Presby-Musings

I wrote the following in my journal this morning:  "This season of Lent has been the longest and most grueling of any that I can remember."  I can't recall a season of Lent quite like this one, within which I've been confronted so harshly by my own frailty and busted-ness.  But then again, maybe I've got a short memory.  Maybe every season of Lent is filled with those kinds of confrontations, and I've simply let the memory of facing them fade.    At this moment, I am longing for Resurrection Sunday.  I know that it will come.  It's just beyond this last bit of the journey.  But it's this last bit of the journey that makes all the difference, isn't it?  This last bit of the journey is with Jesus on the road to passion and to Calvary.   I read this crazy-awesome description of these last days of Lent from Walter Brueggemann, who wrote:  "It is the journey of relinquishment of old visions of reality that are failed and be...

I read a story recently about a performance artist in the 1970's who engaged in a controversial performance piece.  She stood in a gallery, and the crowd gathered were given instructions to do whatever they wanted to her.   The artist (the crowd was told) would be completely silent and passive for six hours, no matter what.  At first, people did pretty benign things. But it turned sinister about midway through the performance.  The performance artist ended up being assaulted, abused, stripped, sliced with a razor blade, forced to hold a gun to her head and a number of other humiliating and horrific things.   When the six hours was up, she began to move and speak to the crowd, and immediately they all fled the room out of guilt.  She eventually collapsed, emotionally and physically exhausted, and in shock at how quickly people had turned to darkness.   The story of that performance artist made me reflect on Jesus' passion, and it also made me...

I've been spending a lot of time during this season of Lent asking for forgiveness.   In all of the busyness of moving, working and managing life, I've found myself experiencing the anger and frustration that often comes from stress--both real and imagined.    You see, when you get busy it's easy to narrow the margins in your life, and, when your margins for error get narrowed, it's easy to get stressed. And when you get stressed it's way too easy to take it out on the people closest to you.   I've had to plead forgiveness  over the past couple of weeks from my son for barking at him when we were running late to school.  I've had to do the same from my wife for a number of neanderthal moves on my part that caused hurt and tension.  It's a long list of things--all the ways I need forgiveness.  Maybe you've got one of those lists, too.  I think we probably all do.   Lent is a good time to think and talk about repentance. It's...

In his book Blue Like Jazz , Donald Miller relates a moment when he and some Christian friends conducted an experiment on their college campus in Portland, Oregon.  They set up a confessional/photo booth at a Renaissance fair, dressed as monks and invited people inside.  But when the curious would step into the booth they soon discovered it wasn't there as an opportunity for them to confess their  sins, it was an opportunity for Donald and his friend to confess all the ways that Christians and the Church had let people down, wounded others, ostracized various groups, or otherwise alienated people from the Gospel, rather than drawing them to it.   The results were amazing.  Tony Kriz, one of the participants in the experiment later wrote this about it:  Over the weekend dozens of students slipped in and then out of our booth, each surprised and expectant. Some stayed for just a photo 1-2 few minutes. Most lingered as long as half an hour. Without ex...

I've heard it said that you don't know who you really are until you have to go through a crisis. Or, to put it another way, it's when your character is tested that you discover if you have any.   I've been reflecting a lot lately on how all of the things that are happening in my life (moving twice in less than four months, chief among those) have tested my character and what they've revealed about me.  I'm not sure I've done all that well.  I can't say that I've exactly been filled with the joy of the Lord through everything. It's probably showed more than a time or two, I'm afraid.     Those of us who call ourselves Christians constantly need to be reevaluating what the people around us experience when they encounter us.  Do they experience the joy of the Lord when they are around us, or something else?   In his novel Godric , Frederick Buchener wrote about a monk named Elric who prayed and sang about God's love and the joy of...

I had a pastor friend many years ago, who asked me if we could work together to improve our preaching. He offered to listen to my sermons and offer critique if I would do the same with him.   I soon discovered, however, that my friend had no real desire to hear anything negative about his preaching, but was pretty keen on critiquing mine. After a few weeks, I pointed this out, and after that it didn't take long for my friend to stop asking to meet altogether. In Shakespeare's  Pericles  the title character decides not to reveal what he knows about King Antiochus of Antioch, because what he knows would prove embarrassing to the king. When asked to explain why he prefers to keep silent, Pericles says, "Few love to hear the sins they love to act."   We all love to offer constructive criticism, but we rarely love to receive it. I think everyone needs to have someone prophetic in the their life--that one person who is unafraid to tell us like it is, even if it ...

This week I am continuing the sermon series that we’re going to be working through together for the season of Lent, a series entitled “RE.”  “Re” is a Latin prefix that denotes change or transformation, and each of the sermons in this series begin with that transformative prefix, and they also are connected to a Lenten practice that I’m challenging us to take up during this season of Lent.  As we learned last week, Lent gets its name from the Latin word for “forty.”  Excluding Sundays there are forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter.  Forty is a number that is often used in the Bible to indicate a time of trial, testing or refinement.  The idea behind the five practices that we’re going to be challenged to take up is connected to this notion—that hroughout the season of Lent we are going to be challenged and tested as we seek to draw closer to Jesus during this symbolic journey with him to the Cross.   During this series we’re going to learn wha...

This week the inspiration for our Daily Devotions will be drawn from the sermon that I preached this past Sunday for All Saints' Day--a sermon on grief, loss, hope, life, heaven, Heaven and resurrection. If you would like to read the transcript of that sermon, you can click HERE .  The Scripture that we used as our guide was John chapter 11--the story of Jesus raising of Lazarus from the dead.   In his best-selling novel  The Five People You Meet In Heaven , author Mitch Albom paints a beautiful portrait of the mission of heaven itself--as a place where we are given the gift of clarity.  In heaven (or more accurately paradise), according to Albom's story, the whole of our lives suddenly makes sense.  We get the chance to see how all of the dots connect.   Eddie, the main character in the novel, has just died and enters paradise where he is met by the first of the five people he must speak to--a character known as The Blue Man.  Albom writes:...

This week our daily reflections will be focused once again on one of the "hard sayings" of Jesus.  The difficult words of Jesus that we're wrestling with this week come to us from Matthew 5:22 where Jesus said, "But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, 'Raca,' is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell." Some of the worst moments in my life have been when I have said something hurtful to someone in the heat of an argument or disagreement, and then had to watch as my words landed on them like a body blow.   And there's a little voice inside of you that tries to tell you not to open your mouth in those moments, but when you are angry, or hurt they come tumbling out despite the protests of that little voice.  For me, it's like I hear myself say the hurtful things that are pouring o...

This week I am preaching the conclusion to the four-part sermon series, "Ever After."  We've been exploring what the Bible has to say about what happens to us when we die. The sermon this week is entitled "Tickets" and deals with the difficult question: "Who gets to go to Heaven?" I have to say that this is a straight up three point sermon.  I'm kicking it old school here.  But it's not three points and a poem.  It's three points and some statistics, some scripture an illustration or two and some wisdom.  I couldn't find a poem. First the statistics... According to a recent ABC News poll, lots of people get to go to Heaven. 75% of Americans believe they are going to Heaven. A scant 21% think only Christians go to Heaven. 60% of Americans believe that both Christians and non-Christians go to Heaven. 80% of American women believe they are going to Heaven. 70% of American men believe they are going to Heaven. About those...

This week I am concluding the sermon series that I’ve been preaching throughout the season of Lent---a series entitled “Walls.”   Each week during the sermons I have been preaching, I have reiterated my belief that Christians who observe Lent have embraced a watered down version of it.  The foundation of Lent is Repentance, which is an inconvenient truth for most of us Christian-types.  When faced with the choice of truly repenting of the things that are keeping us from having a right relationship with God, or giving up coffee for forty days, we choose the coffee almost every time.   Repentance is hard.  It’s public.  It’s an about-face that can’t be accomplished under the radar.  When you repent, the junk that you’ve been carrying around with you gets brought into the open once and for all.  And most of us Christian-types would rather that no one ever really see how broken and messed up we really are.  Which is why we build walls...

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...