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Asking the Hard Questions

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5 Mar 2014

First Sunday of Lent

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11

In the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category was the story from a few days ago about the Kentucky Baptist Convention leading what they’re calling “Second Amendment Celebrations” where churches around the state give away guns as door prizes to lure in nonbelievers in hopes of converting them to Christ.

At one such upcoming event organizers are expecting as many as 1,000 people where they will be given a free steak dinner and the chance to win one of 25 handguns, long guns and shotguns.

The goal is to “point people to Christ,” says a church sponsoring the event, and the Kentucky Baptist Convention said 1,678 men made “professions of faith” at about 50 such events last year, most of them in Kentucky.

Is anyone asking any questions about this? Read more

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Palms

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

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21 Mar 2013

Palm Sunday

Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29
Luke 19:28-40

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

These celebratory words plunge us into Palm Sunday pageantry: greens waving, draped cloaks, children processing, and hosannas resounding. Six weeks into Lent, we may be looking for an escape. We hear the cry, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” and we catch a brief glimpse of Jesus as coming king. Finally there is light in the darkness!

The crowds that gathered some 2000 years ago are also relieved; it’s not simply six weeks from which they seek reprieve, but a lifetime (and an ancestry) of heaviness, oppression and fragility. At last Jesus will take hold of Jerusalem! Maybe even a wisp of smugness laces the festivities; finally the powers that reign are going to be put in their place. “That will show those Roman occupiers who our God really is!”

Mixed with our anticipation, we also are prone to gather with a waft of conceit. Read more

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Mourning

“The regime…was just demolished…by…tears.”

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15 Mar 2013

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3: 4-14
John 8: 1-11

Lent is a difficult season to live into. 40 days contemplating our frail and fragile condition, giving sadness and heaviness room to breathe. This is particularly true in a culture that values positivity like it were gold. Which leaves little room for tears. Crying is for girls, or babies, not for people who are trying to keep it all together. Yet this week’s psalm is all weepy and emotional.

The psalmist apparently has no regard for good manners or propriety. Psalm 126 reads like the interior of a manic person.

Laughing, shouting, crying, shouting, weeping, shouts of joy.

None of it is ignored, all of the emotions are part of the song, all honored. The psalm cares nothing for the safe center of the emotional spectrum. It does not say: “First we were all a little bummed, but then we felt pretty good.” No. Instead it says: “First we were drenched in tears, then we were shouting for joy.” Read more

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Prodigal Son

Difficult Freedom

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6 Mar 2013

Fourth Sunday of Lent
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

With regard to last week’s readings, Jim McCoy began in meditation on William Stringfellow’s description of the freedom of the church… “you are freer than you think.” During Lent, worship in our congregation recalls repeatedly Jesus’ temptation in the desert, which echoes the Exodus from Egypt and the Israelites’ wandering in the desert. Prior to the gospel reading, we sing “forty days and forty nights/thou was fasting in the wild/forty days and forty nights/tempted, and yet undefiled….” If the dramatic event of liberation from the tyrannical Pharaoh speaks to us clearly of what we are freed from, the desert experience is key to learning what we are freed for. Read more

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peacock display

A Cheer for an Invisible Parade

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1 Mar 2013

Third Sunday of Lent
Isaiah 55:1-13
I Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

It is worse than you think it is and you are freer than you think you are. The powers are raging beyond your control and they are already overcome in Christ. The division is an uncrossable spiritual chasm and it’s been crossed.
- William Stringfellow

The Church in America is fragmented and in disarray, laments Fleming Rutledge. The impasse of different factions is symptomatic of “a perilous state of affairs” (And God Spoke to Abraham). Rutledge’s emergency room prescription? Six months of intensive preaching, teaching and small group study of Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55). This “unknown prophet of the exile” tells the whole glorious Story of God which alone can save the Church from itself.

It’s not hard to see why this portion of Scripture speaks to our day. The prophet writes out of exile, having lost even the filters that keep one from facing how urgent the situation really is,”Down here with the savages,in a world of freed Barabbases,/Where nuns carry guns to protect themselves from rape”(Pierce Pettis). Read more

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