Preacher's Post

5/27: Memorial Day Musings

This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. John 15:12-13

I’ve been mulling over the life and death of Leslie Sabo, Jr.  He was recently in the news forty-two years and six days after his death.  All the major news sources carried the unusual story of President Obama paying tribute to a man who was awarded a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.  Army Spc. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. was a rifleman with the 101st Airborne Division who was killed in eastern Cambodia during the Vietnam War.  Sabo is credited with saving the lives of several of his comrades in Company B, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry, when his platoon was ambushed near the Se San River in eastern Cambodia on May 10, 1970.  Sabo shielded a comrade from an enemy grenade and silenced a machine-gun bunker before he was killed.  Sabo's widow, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown, accepted the award along with his brother, George Sabo.  (Note:  According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the medal has been awarded 3,458 times since it was first awarded in 1863. There are fewer than 90 living recipients.)  If you want to read more, here’s a link:  sfgate leslie sabo jr.

5/13: Some Mother's Day Thoughts

A child in the Sunday School class was concentrating hard on the picture she was drawing.  When asked what she was drawing, the little girl stated she was drawing a picture of God.  When her teacher gently reminded her nobody knew what God looked like, the aspiring artist flatly stated, “They will when I’m finished.”

We all carry around inside us some vague notion of what God looks like even though we know in our heads nobody has seen God.  I suspect for most, if not all of us, that image is far more masculine than feminine.  But is that accurate?  I know I cringe when I hear God referred to as “She,” but that is a cultural knee jerk reaction, not a biblical one.  When I take a good look at the references to God in the Bible, there are more masculine references than there are feminine.  But I need to stop right there and pay attention.  There are feminine references to God.  God is beyond my feeble categories and I need to start with the creation revelation of Genesis 1:26-27:

5/6: Telling the St. Andrew Story

“You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)

My God story cannot be told without connecting my story with the larger story God is telling in the church family that follows Jesus and is guided by the Holy Spirit.  Even before going “pro” so to speak, my faith story was intertwined with the story of my church family.  My story was part of a much larger story and gave me context and a family to walk with that was even larger than my biological family, although in my case, my biological family was part of the faith family.  I am who I am today because of that walk, and includes who I am because of my years in the St. Andrew family.

Great week in the city at Doug P's apartment doing sermon outlines with my bud Russ Kane. Good eats... good conversation... challenging plans. The thing I want to do for our Popcorn Parable series this Summer is show films that explore marriage. I'd love to hear from you... What are the best movies you've seen that address complexities, heartaches, and joys of marriage?

4/22: Sharing Hope

Do not be afraid of anyone, and do not worry. But have reverence for Christ in your hearts, and honor him as Lord. Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you, but do it with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3:14-16

Every one of us who has a “God” story possesses something of extraordinary value.  God’s presence in our lives produces hope, and hope is to our souls what oxygen is to our bodies.

4/15: Good News is For Sharing

Every one of us who has experienced the presence of God in our lives has a story to tell and every story is unique.  There might be some similarities between my story and yours, but each of our stories is distinct and peculiar to us.  Peculiar?  I use that in the sense Frederick Buechner used it in the title of his book Peculiar Treasures, in which he looked at the real stories of real people in the Bible.  He concluded we are all peculiar treasures, loved and cherished by God, and that each of us has a story to tell that is of infinite value. 

4/8: Holy Terror

Fear.  The basic, primal responses to the unknown.  So it’s no surprise to me that the universal response to God showing up in the lives of the people in the Bible is fear.  God is the ultimate unknown.  Right up there with death, the other great unknown.  In Mark 16, we have both unknowns coming together. 

Early Sunday morning, three women made their way to Jesus’ tomb.  Jesus’ body had been hastily laid to rest in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea because the Sabbath was fast approaching when he finally died on the cross.  Time was of the essence because the Sabbath was twenty-four hours of worship and rest, and dealing with dead bodies was not permitted.  So at the first possible opportunity, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices to anoint the body of Jesus and complete the burial process.  A large stone had been rolled into place to seal the tomb, and they wondered how they’d deal with that.  Here’s what they found when they got there:

4/1: Preparing to Fail

There is no failure quite like betrayal.  Infamous betrayers like Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold go down in history as villains we love to hate.  But there lurks in my life very painful memories of betrayal, memories I have avoided for years, yet these memories rushed into consciousness, uninvited and most unwelcome.  Mike.  That’s the kid I betrayed.  He was a big, sort of lumbering kid from Idaho, so he wasn’t originally from the neighborhood.  Probably for no good reason other than he didn’t quite fit in, my friends in the neighborhood decided to beat him up, and since I knew Mike and there was a level of trust, it was my job to lure him into a trap.  Not wanting to be “different.”  Not wanting to end up on the “outside” like Mike, I played my part and got him to take the trail through the woods home that afternoon.  I will never, ever be able to erase the look on Mike’s face when what I had done became apparent to him.  I had betrayed his trust and that would never be repaired in this life.  

3/25: Cost of Discipleship

Am I a taker or a giver?  The answer to that is not as easy as it first might seem since we are incredibly adept at hiding our true colors even from ourselves.  Discovering the true answer requires fearless honesty and a willingness to dig below the surface to get at the truth about who we are and what motivates us.  I suspect what the vast majority of us will find if we engage in a fit of ruthless honesty is that we’re both.  If we’re working to develop and maintain an active gratitude list, and at the same time practice surrendering to God’s will instead of dressing our will up as God’s, we might spend more time in the “giver” rather than the “taker” column of life. 

3/18: Time's Up!

"No one knows, however, when that day or hour will come—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; only the Father knows. Be on watch, be alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It will be like a man who goes away from home on a trip and leaves his servants in charge, after giving to each one his own work to do and after telling the doorkeeper to keep watch. Watch, then, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming—it might be in the evening or at midnight or before dawn or at sunrise. If he comes suddenly, he must not find you asleep. What I say to you, then, I say to all: Watch!" (Mark 13:32-37)

Bumper Sticker:  Jesus is coming—Look Busy.