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Good morning. Yeah, It is exciting to be back in this pulpit again. Uh, there's a weird energy up here when you're not being graded. I don't know if it's, it's just, it's

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interesting to me. I am incredibly excited to be able to be here with you to share a sermon with you. I had about 17,000 sermons. Fallout of me haven't preached in 11 weeks. Um,

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so I had less beautiful 39 stage 400 point sermon that I had to uh, set aside uh, to come to something that would be more palatable uh , to the folks that gather here. But one

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of my traditions is always to pray. I know we've had a lot of prayer. I don't think you can go wrong praying a little bit more. So let us pray before I begin Holy and gracious

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. Lord. We have gathered to be moved not by beautiful words, not by designed argument but by your spirit. Oh God. So we asked. Now move in us, open us to your words

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this day that we may take that we may grow that we may learn make me less. So Lord move JD out of the way that your word and your witness are all that is known in this space

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, your holy and gracious name. We pray our men. I have been blessed to serve in a whole bunch of places and to preach and a whole bunch of communities where the knowing of the narrative isn't

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commonplace. What I mean by that is we have a tendency we church folks and I think I can call most of us in this room, Church folks have a common common misconception of believing that everybody kind

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of knows the stories. We talked to a lot of people who know the stories we study under people who really, really, really know the stories. We spend a lot of time in a specific community

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. And the beauty of this text that always jumps out at me is that we are invited into random communities, but I always like to place the text even if you know it already, I don't know

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how many people think that being a prophet is very easy or small, but Joel is called one of the 12 minor prophets, as if it's an easy thing to do. He's given about six pages,

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they're tucked in between Jose A and Amos. It's one of those parts that you might not always come across reading your bible, but Joel is a great hebrew prophet, he does the hebrew prophet stuff.

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He speaks out of the same judges narrative right there is this this loss, the sinful nature of the people and they fall away and then there is this righteous welcome back and renewal that comes to the people

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. He's even one of the cool ones that's in and around Jerusalem. So he's even in the right spot talking to the right people in the right season . I love Joel's teachings because in such a little

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amount of space he gets a lot done. And so often I find us and by us, I mean us preacher types having to do a lot of the same thing. You ever try to walk up

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to the pulpit with a 97 page manuscript, It doesn't go over so well, you keep it around around Joel size, right 4-6 pages and everybody seems okay. They're not too worried about beating the baptist

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to lunch. Does that joke work here too? I don't know, been in the methodist church for a long time, but we also have the parable out of luke today and I'm doing one of those

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things that that I can remember some of my my elder type folk that when the bishop would come, he would he would preach the election eri for the next week and he'd say, here take some notes

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and maybe you'll get some ideas if you're preaching the election eri you have you have a little starter page , I'll say kind of the same thing if you're preaching the election erI this week, take copious notes

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, watch what I do and don't do any of it, make sure you it's okay to make noise in church were really all right with that. But in luke, I love this particular Perica p because

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as hostile, Gonzales writes in his luke a book , it's one of those bridge pieces, there's actually a series of parables that jesus is giving, he's on his journey towards Jerusalem and this is one of

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the many and sometimes for me, I feel a little slighted because it gets jumped a little bit by the one that a lot of people do know the , the scripture right after this, this luke parable

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is the one about let the Children come to me . One of those ones that brings the light, everybody knows that it sits well with you, but I love preaching on the parts that are hard Luke

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17 and 18 in particular are Luke specific. He's deviating from the Matthew and Mark Timelines, Jesus is moving towards his passion and giving us some unique spaces to work. So here we have this parable and

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I can, I can very distinctly remember louis Donaldson talking about parables in class and and he said over and over every time we got two parables, he said they're hard, it's like oh thanks louis,

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that was awesome. Uh when I'm preaching them that that but still to this day, that's what comes to mind every time I come to a parable there hard, he said and they're meant to be read

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a lot and read in community. So I spent time reading this parable in community and listening to what other people had said and what they would feel and the ways that they would they would interpret this piece

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, the ways that that parable would wrestle with that interaction that we're having in that tiny community that we were developing by sharing some scripture and over and over . I kept coming back to this single image,

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this the single and I move around a lot. I'm sorry. But this single image kept coming into my head and it's this image of my kids in my living room, I have three Children. And

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it's us watching a movie. I can't really like why a movie? Why does that resonate with this parable of a tax collector and a pharisee going into the temple. And and so I kept wrestling with

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it and wrestling with it. And finally it it kind of came to me, right? So in this parable, we have two individuals who are brought into this moment of alignment. They are physically brought

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together and a short term community. They are lying . Right? So what's the other thing about movies ? Right. Movies. We go to a movie . We we for a moment we sit together sometimes

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with strangers, sometimes with beloved friends. I didn't mean to do that. And that specific order. And we are aligned to one direction. We are formed as a community that has a singular alignment.

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And then we all kind of focus on the same thing briefly. We for a moment or a community that is united directionally and physically and then we kind of break and go away and I kept wrestling with

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this parable, what what God, what is it that that you are trying to get at me and that's what these two men are doing. They are invited by God into this momentary community, this community

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that doesn't exist for a long time just briefly and we can get lost on the class and the name and how they are interpreting what's happening. But for a moment we have to realize that we get invited

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into these communities of alignment occasionally where we have the opportunity to go deeper into that relationship. One of these folks was entirely focused inwardly. You could hear it. I love the way I asked William to

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read because I love the way he reads it. I Lord, I give you this, I do that. I participate in the law and the one that was focused outwardly spoke in me. Lord forgive

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me, have mercy on me. He was there to be present in this moment to even though he's using me language, reach out into community, reach out and be accepting into this space. This this

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short term God called community and friends. This is what makes me worry because we get to participate in this wonderful work of community building. And sometimes we forget, sometimes we forget that what we are inviting

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people to do is hard and scary work. I can remember so many times sitting in my office going , Lord, they just don't get it. They're just not trying hard enough. Why don't they read

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the scripture? Why don't they study more? They are. It's just we're doing some hard stuff. A pharisee and a tax collector. That's a hard relationship to foster God can, but that's a hard

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relationship to foster. It's having the gene family, both of his family and some police officers shared community . It's having vaccines and anti vaxxers shared community. It's having black and white share a community. It's

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having folks from the body will come in and the folks that are gentrifying it. You're going to serve in these places where God is going to invite for these momentary communities, folks that are vastly different.

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Our invitation is to remind them that in these brief moments that we are aligned together. We get invited to participate in something that strengthens us that renews us , that levels the playing field to allow us to

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truly participate as family with one another. You hear that church, that's good news right there. It's okay to nod and say it's good news. We are going to go and share parables and their heart

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. We're going to read them often community. We're going to read them often with each other and some people that hear them are going to be on the low end of goals narrative, those that are still

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in the season of famine, starvation of want of hurt, some will be on the high end of the renewal, the abundant fields and the crop, our wonderful work is that we get to invite that

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. We get to drive that we get to focus these brief moments of community back towards the table.