Presby-Musings

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 ...

Today is Maundy Thursday ---the day Christians around the world will be commemorating the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples before experiencing the Passion of the Cross. It's easy, within the Christian-y context that I inhabit, to forget the reason why Jesus was gathering with his disciples in that particular moment.  Like a lot of Christians I tend to focus on the parts of the story that affect me, and as a result lose some of the rich meaning Jesus seemed to embed in each teaching moment with his followers. First of all, the occasion for the meal was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread --Passover.  This was a commemoration of the night when God freed the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and set them on the path to the Promised land.  On that night, the Angel of Death passed over the houses of all those who had taken the blood from the Paschal Lamb (sacrificial lamb) and smeared it on the doorposts. The bread, meat and all of ...

This week I am concluding the sermon series "Cross Training" as we celebrate the Fifth (and final) Sunday of Lent, and begin preparing for Holy Week.  The text for this week's sermon comes from John 13---the scene where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  Here's the text: 1 It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas , the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon ...