Of course the church is not necessarily the best place to be talking about trying new things, not just because new things tend to be resisted by many people, but even more because the church itself likes to keep things the same. As Tevye says, it’s that whole tradition thing, although we should celebrate that we definitely changed up our routines and the way we do things this year. But, the fact that we celebrate the same things every year, the fact that there are traditions we do hold onto, can make change hard. And so we find ourselves today, just like this time last year, celebrating Epiphany which is the arrival of the wise men who come to see and worship Jesus. The actual celebration of Epiphany is January 6, as today is only the tenth day of Christmas, but we celebrate epiphany today since I don’t figure most of you would be here for worship on the 6th, plus the fact that the 6th is the anniversary of Linda and my first date and so she wouldn’t be really happy with me if I was to be here.
Monday, January 4, 2021
By A Different Road
Friday, January 1, 2021
Books I Read in 2020
- 32 Yolks: From my Mother's Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert
- A Spirituality of Fundraising by Henri Nouwen
- A Time to Kill by John Grisham
- A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
- Aftermath: Empire's End by Chuck Wendig
- Aftermath: Life Debt by Chuck Wendig
- Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts
- America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis
- American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard
- And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning by Joel M. Hoffman
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Between the world of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity edited by David Evans and Peter Dula
- Birth of the Kingdom by Jan Guillou
- Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship Between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill by Deanne Stillman
- Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
- Camino Winds by John Grisham
- Campaigning with Crook by Charles King
- Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
- City of Fire: Los Alamos & the Birth of the Atomic Age 1943-45 by James W. Kunetka
- Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy
- Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US by Lenny Duncan
- Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges
- Dust Bowl Girls: The Inspiring Story of the Team That Barnstormed Its Way to Basketball Glory by Lydia Reeder
- Embracing the Wideness by Kenneth H. Carter, Jr.
- Evil: The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side by Julia Shaw
- Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts
- Finding God Beyond Religion: A Guide for Skeptics, Agnostics and Unorthodox Believers Inside and Outside the Church by Tom Stella
- For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity by Liz Plank
- Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
- Genesis: A Living Conversation by Bill Moyers
- Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella
- Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
- Glory of Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took On the Army During World War II by Sandra M. Bolzenius
- God is Not...: Religious, Nice, "One of Us", an American a Capitalist edited by D. Brent Laytham
- Grant by Ron Chernow
- Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes
- Helen Keller: A Life by Dorothy Herman
- Holy Disunity: How What Separates Us Can Save Us by Layton E. Williams
- How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You're Going: Leading in a Liminal Season by Susan Beaumont
- How to Retire the Cheapskate Way by Jeff Yeager
- I Am a Man: Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice by Joe Starita
- I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story by Anthony Daniels
- It's Better Than it Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear by Gregg Easterbrook
- Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend by Michael Munn
- Junia is Not Alone by Scot McKnight
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
- K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain by Ed Viesturs
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
- Let Him Go by Larry Watson
- Limits of the Known by David Roberts
- Living Our Beliefs: The United Methodist Way by Kenneth L. Carder
- Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg
- Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
- Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender and Parenting in America by Nefertiti Austin
- Neighborhood Church: Transforming Your Congregation into a Powerhouse for Mission by Krin Van Tatenhove
- No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs and David Roberts
- Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
- On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
- Once They Moved Like The Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, And The Apache Wars by David Roberts
- Orange is the New Black: My Year Inside a Woman's Prison by Piper Kerman
- Prayer and the Devotional Life of United Methodists by Steve Harper
- Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself by Rabbi Donniel Hartman
- Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
- Reimagining the Seven Deadly Sins: Reshaping Our Hearts in a Complex World by James Philipps
- Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse
- Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff
- Sermon on the Mount by Amy-Jill Levine
- Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook
- She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
- Sinning Like a Christian: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins by William H. Willimon
- St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate by Karen Armstrong
- Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream by Mychal Denzel Smith
- Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy
- Ten Days in a Mad House by Nellie Bly
- Ten Days a Madwoman: The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original "Girl" Reporter, Nellie Bly by Deborah Noyes
- The 19: Questions to Kindle a Wesleyan Spirit by Carolyn C. Moore
- The Activists Tao Te Ching by William Martin
- The Andromeda Evolution by Daniel H. Wilson
- The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging by Charles Vogl
- The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop
- The Book of Genesis: A Biography by Ronald Hendel
- The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians, and Other Remarkable People edited by Bethanne Patrick
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
- The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough, and What You Can Do about It by Mark DeYmaz and Harry Li
- The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America by Ethan Michaeli
- The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity by Douglas John Hall
- The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
- The Future of the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornell West
- The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
- The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt
- The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tauchman
- The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
- The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
- The Knight Templar by Jan Guillou
- The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church by Gail Cafferata
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
- The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World by Sean Carroll
- The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCullough
- The Post-Quarantine Church by Thom S. Rainer
- The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking by Adam Sisman
- The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts
- The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- The Road to Jerusalem by Jan Guillou
- The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the Seven Deadlies by Simon M. Laham
- The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks
- The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore
- The Sermon Without End: A Conversational Approach to Preaching by O. Wesley Allen and Ronald J. Allen
- The Spirituals and the Blues by James Cone
- The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
- The Woman Who Stole Vermeer: The True Story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House Art Heist by Anthony M. Amore
- The Year of Fear: Machine Gun Kelly and the Manhunt that Changed the Nation by Joe Urschel
- Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising by Timothy Zahn
- Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump
- Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus by John Indermark
- Travels by Michael Crichton
- Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
- TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald by Timothy L. O'Brien
- Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum
- Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks
- Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty by Walter Brueggemann
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- Without Remorse by Tom Clancy
- Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File by John Edgar Wideman
- You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You: A Caregiver's Survival Guide to Keeping You in Good Health and Good Spirits by Jane Heller
Monday, December 28, 2020
Spirit and Truth
As was said in the introduction, after Jesus encounters Nicodemus, a named man, a prominent official, and a Jew, and that will become important in a moment, we are told that Jesus is then going back to Galilee, which is in the north, but to get there, John says, he “had to go through Samaria.” Now it could be that he had to do this because that was the easiest way to get back to Galilee. But, in John, when something has to be done, it normally implies that it is task that God is requiring. So, it’s possible that Jesus has to go through Samaria in order for this encounter to take place. Now when we hear the word Samaritan today, most of us probably think about the parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story the Samaritan comes off as the moral hero, as Jesus says he is the neighbor to the man who was beaten and left on the side of the road. And so we have then this association with Samaritans as being a good thing. They are positioned high in the moral order. They have virtue. But that was certainly not how they were seen by Jews of the time, and to understand that story, and this story, we have to understand how despised the Samaritans were. To be a Samaritan was to be impure otherness.
Friday, December 25, 2020
Now for as important is Mary is, or has been in the history of the church, especially as a person to whom devotions are made, we really know very little about her. Most of what people think they know about Mary are stories that develop much later in the history of the church. Luke, who we just heard from, mentions her the most. She is named 12 times in Luke, but all of these are in his infancy narrative. She appears in two other stories in Luke, but is not named in those. In Matthew, she is named 5 times. Four of those times are in his infancy narrative, and then she is talked about two other times, being named once, although it’s a reference to her, not something directly involving her. In Mark, she is named only once, and like in Matthew it is simple a reference of a crowd saying that Mary is Jesus’ mother, and then there is one story in which she is not named. In John she is not named at all, but there are two stories make reference to her. And that is all that we have in the gospels. Not really a lot to go on. But when we compare Mary against other characters in scripture, especially women, the fact that we know as much about her as we do, and that she is referenced in all four gospels, is quite extraordinary.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Christmas Miracles
As many of you know, my son Philip has autism. He is 10 years old and is severely handicapped by his disability. Our family learned to slow down at Christmas a number of years ago when he was unable to tolerate *any* of the celebration. He could not handle the changing scenarios - the twinkling lights, the changes in grocery store displays, the changes in the sanctuary at church, presents appearing under the tree, the tree ITSELF, and the moved furniture. He would fall on the floor and scream, unable to move, afraid to open his eyes, almost constantly from Thanksgiving until well after Christmas when it was all over. We carried him through that time his head covered with his coat so we could get through the grocery store, or sat with him huddled in his room, carefully ordered EXACTLY the same since summer, with no Christmas trappings.
Monday, December 21, 2020
Creating Christmas: Love
Paul is doing something very similar in the passage we heard this morning. Because although we often hear this passage used in weddings, and I’ve done it myself many times, Paul is saying in this passage that really don’t have anything to do with the love we think about revolving around weddings. The first thing he is doing is rebuking the Corinthian community. There are some who think they are better than others because of the spiritual gifts they have received, with those who speak in tongues seeming to think themselves at the top of the spiritual gifts hierarchy, which means not only that they are the best, but that others are below them, which is why he talks about the fact that every part of the body is necessary, that no part is greater or lesser than the other. And then he says that even if you can talk in tongues, and you are extremely generous and you have faith to move mountains and can prophecy, which means you are talking to God, but if you don’t have love, if you are not living in love, then you have nothing, you are nothing and you gain nothing. As important as those things are, without love they are worthless.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Blue Christmas Invite
I have a attended a funeral for a family member on Christmas Eve and also on Good Friday, and let me tell you it’s a lot easier to mourn and to hear about life eternal on Good Friday than it is at Christmas. And after the Christmas Eve service, which had the worst funeral message I have ever heard, I said one of the stupidest things I have ever said, and that was, as I was leaving to drive back to New Mexico for Christmas, saying to my Aunt, “I hope you have a good Christmas.” My only excuse is that we tend to say dumb things around death because we don’t know what to say.
Mourning at Christmas is hard because we are told that we are supposed to be filled with holly, jolly and merry because it’s the most wonderful time of the year after all. Except that for many people it’s none of those things. Christmas simply reopens wounds or reminds us of the things and people that are no longer present for us. And so Christmas ends up being a time of pain and sorrow rather than jingle bells, ho, ho, ho, mistletoe and all that stuff.
This coming Monday, which is the longest night of the year, we will be holding our Blue Christmas service which gives space to name those hurts and pains and losses, and also to hear of God’s hope for the world and for us. As I have said before, while this is often the least attended service we do each year, I think it is one of the most important that we do. It’s also the one I always feel least adequate to lead, but trust in the Spirit to speak even with sighs too deep for words.
So, if you need to be reminded of Christ’s light that shines most especially in the darkness, I would encourage you to “attend” the service online. And please make sure to invite others you know who may need this service wherever they are in the world. It will take place at 6 pm on Facebook and YouTube, and for those who are not regular attendees, the worship guide may be found on our website. We will conclude the service with the singing of Silent Night, so we encourage you to have candles available as well.
And speaking of candles, candles for our singing of Silent Night on Christmas Eve will be distributed this week. We encourage you to keep one bag of candles for yourself and deliver the others to neighbors and ask them to join us in singing Silent Night at 7 pm on Christmas Eve. If you need more candles, we have more available at the church and can deliver them to you as needed.
We will have our Christmas Eve service, which will be a combined traditional and contemporary service, streaming at 4 and 5:45 pm on Christmas Eve on Facebook and YouTube. Both times will have the same service. You may also watch the service at your convenience after the first service ends. Unfortunately, we will not be holding our open house or labyrinth as we had originally planned.
I wish you all a continued blessed Advent, and a transition to a merry
Christmas as we celebrate that the light of Christ has come into the world and
darkness cannot overcome it.
Monday, December 14, 2020
Creating Christmas: Joy
Towards the end of his life, Henri Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest, was still looking for some meaning or purpose to his life. Even though he was a world famous author and theologian and had taught at Notre Dame and Yale and Harvard, he still felt there was something missing. And so he left the academy behind and moved to a L’Arche community in Toronto to live with people with intellectual disabilities, some of them severe that require nearly 24 hour care. It was there that Nouwen was matched with Adam, to be his companion and care taker, of whom he said “"It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship.”
Nouwen would take members of the community with him whenever he traveled to speak around the world, and what he also found in this community was joy. He says that there were people there who radiated joy, not because their lives were easy, because they most certainly weren’t, but because they habitually recognized God’s presence in the midst of all human suffering, their own as well as others. And that is at the heart of joy, which we’ll get into, and so, Nouwen says, “The great challenge of faith is to be surprised by joy.” Let me say that again so you can let it sink in and begin to percolate in your mind, “The great challenge of faith is to be surprised by joy.”
Monday, December 7, 2020
Creating Christmas: Peace
Eventually, we had one of the other protestant pastors, who had a closer and longer relationship with the rabbis, talk with them and both of them, to their inordinate credit, agreed that not only would they agree to the invitation, but they would still participate as well. When the day of the service finally arrived, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen, but the rabbi walked up to the representatives from the Islamic center and he put out his hand, remember when we could do that, and he said to them “shalom Aleichem” which is Hebrew for peace be with you, and those greeted replied “Aleichem shalom”, which is unto you peace. In his letter to the Romans, Paul says, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” And I think in that moment, we broadened peace and community just a little bit. Shalom Aleichem.






