Presby-Musings

Welcome everyone.  This is the place to be on Christmas Eve, clearly.  I want to welcome all those who are visiting tonight--those who have traveled from out of town, those who are coming home to celebrate with family... kids home from college...   To all the children who are here, dying to find out what's under the tree or what's on the way tonight...   And to those who aren't exactly church goers, who were dragged, coerced, bribed, guilt-tripped into coming to church tonight...  I have a special welcome for you because you are my people.  I know what it feels like, I've been there myself.   There was a time when I didn't believe in God, and I believed in less in church and church-y stuff.  But once a year, I would find myself dragging in to church on Christmas Eve because my mom would make me feel guilty.   I have to tell you that even during that time in my life when I was not feeling the whole Christian thing, when I was wounde...

Today is the Fourth Sunday of the season of advent, and as we've already seen, the day we light the Candle of Love.  The Fourth Sunday of Advent has been celebrated by the historic Church as a day when everything is turned upside down.  The proud are made low, the fortunes of the poor are lifted--and all of this comes from the passage of Scripture that we'll be reading shortly from the Gospel of Luke.   In the Middle Ages this particular Sunday in Advent became widely known as the Feast of Fools.  Wealthy and high-born people would dress like paupers and paupers would dress like nobles.  The clergy would often become targets for lampooning and jest--often to what we might consider extremes.   The idea behind this celebration was simple: Through Jesus, God turned the world upside down.  The old order is no more.  There is equity at last.  For those who have been on the bad end of things there is now justice, mercy and peace. For those w...

This week we are celebrating the Second Sunday of Advent.  We learned last week that "advent" is a word that essentially means "expectation" or "anticipation," and the season of Advent is a time when the whole Church is invited to lean forward in anticipation of the coming of the Christ-child.  Which seems kind of strange when you think about it.  It reminds me of that infamous scene in the Will Ferrell movie Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby when Will Ferrell's character Ricky Bobby is saying grace before supper and insists on praying to the baby Jesus.   He says: "Dear, tiny infant Jesus, we--"  His wife then interjects: "Hey, um, you know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don't always have to call him, 'baby.' It's a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby."   To which Ricky replies: "Well, I like the Christmas Jesus best and I'm saying grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grow...

The countdown begins.   Macy's parade is over, most or all of the Thanksgiving leftovers have been eaten. Can I get a witness on some Turkey sandwiches, church?   Black Friday is all done (thanks be to God).  Although, Cyber Monday is about to happen, and then there will undoubtedly be a host of other special days for shopping, but still...  So the question that so many of us have right now is simply, "Why don't we just get on with it?  Let's go already!  The Christmas decorations have been up in the stores for a month already, it stands to reason that we should just move right along and get right to the heart of the silly season.   More than a few of us are probably wishing that the whole thing was already over.  Perhaps it's too much--all of the shopping, busy-ness, traffic on the streets, commercials, emails advertising, expenses and the like...   I get all of this.  Heck, I even feel the same way to be honest.   A...

Today we are going to be concluding the sermon series that we've been working on for the month of May, a series entitled "I Like Giving."  This series was inspired by the book I Like Giving  which I read a while ago and which I thought would be an excellent conversation partner for a sermon series on what it means to live generously.  For more information about the book and the website that served as the inspiration for this series, you can visit www.ilikegiving.com. The central idea behind this series is simply this: We were created in the image of God--a God who is inherently generous.  It is out of God's inherent generosity that all the attributes of God flow out toward you and I.  God's mercy, love, creativity, redemption all come out of the boundless generosity of God. And, as I said, you and I are created in God's image with God's DNA embedded within us.  So it stands to reason that you and I should inherently be generous, too.   So why...

This week we are continuing the sermon series that we've been working on for the past couple of weeks, entitled "I Like Giving."  Throughout this sermon series we'll be learning what it means to learn to live generous lives--the kinds of lives that God intends for us to live.   You see, for those of us who believe what we've been taught in the biblical witness, we have been created in the image of God... which means we have the very DNA of God in us.  And God is inherently a generous God.  Out of God's incredible generosity springs forth God's grace, love and boundless creativity.   We were made to be generous--to lead generous lives.  But we sometimes struggle to live into our true nature, because of the way we always seem to choose selfishness over selflessness.   The purpose of this sermon series is to wrestle with these issues and to uncover what the Bible has to teach us about living generously--mostly through the words and teachings of...