Waxing Theological

The texts for this week's sermon are Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 21:5-19 The End Is Near When I was in college, my friends and I spent a lot of time planning for the future.  But since we were all also very much like the characters on the television show “The Big Bang Theory,” our planning for the future probably didn’t play out the way that it does for other college students.  Rather than talking about what grad school we thought we might go to, or what summer internships we were applying for, or what our dreams were for families, career, homes, or anything else, our time was spent laying out plans for that day when all the movies we’d been watching became a reality and we found ourselves right in the middle of a full blown Zombie Apocalypse.  We had nights where we’d get together and watch George A. Romero’s zombie movies as “homework,” learning from those poor, unprepared saps on the screen what we should and should not do in the event of an outbreak of zombie ...

The texts for this sermon are: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 and Luke 20:27-38 It’s a Trap! It seems like one of those strange and frustrating word problems they gave us when we were in school: A train leaves Vandalia traveling at 75 miles per hour and another leaves Columbia traveling at 63 miles an hour - how far does each go before they meet one another?  But of course it’s not as simple as doing a bit of math - the question the Sadducees ask is tough and doesn’t have a good answer.  But then, it’s also a trap.  The Sadducees weren’t really all that interested in Jesus’ answer - they didn’t even believe in the resurrection.  Like the talk-radio personality/news show pundit who invites an extreme member of the opposite viewpoint onto their radio show, the Sadducees were baiting Jesus by asking a ridiculous question and expecting him to give an answer that painted him as the fraud that they all saw him to be. But Jesus doesn’t miss a beat.  Just ...

Saint or Sinner? The texts for this sermon are: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 and Luke 19:1-10 Today we get the chance to look at another one of those familiar passages that we think we know all about, only to discover that we really didn’t even learn the half of it when we were in Sunday School. The story goes like this - we may even remember the song: This all-too familiar “vertically challenged” person plays Tarzan for a moment just to get a glimpse of Jesus as he passes by, and instead of just getting to see Jesus walking past as he’d hoped, he instead finds himself suddenly thrust into the position of host to the very man he’d been trying to see.  Jesus looks up at the sycamore tree, sees Zacchaeus there, and quite literally invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home. It’s a simple story - it seems pretty cut and dry, easy to understand.  Jesus did what he does time and time again in Luke, picking out the sinner in the crowd and choosing to spend time with ...

The Church Reformed and Always Reforming The texts for this sermon are Joel 2:23-32, Luke 18:9-14, and Romans 3:19-28 The legend goes like this: It’s a chilly morning in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31st.  Later that day, beggars and children would be seen going about “souling,” or asking for fresh-baked soul-cakes, thought to help release souls from purgatory as they are eaten.  Church bells would be ringing throughout the day and night for all those same souls as church-goers throughout the city went to mass for All Hallow’s Eve to humbly remember all the saints and martyrs who had gone before them and to pray for the release of all the souls currently in purgatory. But while many still lay warmly cocooned beneath the covers of their beds, one solitary figure moves quietly through the dawn mists that still fill the streets.  He clutches a parchment tightly in one hand and a mallet in the other hand.  He turns a corner and begins to approach the qui...

Pray Until Something Happens The texts for this sermon are 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 and Luke 18:1-8 When I was in elementary school in the 1990’s, kids across the nation got swept up in a craze over wearing these little woven cloth bracelets on their wrists.  We used to collect them in all different colors and styles - we’d trade them with one another and put five and six on our wrists at a time.  Some of my more artistic friends bought kits where they could make their own with different patterns and beads and other things.  These bracelets were kind of like the friendship bracelets that had been going around for years and years, but they were different, too.  This new fad was just four letters: WWJD? Pastors used to hand them out at youth group or during children’s sermons.  You could buy them by the handful at Christian bookstores.  And everyone was wearing them, it seemed.  We were all proud to be able to show our faith on a little piece of...

The texts for this week's sermon are 2 Kings 5:1-15 and Luke 17:11-19 Life after Leprosy In all of the reading and listening I’ve done about the texts today, there’s one word that keeps popping up time and time again: gratitude.  Every commentary, every blog and reflection page, nearly every person who sits down to write a sermon on Jesus’ encounter with the ten lepers... the focus is almost universally on the one leper who comes back and gives thanks to Jesus for his healing. And in a lot of ways, that’s what it should be - it’s the driving point of this section of Luke’s gospel.  It’s the “punch-line” of the story, so to speak, as Jesus remarks at this one foreigner who returns to give praise to God, and it’s what moves Jesus to tell the Samaritan man to go his way, for “your faith has made you well.” But every time I read this story, I can’t help but ask the question: what about the other nine?  There’s an author named Martin Bell who wrote a book calle...

I'm going to let you in on perhaps a little known secret of fatherhood, or at least a discovery I've made about myself now that I've been a father for almost two and a half years.  We often put on a brave face, try to live up to the idea of being the "strong dad" who is there to clean up bloody, skinned knees, who chases away the monsters under the bed or in the closet, who gives the occasional stern look or raised voice to set a wayward child back on the straight and narrow. But there's something else that happens when you become a parent - you learn the truth: being a dad makes you so much more aware  of things.  It brings out emotions you didn't realize you were capable of.  It gives you a different outlook on life.  And suddenly you find yourself powerfully affected by so many things you never would have given a second thought to before you suddenly had this small person in your life who looks remarkably like you. For example: I used to make j...

Small Start, Global Movement It was autumn of 1933 in a beautiful stone Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania.  The leaves were starting to turn to their vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges on the oaks, birches, and maples that surrounded the church.  But for the people of the Shadyside Presbyterian church, the changing leaves were probably one of the last things on their minds.  The world had been plunged into what historians would later call the Great Depression and by 1933, the world economy had completely bottomed out.  Banks were failing, people had lost or were losing all of their money, and there seemed to be little hope to be found anywhere.  Fears were rising once more as people closely watched Germany as Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power that January.  Fascism was the word on many lips and its threat was felt very strongly as countries like Italy and Germany began to gain more power and influence; the drums of war were b...

The Texts for this sermon are 1 Timothy 6:6-19 and Luke 16:19-31 Walking With Blinders On I went to college in a small community nestled squarely in the heart of Western Pennsylvania Amish country.  Every day, we’d hear the buggies driving through our campus as the Amish came into town to buy groceries, to find work with other local families, or to be picked up to be driven out of town to wherever else they needed to go.  Early in the morning, late at night, we’d hear the buggies coming through, “clop clop clop clop clop”-ing down the road.  Living near Amish neighborhoods actually takes a bit of an adjustment, as I’m sure people who have been through Bowling Green can attest.  You have to be ready to brake quickly when you crest a hill and see that Amish buggy suddenly coming up very close to your front bumper, and then you have to wait - often for miles at a time, for the road ahead to be clear enough for you to get around them, or for them to steer the...

The texts for this week's sermon are Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13. Dishonest Wealth There’s a dirty word that flies around during the month of April with regularity - of course, I’m talking about taxes.  Every January, we get those wonderful forms that remind us how much we made this year, then we go about the grueling process of figuring out just how much of a cut of that money we need to give to Uncle Sam.  So we call up our accountants, we log onto the tax preparation websites, we pull out the calculators, the big ziplock bag of receipts we’ve saved all year, the letters from the churches and charities telling us what our donations have been this year, everything we can to help figure out what we need to pay, and we crunch those numbers down to the last penny.  We make that extra pot of coffee, pull out the antacids, and we don’t quit until it’s done and we know whether we’re getting something back , or whether we just have to pay...

I'm sitting on my front porch for really the first time since we moved into this beautiful manse in this little town of Vandalia.  I'm in a folding camp chair, but I'm wishing it was a porch swing like the one my grandparents had in Liberty, Indiana.  I've been sitting out here on this porch off and on throughout the night, actually, my clay Presbyterian mug full of the Punjana tea that reminds me so strongly of Corrymeela and of Ireland.  And the only reason I'm sitting out here is because the rain is comming down in torrents and the thunder is rolling in steady waves, like a celestial ocean wave crashing against the clouds time and time again.  The rain is gently misting against my face as a cool breeze blows in from the rapid descent of the barometer; it leaves iridescent pinpricks of magnified light on my screen as I sit and type.  Lightning flashes and I see the clouds light up on the horizon, the trees coming alive in bluish-green hues from its eerie stati...