20240409: 2nd Tuesday of Eastertide

Readings: Psalm 135; Daniel 6:1-28; 1 John 2:12-17. 

Transcript

Good morning. This is Tim Dribble coming to you from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 135. Daniel chapter six, verses 1 to 28 and first John Chapter two, verses 12 to 17. Today's readings are about the Lord, our God who endures forever. That Psalm 135 is titled Your Name O Lord Endures Forever. And the story we have from Daniel, Chapter six. So we had chapter three. We already heard about Meshach, Shadrach, Meshach and Bendigo and how they were saved from the fire. Well, these same guys came back around. So now we have King Darius. So the Kings have changed, but Daniel and his folks, they're still very much in their in in power in the country. So Daniel is set up over all these setbacks and he's the one who's doing the day to day business for the king. They don't like this. They don't like Daniel, these satraps and other officials. So they jerk the king into making a decree that no one can worship anyone for 30 days but the king because they knew Daniel every day, three times a day would go up and pray. And there's room with the window facing to Jerusalem. 

And of course, he got caught and the king was upset about this. But because of the way they made the rule, he couldn't do anything about it. He had to put the Daniel in the lion's den. Is I hope your God saves you. God, did he send an angel? And in the morning he came and Daniel was still alive. And this is the story of how being true to our faith, in spite of worldly pressures, rewards us. And then first, Jon, the same concept is there in the reading, and this is entitled The second part of it, starting at verse 15, is titled Do Not Love the World. And this is this has been taught for years and years in different fashions, but it's always about, you know, don't do things to the world. And people have taken us to various and sundry different extremes depending on what they wanted to suit them. This is simply about putting God first. That's all it is. 

We don't have to not participate. We don't have to not do things. It's just put God first. Don't go after the desires of the flesh. Don't go after the eyes and pride of life. So all these things that we have in the world, you know, social markers, if you will, you know, you should how make this kind of income, if you have this kind of job, you you know, all the systems that we have in place, you know, the the guy who's a lawyer is better than the guy who picks up the garbage until your garbage stacks up ten feet high. And then you kind of want the garbage guy around. All these things in the world, God loves all of us equally and God looks at all of us as equals. So it doesn't matter whether you're male or female or what color your skin is, what gender you are, what orientation of whatever is your income level. Any of this stuff does not matter. What matters is not having pride in possessions. What matters is not going out. Every desire. All you got to have the latest car. And we we used to call us old folks. We call it keeping up with the Joneses, you know. You know, your neighbor. Oh, you know, he bought a fancy car. You got him a fancy car. We got a fancy house. I got to buy a fancy of all these things that we charge to life. And it consumes us trying to maintain this some form of a status. And that's not what God wants. God wants us to put him first. And by putting God first. And what I mean by putting God first, that's kind of was how you do that. We say a lot of the things. What are the action items? The action item is love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole mind and love your neighbor as yourself. So we're being Christians and putting God first are our actions. So we treat people differently. We don't get caught up in having the fancy car and the fancy house, the fancy clothes, the latest tech item, you know, all the stuff that we spend our money on. We're supposed to use that for the glory of God. We do for the glory of God when we help others, when we go down. You know, when you work, you know, spend time down at your volunteering, your local veteran with your local veteran group or volunteering. You go into schools to read or going in to wherever it is and working with others. Prison ministry, all those kind of things where we go out and we do things for others. Those are the things that are pleasing to God. Those are the things those are the action items. How we can show our love for God. This flies in the face of the prosperity gospel, and that should God is not a celestial ATM machine worshipping God and putting God first does not mean that God's going to root. It means God's going to reward you. It does mean that. But what it doesn't mean is that reward is going to be in cash. It doesn't mean it's going to be in a fancy house that you're going to get, quote, lucky and or whatever in your business or you're going to get promoted or whatever. That's not what God's there for. That's not how God works. He's not our fairy godfather. God is here for us to have a more selfless life. And when we look at the Ministry of Jesus, it was completely 100% about self-sacrifice. You cannot go to the Holy Land. And this was the house of Jesus. Jesus didn't have a house. Jesus didn't have all these. These markers of life back there. And that was one of the things he was he railed against. Because then this is, you know, exactly what it says in Scripture. Don't be caught up in the things of the world. Be caught up in the things of God. Be caught up in praying. Be caught up in pray for something and then take action to make it work. That's how prayer works. We pray to God for the homeless as an example. I work in the homeless ministry at my parish, so we pray for the homeless. It doesn't stop there. We also collect food. We have a budget line item. Budget. We go out and every month we go out and we distribute food to the homeless, out where they're out on the street. And we talk to them and we give them refer them to the help that they need if they want it. 

That's how prayer works. We pray for something, then you take action for it, and we do this in the name of God and that that's how it works. So when we praise God, when we say what's what's, what's a good Christian, do a good Christian is the one who stands up, loves your neighbor as yourself, stands up for those who are unable to stand up for themselves. That's what we're here for. Amen.