FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH - - TYLER, TX WWW.FCCTYLER.ORG

MAY 13 - MAY 19, 2020

JOYS & CONCERNS

JOYS: As far as we know, no one in our church fam-

ily has tested positive for COVID-19. We can also

celebrate reaching 200 subscribers on YouTube!

PRAYERS FOR OUR CHURCH FAMILY: Jennifer

Diotallevi, Charlotte Halbert, James Hardage, Bill

Hughes, Bob Hunt, Aliece Keithly, Michael Lewis,

Fred Mullins, Marjorie Mustard, and Bob Zinzser

PRAYERS FOR FRIENDS & FAMILY: Stone Andrews (T.

Aaron), Beth Gay (Wills), David Johnson (L. Rack-

ley), family of Harold Marshall (MDO), Nancy Perou

(B. Roberts), and Silvia Suarez (T. Aaron)

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YOUTH & CHILDREN’S SUNDAY, MAY 17

Contemporary Worship will be very purposefully different

this weekend -- we’ve created a digital Youth and Chil-

dren's worship. Join us on YouTube/Facebook as children

and teens from our church family lead us in liturgy, prayer,

music, communion -- and an overall message of grati-

tude. We celebrate our young people and their part in

our communal life as this very strange school year ap-

proaches its end as they share their gifts, talents and per-

spectives.

SUNDAY SCHOOL OFFERINGS

After worshiping online, we invite you back for either of 2

offerings: Children's Ministry Moment video will air at

10:40am on our main Facebook page, and, an all-church

Adult Sunday School meeting opens on Zoom at

11am. Call church office for instructions.

BOARD MEETING, MAY 20

At 7pm, the church Board will meet via Zoom, to revisit and

refine plans for returning to in-person worship. Here is the

link to join our meeting: https://zoom.us/j/95897703904?

pwd=aTJHWXpwQjJnemRaRHN1N1lpOTBuUT09

Meeting ID: 958 9770 3904 Password: 564218

MOTHER'S DAY OUT

MDO has a reopening date – May 26! They plan to reopen

on a summer schedule Tues – Wed – Thurs 8:30am –

2:30pm, for essential workers. The staff is currently meeting

in the building regularly, to clean, rework and reorganize

their rooms to safely welcome children. Watch our Face-

book page and website for more details.

FRIENDS OF FCC,

Thank you for your continued faith and support as

we reach the two month mark of COVID-19. At our

Board meeting May 6, we proposed May 31 as a

target date for offering in-person worship on cam-

pus. We have a follow up Board meeting May 20 to

revisit that proposal and refine our plans.

In broad strokes, I believe we will be able to offer

in-person worship May 31, but that experience will

likely be a greatly modified version of we typically

experience. Additionally, we want to continue to

offer the excellent quality online worship we all are

becoming accustomed to.

Please join me in prayer for our world, nation, com-

munity, and church. Pray for our ministry in the near

and distant future as we continue down this most

unusual path. We all are longing for the day when

things return to normal. When, how, and if “normal”

returns is very much up in the air.

May the peace of God guard your hearts and

minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7).

Blessings,

Chris Pulliam, Sr. Minister

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY HOME CLOSING

Thanks to all who helped build Habitat for Humanity of

Smith County’s 109th home at 2401 N. Tenneha. On

May 11, 2020, Demetria Givens and her two sons

received the keys to their new home. Givens works for

Hospice of East Texas. She and her family completed

300 “sweat equity” hours to help build her home. First

Christian Church of Tyler gave the lead gift and

church members volunteered their time to participate

in the construction.

MOTHER’S DAY @ FCC

We we’re so happy to see you all drive through from

our Mother’s Day Communion & Blessing! Thanks for

stopping by and we hope to see you again soon!

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“Among Thorns” Mark 4:13-20 Dr. Chris Pulliam May 17, 2020 MYTHBUSTERS INTRO… You may know of the legendary, Johnny Apple-seed…(aka John Chapman), who planted trees across much of the Midwest some 200 years ago. The Pulliam family used to sing his song as a prayer around our family dinner table, carefully changing the words to include the names of all four of our children). You may also know the Parable of the Sower from our scripture reading this morning. Thank you Marilyn Lacy for reading. In it…a sower sows the seed…walking about throwing seed haphazardly among all the various soils (rocky, shallow, overgrown, or good). Jesus tells the story in the first part of Mark 4, then explains it in the next part. The seeds are “the word,” meaning the word of God, the good news, and possibly, the coming of the kingdom. Some of the seed falls on the path and “immediately” (a word Mark uses in 3 consecutive verses and 41 times in his gospel…kind of like his use of the word “begging” from a few weeks ago). …Immediately the seed is snatched up by the birds (by Satan). Some falls on rocky soil where it springs up quickly before giving way to the sun’s scorching rays be-cause it has no root. Hmmm. Roots really are im-portant, aren’t they? But, that’s another sermon… Now this third group is actually the grouping that I want to focus on. For it says, “Some fell among the thorns.” How long has it been since you’ve been among the

thorns (literally speaking)? Beside my house I have lots of thorns…no such thing as hurrying thru there! Slow going among thorns. My 9th grade (larger than life) science teacher and fellow Disciple Mr. Martin, called them, “Wait a minute vines!” Of course, Jesus is speaking figuratively. What does he mean, “Among the thorns?” I’ll come back to that in a minute. The parable ends with…some fell on good soil and its harvest was 30, 60, 100 fold. Planting seed can seem like an awful waste (lots of bad soil/unreceptive soil), yet those few seeds that do land in the good soil take root and produce a great re-turn…so, in the end, it’s worth it! The main thing is to keep sowing seeds. This parable is likely a reflection of Jesus’ actual experience. Stony soil = scribes, Pharisees, etc. Shallow soil = the crowd’s shallow and unstable en-thusiasm. Thorns = overgrown lives Good soil = those who are willing to listen and consider his message. ** Now, back to the thorns…here are the two related verses, SLIDE: “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain” (Mark 4:7). I’m sure you have an image of that. The one bush, plant, seedling you want to grow surrounded by (being choked out by) everything else. Then in verse 18-19… SLIDE: And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields noth-ing” (Mark 4:18-19).

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Did you catch that?...the thorns? …the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things. It’s true, isn’t it? We live “among thorns.” But, oh how the thorns have changed lately with this crazy virus. The cares of this world have mul-tiplied exponentially to include COVID-19. And conversely, the lure toward wealth and our desire for other things seems to have waned somewhat. Now, it seems like people aren’t thinking about get-ting rich, but just wanting to get by. And, our collective desire for things has taken a back seat to just being able to be together or get dinner out. I mean, how many of you have experi-enced a quarantine birthday? Very few people around to help blow out the candles, right? And whereas we used to long for interesting gifts…now we are content to have friends drive by and wave. Just a few months ago, it was… SLIDE: FOMO! A fear of missing out. Now, we’re wrestling with the… SLIDE: FOGO…”fear of getting out!” We live among thorns. ** The cares of the world USED TO BE the ups and downs of our loved ones, maybe how to fit it all in because we were doing so much. Now many of those cares have given way to what’s happening to our world! What kind of world am I living in when I don’t go to church for 2 months straight? Rondal Jones likes to tell how his mother took him to church when he was 6 days old and he’s rarely missed since then…until 2020 that is. (point to his spot) There’s his spot…and he’s not there. **

If you remember, I started this morning with a story about the Mythbusters. Remember, the multi-tasking test? That’s part of what Jesus is teaching us in the passage. When we concentrate on lots of things, we concentrate on nothing. That’s why Jesus instructed us to “seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to us as well” (Matt 6:33). *If this danger of the overcrowded life was present in 1st century PalestIne, imagine what we must be up against today.” We all know we cannot turn back the wheels of time…AND YET, over these last few months, it is as though we have turned back time…to a more simple time…of talking with neighbors, cooking and eating meals together at home, families taking walks. We have a walking trail behind our house. I have enjoyed watching the variety of groupings the walkers have come in. When’s the last time you saw college aged children walking with their mom and dad? Fishing has become popular in the neighborhood pond. There’s grace in here somewhere. There’s an op-portunity in here somewhere…to do some things differently…to start over…to re-calibrate. As always, Jesus’ words stand firm. That in the midst of this crazy, scary, inconvenient, exhausting, impoverishing virus, let us not focus too much on the cares of this world…at least, not so much that our connection to God gets choked out...our faith in God gets grown over. That’s the bottom line of the message: SLIDE: Let us not focus so much on the cares of this world…at least, not so much that our connec-tion to God gets choked out.

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Here’s a beautiful thing. You and I…we can be any kind of soil we want to be. We can be rocky, shal-low or full of thorns. We can be good soil. We can choose to hear and respond faithfully, just like we can choose to let it come in one and out the other…just like we can let the cares of this world, the lure of wealth, and the desire for things…crowd out our Lord and his calling upon our lives. We choose what kind of soil we are by how we live our daily lives. Do we act on life or do we let life act on us. Are we making things happen or are we waiting to see what’s going to happen to us? Now I realize those of you who are caring for young children or ailing loved ones don’t necessar-ily have the luxury of keeping to your own agenda. Let me encourage you to fight for time to stay con-nected to God. SLIDE: What am I asking us to do? Listen well. Be the good soil (open and receptive)…not over-whelmed by the cares of this world. Fight back the weeds and thorns that are constantly trying to choke out your God connection. ** About 25 years ago, I started listening to this Chris-tian Rock band with a most unusual name, “Among Thorns.” They had 3-4 really great songs (stick around in the weeks and months ahead and I’ll play them for you). I remember thinking at the time what an odd name for a band, “Among Thorns.” That name (phrase) gave me pause. What an odd name for a band, but what a wonderfully descriptive phrase for life, “Among Thorns.” It’s true! We live “among thorns.” Everything is not perfect nor easy, nor what we wanted or ex-pected. And there really are thorns along the way… things that get in our way, slow us down, put a snag in our favorite shirt, or draw blood from our fingertips…things that choke us out from what’s

most important. ** I titled this message, “Among Thorns” because I thought it fit best. But I could have entitled it, “The Strangled Life” (choked out by the vines) or “The Stewardship of the Ear” (for listening), or finally, “the Parable of the Soil” (not sower) be-cause again, it’s really not about the sower, but the soil. Thorns aren’t like an oncoming car, a wild animal or a hand grenade. They’re not imminently danger-ous, but over time…they can choke us out (like bad habits). The old “compounding effect.” It can work for us; it can work against us. SLIDE: Let us not focus so much on the cares of this world…at least, not so much that our connec-tion to God gets choked out. End

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