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Sermon preached on July 31, 2005 by the Reverend Jim Thomas :That reading from Isaiah began with the word, hope! And, in Greek, that means, listen up, because I really have something important that I want to tell you. You women don’t have to listen to the first part of this; you know what I’m going to say. I thought I would pass on my wisdom what I learned this week to my brothers here that are in dire need, I’m sure, and that is there is a big difference between shopping and going on an errand. Sally said that she would like to go shopping and I said, "Well, I went yesterday." And she said, "No, you didn’t go shopping, you went on an errand and bought underwear." So, I want you to hoe about that you guys and know the difference between shopping and going on an errand. I know you’re dying to know how I’m going to tie that into the Gospel, aren’t you? Well, we’ll see here in a minute. Jesus had just gotten news that John the Baptist had been killed and he wanted to get off by himself and take some time and perhaps pray or grieve or be alone in some way. But, people kept following him by the little lake, like a little Ozark lake, that Sea of Galilee, and as he goes around they just kind of follow him around and no matter where he is they can see him. They follow him and always want something from him. Instead of insisting that he do something for himself, the Bible says he had great compassion upon them and started healing them, started being with them, taking care of them. This idea of the difference between going shopping and going on an errand has been on my mind this week, as you can tell, and it reminded me, probably like it has you, of the writings of Spinoza. Well, I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one that happened to. Spinoza lived in the middle 1600s. He was born in about 1632. Grew up in Portugal, and then went to seminary in Amsterdam, there attending a synagogue, and was kicked out of there because he basically professed that Christ was the Messiah, and also believed that Christ had this idea that he later developed, and I’m going to call it his approach to theology and philosophy. Now Spinoza said that we can do two things with our theology. If we consider what we think and what we believe about God as an overall, encompassing, ethical system, or something like that. He says that’s universal theology, and it’s not really theology at all. What it is; is philosophy, the thinking about how God interacts in the world and these lofty thoughts. He said the real theology and how theology impacts on our lives is in the particular, in the unique, in the private, in the individual and that’s where miracles occur, is in that thinking when we accept or when we think about God having an impact on our own personal lives. If we get out of that, then we’re really talking about philosophy. Well, that was Spinoza’s idea. A lot of people mix those up. Remember Charlie Brown’s statement, "I love humanity; it’s just people I can’t stand." So the idea is that we can get those mixed up, but that doesn’t help us very much. What we need to do is to move to the particular. Spinoza said nothing throws us into the here and now into particular to dealing with our relationship with God than does need. When we need something, when we feel desperately in want or a need of something that we’re afraid we’re not going to be able to get, we’re not going to have. I don’t know if any of you have ever needed money, or maybe you’ve been hungry and needed food, or maybe you’d needed companionship, or you’ve been lonely and you needed someone to touch you, or to hug you or just to be with you and listen to you. You see, it’s that kind of need that comes from our basic soul, that basic part of us that affirms who we are. That is what Spinoza would say is the particular in dealing with God, our particular theology in Christ. Because it’s that need that really engenders something that in Hebrew is called, mitzvah. Mitzvah means duty, but it’s not duty to God and country. It’s duty to taking on an oath to help others, to work with others in their needs and to somehow make their needs as important as our needs and to bring their needs into our particular. Again, Spinoza says that’s where the real miracles start to happen is when we can think outside of our own self. When we can start thinking about what somebody else needs and we bring their need into our own yearning, our own particular relationship with God, our own prayer life, our own caring, our own being with others, when we can make their needs into our particular, taking it out of the realm of the great universal but making it our own concern. He said then miraculous things start to happen. But, miraculous things never happen in the great overall philosophy of things. It’s the miracles, the miraculous things that happen in the particular. With that idea, I really wish you, today, that you would go out and do something wonderful, maybe for someone else, maybe something wonderful for yourself that will help you to meet and be aware of some else’s need. You see, there is so much need in the world right now. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the need, but, I’m telling you we can never, no longer allow ourselves the convenience of being overwhelmed by the needs of others. We can never allow ourselves the convenience of being overwhelmed by the needs of others and sit there and do nothing. We must take on the needs of others in our own hearts, in our own particular and get it out of the realm of the universal. The way we do that is mitzvah, duty commitment to the needs of others. Mitzvah. Mitzvah.
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