Choose The Fruit Of The Spirit | Galatians 5:22-23 | Shari Ray

Right.

I am his biggest fan, so he he he told you the truth there.

Um, thank you for having me.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you, Justin.

The mic works.

And I also want to start by saying something that if you know me, if you know Larry and me, you already know this, and that is that last summer we took a long walk uh on a portion of the Camino de Santiago, and it was awesome.

And I'm gonna start with that today.

But what I want to say is for those of you that were um here for a long time ago, um, you were a part of that.

You were a part of making that happen for us, you were a part of uh sending us, uh, you were a part of Larry's retirement situation.

And I want to thank you.

I haven't had an opportunity just to say thank you.

That was wonderful.

It was a life-changing trip for us, and I'm gonna start with that today um as a metaphor.

Our walk, our long walk, our camino is a metaphor.

Uh, before I do, you know how sometimes that the music that Chris uh chose for today is perfect.

I didn't ask for any particular music, um, but he sang that song that included this line Your freedom is all I know.

That's a big claim, isn't it?

It's funny, it's providential, that I'm gonna talk about freedom today.

So think about that, right?

We sang your freedom is all I know.

Let's see, let's see, let's talk about that today.

All right, the Camino.

What's a Camino?

A Camino is a very long walk to a good place.

It's a pilgrimage.

You start at one place, you go to another place.

We started Portugal due north all the way up to Spain.

That's what we did.

It's communal.

Everybody along the way is doing the same thing.

Or on some of you have been on Camino, I've been on pilgrimage.

Um, you we're all going to the same place, we have the same goal, and so it's beautiful that everyone's doing the same thing with the same purpose at the same time.

So it's all it's beautiful almost to the point of being a slightly corny.

Like, hello, pilgrim.

Hello, I mean, really, it is it's amazing.

And so while we're walking the same path to the same destination, we make a variety of decisions along the way.

Um, we might decide to walk around the city rather than through the city.

You might decide to go through the woods, the wooded area by the stream, although it adds miles to your journey rather than bypassing.

We just make a lot of decisions along the way.

Do we um I'm gonna look at my time, make sure I don't go long.

Um, do we eat with people or do we eat by ourselves?

What are the decisions that we make as we go?

And I had a little bitty teeny tiny fear before we actually got started.

We walked for 12 days and we walked multiple miles every day.

I got a little fear that somewhere along the way, about midway, I was gonna wake up in the morning and go, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore.

It's a long walk every day.

I don't want to do that anymore.

I'm tired, I just don't want to.

But that never happened.

The exact opposite happened.

So keep in mind I'm using Camino as a metaphor for our walk, our Christian walk.

It never happened.

The walk became our way.

Our way of, in fact, the pilgrims on Camino call it the way the way to Santiago, the way to the church.

It became our way, our way of being, what we did every day.

And we lived that way in a very good season.

And it brought us a great deal of peace.

We walked, didn't we, Larry?

We walked in peace.

So I'll be using the Camino, the way, as my metaphor.

You know what?

There is nothing on earth about our experience that is static.

Everything's moving all the time.

The planets are moving, the the earth is rotating at like a thousand miles an hour, something like that.

Just constantly moving, moving.

Our blood is moving, everything is moving until it is.

The law, there's a law of physics that proves this.

It'll be up on the slide here.

The second law of thermodynamics comments on this.

You know it already, you've probably studied this.

This law says that things are moving all the time, and the law that deals with the concept of entropy, it states that any spontaneous process, in any spontaneous process, the total entropy of an isolated system will always increase.

And what that means is in all of our movement, there exists in the natural world, our processes tend towards greater disorder.

Like left to ourselves, we we tend to, we lean toward, we move toward disorder more than order.

We don't naturally go towards order.

One of my favorite poets is W.

B.

Yates, and he wrote a great poem called The Second Coming.

And in that poem, he says this, and you will have heard this, I think.

Things fall apart.

The center cannot hold.

Left to our own nature, we tend towards disorder.

Um, Rennie gave me this example one time, and I'm gonna use it, and she may have used it already.

But think about a Thanksgiving turkey.

You get it out of the oven, it's wonderful.

You put it on the table.

If you eat it right away, it's great.

If you don't eat it right away and you leave it till tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, when you go to eat it, it will be all bad because I it will have gone, gone, it will be gross.

Covered with probably animals that you don't even know how they got in here.

Insects.

Why?

Because we have a natural tendency toward disorder.

That's that's the law, right?

So again, we humans are no exceptions to this rule.

In the book of Judges, a very famous line that you have heard before probably says, In those days, Israel had no king.

And the people did what was right in their own eyes.

And I'm gonna argue today that this hasn't changed.

It really hasn't changed all that much.

My second slide.

This is what it sounds like now, right?

It's not only true of Israel then, but of us now.

This second slide talks about what we call it these days, what the kids are calling it these days.

The term is relative or ethical morality.

And what it means is the philosophical idea that morality is not absolute, but rather varies depending on the individual, the culture, or the historical context, right?

So the diction and phrasing sound different throughout time, but this says what it says that the that morality is not absolute.

Let me tell you what it sounds like now.

Like I said, the language changes, but this is what it sounds like now in our day.

I'm gonna act on my truth.

See, we're still doing it.

We're doing what seems right in our own eyes, and in all this constant moving, we're moving from one pole to the next.

You have in your seat an old-fashioned, old school handout.

That is because your speaker today is an old-fashioned, old school teacher, and the poles that I'm gonna show you that we move toward, we're either constantly moving toward peace or chaos.

We're moving one direction or the other, but we're never static.

We're in the middle there, moving between peace or chaos.

There's also two mistakes on the chart, you'll see.

I didn't give you the chart because I found mistakes on them after I made a hundred copies.

But the word forgiveness is on the wrong side, and the word friend is on the other side on the wrong side.

So you'll see that when you get there.

Okay.

Things are moving constantly, things fall apart.

We are constantly choosing one poll or the next.

Here's the slide.

Take a look.

On our walk in this daily Camino, we're walking on this continuum, this way, toward peace or toward chaos, and we're making choices all the time.

Um, Colin, go to there it is.

Thank you.

In the book of Acts, Jesus calls his followers, the people who follow following Christ, and we're here because we say we're doing that.

He calls us the way, them the way.

Walk in this way, follow this way that leads to peace on earth as it is in heaven.

Right?

The Lord's Prayer says, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I am the way, that is the way, the way to peace, not the way, the way out of chaos through the wilderness.

It's an Exodus story, into peace.

That's the story.

So logically, walking in the opposite way brings the opposite outcome.

A choice toward peace is away from chaos, and a choice toward chaos is away from peace.

And I want to use two other kind of loaded words.

A choice towards peace is a choice away from slavery into freedom, and a choice toward chaos is a choice toward slavery, away from freedom.

Christ set us free, why?

Do you know?

Oh, good.

Christ set us free so that we could be free indeed.

But we choose slavery too often, I think.

Why?

And slavery is a loaded word.

I understand.

Why do we st why do we choose that?

We choose that, I think, because in the Eden story, the lie that we believe is this one.

You are the exception to the rule.

You're the exception to the rule.

You can do stuff and not get the consequences of that stuff.

See, when I learned the the Eden story, the the serpent said, You shall not surely die.

And I've always heard it emphasized with the word die, and that's true, right?

Well, it's not true, but I mean that's the that's the story that he told.

You will not surely die.

But let's put the emphasis on another word.

You won't die.

Not you.

That's the lie.

And in the vernacular today, it sounds like this, dude.

Relax.

It's no big deal.

This choice won't kill you.

You can hate those dudes because they are hateworthy, they deserved it.

Relax.

And that's not right.

That brings us into slavery.

That is a way from peace.

In the Hebrew Bible, we read about the children of Israel.

We read about them.

I mean, the whole, the whole thing, the whole, the Old Testament is about this.

Where they were in slavery, and God freed them through Moses, and they moved through the desert, through the flood waters, through the through the water, right?

They moved through the wilderness and into the promised land, but the whole way they kept complaining and saying, We'll just be better back in slavery.

And it sounds so ridiculous.

A little bit.

No, no, we're good.

We're good.

Okay.

It's wonderful.

It's going great.

It's going great.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

The children of Israel were constantly turning away and saying, We'd rather be back in slavery.

And all the while, this is the part that kills me.

All the while they're seeing miracles every day.

Every day.

They see fire at night that leads them.

They see cloud by day that leads them.

They have manna in the morning to eat.

Moses is calling out uh water from rocks.

Miracles everywhere.

And then they're just, oh, but we we want to go back.

Why is that?

Because it's harder than it sounds.

It's harder than it sounds to choose peace.

And I want to.

This is our pattern.

All right, let's talk about peace.

Do you know what it means?

Do you know what peace means?

The Hebrew word peace is shalom.

And shalom means this.

It's different than you think.

It's not this.

I mean, this is this is fine.

But it's not, it's not just this.

Or it's just not just not conflict in a particular day.

It's not that.

Shalom means this, ready?

Wholeness, safety, well-being, completeness.

The apostle Paul praised this blessing on the church at Thessalonica.

He says this may the Lord of Shalom, may the Lord of peace himself give you his peace, ready, at all times, in every situation.

I am telling you that if Paul says that's possible, it's possible.

Peace at all times in every situation, in every circumstance.

Peace means to take something that is broken and to work at mending it and putting it back.

That's what it means.

Amending to make complete.

I'm looking across, and it's lovely because everybody's nodding.

That's right, that's right.

Everybody's yes, that's what we want.

But it still eludes us.

We turn away from it.

Why do we do this?

At our school, at my school, we sing, uh, we have chapel every day, and Chaplain Seegers leads us.

And part of our chapel is liturgy, and part of our chapel is singing.

And we sing a song often, girls like it, called Let There Be Peace on Earth.

I'm gonna sing it, although I shouldn't because I'm not a singer, and Justin will never ask me, Chris will never ask me to sing, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

The end of the song you remember, it goes, Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's not what we mean.

We sing it, but what we mean is let there be, oh, it changed the key.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with him.

With her, with them.

Yeah.

You do it and then I'll do it.

That's what we say.

You start and then I'll do it.

Why do we do that?

I think we do that because our we feel like, well, number one, we feel like we're the exception to the rule, but more than that, we feel like that our hurt, my hurt, is grander than your hurt.

Yeah, you just don't know.

You just don't know how she hurt me.

You just don't know what he does.

My hurt is bigger.

And that's not true.

There's hurt is hurt.

Adam and Eve in their garden chose the wrong fruit.

But the story of the gospel is that we have an opportunity every day to choose the right fruit.

This is the truth.

Look at the chart.

We want revenge when what we need is forgiveness.

We want wisdom, but practice foolishness.

We want love, but we practice hate.

We want reconciliation, but we practice retaliation.

Right?

But I have heard people say, and and and you may have said, well, if I have to forgive him, then I don't even want peace.

I heard a man at a church say this with my, I heard him say this, I heard him with my own ears.

If that guy is gonna be in heaven, I don't even want to go there.

Well, that person is living in constant chaos.

Adam and Eve chose the wrong wrong fruit.

What if we undid that?

And I'm saying that the gospel of Jesus Christ allows us to undo that.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What might that look like?

The kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven.

I'll tell you what it looks like.

It looks like the fruits of the Spirit.

Look at this next slide.

The fruits of the Spirit.

What if we chose this fruit?

I love the metaphor fruit.

Isn't that cool?

I think that's super cool.

That they chose bad fruit and we can now choose good fruit.

Same word.

Right?

Right?

We can do this.

We can choose this.

We're offered this every day.

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives.

This is peace, right?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is no law against these things.

What if we decided to choose this and move away from exile and slavery and curse, even when it does curses, even when it doesn't make sense because it won't make sense?

And your mother or your sister or your friend will say, ah, they don't deserve that.

You shouldn't forgive them.

They don't deserve that.

And that's probably completely true.

I'm not talking about them.

I'm talking about you and me.

I think that we don't do this because forgiving our enemy lacks logic.

Right?

What we really want is quick justice.

I want to, if you've hurt me, I want to see you hurt.

I want justice.

And it doesn't work like that.

You know that if you've hated someone, you know that.

That's true.

I have a quick story about a friend of Larry's who he has helped over the years.

I'm gonna call him Bob.

Bob lived on the street for a long time, a long time.

And he met Larry, and some of you in this room have been gracious and know Bob and have met Bob.

Um, and uh he um was on the street and Larry helped him find a place to live, and many of you contributed that way back in the day and helped him.

Well, anyway, the place where he was living was over there by the University of Memphis, and it's been condemned.

You may have seen that.

Bob was living there, and so they're they're moving everybody out, you can't live there anymore because of these infestations of terrible things.

Anyway, and so Bob calls Larry and says, Gotta move to the new place, and Larry's helping him.

And again, several of you have helped Bob fix his uh TV and you've borrowed a truck and all of this.

Well, Bob calls Larry on the phone a lot, especially during moving times in the first of the month when he needs some money.

So he's calling Larry the other day.

Larry's got it on speaker on the back porch, and we're listening.

I'm listening to Bob, and Teddy is sitting out there, and Bob's going, and he's got this great laugh.

I love his laugh.

He's got this wonderful he does it all the time.

So anyway, Larry's saying to Bob, who has moved to the new place, got moved in, and is now being crabby and mean to all the employees because he is crabby and mean to employees who have helped him.

Krabby and mean to people who help him.

Anyway, so he's being crabby and mean, having a problem, he's telling Larry all about it.

And Larry says, Bob, Bob, why quit being mean to people?

Because they're not gonna help you back.

Stop that.

Be nice, don't be mean.

You know what he said?

They started it.

They started it is maybe the dumbest, most childish thing I've ever heard.

In fact, nine-year-old Teddy goes, that's kind of dumb.

That's right.

That's kind of dumb.

Wherever he lives, Bob is mean to people.

And when Larry says, quit being mean, he goes, They started it.

How many times in your life, or maybe right now, do you have a person who started it?

I bet you do.

Okay.

Now what?

Okay.

Let's go through, let me take, let's take that idea that I've had and push it through the lens of literature, both contemporary and biblical.

All right, let me give you some examples of this.

Slide.

Philosophy and literature support my idea, and I'm sure I got it from this, that we are the exception to the rule.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche talked about the ubermensch, the above a guy, the above man, right?

The superman, who is the creative individual who does not merely follow or obey the laws of others, even God, he sets his own rules, right?

Sound familiar?

This is my truth.

The people did what was right in their own eyes.

Let me give you an example of that from literature.

One of my favorite books that I teach is Crime and Punishment.

Crime and Punishment is a Russian novel, written, of course, translated into English.

You can also translate crime and punishment into other English words.

A better translation is actually misdeeds and their consequences.

The problem with that is that no one's going to buy a book called Misdeeds and Their Consequences.

That's the worst title ever.

So it's crime and punishment, but it is about that.

The guy in Crime and Punishment, Ross Gonkoff, thinks that he is better than a woman in town who is stealing from the people.

She's a usurer, like she's a she has a loaning situation, and you give her something and she never gives it back.

She's like a loan shark.

Can you say that?

He said she's a usurer.

And Ross Conkoff hates her because she has stolen from him.

She has indeed wronged him.

She started me.

And so he's deciding, well, I'm just gonna kill her, take the money, and share the money everywhere and do good deeds with the money.

So he does that.

He kills her, gets the money, steals all the money, and then realizes that he is a man of conscience and he feels bad.

He feels guilty for what he did.

And so he realizes I need to confess this.

But instead of, he walks out of the killing scene and stands right there.

It's it's where I got this idea.

And he can go this way and turn himself in and find ironic freedom through the consequences of his sin, or he can run this way.

The entire book, 550 pages, he runs away.

He runs towards chaos and he gets sick and he feels enslaved and he almost takes his own life and he is just so worked up.

It's terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.

But because Dostoevsky is a Christian, was a Christian, he offers grace to Ross Connikov, and at the very last minute, like on page 550, he turns.

He turns.

He says, I accept the grace.

We don't get to see that because the book is over.

Um, but he suffers because he thinks he's above the law.

You're so bad that I can kill you and do good deeds.

But the only other alternative is the person who's also in the book.

His name is Svidra Gailoff, of all things, who does bad deeds and likes it, does bad deeds and continues to do bad deeds.

Those are the options.

Those are the options.

Or Shakespeare's Macbeth.

I love Macbeth.

Macbeth kills the king because he wants to be king.

Sound familiar?

Early in the play, he decides he's not gonna kill the king.

He says, No, I'm not gonna do this.

I've had this idea, I'm not gonna do this.

If chance, he says, if chance will have me king, then chance can crown me king without my stir.

That's what he says.

It's a it there's no God in Macbeth.

If the fates want me king, then the fates can crown me king.

I'm not gonna do anything about it.

That's right.

That's right, go Macbeth.

But by Act 4, he has killed the king, then everybody else.

He's killed everybody else because if you if I know that you've killed the king, then I'm you're gonna have to kill me.

And then kill him, and then kill him.

So by the end, Macbeth says this I am in blood, stepped so far that should I weigh no more, turning were as tedious as go or.

I read things like this to my husband, Larry, and it makes him mad.

He's like, Why don't they just say it the right way?

He gets all mad when I read poetry.

What he's saying is, I'm in blood now.

I'm in this thing.

Look at your chart.

I am so close to chaos now that to turn around and go there is too much.

I can't do it.

And so that's what happens.

But you know what happens at the end of chaos?

Somebody kills you.

You're dead.

Let's let me take an example real quickly from real life.

Like us.

Let's just say that a young woman, a young teenage girl, finds out she's pregnant.

It happens.

And what she'll say is, I don't know how this happened.

And some old bitty, some old bat, some old church lady will say, I know how it happened.

And that helps no one.

It doesn't help the mother, the baby, off the phone.

What she means is, I don't know how this happened to me.

This happens to other people.

I don't know how this happened to me.

Or the drug-addicted person asked the same question.

I don't think anybody, I could be wrong about this, but I don't think anybody at age 16 or 17 sets out to be drug addicted.

Here, I would like to be drug addicted.

I don't think that's how it goes, right?

They say, I I'm above the I am above the consequences of this.

I can do it, I can smoke or sniff or whatever people do, and it won't hurt me.

And that's not right.

That's not right.

Or the alcoholic.

I could go on all day, right?

And you could too, who drinks and drives and hurts somebody and says, How did this happen to me?

Or a person out of control of their online addictions.

How did I get here?

This very morning, Larry doesn't even know this.

This very morning, the Lord, I was practicing this and I got convicted of an online addiction.

I played this stupid game.

Oh, where's Esther?

I know, don't put your hand down, put your hand down.

I deleted it today.

Thank you.

Now I need you all to pray for me that I don't put it back on there.

Right?

Um, or the person in this audience who will not forgive someone who has wronged them.

When the the Bible clearly says we're supposed to forgive.

But don't be bald.

That's no good.

All right.

It's a question of turning, going in the opposite direction.

There's a way that seems right unto man, but the end thereof is the way of death.

And that's how we feel, right?

When we begin to actively choose God's way, instead of the way we feel, we move away from death.

And when we respond the way we feel, a lot of the time we're moving another way.

All right.

Let me give you five, no, a few, a few, maybe not all five, a few examples from the Bible and literature to kind of hold on to.

Do you remember the story of Gideon?

Do you remember Gideon in the book of Judges?

There were two women before Gideon's time, a woman named a judge named Deborah and a woman named Jael, who killed the king of Sisera, excuse me, conquered Sisera, the king of the Canaanite army, and for 40 years there was peace.

Look at your jar.

There was peace in the land.

And then in Judges 6:1, the Israelites did what was wrong in the Lord's eye, and the Lord handed them over to the Midianites for seven years.

Judges 6:1

Y'all, the Midianites were horrible.

They enslaved the people, they starved the people, the children of Israel were hiding in caves, um, and God, and they were uh reduced to starvation.

And God said this, I rescued you up out of slavery.

I rescued you from the Egyptians and all who opposed you.

I drove out the enemies and gave you their land.

I told you, I am your Lord, the Lord your God.

You must not worship other gods in the land where you live, but you have not listened to me.

I want you to think for a second about what it is that for you and me, what do we put above God in the land where we live?

What's first?

Y'all, peace just doesn't come.

It's work.

We have to strive for it, we have to set stuff down.

Well, anyway, so an angel appears to this boy named Gideon and says to him, Mighty hero, the Lord is with you.

And Gideon asks this, and I love this question.

It's this very big thing to me.

Gideon says this to the angel, sir, because Gideon's gonna lead them out of uh uh slavery with the Midianites, sir, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?

And also, where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about?

See, I think we're still asking that question.

If this, I watch, I'm a good Christian, why are these things happening to me?

I try to do right, why are these things happening to me?

And also, where are all those miracles that I read about?

What Daniel, what uh Gideon is talking about, of course, is the parting of the Red Sea, fire by night, cloud by day.

Where's that stuff?

Because we've been enslaved with these Midianites for seven years.

And you know what the Lord answered?

An interesting answer.

Go with the strength you have.

So he goes, and he collects up 33,000 men to fight against the Midianites who have enslaved them for a long time.

God says, No, that's too many.

Yeah, that's too many.

So tell anybody who's afraid to go home.

And so 10,000 go home, and there's 22,000.

God says, Yeah, it's still too many.

Take them to the to the stream and have everybody get a drink of water.

And those that cup their hands and drink like this, you might remember this story, who cup their hands and drink like this, they stay.

Everybody else goes home.

So they go to the river, everybody gets a drink.

300 out of 33, 32,000, 300 drink like this.

And so Gideon says, Okay, everybody else, go home.

And he's left with 300 dudes to fight a Minnesonite army that they have not been able to conquer in seven years.

Be careful here.

Remember when Gideon said, Where are all the miracles?

Be careful.

God's about to do a miracle, but not without the work of faith in Gideon's life.

I think we want stuff for free.

And God said, So be careful.

Gideon said, Where are the miracles?

And God said, Here's going to be a miracle.

Oh, that can't be.

300 guys, and yet you know the end of the story.

God confused them all, and and Israel gained its peace back, and there was peace in the land after this time for 40 more years.

Be careful when you're asking for a miracle.

What we want is a miracle with no work of faith on our part.

Okay, let's move on.

Let me tell you one more.

Let me tell you another one.

I want to tell you the story, uh, a quick story about Hamlet.

In the play Hamlet, it opens.

Hamlet's father has already died.

And he comes back and visits Hamlet as a ghost.

And he says, This I am in the hell fire.

Now, in Macbeth, there's no God.

In Hamlet, there is God and and and godly thoughts.

Um, he says, I'm in hell.

You've got to help me.

I need you to avenge my death.

My brother, old Hamlet says, has killed me by poisoning, poisoning me, putting um uh poison in my ear, and you've got to go take care of it.

Well, Hamlet doesn't want to do that.

And I don't blame him.

I wouldn't want to avenge somebody's death.

He didn't know he doesn't want to do that, so he waits and waits and waits.

And finally, he doesn't do anything, and and finally he dies.

But in the middle, the brother who killed his brother, his name was Claudius.

And so Hamlet decides, well, I'm not gonna, I'm I don't want to be violent, so I'm gonna write a play.

Hamlet's a writer.

So I'm gonna be, I want to write a play.

So he writes a play about a brother killing a brother.

And he's he hopes that he's gonna show it.

They'll do the play.

Claudius will see it and confess his sin.

That would be great.

So Claudius sits down, he watches the play, a brother kills his brother with poison, and Claudius jumps up and starts to scream.

So Hamlet's excited.

Maybe he's gonna confess his sin.

He jumps up and starts to scream, light, light, I need light, and runs out of the room and runs down the hall of this castle and finds a little side chapel and falls down on his knees.

All of this looks good.

All of this looks very good.

And so Hamlet runs after him and he's gonna kill him.

But then Claudius is down on his knees, and Hamlet's like, Well, I'm not gonna kill him while he's praying because then he might go to heaven, and I don't want him to go to heaven.

I hate him and I want him to go to hell, so I'm not gonna do that.

But what so off he goes.

But what we learn is the reader or the the person watching the play, he's not praying, he's fake praying.

It looks like prayer, it sounds like prayer, but this is what he says.

He says this.

Oh, bow stubborn knees.

Oh, pray, can I not?

And then he says this, and this is a huge one.

I love this moment when I teach Hamlet.

It's why I keep teaching Hamlet.

Can a man be forgiven and retain the offense?

Do you hear it?

Can a person be forgiven and keep the stuff?

What's the answer?

No.

No, the answer is no.

I'll show it.

And I give this example to the girls, it's ridiculous, but watch.

Let's just say I drive a Nissan, that's true.

And let's just say you drive a Lexus somewhere in here, that's probably true.

And so I look around and I'm like, well, that's not fair.

That is not fair.

I'm a hardworking girl, and I deserve a better car.

So I I steal your Lexus.

I just take it home.

And the next time I drive up to church and I'm driving your Lexus, and you're like, you're standing out there, and I get out of the car and I say, I stole your, I stole your car, but thank you.

And um, will you forgive me?

Will you please forgive me for stealing your car?

Well, you might say yes, if what?

If I give it back.

But if I say I'm gonna keep this thing and I'm not gonna give it back, but please forgive me, that's ridiculous.

It's absurd, Claudia.

Can't a man be forgiven and keep the stuff he took?

Yes, no, no, but he can stay there, and that's where your heart is hardened.

I need to forgive this person, but I'm not going to.

That's the hardening of heart.

All right, I've got to go.

Let me give you one more.

Let me give you one more from literature, maybe the best one.

I'm skipping Josiah because of time.

The king who under his reign they found the the uh scroll of Moses.

They'd lost the scroll of Moses.

Now think about that.

The scroll Moses wrote a book, and they lost it, and all this rubble, and all these gods, and and and Josiah tears, it looks like I ain't gonna do it, and Josiah tears down the idols of God.

Listen to the verbs that he does when he is crushing the idols of foreign gods.

Listen to these verbs: removed, demolished, smashed, scattered, crushed, burned.

That's what we have to do with our stuff.

That's what we have to do with our stuff if we want to go to peace.

Look at the chaos sign.

That's the stuff I'm talking about.

You gotta get rid of that stuff.

You gotta crush it, smash it.

Well, anyway, they find the the gospel on the uh the the scroll of Moses, and this is what wonderful Josiah, the boy king, says.

We have not been doing everything this scroll says we should do.

That's right.

And so Josiah led them to doing more what the scroll said.

You're not gonna, you're gonna mess up every day.

I'm gonna mess up every day, but are we doing more of what that I don't have a Bible with me, what this says to do.

All right.

In the book East of Eden, there is a character, the main character's name is Adam.

It's very intentional, Adam Trask.

And he has a terrible situation.

He has a terrible situation, he marries the wrong woman.

She ends up being like a like a kind of a witch sort of woman, and she kills people and poisons people anyway.

He he didn't know that.

He marries her, she has two children, they have two children together, and after the babies are born, they're twins, after the babies are born, she's ready to get out of there.

And so she has to picks up a gun.

So everything's so violent in literature, picks up a gun and shoots him in the shoulder, does it kill him, and says, I'm leaving and you can have the kids, I'm out.

And she goes literally across the tracks and becomes a uh a member of a brothel, a person participating in a in a ring of prostitution.

That's what she does.

Well, anyway, so Adam is is there with these two kids.

She never does come back, and he's got a friend named Samuel, and Adam sits down with his wound.

He sits down and he doesn't move for 11 years.

Now, he has a servant, he's and so the servant takes care of things and is rearing the boys.

He's got plenty of money.

His father has died and left him plenty of money.

He gets up to eat, he gets up to go over there, but for 11 years, he's it's a great image.

He sits in a chair, stuck, and doesn't do anything.

Well, finally, after 11 years, he doesn't plant anything.

He just got this great ranch in California, he doesn't grow anything.

Well, after 11 years, Samuel, the friend, has been coming back and forth, coming back and forth, and finally he he it becomes very California cowboy.

He hits him in the nose, and then Adam stands up and says, Why'd you hit me in the nose?

and he hits him in the nose again.

And then they have this interaction which is super important.

Adam, who is the foolish one, and Samuel is the wise one.

Adam, the foolish one, says, um, of Kathy, who left?

She left them motherless.

And Samuel the wise one looks at him and says, Yes.

And you have left them fatherless.

And then Adam, he's hanging on, he's hanging on to disorder, death, abolitionist, slavery, unforgiveness, self, exile, retaliation, contempt.

He's holding on to all that side of the sheet.

And then he says this.

And Samuel says yes.

We have the power of the Holy Spirit.

I can do it.

I'm gonna leave you with one more thing.

In preparation for this talk, I reread a couple of books, and the hiding place is one of them.

Have you read this?

I read, oh, I read this as a kid.

Corey Tinboom was a um Tinboom, was a uh Holocaust survivor.

She's a uh Dutch woman who hid Jews, Jewish people in her house, and this is the story of that.

And she and her sister, and so anyway, it's a wonderful story.

I if you if you haven't read it or if you haven't read it in a long time, read it again.

It's just it's the best.

Well, anyway, in the end, her sister, Corey, her sister Betsy, and their father get caught hiding Jewish people and they go to the concentration camp.

And Betsy and her father die in the concentration camp.

But this is what Corey writes before uh Betsy has died.

Listen to this, and I'll close with this.

What puzzles, this is in the concentration camp.

What puzzled me all this time was Betsy.

She suffered everything I had, and yet she seemed to carry no burden of rage.

No rage.

Betsy, I hissed one dark night when I knew my restless tossing would be keeping her awake.

There were three of us now sharing the single cot in the crowded camp, daily receiving new arrivals.

Betsy, don't you feel anything for Jan Vogel?

Doesn't it bother you?

Jan Vogel was the man that turned them in.

The friend who turned them in.

Don't you think about Jan Vogel?

Doesn't it bother you?

And Betsy said, yes, Corey, terribly.

I felt for him ever since I knew.

And I pray for him whenever his name comes into my mind.

How dreadfully he must be suffering.

For a long time I lay silent in the huge, shadowy barracks, restless with the sighs, snores, and stirrings of a hundred women.

Once again, I had the feeling that this sister with whom I had spent all my life belonged somehow to another order of being.

When we practice, and when we practice, and when we practice and choose life and order and wisdom and freedom over disorder, death, foolishness, and slavery, we become members of another order of things.

Just a different group.

And let me tell you something.

You know him when you see him.

I'll finish.

Wasn't she telling me in her gentle way that I was just as guilty as Jan Vogel?

Didn't he and I stand together before an all-seeing God, convicted of the same sin of murder?

For I had murdered Jan Vogel in my heart and with my tongue.

Lord Jesus, I whisper into the lumpy ticking of my bed, I forgive Jan Vogel as I pray that you will forgive me.

I have done him great damage.

Bless him and his family.

And that night, for the first time since our betrayer had a name, I slept, the deep and dreamless sleep, until the whistle summoned first call.

Colin, put the fruits of the spirit back up there, if you will.

In the end of Hamlet, Hamlet says, I am unpregnant of my cause.

That's a phrase that would make Larry mad.

I am unpregnant of my cause.

What he means is, I haven't changed one bit since Act One.

I have given birth to no new thing.

I am just as stuck as I was in the beginning.

And Elijah says to the prophets of Baal, How much longer will you waver?

Hobbling between two opinions.

If the Lord is God, follow him.

And if Baal is God, follow him.

We don't have Baal in our life right now.

So I'll rephrase just a ten.

I think it's okay.

If the Lord is God, follow him.

And if you're God, follow yourself.

There's really no other exceptions.

Let's pray.

Just the beauty of the fact that you are seeking to call us into life.

There is no death in you, for death could not hold you.

And so this in-between space that we have the opportunity to choose, and you give us that space because you love us, to choose chaos when you're calling us and beckoning us into peace.

You say, Come to me, all of you who are experiencing chaos, and I will give you rest.

I'll give you shalom for your souls.

Be courageous enough to choose you in that space.

Jesus' name.

Amen.