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here. In today's text, we find the disciples in a somewhat peculiar position. They had been on an amazing journey with jesus during their time together, the disciples had witnessed many great things, they have

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been witness to jesus miraculous healings. They watched as he demonstrated his faith and wisdom in debates with the religious leaders of his day. They had listened to jesus many parables about the household of god and on

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another occasion to other occasions to be specific, they have their own bellies filled by jesus, miraculous loaves and fishes, miracles. On one occasion, Jesus fed 5000 And on another occasion Jesus fed 4000 and

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finally the disciples had even witnessed after all of this , the transfiguration of jesus, this is where Jesus took peter James and john with him and let him up high mountain here, Jesus was transfigured before them

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. The scripture says that whenever jesus was transfigured that his clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. The scripture also says that when jesus had been transfigured that there appeared before

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him, Elijah and moses who were talking with jesus all of this again was part of the amazing journey That the disciples had been on. But now in verse 33 of this text, we find that Jesus

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has found that the disciples are arguing, arguing after saying all of this, all the miracles, all the teachings, even witnessing jesus transfiguration, they're arguing , arguing about who will be the greatest, that

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is, Who will be the next one to heal the sick, to cast out the demons to feed the multitudes and even be transfigured, such that one finds himself in the company of religious greats like Elijah

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and moses. And so it is that the disciples find themselves in the peculiar position of wanting to be like jesus but behaving most unlike jesus in the attempt , in their attempt to be the next greatest.

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Indeed, Jesus seems to imply that they were being a bit more hurtful than healing. Where jesus had been wise, they were being foolish. They had taken where jesus had given and fed and they're transfiguration

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had been into that of warring factions rather than that of peaceful saints. In encountering this text, I was reminded a film I saw a few years ago called the habit, the battle Of the five armies

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. This 2015 film presents us with a group of wars mr who, after a long journey, have reclaimed their homeland within what is called the lonely mountain and they reclaimed this homeland from a fire breathing dragon

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. You see the dragon whose name was Smog had long ago defeated the dwarves and become king of the mountain that is, he became the greatest and now in turn, the dwarves led by their king Thorin

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of Oaken shield had defeated Smog and now we're poised to take their position as king of the mountain as the greatest. And yet even as the dwarves gain power, their leader thorne was overcome by a great

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change of character. Anyone who has seen the film knows that thorn becomes distrustful, jealous and isolated, much like the disciples and the text who argued or hurt one another were foolish, Thorin also turned on

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his family and friends as he sought to be the greatest. It's this transfiguration of thorn that drives one of his kin Balin to observe that thorn has become sick and in balinese language, thorn has come down

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with a bad case of what he calls dragon sickness , dragon sickness, he laments, I've seen it before, The look a terrible need. It is a fierce and jealous love. The same sickness that

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sent his grandfather mad thorn himself exhibits this same sickness . In a conversation with one of his cousins dwelling dwelling is trying to explain to thorn that his quest for greatness is beginning to cause. Lives thorn replies

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, life is cheap, but a treasure such as this mountain cannot be counted in lives lost. Indeed , it is worth all the blood we can spend . And upon dwellings reply thorn again says, do

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not speak to me as if I were some lowly dwarf lord, as if I were still Thorin of oaken shield. I am your king. In other words, I am the greatest dragon sickness. The

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change that happens to someone where the heart becomes strangely chilled with the result in greedy, illogical or even violent behaviour. A change that brings about distrust of family and friends and loved ones. This is what

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we see in the text today, wreaking havoc on the disciples fellowship and causing jesus to have to go into socio spiritual triage dragon sickness. The craze not only to acquire more, not just to have a

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lot, but to turn on others in the process . Now Shelton Chapel, I don't, I want to tell anyone, I don't want you to tell anyone I told you this, but dragon sickness cannot

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be confined either to first century copper knee. Um , nor to the fictional space of Middle earth and the Lonely Mountain you see in an attempt to be the greatest don't look now, but there are signs

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. Even in our own culture, the dragon sickness is making a comeback in an attempt to be the greatest we are doing things that end up being quite harmful, quite foolish and quite destructive sometimes. For

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example, in our attempt to have the greatest family , we maybe lead to deceive and betray the hearts of others, or even harm our spouses or Children . In our attempt to have the greatest position,

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we may harm a co worker. In our attempt to have the greatest economy, we may exploit labor and productive forces of poor folk the world over. Indeed, dragon sickness might be seen across the spectrum

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of our society from persons who acknowledge no moral compass except their own ego. All the way. two things like the growth of information databases that no no limits in their acquisition of private knowledge about you and

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I the greatest. But the example that comes most readily to mind is the me first mentality of our nation as we look towards the border to the south . In our attempt to be first to be greatest

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, we have foolishly demonize our neighbors even as we fortify an artificial border over land that has been linked throughout the ages. We are now even harmful. E reducing the different types of cultures of people's workers

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, aunts, Children's uncles to the label of illegals in the process, committing Hermano tickle violence against our latin, american brothers and sisters like the disciples in the text today, we as a nation, are

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displaying the same navel gazing, egoistic and ethnocentric, imperialistic dragon sickness, one that would produce border walls not only at the homelands, but also borders in our hearts. In an attempt to be the greatest

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, we have placed plutocratic pipelines on the shoulders of syquest id native neighbors. Dragon sickness and an attempt to be the greatest funnels little black boys and girls through the school to prison pipeline and that same dragon

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sickness under pays folk in east Appalachia to make the pipes in the first place. Even now, dragon sickness makes it difficult to see that placing Children in cages is abusive, cruel and unusual and downright wrong

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. It is indeed the case that we are so taken with dragon sickness that we have even violated our sovereign principle of the rule of law and replace it with the rule of the norm of dragon sickness.

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Yes, the current Chief executive officer of the nation has found ways to sidestep the boundaries even of constitutional law and to implement the law of dragon sickness. As the new social norms, irony of ironies,

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it becomes the case that the same person who would label others as illegal also X. Beyond the law . Indeed, in circumventing law and asserting one's own commands and directives as law, One places oneself in

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a position of sovereign authority. Supreme authority. The greatest and in this weighs one begins to question the ways in which our chief executive officer begins to encroach on theological claims about the sovereignty of God and the

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dignity of human life. Perhaps we can notice one more aspect of dragon signals before we move on it . That is not only does it affect our mentality , but that it has an impact on one's understanding

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of belonging and membership. You see dragon sickness is not only about prioritizing myself all the time, but also about drawing the boundaries such that the group only contains members that have the same sickness. The question

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of dragon sickness is distinctively significant, given the power wielded by public officials. Indeed, but we cannot confine our questioning to that group. Why? Because the danger of dragon sickness lurks near to all of

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us in various ways, we are attempting to be the greatest and in the process creating hurt, harm and danger for others. And unlike the film, The Hobbit, which presents us with a character essentially

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immune to dragon sickness and the figure of The Hobbit . In our reality, anyone can fall prey to this disease. In other words, on this side of glory, there are no Hobbits holy enough to

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escape the dangers of dragon sickness, like the dwarves in the film then and the disciples in the text , we are faced with the same question and we must answer it, Who will be the greatest sisters

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and brothers? I must admit to you that this is indeed a dilemma one not easily solved because all of us are concerned to be great more than this , to be great is not in and of itself

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a bad thing. Even beyond this, it sometimes seems to be the case that one must be great if for no other reason than because out there in the world, dragon sickness and dragon crazed people are

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real, so real, in fact that if I were left to my own devices, I might have lost heart, I might have caved in and given into dragon sickness. But you see, the thing

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is I didn't stop by today to give you only the bad news, I also stopped by to give you some good news. You see, Jesus understands the difficulty of our dilemma and what Jesus is trying

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to do in this passage is move the disciples from what we might call an ethics of ego to an ethics of empathy and care, Jesus is pushing the disciples here to move from embracing the self, to

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embracing welcoming and enhancing the most vulnerable among us. Jesus had heard the disciples arguing on the road, but it's interesting that he did not stop the argument on the room, I think Jesus didn't stop the

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argument because he didn't have a problem with the fact that disciples had a desire to be the greatest, What Jesus reveals in verses 35 in verse 36, is that the problem is not so much for the

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desire to be the greatest as it is with the method, the way that one goes about being the greatest. In verse 35, Jesus sits down and says to his disciples, anyone who wants to be

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first must be the very last, anyone who wants to be first must be servant of all. Yeah , then if not to make the message even more clear, Jesus takes a little child and places the

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child among them and says, whoever welcomes one of these little Children in my name also welcomes me and not just me, but the one who sent me , Jesus was not critical of the goal of being

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greatest, Jesus was saying that if one wants to be the greatest, the beginnings of this are not in being first, but in being the first to welcome the vulnerable jesus places a child among them.

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Perhaps one of the most vulnerable figures in our culture , a figure with no rights, very little authority , a figure that must place their entire sense of dignity, being in worth on another. This is

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the paradigmatic figure that Jesus lives up As a sign that one is the greatest. If we were to play jesus lesson in moral terms again, we might say that Jesus is calling us from an ethics of

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egoism to one of care away from a moral compass , guided by self interest, to one where we are compelled by the claims of others on our lives . But in a world where everyone is trying to

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be the greatest, is this even possible? It certainly makes sense if you think about it in the abstract while it is rarely the case, that jesus messages seem logical, this one actually does right.

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Anyone can be for themselves, but it really takes great ones to make themselves vulnerable for the most vulnerable . But what about today? Can it be possible today? Yeah, last week I had the privilege

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of taking a trip to san Antonio texas with a group of pastors, a group of pastors who were concerned about and doing research on the large and controversial question of immigration and detainees. While in san Antonio

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, I happened to be able to visit with a particular catholic charity who was doing work for detainees. And as the group was in conversation, one of the sisters spoke up and mentioned a particular group that

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was doing social justice work at the border. The name of this group, she says is called the Angry Diaz More elaborately. The Angry Diaz and Fabulous . You see down at the border there have been

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a number of Children who had been unlawfully detained and as the orders came that these Children had to be released, the federal government was releasing the Children into the streets, but the government was releasing the Children

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without much food, much protection, much direction. And so one by one, a tear began to come out to where the Children were being released. And as the idea, you know that's spanish for

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aunt right? As a T. A witnessed a child coming from detainment, Atiyah would welcome and embrace this child. And one day as the Tia was welcoming and embracing this child, she looked over and

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there was another Tia doing the same thing, Welcoming embracing a child and the second T. I looked over and there was a 30 year doing the same thing. And the 30 I looked over at.

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The 40 are doing the same thing. And eventually they said, why don't we get together and do this together? We are all a little bit upset about things. Why don't we call ourselves the Angry

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to us? And so now the Angry Diaz are an official group down at the border, ministering to those who have been unlawfully detained and our asylum seekers . They are a group of people from the Rio

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grande valley who decided to welcome and embrace to be the greatest by reaching out for the most vulnerable. The Angry T. A. Show up at all kinds of places. The angry to show up at

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the border for the Children. The Angry T. I show up in courts to monitor to make sure that due process is occurring. The Angry T. I show up at bus stations to ensure that those

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who are traveling have food and sustenance. You see the goal of the Angry Diaz is to give back the human dignity that was taken away from them. For me, the Angry Diaz represents a theological claim

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, a theological claim that speaks directly to the heart of dragon sickness. The angry T. Osce knew and understood what the dwarves and the disciples did not . That is that to be the greatest one must

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open themselves up and embrace the other. To be the greatest one must open themselves up to the vulnerable . Indeed, the Angry T Oz and umbrellas are not the only great ones in our society today.

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We know that there are all sorts of witnesses, movements, figures and people who are also seeking to be the greatest, not through egoism but through empathy and care. It is difficult to tell sometimes Whether

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or not one should give in to dragon sickness, but I want to encourage you on today to be like the Angry Diaz. You see the Angry Diaz are not unlike us and that they also have been

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faced with dragon sickness but trolls against the ego and for the other. And as they go out to reclaim their Children and the Children of others, they are in a most real and righteous sense doing the

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work of God. Whenever I heard the story about the angry tears, I meditated on this story and as I meditated, I came into contact with the scripture proverbs 31. The scripture of proverbs 31 known

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traditionally as that which would exhort to those who would seek to be good wives, the various rules and practices that they must embrace. But as I began to look at the Ministry of the Angry Diaz,

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I began to see something different In this proverbs 31 text, You see, just as the woman in Proverbs 31 is going out to claim property. So are the Angry Diaz, the very real property of

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their Children's bodies that had been taken from them unlawfully . In fact, whether one is in the context of the scripture or in today, the very idea of a woman having the power and authority to buy

00:28:34.060 - 00:28:56.290

property to attain property is itself a revolutionary act. You see the angry tears are girded with strength, much like the women in proverbs 31, and they understand themselves to be profitable. They gather up their

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Children and they provide food for their Children, even when others do not, and in this way they understand themselves to be the greatest. The scripture says that The woman of proverbs 31 girds her Children and

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purple, a symbol for royalty, perhaps against the system of injustice that would detain her Children and treat them as animals. You see the angry T. Osce remind us that the true way to be the

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greatest is through empathy and compassion rather than ego my brothers and sisters. If all we do is assume a might is right and a me first attitude about things, we will end up with a kingdom of

00:29:55.460 - 00:30:15.090

one and a kingdom played with dragon sickness. But there is a cure for dragon sickness. It is called the angry T. A antidote. Indeed, the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 426 that we should

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be angry, but that we should not sin and it seems that the angry T. Is were that but they certainly did not miss the mark. The angry Diaz decided to do with the disciples could not

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do and that is with the old him, encourage us to do, to walk together. We are encouraged to walk together. Why? Because there is a promise, a promise that if we continue to

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walk together that we will one day arrive at a great promise land, a promised land where we can sit and be together around a great banquet table without worrying about the ego or the dragon sickness of one

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another. If we walk together we will have times where we can sing and lift up songs design in ways that speak to dragon sickness such that it will never win. If we walk together, the promises

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that we will never tire, that we will never get weary and that one day we will enter God's great house, my brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you on today to continue to fight off

00:32:04.640 - 00:32:23.290

the disease of dragon sickness, that which would seek to have you be the greatest. By pushing others away. I encourage you to take the angry T . A antidote, the one that compels you with

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a fierce and jealous love not for yourself but for the vulnerable and for the other. In this way we enter God's kingdom, God be with you on