RoboPreacher

'til i get it right For the past three years Jesus has been dragging the disciples along on his tour of ministry. In the few brief instances when there was any quiet, Jesus has been teaching these disciples. In fact, Jesus has even commissioned them to carry on his ministry. Now, as everything builds to what everyone knows must be the climax; the moment that will not only necessitate but also authorize the disciples carrying on Jesus’ mission; these thirteen share a meal. Jesus leads them in a meal of the faith. Then it is time to go, the hour is at hand.  Before they go, though, they do one last thing together . They sing. They sing hymns together… Although it most surely does, it shouldn’t surprise us.  Even though, we each know for ourselves the power of singing the faith; we’re surprised when we let this familiar story speak on its own terms, to find out that the very last thing Jesus and his disciples did together was to sing songs of the faith… The...

...if i could i would no longer be barren When I was just starting here, I asked a pastor-friend what was the biggest challenge to ministry. The answer he gave, surprised me. His answer was “affluence.”  When he told me that, I retorted, ‘it’s not like you’re not serving in some wealthy suburb or anything like that.’ The truth was, he was serving a congregation that was probably less well off than we are. He just looked at me and asked, ‘do you know how much it costs to corrupt a youth? You can do it for as little as $200, or so.” Then he said something that has always stuck with me, ‘the churches I’ve served, seem to have a remarkable inability to deal with the ambiguity, the moral dilemmas of money.’ And as much as we’re loath to admit it, he’s probably right… We like to pretend we’re perfectly capable of handling our money on our own, on managing our assets ourselves, on spending and saving for our self; but the truth is, we know better . I’m not advocating ...

i won't be waiting anymore Prayer has been described as the mother tongue of Christians, as our cradle language. If that is true, though, why does it seem that we stopped speaking this language after leaving the cradle, if not earlier? There are a number of reasons why prayer is so difficult, but for today I want to cut to the core. A sermon exhorting us to pray more or offer unsolicited tips for a dynamic prayer life, will be no more helpful than the guru who gives a long list of methods for success and at the end adds one last impossible rule parading as help by saying some rubbish like, ‘but don’t stress about it, take it easy, have fun with it, let it happen.’ The truth is, there is a disquieting reason why prayer is so hard; and until the heart of the matter is spoken to, prayer will remain a challenge… The problem with prayer is that in prayer we come before The Creator, we come before God. Until we’re right with God, prayer will always be challenging, off,...

Before we have a sermon extolling us to read the Bible more often, let’s just admit it, reading scripture is hard . After all, the Bible is written in a foreign language, comes from a different culture, has an ancient history and is full of names that are alien to our ears. That isn’t to say anything about the challenge of cultivating a discipline of reading scripture, either. So yes, reading scripture is hard… The truth, though, the truth is that none of that stuff, is the biggest challenge when it comes to reading scripture.  Martin Luther described scripture as the cradle that holds Christ… And it occurs to me, that while we would all agree with that aphorism; we don’t really believe it. For instance, any Christian will agree that scripture is important. When the question is asked about why scripture is important, though; you will get a whole host of answers. None of the answers, unfortunately, have much to do with Christ, though… Some will say scriptu...

One of the things Beverly is most remembered for, is her grace; she was a graceful woman. She could light up any room. In fact, not only did she love to dance, others loved to dance with her; graceful as she was. And that’s why we’ve chosen the lesson from revelation we just read. We didn’t simply choose this lesson because it promises that God will wipe all our tears away and dwell with us, although that is true. No, we chose this lesson because of the promise it insinuates . This lesson promises that God’s creation will finally, fully bear God’s magnificent grace, when God brings all of history together by coming to dwell with it. In other words, we chose this lesson because it promises that, like Bev, our lives, this entire world even will embody grace… One day I asked John why he thought he and Beverly were able to be so graceful throughout Beverly’s struggle with Parkinson’s. After all, simply aging gracefully when one is blessed with good health is challenge enough....