Presby-Musings

This Sunday is Palm Sunday , the beginning of Holy Week .  At our church we'll be celebrating this special day by singing hymns and praise songs at the top of our lungs while children run around our church waving palm branches. Christians know how to party. The story that we essentially reenact every Palm Sunday is found in each of the Gospel accounts.  This week we'll be studying Matthew's version, which is found in Matthew 21:1 -11. Before we open up the text and start reading this story--a story that is often called "The Triumphal Entry" of Jesus into Jerusalem --I need to tell you about a "triumphal procession" that took place before this one. It was initiated by none other than Pontius Pilate himself--the Roman governor of the region.  At each of the major feast days in Jerusalem, Pilate would process with his soldiers from his headquarters at Caesarea Maritima on the coast, across the Judean wilderness and into Jerusalem. Pilate's...

This week we are continuing our sermon series entitled, The Elijah Chronicles, a re-imagining of the story of Elijah, set in a post-apocalyptic future.  If you missed out on the first chapter, you can go back and read it HERE.  Or you can watch the whole service on our Livestream recording HERE. The Resistance continues, brothers and sisters...  But this week we aren't going to just sit idly by and wait---this week we are going to strike a blow against tyranny and idolatry!  The story that we are going to be exploring in this second installment of our series centers on an epic battle between Elijah and the false prophets of the ancient god Baal , a battle that would ultimately begin to turn the tide against the evil king Ahab and his wicked queen Jezebel... The people of God had forgotten who they were.  Elijah helped them to remember.  And he kicked some serious... you know... in the process. More on that in a moment. Have you ever had one of...

This week I'll be starting a new sermon series at my church---a three part series from the stories of Elijah from 1Kings entitled, "The Elijah Chronicles."  We will be re-imagining this story as if it was set in an apocalyptic future, inspired by films like "Book of Eli," "I Am Legend," and comics like "Judge Dredd" or "The Walking Dead."   The story of Elijah is very cinematic, actually.  "In a time of desolation... when the people of God had forgotten who they were... a prophet walked in from the wilderness and helped them to remember."  You can almost picture that, right? Take a look at the graphic above, and you can actually... picture it.   The setting of Elijah's story is in the northern part of the divided kingdom of Israel.  In the end, God's prophecy to King Solomon came true---because he turned away from worshipping God alone, his kingdom was torn from his family and divided.  In the time of...