RoboPreacher

i could kiss them / but the bravest make mistakes A sermon on the 3rd act of Joseph's 7 act drama: If you listen carefully , you’ll notice two stories taking place in today’s single passage of Scripture. On the one hand, there’s a tawdry passage fit for the steamiest moments of daytime television. And on the other hand, there’s the passage that soars with the wondrous work of God .   These two stories, though , of course , are one and the same . Let me tell you one of them. And as I do, chart the rise and fall of the protagonist. In this telling, Joseph has the hand of God on him.   It begins with good ol’ Joe landing a new job. And from the word go , he’s got that golden touch. Everything he puts his hand to succeeds . As such, he’s quickly promoted .   What’s more, all that success starts attracting attention . Eventually, Joseph gains the eye of his boss’ spouse . And she’s so taken with him that she puts in a word for Joseph.   This word does the trick, ...

tell me you love me anyway The conclusion of the Joseph family saga : Today’s passage is the very end of the lovely Joseph saga . I commend it to you, Genesis 37 through 50. I’d like to read the entire story, but we’d run out of time.   So this passage might land the punch it packs, though, I’d like to give you a general idea of this story’s overall shape. To do that, I’d like to lead you through a little exercise. This is borrowed straight from the author, Kurt Vonnegut. You can YouTube his “shape of story” lecture .   He does this thing where he charts stories on a simple graph. The horizontal axis has a “B” on the left end and an “E” on the right , for Beginning and End. The vertical axis has a “G” at the top and an “I” at the bottom , for Good fortune and Ill fortune.   Now, Vonnegut works through this exercise to illustrate how most stories have the same trajectory, and nearly always lie . They presume to know more about life than we actually do.   If yo...

you take me out to pasture now A reading from Genesis 39 As we prepared for our trip to Croatia, one place kept turning up in nearly all the travel literature we read: The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb. It’s an odd concept, to be sure. A museum dedicated to the breaking of bonds. Apparently the idea formed when the creators went through a break-up of their own. As they went through all their belongings, deciding who would get what , they joked about forming a collection ; an exhibit of artifacts that told the story of relational demise .   So they put out a world-wide call for artifacts from debris of past relationships. And as pieces flooded in, they quickly had enough material to form a traveling exhibit.   …So many were the entires, though; and so popular was the exhibit, that eventually a permanent location had to be established to house all the artifacts! Now, when you enter the museum there’s a note explaining how w...

hours 'til the dawn A sermon about Jacob's 12 sons : You know, it’s more true than we like to admit, “ the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree .” The old and faithful Abraham finally had the child he was promised back in Genesis 21. And Isaac, meaning laughter, has two children, twins of his own. Esau the eldest, and Jacob the huckster. Jacob who has a con going from the start, born holding his elder brother’s heel - trying to steal the birthright. Finally, in Genesis 27 he does steal the birthright from his older brother, Esau.  And it is from there that Jacob drags the reputation of God’s family through the mud… Jacob has twelve children himself. And in the scripture passage we just heard, you have to admit; the apple has not fallen far from the tree, has it? Every single one of the characters in this story has a con going! Why they make “ Keeping Up with the Kardashians ” look like “Little House on the Prairie” by comparison!  So much for good,...