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“We are a people born from a response to hints of the divine. Not only this, but we must embrace the idea that we are also called to be hints of the divine.” Peter Rollins in How (Not) to Speak of God.
I hope to say more about this book later as I continue to work my way through it and digest it. But let me just say that so far I am deeply impressed.
Today, the church geek enters into the political arena, which is not a place he frequents often in public. This is good news however: Wesley Clark may run for President.
Even though he never generated enough steam, Clark had my vote in the 2004 democratic caucuses here in Iowa, and he’ll have my vote again should he decide to run.
The Democrats need to be strong on issues of national security. Also, as a nation we’ve got a lot of work ahead to restore our international reputation. I think Clark is the best candidate to fit the bill on both ends.
Christmas is just around the corner. Are you looking for a great gift to give your coffee loving friend or relative? How about the Toddy Coffee Maker?
I’ve been brewing cold brew coffee for over 5 years now, and if I have a choice it’s the only way I’ll drink my coffee. The coffee is smooth, low acid, and free of bitterness. Best of all? Once you’ve brewed your coffee concentrate there’s no messing with filters and machines; a great time saver in the morning.
Don’t wait any longer. Go order one now.
Miranda at Presbyterian Bloggers highlights a number of on-line advent calendars. Go and check them out. I especially like the Praying Advent Calendar.
People are constantly looking for another world. A different reality. A way of escaping the pressures of this present world. Movies, soap operas, romance novels, even sporting events, are some of the many ways we can temporarily escape the reality of life in the here and now.
Today, people are creating new ways to escape. One of those new creations is the promise of “Second Life.†I don’t mean life after death. Nor do I mean the second life of a cat that has used up its first one and has eight more left to go.
“Second Life†is a whole new world, with over a million and a half people currently living and participating in it. As we are gathered here in worship this morning, there is a whole other life, in another dimension, that is currently unfolding and evolving.
Second Life is an on-line digital 3-D world that is imagined, created, and owned by its residents. Anyone can participate in this alternative world. You could even enter into it if you wanted to. All you need is a high speed internet connection and a computer that is powerful enough.
In this on-line 3-D world, you create an alternative reality version of yourself and then go about living your new digital life. You can visit and make friends, get married, build houses, and buy virtual goods. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you can design and create things to sell in this on-line world. There are virtual shops with people designing software, clothes, buildings, or anything you can imagine selling to other Second Life members.
“For a child has been born to us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Even so, there is evidently not much of a desire to allow one woman the opportunity this Christmas season to share Christ’s message of peace on earth in a subdivision of Pagosa Springs, CO.
Much has been written lately about the purpose of keeping a blog. For instance Fernando highlights a plan for his blog for the up-coming year. And Kairos highlights the questions raised by Not Prince Hamlet about his ability to keep pace with the blogging community.
While my blog could probably benefit from some reflection about the purposes behind it, the question I’ve been struggling with lately is a different one: Do I really need to have 91 faith related blogs in my feed reader?
Every morning, I find somewhere between 50 -75 new posts in my feed reader and over the course of a day probably another 20-25 posts come across the wire. Granted I skim through most of them looking for the posts from my favorite bloggers or that cover the subject matters I’m most interested in, but all of this does take up considerable time and effort.
Time I could probably be devoting to other worthwhile tasks. I’ve noticed in the last year, that the amount of time I’ve spent reading books has decreased - I’m willing to bet - somewhat proportionally to the amount of time I’ve spent keeping up with blogs.
And to be brutally honest, I’ve been feeling a little guilty lately about my prayer life; should I really spend an hour catching up on the latest in the blogosphere when I could be using that time to pray for myself, the congregation, and our ministry?
We enter today’s story with Hannah at the temple pouring out her heart before God, imploring to God and pleading before him, the dam finally having burst after years of not being heard by those around her.
Nobody took the time to listen to her. All alone in her pain, there wasn’t anybody to understand her emptiness, or who really even seemed to truly care.
It’s often been said that the one thing we need and want most in life is to know that we are not alone. In today’s story, no one listened to Hannah, and she feared that she really was all alone.
Hannah’s trouble came from the fact that she was childless. In her time, this was one the worst positions for a woman to be in. In her patriarchal and male-dominated society, much of a woman’s self-worth was directly wrapped up in her ability to be productive and to have children.
Even worse, the common theology of her day said that infertility was a curse from God. Hannah dreaded the yearly visits to the temple of the Lord at Shiloh, because they made her acutely aware of her failure to bear children, and they were a painful reminder of God’s curse upon her.
It didn’t help that her rival, Peninnah, found great joy in taunting Hannah. She constantly reminded her that her closed womb was a symbol of God’s curse. Peninnah loved to rub her nose in it. She enjoyed provoking Hannah to the point of tears.
Over the past year, I’ve been evaluating a number of different resources for lectionary sermon and worship preparation. Here’s my review of what I generally turn to when I’m preparing for worship based on the lectionary:
Lectionary Homiletics: This is a bi-monthly printed journal. It’s not fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but I generally get one or two useful things out of it. Features for each Sunday include an exegesis of the chosen text, theological and pastoral implications, art and movie ideas focused on the theme (though these never seem to work for me), a review of three sermons, and a sample sermon. My only complaint is that it focuses on only one of the lectionary texts, so if you want to preach another one of them, the magazine for that week is worthless. (Plus as far as I know there is never an index so it makes it hard to look up particular texts in previous issues.)
Desperate Preacher: This is an online website with some free resources, other services require a one year subscription of $39.95. I just finished a four week trial and am considering subscribing to it soon. Subscribers receive a weekly e-mail with a more thorough exegesis of the chosen text than you’ll find in Lectionary Homiletics. It looks like the focus is generally on the Gospel text, but it sounds like as things continue to develop more texts will be included. One of the ‘free’ features on the site that I really like is a bulletin board discussion in which people can post their ideas and thoughts about how to preach the text.
Our church is low tech and low budget. We’re a pretty small (avg worship att. of 65) Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation, fairly traditional but not rigidly so, with a good variety in terms of age. In a recent sermon I used two videos found on YouTube as sermon illustrations. How did I do it? Well, let me tell you…
Whenever I want to do video projection, I call up one of our church members who owns a video projector for her business and ask her if I can borrow it for Sunday. I also have to put up one of those old-fashioned collapsible screens; setting it up in the front corner of our worship space. Nothing fancy here, but I guess where there’s a will there’s a way.
I downloaded the videos off of You-Tube using the “UnPlug” add-on available for Firefox. I then used the free VLC media player to play the videos off my laptop. The quality was not the greatest especially when played on the big screen, but it was good enough and it got the job done.
This worked real well. I had lots of positive comments on my sermon, and I think people really appreciated having something other than my preaching to connect the point of my sermon with their everyday lives. Best of all? It cost the church next to nothing.
On Saturday mornings, I tend to find something else to do rather than getting to work finishing up my sermon. Today’s diversion was voting for the new seven wonders of the world.
My votes went to:
Chichen Itza
Great Wall
Hagia Sophia
Machu Picchu
Pryamids of Giza (the only remaining wonders on the ancient seven wonders list)
Taj Mahal
Timbuktu
I have some traveling to do! Of the 21 on the list you can vote for, I’ve only seen the Eifel Tower and the Statue of Liberty in person. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for them because they just don’t seem like ‘wonders’ to me.
I’m still looking for the perfect Feed Reader. Since I’m cheap, I want it to be free though I might consider paying a nominal price for something that was really, really great.
I’m currently trying out Google Reader, though in the past I’ve used a few of the firefox feed reader plugins, newsgator, and bloglines. Each of them have their nice features, but so far, none of them has been perfect.
Of all the things I’ve tried, the Flock browser with its built-in feed reader worked the best, but I became annoyed with some of the other features of Flock as a whole and with the fact that it didn’t seem like they were making any progress to better their product.
Chris Tilling has an interview with Richard Bauckham about his yet to be published book “Jesus and The Eyewitnesses.”
I confess that I don’t know much about Buackham. The hypothesis of his new book is that the gospels are in fact eyewitness accounts by those who knew Jesus closely. Though his work supports rather traditional view of the gospel, Bauckham says that much of his argument is “quite fresh.” He uses unnoticed internal evidence from the gospels, recent scholarship about the use of names, and modern psychological research on eyewitness memory.
This one is going on my Amazon wishlist.
(HT for use of the videos in this sermon goes to Kairos along with my wife who suggested I use them.)
This passage has been the source of many sermons on the nature of Christian stewardship. The obvious comparison, the one hears most often in these types of sermons, is between the rich folks who throw lots of money into the offering plate and the widow who gives the very last two coins in her possession.
But there is another comparison in this passage, between the behavior of the teachers of the law and the widow, that can be made which is just as fruitful. It leads to a different sort of sermon.
The passage starts off with Jesus warning the crowds to beware of those scribes who “wear their faith on their sleeves.†The ones who run around hoping others will notice just how holy and pious they are.
They are the ones who wear their long robes not only when they teach in the synagogues but whenever they go out in public. They also like the best seats in the synagogue, the ones right up front, on the podium, where others can see how truly devout and religious they are.
And when it comes time to pray, boy you better be ready to sit for a long time because their prayers are long and showy. Such prayers make it clear just how close to God they really are because nobody else ever prays like that.
So instead of working on my sermon this morning like I should be, I finally got around to setting up a Flickr account and uploading a few photos. Check out my new Flickr page. I hope to be adding more photos in the next couple of days.
The photos I have currently uploaded are from our Scotland trip to Iona in 2005 and from this summer’s vacation to the north shore of Lake Superior. Hope you enjoy.
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