Curwensville Alliance

Presented July 11, 2010.

Laurel’s nephews are pedaling across the United States to raise money and awareness of the need for fresh drinking water in developing countries. I have been following them on their journey via Twitter and their blog. In recent days they have made a discovery: While the prevailing winds in their faces as they crossed the plains were difficult, the climb up the mountains was even harder. Let me read to you a page from their blog this past week:

This is Andy.

Yesterday we set up off the Big Horn Mountains. We climbed, and climbed, and climbed. Thirty miles up. At five miles an hour we climbed just about all day.

The views though made it all worth it. I have never seen such lush forests. A sea of pines. I had also never seen snow in July. By the time we got up to 10,000 feet we would have been cold had we not been working so hard.

Then we went down. Maybe the most euphoric hour and a half of my life 30 miles down through a pristine lake, ten sleep canyon, and lots and lots of peaks.

In so few words I was more pleased with life than I had been in some time.

What a day.

We made camp in a pastor’s yard and slept quite well.

What I liked about that was the ups and downs he explains in just a few short words. Riding across the United States on a bicycle has difficulties – thirty mile stretches of pedaling uphill. And riding across the United States on a bicycle has rewards – 30 mile stretches of coasting through lush mountain forests. Life is that way.

And your walk with Christ is that way too. There are times Jesus addresses difficult issues. And those issues are hard pedaling. But he addresses them because they need to be addressed. And as we grasp them and apply them, we experience reward. In these last chapters of Matthew, Jesus has been and will continue to force us to face the darkness at the heart of humankind. He speaks to the Pharisees – the people everyone loves to hate. As he speaks to them, he speaks to us. We’re going to take an overview of this passage and then, in the weeks ahead, look more specifically at the concepts Jesus addresses. The sermons ahead will be hard pedaling. But the final views and the ride beyond will make it worth it.

Presented July 4, 2010

A dozen or so years ago a woman visited our church and said words like these: You’re not like my pastor where I use to live. He was a GOOD preacher. He gave us the dickens from the pulpit.

So I tuned into that churches web site and this is what I heard her old pastor saying with a tone of severity and authority: Now it’s time for the preaching of God’s word. There will be no moving. No one is going to the bathroom. The ushers have closed the doors. You will remain seated and you will listen to the word of the Lord. The feeling of the message was one of oppression — one that said, “If you so much as look at your watch, you’re not worthy to be here!”

If you find yourself in that kind of place, you are probably sitting under a spiritual abusive preacher.

Everyone is familiar with abuse. Physical abuse. Verbal abuse. Psychological abuse. In Jesus’ day there was a group of people who engaged in a different kind of abuse. It was an abuse of power. It might be thought of as spiritual abuse.  Spiritual abuse is the kind where a position of spiritual leadership is misused to influence of further the self-centered interests of the leader rather than to help the one or ones in the leader’s care.

This podcast takes Jesus’ words about such people and helps us to both avoid becoming abusers and avoid being influenced by them.