Meditation on migraines
Every single morning my first thought is: Does my head hurt? That is, if I haven’t already been awakened at 4 a.m...
More Stories from this Author
Boating lessons
Living on Puget Sound, my husband, Rick, and I love putt-putting around on the Willie C, our 45-year-old, 25-foot Swedish troller boat...
Be the church!
First Presbyterian Church of Seattle: Then and now First Presbyterian Church of Seattle was organized in 1869 with seven charter members..
No room in the what?
I confess: Learning that the New Testament never uses the word stable or barn to describe where Jesus was born was borderline..
The job of transitional ministry
In the last 30-plus years as I’ve served seven congregations as a pastor, only a few were officially called “interim ministry.” But..
Reflections on marriage
It’s June – the most marrying month of the year. I‘ve long since lost track of how many weddings I’ve officiated over..
Getting perspective
It happened again just recently. I was going through one of those new-fangled car washes. Not the kind I grew up..
Why I love Pentecost
YES, I KNOW IT WAS NEARLY 3 MONTHS AGO, BUT... hands down, my favorite liturgical holy day is Pentecost. Though I rarely..
Preaching resurrection
PREACHERS CAN FEEL ENORMOUS PRESSURE for our Easter sermons to rise to the greatness of the occasion. How do we make it..
When love wins
WE CAN ALL PROBABLY AGREE ON THIS MUCH: This year’s SCOTUS decision on marriage was epic. But what caught my imagination was..
Ruling elders?
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SURE HAS ITS QUIRKS. Why else are lawyers disbarred and clergy defrocked, but cowboys aren’t deranged or dry cleaners..
Misneach
NOT LONG AGO MY HUSBAND AND I ACQUIRED a little boat — a 1973 Swedish-built 25-foot fiberglass troller that has a reputation..
Nothing!
AT THE VERY LEAST WE FELT a sense of responsibility … maybe even God’s call. As I wrapped up an interim, my..
My stab at a pastoral response
I SUGGEST WE START BY COMPILING A LIST of things Christians have disagreed about through the centuries right on into today: God’s..
Reflections on sin
TO BE HONEST, SOMETIMES WHEN I hear the word “sin” I flinch. You’d think I’d get used to it after nearly 45..
Remember your baptism
IT WILL GO DOWN IN MY MEMORY as one of the top ten all-time meaningful events in my ministry.
Mixing faith and politics
Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
We know how the story goes: Unmarried pregnant teenager; no room at the inn; baby born in a manger; Emmanuel, God-with-us. It's so familiar -- prompting one little boy to ask his pastor with that blunt, no-holds-barred, child-like honesty: "Do we have to hear that same story again?"
Over-familiarity is challenging for preachers, too, an occupational hazard for those whose job is to listen to ancient texts and proclaim a fresh message from God. It takes commitment. But it also takes courage. Presbyterian pastor James Lowry warns: "Any preacher who can sleep soundly on Saturday nights. ... Any preacher who has no form of gastrointestinal distress on Sunday mornings" -- or on Christmas Eve! -- "has not dealt with the texts ... and is not to be heeded."
“Jesus is coming … so now what?”
Advent 1: Luke 21:25-36
I was a tall, skinny, spindly-legged girl, gawky and uncoordinated. I recall my kindergarten teacher being alarmed when initially I could skip only on one side of my body. But all through my elementary years jump rope proved particularly challenging. Remember the schoolyard motion -- elbows bent at the waist, palms down, a slight rocking motion, hands pushing the air in time with the rope? I could do that for hours. Days. I never knew how to jump in.
I feel like that with a text like this. I'm not quite sure how to jump in here.
Scholars come along and try to give us a push: It's just apocalyptic literature, they say. So we jump in -- only to discover that apocalyptic is the double-dutch of biblical genres, and we collapse in a tangled mess of dispensational exegesis.
The fact that it's Advent, too, the beginning of the church's liturgical calendar, the Christian New Year, complicates matters as well. Because this text is more about an ending than a beginning, and it hardly evokes a sense of celebration. Yes, we're assured Jesus is coming again ... but not before we're bombarded with images of persecution and pestilence, cosmic disturbance and destruction. Don't let the prescribed lectionary boundaries try to soften the blow -- force yourself to go all the way back, at least to verse 12 and start reading there. Linger over these verses and you begin to get the sense that apparently followers of Jesus are not exempt from suffering. So much for a happy New Year.
Stay alert, keep awake
Scripture lesson: Mark 13
With all due respect to Holy Scripture, this is some great Advent sermon fodder. There is Isaiah 64's cry to come down; Psalm 81's plea to come to save us, and the thrice reiterated restore us," and, I Corinthians 1's invitation to patiently wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But when it comes to interpreting Mark 13's imperatives to stay alert and keep awake from a Reformed theological perspective, we who live after the publication of some 62 million copies of The Left Behind series (not to mention some two-thousand Advents, more or less), have our work cut out for us. The mild-mannered Christianity Today once referred to LaHaye and Jenkins' series as a multi-"volume post-rapture, dispensational soap opera." But this stuff--page-turning intrigue and hair-raising climaxes notwithstanding--is not harmless entertainment. It's theology.