#u people are tricking yourselves fr

[worstloki]

'loki kissed mobius and they deleted the scene' funniest behind the scenes claim i've heard today thank you

[riverdamien]

Humility and Faith

Session 7: Humility and Faith--James 4:1-17 . . .Warning Against Worldliness 4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions1 are yat war within you?2 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask zwrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 aYou adulterous people!3 Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? bTherefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit cthat he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But dhe gives more grace. Therefore it says, e“God opposes the proud but dgives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. fResist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 gDraw near to God, and he will draw near to you. hCleanse your hands, you sinners, and ipurify your hearts, jyou double-minded. 9 kBe wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 lHumble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 mDo not speak evil against one another, brothers.4 The one who speaks against a brother or njudges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only oone lawgiver and pjudge, he who is able to save and qto destroy. But rwho are you to judge your neighbor? Boasting About Tomorrow 13 Come now, you who say, s“Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For tyou are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, u“If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. vAll such boasting is evil. 17 wSo whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction: On my desk sits the picture of an old friend who passed away several years ago, Annie, she was 95 years old. We met on line, she read of our work. Her interest in me came from having the religious name of "Damien of Molokai", for she lived on the island of Molokai. She paid my way to see her. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, walking where Damien walked, so many year ago. We had prayer every morning, and as I picked up her Bible to read a passage I noticed that the Book of James was torn out of the book. I looked surprised, and she said emphatically, "James is not supposed to be in the Bible, we are saved by grace." Through the two weeks we were there I loved joking about James, and getting her riled, it was fun. The reality is James challenges all of us. He is very blunt about the Biblical message, but what he is saying is at the heart of the Gospel, the heart of which Paul proclaimed, in a different way of speaking. When we experience Jesus in our hearts, they are transformed, and we have to share him in our actions, we have to love other people. Each day as we read the lectionary, the Old Testament scriptures ring out with the same message in connection with the Gospel. My friend felt challenged by the bluntness of James, she was 95, she believed she could not do much for others. Her whole life was given for others, my experience alone, was one of the grace of God through her hands. The truth is all we are asked to do is to give our best. To aim for perfection, but we always fail, but we tried. We shoot the arrow, aiming for the target, sometimes we get close, the majority of the time we fail. In this session we invite you to meditate on the passage, think how in this time of crisis, we can have humility, and faith, in which we love our neighbor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. James 4:1-6: Two days ago as we shopped at Safeway, a fight broke out in front of us. Was it two street youth? Two homeless people? No, it was two seventy plus year old individuals fighting over the last role of toilet paper. They came to blows, the police were called. Well dressed, nice looking, and yet they gave in to their fears. How often do we let our own needs, desires, bring us to war with others? How often do we put our own needs over that of the greater good. Wars, great, and small are caused by selfish needs. By the way the "world behaves" implicitly says to us we are going adrift, and do not reflect upon the need of others, we become friends with the world. What are some patterns or values of the world that are easy to drift along and accept with out much thought that might come into conflict with the Biblical perspective of loving our neighbor? How can fear, panic, increase this conflict? 2. Verses 6-10: "Resist the devil and he will run away from you." James may have believed in the literal "devil", personally I believe in the evil that is within all of us, that which pushes us to be inhuman to others. James tell us that the devil is a coward when he/she is resisted, with prayer that claims the victory of Jesus on the cross. The devil's trick is to whisper that we know we can't resist; he/she has got us before and will get us again, so why not just give in straight way and save all that bother? It's a lie. Resist those tendencies to turn on others, to be selfish, and self-centered, to put yourself first--and the devil will run. What are the practical ways we can resist the "devil?" For example three weeks ago I had a light case of the flue. I was at a friend's house after I had recovered, and one of my friends joked with me about having the virus. I returned home, called my doctor, made arrangements to have the test, and waited. I have shut off my phone, simply to be alone, reflect, and not deal with constant questions. Yesterday my test results were back, and I am negative, I simply had the flu. In the mean time there were emails about rumors of me "having the virus." My tendency is to get angry, but now I simply laughed, and moved on. We resisted "the devil." So what practical ways can we all "resist the devil." 3. James contrasts "resisting the devil" with this promise: "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you" (v8). This is astonishing God is ready and waiting. God longs to establish friendship with each of us, a friendship deeper, stronger, and more satisfying than we can ever imagine. Why is it sometimes hard to imagine that God wants a relationship with us? In between his advice on "resisting the devil", drawing near to God, and having a pure heart are comments on humility in verses 6 and 10. Apparently humility has something to do with these directions. What is the connection? 4. In verses 11 and 12 James warns about speaking evil of one another. He seems to have in mind the kind of slander or gossip which eats its way like a cancer in into our relationships, and requires urgent treatment if it is not to prove fatal. His point is this: anyone who does such a thing is thereby implying that the ordinary "law" which applies to Christians --that they should love their neighbor as themselves does not apply to them. They are above it! They can look down on such petty standards from a great height? They are, says James, "judging the law," instead of doing what the law says. When are we tempted to think that we are "above the Law," of loving our neighbor as ourselves and why? 5. Why is it so easy to talk about what's wrong with other people and cast them in a bad light? 6. Throughout this passage James warns against the temptation to put ourselves in the place of God. How do verses 13-16 highlight this danger in relation to our future plans? 7. James again has strong words in store for us--don't you realize, he says, what your life is like? Think of the mist; you see out the window on an autumn morning. It hangs there in the valley, above the little stream. It is beautiful, evocative, mysterious, yes, just like a human being can be. Then the sun comes up a bit further, and ..the mist simply disappears. That's what your life is like. You have no idea what today will bring, let alone tomorrow. How do you respond to Jame's observation about the fragility of life? 8. In practical terms, what would it look like to live out an attitude that expresses, "If the Lord wills, we shall live, and we shall do this or that"? 9. The chapter ends with a warning which is far more general, and indeed far more worrying, thanloj what has gone before. Not to do what you know you should do is actually to sin. Once you learn the humility to accept God's royal law ("love God and your neighbor as yourself), and to live by it, to accept God's ordering of all life and to live within that, then you see more clearly the positive things to which you are being called. This may be a major life decision, a question of your whole vocation and path of life. Or it may be the small Spirit-given nudge to do small act of kindness for a neighbor or a stranger. But once we have had that nudge, that call, then to ignore, to pretend we have not heard it, is a further act of pride, setting ourselves up in the place of God. So the question is that as we look over this passage, in what ways is God calling or nudging us to do what is right? ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T. P.O. Box 642656 San Francisco, CA 94164 www.temenos.org 415-305-2124 punkpriest1@gmail.com “Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispel the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.” -Gloria E. Anzaldúa Tenderloin Stations of the Cross Good Friday, April 10, 2020 Noon-2:00 p.m. Polk Street side of City Hall We will have the Stations of the Cross. Our plans are to do it alone, and have people go through the Stations at home. . Holy Communion We have taken Holy Communion to individuals who request the Sacrament. We administer the Sacrament outside, and have plastic gloves on, standing six feet away. We give only use only the host. We take all precautions.