What's Happening at Pilgrim this week?

Monday, Jan. 31st...7:00 PM Pastoral Meeting - Parsonage
Tuesday, Feb. 1st... 7:00 PM Bible Study
Wednesday, Feb. 2nd ...7:00 PM Pilgrim Circle - Parsonage
Thursday, Feb. 3rd ... Choir Practice
Friday, Feb. 4th ... Cards - Parsonage

Please keep those of our church who are ill or facing surgery in your prayers!
Birthdays this week

Monday, Jan. 31st ... Hugh Everhart

Wednesday, Feb. 2nd ... Patsy Miller

Thursday, Feb. 3rd... Reid Black

Friday, Feb 4th... Joanna Gibby, Johnette Davis, Bruce Everhart & Alex Hege

THIS PASTOR’S VIEWPOINT

There are many professions where one individual must put his safety and even life in another person’s hands. You might say “it goes with the territory.”

Our nephew, Robert, was a jet fighter pilot who flew the F-15e Strike Eagle He has recently retired from active service although he still flies them as a reservist. There have been many people in his life in whom he needed to have absolute trust every time he took off. Many of them were the people responsible for maintaining his aircraft. You just can’t pull one of them over to the side of the road if the engines quit running. In flying combat missions other members of a flight formation are trained to look out for each other. We know of the importance of the “wingman.”

Firemen and police officers constantly rely on their “buddies” or partners to protect them when things get dangerous and I certainly remember looking at the initials of one who packed my parachute each time I jumped and thinking, “Partner, I sure hope you did it right.”

I thought of these things on Wednesday when I came across Psalm 25:5b in my daily Bible reading. David wrote, ”All day long I put my hope in you.” David put his trust in God “all day long” and we can assume that it was all day long every day.

It wasn’t just when things got tough. It wasn’t just when things got dangerous. It was “all day long,” from the moment he got up to the time he went to bed…and even then he was trusting that God remained, on duty, by his side while he slept.

How often we Christians cry out, “Jesus, help me” when we’re in trouble and forget him when everything is going smoothly. How often our hope is in our own efforts rather than the presence, strength and promise of our Lord.

We forget that each day we fly out into a world where we are constantly in harms way, and just like Robert, we need to be aware that we too, have a wingman in whom rests our hope. How comforting it is to know he is there all day long.

Sermon for Sunday, January 30, 2011

BETTER IGNORANT THAN UNCARING
An Upbeat Word for a Downbeat World, #5
Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But the man who loves God is known by God.
4 So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
7 But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, won’t he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall."
I don’t know which is worse to have so much knowledge that you come across as arrogant or too little knowledge so that you come across as dense.

A lady made her first visit to Yellowstone National Park. She asked her
guide, “Look at all those big rocks. Wherever did they come from?”
“The glaciers brought them down,” said the guide.

“But where are the glaciers?” asked the persistent tourist.
“The glaciers,” said the guide in a weary voice, “have gone back for more rocks.”

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it’s been said, but what about a little ignorance?

A man working in the operations department in the central office of a large bank receives calls from employees in the field having problems with their computers. Since their computers are tied in to a central server, he is often able to help them online.

One night he got a call from a woman in one of the branch banks who had this question. She said, “I’ve got smoke coming from the back of my terminal.” Then she added, “Do you guys have a fire downtown?”

Well, that makes sense, I guess. If they get their information via the phone lines from downtown, why couldn’t they also get smoke? Which is more dangerous a little knowledge or a little ignorance?

Some of you are familiar with Judge Judy on television. As presiding jurist on national television, Judge Judy Sheindlin draws more than ten million viewers to her show. If you’ve seen Judge Judy you know she is not one to accept ignorance as a defense.

As Sheindlin became a lawyer and then a judge, she saw what happened to people who didn’t use their heads.

“The fallout of their poor decisions was the daily parade of misery that marched through family court,” says Sheindlin. “I’ve heard it all before: ‘I didn’t think, I didn’t mean to . . .’ Ignorance of life is not an excuse in my courtroom.”

I think she’s saying that a little ignorance is worse than a little knowledge.

Dr. George Gallup, responding to the request of the Dallas Times Herald, did a survey of students’ knowledge in eight industrialized countries.

Those currently in school in the U. S. ranked either at the bottom or near the bottom of the list in mathematics, science, and geography.

Here are some examples:
* Only one-fifth of the students tested could even locate the United States on a map.
* One-third of the teens did not know that Mexico is the country that borders on Texas.
* Twenty-five percent were unaware that New Jersey is on the East Coast and that Oregon is on the West Coast.
* Only about 40 percent could name California as the most populous state.

Gallup found that these aspiring high school graduates were woefully ignorant in three major fields: trade, travel, and culture. Their answers to three questions illustrate:
* What nation in the world has the largest population? The preponderance of the students answered, “The United Nations.”
* Which were the last two states admitted into the Union? The majority of answers included Florida, Mexico, and Canada.
* What language is most widely spoken in Latin America? The common response was “Latin.”

So, is it better to be knowledgeable and arrogant or lacking in knowledge and be taken for stupid? Hopefully these are not the only two choices, but I confess that for years I’ve tried to get hold of the bumper sticker that proclaims “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
I ask this question because of something St. Paul says in our scripture lesson for today: “Knowledge puffs up,” says Paul, “but love builds up.”

It’s true. Knowledge can puff us up. There are people in our society who disdain anyone who is not as well educated as they are. For example, they turn up their noses at anyone who is not precise in their use of grammar.

They regard anyone as stupid who is not as well read or as sophisticated. Many of these folks are not only elitist in their cultural preferences, but also in their politics, in their social relationships and even in their religion. These people ignorantly believe that education is the sole measuring stick for intelligence.

St. Paul encountered people like that in the early church. Christianity had become a very liberating force in the lives of the earliest followers of Jesus. Most had been drawn from the Jewish faith. They had once lived under the law with the burden of the legalisms of that day. But Christ had set them free from all that. And they were proud of their freedom and flaunted it.
Paul could understand that. He himself wrote eloquently of the freedom that Christ gives. But Paul had a higher vision and an even more tender heart. He knew that freedom had a double edge.

Many of the more recent converts to Christianity had been worshiping idols before they came to Christ. And part of their worship involved sacrificing food to the idols. Afterwards they would feast on that food. This was a social event as well as a religious duty. Should they continue to patronize these feast events after giving their hearts to Christ?

Certainly, said some. After all, idols are an illusion. There is no reality to them. But the food and the fellowship are still good. What possible harm could it do for them to continue participating in the social part of these events even though they were now followers of Christ?

Well, Paul saw the possibility of a great deal of harm. What if a new believer, still insecure in their faith, saw them eating food offered to idols and thought they still believed in idol-worship even after becoming Christians? Then these newer believers might fall back into worshiping idols themselves.

So, says Paul to Christians in Corinth, don’t let your superior understanding of faith cause you to be a stumbling block to others. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Christians are people who build up others. It is not our intellect that marks us as a follower of Christ, but the love in our heart.

This does not mean that a Christian needs to park his or her brain at the door. Just the opposite is true. God gave us our good minds. God intends for us to use those minds to the fullest extent possible.

What it means is, that the highest use of our intellect is to find a way to build up other people. As we have often noted before, Jesus was an encourager. He lifted people up he did not put them down. And that is our task as well. It is not enough that we do not hate people or that we do them no harm. We are to be sensitive to the needs of others and find ways to do good for them.
In the book Letters to Phillip by Charlie Shedd, tells of a woman who suffered a car accident. She called her husband as soon as she could to tell him.

Seemingly oblivious to her condition, he asked, “How much damage did you do to the car?” His second words were “Whose fault was it?” Following this, he suggested, “Listen, darling, don’t admit a thing! You call the insurance company and I’ll call the lawyer. We can beat this thing.”
His wife said little until this point.

Then, she asked, “Well, do you have any more instructions or questions?”

“No,” he said, “I think that about covers it.”

“Oh, does it?” She fumed. “In case you’re interested, I’m at the hospital with five broken ribs.”

Certainly we don’t have any husbands in our congregation who are like that! Christians are people who build people up. Christians are people who are sensitive to the needs of other people and seek to lift them to a higher plane of life. Christians are people who recognize that everyone needs encouragement in order to be all they can be.We all need encouragement, don’t we? And so do the people we live with, the people we work with, the people we meet each day.

My great prayer for this church is that we will continue being an encouraging church.

Little people tear others down. Little people abuse others and take advantage of them. I pray that as a congregation we will continue in our resolve to be a place where people find positive affirmations.

Several years ago Eric “The Swimmer” Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea was an unlikely hero of the Sydney Olympic Games. The 22 year old African had only learned to swim the January before. He had only practiced in a 20 meter pool without lane markers, and had never raced more than 50 meters. By special invitation of the International Olympic Committee, under a special program that permits poorer countries to participate even though their athletes don’t meet customary standards, he had been entered in the 100 meter men’s freestyle.

When the other two swimmers in his heat were disqualified because of false starts, Moussambani was forced to swim alone.

Eric Moussambani was, to use the words of an Associated Press story about his race, “charmingly inept.” He never put his head under the water’s surface and flailed wildly to stay afloat. With ten meters left to the wall, he virtually came to a stop. Some spectators thought he might drown! Even though his time was over a minute slower than what he would need to qualify for the next level of competition, the capacity crowd at the Olympic Aquatic Center stood to their feet and cheered Eric on.

After what seemed like an eternity, this young African athlete reached the wall and hung on for dear life. When he had caught his breath and regained his composure, the French speaking Moussambani said through an interpreter, “I want to send hugs and kisses to the crowd. It was their cheering that kept me going.”

I like that. It was the cheering of the crowd that kept him going.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one of our children could say late in life, “It was the cheering of my church that kept me going?”

Wouldn’t it be great if a person who has been through a terrible illness could report later, “It was the cheering of my church that kept me going?”

Would you pardon me if I say in all humility to you, that when my term as your pastor is finished, I would like to be able to say, “It was the cheering of my church that kept me going?”

Knowledge puffs up, but loves builds up. We have many smart, well-educated people in our congregation and we’re thankful for that.

Knowledge is much to be preferred over ignorance. But that will not make us a great church. What will make us a great church is being a church of encouragers, building one another up with the love of Christ.

An upbeat word for a downbeat world.

Amen