Presby-Musings

I was thinking about the phrase "God is love," which was employed by the author of 1 John in the New Testament, and naturally, I also began thinking about all the movies I could name with the word "love" in their title.  This is how my mind works.  Here are a few of the ones that came to mind:  Love, Actually Eat, Pray, Love  Endless Love  Love Story  Love Is A Many Splendored Thing Love and Other Drugs  Shakespeare In Love P.S. I Love You  What's Love Got To Do With It?  There were more, but if I listed all the ones I could think of, I'd just be showing off.  #humblebrag Seriously, the topic of love dominates storytelling, specifically in film, but also in song.  If you can create a great love story, you might have a bestseller or, at the very least, a reasonably good movie to sell.   And if you can write a great love song, well... that lasts forever, it seems.   Why are we so obsessed with love and love stories...

  As we prepare to enter the season of Advent, we have the opportunity to pause for a moment and reflect on the true nature of this measure in the liturgical rhythms of the Church.   And we also get the chance to buy some really awesome Advent calendars.  In fact, today, I purchased what may be my favorite Christmas decoration purchase in a very long time.  It will be delivered tomorrow, which makes me even happier.  It's a "Die Hard" Advent calendar from the motion picture  Die Hard  with Bruce Willis, which is absolutely, without a doubt, a Christmas movie.   The calendar is a wooden replica of Nakatomi Plaza, the high rise from the movie that is taken over by master thief and terrorist Hans Gruber and his crew of miscreants.   In the closing moments of the final struggle between Gruber and John McClane (Willis), Gruber falls dramatically from the top of the building to a well-deserved doom.  So this Advent calendar has ...

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that you were able to experience gratitude and togetherness with friends and family.   I've shared this in past years, but it's become an annual tradition for me, so I'm sharing it again with some edits.   Did you know that Thanksgiving wasn't declared a national holiday until 1863, during the height of the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that it be celebrated on the final Thursday of November?  This would be changed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 when he moved the holiday up a week during the Great Depression to boost retail sales.  Eventually, after much pressure, he moved it to the fourth Thursday in November 1941.  Funny--back then, people were outraged that the holiday would be a precursor to shopping.  Alas. Times sure have changed.  Black Friday sales already started a few weeks ago!  The only positive thing about Black Friday becoming mo...

  Today's Devo is an adapted version of one from the archives, but it seems appropriate as we enter a season of giving and receiving...  Generosity done for the wrong reasons is easy to spot.  It looks inauthentic.   According to a contemporary study by the Harvard Business Review, over the past two decades,  charitable giving by U.S. companies has declined at an alarming rate, dropping to 15-year lows in the early 2000s and descending even lower to date. Even though overall charitable giving by companies has decreased, what has increased is what is known as "cause-related marketing." In other words, companies will strategically engage in philanthropy as a form of public relations, increasing their brand exposure to provide positive impressions among consumers and increase employee morale. While some good may be done through the charitable contributions of companies engaging in this form of marketing, it has begun to come off as inauthentic. According to th...

I haven't written or posted anything online about the horrifying conflict that is taking place between Israel and Hamas.  I feel like whatever I write, or post will offend some people or that my words might be misconstrued.  But my heart is heavy today, so I will write what I am feeling. What follows is a reflection I made after a visit to Yad Vashem,  the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem:  I'd like to reflect on my visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in the northern suburbs of Israel on Mt. Herschel. The meaning of the words yad vashem in English is "everlasting name" and comes from Isaiah 56:5, which reads: "To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever." The 2-3 hour tour through Yad Vashem is an incredibly sobering and heart-wrenching experience.  Walking through the exhibits, you feel like you are traveling deeper into darkness....

The Latin festina lente is a classical adage and oxymoron used to describe the military and political acumen of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus.  The phrase means "make haste slowly," and Augustus was so fond of it that he had emblems and seals made to signify it.   The Roman historian Suetonius wrote of Augustus:  He thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than haste and rashness, and, accordingly, favourite aphorisms of his were: "Hasten slowly"; "Better a safe commander than a bold"; and "That which has been done well has been done quickly enough." Sofia Isabel Kavlin is a poet I've read from time to time, and she recently wrote a poem about relationships and how they go awry when we move too quickly and ignore warning signs that might have helped avoid heartbreak.   She writes of festina lente :  One metaphor that opens things up, Like a point in time, Stretching to become a moment, And the idea of time, Draining out of ...

I was having a conversation recently with a church member, and we started discussing the idea of Christians using the term "thoughts and prayers" when responding to bad news.  The gist of the conversation was that people tend to use phrases like that because they don't know what else to do.  Or, in the case of most politicians responding to yet another mass shooting, as a way of saying something but doing nothing.  I've used that phrase more than once in my life, but I'm starting to rethink it or, at the very least, try to reframe it.  The phrase isn't the problem.  Using the phrase to absolve ourselves from putting our thoughts and prayers into action is something altogether different.  Let me explain what I mean.   Every church I've ever been a part of has had what is commonly known in church-y world as a "Prayer Chain."  This tool is used to share the prayer requests of church members and friends with a broader group, presumably so that th...

Final Instructions—Jesus last teachings to his Disciples Why are we reading and teaching these texts before Advent?  We are expecting a Gift, but we need to know what the Gift means for us.  Today, we will hear a parable layered with meaning—one that Jesus meant as a lesson for his followers waiting for the Kingdom. We’ll also receive a lesson in 1st Century economics—and how being risk-averse isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  What’s the biggest risk you have ever taken?  What did you learn?  The psychology and biology of risk-taking.  We all take risks every single day.       Driving. Flying. Walking alone outside.  The difference between Impulse Control and Healthy Risk      Adrenaline and Dopamine   Risks I want to avoid:      Swimming in the ocean      Jumping out of airplanes       Hiking in Iraq      Drinking Fireball What does it mean to...

In a recent 60-Minutes interview, the newly elected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was asked about his faith and how it informed his decision-making.  Johnson had this to say:  I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘… People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that’s my worldview. You might very well be wondering, "Why would you have to attach 'Bible-believing' to the word 'Christian?' Couldn't you just say 'I am a Christian' and leave it at that?" Well, there's a reason why some Christians feel the need to use that modifier, and it begs an explanation.  I grew up in a faith tradition that proudly used "Bible-believing" before the word Christian and also smugly referred to the way they saw the world around them as "having a biblical worldview ." On the surface, these descripto...

I've always struggled with praying silently for very long.  It makes me feel like I'm not a very good pastor sometimes, especially when I hear stories of other pastors who spend hours praying alone in their office or on some mountaintop.  The truth is, I get bored during long prayers, my mind wanders, I find myself thinking of anything except what I intended to pray for, and sometimes I fall asleep.  I remember years ago, at the church I served in seminary, there was an interminably long prayer as part of the service.   In fact, those prayers (which we called Prayers of the People) were supposed to be at least five minutes long.  As a staffer, I had to offer them every once in a while, and a minimum of five minutes was the guideline I was given.   I had a friend on staff who told me once that he was going for nearly eight minutes on the Sunday he was scheduled to offer the prayer.  And then he did.  At any rate, there was this interminab...

Sometimes, someone who isn't part of my church or doesn't regularly read the Daily Devos, watch my sermons, etc., will comment on something I've posted about God's inclusive and unconditional love and how we should show that love to everyone.   Their comments typically read something like this:  "You are ignoring what the Bible says about [fill in whatever divisive issue you like]. You can't call yourself a pastor and do that."  Those comments usually never see the light of day because I get tired of arguing with people who simply want to argue online.  But there are occasions when I will engage some of those folks in conversation because I want to let them know that not only are they missing the point, but they are also missing a lot of the Scripture they claim to hold up as authoritative.  The truth is, anything I say about loving God and loving everybody being at the heart of what it means to be a Christian is going to rankle some folks.   Tha...

In case you haven't noticed, election years bring out the worst in many of us.  And because most of our politicians seem to be doing nothing but campaigning instead of governing, election years seem to blur together like a bad dream.  It would be nice if our nationally elected officials had term limits, but since they are the ones who vote on whether to have term limits, we shouldn't hold our breath while waiting for it to happen.  What gets lost because of this endless cycle of campaigning and posturing is any sense of common ground, sympathy, and empathy for those who disagree with one another.  It trickles down, as you might imagine.  All you have to do is gather your family for a holiday celebration, and you'll discover that the divisions we see in our government have extended to our own doorsteps.  Far too many of us receive our news from carefully curated and highly partisan sources---most of whom we tend to agree with.  We don't make any effort ...

Growing up in the evangelical, fundamentalist wing of the Church, I was taught some things that I still cherish to this day.  I memorized Scripture, learned Bible stories, and developed a sense of the importance of a faith community.  I also learned to love some old, wonderful hymns that have been part of the Christian tradition for centuries. I also developed an affinity for energetic, passionate, and engaging preaching.  While the content and theology of the sermons from my youth were often pure, hot garbage (putting it mildly), I always loved a good sermon delivered with enthusiasm and great illustrations.   Those early influences are why I never read my sermons, and I have a particularly "evangelical" delivery when I preach.   I often write about all of the negative aspects of that upbringing, and there are plenty of those to write about, to be sure.  But there were good things, too, and for the most part, I've let go of what was unhealthy and...

Final Instructions—Jesus last teachings to his Disciples Why are we reading and teaching these texts before Advent?  We are expecting a Gift, but we need to know what the Gift means for us.  Today, we will be exploring what it means to wait and be ready for the coming of the Messiah and a world made new.  And we’re also going to be learning that we must be ready to wait.  Let’s reflect for a moment on why we hate to wait…  Berlin-based cultural scientist Claudia Peppel wrote a book in 2019 entitled "The Art Of Waiting," she explored through art, stories, and commentary what about waiting makes most of us anxious, angry, and frustrated.   Peppel said that most of the reasons surrounding our anxiety about waiting have to do with issues of power and how we chafe at someone else having so much control over our time and energy.  How many of you have sat waiting in line for one thing or another and found yourself critiquing the powers that be who set th...