love

Choose this Day: A sermon on Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 and James 1:17-27

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Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27

As we as a country have made our final turn toward election day, I’ve noticed a picture being shared quite a bit on some social media platforms, and, for once, its a picture or post that doesn’t make me cringe. It’s a list of suggestions for how to post an interact on-line around political discussions that, hopefully, will prevent discord and vitriol. I know some of you have seen it as well, because you’re some of the folks who are resharing it in your social spaces. The text on the picture reads:

Between now and Tuesday, November 5:

POST WISELY!

  • Contribute to discussion – not division.
  • Don’t take the bait!
  • Check. Your. Facts.
  • Resist memes, cheap digs and name calling (That one is a little funny coming from a meme.)
  • Create constructive content.
  • We can transcend bitterness and be our better selves – even when we disagree.
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Covenantal Calling: A sermon for Confirmation Sunday on Genesis 35:9-15 and John 15:9-17

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Genesis 35:9-15
John 15:9-17

The worship video for these sermon is cued at the end of the manuscript or the entire video can be found on YouTube.

A few months ago a conversation started in a Facebook group for Presbyterian leaders about one pastor’s struggle to get a mouse out of the church kitchen.  The church didn’t want to use poison near food.  They didn’t want a trap that might hurt the mouse. The exterminator was too expensive. And on and on and on.  One witty, and maybe even tired, colleague suggested, “Just baptize and confirm it. Then you’ll never see it again. At least that’s how it works at my church.”

That’s one of those sad-funny ones, isn’t it?

In celebration of Confirmation, I share a picture of my own confirmation class. I’m the one with the shoulder length perm, white dress with a black belt, standing next to the Rev. Dr. Roy McCormick of Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Indialantic, FL. (1990)
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No “if”s: A sermon on John 15:1-8 and 1 John 4:7-21, 5th Sunday of Easter

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A video of the full service in which this sermon was preached can be found here.

1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

I’m not the gardener in our household. I think I have mentioned this before. I truly don’t know what I’m doing either with the decorative plants out front or the food that is growing in the back. At the Youth Group flower fundraiser last year I almost made a very accidental HUUUUUGE donation because I didn’t understand how many flower plants were in a flat. I mean, I know nothing. During the pandemic, I got a little on board with the houseplant trend, but, my part of our little plant area often looks like a plant hospital. This is not my arena. I love plants! I enjoy them a great deal. I just require some more knowledgable help to keep them alive.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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Thin Place – A Maundy Thursday meditation on Mark 12 and John 15 from a Wizard of Oz Lent

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Mark 14:12-16, 22-25
John 15:12-15

Celtic spirituality, both pre-Christian and Christian, has given us the language of thin places to describe places where it feels like the realms of the human and divine mingle.  “Heaven and earth,” the Celtic saying goes, “are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. Journalist and author, Eric Weiner, writes of thin places, “[They] relax us, yes, but they also transform us – or, more accurately, unmask us.”

Ruins from Iona Abbey by Iain Marshall is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

People often talk about temples and cathedrals as thin places, or particular geographies – mountaintops or beaches – but in a New York Times travel article, Weiner argues that thin places can be more unconventional as well – a city park, a bookstore, or even a bar. Thin places give us a glimpse or a feeling of a reality different from what we typically experience – a reality more closely aligned with God’s spirit and intentions than we typically see.

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Perfect Love – a sermon on Matthew 5:38-48

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Matthew 5:38-48

I am going to break the rule of one of the most influential people in my life. Maria von Trapp, at least as played by Julie Andrews, sings, “Let’s start at the very beginning,” but the-sound-of-music-poster-julie-andrewstoday I am not. In fact, I’m going to start at the very end, because if you’re anything like me, when I heard the end, I couldn’t even go back to the beginning to think about what it said. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Perfect. Riiiiiight. Perfection is impossible. Or at least perfection achieved by human beings is certainly impossible. If we know anything to be true, it is this, that we are imperfect creatures. From the very beginning of creation, in our relationships with God and with others, even in our relationships with ourselves, we experience on a daily basis our complete imperfection. So why does Jesus say this? Is he challenging us so that we’ll achieve some level of goodness, even if it’s not perfection? Or is he just setting us up for failure? Continue reading →

Love first

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“Strengthening us to… love” — From the collect in Midday Prayer, PC(USA) Daily Prayer App
“Loving can hurt” — Ed Sheeran, “Photograph”

In worship last Sunday in a time of quiet reflection following the sermon I invited the congregation to listen for God speaking to them about a way they are called to love, a specific individual or a general group, with a particular action or a more all-encompassing attitude.  I listened, too, and with the rest I jotted down what I heard.

love first

This nudging came to me in the context of my first Sunday back leading worship after sabbatical.  I had been back in the saddle, so to speak, for about a week, and my mind, thoughts, and prayers had been (still are) spinning.  I feel different.  I want to lead in a different way.  Life went on while I was gone, in some ways that I expected it to and in some ways that I didn’t, and I’m trying to figure out where I fit, how I will respond.  I have new insight into vision and direction for the church that I want to move forward and bring to life.  I am rested and energized, but sense already it will be easy to tip into overloaded and overwhelmed.

And the nudging from God that I heard was to love the church first.  Now that doesn’t mean change may not be part of my calling, or pieces of our life together might not need to be improved.  Not tolerating was most certainly part of what was spoken to me.  But what I heard God saying is that love comes first.

I imagine (or maybe I just hope) I’m not the only pastor who sometimes gets caught up in trying to do “all the things” in my work.  I don’t just mean tasks like email and phone calls and scheduling and writing.  I mean even spiritual sounding things like serving and preaching and praying.  They are good things, and they look and sound and feel like faithful things. But I heard God telling me they have to start with love, and I needed to be reminded of that because loving isn’t always easy.

A prayer I prayed from the order for Daily Prayer at the conclusion of my silent prayer this morning reminded me how hard just loving can be.  Loving when we disagree, loving when we feel slighted or disrespected, loving when trust has been broken, loving when we are reunited after time apart, loving when we have competing interests, loving when we are growing, loving when we are changing, loving when the future is uncertain –  it’s all hard work.

Yet this is my call, as a pastor, sure, but really as a disciple of Jesus. In easy times and difficult times and all the times in between, my call is to love first. It must be the beginning of all I do, and if I’m beginning anywhere else, I am starting in the wrong spot.  It is helpful to be reminded of that, and it is great encouragement when the call sounds daunting, if not impossible, to remember that I even need strength from God to accomplish it.