2.12.12--Faith or Fad? (Acts 5:27-42)

This might come as a shock to most of you, and if you are never able to look at me the same way again, I do apologize for the upset. But I have to confess something to y’all, and hopefully we can still be friends after I get this off of my chest. Ok… here goes:

I have an absolutely horrible fashion sense.

There. I feel much better.

It’s true, though. I cannot count the number of times that I’ve tried to leave the house in one get-up only to be flagged down by Jess for her to kindly but sternly suggest that I put on different shoes or try for a shirt that is not both wrinkled and stained. Honestly, church is a blessing for me, because it’s not too hard to pick out a shirt and sometimes a tie to go with a black suit. It pretty much does the work for me.

I kid you not, though. In high school, every day of every week—with the exception of when it was freezing outside—I wore the same ensemble: aloha shirt, t-shirt, blue jean shorts, and flip-flops. I had enough aloha shirts to clothe a village, and I would wear out a pair of flip-flops in a matter of months from the constant wear.

I can remember in college trying to figure out just what was right to wear and what wasn’t. An old girlfriend once told me that white doesn’t go with khaki and that brown shoes and belts don’t go with black pants or a black shirt, so I tried to pay attention to colors. That didn’t stop me from wearing striped shirts with floral print shorts, though. Even now, I have no idea which of my jeans I’m allowed to wear with dress shirts and which ones I have to save for days off. And if I had it my way, I’d either wear boots or flip-flops with everything.

Fashion just doesn’t make sense to me. It changes so often, and it seems like every week brings a new fad that will be gone just as quickly. Why even bother paying attention to it, when it is such a transient thing?

So much of our culture is like that, isn’t it? This gadget or this activity is the hot new thing now, but as soon as you get it or try it out, something has taken its place. If you blink, you fall behind everyone else. But this isn’t a new fact of reality. Throughout human history, as technology and innovation continue, the old is discarded for the new. In hunting, this meant transitioning from the spear to the bow and arrow. In war, this meant discarding iron swords for steel. Pottery makes way for glass. Feudalism bends knee to democracy. Frank Sinatra is replaced by Lady Gaga.

2.5.12--Sermon on the Resurrection of Christ

Two years ago, Jessica and I were living in Princeton while I was attending my first semester of seminary. Jessica was working full-time at Starbucks as a shift supervisor and when I wasn’t working on my homework I was desperately and hopelessly trying to find a part-time job. We weren’t in a good place financially. Even with the scholarships and loans that I received, the cost of living was too much for us to handle, and our savings was slowly but steadily diminishing as the bills seemed to steadily increase. In about six months’ time, we would be out of money and in need of other options. Now, I don’t know about you, but money is an extremely stressful thing for me. I never feel like I have enough of it, and I always feel like too much of it is gone before it hits my wallet. Having no money, especially so early in our marriage, was all the more stressful, and we were beginning to worry more and more about how we were going to make it through the summer. To top it off, I was already struggling with my work because I didn’t have any practical outlet for the highly abstract things I was learning. The academic aspect of Princeton Seminary so outweighed the practical that I felt I was drowning in it!

Then I got a call from my district superintendent asking me what I thought about doing a two-point charge. It was a less-than-half-time position at two small but grounded churches, and it came with a parsonage. Would I maybe be interested in this? I remember my voice catching in my throat as I answered him, “Absolutely!”

And all of a sudden, doors that were previously barred began to open. In that one conversation, Jess and I went from not knowing how we were going to continue making payments on her car to figuring out when she would be able to quit her dead-end job and find something she really loved to do. I went from dreading my classes to feeling excited about the chance to learn more that I could then share with my congregations!

It was as if the new day had dawned, and the dread of night fled at the approach of the rising sun.

Sermon 1.29.12--Mark 15:33-39

I think that one of the most underrated Disney movies of all time is The Sword in the Stone, Disney’s tale of how King Arthur—who everyone calls Wart in the film—grew up and his zany adventures with Merlin. I saw a copy of this movie on the DVD rack in BJ’s the other day and then proceeded to spend the rest of my shopping excursion reliving my favorite parts of this movie that I haven’t seen in over a decade.

Two parts in particular still stand out in my mind. Merlin wants young Wart to truly come to know and love the world around him, so as he teaches this king-to-be, Merlin keeps turning him into different animals so that he can experience the world through new eyes. Arthur learns what it’s like to be a fish swimming around in a lake and what it’s like to be a bird soaring through the air. He lives through the joy of near-weightlessness in the water as well as the overpowering fear of running from a predator for dear life. He finds true freedom and ecstasy in flight as well as the pang of loss in the death of a fellow sparrow.

By truly experiencing life in these different forms, Arthur learns to love and care for every creature, great or small.

1.22.12--Sermon on Mark 8:27-30

During my senior year of high school, I took my mom’s Sociology class. It was a dual credit course, and I was trying to wrack up as many college hours as possible before I graduated. Now, other than the little bit of awkwardness of being the son of the teacher, I had a lot fun in the class and learned a lot.

One of the lessons is one I will never forget. We were talking about the actual quantitative effect that peer pressure can have on the individual and how this can easily lead to mob mentality. To illustrate her point, my mom asked ten students to step outside of the classroom for a moment. When they were gone, she drew four lines on the chalkboard. They were all relatively the same size, but third line down was obviously longer than the others. She turned to us and informed us that she had given instructions to all but one of the students outside to pick the top line no matter what she asked of them.

When the ten people came back into the room, she asked each one to point out the longest line of chalk on the board. One after another, nine of the students came up, studied the board, and picked the top line as the longest. Now, Justin, the last student to come up, had not been given any instruction from Mom. He was supposed to come up and pick the longest line based on his observation of the four marks. But when it came his turn, he was so afraid to pick anything contrary to the other students’ choices that he went against his better judgment and chose the top line as well.

His need to fit in with the world around him had overruled his basic logic.

1.15.12--Sermon on Luke 15:11-32

Two weeks’ ago, Jess and I celebrated our second anniversary. As is usually the case on such memorable occasions, this day led to me spending the majority of my quiet time remembering all of the fun that we had at the ceremony and reception and even on the days leading up to it. I remembered the headache of trying to get everyone to his or her spots during the rehearsal. I admit that it was my groomsmen who were the problem. Someone made a comment that it was like herding cats, and they weren’t far off from the truth. I remembered having breakfast with Jess the morning of, both of us brimming with excitement for what the day would hold. So many memories crowded in my head, and, honestly, not all of them were happy memories.

I remembered the little tug in my heart when I realized that some of my family members had decided not to come to the wedding. I remembered some completely unnecessary tension that had formed between one of my groomsmen and me. And I remember being furious at two of my brothers while driving to the reception. 

12.11--Our Advent (Sermon on Isaiah 61:1-3 and Luke 4:14-21)

A week and a half ago, while I was still sleeping, millions of people around the nation were up and preparing for one of the scariest, one of the craziest, and one of the most unsettling events of the year: Black Friday.

Do we have any Black Friday shoppers here? Does anyone go out and brave the cold weather, early morning, and cutthroat competition on the morning after Thanksgiving? I can’t bring myself to do it for a couple reasons. The first is that I value my sleep too much to ever desecrate it by waking up so early. The second is that I spent many a Black Fridays growing up going out with my mom and waiting in the seemingly mile-long lines while she ran around and grabbed any- and everything she could find off of her Christmas list. I’ve earned my shopping stripes. I’m retired.

This year, though, one of my classmates woke up from his turkey nap at 10 pm to try and be one of the first in line at Best Buy. He had his heart set on a new TV for his family, and he was not going to let the deal pass. Unfortunately, he did not get there early enough to be among the first inside the store. He ended up waiting out in the cold in a line that wrapped around the building for almost 4 hours and then spent another hour inside the store. While he waited, he started talking with the people on either side of him. The gentleman ahead of him was there to purchase a new computer for his mom. The one behind him was there for a game system for his kids. As they talked, my friend heard more and more testimonies around him of shoppers who were there for the purpose of buying for others.

They waited, and waited, and waited, just so that they could make someone else happy.

12.4--Great Expectations (Sermon on Luke 1:5-25)

The story goes that Balaam, a priest and sorcerer of much renown, was on his way to thwart the Israelite king and his armies. Having been hired by the enemies of Israel, Balaam set out on his trusted donkey to the Jew’s encampment so that he might curse them and gain for his employers the upper hand. As he was traveling, God sent an angel, armed with a sword, to bar his way.

Now, Balaam, for all his prowess and priestliness, could not see this heavenly being standing so menacingly in front of him. If he had been unimpeded in his traveling, his life would have been cut rather short. Luckily for him, his trusted steed’s eyes were opened to the impending doom, and she stopped in place and would not move a step closer to the armed seraph. Balaam, who was oblivious to the danger, cursed his donkey and beat her. She moves slowly and carefully around the angel, and they continue on their way.

The story is not over, though. God moves his malicious messenger farther down the road. Again, the donkey sees what Balaam cannot. Again, the donkey stops short. And again, Balaam curses and beats her. Not the nicest guy, is he?

A third time God places his angel in Balaam’s path, but this time it is in a narrow gorge. The angel is taking up the entire path, and there’s no way for the Balaam-laden donkey to work herself around the heavenly barrier. When the donkey sees the angel, she stops and will not move, no matter how much Balaam beats her and curses her. Now, Balaam is not a patient man. He, a priest and sorcerer of great renown, is used to kings shriveling before his gaze. No one crosses him, and yet this donkey is getting the upper hand… or hoof… on him. He has had enough, and he is ready to strike this animal down for her incompetence. But as he prepares to kill her, God opens the donkey’s mouth and Balaam’s eyes and ears. She—the donkey—calls him out for being an ignorant jerk, and he, already wide-eyed at his donkey speaking, sees the angel waiting menacingly ahead of them.

He was completely caught off guard by the angel and the donkey.