Presby-Musings

  Today is the First Sunday After Christmas in the Christmas Season (The Famous 12 Days).  It’s Still Christmas, in case you didn’t know.  Keep Celebrating! We’re not quite ready to take all the decorations down… Epiphany is the official cutoff—but you can extend it.   I mean, there are all the bowl games, the college football national championship, the NFL playoffs, heck, even the Super Bowl.  By then, you'd be almost to Lent, so you could push on through that to Easter, and then you've got to make a decision... "Do I just leave it up until next Christmas?" Today, we will reflect on what it means to have a new start with a new year and what it takes to leave the old you in the past.   And we will read a portion of a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to some folks who felt a bit on the outside of grace just because of their identity.  New Year, New Resolutions—have you considered what you want to change? Get in shape. Read more. Spend more t...

Tonight is the Night of Nights in the Christian calendar.  Christmas Eve.  This night brings to mind the Christmas story, as told in Luke's Gospel, about how God became one of us to rescue all of us.   It's also the night we put on our Christmas-y clothes and come together to sing, pray, light candles, and then go off into the night with no small expectation, and maybe even---dare I say it---hope.  No matter how we got here tonight---willingly, unwillingly, coerced, bribed---we are here together.  Our collective memories of Christmas Eve's past can be felt among us.  We share these feelings.  There is nostalgia here tonight.  There is joy. There is excitement. There is also sadness and grief.  There is firm belief and also skepticism.   As my kids would say, there is "all the feels."   So tonight, we share the story.  And even when the story itself doesn't always align with history or our understanding of reality...

Advent - A Season of Expectation, but also of Readiness The texts we have been studying for the past few weeks will help us prepare for the change and transformation in the world we all long for. Today, we will be learning what it means to have hopeful expectations in the season of Advent. And we’ll be reading from a song from Mary, the mother of Jesus, about God’s plan to turn the world upside down. The historic Church celebrates the Fourth Sunday of Advent as a day when everything is turned upside down.  The proud are made low, the fortunes of the poor are lifted--and all of this comes from the passage of Scripture that we'll be reading shortly from the Gospel of Luke.   The idea behind this celebration was simple: Through Jesus, God turned the world upside down.  The old order is no more.  There is equity at last.  There is now justice, mercy, and peace for those on the wrong end.  For those who resist the kingdom of God in favor of the kingdom of t...

"What do you think you're going to get for Christmas?" My leering uncle by marriage asked me when I was eight.  He was an odd man with a penchant for terrible jokes and general ribbing and who was also creepy to the point of distraction.   I never knew him to wear anything but cowboy boots, western snap-button shirts, and jeans held to his skinny frame by belts he'd made himself, festooned with enormous belt buckles.  "I don't know,"  I mumbled as I stared at his latest belt buckle decorated with horseshoes.   "I'll tell you what you're gonna get," he told me with a Grinch-like expression. "You're getting nothing but a lump of coal."  Even though I knew he was full of it, I had a moment of pause.  I wondered if he knew something I didn't.  Or maybe that's what he and my aunt had gotten me for a gift.  Because I was raised in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist tradition, I'd stopped believing in Santa Claus ...

Recent videos of an extravagant Christmas show put on by one of the largest churches in America have garnered millions of views and no small amount of backlash from online viewers.  Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX, first got national attention when videos were shared online from last year's annual Christmas show, which featured flying drummers and spectacularly over-the-top production.  Not only are the airborne drummers back again this year, but the Vegas-style extravaganza now includes flying angels, 1,000 cast members, a real zebra, a flock of sheep, and three live camels, among other fantastic elements.  The show lasts 100 minutes, which Prestonwood touts as the "perfect length for everyone in the family," and tickets cost $70 per person.   One Dallas journalist called it Cirque-du-Holiness.  I've watched many of the show's videos, and I can attest that he's not far from the truth with his assessment.  The criticism that Prestonwood has rec...

Behold.  If you want to talk about excellent words that have fallen out of use in our everyday discourse, I'll put "behold" up there on the list.  I'll also include "posthaste" and "forsooth," but that's beside the point.  Behold is the kind of word that carries with it a sense of gravitas, a jen a sais quoi , if you will.  It can't easily be placed in a box or described.  It's the kind of word that, if used properly, can provide the very thing you're looking for when you are feeling fairly awesome about something you are sharing with others.  "Behold, I have made the perfect casserole."  "Behold, I have arrived fashionably late for the party, looking fabulous." "Behold, my Christmas lights are on point this year."    "Behold, I have created the perfect Instagram post."  Bringing back behold  is something I can put my arms around.  I know there are probably more seemingly important things to c...

If you've ever wondered where the phrase "It is better to give than receive" came from, I'm here to help.  It's actually a quote from the Apostle Paul in Acts 20:35 in his final discourse to the Church at Ephesus where he says this:  “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive'” Interestingly, when we go to the Gospels to find the moment Jesus said that very thing, it's not there.  We can discover inferences from that idea but not the exact quote.   This means that Paul heard that Jesus had once said it is better to give than to receive from other disciples and simply repeated it.  The context of this verse is  Paul declaring that by the work of their hands, Christians should "help the weak."  Jesus' words are filled with wisdom, and this teaching has pervaded culture to the point that it's become part of our cultural lexicon, especially during Christmas.   In other words, m...

One of the lectionary readings for the Season of Advent is the story of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, being visited by an angel in chapter one of the Gospel of Luke.   The angel appears to Zechariah, who is doing his priestly duties in the Holy of Holies in the Temple.   The angel then announces to Zechariah that even though he and his wife Elizabeth are old, they will have a child (they had been unable to), and that child would be used by God in amazing ways.  Zechariah doesn't believe the angel and is rendered unable to speak after the encounter with a promise that his speech will return upon the birth of his son.   This story has some fascinating aspects, and I've been thinking about it for a while.   The news that came to Zechariah was so unbelievable, so far-fetched that even though it was being delivered by an other-worldly being, he couldn't believe it.  He and his wife had spent years together longing for a child, ev...

Advent - A Season of Expectation, but also of Readiness The texts we’ll study for the next few weeks will help us prepare for the change and transformation in the world we all long for. Today, we will learn about the Gift of Grace we anticipate in Advent. And we’ll be learning about the two songs the ancient Hebrew people sang during a time of terrible trial and tribulation. What's your favorite Christmas song, and why?  Let's do a quick survey.  What are the emotions that these songs evoke for us?  Nostalgia, Memories, Repetition, and Resolution make a classic Christmas song a classic.  And this is also why Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" is a classic.   Don't hate, appreciate.  Mariah recorded a catchy song that now has nostalgia and memories attached to it, but it has excellent repetition and an acceptable resolution.   You can also place Kelly Clarkson's "Under the Tree" in this category.  Give it a few years, and it will b...

As we journey further into the season of Advent, we need to learn how to lean into our expectations and hopes for Christmas to discover something significant about our faith.  Most of us find that the holidays can be complicated, despite our best efforts to keep them simple.  There are demands on our time, demands to find the "perfect" gift, demands to create meaningful and magical gatherings, and scores of other impossible tasks.  And then, as if that wasn't enough, we often over-sentimentalize the meaning of the season itself, doing our best to tap into nostalgia and recreate moments of happier times, peaceful seasons, and the like.  This isn't to say that it doesn't work occasionally.  More often than not, however, our efforts to recapture an idealized past fall short, leaving us empty.   One of the many things we tend to over-sentimentalize to our detriment is the actual Nativity itself.  We focus on the birth of a baby and the bucolic setting...

The other day, I read a fantastic quote from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  I have been thinking about it ever since.  People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for... Like me, many of you nodded in agreement as you read that line and probably thought of people in your own life who live markedly myopic and unexamined lives.  These types of people can be confronted with the truth and will still find a way to deny it or dismiss it.  They also tend to be so set in their beliefs and opinions that nothing you say or do will convince them that they might be wrong about them.  By now, most of you are probably smiling grimly as you begin to list the folks you know who fit that description.   Or you're listing groups of people you assume (based on what you've seen on social media or cable TV) have those nasty characteristics- the kinds of folks you want nothing to do with.  The funny thing is that when making our lists and de...

One of the more exciting transformations I've seen while serving in churches over the past twenty-five years is how the way people view church membership has changed.  When I started serving in churches "back in the day," people didn't tend to do what is commonly known as "church shopping" all that much.  If you had a visitor come to your church, it was most likely because they were new to the area and wanted to find a new place of worship.  But over the years, all that has changed.  People "shop" for churches regularly now; most of the time, you will never know they are doing it.   A case in point is a family that recently joined the church where I serve as lead pastor. They found us online when they were living overseas during the pandemic.   They knew they were moving to Austin and started looking for a church online.  As a result, they were ready to call our church home when they showed up in person.   I think that's awesome, by...

In America, we lift up a notion that our founding fathers felt was necessary to place in our Constitution, namely that every citizen of the U.S. is entitled to the freedom of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And when I say we lift it up, I mean that some of us lift it up, especially when we feel that we are being impeded in any of those three in any way, particularly the last one.  Here's the rub, though: The "pursuit of happiness" has become a national pastime in the U.S.  For far too many of us, it's not the pursuit of happiness but happiness itself  that is seen as an unalienable right .   This presents a problem when we find how elusive true happiness can be, and even the pursuit of happiness is not all it's cracked up to be.  Interestingly, according to the Global Happiness Index, the U.S. has risen from 18th to 15th since the end of 2020.  You can make of that what you will.   During this season of Advent, we are challeng...

If you have been reading these Devos for a while, it's no secret that Khalil Gibran is one of my favorite poets.  His short life (he died at age 48) was one spent in the liminal space so often occupied by refugees, expatriates, and, of course, artists.   Gibran was born to a Maronite Christian family in Ottoman-controlled Lebanon, but when he was young, he migrated to Boston with his mother and sisters.  He returned to Beirut for university and then studied art in Paris. He was an accomplished painter and a remarkable poet.   His longing was that one day, his beloved Lebanon would be free from the oppression of the Ottoman Empire, and he expressed this longing through his writing and his art. Although his books were translated into Arabic, they were banned in many countries during his lifetime.    Gibran believed that “Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.” The poem I want to share today is one tha...