From Karma to Grace

... A Prayer for the Second Sunday in Lent: 

We have confessed our imperfection to you O God,
and we have received your forgiveness.

Help us now to move beyond
the old cycles that held us captive.
For without you,
we are caught up in the universal cycle
of cause and effect,
of pain and retribution,
or trying to earn a salvation
that remains far distant from us.

So thank you for your grace.
Thank you for loving us
with the love of a perfect Parent—
a love that asks no questions,

Always a Reckoning: A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

Therefore his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.

—Rom. 4:22

Just about all religions offer the world a set of rules. In fact, many of the rules are the same from religion to religion. Most religions also offer a set of teachings to help believers understand the deep

things of God and the heights of the universe, Christianity is, of course, a religion that—at least to some extent—offers rules and insights. But it might be the case that we’re deficient in both areas—at least compared to some of our competitors.

Most religions also offer believers a bit of entertainment, whether it’s in the form of ritual, or music, complicated liturgy, or maybe just a long weekly speech. In this, Christianity excels. But in a world with every form of entertainment imaginable available 24/7, humanity is turning less and less to Christian worship services in order to fill its hour of boredom.

And so, does Christianity actually offer anything that isn’t offered anywhere else or by any other religion? The answer is Yes. Christianity offers Grace. Grace is just a fancy word for unconditional love, or (to put it bluntly) getting something for nothing.

You’d think that this peculiar offering of Christianity would be wildly popular—

The Perfect Example: A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

I know this is the sort of thing Bob told you all a million times, but I think you need a quick refresher course on the gospels. For starters, it’s obvious to everybody that the Gospel According to John is very different from the other three. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, on the other hand, share a similar viewpoint— that is, they describe more of the same events in the same order— and so we group them together using a Greek word for common viewpoint and call them the Synoptic Gospels. 

The symbols of the four evangelists are an eagle
(John), a winged lion (Mark), a winged man
(Matthew), and a winged ox (Luke)

Now, of these three, Matthew and Luke seem to have more in common with each other than they do with Mark. For one thing, they’re longer. But on top of that, the material they contain that’s not in Mark seems to come from the same source. But they were written nearly 2000 years ago, and so we have no idea what that source was. But we do have a name for it. And that name isn’t Greek, but German. It’s a two-syllable, six-letter word: Quelle, which just means source. But apparently that’s too long and too hard, so we usually call this lost source by its first letter: Q.

One of the biblical stories where we can see the differences among the gospels is

Pastoral Prayer after Another Mass Shooting

How good it feels to come to you in time of need, O God.
We thank you for assuring us that you are in control,
even in times of natural disaster.
When the wind blows and the earth shakes and the waters rise,
your power is on display,
the forces of nature are creating a new thing,
and even when all around is devastation,
yet our faith in you remains firm.

When sickness strikes, when disease ravages,
and when doctors are powerless, we know that you are there;
that the Suffering Servant suffers with us;
that your Spirit of healing is at work
even when all hope is lost.

But when the sickness is the sickness of a nation’s soul,
when the disaster is unnatural,
when the responsibility is ours,
to whom can we turn?
When our thoughts are of violence and our prayers are selfish,
dare we approach your throne with our entreaties for peace?
When we place our passion for weaponry
above our love for our children,
what can we say to you?

So speak to us, God.
Drown out all other voices but yours.
Let your creating word descend upon us,
and may it not return to you empty.
Convert us, O God,
from worship of the passing values of the world
to an affirmation that your ways are not our ways,
and that we need not fear vulnerability
when you are our refuge and our strength,
a very present help in trouble.

And we are in trouble, O God.
Help us, for we refuse to help ourselves.
Alone we are weak,
and together we feed off one another’s fear
and stoke the fires of anger.
Help us to move beyond feeling helpless in the face of fear and wrath.
Give us the words to speak,
help us to stand up to cowardly politics,
remind us that the power of money
cannot resist against your power.
Sweep through us and among us with fresh winds of your Spirit,
and help us create change
when the new thing that we know should be possible
still seems impossible.

All this we pray in the Name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior,
who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns
as one God both now and forever. Amen.

Your Treasure Chest: An Ash Wednesday Call to Reëvaluation

"Where your treasure is…" In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave us a way to picture our blessings and our values and priorities. He gave us the treasure chest. And I can’t think of a better way to begin Lent than to place that image before us right now. For it’s our treasure chests that’ll help guide us through our Lenten discipline.

Let’s begin by imagining ourselves with our treasure chest in front of us. Each of us probably has a different chest, but mine is one of those big old wooden ones— the kind that pirates always have in adventure stories. Whether yours is wood or metal or some other material, whether it’s big or small, new or old, think of it with the lid closed. Because I want us all to open our chests together.

Let’s do that right now. Does yours open silently or with a squeak, a creak, or a groan? The noise it makes in our minds might tell us how often we open our treasure chest. And however often we open it might indicate how often we share what’s in there, or whether it’s something that we openly admit we treasure, or something we idolize only in secret.

Now that it’s open,

Plum Transfigured

Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

—Mark 9:5

Introduction: Prunes

If I were to ask you where you were on certain famous dates in history, chances are you’d be able to answer me without hesitation—it all depends on your age. Where were you, for example, November 22, 1963 when John F. Kennedy got shot? I was only 3½ years old back then, but the impact of that event was so huge, that either the news of what happened or the funeral itself is my first memory: I very vague remember coming down the stairs and it being on television.

Or what about September 11, 2001? That’s much more recent, and just about everybody remembers where they were when they heard the news of the terrorist attacks. My memories are especially vivid, because, as I shared with you a few months ago, I was actually on an airplane that was just about to enter U.S. airspace when my plane was diverted to Newfoundland where I spent the next week as a refugee. Everything not only about that moment, but about that whole week is indelibly etched in my memory.

But where were you on June 23, 2000? Do you remember? I know I’ll never forget that day. I was driving down Loiza Street in San Juan, PR, when a news report came over WOSO-AM radio informing me of the demise of the California prune. Yes, it was on that day that the Food & Drug Administration gave the California Prune Board permission to change the prune’s name to the dried plum.

The reason? Well, that’s pretty obvious. Prunes are boring. They’re eaten by people whose main concern is their digestion. You won’t see Justin Bieber or Beyoncé or Kanye or Lady Gaga snacking on prunes between songs at their concerts. Dried plums, on the other hand, sound exotic—maybe even sexy. They sound youthful and cool and upwardly mobile—something you might look for amongst the in crowd at Whole Foods.

Wolf by First Aid Kit

'On Eagles Wings'

An Invitation to the Table 

based on Isaiah 40:31

The Dark Side of Christianity

This was my 9 AM sermon this morning.

If you peek into the sanctuary, you’ll see that the liturgical color right now is green. Not only that but, according to the Common Lectionary, the Old Testament reading appointed for Super Bowl Sunday promises us that “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

So it would appear that God has already chosen our Super Bowl winner for us.

When I was planning 2018 worship, of course, I had no idea who’d be playing in today’s big game, but I gravitated toward preaching on Isaiah 40:31—the verse about the wings like eagles—because it’s such a beloved piece of scripture.

And it is a truly great verse—not least of which because of its actual context. Remember, Isaiah wrote those words to Israel while they were still in exile. So they must certainly have been weary and felt hopeless. So Isaiah reminds Israel how all-powerful God is, and that God is promising them a huge comeback—bigger even than the Tide in their last big game.

When you think about it, both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures are all about comebacks, and God’s power to bring them about.