Presby-Musings

Read these next three phrases, and ask yourself what you think when you've heard someone say one or more of them to you.   "Have you heard...?"   "You're not going to believe this...!"   "You cannot tell anyone what I'm about to tell you...."  As soon as someone begins a sentence with these words, we know that what comes next is going to be juicy. We've been trained to move to the edge of our seats when we hear those phrases being uttered.   Because we love us some gossip, don't we?   Unless it's about us.   I've been on the wrong end of gossip before. As a pastor, it kind of comes with the territory.  I had a church member once who seemed to take great pleasure in making up fantastic stories about me, and sharing them with anyone who would listen.  "No one really takes her seriously," a church staffer told me.  "They know she loves to gossip, and they just take everything she says with a grain ...

This week I am preaching the second installment of the Lenten sermon series, "Walls: What Separates Us From God & Each Other?"  The basic idea behind this series is that we carry around with us all of the building materials that we could ever need to create barriers between ourselves and God--and between ourselves and others.   And we need to let them go.   I had to make a decision about the "materials" that I would choose to highlight because we quite literally could spend each Sunday of the year addressing the bricks in our walls and never exhaust the list.   So I thought I would identify what I saw as the most prominent "wall building materials" within the Church:  Division, Gossip, Grudges & Guilt. This week we're dealing with Gossip.   First, let me ask this very important question which will be at the heart of our study:   Words kill, and words heal... Which words are we using? I have to confess that this question haunted me a...