Expecting the Unexpected

Proper 14, Year A RCL

AUGUST 10, 2008

Prelude

OLYMPIC EXPECTATIONS OF OUR ATHLETES IN SPORTS ILLUSTRATED AND THE MEDIA

Bela Karolyi

After leading Nadia Comaneci and the Romanian

Women’s Gymnastic team to elite status, highly

regarded gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi defected

to the U.S. in 1981. People said, “The Karolyis will

come here and make a big splash, but our kids won’t

excel like the Europeans. Here they have the highest

standard of living but they’re kind of lazy and don’t

want to achieve.” Karolyi saw something different

though. “From the moment we fi rst stepped into a

U.S. gym as coaches, I saw the same enthusiasm

and the same smiles as those I had left behind.

Everything I’ve read is a bunch of crud. These kids

can do it.

1. Peter's move of desperation toward Jesus in a situation you expected to have control over.

BISHOP ED LITTLE'S RECURRENT NIGHTMARE

2. The prophet looked to the largness of the situation and almost missed the vibrant silence

MY HEARING LOSS IN ROOMS FULL OF NOISE

3. We are brought to worship

Read this verse: ?Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, ?Truly you are the Son of God?? (Matthew 14:33 niv).

After the storm, [the disciples] worshiped him. They had never, as a group, done that before. Never. Check it out. Open your Bible. Search for a time when the disciples corporately praised him.

You won?t find it.

You won?t find them worshiping when he heals the leper. Forgives the adulteress. Preaches to the masses. They were willing to follow. Willing to leave family. Willing to cast out demons. Willing to be in the army.

But only after the incident on the sea did they worship him. Why?

Simple. This time they were the ones who were saved.

Max Lucado and Terri A. Gibbs, Grace for the Moment : Inspirational Thoughts for Each Day of the Year (Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman, 2000), 246.

Postlude

"I don't know how many operations I actually performed in my surgical

career. I know I performed 17,000 of one particular type; 7,000 of

another. I practiced surgery for 39 years, so perhaps I performed at least

50,000 operations. I was successful, and I had a reputation for success.

Patients were coming to me from all over the world. And one of the things

that endeared me to the parents of my patients was the way my incisions

healed.

"Now, no one likes a big scar, but they are especially upsetting to

mothers when they appear on their children. So I set out early to make my

scars small, as short and as thin as possible. These 'invisible' scars

became my trademark ....

"The secret of thin scars is to make the incision precise - no feathered

edges - and in the closing, get the edges of the skin in exact apposition.

I would do this by sewing the stitches inside the skin, but not through

it, and the knots were tied on the bottom. And you have to figure out how

I crawled out after doing that.

"I was the one who sewed the edges together, but it was God who coagulated

the serum. It was God who sent the fiberblasts out across the skin edges.

It was God who had the fiberblasts make collagen, and there were probably

about 50 other complicated processes involved about which you and I will

never know. "

-Everett Koop,

"Faith-Healing and the Sovereignty of God,"

in The Agony of Deceit,

ed. Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1990), 169-70.