Play Doh Formation

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was

Today we begin a new worship series that will take us to Lent looking at what toys can teach us about leadership and life. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to be doing for the beginning of the year, and so was talking with Phillip if there was something that would be helpful for our faith development activities, and he said that we might look at our goals. One of our goals is to build up our leadership, and I had in my list of potential worship series ideas a note about a book I read a long time ago called Toy Box Leadership, and to let you know how long ago, they use Blockbuster Video as an example of a company facing a leadership challenges, and they say that the decisions they make will decide if they survive or not, and we now all know how that ended. And so, I am indebted to that book and its authors Ron Hunter and Michael Waddell for providing the inspiration. And with that, today we begin with one of the staples of childhood, Play-Doh®, which was inducted in the inaugural class into the National Play Hall of Fame, whose museum in Rochester, NY, is absolutely fabulous if you ever get up that way to visit.

Now I have to say that of all the toys we will look at, Play-Doh®, is my least favorite, at least as an adult. When our children get Play-Doh®, which they invariably do, I sort of bow my head and think, oh great, thanks. Not because Play-Doh® isn’t great, because it is and I enjoyed it as a child, but it’s the fact that we end of with little pieces of dried Play-Doh® that end up all over the house, which then have to be cleaned up and invariably I’m still finding it in strange places days later. And so, I guess, it’s sort of ironic then that that is exactly the thing with which we are starting because of what Play-Doh® and baptism and leadership all sort of have in common with each other, and I bet you never thought of that combination before.

Temple Tossed

Here is the sermon from Sunday.  The text was Luke 2:41-52:

Today, and for the next few weeks we are going to find ourselves in a sort of time-warp.  We celebrated Jesus’ birth just two days ago, and yet we find him today at the age of twelve, then next week we jump back to when he was somewhere around the age of two, and then the week after that we jump ahead to the time when he is about 30 years old.  I don’t know if the group who puts together the lectionary readings really thought about the reality of today’s passage in regards to the holidays, but it’s totally appropriate because it starts with Jesus’ family going to Jerusalem for Passover, one of the high holies, when Jerusalem and the Temple would be packed with people and everything would be a little crazy, and then everyone went home and just three days later everything is calm and quiet again.  There is plenty of space for Jesus to be in the Temple wiling away the days.  The same is true for the church, on this Sunday which is traditionally one of the lowest attended worship services for the year, all the guests we had for Christmas Eve have gone home, or are close to going home, everything has turned back to normal, there’s plenty of seating available and it’s a little quiet again.

This is a passage that is very unusual for the gospels, especially for Luke’s gospel.  First because this story makes no sense in relation to Luke’s birth narrative which precedes it.  After all, it is in Luke’s narrative that Mary is visited by an angel and told that the child she will carry is special, and Mary responds by giving us the magnificat, her beautiful poetic response.  It is in Luke’s gospel that John the Baptist, who has his own miraculous conception story, is a cousin of Jesus who leaps in his mother’s womb when his mother Elizabeth and Mary meet.  It is in Luke’s narrative that the shepherds are sent to Bethlehem by an angel and come to pay homage to the child in a manger, and we are told “Mary treasured all these things in her heart.”  And it is in Luke’s narrative that when Joseph and Mary present Jesus at the Temple shortly after his birth and make an offering for their first born son that Anna and Simeon both make claims about who Jesus is and what he means to Israel.  And yet if we just read today’s passage none of this seems to have taken place, or if they did then Mary and Joseph have totally forgotten about them after only twelve years, which seems very unlikely.  Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father.   This story just simply doesn’t match up with what has come before it.

Five Practices: Intentional Faith Development

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Acts 2:37-47:

Baseball Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver was known for many things besides for leading the Baltimore Orioles to a World Series title.  His temper tantrums were legendary.  He owned the major league record for being thrown out of the most number of games for many years, including being thrown out during the exchange of the line-ups before the game twice.  He was also known for his unique philosophy of winning baseball games, in which he said the key was “pitching, defense and three run homers.”  But none of that really has to do anything with today’s message except as a set-up to this.  One of his players once said, “Don’t you want to walk with the Lord?” to which Weaver was said to have responded, “I want to walk with the bases loaded.”

I thought that quote was appropriate for today, not only because we are now in the midst of the baseball playoffs, but also because today we look at the third part of our series on the five practices of fruitful living, based on a book of the same name by Bishop Robert Schnase.  We started by looking at passionate worship, which is to give all that we have and all that we are to God in worship, to literally bow down and pledge our allegiance to God through our lives.  Last week we looked at radical hospitality which is about opening ourselves up to welcoming others way beyond the ordinary, and this also begins with opening ourselves up to receiving God’s radical hospitality which is offered to us and is best represented by the table fellowship we share when we participate in communion.  And today we move onto intentional faith development.  Now it could be argued that passionate worship and radical hospitality are issues of the heart, because as we commented on, you can do worship and hospitality and go through the motions, but never live into the adjectives that we have accompanying them.  But when we give of ourselves in these things and become radical or passionate, it comes from the heart, from the emotion, from the feelings we bring to these issues, not really from the mind.  Surely there is something of the mind involved, but that’s not really what we think of when we talk about these subjects.