Pastor’s Column. Once upon a time there was a woman married to an annoying man. He would complain about everything. One day he went to the creek with his mule. He complained so much that the mule got annoyed and kicked him to death. At the funeral, when all the men walked by the wife, she shook her head yes, and every time the women walked by she shook her head no. The minister asked "Why are you shaking your head yes for men and no for women?" Her response was, “The men would say how sorry they felt for me and I was saying, ‘Yes, I'll be alright.’ When the women walked by, they were asking if the mule was for sale.” - DJ
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Pastor's Column - Nov. 18, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Here are the Top Ten Reasons Presbyterians choose the Back Pews:
10. They can see everybody, but everybody can’t see them.
9. Fewer people will hear it if they share an inspiration with their spouse.
8. It won’t be so obvious if they mouth a hymn rather than sing it.
7. They have more time to get their offering ready before the ushers get to them.
6. They are less likely to be caught drifting off during the sermon.
5. It’s easier to kick off uncomfortable shoes.
4. There will be fewer children crawling under the pews to observe their shoes.
3. They can dress more casually than the folks up front.
2. It’s a shorter trip to the restroom.
1. They can bless people going out and coming in to the service.
- from Rev. Denny J. Brake, Raleigh, NC
10. They can see everybody, but everybody can’t see them.
9. Fewer people will hear it if they share an inspiration with their spouse.
8. It won’t be so obvious if they mouth a hymn rather than sing it.
7. They have more time to get their offering ready before the ushers get to them.
6. They are less likely to be caught drifting off during the sermon.
5. It’s easier to kick off uncomfortable shoes.
4. There will be fewer children crawling under the pews to observe their shoes.
3. They can dress more casually than the folks up front.
2. It’s a shorter trip to the restroom.
1. They can bless people going out and coming in to the service.
- from Rev. Denny J. Brake, Raleigh, NC
Monday, November 12, 2012
Pastors' Column - Nov. 11, 2012
Pastor’s Column. There is an advertisement related to our New Testament Lesson today. I haven’t seen it, but others have. It reads, "Now you too can own a Genuine Coin From The Time of Jesus: The Widow's Mite. It’s a minor miracle that this coin has survived, and now people of faith can study, cherish, and protect it for future generations. It’s yet another miracle that they’re so affordable."
Then, the ad goes on to quote our scripture this morning, “He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.” And it finishes up with, "While our limited supplies last, you may order the 2,000 year old Widow’s Mite for only $39.95 plus shipping and handling. Remember this is the genuine coin mentioned in the Holy Bible and it makes a perfect gift for your child, grandchild, or favorite clergyman."
The advertisement makes it sound like you’re buying the actual coin the widow dropped into the temple receptacle. This rip-off reminds me of Wolfman Jack in his younger days. He broadcast from an incredibly powerful radio station in Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, TX. And he offered hard to get items for sale to people in the Southwest, like autographed pictures of Jesus Christ, not to mention Bibles signed by King James himself. Sometimes he wasn’t so religious. He also sold genuine imitation pearl necklaces.
At the beginning of our New Testament lesson today, Jesus warns about the sort of scribes who “devour widows’ houses.” (We’re dealing with Mark 13: 38-44.) It wasn’t enough that widows in Jesus’ day were almost all poverty stricken, those that had a few coins were on the radar of rip-off artists trying to get them. If Jesus says elsewhere, “The poor will always be with you,” he could also have added, “And so will those trying to rip you off.”
Although taken out of context, these words fit the world in which we live. “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” -DJ
Then, the ad goes on to quote our scripture this morning, “He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.” And it finishes up with, "While our limited supplies last, you may order the 2,000 year old Widow’s Mite for only $39.95 plus shipping and handling. Remember this is the genuine coin mentioned in the Holy Bible and it makes a perfect gift for your child, grandchild, or favorite clergyman."
The advertisement makes it sound like you’re buying the actual coin the widow dropped into the temple receptacle. This rip-off reminds me of Wolfman Jack in his younger days. He broadcast from an incredibly powerful radio station in Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, TX. And he offered hard to get items for sale to people in the Southwest, like autographed pictures of Jesus Christ, not to mention Bibles signed by King James himself. Sometimes he wasn’t so religious. He also sold genuine imitation pearl necklaces.
At the beginning of our New Testament lesson today, Jesus warns about the sort of scribes who “devour widows’ houses.” (We’re dealing with Mark 13: 38-44.) It wasn’t enough that widows in Jesus’ day were almost all poverty stricken, those that had a few coins were on the radar of rip-off artists trying to get them. If Jesus says elsewhere, “The poor will always be with you,” he could also have added, “And so will those trying to rip you off.”
Although taken out of context, these words fit the world in which we live. “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” -DJ
Monday, October 29, 2012
Pastor's Column - Oct. 28, 2012
Pastor’s Column. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, told a story on himself. He was waiting for a taxi outside the railway station in Paris. When the taxi pulled up, he put his suitcase in it and then got in himself. As he was about to tell the taxi-driver where he wanted to go, the driver asked, "Where can I take you, Mr. Doyle?"
Doyle was astounded. He asked the driver if he knew him by sight. The driver said, "No Sir, I have never seen you before." Doyle was puzzled and asked him how he knew he was Arthur Conan Doyle.
The driver replied: "This morning's paper had a story that you were on vacation in Marseilles. This is the taxi-stand where people who return from Marseilles always wait. Your skin color tells me you have been on vacation. The ink-spot on your right index finger suggests to me that you are a writer. Your clothing is very English and not French. Adding up all these pieces of information, I deduce that you are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."
Doyle exclaimed, "This is truly amazing. You are a real-life counter-part to my fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes."
"There is one other thing," the driver said.
"What is that?" Doyle asked.
"Your name is on the front of your suitcase."
It wasn't the powers of deduction. It was the power of observation. Jesus taught us, “Observe the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... And why do you worry about clothing? Observe the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
“Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat or drink or wear?’…Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Mt6: 26-33
It would seem that we don’t have to be a smart as Sherlock Holmes to see God at work behind the scenes. All we have to do is observe. -DJ
Doyle was astounded. He asked the driver if he knew him by sight. The driver said, "No Sir, I have never seen you before." Doyle was puzzled and asked him how he knew he was Arthur Conan Doyle.
The driver replied: "This morning's paper had a story that you were on vacation in Marseilles. This is the taxi-stand where people who return from Marseilles always wait. Your skin color tells me you have been on vacation. The ink-spot on your right index finger suggests to me that you are a writer. Your clothing is very English and not French. Adding up all these pieces of information, I deduce that you are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."
Doyle exclaimed, "This is truly amazing. You are a real-life counter-part to my fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes."
"There is one other thing," the driver said.
"What is that?" Doyle asked.
"Your name is on the front of your suitcase."
It wasn't the powers of deduction. It was the power of observation. Jesus taught us, “Observe the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... And why do you worry about clothing? Observe the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
“Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat or drink or wear?’…Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Mt6: 26-33
It would seem that we don’t have to be a smart as Sherlock Holmes to see God at work behind the scenes. All we have to do is observe. -DJ
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Pastor's Column - Oct. 14, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. At Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, a ten-year-old boy walked into Rev. Sarah Jo Sarchet’s office. “I’d like to be baptized,” he said. “We were learning about Jesus’ baptism in Sunday School. The teacher asked the class who had been baptized, and all the other kids raised their hands. I want to be baptized too.”
“Cameron, do you really want to be baptized just because everyone else is?” the pastor asked. “No. I want to be baptized because it means I belong to God.”
Rev. Sarchet was impressed by his understanding. “Well, then, how about this Sunday?” The boy’s smile turned to concern. “You mean in front of all those people in the church? Can’t I just have a friend baptize me in the river?”
The pastor asked where he ever came up with such an idea. “Jesus was baptized by his cousin John in a river, wasn’t he?”
Caught off guard, she conceded. “You’re right, but if a friend baptized you in the river, how would the church recognize it?” And then to teach him about what Presbyterians believe about baptism, she climbed up on a footstool to reach her Presbyterian Book of Order on the top shelf.
But before she could reach the book, Cameron said, “I guess by my new way of living.” The pastor nearly fell off the footstool and left her Book of Order on the shelf. Cameron’s understanding was neither childish nor simple. It was profound. Baptism calls us to a new way of living. - DJ
“Cameron, do you really want to be baptized just because everyone else is?” the pastor asked. “No. I want to be baptized because it means I belong to God.”
Rev. Sarchet was impressed by his understanding. “Well, then, how about this Sunday?” The boy’s smile turned to concern. “You mean in front of all those people in the church? Can’t I just have a friend baptize me in the river?”
The pastor asked where he ever came up with such an idea. “Jesus was baptized by his cousin John in a river, wasn’t he?”
Caught off guard, she conceded. “You’re right, but if a friend baptized you in the river, how would the church recognize it?” And then to teach him about what Presbyterians believe about baptism, she climbed up on a footstool to reach her Presbyterian Book of Order on the top shelf.
But before she could reach the book, Cameron said, “I guess by my new way of living.” The pastor nearly fell off the footstool and left her Book of Order on the shelf. Cameron’s understanding was neither childish nor simple. It was profound. Baptism calls us to a new way of living. - DJ
Monday, October 8, 2012
Pastor's Column - Oct. 7, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. On “Oldies” radio stations you constantly hear the following sort of promo, “Bringing Back the Memories!” Or you hear testimonials like, “I just discovered your station, and I love the music! I haven’t heard those songs in years, and oh my, they’re bringing back so many memories!”
Does hearing an old favorite song bring back memories for you or not? People break both ways on this. For some it does, for others they get nothing more than the pleasure of hearing it again. And by the way, most people say that if a song was a dog back then, it’s still a dog. Unlike wine, age doesn’t improve it.
The mind is one of God’s most mysterious gifts, and memories seem to be provoked in a variety of ways. But sometimes we can’t leave remembering to chance melodies. There are thing we need to remember, and the only way is to sit down and actually search through our experiences. For ex., we may need to remember what God has done in our past because it can give us confidence as to how God will act in the present and in the future. In terms of frequency of use, “Remember” is one of the most used words in the Bible. The prophets of Israel would exhort their people, “Remember, O Israel!” referring to the covenant that God had made through Moses with the people at Mt Sinai. In that covenant the people agreed to obey God’s laws, and God agreed to take care of them. This covenant is not to be forgotten even for a moment.
All of us have experienced memorable instances of God’s intervention in our lives. These experiences of God’s help, as well as what Christ requires of us, are something to keep in mind constantly. Not something to be left to chance memory. -DJ
Does hearing an old favorite song bring back memories for you or not? People break both ways on this. For some it does, for others they get nothing more than the pleasure of hearing it again. And by the way, most people say that if a song was a dog back then, it’s still a dog. Unlike wine, age doesn’t improve it.
The mind is one of God’s most mysterious gifts, and memories seem to be provoked in a variety of ways. But sometimes we can’t leave remembering to chance melodies. There are thing we need to remember, and the only way is to sit down and actually search through our experiences. For ex., we may need to remember what God has done in our past because it can give us confidence as to how God will act in the present and in the future. In terms of frequency of use, “Remember” is one of the most used words in the Bible. The prophets of Israel would exhort their people, “Remember, O Israel!” referring to the covenant that God had made through Moses with the people at Mt Sinai. In that covenant the people agreed to obey God’s laws, and God agreed to take care of them. This covenant is not to be forgotten even for a moment.
All of us have experienced memorable instances of God’s intervention in our lives. These experiences of God’s help, as well as what Christ requires of us, are something to keep in mind constantly. Not something to be left to chance memory. -DJ
Friday, September 28, 2012
Pastor's Column - Sept. 23, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Some time ago I read an article, “Futile Cancer Therapy Is on the Rise.”
This story said, “Doctors are reporting a disturbing rise in the number of cancer patients getting chemo and other aggressive but futile treatment in the last days of their lives… ‘Patients don’t like to give up,’ and neither do physicians, said Dr. Roy Herbst, a cancer specialist at the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“Overly aggressive treatment gives false hope and puts people through grueling and costly ordeals when there is no chance of a cure, cancer specialists said. ‘There is a time to stop,’ said Dr. Craig Earle of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. ‘It’s sometimes easier to just keep giving chemotherapy than to have a frank discussion about hospice and palliative care.’”
I imagine that the content of this article is something you have heard before. In case it isn’t, I bring it to your attention. I have known several persons who have refused aggressive cancer treatment toward the end of their lives. They had come to the point where they knew they were dying, and they didn’t want to spend their remaining months or weeks or days being sicker as a result of a treatment that was only going to prolong their life a short time. They wanted to enjoy their remaining days on earth and prepare themselves for death.
Furthermore, there are new medicines that do not put patients through the ordeal that traditional chemotherapy does. One needs to know all the alternatives. Still, in the long run prayer and faith are called for. Is God telling us to keep fighting? Or is God telling us that “the good fight” is over? That it’s time to entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ, who will do for us what we cannot - transition us into the next life?
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”
- 1 Thessalonians 4: 13, 14 -DJ
This story said, “Doctors are reporting a disturbing rise in the number of cancer patients getting chemo and other aggressive but futile treatment in the last days of their lives… ‘Patients don’t like to give up,’ and neither do physicians, said Dr. Roy Herbst, a cancer specialist at the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“Overly aggressive treatment gives false hope and puts people through grueling and costly ordeals when there is no chance of a cure, cancer specialists said. ‘There is a time to stop,’ said Dr. Craig Earle of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. ‘It’s sometimes easier to just keep giving chemotherapy than to have a frank discussion about hospice and palliative care.’”
I imagine that the content of this article is something you have heard before. In case it isn’t, I bring it to your attention. I have known several persons who have refused aggressive cancer treatment toward the end of their lives. They had come to the point where they knew they were dying, and they didn’t want to spend their remaining months or weeks or days being sicker as a result of a treatment that was only going to prolong their life a short time. They wanted to enjoy their remaining days on earth and prepare themselves for death.
Furthermore, there are new medicines that do not put patients through the ordeal that traditional chemotherapy does. One needs to know all the alternatives. Still, in the long run prayer and faith are called for. Is God telling us to keep fighting? Or is God telling us that “the good fight” is over? That it’s time to entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ, who will do for us what we cannot - transition us into the next life?
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”
- 1 Thessalonians 4: 13, 14 -DJ
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Pastor's Column - Sept. 16, 2012
Pastor’s Column. When we pray for another person, it is not a matter of changing God’s mind about the person or exercising some magical spell over the person’s life. Before we even begin to pray, God’s concern for this person has been active. All of us, including those we pray for, live within the force field of God’s love. God is not only the power source for people with free will, but God’s love is our environment, the grid in which we live. The inner power of a person’s life can always be turned back on, for whether one chooses to love God, God loves her. Whether a person makes good choices, God is at work for this person’s wellbeing. And whether or not one chooses to plug in to God, our power source, God is standing by to restore inner strength.
When we pray for another person, what we’re doing is adding our concern to the love that God already has for the individual. Our prayers don’t have to turn the tide, as though it’s up to us entirely. We aren’t the person’s power source. God is. Our prayers, which sometimes lead to our cooperating with God via word and deed, are but added to the force field of God’s concern. And they only have to tip the balance of courage or hope or determination or whatever of God’s grace is needed by the person to result in his/her wellbeing. Tip the balance so that this person will be moved to hang in there, or endure the cure, or take responsibility for her life, or pick himself up and try again, or turn his life around. - DJ
When we pray for another person, what we’re doing is adding our concern to the love that God already has for the individual. Our prayers don’t have to turn the tide, as though it’s up to us entirely. We aren’t the person’s power source. God is. Our prayers, which sometimes lead to our cooperating with God via word and deed, are but added to the force field of God’s concern. And they only have to tip the balance of courage or hope or determination or whatever of God’s grace is needed by the person to result in his/her wellbeing. Tip the balance so that this person will be moved to hang in there, or endure the cure, or take responsibility for her life, or pick himself up and try again, or turn his life around. - DJ
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Pastor's Column - Sept. 9, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Cheri and I have fled a few hurricanes in our time and have known a number of people who have been “inconvenienced” or worse by hurricanes. Reports are that even though it’s been a week or more since Hurricane Isaac passed through, things in Louisiana and elsewhere haven’t returned to normal. I hope these folks haven’t lost their sense of humor. I was reminded of an article I once read titled, “What we learned during our last hurricane.”
- Coffee and frozen pizzas can be made on a barbecue grill.
- No matter how many times you flick the switch, lights don’t work without electricity.
- My car gets 23.21675 miles/gallon. Ask the people who helped me push it the rest of the way.
- Kids can actually survive four days or longer without a videogame.
- Women can actually survive without doing their hair. You just wish you didn’t have to be there to hear about it.
- He who has the biggest generator wins.
- Crickets can increase their volume to overcome the sound of 14 generators.
- People will get into a line that has formed without having any idea what the line is for.
- My four-year-old daughter says don’t ever hold a cat during a hurricane. -DJ
- Coffee and frozen pizzas can be made on a barbecue grill.
- No matter how many times you flick the switch, lights don’t work without electricity.
- My car gets 23.21675 miles/gallon. Ask the people who helped me push it the rest of the way.
- Kids can actually survive four days or longer without a videogame.
- Women can actually survive without doing their hair. You just wish you didn’t have to be there to hear about it.
- He who has the biggest generator wins.
- Crickets can increase their volume to overcome the sound of 14 generators.
- People will get into a line that has formed without having any idea what the line is for.
- My four-year-old daughter says don’t ever hold a cat during a hurricane. -DJ
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Pastor's Column - Sept. 2, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Nancy Gibbs reminds us that “There was a certain bracing beauty about the original seven deadly sins – pride, gluttony, sloth, lust, greed, envy, and anger – which among them could account for virtually all the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. Anger gives rise to violence; gluttony to waste; pride to every manner of tragedy and hurt. They were judged sufficient for the past 15 centuries, ever since they were cataloged by Pope Gregory the Great…
“But not anymore. ‘We are losing the notion of sin,’ Pope Benedict XVI warns. The culture celebrates what it once sanctioned: parents encourage pride as essential to self-esteem; a group of self-rising French chefs has petitioned the Vatican that being a gourmand is no sin. Envy is the engine of tabloid culture. Lust is an advertising strategy; anger, the righteous province of the aggrieved…” Most Presbyterians agree that in modern day America almost anything goes.
Mohandas Gandhi used to say that he would consider converting to Christianity if he ever met a Christian. What he meant was that he was most interested in the Jesus he read about in the New Testament, but he’d never met a follower who actually lived by Jesus’ teachings. He had a great version of the seven deadly sins, one expanded to better deal with the situation today:
- Wealth without work - Politics without principle
- Pleasure without conscience - Commerce without morality
- Science without humanity - Worship without sacrifice
- Knowledge without character
-DJ
Monday, August 27, 2012
Pastor's Column - August 26, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. We Presbyterians are also known as Murphy’s Denomination. We believe that if anything can go wrong, it will. Thus, we want safeguards in place to keep it from happening and procedures that tell us what to do next if it does.
We take sin seriously, be it individual or corporate. We’re the regulators who gave America a government of checks and balances, the same sorts of checks and balances in our Presbyterian Book of Order. Over the centuries we have labored to have a policy or a rule in place for almost every matter under the sun and Son.
“If anything can go wrong, it will.” When I was younger, it amused me how uptight we were about this, but as the years have gone by, it is one of the things I appreciate most about Presbyterianism. Why? When we’re right, we’re right. Read the papers. Watch the news. Human beings are a moral mess. I laugh every time I hear something like the following: “An industry spokesperson says that no regulation is needed. The industry will police itself.” Sure it will. All the way to the bank.
The Bible is our authority when it comes to understanding human nature. Jesus says, for example, “No one is good but God alone.” He also says to the men who were about to stone the woman, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” What happened to the Garden of Eden? What’s the cross all about?
A confession, as in our Book of Confession, is a statement about a particular topic based upon what the Bible teaches. Our Confession of 1967 says the following about human nature. “The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in humans as sin in the sight of God. In sin, persons claim mastery of their own lives, turn against God and their fellow humans, and become exploiters and despoilers of their world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are left in rebellion, despair, and isolation… All are in the wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all humans fall under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than the person who assumes he is guiltless before God or morally superior to others.”
I’ve always thought that Pogo the possum in the comic strip Pogo has to be Presbyterian. His best-known line? “We have met the enemy and he is us.” -DJ
We take sin seriously, be it individual or corporate. We’re the regulators who gave America a government of checks and balances, the same sorts of checks and balances in our Presbyterian Book of Order. Over the centuries we have labored to have a policy or a rule in place for almost every matter under the sun and Son.
“If anything can go wrong, it will.” When I was younger, it amused me how uptight we were about this, but as the years have gone by, it is one of the things I appreciate most about Presbyterianism. Why? When we’re right, we’re right. Read the papers. Watch the news. Human beings are a moral mess. I laugh every time I hear something like the following: “An industry spokesperson says that no regulation is needed. The industry will police itself.” Sure it will. All the way to the bank.
The Bible is our authority when it comes to understanding human nature. Jesus says, for example, “No one is good but God alone.” He also says to the men who were about to stone the woman, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” What happened to the Garden of Eden? What’s the cross all about?
A confession, as in our Book of Confession, is a statement about a particular topic based upon what the Bible teaches. Our Confession of 1967 says the following about human nature. “The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in humans as sin in the sight of God. In sin, persons claim mastery of their own lives, turn against God and their fellow humans, and become exploiters and despoilers of their world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are left in rebellion, despair, and isolation… All are in the wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all humans fall under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than the person who assumes he is guiltless before God or morally superior to others.”
I’ve always thought that Pogo the possum in the comic strip Pogo has to be Presbyterian. His best-known line? “We have met the enemy and he is us.” -DJ
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Pastor's Column, August 12, 2012
Pastor’s Column. Toward the end of World War II in Europe, the Germans did something that bears remembering today. To delay the Allied Armies’ march to Berlin, retreating German soldiers switched road signs and destroyed landmarks. Doing so did not prevent the inevitable, but it did confuse their enemy. Many an Allied soldier wound up other than where he thought he was going.
The above is but one example of the importance of reliable signposts and landmarks. Think about how the people of Jefferson County use landmarks like the courthouse in Hillsboro, the Meramec River Bridge, the Mississippi River, Jefferson College, even Grace’s park to help us find our bearings. If some Saturday night pranksters pointed our signs the other way or removed our signposts, the next day lots of people would get lost. But it wouldn’t be nearly as much a problem as the absence of signposts and boundaries in our society.
We live at a time of exponential change, a time when our historical, traditional, and religious signposts are being ignored. Jesus is “The Way,” and the Bible is filled with signposts – laws, commandments, stories, even the beatitudes - that help us find our way. But so much of this is being ignored anymore, as well as the practices and the manners that these signposts have created.
One might say that churchgoing today is an activity that helps us get our bearings in a world in which so many don’t care where we’re going. -DJ
The above is but one example of the importance of reliable signposts and landmarks. Think about how the people of Jefferson County use landmarks like the courthouse in Hillsboro, the Meramec River Bridge, the Mississippi River, Jefferson College, even Grace’s park to help us find our bearings. If some Saturday night pranksters pointed our signs the other way or removed our signposts, the next day lots of people would get lost. But it wouldn’t be nearly as much a problem as the absence of signposts and boundaries in our society.
We live at a time of exponential change, a time when our historical, traditional, and religious signposts are being ignored. Jesus is “The Way,” and the Bible is filled with signposts – laws, commandments, stories, even the beatitudes - that help us find our way. But so much of this is being ignored anymore, as well as the practices and the manners that these signposts have created.
One might say that churchgoing today is an activity that helps us get our bearings in a world in which so many don’t care where we’re going. -DJ
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Pastor's Column - August 5, 2012
Pastor’s Column. The following are signs found in kitchens.
"If a messy kitchen is a happy kitchen, this kitchen is delirious."
"A clean house is a sign of a misspent life."
"If we are what we eat, then I'm easy, fast, and cheap."
"Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator."
"My next house will have no kitchen, just vending machines."
"A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand."
The staff at www.eSermons.com point out that these sayings point to some of our society's attitudes about food: “only junk food is enjoyable,” “food is meant to satisfy us,” “if I had to cook it, it doesn't taste good,” and “as long as it's not good for me, I should eat as much as I want.” We stuff ourselves, trying to fill the hole inside of us with food, as if we could eat something that would totally satisfy us. But we could stuff ourselves at every meal and still be hungry for something deeper!
This is what Jesus points out in the Gospel of John when he says, “I am the bread of life.” We can try to ignore our spiritual needs, but all else is insufficient. –DJ
"If a messy kitchen is a happy kitchen, this kitchen is delirious."
"A clean house is a sign of a misspent life."
"If we are what we eat, then I'm easy, fast, and cheap."
"Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator."
"My next house will have no kitchen, just vending machines."
"A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand."
The staff at www.eSermons.com point out that these sayings point to some of our society's attitudes about food: “only junk food is enjoyable,” “food is meant to satisfy us,” “if I had to cook it, it doesn't taste good,” and “as long as it's not good for me, I should eat as much as I want.” We stuff ourselves, trying to fill the hole inside of us with food, as if we could eat something that would totally satisfy us. But we could stuff ourselves at every meal and still be hungry for something deeper!
This is what Jesus points out in the Gospel of John when he says, “I am the bread of life.” We can try to ignore our spiritual needs, but all else is insufficient. –DJ
Monday, July 30, 2012
Good Grief - July 29, 2012
GOOD GRIEF
Genesis 49: 29-50:3, 1 Timothy 4: 13-18, SPC, 8/17/08, D. Johnson
A pastor had just moved to the Deep South, to a county where there were several cemeteries. A member of the church died, and sure enough the pastor got confused as to which cemetery he was supposed to meet the family mid-morning for a graveside service. He showed up at one cemetery, but no one was there. He couldn’t rouse the family on his cell phone, and so he drove to yet another cemetery. No family there either.
He was driving down a county road, still unable to get the family on his cell phone, when he noticed a mowed, grassy area in which there had been digging. Obviously this was “the” cemetery and the grave he had been looking for. Stopping his car and getting out, he was so late that the mourners were long gone, having given up on him. There wasn’t a headstone in place, but, of course, it would be weeks until the headstone arrived. And so he stood by the freshly dug dirt that had been heaped back in place and thought a minute. Given that there was no one around, he could do a brief prayer. But no, this person deserved a proper sendoff, and so he went through the entire funeral service that he would have given had there been mourners there.
Half an hour later, returning to his car, he noticed that on the other side of the road there was a backhoe and two men, one older, one younger, eating their lunch. He had been so focused on finding the grave that he hadn’t seen them when he drove up. But now he nodded and they waved back. Then as he drove away the older one said to the younger, “You know, I ain’t ever seen no one do that, and I’ve been installing septic tanks for twenty years now.”
--
There weren’t any mourners present when the pastor showed up, which has become a trend in America, even when the pastor is at the right place at the right time. Funeral home statistics show that the number of viewings on the evening preceding a funeral service is way down, and that the number of people attending funeral or memorial services is also down. Maybe the only statistic that is up is that increasingly families are choosing not to have a funeral or memorial service for the deceased. The bulletin cover today contains a message that will help keep us physically and mentally healthy, “Never, Never, Never, Stop Moving.” But the reality is that we all of us will come to a time when we will stop moving. Our concern this morning is that America is a death-denying culture, which is not healthy. So how do we deal with it?
---
Contrast the denial of death nowadays to how Jacob’s family dealt with his death in our OT lesson. Jacob breathed his last, and “then Joseph threw himself on his father’s face and wept over him... Joseph commanded the physicians in his service to embalm his father… They spent forty days in doing this... And the Egyptians wept – along with Joseph and his brothers and their families – for seventy days,” a sufficient length of time.
No culture back then was death-denying. People knew how to deal with grief, starting with periods of formalized mourning. In fact, if you continue reading Genesis chapter 50, you will find that there was a great procession accompanying Jacob’s body from Egypt back to Canaan for burial. And when they arrived, they mourned for another seven days. Because of all this formalized mourning, Joseph and his brothers did not suffer ill effects from their father’s death. Sure, they missed him and his loss was painful. Still, they did not become damaged goods, as can people who do a poor job of mourning.
The Christian writer, Wendell Berry, once wrote a short-story for The Atlantic Monthly called Stand by Me. It is a story about a farming family that begins in the Deep South of the 1920s with two grown sons and their aging parents. The older son, Jarrat, gets married and moves into a house across a hollow from the family home, where his younger brother lives with their parents. Jarrat and his wife have two sons, and they work hard trying to build a life. But after a number of years, the wife gets sick and dies.
Jarratt is 38 when she passes, the two boys 5 and 7, which presents a dilemma to his parents and brother. Says his brother, Burley, “Jarrat wasn’t going to be able to take care of the boys and farm too, and they didn’t need to be over there in that loneliness with him. But Pap and Mam were getting on in years then. Pap, just by the nature of him, wasn’t going to be a lot of help. And Mam, I could see, had her doubts. Finally she just out with it, ‘Burley, I can be a grandmother, but I don’t know if I can be a mother again or not. You’re just going to have to help me.’” And so Burley and his mom go across the hollow, pack up the little boys’ clothes, and bring them to their house to live.
I find it admirable what the grandmother and Burley, the little boys’ uncle, did. The name of this short-story is Stand by Me, and the uncle stood by them from then on as best he could. In the first years after their mother died, Burley would find one or the other of them out in the woods in tears. And Burley would try to console the little boy who needed his mother. The boys’ dad wasn’t of any comfort to them, for as the uncle said, “How could he console them when he couldn’t even console himself.”
I find Uncle Burley most admirable, but I find it hard to have much use for the boys’ dad, Jarratt. No doubt that he loved his wife and the pain of losing her was terrible. But this fellow Jarratt, who is the best worker in the county – there is no chore he can’t do in half the time it takes anyone else – won’t work through his own grief? He’s such a sad sack that it’s okay for him to give up his duties as a father and dump his boys on his old mother and brother?
All of us have to deal with grief multiple times over the course of our lives as we lose the persons we love. And we may feel like dying ourselves. Grief is a sense of intense sorrow, a deep sadness that sweeps over us. When a loved one dies, grief walks in the door. We don’t invite it, it just barges in. And so, if I call the sermon today, “Good Grief,” as opposed to “Bad Grief,” I want to point out that our grief is good when we’re working our way through it, bad when we give up and give in to it. For by fully grieving, by working our way through the sorrow to a better day, God prepares us for the rest of our life, a full life, as opposed to a diminished life.
As Uncle Burley in the story thinks about how people work through grief or not, he is reminded of a woman who once lived down the road. She married a man and had a little boy. Her husband died, and she handled that fairly well. But then her little boy got sick one winter and died when he was 9 or 10 years old. Burley knew that the woman took it awfully hard, that she was “grieved to death.” Indeed, as Burley said, “It’s maybe a little hard to believe that people can die of grief, but they do.” And she did.
After she died, her place had to be sold. Burley went out there with several other men to get it ready for auction. And how he dreaded going into the little boy’s room. “It was like opening a grave. It had been kept just the way it was when he died, except she had gathered up and put there everything she’d found that reminded her of him … every broom handle he’d ridden for a stick horse, every rock or feather or string she knew he had played with.” And Burley knew why she had kept the little boy’s room like she did. For when a person you love “is all of a sudden gone, never to come back, the whole place reminds you of him everywhere you look. You dread to touch anything for fear of changing it. You fear the time you know is bound to come, when the look of the place will be changed entirely, and if the dead came back they would hardly recognize it at all. Even so, this place is not a keepsake just to look at and remember. You can’t stop just because you’re carrying a loaf of grief and would like to stop, or don’t care if you go on or not.” God has more life in store for us.
--
In our NT lesson, the Apostle Paul writes to members of the early Christian church who grieve their dear ones. And there was some confusion. Many Christians believed that Jesus was going to return soon to inaugurate the new world coming. Some also believed that to be a part of the new world, or kingdom of God, you needed to be alive when Jesus returned. And many of their loved ones weren’t. They’d missed out. But not so, says Paul. “Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever (as he inaugurates his kingdom on a transformed earth.). Encourage one another with these words.”
There is a greater world than this one coming. Encourage one and all to keep moving toward it. Burley says about the relation of these two worlds, “What gets you is the knowledge…that the dead are gone from this world. As has been said… you are not going to see them here anymore. Whatever was done or said before is done or said for good. Any questions you ought to have asked while you had a chance are never going to be answered. The dead know, and you don’t.
“And yet their absence puts them with you in a way they never were before. You even maybe know them better than you did before. They stay with you, and in a way you go with them. They don’t live on in your heart, but your heart gets to know them. As your heart gets bigger on the inside, the world gets bigger on the outside. If the dead were alive only in this world, you would forget them, looks like, as soon as they died. But you remember them, because they always were living in the other, bigger world while they lived in this little one, and this one and the other one are the same.”
That’s an interesting way to put it, a bigger world. As I think about the new world coming, or the bigger one into which this one will one day be incorporated, it seems to me that there is one more thing to be said about the good work of grief. Namely, by working our way through our grief rather than giving up and giving into it, not only does God help us prepare us for the rest of this life, but God fashions us for the new life to come, a life in which there is no death to separate us from our loved ones. Grieving well is difficult in a death-denying culture. We might even say it is an art. If so, then it is an art worth learning. There is a bigger life to prepare for yet. Amen
Genesis 49: 29-50:3, 1 Timothy 4: 13-18, SPC, 8/17/08, D. Johnson
A pastor had just moved to the Deep South, to a county where there were several cemeteries. A member of the church died, and sure enough the pastor got confused as to which cemetery he was supposed to meet the family mid-morning for a graveside service. He showed up at one cemetery, but no one was there. He couldn’t rouse the family on his cell phone, and so he drove to yet another cemetery. No family there either.
He was driving down a county road, still unable to get the family on his cell phone, when he noticed a mowed, grassy area in which there had been digging. Obviously this was “the” cemetery and the grave he had been looking for. Stopping his car and getting out, he was so late that the mourners were long gone, having given up on him. There wasn’t a headstone in place, but, of course, it would be weeks until the headstone arrived. And so he stood by the freshly dug dirt that had been heaped back in place and thought a minute. Given that there was no one around, he could do a brief prayer. But no, this person deserved a proper sendoff, and so he went through the entire funeral service that he would have given had there been mourners there.
Half an hour later, returning to his car, he noticed that on the other side of the road there was a backhoe and two men, one older, one younger, eating their lunch. He had been so focused on finding the grave that he hadn’t seen them when he drove up. But now he nodded and they waved back. Then as he drove away the older one said to the younger, “You know, I ain’t ever seen no one do that, and I’ve been installing septic tanks for twenty years now.”
--
There weren’t any mourners present when the pastor showed up, which has become a trend in America, even when the pastor is at the right place at the right time. Funeral home statistics show that the number of viewings on the evening preceding a funeral service is way down, and that the number of people attending funeral or memorial services is also down. Maybe the only statistic that is up is that increasingly families are choosing not to have a funeral or memorial service for the deceased. The bulletin cover today contains a message that will help keep us physically and mentally healthy, “Never, Never, Never, Stop Moving.” But the reality is that we all of us will come to a time when we will stop moving. Our concern this morning is that America is a death-denying culture, which is not healthy. So how do we deal with it?
---
Contrast the denial of death nowadays to how Jacob’s family dealt with his death in our OT lesson. Jacob breathed his last, and “then Joseph threw himself on his father’s face and wept over him... Joseph commanded the physicians in his service to embalm his father… They spent forty days in doing this... And the Egyptians wept – along with Joseph and his brothers and their families – for seventy days,” a sufficient length of time.
No culture back then was death-denying. People knew how to deal with grief, starting with periods of formalized mourning. In fact, if you continue reading Genesis chapter 50, you will find that there was a great procession accompanying Jacob’s body from Egypt back to Canaan for burial. And when they arrived, they mourned for another seven days. Because of all this formalized mourning, Joseph and his brothers did not suffer ill effects from their father’s death. Sure, they missed him and his loss was painful. Still, they did not become damaged goods, as can people who do a poor job of mourning.
The Christian writer, Wendell Berry, once wrote a short-story for The Atlantic Monthly called Stand by Me. It is a story about a farming family that begins in the Deep South of the 1920s with two grown sons and their aging parents. The older son, Jarrat, gets married and moves into a house across a hollow from the family home, where his younger brother lives with their parents. Jarrat and his wife have two sons, and they work hard trying to build a life. But after a number of years, the wife gets sick and dies.
Jarratt is 38 when she passes, the two boys 5 and 7, which presents a dilemma to his parents and brother. Says his brother, Burley, “Jarrat wasn’t going to be able to take care of the boys and farm too, and they didn’t need to be over there in that loneliness with him. But Pap and Mam were getting on in years then. Pap, just by the nature of him, wasn’t going to be a lot of help. And Mam, I could see, had her doubts. Finally she just out with it, ‘Burley, I can be a grandmother, but I don’t know if I can be a mother again or not. You’re just going to have to help me.’” And so Burley and his mom go across the hollow, pack up the little boys’ clothes, and bring them to their house to live.
I find it admirable what the grandmother and Burley, the little boys’ uncle, did. The name of this short-story is Stand by Me, and the uncle stood by them from then on as best he could. In the first years after their mother died, Burley would find one or the other of them out in the woods in tears. And Burley would try to console the little boy who needed his mother. The boys’ dad wasn’t of any comfort to them, for as the uncle said, “How could he console them when he couldn’t even console himself.”
I find Uncle Burley most admirable, but I find it hard to have much use for the boys’ dad, Jarratt. No doubt that he loved his wife and the pain of losing her was terrible. But this fellow Jarratt, who is the best worker in the county – there is no chore he can’t do in half the time it takes anyone else – won’t work through his own grief? He’s such a sad sack that it’s okay for him to give up his duties as a father and dump his boys on his old mother and brother?
All of us have to deal with grief multiple times over the course of our lives as we lose the persons we love. And we may feel like dying ourselves. Grief is a sense of intense sorrow, a deep sadness that sweeps over us. When a loved one dies, grief walks in the door. We don’t invite it, it just barges in. And so, if I call the sermon today, “Good Grief,” as opposed to “Bad Grief,” I want to point out that our grief is good when we’re working our way through it, bad when we give up and give in to it. For by fully grieving, by working our way through the sorrow to a better day, God prepares us for the rest of our life, a full life, as opposed to a diminished life.
As Uncle Burley in the story thinks about how people work through grief or not, he is reminded of a woman who once lived down the road. She married a man and had a little boy. Her husband died, and she handled that fairly well. But then her little boy got sick one winter and died when he was 9 or 10 years old. Burley knew that the woman took it awfully hard, that she was “grieved to death.” Indeed, as Burley said, “It’s maybe a little hard to believe that people can die of grief, but they do.” And she did.
After she died, her place had to be sold. Burley went out there with several other men to get it ready for auction. And how he dreaded going into the little boy’s room. “It was like opening a grave. It had been kept just the way it was when he died, except she had gathered up and put there everything she’d found that reminded her of him … every broom handle he’d ridden for a stick horse, every rock or feather or string she knew he had played with.” And Burley knew why she had kept the little boy’s room like she did. For when a person you love “is all of a sudden gone, never to come back, the whole place reminds you of him everywhere you look. You dread to touch anything for fear of changing it. You fear the time you know is bound to come, when the look of the place will be changed entirely, and if the dead came back they would hardly recognize it at all. Even so, this place is not a keepsake just to look at and remember. You can’t stop just because you’re carrying a loaf of grief and would like to stop, or don’t care if you go on or not.” God has more life in store for us.
--
In our NT lesson, the Apostle Paul writes to members of the early Christian church who grieve their dear ones. And there was some confusion. Many Christians believed that Jesus was going to return soon to inaugurate the new world coming. Some also believed that to be a part of the new world, or kingdom of God, you needed to be alive when Jesus returned. And many of their loved ones weren’t. They’d missed out. But not so, says Paul. “Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever (as he inaugurates his kingdom on a transformed earth.). Encourage one another with these words.”
There is a greater world than this one coming. Encourage one and all to keep moving toward it. Burley says about the relation of these two worlds, “What gets you is the knowledge…that the dead are gone from this world. As has been said… you are not going to see them here anymore. Whatever was done or said before is done or said for good. Any questions you ought to have asked while you had a chance are never going to be answered. The dead know, and you don’t.
“And yet their absence puts them with you in a way they never were before. You even maybe know them better than you did before. They stay with you, and in a way you go with them. They don’t live on in your heart, but your heart gets to know them. As your heart gets bigger on the inside, the world gets bigger on the outside. If the dead were alive only in this world, you would forget them, looks like, as soon as they died. But you remember them, because they always were living in the other, bigger world while they lived in this little one, and this one and the other one are the same.”
That’s an interesting way to put it, a bigger world. As I think about the new world coming, or the bigger one into which this one will one day be incorporated, it seems to me that there is one more thing to be said about the good work of grief. Namely, by working our way through our grief rather than giving up and giving into it, not only does God help us prepare us for the rest of this life, but God fashions us for the new life to come, a life in which there is no death to separate us from our loved ones. Grieving well is difficult in a death-denying culture. We might even say it is an art. If so, then it is an art worth learning. There is a bigger life to prepare for yet. Amen
Pastor's Column - July 29, 2012
Pastor’s Column. One of today’s greatest spiritual misunderstandings is the idea that the spiritual and material are separate. Jesus continually proved otherwise.
When the 5,000 people came to Jesus, he didn’t give them “pie in the sky;” he gave them fish and bread. He was as much concerned about their shrunken bellies as he was their shriveled souls. And when he was confronted by people with illnesses, he didn’t just say, “In heaven there will be no pain.” He healed the person, made him/her whole. Jesus is why we have missionaries who start medical clinics and schools. He’s why churches have food pantries.
Physical life is not a be-all and end-all, but neither is it inconsequential. In Jesus, the spiritual has broken into the physical world. Jesus became incarnate, took on material form, a human body. Jesus felt human hunger, thirst, exhaustion, injury, and aging. In one of his last teachings before his arrest and suffering, he said that those who are righteous are the ones who provide food, water, clothing, and friendship to those in need. And if God is on the side of anyone, the Bible makes it clear God’s on the side of the poor, those deprived of material necessities.
This may be obvious to us in church – I hope it is – but it seems to be unclear to many secular people. Christianity is regarded as irrelevant by many because they don’t understand that spiritual life gives shape to material concerns. The two are not separate. –DJ (thanks in part to Len Sweet)
When the 5,000 people came to Jesus, he didn’t give them “pie in the sky;” he gave them fish and bread. He was as much concerned about their shrunken bellies as he was their shriveled souls. And when he was confronted by people with illnesses, he didn’t just say, “In heaven there will be no pain.” He healed the person, made him/her whole. Jesus is why we have missionaries who start medical clinics and schools. He’s why churches have food pantries.
Physical life is not a be-all and end-all, but neither is it inconsequential. In Jesus, the spiritual has broken into the physical world. Jesus became incarnate, took on material form, a human body. Jesus felt human hunger, thirst, exhaustion, injury, and aging. In one of his last teachings before his arrest and suffering, he said that those who are righteous are the ones who provide food, water, clothing, and friendship to those in need. And if God is on the side of anyone, the Bible makes it clear God’s on the side of the poor, those deprived of material necessities.
This may be obvious to us in church – I hope it is – but it seems to be unclear to many secular people. Christianity is regarded as irrelevant by many because they don’t understand that spiritual life gives shape to material concerns. The two are not separate. –DJ (thanks in part to Len Sweet)
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Pastor's Column - July 22, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Jesus said, “A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest/levite/Samaritan was going down that road when he saw him”… Luke 10:25-37
A seminary professor gave an extra-credit opportunity. The students who participated met him at the library to receive their assignments.
The professor divided the students into three groups. He gave the first group envelopes telling them to walk across campus to a lecture hall. He told them that they had 15 minutes, and if they didn't arrive on time, it would affect their grade.
A minute or two later, he handed out envelopes to the second group. They were also to walk to the same lecture hall, but they had 45 minutes. He then gave the third group three hours to get to the same location.
The students were unaware that their professor had arranged for three drama students to meet them along the way. Close to the beginning of their walk, one of the drama students sat, head in his hands, moaning aloud as if in great pain. About half way the seminary students passed a man who was lying face down as if unconscious. Finally, on the steps of the lecture hall, the third drama student was acting out a seizure. In the first group of students, those who had only 15 minutes, no one stopped to help. In the second group, two students stopped to help. In the last group, which had three hours for their assignment, all of the students stopped to help at least one person.
The professor had clearly shown these seminarians that being in a hurry affects good intentions. It would be ideal were we never in a hurry, but so often we are, and often enough we have no way of slowing down. Interestingly, the professor had also proven that groups such as retirees, who may have more time on their hands than they did when working, are a welcome addition to Christ’s ministry. -DJ
A seminary professor gave an extra-credit opportunity. The students who participated met him at the library to receive their assignments.
The professor divided the students into three groups. He gave the first group envelopes telling them to walk across campus to a lecture hall. He told them that they had 15 minutes, and if they didn't arrive on time, it would affect their grade.
A minute or two later, he handed out envelopes to the second group. They were also to walk to the same lecture hall, but they had 45 minutes. He then gave the third group three hours to get to the same location.
The students were unaware that their professor had arranged for three drama students to meet them along the way. Close to the beginning of their walk, one of the drama students sat, head in his hands, moaning aloud as if in great pain. About half way the seminary students passed a man who was lying face down as if unconscious. Finally, on the steps of the lecture hall, the third drama student was acting out a seizure. In the first group of students, those who had only 15 minutes, no one stopped to help. In the second group, two students stopped to help. In the last group, which had three hours for their assignment, all of the students stopped to help at least one person.
The professor had clearly shown these seminarians that being in a hurry affects good intentions. It would be ideal were we never in a hurry, but so often we are, and often enough we have no way of slowing down. Interestingly, the professor had also proven that groups such as retirees, who may have more time on their hands than they did when working, are a welcome addition to Christ’s ministry. -DJ
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Pastor's Column, July 15, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Sometimes things aren’t as bad as they appear. A fellow recently took a flight that was diverted because of weather. Upon landing at the airport, the flight attendant announced that there would be a delay of at least an hour. The passengers could deplane, but please listen for a call to re-board.
The fellow noticed that everyone got off the plane except a blind lady seated nearby. A Seeing Eye dog lay at her feet. The lady evidently had flown the flight before because as the pilot walked by he said, “Sally, we’re going to be here for awhile. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?”
The blind lady answered, “No, but my dog would like to take a walk.”
And so the pilot, who was wearing sun glasses, walked off the plane into the terminal with a Seeing Eye dog. Passengers who witnessed this not only tried to change planes, but attempted to change airlines. Still, sometimes things aren’t as bad as they appear.-DJ
The fellow noticed that everyone got off the plane except a blind lady seated nearby. A Seeing Eye dog lay at her feet. The lady evidently had flown the flight before because as the pilot walked by he said, “Sally, we’re going to be here for awhile. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?”
The blind lady answered, “No, but my dog would like to take a walk.”
And so the pilot, who was wearing sun glasses, walked off the plane into the terminal with a Seeing Eye dog. Passengers who witnessed this not only tried to change planes, but attempted to change airlines. Still, sometimes things aren’t as bad as they appear.-DJ
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
July 8, 2012 - Pastor's Column
PASTOR’S COLUMN. Novelist and journalist Amos Oz says in How to Cure a Fanatic: “I think I have invented the remedy for fanaticism. A sense of humor is a great cure. I have never once in my life seen a person with a sense of humor become a fanatic, unless he or she has lost that sense of humor… Humor contains the ability to laugh at ourselves. Humor is relativism, humor is the ability to see yourself as others may see you, humor is the capacity to realize that no matter how righteous you are and how terribly wronged you have been, there is a certain side of life that is always a bit funny. The more right you are, the funnier you become…
“The antidote can also be found at home, virtually at your fingertips. No man is an island, said John Donne, but I humbly dare to add: No man and no woman is an island, but everyone of us is a peninsula, half attached to the mainland, half facing the ocean – one half connected to family and friends and culture and tradition… and the other half wanting to be left alone to face the ocean. I think we ought to be allowed to remain peninsulas. Every social and political system that turns each of us into an island and the rest of humankind into an enemy or rival is a monster. But at the same time every social and political and ideological system that wants to turn each of us into no more than a molecule of the mainland is also a monstrosity.”
-DJ
“The antidote can also be found at home, virtually at your fingertips. No man is an island, said John Donne, but I humbly dare to add: No man and no woman is an island, but everyone of us is a peninsula, half attached to the mainland, half facing the ocean – one half connected to family and friends and culture and tradition… and the other half wanting to be left alone to face the ocean. I think we ought to be allowed to remain peninsulas. Every social and political system that turns each of us into an island and the rest of humankind into an enemy or rival is a monster. But at the same time every social and political and ideological system that wants to turn each of us into no more than a molecule of the mainland is also a monstrosity.”
-DJ
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Pastor's Column - July 1, 2012
Pastor’s Column. One of the things we know about God is that God establishes boundaries. For ex., God says in Job 38, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?...when I prescribed bounds for the sea,… and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther?’” Or of the faithless amongst God’s people, God says, “They know no limits (boundaries) in deeds of wickedness;… shall I not punish them for these things?”
Do we and others take this seriously any longer? There is not much out of bounds on TV. Anything goes. An incredible amount of the news anymore is taken up by accounts of the abuse of children. What used to be a boundary rarely crossed with our young is now ignored by predators, witness Jerry Sandusky. And whereas people once observed the boundaries of modesty and humility, nowadays so many want to be celebrities.
And how about the wildfires in the west? We’re finding out that limiting forest fires as we’ve done the past century is setting an unrealistic boundary. We now know that wildfires are regular visitors to many ecosystems, often causing little or no long term damage; forest fires are inevitable; and postponing forest fires just makes the next fire bigger and more difficult to put out because there is so much more wood to burn.
A sobering thought in the midst of all this is Genesis 1: 28, when God says to Adam and Eve, “Have dominion over…the earth.” -DJ
Do we and others take this seriously any longer? There is not much out of bounds on TV. Anything goes. An incredible amount of the news anymore is taken up by accounts of the abuse of children. What used to be a boundary rarely crossed with our young is now ignored by predators, witness Jerry Sandusky. And whereas people once observed the boundaries of modesty and humility, nowadays so many want to be celebrities.
And how about the wildfires in the west? We’re finding out that limiting forest fires as we’ve done the past century is setting an unrealistic boundary. We now know that wildfires are regular visitors to many ecosystems, often causing little or no long term damage; forest fires are inevitable; and postponing forest fires just makes the next fire bigger and more difficult to put out because there is so much more wood to burn.
A sobering thought in the midst of all this is Genesis 1: 28, when God says to Adam and Eve, “Have dominion over…the earth.” -DJ
Monday, June 25, 2012
Pastor’s Column 6-24-2012
Pastor’s Column. A man was driving along a country road when a rabbit jumped out in front of his car. The man hit it. Being a sensitive animal lover, the man pulled over, examined the dead rabbit, and began to cry.
A woman driving by stopped her car and asked the man why he was crying. “I killed the Easter bunny with my car.”
“Don’t worry,” the woman said. She ran back to her car, pulled out a spray can, walked over to the dead rabbit, and sprayed the contents on him.
The Easter bunny immediately jumped up, waved its paw at the two of them, and hopped off down the road. Then the bunny stopped, turned around, and waved again. He stopped and waved several more times before he disappeared out of sight.
The astonished man asked the woman, “What’s in the can that you sprayed on the Easter bunny?”
The woman showed the man the label on the can. It said, “Hair spray. Restores life to dead hair and adds permanent wave.
(It wouldn’t have worked had the woman known how to spell.) -DJ
A woman driving by stopped her car and asked the man why he was crying. “I killed the Easter bunny with my car.”
“Don’t worry,” the woman said. She ran back to her car, pulled out a spray can, walked over to the dead rabbit, and sprayed the contents on him.
The Easter bunny immediately jumped up, waved its paw at the two of them, and hopped off down the road. Then the bunny stopped, turned around, and waved again. He stopped and waved several more times before he disappeared out of sight.
The astonished man asked the woman, “What’s in the can that you sprayed on the Easter bunny?”
The woman showed the man the label on the can. It said, “Hair spray. Restores life to dead hair and adds permanent wave.
(It wouldn’t have worked had the woman known how to spell.) -DJ
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Pastor's Column June 17, 2012
As we think about
gifts for Father’s Day, here are a couple of gifts that dads have received
lately.
A lady came down with cancer. At first she
responded with fear and depression. But then she had an experience of God that
led her to say, “Today I do not pray for a cure for myself. I pray that God
will help someone find a cure for cancer so that the thousands who come after
me will profit and benefit from that cure.”
She herself had only one prayer… that she
would live as fully one day at a time as she could. Her last act was to ask her
husband for a paper and pencil. He thought she wanted to write her will.
Instead, she wrote down simple recipes he could use to feed their children.
And don’t you know that violinist Philippe
Quint’s dad felt that he had received an incredible Father’s Day present!
Philippe left his 285-year-old Stradivarius in a taxi on a ride home from the Newark Airport
Ties, golf balls, and fly rods aren’t the
only gifts that fathers treasure. -DJ
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Pastor's Column June 3, 2012
The following is the
story of a radio communication between a U.S.
ship and an unidentified maritime contact off the coast of Newfoundland.
Naval
ship: Please divert your course 15 degrees north to avoid a collision.
Maritime
Contact: Recommend you divert your course 25 degrees south to avoid collision.
Naval
ship: This is the captain of the ship. I say again, divert your course.
Maritime
Contact: No, I say again, you divert your course.
Naval
ship: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. We are accompanied by three
destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. I demand that you
change your course 15 degrees north or countermeasures will be taken to ensure
the safety of this ship.
Maritime
Contact: We’re a lighthouse. Your call.
Whether or not this story actually
occurred, it makes a great point about making assumptions. Some assumptions can
sink your ship. -DJ
Monday, May 28, 2012
Pastor’s Column May 27
Rev. Ole was the pastor of the
local Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Pastor Sven was the minister of the
Swedish Covenant Church across the road in Minnesota. One day they were outside
standing by the road, pounding a sign into the ground that said:
Da End iss Near!
Turn Yourself Aroundt Now!
Before It’s Too
Late!
A car sped past,the driver leaning
out his window yelling, “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!”
As the car
disappeared down the road, suddenly there came the sound of screeching tires
and a big splash. Rev. Ole said to Pastor Sven, “Do ya tink maybe da sign
should yust say ‘Bridge Out’?” - DJ
Monday, May 21, 2012
Pastor's Column May 20, 2012
Do you remember that
centuries ago there was an index of forbidden books?
Maggie Ross does not want to embrace an
index of forbidden books again, but she sees a legitimate intention behind such
a list. “For all of us there are books we wish we hadn’t read, movies we wish
we hadn’t seen, activities we no longer care to engage in – all of which can
leave residual images in the mind that take time and effort to dissolve.”
I find
what Ross is suggesting helpful. Which movies, TV programs, books, periodicals,
columns, events, websites, and activities not only upset you, but which ones
have been a big “That was a waste of time!” Based then upon these distasteful
experiences, ask ourselves if a repeat is not worth avoiding.
About
any encounter, Ross would have us ponder these questions: “Will this text,
experience, or person create an interior storm of pleasurable excitement, or
anguish and distress, clouding the mind with noisy distraction? What is the
quality of silence in this text, experience, or person?”
Paul
says, “Finally, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is
any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these
things.” Philippians 4:8. I.e., there is a whole lot of entertainment and
opinion out there not worthy of our time. -DJ
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Pastor's Column May 13, 2012
One of
the scriptures used at funerals or memorial services for Moms is Proverbs
31:10-31. Eugene Peterson would certainly not lobby for a woman’s place being
confined to the home; but a Mom’s place certainly includes the home. This is
his translation from The Message.
“A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds. Her
husband trusts her without reserve, and never has reason to regret it. Never
spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long. She shops around for the
best yarns and cottons, and enjoys knitting and sewing. She’s like a trading
ship that sails to faraway places and brings back exotic surprises. She’s up
before dawn, preparing breakfast for her family and organizing her day. She
looks over a field and buys it, then, with money she’s put aside plants a
garden. First thing in the morning, she dresses for work, rolls up her sleeves,
eager to get started. She senses the worth of her work, is in no hurry to call
it quits for the day. She’s skilled in the crafts of home and hearth, diligent
in homemaking.
“She’s quick to assist anyone in need, reaches out to help the poor. She
doesn’t’ worry about her family when it snows; their winter clothes are all
mended and ready to wear. She makes her own clothing, and dresses in colorful
linens and silk. Her husband is greatly respected when he deliberates with the
city fathers. She designs gowns and sells them, brings the sweaters she knits
to the dress shops. Her clothes are well-made and elegant, and she always faces
tomorrow with a smile. When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and
she always says it kindly. She keeps an eye on everyone in her household, and
keeps them all busy and productive.
“Her children respect and bless her; her husband joins in with words of
praise: ‘Many women have done wonderful things, but you’ve outclassed them
all!’ Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades. The woman to be admired and
praised is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God. Give her everything she
deserves! Festoon her life with praise!”
I get tired just
reading the above. No wonder we set aside a day for Mom to take it easy.
Tomorrow it starts again. -DJ
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Pastor's Column May 5, 2012
(An allegedly true story.) A bar
called Drummond's, Mt Vernon, Texas, wanted to expand their business to attract
more patrons. A local Southern Baptist church protested and began a campaign to
prevent the expansion - petitions, prayers, etc. The protest was not successful
in that the bar got the license to build on.
About a week before the bar's grand
re-opening, a bolt of lightning struck the
bar and
burned it to the ground. Afterward, the church folks were rather smug. They
bragged about "the power of
prayer". The angry bar owner took all he could and then sued the church on
grounds that the congregation... "Was ultimately responsible for the
demise of his building, through direct actions or indirect means."
The church vehemently denied all
responsibility or any connection to the
building's demise. The judge read carefully
through the plaintiff's complaint and the
defendant's reply. He then opened the hearing
by saying: "I don't know how I'm going to decide this, but it appears from
the paperwork that what we have here is a bar owner who now believes in the
power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not." - DJ
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Pastor’s Column
The
new geographic “center” of Christianity has shifted slightly. Anyone want to guess
where the global geographic center of Christianity is now located?
No,
it’s not Vatican City. No, it’s not some football stadium sized sanctuary in
Texas.
No, it’s not in South Korea, South Africa, or Southern Jerusalem.
Len
Sweet reports that the wonderfully revealing new global center-point for
Christianity, the new center of gravity for the Christian religion, is . . .
Timbuktu.
That’s
right, Timbuktu in Mali. Can anyone locate Timbuktu on the map? Timbuktu is the
ultimate,
classic definition of “the middle of nowhere.” What better place to
locate the heart of Christianity?
Where is the hope and love of Christ needed
more . . . than in the midst of “nowhere”?
The good news is that from its central
point of Timbuktu, Christianity is the largest and fastest growing world
religion. There are now over two billion
Christians scattered across the globe.
– DJ
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Pastor's Column April 22, 2012
After his crucifixion,
according to Luke, the disciples were trying to sort out the meaning of the
reports they had received about appearances of the risen Jesus. It was most
confusing, maybe a hoax. But suddenly Jesus himself stood among them, saying, "Why
are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands
and my feet; see that it is I myself..." Luke tells us that, "Even in
their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering." It was too
wonderful to be true! He was dead, yet now alive and with them. No wonder they
had difficulty believing. Some persons still have that problem today. Many
desperately want to believe but something holds them back. So, says Jesus, "See
my hands and my feet..." See if it’s not I who is with you.
From
frightened and uncertain men marked by doubt and envy, the disciples developed
courage and purpose. How about you? What difference has been made in your life
by seeing the hands and feet of the risen Christ? By knowing He is with you?
Has it caused you to take more seriously your discipleship? Has it had an
effect on the goals you have set for your life? Harold Kushner tells about a
young man who left home to find fame and fortune in Hollywood. He had three
dreams when he set out: to see his name in lights, to own a Rolls Royce, and to
marry a beauty contest winner. By the time he was thirty, he had done all
three, but he was a deeply depressed, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his
dreams coming true. By thirty, he had run out of goals. What was there for him
to do with the rest of his life? Those who have seen the hands and feet
of the risen Christ and live their lives in the light of eternity never run out
of a purpose, God’s purpose. "See my hands and my feet..." Follow me.
-DJ
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Pastor's Column April 15, 2012
One hundred years ago today the “unsinkable” Titanic sank. The White Star Line, which owned the ship, never
itself claimed that its new flagship was unsinkable. It was media hype from
such sources as the Belfast Morning News
and Shipbuilder that began this
claim. But everyone soon got on board.
The whole Titanic saga is one chocked full of hubris or pride based on the
idea that such a large, modern ship could not possibly suffer a disaster at
sea. Even though they may never have said it out loud, the Titanic’s designers, agents, leadership, and even its passengers
clearly bought the hype.
And because they did, no real concern was given to the following: the Titanic had received several transmissions from other ships that there were ice floes in the vicinity,
yet
she continued at full-throttle. The Titanic’s
rudder was 30-40% too small for its size, meaning the ship could not steer
quickly enough to avoid the iceberg when first sighted. The parent company of
the White Star Line suggested using a type of crane that would have allowed 48
lifeboats, more than enough for passengers and crews, but the White Star, which
spared no expense in amenities for wealthy passengers, cut costs by mounting
only 20 life boats, enough for half those on board. On and on the insanity went
because of the hubris that an unsinkable ship could be built.
Whether it’s the Titanic or the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig disaster that dumped
206
million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 or the economic collapse
of fall 2008 (including subprime mortgages), human beings are especially
afflicted by one of the Seven Deadly Sins, hubris. As Proverbs 16:18 say,
“Pride goes before destruction,
and a
haughty spirit before a fall.” - DJ
Monday, April 9, 2012
PASTOR’S COLUMN April 8
Have you noticed that we say, “Easter is
early this year,” or “Easter is late this year;” but we never say, “Easter is
just right this year”? Evidently, Easter never comes when we think it should.
But just when does it come?
Obviously,
Easter is the Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21, the vernal
or spring equinox. Everyone knows that. But what many of us didn’t pay any
attention to were the incredible “early Easter” and “late Easter” of recent
times.
In
2008, Easter came the earliest that
any of us will see for the rest of our lives, March 23! The last time Easter
fell on March 23 was 1913, which, those of you 99 or older remember quite well.
The next time Easter will fall on March 23 is 2228. Mark it in your calendar!
(The earliest Easter can fall is March
22, which it hasn’t since 1818. The next time Easter will fall on March 22 is
2285. I’d say mark it too, but few of us keep our calendars beyond 2250.)
In 2009, Easter fell on April 12, and then
on April 4 in 2010. But 2011 was
special because Easter fell on April 24! The latest Easter can fall is April
25.
We have just lived through an amazing time,
and most of us didn’t even know it! Within the space of three years, 2008-2011, Easter was celebrated one
day short of the earliest possible date and one day short of the latest date.
What can we say about Easter’s date this
year? Not much. I guess we could say that April 8 splits the difference between
the dates in 2009 and 20010, April 4 and April 12. That’s not very exciting,
but, of course, when Easter falls is unimportant. What we celebrate on Easter
is what’s exciting! - DJ
Monday, April 2, 2012
Pastor's Column April 1, 2012
More PARAPROSDOKIANS, figures of speech in which
the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and
frequently humorous.
1. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
2. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need one to skydive twice.
3. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out all I wanted was a paycheck.
4. In filling out an application, where it says, “In case of emergency, notify:” I put,
“Doctor.”
5. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
6. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
7. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
8. You’re never too old to learn to do something stupid.
9. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
10. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
5. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
6. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
7. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
8. You’re never too old to learn to do something stupid.
9. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
10. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
11. Change is
inevitable, except from a vending machine.
12. Where there’s a
will, there are relatives.
- DJ
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