Welcome to the climax of the Christian year. This service, much like Holy Week itself, is all over the place. Highs. Lows. Joy. Suffering. Light. Darkness. Everything we talk about all year long, comes to a head in this holiest of times.
With such a long gospel reading today, there is much to preach on. In a hundred odd verses we have the entire ministry and person of Christ on display in high speed. On a Sunday such as this, there really isn’t a wrong way to go. This year, however, I’m going to focus on the verse that immediately stood out to me.
Read more...Yesterday morning when I came out of my office, Rosemary asked me a very important question. Knowing that I was working on my sermon, she asked me, “Daddy, how do you write a sermon?”
It’s an important question, because I think a lot of people have a certain idea about sermon preparation that’s actually a good bit different from what happens. (At least for me.)
I’ll pull the curtain back a bit and fill you in on my process. First, I pray. Then I read the lectionary readings for the week. Then, I pray again. Then I stare out the window. I wait for the Holy Spirit to give me a faint starting idea. Then, I write and listen. So often, the place I’m taken by the end of the sermon is very different from what I’d have expected. So often, there’s something in the reading I hadn’t noticed before. More often than not, conversations and readings from the last several weeks come into focus and I realize that God was preparing my sermon for me weeks in advance.
Read more...Nashville is a tricky city for us Christians. On one hand, we’re Southern enough that the church is still expected and Christianity is not completely unknown. On the other hand, we’re metropolitan enough that the social norms and ideas of the secular world are fully engrained and lived in the society around us.
In Nashville it’s not necessarily completely odd that you go to church on Sunday or have a “spiritual” life, but it is very clear that proclaiming Jesus as “The Way” and expressing traditional Christian ethics out loud in mixed company is not welcome. Nashville is the type of place where no one bats an eye at someone being a Christian, but they are shocked when your Christianity affirms things like sacraments, resurrection, and a God whose holiness impacts even our most intimate moments. In short, Christianity is fine so long as it doesn’t impact your life or your worldview in any way whatsoever.
Read more...Now, for those of you who know me — and even for those who’ve just heard the last few seconds — I’m sure it’s hard to believe that I could be any odder than I am now. But, believe you me, I was a very strange and awkward teenager. Asthmatic, nerdy, Mormon boys don’t really have a lot of places to fit in in Alabama. Looking back, it’s a sure sign of God’s providence and protection over my life that I made it out of school relatively unscathed. Outside of God, there really is no reason why I shouldn’t have been mercilessly bullied each and every day.
Read more...If there’s one thing the World knows about us Christians, it’s that we’re hypocrites. We’re either out there telling people we believe in love and peace when they see volumes one through eight of “The Crusades and Other Christian Wars” on the shelf right behind us. Or we’re wearing a WWJD t-shirt and a purity ring as we stumble down the Strip in Vegas. Naturally, we like to rationalize these hypocritical Christians away in our minds. They’re the “wrong” kinds of Christians: hippies who need to better understand just war theory and cultural Christians who like the Church so long as it doesn’t interfere with their own personal goals and desires.
Read more...How many of y’all have sat through an all-hands meeting? Having spent the greater part of a decade in the Nashville corporate scene, I’ve been in my fair share. For an hour (or more if you’re particularly unlucky) a stream of people come across the stage (or these days your screen) to, nominally, share with you “exciting” news and to “inform” you about all the “good” things on the horizon. But, we all know the reality. It’s spin. A reorganization is going to be announced. Layoffs happened in a part of the org. The company is moving its focus to a new product or industry.
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