Waxing Theological

8-30-15 (Proper 17/Ordinary 22 B, Semi-Continuous) James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Do the Word     How many times each day would you say that you wash your hands?  How many pumps of hand sanitizer do you rub into your skin?  How often do you walk around the house, rubbing things down with an anti-bacterial wipe?  More and more these days, it seems like we’re obsessed with being clean.  Sometimes, it seems like we’re living in a society of germophobes.  But how many of you, if someone in your family came to dinner without washing their hands, would consider that person wholly unclean and eject them from your house so that you and your whole family didn’t become unclean in the process, and then take two turtledoves to your local church, then sacrifice them as an atonement for the person not washing their hands?  How many of you set up a tent outside of the city limits of Vandalia for 24 hours after you’ve changed a dirty diaper, or d...

8-23-15 (Proper 16/Ordinary 21 B, Semi-Continuous) 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43; John 6:56-59                                                                   “God’s House” There are places like that are, for one reason or another, very important to each of us spiritually - some people call these “thin places” - places where it’s as if the boundaries between heaven and earth are somehow not as clearly defined, where it is easier to encounter God.  For some, it’s at a church camp, your alma mater, the church where you grew up, got married, saw your first child baptized.  Or maybe it’s in your garden among the tomatoes and zucchini, nose deep in your zinnias and pruning roses.  Or maybe it’s in the misty early morning, huddled under a poncho in your deer stand, or your favorite hunting blind or fishin...

It's been a busy couple months for my family and I - I had hoped to write some more posts exploring the models of atonement, but between traveling to New York to visit family and then taking time at Covenant Point to participate with our local church camp, things got away from me.  My goal is to make some time in the next several weeks now to continue this exploration more fully! In the first entry we started by exploring what atonement is, and then went in-depth with the most common model that we see in both Catholic and Protestant churches: Satisfaction/Penal Atonement.  We see how the Satisfaction model stacks up, both its pros and its cons, and we see that it is still the most commonly-known and used model of atonement in our culture today.  But if this model isn't... pardon the pun... satisfactory, then what other models have been proposed, and how do they look, instead? As we noted earlier, Anselm kicked much of this debate off because he was unhappy with t...

8-16-15 (Proper 15/Ordinary 20 B Semi-Continuous) 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Ephesians 5:15-20 Wisdom     What would you do if you had a magic genie who granted you three wishes?  What if you did something extraordinary for the President or someone else immensely important, and they offered you any one thing you wanted as their way of saying thanks?  Or, perhaps a more repeated and debated question: if you won the Powerball tomorrow, what would you do with it?  We like to use our imaginations and dream about fantastic circumstances occurring to us and we rehearse our responses to those events as if they were just around the corner.  Personally, I have a numbered list of what I’d do with my Powerball winnings - just in case.     So imagine what it must have been like for Solomon in this moment as, after a time of worship and sacrifice, God comes to him in a dream and says “What do you want?  Name it - anything!”  Solomon has j...

8-9-15 (Proper 14 / Ordinary 19B Semi-Continuous) 2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33; John 6:35, 41-51 TRIGGER WARNING: This sermon contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.  Tamar is/was a victim whose story should be told and honored - as such, I have not avoided stating her victimization for what it is.   Game of Thrones, Game of Grace         Drama.  Violence.  Incest.  Political intrigue and scheming.  Surprising betrayals.  Injured family members seeking vengeance and justice.  A civil war that divides kingdoms and raises new kings.  It’s the kind of story that makes for a high entertainment television series!  In fact, these elements are the very things that drive the hit HBO show Game of Thrones.  From April to June for the last five years, people have been glued to their television sets watching the great houses of Westeros battling it...

8-2-15 (Proper 13 / Ordinary 18 B Semi-Continuous) 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; John 6:24-35 You're the Man!    Growing up as a child in the ‘90s, my friends and I frequently used to throw around different phrases.  Some of them are still around - if we got excited about something, we yelled “Sweet!”  Calling our friends “Dude,” and putting “Like” in the middle of all of our sentences were common occurrences.  Our response to everything was typically “Whatever.”  One that we used to use, however, that has more or less faded out, was “You da man!”  Your friend scored tickets to a sold out concert and invited you - “Sweet!  You da man!”  It was a recognition of accomplishment, another way of saying “Good job,” even a title of honor given to a person who was simply outstanding.     I don’t think that’s what David heard, however, when Nathan told him “You are the man.”  In those four words, there was no high five, no job well ...