To be a Christian often means living in the undefined spaces of tension between things that together cannot be true and yet are. Take today for an example. In the Christian calendar, today is the seventh Sunday of Easter and the first Sunday after Ascension. Also today, many Christians in the United States will reflect upon the lives lost over the centuries by the United States Armed Forces as a church prelude to Memorial Day on tomorrow.
Read more...Shepherd of Israel, listen, you who lead Joseph like a flock; enthroned on the cherubs, shine on Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh; rouse your strength, come to us and save us! Yahweh Sabaoth, bring us back, let your face smile on us and we shall be safe. Yahweh Sabaoth, how much longer will you smoulder at your people’s prayer? Having fed us on the bread of tears, having made us drink them in such measure, you now let our neighbours quarrel over us and our enemies deride us. Yahweh Sabaoth, bring us back, let your face smile on us and we shall be safe. There was a vine? you uprooted it from Egypt; to plant it, you drove out other nations, you cleared a space where it could grow, it took root and filled the whole country. It covered the mountains with its shade, the cedars of God with its branches, its tendrils extended to the sea, its offshoots all the way to the river. Why have you destroyed its fences? Now anyone can go and steal its grapes, the forest boar can ravage it and wild animals eat it. Please, Yahweh Sabaoth, relent! Look down from heaven, look at this vine, visit it, protect what your own right hand has planted. They threw it on the fire like dung, but one look of reproof from you and they will be doomed. May your hand protect the man at your right, the son of man who has been authorised by you. We shall never turn from you again; our life renewed, we shall invoke your name, Yahweh Sabaoth, bring us back, let your face smile on us and we shall be safe. (Psalm 80, Jerusalem Bible)
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Whether we realize it or not we all have expectations. When a football player enters the end-zone after a game-changing interception we expect a big team celebration. Presidential candidates are expected to kiss babies. When an application gets updated on your phone you expect new features and a new look. These and so many of the expectations of our daily lives are unspoken. No one really notices they even exist until they are not met. If a team casually walked away from the end-zone after a touchdown or a presidential candidate refused a baby, it would make the news. Take a moment sometime and read the reviews on the App Store. There are lots of unmet expectations being communicated – at varying degrees of eloquence and rationality – there.
Read more...There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Silo′am fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
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In today’s gospel reading we find Jesus attending worship at his home congregation in Nazareth for the first time since he left. One can almost imagine the scene as the familiar – and yet now somehow unfamiliar – Jesus takes his old place in the synagogue. The sweet elders of the congregation surround him, excited to hear how the boy they saw grow up has faired in the world. The men Jesus grew up with fish for stories of life outside of little Nazareth; tales of danger and adventure. For others, it is as if time hasn’t passed; Jesus is – frustratingly – still treated as the carpenter’s boy. As anyone who has left home for a time and then returned can attest, the scene Jesus finds himself in is already setup to be a charged situation. Jesus, however, has done a lot more than study a semester at Judah State or take a month abroad in Rome.
Read more...Good morning holy, healthy, and happy people of God! If you are visiting today, I welcome you and apologize at the same time. Please do not judge McKendree by today’s sermon. I am but the humble seminary student here. Pastor Stephen will be back preaching as normal next week and I strongly encourage you to come back then.
Today marks the third time I’ve preached from this pulpit. People told me this would get easier over time, and I must say the writing part does get easier with each attempt. Surprisingly once one learns to let go of one’s high thoughts about one’s intellect and humbly falls before God praying only that his thought be expressed, the writing goes much easier. Hmmm, humbleness before the Lord bringing great joy, I seem to remember a book being written about that… Yes, some of us are slow learners. Those of us called to ministry, I’ve found, are often times the slowest of all.
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