Presby-Musings

In the Gospel of Luke chapter 17, Jesus is questioned by a group of overly-religious people:  "Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, 'The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, ‘Look here!’ or, ‘There it is!’ And why? Because God’s kingdom is already among you.'"  Another way to translate that last line is: "Because God's kingdom is withi n you."  Two things occur to me this morning:  1) It's important to understand what Jesus means by "God's kingdom, and 2) It's also important to understand why he wanted his followers to know that God's kingdom was "within" them. Frederick Buechener described God's kingdom like this:   "The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers.  We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know."  An...

Yesterday I returned home after spending a week in Guatemala with the various mission teams sent by my church in Austin, Texas.   I had the unique privilege to move from team to team over the course of the week, staying in different parts of Guatemala, and seeing how all of our mission teams work together to create unique, sustained partnerships with ministries and organizations within Guatemala.   And it also happened to be the first foreign mission trip for my son Jackson.   I will be forever grateful to the adult leaders of his mission site (an orphanage where some 70-80 children live) for all they did to care for and encourage him while I was moving from site to site.  The trip had a profound effect on him---I can tell he's still trying to figure out how he feels now that he's back home.     One of the adults on the trip told me that bed Jackson had selected for the week was pretty terrible. At one point, they told him he needed to move to ...

Today we're going to continue the sermon series  "The Divine Storyteller."  This series is focused on a rethinking of some of the more challenging parables or stories that Jesus told.   Whether it was a city high on a hill, two women grinding grain or---as we'll see today--a man planting seeds in a field, Jesus knew how to draw his audience in to his stories by using everyday, common and ordinary things that he could see around him to teach deep and abiding spiritual truths about the kingdom of God.   This week we're going to be exploring a parable that is fairly well-known but in many ways underestimated in common Christian culture: The Parable of The Sower.  This parable truly causes us to have to confront the truth about who we really are.   In fact, before we dig into the text today, let me ask you a question.  How would you want to be remembered after you die?  As you think you are  or as you really are ?   Last week I rea...

Recently, I discovered a great mental exercise that John Maxwell included in his book Developing the Leaders Around You .  In this exercise, which is designed to help you identify your dreams, you ask yourself two question:  "If I had________________," I would_________________."   If you had unlimited time, money, information, anything you asked for, what would you do?   Whatever your answer is to the second question is what you're dreaming for your life, Maxwell asserts.   The genius behind this kind of exercise is that once you start thinking about the possibility  of your dream, you start to wonder if you might either already have all of the resources you need to achieve it or at least a way to acquire them.   I got to thinking about how this applies to our journey with Jesus, and the struggles we often have to imagine a world that has not yet been made right.   I'm afraid more than a few of us Jesus-followers spend a lot of time won...

A customs officer observes a truck pulling up at the border. Suspicious, he orders the driver out and searches the vehicle. He pulls off the panels, bumpers, and wheel cases but finds not a single scrap of contraband, whereupon, still suspicious but at a loss to know where else to search, he waves the driver through.  The next week, the same driver arrives. Again the official searches, and again finds nothing illicit. Over the years, the official tries full-body searches, X rays, and sonar, anything he can think of, and each week the same man drives up, but no mysterious cargo ever appears, and each time, reluctantly, the customs man waves the driver on. Finally, after many years, the officer is about to retire. The driver pulls up. "I know you're a smuggler," the customs officer says. "Don't bother denying it. But [darned] if I can figure out what you've been smuggling all these years. I'm leaving now. I swear to you I can do you no harm. Won...

I am going to share some of the most powerful words in the English language with you today.  Are you ready?  Here they are:   "Once upon a time..."   Those words are absolutely pregnant  with possibility aren't they?  Your mind is already racing right this very second to finish that sentence with a story of your own, or one that you remember...   Never underestimate the power of a good story.  Writer Matt Goins offers this description of how important stories are to human beings.  "Story is where we came from.  Story is where we are going. Story is what connects us and binds us together."   It's in the midst of storytelling that we discover ourselves, the meaning of things, our purpose and direction.   Jesus was a master storyteller.  In ancient Judaism, storytelling was an enormous part of the religious and spiritual life of the community.  Later, inspirational storytelling became a recognized hol...

I was talking with a friend the other day about all of the things I was experiencing anew in ministry as I complete the first couple of months in my new church.  My friend is a retired pastor, and a frequent confidante.    As I talked, I was aware that I was rambling on and on in excitement, but I couldn't stop myself.  My friend listened patiently as I gushed about the people, the programs, missions, resources and all of the great growth potential of my new church.   When I finally came up for air, and gave him a moment to speak, he said something extremely wise.   "I think that the most important growth that churches can have is in the way they reach out into their community."   He went on to say that he wished that more churches focused on growing their ministries that showed Jesus to the world, rather than spending all their energy worrying about whether they have enough.   I wanted to kick him through the phone for being so right. ...