A couple of days ago, someone asked me what an average week would look like for me. I explained that much of my work is rather spontaneous. Today is no exception.

1. Spend two hours in counseling.
2. Perform an exorcism.
3. Pray with a couple of people.
4. Cancel a New Year’s Eve party.
5. Write a sermon.
6. Re-translate a passage of the New Testament for the sermon. (or was that last night?)
7. Answer numerous phone calls.
8. Make a few phone calls.
9. Perform a full filesystem backup on two computer systems.
10. Spend a considerable time in prayer.

Expect the M Squared T top 10 or top 25 (whatever I feel like tomorrow) of 2005 tomorrow sometime.

Happy New Year!

The text for this week, Galatians 4:3 - 7, is a rather complicated text for the sermon this week. This text is deeply involved in the ancient culture in which it was written. There are a number of issues with the passage that make it rather difficult to communicate to a 21st century audience unfamiliar with both a Biblical Worldview and with the culture of late Graeco-Roman antiquity.

My responsibility is to bring the text to life, probably by explaining both the Biblical Worldview and Classical cultural locus, without turning the congregation into Classicists and Biblical Scholars (of the academic variety).

Rather a tough position for a Classicist/Ancient Historian/Biblical Scholar.

Ok, so this was lots of fun… all the Thomas cousins together from all over, including Sweden! All the Aunts and Uncles as well, and we were at Grandpa’s “Community Center.”

There was a lot of good conversation. There was plenty of good food. There was an abundance of Labatt’s. We are definately going to have to do this again!

Pictures will be coming soon. I promise.

Ok, I know it isn’t Advent any more.

But nevertheless, I have spent my entire day (over 13 hours) cleaning my house. I even hired a bored teenager from church to help. (it’s amazing what they will do for food.)

Now the whole house smells of Murphy’s Oil Soap, Christmas Tree and “Scrubbing Bubbles.”

I think this is the cleanest this place has been since I moved in.

Whew.

This has been a weird Christmas.

Weird but good.

More later.

Sermon 2005-12-24
Christmas I, Year B
Isaiah 9:2 – 7

[With Psalm 96]

The Austrian village of Rattenberg just found a solution for a 700-year-old problem. Ever since the village was founded in the early 1300s, the village has not gotten any sunlight from November to February, even while a town only 10 minutes away bathes in sunlight year-round.

You see, Rattenberg is located in an Alpine valley between two high and steep mountains. During the darkest four months of the year, the sun never gets high enough off of the horizon to peak over the heights of the mountains that surround the village. It lies in the shadow of a mountain whose sunward side is only a 10 minutes’ walk away.

Now a project is underway to bring light to the winter darkness of Rattenberg. The village has commissioned a set of thirty mirrors to reflect sunlight from a sunnier village close by into downtown Rattenberg.

Those living in this valley of darkness are about to see a great light: the light of the sun. When this project is complete, the sun will shine in a place where, for a third of each year, darkness reigned supreme. (more…)

Wow. I’m over 1/2 way there. Only about 8 good sermon-prep hours left until Christmas.

I think I can… I think I can…

Sermon #1 is almost done; sermon #2 is roughed-in; I have miles to go before I sleep.

On her way to making a point about how Christians should behave regarding the (now seemingly perennial) debate over our holiday nomenclature, Sister Joan Chittister makes a very profound point about the nature of history:

Only in the 16th century did the Christmas tree as we know it begin to emerge in Germany, and even then not without resistance.

English Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, in both England and colonial United States, rigorously suppressed such “pagan mockery.”

It wasn’t until the 19th century, in 1850, in Cleveland, Ohio, historians tell us, that the first Christmas tree was put in the first Christian church in the United States. Oh me.

It gets clearer every day that there are two histories about everything.

The first history is history, the accumulation of facts over time that help us understand how ideas develop and why and for what purpose.

The second history is immediate past history, the period that spans our own life experiences back to the time of our great-grandparents. The history which for us, at least, “has always been this way.”

From where I stand, it seems clear that the second kind of history always predominates.

[Aside] Ok, first of all, Cleveland. Rather famous city, from a certain point of view. Rock and Roll hall of fame, yeah. Rivers engulfed in flames, yeah. But Christmas trees? And only in the 1850s? Well. I suppose it’s due for an upgrade in its reputation. Merry Christmas, Cleveland. [/Aside]

I had a rather “aha” sort of experience reading that bit about the two kinds of history. I am a student of the first kind: “the accumulation of facts over time that help us understand how ideas develop and why and for what purpose.” Or whatever other definition of history as an academic, paedogogical or chronological discipline one wishes to present.

This is the history that I tend to present when asked to explain “why things are the way they are.” Oftentimes this makes the second kind of history rather frustrated, because it usually spoils the party. The second kind of history is a history whose rootedness in reality is either limited or obscured. It is unable to find its source. In many cases, it does not stand the test of “why.”

Nevertheless, this second kind of history is more emotionally compelling, by several orders of magnitude, than the first. And as long as the first and the second are not found to be mutually exclusive, the second tells the story of history much better than the first. Where the problem usually comes in is when the second demands that the first have no place, or vice versa. (It’s usually the second’s demand on the first.) The second does not have the stamina or the endurance to survive past one or two generations, unless it is supported and framed by the first. But when the first kind horns in on the second’s space after a long absence, the first is unwelcome. It demonstrates the falsity of certain nostalgic practices and calls them to account. If the second does not permit the first its due, the content of the second will fade from view as the generation that holds the memory dies. If the first overwhelms the second, it steals vitality from life by becoming dispassionate.

In the end, then, the second form of history requires the first to remember correctly. In this case, denying it does not make it any less true. Only in conjunction with the first can the second create hope for the future.

But the first must have the second - for the cold, hard facts are as vital as the pulped wood upon which they are printed. Without the second the first cannot hope to be propogated into the future and, without the second, it has no chance of being loved and admired.

The goal is that we move from the mutual exclusivity of the two histories to the point where they find convergence. Then the past will have meaning that will give us hope for the future.

Quote via Waving or Drowning.

This is so addicting…

Let’s all googlefight!

You can even do it in French.

Who’s the bigger… um… keyword?!?

For the Ohio folks, here’s the Googlefight between the Browns and the Steelers.

For the Illinois folks, here’s the Googlefight between the Cubs and the Cards.

Evidently, it’s “Go [Chicago] Cubs” and “Go [Pittsburgh] Steelers.”

Which is just the way it should be, right Robin?

via TSK.

This week’s gonna be nuts.

Please pray that I can develop a good Christmas Eve sermon… and a decent Christmas Day sermon.

Back to back… hmm…

Peace out.

So… in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” on NBC (RIGHT NOW!!!) the son of the Chevy Chase character, Russ, wears an orange ILLINOIS old-school 80’s style sweatshirt while at the mall…

Now ain’t that cool?

Sermon 18 December 2005
4 Advent, Year B
Luke 1:26 – 38

[Preamble outlining our trajectory over the last four weeks]

Submission isn’t an attitude that we Americans look on very favorably. We are a people who value self-reliance, survival and competition. One might expect this from a people who descend from those who had to scratch life from the resistant soil of the American frontier.

One of our most highly-rated television programs (that is, one of the most popular shows) has the slogan “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.� Clearly, submission is not a value on Survivor, whether it be in Guatemala, Vanuatu, the Pearl Islands or other places exotic and strange to our eyes.

Submission is not a particularly American thing to do, although it is a very Biblical and godly practice. For this reason, it deserves – yes, even demands – our careful attention and consideration. Nevertheless, submission has gotten a justifiably bad reputation – being the excuse and the catchphrase for all sorts of rotten behavior – for keeping Rosa Parks on the back of the bus; for forcing children to follow their parents’ ill-shaped, ill-conceived dreams which did not take the children’s personalities, gifts and calling into account. Submission was the excuse used by generations of men to physically, verbally, psychologically and financially abuse their wives – and for that matter, most other women they met. Submission was the notion used by kings and colonizers from Caesar to Stalin to keep peoples and nations, natives and naturalized, cities and civilizations in line. Submission was the excuse used by many to hold superiority of one group over another based on some patently arbitrary criteria.
(more…)

As I prepared the sermon for tomorrow, I have begun to realize some of the horrible things we believe about God that our thoroughly debunked by a careful reading of the scriptures. This evening’s reflections revealed to me what a tyrranical despot we, on occasion, hold God to be. Of course, these terrifying, un-Biblical images of God prevent the true Good News of Jesus Christ from ever taking root in our lives in any sort of comprehensive fashion. Moreover, once we have drunk deeply of such horrors of divinity as we might imagine, we are then beset with an onerous task: to convince the world that such a god is, in fact, good - to the extent that his tyrrany is the epitome of goodness - and then, with even greater difficulty, to convince them that they should love, respect and obey such a monster as we would never wish to meet even in our most imaginitive science fiction.

This mischaracterization of the Almighty is, in all likelihood, one of our most grievous sins. We have cast the idol of ourselves and placed it in the midst of his people, declaring “this is your god!” Whether we have created the doting, senile, elderly uncle who showers us with blessings while we crack jokes at his expense beyond his attenuated earshot; or we have created a wrathful, thunderbolt-bearing Zeus, more capricious than Aeschylus could even have dreamed, it is all the same. We will be responsible for the lives of all those who, beyond all reason, we convince to believe in this idolatrous god.

Whoever has ears to hear, listen!

In his book, What Have We Learned? The Best Thinking on Congregational Life (Abingdon, 2001), Lyle Schaller writes, “While exceptions do exist, the general pattern is that congregations that have been meeting at the same address for more than forty years tend to give a higher priority to (a) perpetuating the past rather than creating the new, (b) taking care of today’s members rather than seeking to reach the unchurched, (c) maintaining the real estate rather than launching new ministries to reach new generations.” He concludes: “Never before in American church history have there been so many congregations that are vulnerable to this ‘forty year syndrome.’”

via Jordon.

Interesting statistics; interested in being the exception; knowing that’s a long road.