Presby-Musings

Today we are going to conclude this week's study on the Holy Spirit through our Daily Devos.   In the Jewish tradition there are literally prayers for all aspects of life--because, according to the ancient rabbis, being open to God requires a shift in your understanding about what is sacred and what is "profane"---another word for what is seemingly earthy and not holy.  In fact there is a very old "privy" prayer that is meant to be prayed after you have finished doing your business in the privy, which is the old English word for bathroom.    Listen to this from Rabbi Abayei: "Abayei said, when one comes out of a privy he should say: Blessed is He who has formed man in wisdom and created in him many orifices and many cavities. It is obvious and known before Your throne of glory that if one of them were to be ruptured or one of them blocked, it would be impossible for a man to survive and stand before You. Blessed are You that heals all flesh and d...

Today we are continuing our series in the Daily Devos about the Holy Spirit.  As you recall from earlier this week--we are constantly exchanging the atoms that make us us with one another and everything else.  Energy is flowing around us, in us and through us all of the time.  And to think that we aren't affected by this billions-of-atoms-a-second energy exchange is ludicrous.  So there's all of this energy flowing back and forth between us--energy that bears the very DNA of a God who is not far away in his holy temple tuning in occasionally to hear our puny prayers.  This God is here, present, flowing through us in what Christians call the Holy Spirit.  And I believe this God is speaking, laughing, guiding, whispering and creating in the midst of all of it.  When we read about the way Jesus always seemed to be speaking to God, sharing something special with God, maintaining an open channel, so to speak with God... it makes you wonder if this w...

Today we'll be continuing our exploration of the Holy Spirit of God through the Daily Devos.  I went on a cruise to Alaska a few years ago.  While on the cruise my wife and I joined some new friends for an evening of karaoke and drinks.  Actually drinks and then karaoke.  Trust me, the order is important. For the final number my friend Stuart was asked by the DJ to come up and sing Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."  As the first strands of the song played over the speakers, every woman in the crowd it seemed was on her feet singing along, "At first I was afraid, I was petrified...."  And then they came to the dance floor.  Young women in the twenties.  Teenagers.  Single moms.  Middle-aged women in super high heels.  An elegant woman in her mid-seventies.  Two lesbian couples.  A couple of old ladies who couldn't walk very well... And Stuart.  They sang at the top of their lungs.  In unison.  ...

Today we're going to be continuing a short Daily Devo series on the Holy Spirit of God.   Some years ago, I remember having a conversation with a young woman who told me that she had come to point in her life where she knew she believed in God, and that this belief had ultimately led her to experience Jesus. She said that "there is just too much good in the world for this not to be true...." The first time I heard a sermon on grace was when I was twenty four years old in a Presbyterian church in Ocoee, Florida.  I can't remember exactly what the pastor preached, but I couldn't stop crying.  I'd been an agnostic for some time.  I was bitter.  I had spent years trying to fulfill the longings of my heart by appeasing one god or another.  And I thought that the God I had learned about in Sunday school was angry and required negotiations.  There wasn't anything imminent about that God, and by imminent, I mean up close, personal, and real.   ...

For today's Daily Devo, we're going to continue thinking about the Spirit of God, and how the Spirit of God works in and through us.   I believe that the Spirit of God within us creates a longing to connect not just with other people, but with God, who knows us better than we know ourselves.  We long to know and to be known.  We long to truly feel.  To not give in to the despair that comes from the resignation that this is all there is, and there is no Creator or Designer, no plan or purpose.  Because when we resign ourselves to this--even slightly--we end up trying to fulfill our longings with other things, other feelings or even what some might call other "gods."  But when those longings are met for real. We know it.  When we realize (sometimes surprisingly) that there really is a God, and that God is actually connected to us.  It draws out emotions, feelings we didn't know we had.  And when we respond to these emotions we ofte...

This is the second week of daily devotions reflecting on the sermon series that I'm currently preaching, "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  This week we are reflecting on what it means to recognize the Holy Spirit working, moving, creating and inspiring in the world around us.   Several years ago, my wife Merideth and I visited Rome and spent some time at the Vatican.  We were waiting to attend Mass in St. Peter's Basilica and were wandering around the grounds.  I'd been praying for some time prior to our arrival that God would give me a sign, show me something, anything that would give me some direction.   At the time I was feeling a bit dusty and dry spiritually. To be honest, what I wanted most was to know that God was still there, still caring about me, still guiding me.  I hadn't felt very connected to God in a while, at least not in ways that I had known in the past.  I figured that if there was anywhere on earth t...

This is the second week of daily devotions reflecting on the sermon series that I'm currently preaching, "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  This week we are reflecting on what it means to recognize the Holy Spirit working, moving, creating and inspiring in the world around us.   Every Sunday at the traditional worship service of my church we read as part of our liturgy an "Affirmation of Faith."  Typically, we rotate between three different historic "creeds" of the Church: The Apostle's Creed, The Nicene Creed and the French Reformed Creed (which we use mostly on Sundays when we celebrate communion).   Each creed is a bit different in language and form, but not that dissimilar in substance.  They all affirm the same basic Christian beliefs about God, the church, sacraments and community.  And each contains very distinct language affirming the Christian belief in the Trinity.  The Trinity is one of the most mysterious and cha...

This is the second week of daily devotions reflecting on the sermon series that I'm currently preaching, "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  This week we are reflecting on what it means to recognize the Holy Spirit working, moving, creating and inspiring in the world around us.   This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible from Genesis 28:10-17:  10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth...

This is the second week of daily reflections on the sermon series I am preaching entitled "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  This past week we talked about a challenging word that Jesus had from Mark chapter 3 for some people who were missing out on what the Holy Spirit of God was doing right in front of them...  The great Christian poet, contemplative and mystic Thomas Merton once wrote:  "The forms and individual characters of living and growing things, of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature, constitute their holiness in the sight of God.     Their inscape is their sanctity.  It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them.  The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom... and it declares the glory of God." Merton spent much of his life in a monastery in Kentucky, praying, writing, and seekin...

Welcome to the second week of our daily reflections inspired by our current sermon series—“Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus.”   If you would like to watch the video of the sermon I preached yesterday on Mark 3:28-29 where Jesus says that the only "unforgivable" sin is when you sin "against the Holy Spirit," you can do it right here . But be sure to come back!  All this week we are going to be focusing on the Holy Spirit of God—the revelation of God  scholars and theologians refer to as, the “Third Person” of the Trinity.  And, more specifically,  we’re going to be thinking about all of the many ways that the Holy Spirit of God is present and revealed not only in Creation, but also in each of us.   A couple of years ago it was widely reported that the fasting growing religion on America was “None.”  In other words, more people than ever before were identifying “none” when they were being asked about their religious preference. ...

This week we are continuing the sermon series that we started last week, a series entitled, "Red: Understanding the Hard Sayings of Jesus."  The title of this series comes from the presence of "red letters" in many versions of the Bible to indicate when Jesus is speaking and teaching.   I love the red letters.  In fact, I have a version of the Bible that is nothing but the red letters. It's pretty amazing just to read the teachings and the sayings of Jesus.  Most of these words are beautiful, inspiring, challenging and wonderful.   But there are some of the red letters that make me scratch my head.  More than a few Christians have struggled with what scholars have called the "hard" sayings of Jesus--"red letters," so to speak, that seem completely out of character for Jesus, are confusing, maddening, difficult to understand or all of the above. Today we're going to be taking a look at a passage of Scripture from Mark chapter 3 t...

This week we are concluding the sermon series that we've been working on for the past several weeks--a sermon series entitled, "Risen."  We've been struggling with an important question each week during this series--a question that anyone who calls themselves a follower of Christ needs to be answering on a daily basis.  Here's the question:  "Jesus is risen... now what?"  Do we celebrate Easter as a one off event, and then just go back to business as usual for the rest of the year?  Or is there something more?   What does it mean that Jesus is risen?  What does it mean for you and me? For the church?  For all of Creation? This has been at the heart of our study for the past month--a study that we're going to conclude today.   I'm actually going to go directly to our text this morning.  So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them to Acts 4:5-12.  This story is actually the continuation of the story we explored last ...

This week we are continuing the sermon series that we started last Sunday--a Sunday that happened to be the  Sunday of Sundays in the Christian calendar .  We celebrated Easter with style last week.  For the second year in a row we had over 800 people experience worship at First Church.   At our casual service, the Crossing we had 100 more people in the room than we did last year.  Everyone dressed up, wore hats and looked awesome.  Families came en masse, some of them even brought their wayward Uncle Larry, who never goes to church.  And now it's the Sunday after the Sunday.  Most of the snowbirds are gone.  Uncle Larry isn't here.  It's just us.   Easter is over.  Jesus is risen.  Now what?   This feeling that we have today is not unlike what the disciples of Jesus felt after his resurrection.  There was joy at first, then elation, then unbelievable purpose and then he left.  Jesus appeared ...