Presby-Musings

This past week I preached a sermon on the story of the Prodigal Son, and there were so many people who resonated with the message that I thought I would paraphrase some of my remarks and make them into a Devo!   Shame is a powerful feeling/emotion, and it can lead us to do some pretty destructive things.  Shame is different from guilt, however.  Guilt can lead us to restoration and generative acts if we don't allow ourselves to be consumed by it.  Invariably, when we let ourselves get consumed by guilt, it almost always leads to shame.   I created a working definition of shame for the sermon I preached, and I'd like to share it here:  Shame is what we experience when we feel exposed in moments of vulnerability where we're laid bare and all of our faults, doubts, fears, mistakes, and so much more are visible to all.   We also experience shame when we are "othered" by others.  When who we are is ridiculed, denigrated, mocked, or downright subjected to hate.  We also

As we enter into the last weeks of this season of Lent, it's tempting to want to look past them and begin focusing on the coming of Easter.  Especially when the weather begins to warm, and the flowers start to bloom.  Here in Central Texas, Spring has finally arrived in full force.  The bluebonnets are blooming, trees are exploding with white and pink blossoms, and it was actually hot inside my car when I got in it the other day.  Welcome, Spring.  It's been a while.   But there are still days to go in our Lenten journey, and even though the temptation is there to begin longing for the coming of Easter, and the story of Resurrection... there are shadows to deal with before we do.  I've been missing my mom a lot lately.  I think it has something to do with the blooming flowers all around me and the bird feeders I keep having to refill in my backyard.  For one brief Spring before she died, my mom got to enjoy the beauty of our yard, and that Spring we went all out with birdfe

I woke up yesterday morning to the news of the "Slap Heard Round The World," as I read the headlines from last night's Oscar Awards show.   At some point during the televised ceremony, actor Will Smith walked up on stage and viciously slapped Oscars host Chris Rock across the face for insulting his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.  On live TV no less.   I'm pretty sure this is the most talked-about Oscars show---ever.   The slap was precipitated by Chris Rock cracking a joke onstage about Pinkett-Smith's shaven head--a look that is due to her suffering from alopecia, which causes hair loss.   This prompted Will Smith to stride up the stairs to the stage and right up to Rock where he belted the comedian right in the face with a huge open-handed slap, before calmly returning to his seat.   Then in a stunning turn of events, Smith actually won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Richard Williams, father of tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams.   There were apologi

Even though we resumed in-person worship over a year ago, because of the concerns of our church community, and out of an abundance of caution and care for the more vulnerable among us, our church leadership elected to make wearing masks mandatory until about a month ago.   I get that not everyone was quite ready to come back to worship maskless, and there were others who had been advocating for it sooner, but in the end, we were finally able to safely allow those who wished to shed their masks to do so.  After over a year of only seeing people with their masks on, I realized something once we started worshipping without them...  There were several people who had started attending over the past several months, and I had never seen their faces.   Also, there were more than a few church members who I don't regularly see outside of Sunday mornings, who had been coming to in-person worship pretty consistently, but I wasn't sure who they were.   It's been a pure joy being able to

Today is the Fourth Sunday of the Season of Lent, and also the fourth installment of our sermon series, Return To Me. This series is inspired by a phrase that is found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures--a phrase that is closely connected to repentance but is also much deeper and all-encompassing than mere penitence.   The key verse for our particular journey, however, comes from Joel 2:12-13, which reads:  12“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning.” 13 So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. I've always been moved by this passage, mostly because of the way verse 13 starts off, "So rend your hearts and not your garments."  In other words, don't go through a big show of your piety, when your heart still might not be in the right place.  And so this series will help us retrace our steps bac

Fr. Anthony de Mello once included the following parable from the Bhagavata Purana in a teaching moment, and I have been thinking about it recently:  A crow once flew into the sky with a piece of meat in its beak.  Twenty crows set out in pursuit of it and attacked it viciously  The crow finally let the piece of  meat drop.  It's pursuers  then  left it alone and flew shrieking  after the morsel.  Said the crow, "I've lost the meal and  gained this perfect sky."  There are a few ways that you can interpret this little parable.  It could be a lesson on finding peace no matter your circumstances.  It could be a way of grasping the impermanence of things.   It can also be a story that helps us understand how sometimes the things we thought we needed weren't really the things we actually needed.   So if any of those interpretations resonate with you today--hold on to that meaning and let it guide you.  But I do have another way of seeing it that might also be helpful.

The other day I was listening to one of the many iTunes curated playlists that I subscribe to, and a song came on that got my attention.  I ended up listening to it no less than three times in a row, and I've been thinking about the lyrics ever since.  The song is "I Know You Know Me" by Caroline Spence and Matt Berninger, two indie singer/songwriters, who are definitely worth exploring.  This collaboration between Spence and Berninger is a back and forth conversation between two people who may or may not be together in the moment, but in spite of that, they each feel the longing to know and be known is fulfilled in the other.  These are the lyrics that really sparked my imagination:  When I go out and try to walk alone Pretending I don't need a hand to hold I'm hiding, but I know that you can see I know you know me No matter where the storm is in my mind It'll never be a place that you can't find You hold the candle, oh, you hold the key I know you know m

In the 17th century, St. Ignatius of Loyola offered up this bit of wisdom that I think absolutely still preaches all these centuries after he wrote it:   In a time of desolation do not make a life-changing decision and do not go back on a decision made during a time of consolation.  Remember the times of consolation.  In other words, when things have fallen apart and you think the world is about to end, don't do anything rash or radical just to alleviate your discomfort.  Decisions made in the haste of those uncomfortable moments usually mean we'll have plenty of time to repent of them later.   I've heard that same advice a hundred times in my life in various forms and from a wide variety of people.  Maybe you have, too.   In contrast, the other side of that quote is equally important:  Don't start second-guessing a decision or a direction you made when you were calm, clear, at peace, and feeling sure about it.   Ignatius exhorts that we must instead remember the moment

In her poem Blueberries , Mary Oliver reflects on how she lives near a market where she can buy sustainably and responsibly grown fresh blueberries all year long, shipped from places all over the world.  Then the poem shifts as she remarks:  What they don’t have is the field. The field they belonged to and through the years I began to feel I belonged to...  And then there's this line, which just about broke my heart when I read it the first time, and very nearly every time after that:  Well, there’s life and then there’s later.   Maybe it’s myself that I  miss…  I have to be honest, I have been wanting to write about this for a while, but every time I started to, I found that I really couldn't put into words what I was feeling.  But today, it came to me.  Let me ask you a question... Have you ever had a moment when you looked around and wondered how in the world you got where you are?   Maybe you caught a good look at yourself in the mirror, and thought, "Am I really that

I took my youngest son Jacob to his first big-time heavy metal, rock and roll show last night.  It was especially sweet because the band we went to see was Judas Priest, the same band I saw at my first ever concert in 1986 at the ripe old age of 17.   Hey, don't judge me--I'll always be a metalhead at heart.   Besides, the band is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the three original members who are left are all at least 70 years young, and the crowd was made up of greying fans like me, and their kids... or grandkids.   For a bunch of aging metal stars, the guys in Judas Priest put on a heckuva show, and my kid was duly impressed.  They moved a lot more slowly than when I saw them over 35 years ago, but still...  We left the arena with our ears ringing and voices hoarse, and Jacob was already wearing one of his concert t's that I  got him, telling me on the way out that he was planning on wearing it to school.  He made it about halfway home before he was dead asleep in t

I spent a lot of my years as a pastor being quiet about the things that divided our society---issues of justice, mercy, equality, and the like.   I did this for a lot of reasons, mostly selfish ones.  I worried that if I spoke up, I would offend people, lose church members, and make people angry at me.  I also felt like I should just stay in my lane, and not do anything to upset anyone.  Several years ago, I   remember reading this quote from the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, who wrote this exhortation to preachers:  “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” I have come to believe that following Barth's advice is one of the many things I am called to do as a preacher and a pastor.  But I also believe that it is also the duty of all of those who claim to be followers of Christ.  There's so much that's wrong with our world around us, so much that divides us.  But there's also so much that's beautiful and

Today is the Second Sunday of Lent and also the second Sunday of our Lenten sermon series entitled Return To Me.  This series is inspired by a phrase that is found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures--a phrase that is closely connected to repentance but is also much deeper and all-encompassing than mere penitence.   The key verse for our particular journey, however, comes from Joel 2:12-13, which reads:  12“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning.” 13 So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. I've always been moved by this passage, mostly because of the way verse 13 starts off, "So rend your hearts and not your garments."  In other words, don't go through a big show of your piety, when your heart still might not be in the right place.  And so this series will help us retrace our steps back to

Lent is a season of repentance as much as it is anything else.  And by repentance , I mean the way that the Bible speaks of it, probably not what we've made of it in the Church.   Most of us have been taught that repentance is essentially confession followed by contrition.  We admit that we have done wrong, and we ask God (and/or someone we've wronged) for forgiveness.  But in Scripture, we find that repentance is so much more than mere confession/contrition.  In fact, the Hebrew word for repentance is tshuva , which literally means "return."   Think of it this way.  In the general sense that we typically think of repentance there's not necessarily a change of direction, but in the ancient Hebrew understanding of repentance, there's an about-face.   I've been thinking about this a lot because in my church our Lenten theme is "Return to Me," which is directly connected to this concept.   Repentance is a return to faithfulness---a turning around fr