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Take a big, deep breath. Can you smell the potluck? What is it that you love about a potluck?

God be with us til we eat again.

John chapter 6: we are going to read about the world’s most amazing potluck! Quick, what story’s coming? The feeding of the 5,000, that’s right. Now, that’s a potluck!

Of course, it was a potluck with some issues, right?

We’ve announced potluck the last two Sundays to 55 or 60 people each Sunday, so the assumption is that when we show up for this potluck here in a little bit, that there’ll be enough chow there for 60 people, right?Because that’s what we’ve announced. If suddenly, everyone here decided to invite, you know, 14 other people per person and we got a big portion of the zipcode here, we’d have potential for some issues.

I’ve seen God do amazing things with a pot of green beans.

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Beginning in [John chapter] 5 verse 18 (18, you remember, is where we stopped last week), it says, “for this reason the Jews were trying all the more to kill him because He was not only breaking the Sabbath but He was also calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” We talked a bit about that.

And we continue on in verse 19, (this was His response to their charge) it says, “therefore, Jesus answered and was saying to them, ‘truly truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself unless it is something He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner, for the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.’ ”

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This fine document in my hand is a patient refusal form. (Where’d Sarah go? There’s Sarah. Sarah has had to fill these out a number of times.) This is a legal document. This is the form we use when somebody calls 911 and then says, “Psych! I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to go.” They get on the horn to 911 and they say, “Oh, man, I’m sick and I’m calling 911,” and we show up in the shiny red trucks and we get there and they calm down or they don’t calm down and they decide that, “You know what, I really don’t want to go to the hospital any more,” and we make them sign a document that says so. And so what this really is, this is called the “I told you so” document. Because what we do is we warn them. Down here at the bottom of this document, right next to where they sign, it says, “I understand the risks of refusing ambulance transport.”

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Happy new year! Two thousand twelve! The year to end all years, right? Is anybody here living in a cave deep enough that they haven’t heard about the Mayan long count calendar? Anybody not heard it? Ok, that’s kind of what I figured.

I Googled 2012, just put that in Google. Holy MOLY did I come up with some doozies! There are a whole bunch of people who’ve got all kinds of big ideas. They want to talk about science and they want to talk about prophecy and they want to talk about legends and they want to talk about some plain looniness and, you name it, it’s all there. Don’t forget the aliens. Yeah, I think there are some aliens involved and there are some really sharp guys out there that are making a buck or three off of this thing. Oh, my golly, there are some folks making some money off of the fact that whole Mayan long count calendar ends in December.

I scrolled through a bunch of the web sites and had fun sitting there laughing and wondering what I would do with a pallet of freeze-dried dinners, you know. I neglected to highlight the verse, so it didn’t make it to the notes [on the screen]. Matthew 24:36. Here are my thoughts on two-thousand twelve: speaking says, “but of that day and hour,” – actually, lets back up to 35. 35 says, “Heaven and Earth will pass away but my words will not pass away. But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son but the Father alone. But the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and carried them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.”

You know, the long and the short of it is, He’ll get here when He gets here and it’ll end whenever it ends and it’ll keep going whenever it keeps goingI have a call to keep right on barreling ahead. I am still going to plan a Christmas Eve service!

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I want to talk about expectation. Now, a fair number of you are facebookers, right? How many facebookers have we got in the room? Good grief, a whole bunch of us! So, this week I began to notice people counting down the

hours

until Christmas.

Jarrad’s not here this morning. He was the most recent one I saw and I was going to give him a bad time but they’re off at a wedding today, so I won’t give Jarrad a bad time – except for on the internet(That’s the beautiful thing about all of this being recorded).

People have been counting down the hours until Christmas. I haven’t double-checked them to see if they had it right, but there it has been. While I have chuckled at it and thought, “Really? You have to do that?” The flip side of that is, guess what, they’ve got a sense of expectation! Brewing there in their own electronic wonderland.

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So, I want to tell a story about somebody different. This is another friend who’s making the sermon this morning.

A young man, one of many young men and women who’ve wandered through my house and they’ve taken a look at the way my family operates and said, “You know, I’d like to have that.”

For whatever issues my family has (and guys, my family’s got issues, right? Joy was throwing a fit and kicking the floor upstairs during Sunday school,
OK? My family has far from got it all together.) But, something happens at our house. First off, our house is peaceful, we don’t fight and we all genuinely like each other. Even when we have a disagreement, we genuinely like each other. And because of that, I’ve had a number of people wander through my house and just point blank tell me, “We want this.”

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I’ve been on a quest and my quest is this: my quest is to listen when God talks to me. We had a discussion about prayer on a Tuesday night some weeks ago that went all over the map – and one of the things about prayer is it really ought to be two way. I need to listen.
Now, here’s the deal. I’m good at dealing with my stuff and going, “Hey, Lord, I’m really up against it, here.” You know, real quick in the middle of the day, it doesn’t matter what’s going on, I can pray.
That stopping and listening is more difficult, and so, I’ve been on a sort of personal quest to do that.

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I am a woman of no distinction of little importance. I am a women of no reputation save that which is bad.

You whisper as I pass by and cast judgmental glances, Though you don’t really take the time to look at me, Or even get to know me.

For to be known is to be loved, And to be loved is to be known. Otherwise what’s the point in doing either one of them in thhe first place?

The Woman

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November 20 sermon
November 13 sermon

How many people have been to one of these churches that’s got an espresso bar in the foyer? I hear a couple people who sound kind of like I am about them. And understand as I mention that to introduce this, I am not going to condemn that at all because I’m not there, I haven’t made the decisions, I don’t know how that’s working. I’d struggle a little with buying a mocha in the foyer of the church. I would. I struggle with pitching what I’m doing sometimes…

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My apologies for not posting last week. Here is the sermon from October 30. Listen to last week’s sermon.

Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. No guile. Jesus is perfectly content to deal with his [Nathaniel's] doubt.

I have a good friend who once told me he was angry with God. I looked at him and said, “Okay, cool. Not a problem,” and he about drove in a ditch!

God’s not afraid of dealing with our stuff. God wasn’t afraid of dealing with Nathaniel’s doubt. Nathaniel says, “Man, what good thing ever came out of Nazareth?” So Jesus says, “Hey, Nathaniel, welcome aboard!” He says, “By the way, when you were sitting over there doubting, you happened to be sitting under an apple tree.” Okay, it happened to be a fig tree, because they grow figs and we grow apples.

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