HOMILETICS

Litany for Advent 1 based on Isaiah 64:1

Leader: Awesome and mighty God, you promised long ago to visit us in human form. Prophets and seers foretold your coming to a world heedless and uncaring. We marvel at the quietness and simplicity of the incarnation, We stand in awe of your choice of the right time -- the fullness of time -- for being born to us; for growing up with such amazing love for all of us; for going all the way to the Cross for us; and for pursuing us still, relentlessly, with your offer of redemption. O God, you come to us daily, in season and out of season, invited or unasked. As your people, we pray as did the prophet of old, Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

Leader: Come to us, helping us to recognize you in the midst of our cluttered lives that the comfort and the warning of your Presence may not be wasted on us. Oh, that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

Leader: Come to us with rebuke if we have been unresponsive or irresponsible, if we have treated important obligations lightly or fulfilled our ministry to a world in pain with callous indifference. Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

Leader: Come to us with healing when we are afflicted with illness or our loved ones are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Help us to fear no evil. Come to us with consolation when we are grieving. Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

Leader: Come to us and sustain us when our faith is tested, when our future seems uncertain, when and if we feel the pain of loneliness. Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

Leader: Come to us, fulfilling your promise through the prophet Isaiah that when we pass through the water you, O Lord will be with us, and when we pass through the rivers they will not overflow us, and when we pass through the fire we shall not be burned. Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

Leader: Come to us when we’re lacking discernment and fill us with the spirit of wisdom and understanding; come to us when we’re weak and hesitant and fill us with the spirit of counsel and of power; come to us when we’re lost our vision of you and fill us with the spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord. Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord.

Leader: And come to us, as a child who is born, a son who is given, as one who is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Oh that you would rend the heavens …

People: And come down, O Lord!

LEADER: AMEN!

This Turkey Needs a Pardon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Somehow, this year, giving thanks is invested with more meaning than in previous years—because, ironically, many of us have less to be thankful for, as such things are often measured.

Then, one has to remember our lot compared to those around the world. Our hearts go out to those who are in mourning in Mumbai, as that tragedy continues to unfold.

But my thoughts have also wandered to that quaint White House tradition of issuing a presidential pardon to the turkey that otherwise would be sitting atop the banquet table in the West Wing.

Go to www.snopes.com for details as to how this all got started. It did not begin, as many believe, with Harry S. Truman in 1947, but, surprisingly, with H.W. in 1988 or 1989.

In any event, I thought that along with my own prayers of thanksgiving, I’d ask God to grant a pardon to the biggest turkey of all.

That would be me.

The good news is the God is a God who keeps promises.

And that is something for which to be thankful as I journey from Thanksgiving Day to the First Sunday in Advent.

Emmanuel.

God is with us.

All us turkeys.

Unrehearsed Christmas Pageant

You’re in a small church. The First Sunday of Advent is days away. You don’t have a Christmas program planned yet, or it’s not coming together. And you were not able to afford a fancy DVD program with cued music and PowerPoints slides or videos. What to do?

Announce an “Unrehearsed Christmas Pageant” for the 14th or 21st or even the 24th.

Ask for a Mary and Joseph volunteer, and then ask for children to sign up for angel and shepherd “parts” and wise “men,” too. Tell parents to bring towels and bathrobes for costumes. And voila!
You have a Christmas pageant.

You create a program of Scripture readings and carols, and send in the players accordingly. When the congregation sings, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” –in go the angels.

“While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night”—in go the shepherds. And so on.

This really works. In fact Google the title of this blog and you’ll find scores of churches that have done this very thing.

A Smidgeon of Solace

Merrill. Timothy Merrill.

With a license to pray. And prayer is what you needed if you tried to sit through the latest abysmal and incomprehensible Bond movie.

I think, were I to be offering a Call to Worship this Sunday morning --which I'm not-- I'd make a desultory nod to the movie, by saying that it offered not a quantum of solace but at best a smidgeon, and that they've come to the right place if seeking a true quantum of solace.

In these trying times,we need quantums and quantums of solace, and when we turn in other directions, we're likely to find only empty promises; we grasp at straws in the wind and come up empty-handed.

On Thanksgiving Sunday, we gather in company with the faithful and in a sanctuary of solace,find more than a smidgeon of rest for our souls.

Amen.

Annual Time to Stop and Give Thanks

Gosh, it is Thanksgiving again—already?

Time to stop what we’re doing to give thanks, and then on the Friday following start spending money like there’s no tomorrow.

Wait. That’s right. We may have no tomorrow. We have no money, no retirement, no equity in our houses, no gas in our cars, no jobs.

This Thanksgiving, thousands in the auto industry are facing the prospect of unemployment checks, soup kitchens and bread lines. It’s bleak.

We're worried. Perhaps that's why 60% responding to the current poll (to the left) at this point in time are saying that the president-elects first priority when taking office is to help pull the country out of the recession.

Perhaps this Thanksgiving Sunday will be one of the more memorable ones in recent history. I suspect that if you hold an emergency Thanksgiving service on Wednesday night, you might have a fair crowd show up.

Truth is, the spirit of thankfulness has never been tied to economic prosperity. Oh, to be sure, when we prosper, it would be the height of ingratitude not to express thanksgiving, and a humble sense of unworthiness.

And granted, the pilgrims who were headed for Virginia but got blown northward and landed in what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts—see the irony—were thankful that first cold winter when few survived that they were able to find some Indian caches of food and help themselves, and were thankful when some crops came in the following year.

But the giving of thanksgiving is a Christian duty and sacrifice. We offer thanksgiving because it is right and fitting to be thankful to God the Creator of all things. So Sunday we gather, cap in hand, asking for our daily bread, but otherwise to offer thanks to the living God for all things great and small.

On a related note … just finished watching the HBO series, John Adams, a dramatization of the life and influence of our second president, and the only other president beside H.W. to live to see a son also occupy the office. The seven-part series was an instructive tool to help me see again how manifest are our blessings because of the sacrifice of our forebears in securing our freedom. Adam, an irasible, crumudeonly figure, not particularly popular, was as practical as Jefferson, his successor was idealistic and intellectual. They were described as the north and south poles of our revolution, and both died on July 4, 1836, Jefferson first, and Adams hours later.

Also … the BBC carried a news item today of an intelligence report that says that U.S. influence on the global stage is one the wane and will continue to wane, while that of China, Russia and India will continue to expand and become more powerful.

Time to be thankful … To live in a new way with hope, to experience what our president-elect has called the “audacity of hope.”

May next Thursday be a day when we give thanks, and take hope. If we give the one and take the other, life can be good.

 

Hey! Who Moved My Ladder?!?

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is one of the most revered holy sites of the Christian faith.

And it’s so holy, its priests and caretakers will just about fight to the death anyone who presumes to diminish its holiness.

The church is an architectural hodgepodge. Looks like it was built by a committee—which it sort of was. Over 1,500 years old, it was cobbled together by the Armenian Orthodox Committee, Greek Orthodox committee, Egyptian Coptic Committee, and others, no doubt. The place is a bewildering maze of chapels, apses, closets and shrines. It has more nooks and crannies than a wheel of Swiss cheese.

Last week a brawl broke out between the Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks during an Armenian procession commemorating the 4th-century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

The Greeks had their reasons, of course, and you can read the details here.

Israeli police intervened, and two monks were arrested and led away in handcuffs.

One report says that “After the brawl, the church was crowded with Israeli riot police holding assault rifles, standing beside Golgotha, where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, and the long smooth stone marking the place where tradition holds his body was laid out.”

I was going to say that Jesus must be rolling over in his grave. But no, he’s not there. But given this kind of behavior, he might as well be.

I was pastor of a church which we shared with a Hispanic congregation. We never interfered with each other’s processions, but there were accusations of disappearing possessions, and there was bickering about all the space they took up in the sanctuary with speakers, keyboards, microphones and the like, and after 18 months or so, they left or were asked to leave. By then I was gone, too—not for reasons linked to this arrangement.

But, not all disagreeable disagreements are linked to multicultural misunderstandings. Get a few preachers together, and they could all rattle off hilarious battles fought with righteous intentions over the most inconsequential of issues, congregations whose favorite hymn is, "I Shall Not Be, I Shall Not Be Moved."

To wit: to go back to this particular case, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the government wants the church to build a fire exit, but the committees can’t agree on where to put it.

To wit: There’s a ladder standing on a ledge over the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, put there back in the 1800s. It’s stayed there ever since because of a dispute over who has the authority to take it down.
 
Reminds me of the American flag standing behind the pulpit in a previous, much beloved, church (mentioned above) where I pontificated on Sundays. It suddenly appeared there, like out of nowhere. I was nonplussed, so I moved it to a closet (I have a thing about symbols of civil authority or government in a sacred worship area). The next Sunday it reappeared! I moved it. It got moved back. I never learned who kept moving it back (perhaps I’ve forgotten). We were able, however, to resolve the issue.

Hey—the apostle Paul had similar problems. Read Philippians 2, and 4. Read Acts 15.

The Case of the Standing Ladder, however, is a gem. It shall not be--it shall not be moved! If and when you get to preaching about “being of one mind, that my joy might be full,” this is a great story with which to begin.

Don’t Wear Sport-related Vestments

Don’t Wear Sport-related Vestments. That’s the advice of respondents to a poll we put up last month. It was one of our most popular polls. A good 70% said that they would NOT wear the colors of the local sports team on the brink of going to the Super Bowl, or the World Series, not matter how frenzied their fan base in the congregation. About half of that group did know why they were of this opinion, but the other half believed that to do so would be a profane intrusion into the worship space, and a distraction from the sacred purpose for which worshippers had gathered.

But 30% disagreed. About half of those didn’t know WHY they thought it was okay to wear fan-friendly vestments, but the other half thought that doing so promoted a sense of community and spirit.

I Don’t Believe In Goodness; Too Much Bad Done in Name of Good

The facts are these:

There’s a small, but occasionally vocal minority of dear souls who for some fool reason take pride in announcing that they don’t believe in God; some have even written books earnestly argued but hopeless flawed on the topic, while others have come to terms with the notion that they’re alone in the universe.

For a number of years, some of them have been promoting a new slogan, a marketing campaign as it were: “Why believe in a god? Be good for goodness sake.”

This cute phrase popped up in ads yesterday in The Washington Post and The New York Times and we’re likely to see more of them.

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, says that the ads are not intended for a believing audience, but for other non-believers, to let them know—and here’s the irony—that they’re not alone.

Well, yes, they are. But I digress.

This is a topic that could be discussed Sunday morning. It’s a subject that interests me greatly, and one to which I’d love to devote a week of reflection, and THEN write a well-reasoned, philosophical discourse that I’d post here that would be sure to impress.

Instead, I’ve just got up, barely made it to the coffee pot, sitting here in my boxer shorts, and I’m not feeling really too intellectual this morning. Why believe in a god? That’s the question posed by these blokes. Let’s see. How long did it take Aquinas to write the Summa Theologica? I’ve got five minutes, and then I got to go to the bathroom.

Here’s a couple of initial reactions. I’ve never understood this business of connecting goodness to a belief in God. The slogan is a non-sequitur for me. Read Camus’ La Peste (The Plague) where the same question is posed (“Can we be good without God?”) I don’t believe in God in order to be good. I believe in God because I don’t have enough faith to believe that there’s no God.

I’m kind of intellectually puny that way, I guess. Takes too much faith—more than I can muster—to really believe there’s no God.

Yes, please be good for goodness sake. I don’t see what God has to do with it.

Second, since when did believing in God and being good and doing good become mutually exclusive concepts?

Third, I’m confused as to how I can know what being good means. “Be good for goodness sake?” Sounds really cute. I think I make a little wrist band out of it. But who is going to tell me what that means exactly? The American Humanist Society. I don’t thiiinnnnkk so!

Finally, I don’t believe in Goodness, because there’s just too much Badness in the world done in the name of Goodness. Really, who in their right minds—how can any rationale human being—believe in Goodness when you see the Badness done throughout history by people who thought they were doing the right thing.

I mean, when you think about it, you can look back in history and certainly identify certifiable villains—evil people. No question. But they’re a rare breed, fortunately. A few czars here and there, a Hitler, Mussolini, and so on. But for the most part, history has unfolded with good people at the helm with good intentions and great plans but who manage to make a mess of things. I’m thinking of people like Hoover, and Wilson, and Clinton, and George III, and Innocent III, and Urban II and St. Peter, and the folks at Ford Motor Company who gave us the Edsel, and the fashion people who gave us leisure suits and cargo pants, and whoever invented rap, and then there’s Ray Kroc, and whoever discovered gunpowder, and was the invention of the car a good thing, and Alexander Graham Bell’s annoying little invention, telemarketers and I could go on. Lots of good people doing good things that are bad things.

Good and goodness – what is that? I just can’t believe in it. Too many bad bad bad things have happened by people who’ve thought they were doing good good good things. (And,frankly, this is my ONE reservation about the Democrats taking over: They're always are trying to do things for my own good--when I don't want them to. Democrats tend to be like mothers--passing laws to make you wear a coat when its too cold outside and--they'll not only make it a law that I have to wear a coat, they'll make me buy the coat; Republicans are more like an older brother who's always beating the crap out of you and calling you a big baby--but at least they're not trying to do stuff for "my own good." Of course you may disagree.)

So it’s a nice slogan. I’ll give you that. And I hope these folks can find bin Laden, and pop a daisy in his plastique, and say, “Hey, bin baby, be good for goodness sake.”

Well, that’s all I got for now. I got to go.

I mean, really. I got to go.

Later.

January-February 2009 Issue of HOMILETICS Is Online!

FYI: The January-February 2009 issue of Homiletics is online and it's fitting that the cover story, STILL WE RISE, with a powerful visual image, focuses on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP in February, 2009.

President-elect Obama will be President Obama then. It's also Black History month.

But this sermon starter idea is not about politics and black history ... It's about the message the prophet Isaiah brings to us from the text, and it's powerful, stirring material. People who read an advance copy of this stuff raved about it. You're going to want to read it.

Of course, there much,much more in this issue, including helpful ideas for Ash Wednesday ("Bill Me Later) and D-Day, February 17, 2009, the last day for a digital conversion of all television sets; a day for conversion!

We also talk about the best lemonade stand ever, about salad dressing discovered on the ancient wreck of a mediterranean ship, all creatively linked to the text for the day.

Take a look.

Obama Is Our President

Prior to the polls closing last night, we were Republicans and Democrats. Now we are Americans—again.

At least for another 12 months when the mid-term electioneering will begin and the squabbling starts all over again.

Crazy system, all this running for office all the time.

Anyway, Obama is not the first candidate to run on a platform of hope and change. It’s an interesting symbiosis—how the one feeds on the other; how the one gives birth to the other. You don’t usually associate hope with that which cannot change or is not changing.

When change is introduced, like a flower springing from a long-buried seed, hope flowers until it either flourishes in the new environment, and multiplies until the entire meadow is awash in color and brilliance; or it wilts under the heat of the noon day sun, withers under criticism, collapses under insurmountable pressures.

We now have change. And with it comes hope.

It’s always been that way. Jesus was a prophet of change. He knew that with change, people could hope again.

Sounds like a sermon.