George Martzen "georgos"

Sermon preached at Sage Granada Park United Methodist Church, August 2, 2020. Scripture reference - Romans 9:1-5 and Matthew 14::13-21 Troubling Grace and John Lewis [1] Wade in the water; the Lord’s gonna trouble the water.Wade in the water; w ade in the water, children. This song has its roots in the Underground Railroad, the movement of Harriet Tubman and others to free slaves from the south and send them north. The words flow from the biblical stories of Israel’s fleeing slavery through the Red and crossing the Jordan into the promised land; and also the gospel story that we heard last week when Ratheesh was preaching, about the man waiting for the angel to trouble the water. If he could just get up and touch that water, he could be healed.     Recently I talked about grace as something that goes before us and attracts us to God, to salvation and a better life – that’s prevenient grace, and sometimes it works through trouble. This week I want to talk especially about troub...

(Sermon at Sage Granada Park United Methodist Church: 3/23/2019) Texts: Isaiah 55:1-9 ; Luke 13:1-9 The Shawshank Redemption In the 1994 movie, The Shawshank Redemption, a banker, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), was sentenced to Shawshank state penitentiary for murdering his wife and her lover.  He struggles to survive in jail and to prove his innocence.  Eventually his knowledge as a banker proves useful as he helps fellow inmates, prison guards and even the warden on money matters. He befriends Red (Morgan Freeman) who manages to get him a rock hammer. Over time, Andy finds proof of his innocence and as well as evidence of the warden’s money laundering schemes.  He escapes with both through a hole he had slowly chiseled from his cell and turned over his evidence setting things right. He had managed redeemed himself.  God is in the business of redeeming people. The Fig Bar Redemption During the summer months, my father practically lived out of his car, crissc...

There is a wonderful, yet simple joy in greeting another person. Greetings may take the form of the amorous kiss of two lovers, or a cheerful "Good morning" beween friends and family members, a simple nod of passing strangers, or the formalized expressions of a ritualized public:      "The Lord be with you."      "And also with you."      "Let us pray." Each form of expression is a way not only of acknowledging the other's existence, but also of creating space for further interpersonal encounters. I love the few minutes at the conclusion of a worship service when I as a pastor take the liberty to walk through the nave, to greet people still seated or just leaving their warm pews.  It is a moment of heightened anticipation.  The people have shared the space together for an hour or more, sung, chanted, recited, listened, watched, and otherwise participated in the corporate mystery of faith. They have been bless...

Out of sight, out of mind. Last month we sent our son to New York.  That's New York state. Upstate New York.  College. We try to keep in touch, which isn't hard these days with all the different social media.  We say good morning and good night all almost every day. On the other hand, out of sight, out of mind.  I don't come home and see him around the house.  Or visa versa.  So it's not bad, because we don't argue.  But I do miss him.  And it troubles me sometimes that he's out of my mind, because I don't see him, except on some digital image on my mobile device. Today is 11 Sept 2015.  Fourteen years ago the day was infamous as nine eleven, the day several individuals with a deadly passion carried out their mission by taking control of airline jets and ramming them into New York's vertical real estate. I had almost forgotten about it, because I live 8,000 miles away from the place that issued my California drivers licence.  Out...

We are taking a few days off to visit Taman Negara National Park in Malaysia. I have driven into Malaysia many times while living in Singapore, but this time we decided to fly up to KL to my brother-in-law's place.  As we were going through the new budget airport, KLIA2, I was thinking about the affects of the recent decline in Malaysia' currency, the Ringgit.  A decade ago, it was fairly stable at roughly 2 to 1 Singapore dollar. Currently it has dropped below 3 to 1. While on the surface that looks good for Singapore travelers and shoppers, because the exchange favors those holding Sing dollars, I already observed some clues that it is not that rosy. We stopped to get bread at a bakery outlet, the kind that sells nice fluffy pastries with cheese or chicken filling. In Singapore, the typical price would be about $2 per item.  These individual pastries were priced about RM 4 to 5.  We bought two pieces plus  a 500 ml bottle of drinking water.  The total w...

There is a spot of land at some corner of the world that may remember me. I’m hopeful. Oh it’s compressed and rearranged and slightly congealed with old engine oil or lizard dust, I don’t know, but I think I could find a few grains of sand or a fingernail of loam from that day.   Well, there were many days. It used to fill my fingernails, that soil under the grape vine next to the young deodar cedar that Dad planted I don’t know when.   But I think the grains of sand will remember; they would tell, if I could just stop and listen, with my finger tips.

I love science fiction.  The rest of my family are not so in love.  So when I saw from the " Gravity" trailer that it starred Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, I was intrigued to say the least.  And when I heard that the two would be tethered together in space, I figured it had to be break-through in movie watching, at least for my my family. I was not disappointed.  We didn't see it in 3D or Imax3D, but but we still had sense of being on a roller coaster ride in outer space.  The movie immediately opens in orbit around earth, with the space shuttle latched onto the Hubble Telescope for maintenance.  Bullock's character, medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone, is perched atop the shuttle's robotic arm making adjustments on the telescope, while Clooney's character, veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, is testing his maneuvering unit and another crew member is doing a tethered space walk in the shuttle's open bay. Conversation is jovial as they anticipate complet...