haidt’s important book The Anxious Generation demonstrates that smartphones and social media multiply anxiety. This is particularly true for adolescents. He’s right. Yet the problem of anxiety is not new. Tolstoy in the 19th century said, “Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.”

Election years exacerbate anxiety. But anxiety haunts the human experience. A little 4 year old spent Tuesday morning crying through morning prayer on the first day of school, right over there. Perhaps the mother was also weeping. Letting go of your child, whether for JK or her freshman year out of state, is fraught with worry....

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Thanksgiving 2023

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But here’s the astonishing kicker: we are to present these cries of desperation with thanksgiving: “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” We’ve been accustomed to think of thanksgiving as an acknowledgement of abundance. Thanksgiving is for the prosperous and well-fed, with family gathered in a warm house and a rest from work. But here, Paul directs our thanksgiving to arise from our lack, our poverty, our need, our desperation….

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Trinity 16, 2023

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In the Bill & Hillary Clinton Airpot in Little Rock, Arkansas, a large sign advertises a local church, with the slogan Expect an Experience. That captures perfectly the American religion: Emotivism. Faith means experiencing happiness. Big Evangelicalism equates faith with success, prosperity, health. If you lead a good life, good things will come to you. One slogan puts it this way: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” The first part is true. But God’s plan for the disciples of Jesus might not be what the world calls “wonderful.” Bonhoeffer’s famous saying is more accurate: “When God calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Faith will not eliminate tribulations in your life. Afflictions come to the faithful to strengthen their faith further. Whom the Lord loves, He chastens….

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