RoboPreacher

though i'm beginning to An Advent sermon on Joel 2:12-17; 26-32 : In today’s scripture, the prophet Joel asks you to bring something difficult to worship… And no , he’s not talking about money or spending that rare free evening on some joyless committee bickering about the color of the sanctuary carpet. No, Joel is talking about something much harder to bring to worship; your heart . Your heart as it really is. And all of it, too. Cracks and all … And we have no shortage of things that break our heart THESE days. Do we? Loved ones we can’t visit. Loved ones who have died . Trips that have been canceled . Holiday gatherings that have been called off. And that’s just the low hanging fruit. Isn’t it? I’m sure you could easily add to this list yourself … Tragically , those “broken hearts and dirty windows that make life difficult to see," to quote John Prine (RIP), are a fact of life. And yet , despite this fact, when it comes to worship, we think WE need to mend our hearts...

we sat down & wept I couldn’t have been here more than a month; I was making a hospital visit, when out of nowhere she asked: “what do you think, why would God let Pastor Chuck die so young.” That was the first time I touched, for myself, the scar that had ripped across this place. I knew that Pastor Chuck’s sudden and tragic death was a part of this place’s story. That day, though, I learned that the scar was still raw. That day I learned that tragedy had ripped across you all and left sorrow and that terrible question in its wake, “why.” That day in the hospital, the woman I was visiting had known me for as long as about ten minutes, and Pastor Chuck’s death had happened over ten years ago. Yet, when she was confronted with someone from Trinity, the first question on her lips wasn’t “how are you,” but “ how could God let something like this happen.” We all know what that’s like, too; to be tormented by some tragedy that prods at what we think we know about G...