Mar 2nd: Deliver Us – Surrender, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
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Deliver Us – Surrender with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: The Jesus Prayer: 7 Spiritual Practices for the New Year A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Rom. 12.21; Matt. 6.13; Gal. 5.22-23.
Join us this Sunday to hear an inspiring message about overcoming evil with goodness. We’ll explore the power of kindness, beauty, and hope in a world that needs it most. Come online or in-person – all are welcome.
Transcript:
Steven: I love this picture. Jennifer, a nurse, learned that one of her patients, John, who was homeless, was forced to give up his dog, Boomer, to the local shelter when he was hospitalized, Jennifer went to the animal shelter and adopted John’s dog so that she could bring him to visit while John completed his rehabilitation in the hospital. Jennifer said there’s so there’s so much ugliness in the world right now. If I can give one person a little bit of hope, that’s the least I can do. I can’t cure diseases. I’m not a miracle worker, but I can care for John’s dog as long as he needs me to you know right now, when it seems like the worth value dignity of beloved children of God are being easily discarded for the sake of efficiency and profit, we need to be reminded of the sheer power of kindness when the ugliness of inhumanity is on full display, we need to show up with the very best of our humanity. The medicine this world needs is to believe in the power of goodness. You know, I suggest the motto we need for this moment in time are the words of the Apostle Paul from the book of Romans. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with goodness. I mean, this is our marching orders as people of faith to be a fierce force for good in the world. We’re concluding our worship series on the prayer. Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer, and this is not simply a prayer we recite on Sunday mornings. Jesus was teaching an orientation of the heart, a way of being in the world. Jesus was inviting this prayer to live in us, that we might live this prayer today’s phrase, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil every day, every day we are tempted to give in to cynicism and despair. Every day. We’re tempted to assume life can’t be different. We can’t be different, the world can’t be different. Every day, we’re tempted to assume we’re powerless. Every day we’re tempted to allow to allow fear, suffering, ugliness, evil in this world to overwhelm us. Jesus said, Pray, this way lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. One way we are delivered from evil is remembering there is a goodness stronger than evil. There is a light that dispels the shadows of darkness. There is a love more powerful than hate. Three days after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, composer and conductor Lynda Cohen, spoke these words at his memorial service. We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow filled with rage. Sums up a lot of us these days, numb with sorrow filled with rage. Cohen continued, this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution or retreat in fear. Rather, it will inflame our art, our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to the evil of our times, to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. Imagine if we didn’t understand this prayer, deliver deliver us from evil, as asking to be to be rescued or or to escape the pain and the suffering in our world. What if we understood this prayer as asking for the strength to resist the temptation to be overcome by evil, trusting, trusting the goodness that is stronger than evil. Now imagine if we collectively said, this will be our reply to the evil of our times. To be a force for good, more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. How was that stop light on 27th by the Safeway? You know, it’s actually a really, really dangerous intersection with just a lot of a lot of traffic, and there was an elderly gentleman bunched hunched over like Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, trying to get across the street, using his walker and carrying a bag of groceries, and you could barely slip a piece of paper under his shoe as he as he was shuffling forward inch by inch, and he was only about halfway through the intersection when the light turned green. Now a few cars began to honk with impatience, and there was a young woman, a teenager, with spiked, vibrant purple hair, and she was skateboarding on the sidewalk. She left her skateboard. She left her skateboard behind and and she raced to this elderly man offering to help him across the street. She tenderly took his arm, she whispered something in his ear, and I I could see that they just both kind of their heads went back and they laughed. I couldn’t help but think now that’s what the kingdom of God looks like, mercy, tenderness, goodness. Could these be our superpowers in a world threatened by villains. The very best gift we can offer the world right now is the very best of our humanity, the part of our humanity that bears the image of God’s goodness. Do not be overcome by evil. Overcome evil with goodness. In Galatians, the apostle Paul also says, the fruits, the fruits of the spirit, the fruits of the Spirit are kindness, goodness, gentleness. In other words, there’s something of God in every act of goodness, in every act of goodness, we are delivered from evil. You know, as a pastor, I’ve had many conversations with people who who really aren’t sure what they believe, and they they tell me that they really struggle to believe in the resurrection, and rather than trying to convince with a theological argument, which never works, I often tell a story that took place and as South Africa struggled to heal from the pain and the suffering from the evils apartheid as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the perpetrators of evil acknowledged their crimes, and they met face to face with their victims. Now one police, white police officer, faced the black woman whose husband he and other white officers murdered by setting him on fire. Now in the face of that unspeakable evil, this woman was asked what she needed, and she requested three things. She said she wanted to be taken to the spot where her husband was murdered, so that she’d gather up the dirt and the ashes and give him a proper burial. She asked that the police officer visit her once a week in the ghetto, because she still had a lot of love to give, and this officer needs love. And the third thing she asked is for the white police officer to be brought to her in the courtroom, so that she could embrace Him, that He might experience the power of forgiveness. Wow, why do I believe in the resurrection? Because that kind of goodness, that kind of goodness that is stronger than evil, isn’t humanly possible. But with God, all things are possible. At the very heart of our faith is a core belief that suffering, evil, even death, will never have the last word God. Does, and God’s word revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is a goodness stronger than evil. The spirit of that goodness embodied in Jesus could not be defeated, even though they tried, that same spirit of goodness was present in that woman in South Africa and friends. Here’s the good news, that same spirit of goodness is present in you and me, and we are delivered from evil each time we bring something of that goodness into the world. A colleague of mine described a time when he was feeling hopeless about his about his work, and hopeless about the world, hopeless about his ability to affect any kind of change. He was we he was overcome. He was overcome by all that was wrong with the world and and he was tempted to give in, just given to despair. Here’s how he tells the story. I was working with the senior high youth group in my church fixing up an inner city park that had really fallen into disrepair. We spent the whole weekend picking up trash, weeding, hacking down bushes, pulling up dead trees. It was really hard work two weekends in a row, we left that park as clean as we could possibly make it. And each time the following Monday, there was even more trash. Someone pulled down the damaged fence. We repaired, I mean, the park looked awful. We felt hopeless, defeated, demoralized, and we were tempted to give up. What was I to do? Well, I did the only thing I could think to do. I planted flowers. Now I don’t know much about flowers. I didn’t know if I was buying the right kind of flowers for our climate, or if they needed a lot of a lot of water or sunlight, I didn’t even bother to find out what kind of flowers they were. They were pretty and they looked hardy, hardy enough to stand up to the rowdy neighborhood kids. I didn’t have time to research the perfect flowers for that region or time of year, I just needed to plant something. So I planted flowers. I wanted to be the kind of person who would rather try to make even a small, temporary gesture of goodness and beauty than the kind of person who would just simply add to the ugliness or do nothing at all. The ugliness in the park, broken little what liquor bottles, syringes, broken toys, bullet casings, drug deals in the alley, the person driving by in their fancy car quickly rolling up their window and locking the door. All of that, all of that reflected the ugliness and the and the pain in the world around us. And I just needed a break from the ugly. I needed a break from the despair I was feeling inside of me, so I planted flowers. You said, you know, people are going to just trample on these flowers. You know, they’re just going to pull these flowers up, right? I said, probably, we’ll see. But planting these flowers felt like an act of resistance. Planting flowers reminds us that in spite of the ugliness, there is beauty, and we we are part of that beauty. Do not be overcome by evil. Overcome evil with goodness friends. What if we trusted what if we trusted that with every act of goodness we are delivering one another from evil. We’re bringing something of God into the world. What the world needs now and what our souls need right now, is really the kind of foolishness that. That plants flowers in the midst of despair. Just imagine if we collectively said, this will be our reply to the evil of our times, to be a force for good more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. May it be, so I.
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