Waxing Theological

1-22-17 (Epiphany 3A) 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23 Come and Follow They left their nets, their boats, and even their father behind to follow the Christ.  They didn’t ask for a list of qualifications or a demonstration of proof; they just heard Jesus’ invitation to become “fishers of men,” dropped everything else, and went to follow him wherever he was going.  It’s a peculiar image that we’re given by Matthew, and vastly different from John’s account that we heard last week.  If we’re being honest with ourselves, in fact, John’s is far more believable - Andrew starts off as a disciple of John the Baptist in John’s gospel, so he’s already been primed and ready to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  It’s why Andrew is so quick to invite his brother to come with him.  Peter and Andrew experience the Messiah and then become disciples. Matthew cuts to the chase, and makes Jesus come across all the more powerful in the process.  And what fa...

1-15-17 (Epiphany 2A) Psalm 40:1-11; John 1:29-42 Come and See! There’s something particularly compelling about the excitement and persistence of a young child when there’s something they want you to come and see.  It doesn’t matter what, exactly, it is - whether it’s a new picture they’ve drawn or colored, a particularly interesting leaf somewhere in the yard, or the pile of flour, broken eggs and gallon of milk all over the floor that came about as they tried to make you cupcakes, there’s a kind of urgency, even a desperate need that you drop whatever you are doing, take their hand, and follow them to see what it is that they want you to see.  There’s no logic on earth that can dissuade them, no door they’re not willing to keep knocking at, no conversation that’s not too important to interrupt. It may seem strange to take the image of an excited child and compare it to the account in John’s Gospel of the calling of the first disciples, perhaps even stranger...

1-1-2017 (Christmas 1A) Isaiah 63:7-9; Matthew 2:13-23 Some Kind of New Year Over the last week, I’ve seen a lot of folks saying that this would be the first time in a long time that they’d actually stay up to watch the ball drop.  Strangely enough, it hasn’t been because of anything special like the turn of the century, the change of a millennium, or a fear of some kind of Y2K computer dating glitch or anything - these folks have been saying they plan to stay up just so that they can watch 2016 finally be over, finally be behind them.  This last year has been one filled with challenges, disappointments, and heartaches for a lot of people, particularly from a pop culture standpoint.  We’ve been surprised and saddened on too many mornings to wake up and discover that yet one more beloved cultural icon has passed away, and we’ve gone to blame and curse the year as if it’s somehow been 2016’s fault that people have come to the end of their life.  I’ve heard ...

12-24-16 (Christmas Eve Year A) Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20 Real Savior - It’s a Boy ! When you think of the events that happened at Christmas Eve… what do you picture?  How do the events play out in the theatre of your mind’s eye?  Does it look like the picture on the front of a Christmas card?  Is it staged like a Cecil B. DeMille movie with incredible grandeur and production values?  Does it look more like the nativity set you have sitting on the mantlepiece?  For me, it’s definitely the nativity figures.  When I was growing up, it was that nativity that captured my imagination and shapes a lot of my early Christmas memories.  My father has a beautiful hand-carved antique nativity that he bought while he was stationed overseas in the Air Force.  The figures are exquisitely detailed and sit in a stable that is equally intricate.  The scene has real moss and hay in it, the figures are dressed in real fabrics… my father even kept a ...

12-11-16 (Advent 3A) Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 1:18-25 Joy in the Unexpected When we were in seminary, we spent a lot of time in classes, a lot of time reading for classes, and a lot of time writing papers and doing projects for classes - but believe it or not, we actually did have some free time in the midst of having to parse Greek or Hebrew sentences and write papers exploring the hows and whys of the laws about mildew in Deuteronomy.  In that free time, we each found different ways to relax, to unwind, and to manage the stresses of our classes and classwork.  As we got to know one another, we learned about what helped each of us stay sane, and we sometimes talked about our “guilty pleasures” with one another.  You know what I mean - the things that we really enjoy that maybe not everybody else would understand, and so maybe we don’t lead off in a conversation by talking about those things?  For my friends and I, it was comic books - we’d pile into one ...

12-4-16 (Advent 2C) Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12 Strange Images of Hope There’s a state park near my hometown in western Pennsylvania called Cook Forest.  It’s the largest virgin white pine and hemlock forest east of the Rocky Mountains and was even the site for a Cecil B. DeMille film called “Unconquered.”  Our family visited the park frequently to float down the river, to buy products from different local artists, and to enjoy the beauties of the forest together. One of the stranger things that we saw in Cook Forest was a large rock left behind millennia ago by the glaciers of the Ice Age as they shifted and melted.  Now, there are a lot of these boulders and huge rocks scattered all over this area, but this one stands out in particular because it has a tree growing on top of it.  We talked to a park ranger about it once and he explained that trees will occasionally grow on top of the boulders like that almost by happenstance - a bunch of leaves ...

11-27-16 (Advent 1A) Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44 Don’t Get Left Behind! The first Sunday of Advent never fails to catch me by surprise, even after years of preaching and years before that of going to church and hearing sermons.  We go through those last few weeks of Ordinary Time in the lectionary and they tend to turn toward the apocalyptic - it’s Jesus telling the disciples what is to come, how the temple will be destroyed, all the things like that.  And then we have Christ the King Sunday, and it reminds us that the next week is Advent.  Here’s where I always get excited, too - we’ve got Thanksgiving, we get to start breaking out the Christmas decorations, we have our “hanging of the greens,” both at church and in a lot of our homes… and we’re ready .  We’re finally ready for the things that we’ve been seeing all around us since Halloween in the stores and in our communities.  We can finally listen to that Christmas music with...