Kontakion

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-13 Central Verse: “…but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.” 1 Kings 19:14b-13 Central Truth: This is the second lesson in our stewardship series and it focuses on Prayer. This may seem like an odd verse to focus on prayer within our membership vows but we must take the time to begin to understand in the most basic elements what prayer is. Prayer is communication with God. With communication there are two important attributes to the conversation. The first is listening and the second is speaking. Most people would put speaking as the primary for conversation but it is just the opposite which is listening. When we speak about prayer in its most basic components we are talking about conversation. Most of the time it feels like we do all the talking. We fill up the silence of our lives with it. This relegates the ro...

Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20 Central Verse: “…And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20b NRSV Central Truth: We are a distracted and distractible people. I have to be intentional about putting my phone down in the evenings. We are pressed to give attention to everything and everyone on an equal basis, the call apps like Facebook and Twitter are almost irresistible to some and while it is possible to have meaningful relationships over these apps the time spent is often wasteful rather than fruitful. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew we receive what is commonly known as the great commission. I’ve heard many sermons talking about the great commission and I’ve done more than a few sermons on it myself but the key part I want to focus on is the last verse. That Christ promises to be with us. Christ promises his presence in our lives all the way to the end of the world. Because of all the important things to talk about in this section I have noticed t...

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Central Verse: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;” Exodus 20:2 NRSV Central Truth: There has always been a tension within the church in relation to the law and grace. As Christians we tend to swing too far one way or the other. We are constantly in danger of being legalistic, that is focusing primarily and exclusively on the letter of the law, then the flip side is we risk erring on the side of no personal responsibility for actions. The Decalogue has always had a special place in this conversation about law and grace. Even some of the biggest founders of Protestantism had divergent views on how to deal with the Decalogue. Martin Luther says, “The Ten Commandments have no right to condemn that conscience in which Jesus dwells, for Jesus has taken from the Ten Commandments the right and power to curse us.” . John Calvin states “We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us ...

Scripture: Exodus 17:1-7 Central Verse: “The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” Exodus 17:2 NRSV Central Truth: The cycle of complaining continues. There is no water therefore the people complain to Moses, who then takes the complaint before God. God provides very specific instructions for Moses in order to answer this need. The result is God, through Moses, brings forth water from a rock. Notice there is an escalation this time around. In verse four Moses claims to God that the people want to stone him. Of course, we have known way of knowing that people intended to stone Moses. This could be one of those situations where people are complaining and the leader goes to the next logical step and outlook of the complaint. There is another escalation that needs to be pointed out and that has to do with God’s command to strike the rock. This is the same wording used in the earlier E...

Scripture: Exodus 16:2-15 Central Verse: “And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the LORD has heard the complaining that you utter against him – what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the LORD” Exodus 16:8 NRSV Central Truth: In times of plenty we typically forget about God. We have a tendency to only remember God when things go bad in our lives. A classic example is the story of a person who is never in church but in a moment of panic yells “Oh God!” as if they suddenly remember that God exist. This scripture follows a pattern that has been established in the Exodus story, that pattern is that the people perceive a threat in this case dehydration and starvation, they complain against the leadership, the leaders bring it before God and then God saves the people. A difference to notice here is that God responds right away to the murmurs of the people. In fact God seems more concerned wit...

Scripture: Exodus 14:19-31 Central Verse: “Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.” Exodus 14:31 NRSV Central Truth: This is another story that is particularly difficult for many of us to fathom. We rejoice in the idea of God delivering his people from slavery into a new life. However, when we read the text closely we notice that not only does God deliver his people but God also kills, or “tossed the Egyptians into the sea.” (Ex 14:27b NRSV). This means that God killed an army. It’s easy to toss this idea about as no big deal, we are meant to be concentrating on the people of Israel and their deliverance. However, for many of us we have a theology that defines God as love, these actions beg the question about how can God be love if destruction and death are a part of that? There are no easy answers to this situation we find ourselves in. We could focus on everything in the t...

Scripture: Exodus 12:1-14 Central Verse: “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” Exodus 12:14 NRSV Central Truth: This is a text that is primarily focused on the liturgical notion of faith. The story of Moses has been action packed up to this point and here at the culmination of the plagues we stop not just to be told about something the people of Israel are supposed to do, but how they are to do it. Typically the image we carry of this text is the Charleston Heston movie. This image is of people seriously eating together attempting to avoid accidental death by God. Viewing this text through the lens of a popular movie has, instead of breathing life into the text, solidified it as a significant historical event with very little meaning outside of its time. When we take the events out of their context like the movie but place it back into the contex...

Scripture: Exodus 3:1-15 Central Verse : “Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt: I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” Exodus 3:7-8 NRSV Central Truth : This story in Exodus can be talked about in many ways. It could be used to talk about the original ‘call’ story and how every prophet after Moses, including Jesus, story tries to measure up to this. We could talk about how God decides to interact with the Israelite people, more to the point of why did he wait to interact and why did he choose Moses. We could even take my favorite topic, removing your shoes because you’re on holy ground. Or my second favorite topic, questions (like ...

Scripture: Exodus 1:8-2:10 Central Verse: “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Exodus 1:8 NRSV Central Truth: This begins a few weeks in Exodus so some background material is important. Author: Unknown, tradition has accredited it to Moses. Some portions may have been written by Moses but they have been compiled together by various authors over the years before they arrived at their final work. In biblical studies, there are four primary redactors of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the bible). Their abbreviations are JEPD. J stands for Jehovah tradition which is the southern kingdom of Israel’s history. E is Elohim which is the northern kingdom. In the Hebrew, these two redactors are identified by their usage of these names for God. While we translate Jehovah and Elohim as God, and Yahweh as GOD traditionally these groups used the names listed above. P stands for priestly tradition, usually if the text deals heavily with priest and what priest do i...

Reading Amount: Revelation 14:1-20 Central Verse: Then I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth - to every nation and tribe and language and people. He said in a loud voice. "Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water." Then another angel, a second, followed, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, "Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up foreve...

Title: The Example of the Lamb Reading Amount: Revelation 12:1-13:18 Central Verse: Let anyone who has an ear listen: If you are to be taken captive, Into captivity you go; If you kill with the sword, With the sword you must be killed. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. But they have conquered him by the Blood of the Lamb, And by the word of their testimony, For they did not cling to life even in the Face of death. Revelation 12:9-11 Central Truth: Victory for a believer comes not from violence but from the victory that the Lamb attained and how well we follow that example. Food For Thought: Note the only mark of a true believer is not accepting the mark of the beast. Salvation doesn’t have anything to do with a confession of faith contrary to what many modern theologians say. This section continues with the fact that evil is just a parody of God. We see an evil "trinity" the dragon represents Satan. The beast from the sea represents the Roman governme...

Reading Amount: Revelation 10:1-11:19 Central Verse: We give you thanks, LORD GOD Almighty Who are and who were, For you have taken your great power And begun to reign. The nations raged, But your wrath has come, And the time for judging the dead, For regarding your servants, the Prophets And saints and all who fear your, Name, Both small and great, And for destroying those who destroy The earth." Revelation 11:17b-18 NRSV Central Truth: The role of the church in the book of Revelation is one of praise of God and reflection on what God has done. We often forget this role in the church today in favor of other modes of expression. Food for Thought: Seven Thunders - a curious thing happens and John is interrupted and told not to write down what the thunders say. Traditional Apocalyptic tradition would dictate that there must be seven different sections of seven woes. Here we see that God is not trapped by our own traditions but is powerful enough to say stop, we will move forward. C...

Reading Amount: Revelation 10:1-11:19 Central Verse: We give you thanks, LORD GOD Almighty Who are and who were, For you have taken your great power And begun to reign. The nations raged, But your wrath has come, And the time for judging the dead, For regarding your servants, the Prophets And saints and all who fear your, Name, Both small and great, And for destroying those who destroy The earth." Revelation 11:17b-18 NRSV Central Truth: The role of the church in the book of Revelation is one of praise of God and reflection on what God has done. We often forget this role in the church today in favor of other modes of expression. Food for Thought: Seven Thunders - a curious thing happens and John is interrupted and told not to write down what the thunders say. Traditional Apocalyptic tradition would dictate that there must be seven different sections of seven woes. Here we see that God is not trapped by our own traditions but is powerful enough to say stop, we will move forward. C...

Reading Amount: Revelation 8:1-9:21 Central Verse: The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts. Revelation 9:20-21 NRSV Central Truth: The heart of Revelation is Salvation and the desire for the salvation of the world. As the plagues begin we find reason to mourn, people still don't turn to God when things are bad. Food For Thought: The description of the locusts in these chapters are often seen as a parody of the divine. We see they have golden crowns, like God, human faces like the creatures around the throne of God, and their hair has been understood as representing certain frenzy religious practices in the emperor cults. There are also biblical ties to the image of the locust. Locust were understood to ...

Reading Amount: Revelation 7:1-17 Central Verse: After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "salvation belongs to our God who is Seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" Revelation 7:9-10 NRSV Central Truth: Salvation has come to all. No one is excluded from God's plan of salvation. The appropriate response to God's salvation is praise to God and the Lamb (note that they both share the throne). Food For Thought: Great emphasis has been put on the 144,000 in recent church history. Some groups have emphasized this as an exclusionary tactic claiming that they are the 144,000 and no one else. There are two problems with this view, one is that it forgets the nature of symbolic/metaphorical language. John is using the biggest number he can thi...

Reading Amount: Revelation 4:1-6:17 Central Verse: Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Rood of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals," Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Revelation 5:5-6 NRSV Central Truth: While there is violence present in Revelation everything comes back to the lamb of God. The act of conquering, while using violent language, comes back to a non-violent image the slaughtered lamb who conquered all evil for us. Food For Thought: The throne of God is a traditional visionary experience that happens in many of the prophetic books in the bible. The vision of the four horsemen has been used in artistic renderings for centuries. There is a lot of discussion about who the first horseman ...

Reading Amount: Revelation 2:1-3:22 Central Verse: And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve. - Rev. 2:23b Central Truth: Christ knows his churches and his people, he deals with each of us differently but expects us to follow him regardless of our surrounding culture or the powers we find ourselves surrounded by. Food For Thought: There are seven churches that are dealt with, and these churches were in a circuit so that when the letter traveled each would see and hear what was spoken to the others. This reminds us of the universality of the message of Revelation but also reminds us that the intent of Revelation is pastoral in nature not future forecasting as many views of Revelation would have us believe. There is a pattern that each mini-letter to the churches holds Similarities of the prophecies to the churches To the angel of the church in a given city, write: Jesus (depicted in glory, ofte...

Reading Amount: Revelation 1:1-20 Central Verse: I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force. - 1:13b-16 NRSV As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lamp stands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lamp stands are the seven churches. - 1:20 Central Truth: Christ is the Lord over all creation but his love is manifest in that he is present with us as individuals and as a community. Food For Thought: In the opening chapter of Revelation we learn that it is a letter written to seven churches in particular. Bec...

Who, When and Where: The question of who wrote the book of Revelation, like most books in the bible, is not an easy question to answer. Fortunately there isn't much discussion about possible redactors or editors of the book. A redactor is similar to a second author who goes over the original manuscript inserting comments for what they deem as clarification. Most scholars seem to agree that that book was written by one individual. Historically and traditionally speaking that leaves us with two individuals as options. First in the traditional category is John the Apostle, or other wise known as "the Disciple whom Jesus loved" a reference to his nickname in the Gospel of John. The historical, and to some traditional, option is John of Ephesus who was a church elder in the city of Ephesus located in modern day Turkey. Some individuals believe that these are the same persons. Their reasoning that this is the same person is that tradition states that John the Apostle took Mary...