Sermon: What God's Looking for in a Building (Fig-ure of Speech)

Sermon Notes
Mark 11:11-26
Ben Loos

The fig that Jesus walks by has the leafy green appearance of health, but it is sick and not bearing fruit. The temple is the tree, the people of God are the tree. It looks good and healthy but it is a den of sin and secularism.

The outer court of the temple; the court of the Gentiles, the one place that the nations could learn about the one true God was a marketplace. A marketplace similar to our trading floors and add in livestock. The quiet place of reflection where the nations can seek the Father has been turned into a place of exploitation and a den of robbers.

We are meant to align our actions and desires with the owner of the house. The temple should be a place for God to feel at home. Are his comforts our comforts? The house of God should feel like home. A place of restoration and refuge for the weary and the weak. God wants us to come home and live with him.

It isn't home until we go through hard and beautiful things. Moments of pure joy and moments of sheer heartbreak. Warm conversations and spilled coffee. Hot tears and uncertain outcomes. Times when we feel God in every nerve in our body and times we feel alone in the world. Through it all coming together in love as family. Then it will be home.

Jesus invites the rich and poor alike. We are all equally undeserving of the great grace of God. God only receives the poor, because that is all he sees. Even our poorest offerings ( money, time, devotion) God will take it and multiply it.

We are the Gentiles, Jesus was knocking over the tables for us. We were the ones being excluded. We are the ends of the earth, not the center. The gulf Jesus overcame for us is so much larger than any we will have to overcome. We are the temple, we are the house of God. Where we meet, heaven and earth meet.

Steam Rising (Musings on Insomnia)

Steam rising at dusk's embrace.

The moon looks down on the silent world. Keeping watch over the hidden workings of night owls and specters. The coming and going of those ignored by the light of day. Forgotten by the watching world, unheard in their whispers with the moon.

I enter this sacred space and revel in the peace that can only be attained in the embrace of the evening. When the anxiety of life seeps into the moment between and my thoughts fire over and over, I long for rescue and restoration.

Steam rising in the middle of the night.

Fitful sleep flees from my grasp. Dreams and nightmares war again, no victims but my sanity. As the night lingers on I wander the halls like a shade of the mists. Searching, seeking for something that simply fades away.

The object of my longing as ethereal as the thoughts conflicting above. A clear path eludes me as I drift between reality and midnight musings. I cannot begin to grasp where mind and body end. Reliving the highs and lows of the sun drenched day.

Steam rising in the middle of the night.

The nights embrace weakens around me and the resignation of a sleepless night sets in. The ethereal becomes tangible and the lies of the night are shown the harsh truth of the dawn. I greet the morning with weariness, felt bone deep.

Battle worn I watch the last vestige of night burn away. Forgotten are the desires and the pursuits of moonlit visions. The concrete concerns of waking light return a clarity of mind found only in worry. Another day collecting fatigue before the all consuming embrace night.

Steam rising to the glaring sun.

Sermon: Sowing Our Tears

Sermon Notes
Psalm 126
Ben Loos

A memory of past laughter and a promise of a tearless future.

They are remembering the past of a deliverance and joy. They are using this for strength to have hope for the current situation.

When everything seems lost and hope has failed. That moment when unexpected good happens and there is nothing you can do, but laugh. Sheer joy and hope expressed.

The promise of the past is the promise of the future on the cusp of being fulfilled. Remembering the past to reshape the present and the future.

Our hope, through our tears, is that the desert will bloom and the barren will be made fruitful. God can work in an instant.

Often, however, only after the long winter or the never-ending drought, does God work in his time. Working through the labor and struggle of the faithful hand does God bless the harvest.

If we do not sow through the despair and the melancholy we often will not sow at all. Tears do not need to be the enemy, the preventer of our labors. Rather they can be the companion that waters the seeds as we sow them. The tears bring the growth and enable the harvest.

Though tears give growth, they will be traded for eternal life and laughter.

Dark Battle Lines

The rain comes again today

Washing the world to shades of gray

Day after day, no change in sight

Forever mundane, no battles to fight

Fooled into thinking our lives are grand

Living in sync to the world's demands

Dying slowing in the guise of life

Killing ourselves with slavery's knife

If clarity come will we know what it means

Or will it be twisted by digital fiends

Missing the truth in honey sweet lies

Gasping for air as reality dies

The world around, rife with delusions

Hope decaying in lustful illusions

I must cut away my blinded eyes

To see our fast approaching demise

Though the war is won we still must fight

Or simply stop and welcome the night

The call has come, the road has split

Choose to battle or to evil submit

Father, Father

Father, Father, take my hand

Lead me out of this dying land

A beautiful gift that you gave

Now nothing more than an open grave

Father, Father, guide my path

So I escape your holy wrath

Corrupted by my favorite sin

Cleaned by strips on your skin

Father, Father, give me rest

On all sides I am pressed

I feel run ragged to the bone

When You are life, alone

Father, Father, give me sight

To see the broken in the night

Those so consumed with fear and pain

Under the enemies deadly reign

Father, Father, send me out

Showing truth to those who doubt

Not my strength or my will done

But the Power of the Firstborn Son

Your Love Will Last

(A rework of a poem I wrote before, this one is more accurate)

After the light falls from the sky

And the world's truth is revealed as a lie

While the mannequins walk away

And all our sins are plain as day

Your love will last until I die

After all regard for life is lost

And the souls of the masses are covered in frost

While my vision blurs in terror's haze

And my dreams are cast in a funeral blaze

Your love will last at any cost

When being true is a deadly crime

And the call of sweet darkness is sublime

While my safety means a slow decay

And smog chokes out the sun's last ray

Your love will last in shadow's time

Until all memory of peace has faded

And hearts of the leaders are fully jaded

While breaking ourselves to prove we're the same

And donning lies at the cost of our name

Your love will last unaided

Until nothing of happiness remains

And even the resistance is slapped in chains

While facing the fire and deaths embrace

With you next to me I can finish the race

Your love will last through all my pains

A Thousand Different Hues

Pains of a thousand different hues

Plight painting each and every pew

Coloring what we see with shades of red

Further harming the dying and dead

Betrayed by our fathers to slavery

Trading the pure for the unsavory

Cast out of the garden of fellowship

Forever altering our divine relationship

Vain pursuits toward man-made idols

Gladly accepting the Deceiver's bridle

Trying to steal the glory we lost

Buying our slavery our souls are the cost

Pains of a thousand different hues

Belongs to us in each and every pew

Coloring what we see with shades of blue

Ransoming sinner from the punishment due

Living for Christ, our souls he bought

Clothed in righteousness no plan or plot

Casting aside the shackles of despair

Praises of the Unmade I will always declare

Forever altering our divine relationship

Invited back into life-giving fellowship

Trading our rags for snow white and gold

Ransomed by blood, destroying sins hold

Panes of a thousand different hues

Light painting each and every pew

Coloring what we see with shades of green

Sharing the life and redemption foreseen