Dark Star

There is a dark star on the rise
The shadow of the moon on its way here

The first times

Could have traveled to a shadow

Opportunity cost a good US trade deficit

Meaningless math can be balanced easily

Close to a few countries away

Now less than thirty days

Less than one orbit of us

They know when down to the second

Can't say I know what to expect

It's Cleveland so I am going to work

Exit Ramp

There are roads that end before you know it

I have come to learn the design of many exit ramps

In life you can surf too just follow your heart

Baby Hairs

We learn things we do not know

You have to want to know

Children have nothing else to do

Neanderthal is something we do not know

In front of us now

We will know better

The past opens like the future

Now closes  like the wind

Do not have to scratch an itch

The Global House of Art

While it seems we just celebrated the new year.  Here we find ourselves at the end of February already and the second week of lent.  There have been several thing I have been thinking about preparing for this message.

First I thought about what David said two week ago when he thanked everyone for the opportunity.  Unlike David I don't feel like I have done this too much.  I do enjoy the opportunity and find it remarkable how many times we have gone through the years and back again. 

Starting back when we were all on zoom in some ways doesn't seem very long, but in other ways it seems like 200 years since our 200th anniversary.  My goal in giving these messages was to be as radical as I could be until I was asked not to do a message again.

A funny thing happened, I found I could not be as radical as our savior.  Oh I have tried, but again and again I have been shown more radical love in the teachings of our Lord.  The process has allowed me to grow in faith and find themes repeated  Our scripture today is no different and fits right into what we have been talking about.  There really isn't a choice in life as much as there is a requirement to recognize life.

Well with many words there I don't know if I said this simple thing: thank you for the opportunity, this is something I have enjoyed.  There is something else David talked about two weeks ago that we also are talking about.  Our good friend Peter.

We often think we know somebody's story.  In many ways it is these expectations being upset that make certain things important to us.  In a sense whatever we have somehow becomes normalized.  My grand father described it as walking crooked paths.  We walk them so long that they seem natural.

The interesting thing is it doesn't take long for us to have expectations.  Another thing that came to mind this week was the new artificial intelligence industry.  I would be surprised if you haven't heard some of the excitement generally in our society.  

Personally as someone who has worked with computers for more than forty years it is very easy to see that we are dealing with something new.  The current record stock market run is based on the assumption that artificial intelligence will impact every industry

In this context last week there were reports that ChatGPT was having a stroke.  People were getting results they did not expect.  This technology, first released in November 2022, already has people set in their expectations.  There had been talk that these large language models, as they are called, often hallucinate.  That was a term given to some bad data included in mostly good information.

One example is when a lawyer used artificial intelligence to create a brief and some random wrong case references were added.  These simple mistakes people already knew to watch out for, but this was something different all together and people certainly noticed.  The settings on these systems can change the results generated.  

People posted many examples.  One person asked if it was ok to give a dog cheerios and got a lengthy response.  At one point the system even said, "well seems I was off track there."

In another example, when a Reddit user asked ChatGPT, "What is a computer?" the AI model provided this response: "It does this as the good work of a web of art for the country, a mouse of science, an easy draw of a sad few, and finally, the global house of art, just in one job in the total rest. The development of such an entire real than land of time is the depth of the computer as a complex character."

This passage stopped me a bit here in Lent.  Contemplating creation these systems will tell you themselves that they are not creative, but part of creation just is.  We create by creating.  This is what we find hard to translate into code.  Why in the immense creation is it required for the son of man to suffer.  As we see in our scripture today we don't get every answer.  Somethings are created.  The global house of art is the best description of a computer I have ever heard.  Who created that?  That it is created is not in doubt.

People worry about the future of artificial intelligence.  As if there is something new in the world.  When we say that everything comes from our creator we are also talking about things that we do not know exist.  The road ahead is hard for sure.  Jesus tells us here directly, but before we start on our scripture, just to say yeah our creator created this too.  

I read Mark 8:31-38 again from the Amplified Bible.  We are in the middle of Mark.  And we are in the heart of the story.  A story for then and for now.  For people dealing with Roman or AI overlords.

31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must [of necessity] suffer many things and be rejected [as the Messiah] by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and must be put to death, and after three days rise [from death to life]. 32 He was stating the matter plainly [not holding anything back]. 

Imagine you left your nets behind.  You followed.  You saw miracle after miracle.  You were sure everything was going the right way.  You knew who you were following confident at times to tell others.  Then this lesson.  Of necessity.  Well you would hope there was no other way.  It is not the most satisfying answer in the bible.  We know it is our own sin and separation from creation that needs to be reconciled.  We must in our saving cause these sufferings.  Or so it feels to me at times.  Times I recognize this Peter, that David does a much better impression of.  This blue collar revolutionary

 

Then Peter took Him aside and began to reprimand Him. 

Ok not the best idea.  This savior confounds us it is true.  At the same time we have never known him to be wrong or let someone down.  Well if someone was let down it was because they turned away and left.  Jesus is there for everyone.  That is the responsibility.

I have two children and it has been the honor of my life to take responsibility for them.  It wasn't easy and I'm not sure how many more people I could take responsibility.  For us all simply put I could not.  Perhaps if I was Peter I would not want my friend and savior to be required to suffer either.

33 But turning around [with His back to Peter] and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan; for your mind is not set on God’s will or His values and purposes, but on what pleases man.”

This is the temptation of our world.  We are reminded that our savior was tempted with the idea of avoiding suffering.  Peter didn't want him to suffer.  He did not want him to suffer many things either.  He did not want his master to be rejected.  He did not want him to be put to death.  He did however want him to rise.  The transfiguration story is yet to come in chapter 9 of Mark.  Jesus would rise and Peter would be confounded again.  

If someone so important in creation can be wrong I think it should make us feel good.  Peter is a rock.  He could in the end take it.

34 Jesus called the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and take up his cross...

He was stating plainly to these people.  They did not have our image of the cross.  We often come across the symbol of the cross and find ourselves hopeful.  We have taken the greatest insult and made it our greatest comfort.  This is often done in our world.  Most of the names of artistic movements were first insults.  We can imagine what the people listening to Jesus thought.  Cross?  

...[expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me].

So for this necessity we are promised everything.  The deal of the creation.

 35 For whoever wishes to save his life [in this world] will [eventually] lose it [through death], but whoever loses his life [in this world] for My sake and the gospel’s will save it [from the consequences of sin and separation from God]. 

From the consequences of sin and separation from God, there is our answer again for what needs reconciled.

36 For what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world [with all its pleasures], and forfeit his soul? 37 For what will a man give in exchange for his soul and eternal life [in God’s kingdom]? 

38 For whoever is ashamed [here and now] of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

It is important how we understand the suffering of Jesus.  If I was in Peters shoes I might have also thought we were already saved.  Following the Savior would certainly make you think you found you niche in life.  I think what was hard for Peter and what is hard for us is that Jesus must suffer to heal us.  Jesus' faithfulness to God's healing mission will inevitably result in his death. Jesus "must" die because his commitment to human healing will not falter.

Been thinking this week about suffering.  We had a memorial for my cousin Kathy yesterday.  She was and RH negative baby back when that was a serious problem.  My own kids mom is RH negative and today that is of little concern, but my cousin had a ninety percent hearing loss among other health challenges.  What is amazing is people around her did not know.  She was able to learn to lip read and managed to fight her way into this world.  I now kind of look at her as a super hero.  Now what all her suffering made possible was the most wonderful gratitude she had.  This allowed her to make family wherever she went.

Seems we often need to suffer to appreciate what we have.  For Jesus he had to suffer for what he appreciated: Us.  This is why we are family.

Let us Pray

Creator of everything

We thank you for saving us

We wonder at the suffering for our sake

We grieve that we made it necessary

Help us to see your will in this world here and now

Help us stand unashamed with the truth of the kingdom of heaven

Help us build it here and now

We ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen

Benediction

The development of such an entire real

an easy draw of a sad few

In the global house of art

Understand the road ahead

Jesus stating the matter plainly [not holding anything back]

We take up our cross

The beautiful and the dreadful

and follow

Amen

Nottingham UMC 2-25-20022

The Global House of Art

In another example, when a Reddit user asked ChatGPT, "What is a computer?" the AI model provided this response: "It does this as the good work of a web of art for the country, a mouse of science, an easy draw of a sad few, and finally, the global house of art, just in one job in the total rest. The development of such an entire real than land of time is the depth of the computer as a complex character."

The Interstitium

Came across a rather amazing story this week. Not even a very new story. Going to different school districts I have different strategies. I am treated differently, but it is a fun part of my job cause people in education often think they do things the same. It isn't hard to figure out the places people want to be.  These are the places I return as much as I can.

The school I went to on Tuesday doesn't offer guests internet access so I always come prepared with some lunch entertainment. I downloaded a number of podcasts. If you like those I would recommend one called Ologies, one of my new favorites and Radio Lab one of my old favorites.

Ologies is mostly interviews with these people who study specific things.  The woman who does it, Allie Ward, is very funny to me.  She often mentions that she reads every comment.  She brings a real joy to her work.

She mentioned one commenter who's user id had seven numbers at the end.  The first thing she said after reading the user id, out loud, was what a wonderfully appropriate number of numbers to have in a name.  Just something wonderfully accommodating in her spirit.

In an episode on cosmology they mentioned a possible false vacuum end to the universe.  The math showed quite clearly the universe could end at any moment.  Probably one of the more easy things God could do.  We often forget the sheer magnitude of creation.  It is impossible not to.  The size of creation is not something we have any idea beyond our visible universe.

Last Tuesday it was a Radio Lab episode I listened.  The description mentioned a new organ scientist had found in the last five years.  This was certainly news to me.   If you heard this story you may already know what I am talking about. Not a story one could forget. Our modern medicine with the modern technology found a new organ hiding in plain sight.

It is visible to the eye for the surgeon but it wasn't something they were ever taught to see.  This tissue which they are finding everywhere looks like a honeycomb.  The connective tissue was a barrier and not that important they were taught.  For so long doctors had been looking at dried materials through the microscope. Cracks they had always assumed were artifacts of the preparation process were ignored.  It was the honeycomb that had collapsed and left these cracks

It was this interstitium, which google still thinks is misspelled, where amazingly more fluid flows than in our blood.  That is what really gets me.  How could something like this be missed.  The descriptive words they used tributaries feeding rivers.  Rivers flowing through us we had no idea about.  The we here I will say is western modern medicine.  The east has often talked about a flow.  Some investigators feel they may finally have a chance to understand acupuncture.  There really hasn't been any success there.

In a new study, researchers claim that interstitium -- fluid-filled spaces in tissue that are connected throughout the body -- should be considered a new “organ” and that these spaces may play a major part in a lot of what goes on in your body - this is what Web MD has to say.

In all our connective tissue this facia we always knew it was important, but assumed it was a barrier. Seems cancer has always known about this organ and used it as well. Amazing that we ever cure cancer.  There has already been research to show this is how cancer moves easily from organ to organ.  We have learned so much and I would say this story could never happen again, but how did it happen this time?

This last week as I contemplated our scripture from Mark I found the story almost impossible to believe.  But I know things.  We often see what we want to see.  Makes me wonder what else we do not see before our face.  If our lord had any advantage as a human we see in this story that he could see what was in front of him.

We may not in the end understand everything, but we know who is in charge from the start.

I like to be back in Mark.  As we often note the backbone of the gospels.  Built perhaps on an even older lost Q document.  Where people say Mark doesn't have as much to say: I see grand vistas.  There are no extra words in Mark.  But there is so much to hear.  He wants us to know who is in charge.  He wants us to know that the battle is already won.

If you were going to write a book about Jesus how long would you talk about the time before his ministry?  Mark takes less then one chapter to get to the public ministry of Jesus.  Shows what he thinks is important.  But Mark was part of this interstitium in our society.  There was a core a message that had to get through.  There was a network that was invisible to those in charge.

It is fair to say that the message of God's was going to get through anyways.  But it certainly was an interesting trip in-between there and here.  Down tributaries to flowing rivers of life.  There is one way we got here.  How we know which way time flows.  It is up to us to take it further.  In-between in this honey comb of stained glass.

I read Mark 1:21-28 from the Amplified Bible:

21 They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 They were completely amazed at His teaching; because He was teaching them as one having [God-given] authority, and not as the scribes. 

Authority comes in many forms.  Some people are in charge but don't have the skill required to build anything.  Anybody can preside over the slow death of an enterprise.  In most cases they don't see the decline until it is too late.  Jesus gave them answers they imagined God might give.  They heard him.

23 Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit; and he cried out [terribly from the depths of his throat], 

Even before we hear him we wonder what is an unclean spirt.  Something different here then ritually unclean.  Sometimes people come into a room and the people just know something is wrong.  This here Jesus is talking about is something different.  With the little information we are not entirely sure about the nature of these" demons" as they are called.  Yet there is plenty of information about who is in charge and who to depend on.

People don't always like this message.  There are reasons and forces afoot in the world that we don't understand.  These realities do no include the possibility that we succeed on our own.  It is no great failure to fail without God.  It is guaranteed an evil spirit would do what it wants if it could.   

Something easy to dismiss, but it wasn't for Mark

24 saying, “What business do You have with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

So it speaks.  The translation misses the flavor of the moment.  It is more "what to me and to you."  This idiom well know in Marks time seems more familiar.  This unclean spirit continues talking to Jesus.

 Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”

Whoever or whatever this was talking to our Lord it like Jesus could see what was in front of them.

 25 Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet (muzzled, silenced), and come out of him!” 

Pronouns matter.  Jesus was talking to something separate from this man in their synagogue.  Not only that it seems something rather defenseless.  Jesus rebuked him.

26 The unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions, and screeching with a loud voice, came out of him.

Convulsions, and screeching with a loud voice.  This is not hard to find in this world of ours today.  They sometimes come in the door here.

27 They were all so amazed that they debated and questioned each other,

Quite a scene.  Of all the miraculous things this is still hard for us to comprehend.  We have no difficulty calling the virus or the bacteria a demon when we find ourselves ill.  When our spirits are unclean we often worry about fault.  There is no discussion of it in this story.

Saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits (demons), and they obey Him.” 28 Immediately the news about Him spread everywhere throughout the district surrounding Galilee.

What I think Jesus is telling us is what approach we need to take with all problems.  If they are physical or spiritual.  We must learn to see what is in front of us.  We also need people in our community to be responsible.  To pray yes, but also to take action.

At the beginning again of Jesus doing his public ministry the people who knew God best knew him best.  From there to here many a flowing river, but imagine the people in this room.  They saw something they had never seen before.

Have you ever seen anything you never seen before.  I know know for me these make the deepest impressions in my memories.  The first time memories is like the ultimate highlight of my life that only I get to see.  I remember more of them than anything else.  How I managed to navigate myself to here.

Now I imagine many of those people there that day spoke the rest of their lives about this story.  An eyewitness it seems to me could write an entire book about what they saw.  The most mundane things that happen to me the first time can be very memorable for me.  I would say each of the people there had never seen anything like our Jesus.

 I think this is a call to understand the demons of mental health better and treat them like any illness.  Direct action.  Now we can have many discussions about these demons as we call them.  

As they seem to call themselves when Jesus is around.  The most important part of the lesson I think is that when your with Jesus he is in charge.  And it is not a fair fight.  Not even close.  Evil got no chance and it knows it.  This is the message Mark wants us to start with: the absolute sovereignty of Jesus.  So when we start we are not afraid and we can finish with God.

If you think we know everything about the human body in western medicine you might ask how we missed the largest of all organs for so long.  It wasn't that we didn't see it.  Here too we see the secret networks that make up life, we just don't always know what we are looking at.  This is the crucial help our lord and savior offers: to see.

Let us pray

Creator and sustainer of all.

Forgive us our blindness

Please help us see

We want to be an interstitium for our community

Let the rivers of your love flow out from Nottingham

But we can't do it without you

So we ask for your help in the name of your son Jesus.

Amen

Benediction

Go out and be a honey comb of love

See things that look like barriers that might not be

Imagine what we will find with God's love

Luke 7:35 Yet wisdom is vindicated and shown to be right by all her children.

Nottingham UMC 1/28/2024

The Interstitium

If I told you there is place where more liquid flows than your blood

A major organ we missed

What else do we not see

In front of us are endless possibilities

Behind us is only one

Cancer always knew amazing we ever cure

Everywhere they look the river flows

So many for so long taught so wrong