Presby-Musings

This will be my last Devo for a little over a week because I'm about to go on a trip that was supposed to happen in 2020 but got rescheduled a few times until now.  To be honest, I'm not sure how to feel about this trip because there are so very many things that have to get done before I go, and I'm leaving tomorrow (Wednesday).  This also means I've got at least three to-do lists going right now.  As I stare at them at this moment I realize that I am nowhere near being ready, and honestly, it feels like I won't get there, which is pretty overwhelming.  I know what you're thinking: "Yo, Leon.  I'm having a really hard time feeling any sympathy as you machinate over going on a trip... Wanna trade places?"  Yeah, I get that.  But hear me out for a moment.   That feeling of unpreparedness, and all of the angst that goes with it is something that most of us have felt (or are feeling right about now) in the midst of times of uncertainty.  We might feel

There's this weird thing that happens in the life of a pastor's kid as they reach the age when they no longer attend children's Sunday school, and "graduate" into "big church."  The weird thing is that they get to hear their parent preach on a regular basis, which for some of them is kind of odd.  I remember when my son Jackson graduated from the Fifth Grade and started attending worship with the rest of the family.   To begin, it's not like he'd never seen a worship service before, or been exposed to liturgy, prayers, and creeds.  But he'd never really heard me preach before--at least when he was old enough to remember it.  "Dad," he said to me afterward, "You're pretty good."   I took that as high praise, to be honest.   My youngest son Jacob has begun to attend worship regularly now that he, too, is about to graduate from Elementary school and our kids' programs at church.  He hasn't said much to me yet.  Ba

Today is Easter Sunday!  Come on!  Let's do that chant that we do just to get even more hyped... Christ is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed! That's about as hyped as most Presbyterians get in worship unless we're talking about forming committees.  If you've ever wondered why we say that particular phrase, I'm going to tell you the origin story of it today, along with the origin of Easter Eggs, and a whole bunch of other surprising things...   Like Jesus being raised from the dead, isn't surprising enough, right?  We've heard the story before, haven't we?  Probably a hundred or more times for most of us of a certain age.   But it's a story that bears repeating because it's our  story, in the end.   Once a few years ago, a wiseacre pastor friend of mine and I were having coffee in the middle of Holy Week.  "Hey man," my friend queried, "what are you preaching on this coming Sunday?" He was joking of course, so I responded, "I thi

Easter is over.  It came and went after a long 40-plus-day build-up.   At my church, we celebrated our first Easter Sunday with people inside of our building in two years.   We'd been leading up to that day for a very long time, and it was electrifying to feel the energy in the room yesterday morning.   There was joy, laughter, food, and fellowship--all the things we'd missed over the last two years of uncertainty, virtual worship services, isolation, and angst.  It felt good to feel good.   That was yesterday.  This is the day after.   My usual post-Sunday episode of the blues hit extra hard yesterday afternoon and has continued through this morning.  It's a common thing for pastors to feel after Sunday worship, not to worry.  A lot of us pastor types experience a letdown on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning, so I'm not alone in this.   The letdown comes from expending so much energy and emotion, preaching, and interacting with church members and staff, followed by a

Today is Good Friday, the day that Christians all around the world will commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus.  Around the world, it's also known as Great Friday, Holy Friday, and even in some contexts as Black Friday.  It's believed that the name "Good Friday" is a derivation from the Middle English term "God's Friday." Sort of like the word "goodbye" is a derivation from the phrase "God be with you."  On this day, as I read through the Gospel narratives of Jesus' Passion, I am always struck by the way Pontius Pilate reacts to Jesus being brought to him by certain members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council.   He vacillates back and forth between the loathing that he feels for having to placate the Jewish religious leaders, and his desire to just keep the peace during Passover.  Pilate's position was delicate.  All that Tiberius Caesar cared about was that the goods and money the Roman Empire was basically pl

Tonight at my church we will hold a worship service to commemorate this day in Holy Week, which is known as Maundy Thursday, Holy Thursday, or Sheer Thursday, depending on the context.  The word "Maundy" is thought to be a derivative of the words of Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper, translated into Latin:   “Mandatum novum do vobis” ("A new command I give to you.") Most European countries call the day Holy Thursday, but there are some quarters where it is known as Sheer Thursday because of the ceremonial washing of the altars that takes place today.  In many Christian faith traditions, this is also a night when the priests or pastors in some churches will wash the feet of 12 congregants, to commemorate Jesus' washing the feet of the disciples.   There are many powerful moments in the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper on that fateful Thursday night.   There is the moment when Peter refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, because of the shocking nature of h

Today is Holy Wednesday, also known in the historic Church as Spy Wednesday, Good Wednesday, or Great Wednesday.  For centuries this has been the day that Christians commemorate Judas' conspiring with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus and turn him over to them to be arrested.   In John's Gospel, it seems that Judas' betrayal is connected to his being a dishonest, shifty person, who kept the money for the group but skimmed off of it for his own gain.   This claim is not corroborated in any of the other Gospel accounts.  In fact, in Luke's Gospel, the narrator declares that "Satan entered Judas," who agreed with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus for money.   Interestingly, the first-century Christian text The Gospel of Judas  paints him as a hero of sorts--the only disciple who was willing to take on the impossible task of initiating the Passion of Jesus by what appeared to be a betrayal.  The first-century Christians who adhered to The Gospel of Judas believed that whe

Today is Holy Tuesday in Holy Week---a day which has also been called Fig Tuesday because of the passages of Scripture that mark this particular holy day in the historic Church.  The reference to figs comes from two different passages in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.  I'll paraphrase, mainly using Mark's account.   After Palm Sunday, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem with his disciples after hanging out with friends in Bethany, when he approaches a fig tree and finds no fruit on it, and then inexplicably curses the tree by saying:  “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” (Mark 11:14, NIV) Mark's account is careful to say that it wasn't the season for figs, which makes Jesus' cursing of the tree all the more curious.   Then Jesus and the disciples head to the Temple, where Jesus literally turned the tables on the religious leaders of his day by dumping the tables of the money-changers and the sellers of doves and then driving them out with a whip.  This spectac

  I was having a conversation with my middle son last night after he watched a video about the infamous case of the Scottsboro Boys.  The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of the sexual assault of two white women on a train in Scottsboro Alabama in 1931.   None of the young men had met before then, but all of them were tried together and then sent to prison for most of their lives. They all experienced horrible trauma as a result, and most of them died at an early age.  My son was flabbergasted that such a thing could have happened, but I assured him that it was just one of the hundreds of cases like it that occurred in the United States from the early to mid 20th century.  I also told him that most of the same people who participated or applauded such things back then went on to raise children who would later scream, spit and beat on black children who were integrating "white" schools in the 1950s and 1960s.  And many of those people would go

Today is Palm Sunday, the end of the season of Lent, and the beginning of Holy Week.  We are just a few short days away from Easter, can I get a witness?   This year we're doing something a bit different for Palm Sunday, as you have already noticed, I'm sure.   We're letting the story guide our worship service--reminding us of the story of Jesus during his week of Passion---the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his last supper with his followers, and then... the shadows that fall after.   It's also the last mention that we'll make of the sermon series that we've been working through together entitled Return To Me .   This is the moment when all of our talk of repentance gets put to the test as we have Resurrection Day within our sights, and we are ready to be there, to celebrate, to put on our bright Easter finery, have dinner with the family, let our little ones hunt for eggs and all the rest of it.  If this Lenten season seemed long---you may want to skip to the

In his wonderful book of parables entitled The Song of the Bird, Fr. Anthony de Mello relates the tale of a holy man, who was approached by a villager with a strange revelation and request.  As the holy man was settling in for the night under a tree near the outskirts of the village, a man approached him shouting "Give me the stone!"  It seems the man had a dream the night before within which a divine figure told him he would find a holy man under a tree outside the village, and that the holy man would give him a precious stone.  The holy man reached into his bag, and pulled out a stone, relating to the villager that he found it on a forest path some days ago.  "You can certainly have it," he said and handed it over.  At that moment the man realized what the holy man had handed him was the largest diamond he had ever seen.  He went home elated, but then passed a sleepless night, tossing and turning constantly.  The next day he returned to the holy man and woke him a

One of the most difficult things that we have to learn as human beings is how to be patient when we are waiting on our world to change.  It's a lesson that doesn't come easily to most of us.  And when I say "world" here, I  mean the world within us as well as outside us.   There are all kinds of things outside of us that we can't control---circumstances, people, systems, and the like.  And we might very well long for those to change, doing what we can to expedite it.   So we wait, and we do our best to learn patience.  But there are also plenty of things within our inner world that we hope to change as well.  We might long for a change of heart, or we long to be more connected to God and others.  We also might be waiting on the healing of our mind, body, or spirit, and find that it's slow and frustrating.   I've learned that having patience with the transformation of my inner world is much more difficult than the transformation of my outer world.  I'm

As part of a pastor's leadership cohort that I recently joined, our coach assigned the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership  for reading and discussion .   One of the major takeaways I've had so far in the reading is that most of us spend our lives operating from the unhealthy and unhelpful belief that life mostly happens to us , rather than through us.  When we live from the Life Happens To Me  stance, we are more prone to blaming ourselves and others for the problems we face.   When we live and lead from this stance we will also find ourselves asking  "Why me?" or "Whose fault is this?" And then we look about trying to figure out who should fix the problem, or we decide to fix it on our own, which can create its own set of problems.   There's also an adrenaline rush that comes pretty standard with this stance.   In other words, if we're addicted to drama, busyness for busyness' sake, or we simply just have  to have jolts of energy br

I'm feeling curious today about the idea of resurrection, particularly in the ways that resurrection is made evident all around us all of the time through what Fr. Richard Rohr calls the "cosmic pattern" of dying and rising.   One of the struggles I had some years ago when I experienced a crisis of faith was manifest in my inability to get my mind around the Resurrection of Jesus.   I tried in vain to regain my confidence in the biblical witness, reading all of the books that demonstrated how you could "prove" that all of it was true, even though the proofs were full of holes, and often lacking in real logic.   As it turns out the way forward for me was strengthened by the following concept:  God is not a problem to be solved. God is a mystery to be experienced.    This is not as easy to grasp as you might imagine.  It seems simple enough, but in the end, our heads have a harder time finding reconciliation with our hearts than we'd like to admit.   In other

Lately, at my church, our church staff and leaders have been talking a lot about our church vision and the direction we believe the Spirit is leading us forward into the new world that is emerging.  We say that the vision of our church is to Love God, Love Everybody , which we glean directly from the words of Jesus known as the Great Commandment.   These have been vital and crucial conversations, especially considering all that we've gone through as a family of faith over the past couple of years.  Our vision remains, but we are sensing that it might be leading us in a direction that we could not have completely predicted two years ago.  And I believe each of us is being challenged to wrestle with what that vision and the words of Jesus mean to us individually as well.  It's not just a slogan---it's our story, and I believe that it is truly a story worth telling.  The other day I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh's excellent book Going Home , and he had this to say about Jesu

Today is the Fifth Sunday of the Season of Lent, and also the fifth and final 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 s