Sermon Texts:
Philippians 4: 8-9
Psalm 78: 1-8
Sermon notes:
(hmm, as I copied and pasted these, it occured to me how much I got off my notes in the actual sermon--so, I guess you get two sermons for the price of one ;D
Sunday sermon notes
Karate Kid: young man must trust his teacher and submit to the authority
Youtube: Karate Kid Wax on Wax off.
Teachers in the bible, ultimate teacher is Jesus
Gives his disciples tasks that they don’t understand at the moment: later, those skills will connect them to him.
Letter of John, we cannot love God if we do not love one another. Daniel-San, you cannot learn Karate if you do not wax the car, sand the floor, catch the fly, paint the fence. Could learning to love one another be the same kind of practice for our eternal life of loving God.
If one of our goals as Christians is to praise God in all things and to be able to discern the praise of God in all things, as the Pslamists frequently do, a good teacher can help a child see the power of education in all things.
One of the movies that always gave me chills as a teenager was Dead Poet’s Society. In that movie, Robin Williams takes his first dramatic role as a English teacher at a preppy private boy’s school in the 1950s. He begins blowing the students expectations of a boring old English class by asking the students to rip out the introduction (a staid and dusty academic approach to poetry) to their Poetry books.
Build trust with the teacher, he helps them get inside poetry and letting it change them
Respect our teachers. I’ll never forget the shame I felt when I was a kid and one of the teachers found a drawing that I had made of my teacher. “Hippo Hopper” it read, with a caricature of my teacher as a hippopotemous. I don’t remember doing the drawing, but I remember feeling so sorry for what I had done when another teacher found it in my desk. It wasn’t just the shame of insulting someone. It was the shame of insulting someone who had never done anything to me besides try to teach me.
Robin Williams inspires the boys to live more authentic and exciting lives than the parents of the boys approve of.
Part 6 7:30, I sound my barbaric yawp.
Part 7: 6:45, importance of conformity, walking exercise.
One son of a maniacally strict and condescending father follows his own dream of being in a play to audition for Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” When negative fallout occurs from that decision, the parents and the school pin the blame on the teacher.
In this way, Robin William’s character becomes a kind of Christ figure, a character the reminds us, intentionally or not, of the sacrifice that Jesus made on behalf of his own students. God gave us the freedom to live truly authentic lives, and the authorities didn’t like it, so the teacher—the rabbi, took the fall.
Most of us would say that our object of study as a person of faith is the Bible. We are “people of the Book,” and are formed by the stories and commands of Scripture. Many people find the answer for our relative ignorance of scripture in the study of the Bible in public schools. And, many English teachers find uses for the scriptures to communicate aspects of that discipline.
But, the Scriptures are hard to pin down. They are hard to teach. I watched a movie this past week called “The Book of Eli”
Describe plot.
Post apocalyptic setting. One man walks the landscape protecting a Bible, which is said to be the last remaining Bible on earth. A harsh and corrupt leader of a community in the desert also covets the Bible, because he sees it as a “weapon—aimed right at the hearts and minds of the weak and the desperate. They’ll do whatever I tell them as long as the words come from the book.”
This is the difficulty of our scriptures. They can be used and abused, or they can inspire beauty, love, and faith.
This is the difficulty of education in general! The gift may lead some to create horrible weapons or learn the skills to persuade people to destruction—or it can be entrusted to others to better the world. It has to be given in faith.
Perhaps this is why our scriptures speak of Wisdom as something almost Divine. In the Proverbs, Lady Wisdom identifies herself as being “
1 Corinthians 1:24, 30—“...[but we preach] Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. . . .Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God...” (NASB). Others point to Matt. 11:19b and Luke 7:35. In Matthew, Jesus defends Himself by saying, “But, wisdom is vindicated by her actions.
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