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Another thoughtful and insightful look into the mirror of the Word. Thanks for the slightly different angle on baptism, and the call to unity in Christ's promise. I always learn something.

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My experience has been that everyone hears things differently, particularly in a sermon. At the same time we don't always like what we hear, not unlike what steamed that Senator so badly, but was probably something that hit a little too close to the bone. Sermons do that. They're supposed to do that. (Mostly) Those sermons that I may not like to hear usually signal to me that it's something I need to pay attention to.

As far as the 'they', those, and them in here, having been on the receiving end of comments made when I had just buried my 45 year old husband, that really hit home.

People managed to spew a variety of topics, all of them painful nonetheless. And yes they became 'those' people. Yes I asked what was wrong with them. Some of them I understood, especially those friends who were our age as they had to stare down their own mortality, but was all in that delivery of those comments. I digress.

In light of the tone of your writing this week, which has been pointed and thank you for that, this sermon looped right in with the theme of the week. Plus I'm kind of thinking those folks in that Baptist church in OK "heard" you. Like it or not. Keep em coming Jason, I need that voice that isn't afraid to throw it all out there. Thank you.

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"Just so, what is or is not biblical is no longer the final criterion for faithfulness. 'Scripture says…' no longer suffices as a way to adjudicate obedience. If you go to the Bible simply to win arguments, it’s your word you find there not God’s word. The final criterion for every argument is now, 'In Jesus Christ, you have been welcomed by God; therefore, welcome the other.'”

This is exactly the point of Jesus' sermon in Mark 9:33-50 and no one will preach it as one coherent sermon. As I've said theologians are more interested in harmonizing various texts than delivering the point Peter was making here - at the center of the Gospel - through Mark.

Oh, and Roberts wasn't totally wrong to call out the youthful pastor's efforts to assume Jesus would oppose torture because he'd experienced it. Jesus watched torture day after day and yet he called a torturer the greatest man of faith in all of Israel. Presumably an older pastor will see nuance where the younger one saw certainty.

But getting back to the point of THIS message. God is equally offended by the envelop and the exclamation it engendered. Recently I heard a Pastor tearfully remark, "They can do it, so they will." And I thought to myself she's still missing it, probably because she's too close. But there is no "they." Creating the "other" makes us feel safe. We need it to cope, to understand. But it's not real.

Honestly this sermon, given the types of examples given and the audience that received it would have created a comfortable sense of otherness, I imagine. "Thank God we are not like them."

Until we see the sinfulness of the statements, "What's wrong with THESE people?" and THEY can do it, so THEY will." we are full bore participants in the "othering-industrial-complex" or as Satan likes to call it, Big Other.

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Well, the listeners were a Southen Baptist congregation in Oklahoma so I’m fairly certain I was the other :)

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Depends, was it a First Baptist? Can’t trust those guys. My family’s had fights about whether First Churchers are even saved! (I’ve come a long way.)

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