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The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

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This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week.

It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind.

And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week.

I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  


But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times.

That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the cheers and palm waving …
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Family Values Week One: Calendars & Morals

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This week I am launching a new sermon series, "Family Values: Rediscovering What's Really Important."  The idea is pretty simple...

Our culture has become marked by anxiety.  There is no way to escape the deluge of bad news that just seems to permeate the air around us.  Some blame it on the recent 24-hour news cycle that was once a phenomenon, and is now just the status quo.  Others blame it on the immediacy of information from cable TV, the internet, smart phones and social media.

There is the passage of Scripture from Psalm 85 where the psalmist extols the virtues of those who are walking in pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem with the blessings of God all around them.  "They move from strength to strength," he writes.  Strength to strength... that sounds beautiful doesn't it?

Unfortunately, I think that most of the people in our culture move from fear to fear.  We move from being anxious about terrorism to being anxious about war.  We were fearful…
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"My Holy Land Experience" or "It's Not Easy Being [that] Cheesy"

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I went to the Holy Land Experience yesterday with my youngest son, who happens to be five going on forty.  It was my first visit to the Christian-based Orlando theme park since the Trinity Broadcasting Network bought it some years ago.  I went, quite frankly, because my wife and older son went on a 15 day trip that included several days in the real Holy Land, and I promised my little guy we would one-up them.  Our mission was not to merely experience the Holy Land Experience as a means of one-uppance. We knew that wouldn't cut it.  Our mode of one-uppance was going to come when we got our picture taken with Jesus, which we were certain we would be able to do. The brochures and television ads clearly showed Jesus walking around greeting people in the park.  We decided that a photo op with Jesus himself would pretty much trump any ancient ruins that the other two members of our family visited.  In a moment of kindness I will include you on my little photo safari through the land of …
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