Following in Strange Places

This is an excerpt from the Ash Wednesday sermon Stephen shared at the Hopwood Christian Church.  It is well worth taking the time to read.

Crazy Worship

Love sometimes gets a little crazy.

In college, a friend of mine wrote the love of his life a long and deeply romantic letter on an entire roll of toilet paper (you realize this is no small feat if you've tried to write anything on toilet paper). Other people in love have rented out huge billboards or hired advertising blimps. That's just crazy. There's something about love that pushes the boundaries.

In Luke 7.36-50, Jesus is having a nice lunch with a nice group of very nice people. It is a pleasant moment. No one has called him names. The conversation has been civil and respectful. All the proper boundaries have been preserved. Simon, who is hosting the luncheon, has not joined other Pharisees in dismissively attacking Jesus. Simon isn't like that. He has opened his home, his table, his hospitality, and has been decidedly respectful to the less educated Nazarene.

The pleasant lunch abruptly changes when the town's best known whore aggressively shoves her way into the room. Before anyone can stop her, she throws herself at Jesus' feet and starts holding and intensely kissing them over and over. 

February Fields and the Euchairst

The Superbowl commercial using Paul Harvey's "And so God made a farmer" was very moving, although I'm not going out to buy a Dodge pickup.

The truth is this has been a warm limp brown snowless winter in southwest Missouri. Not far from where I sitting right now, spreading acres of dry dirt fields look sadly abandoned. They would look much better covered under a while blanket of snow. But, for now, the fragments of the remains of last fall's crop lie mingled acres of  dirt. No one would call it a pretty sight. No one makes a landscape painting of a Missouri field in February (unless there's snow).

Loving Monsters (A Sermon)

How can "blessed in the one who dashes your babies against the rocks!" and "love your enemies" both be part of the Bible?  How is it that "love your enemies," a doctrine so central in Christianity it is widely known by those outside the church, seems to have had so little power to change the world?

In this message, I will explore the seductive attraction of hatred and the challenging teachings of Jesus in light of the real-world events that foster hatred in our lives.  It is not message about the rightness or wrongness of war (a very important topic), but focuses on that area where we find Jesus' teachings the most difficult to live out: our own daily lives.

In addition to serving on the faculty of Ozark Christian College, I am also the interim pastor at the Christian Church of Liberal (MO).  The message comes from our Advent to Holy Week series of messages through the Gospel of Luke.  This sermon was given on Feb 3, 2012.





Download: Sermon: Love Your Enemies

Good Bad Worship

"So, you got your wife a diamond ring for your 25th anniversary?"
"I sure did. Two and half carets."
"That's great, Bill. One thing though, I thought you said she wanted a new SUV?"
"She did. But, where was I going to find a fake jeep?"

Accidents and Substance

Gifts of love are wrapped in marvelous subtlety and nuance that dramatically change them. The change is more fundamental than the fabled curse of King Midas, turning ordinary cheap tableware into solid gold with a touch. To employ the Aristotelian language Thomas Aquinas brings to play in his teachings on the Eucharist, we can wholly change the substance of a gift, while leaving the accidents untouched.*

Facing the Ugly Truth about Jesus

People will not let the reality of the Jesus they encounter in scripture see the full light of day.  For many, it is plain ignorance.  For others, including those deeply committed to biblical truth and regular Bible readers, it is surprising that they also join in remaking Jesus of Nazareth into the Jesus of Hollywood.  They learn to take scripture quite seriously and ignore some of it all at the same time.

The Growing Gap in Worship

Welcomed or not, the contemporary music-centered approach to worship that has been both dominant and effective most large and mega church worship service is being challenged.  This challenge, however, does not come from traditionalists who are still demanding a return to the Hammond B3 and southern gospel.  This challenge, which has been slowly growing over the past decade, is coming from the same age-group that once pioneered praise bands and raising hands:  Teens and young adults.

Calvin was Right

Is the Lord's Supper just a memorial?  Calvin says absolutely not.  And, he's right.

Ironically, on something as central to the Christian life as the Eucharist, many Protestants would find Calvin's views sound surprisingly un-Protestant.  As noted in an earlier post, Escaping Zurich, many evangelicals, actually hold views of the Eucharist consistent with Ulrich Zwingli (a reformer from Zurich a generation before Calvin), rather than Calvin.  As such, this Zwinglian approach to Communion, one that is neither biblical nor consistent with the understanding of John Calvin, has come to be widely accepted as both biblical and Reformed.

Le Résistance: The Subversive Church

The small speaker crackled with static, and then they heard it.  “Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne blessent mon coeur D'une langueur Monotone.”  The poem by Paul Verlaine was well known.  Many listening had learned it in childhood.  The melancholy words spoke of the long slow weeping of autumn’s violins. 

This time the words held sensus plenior (fuller meaning).  This time they were announcing, somewhere out there in the darkness, ships were plowing their way through the waters of the English Channel  – among them a thousand Higgins boats – the landing craft that would bring soldiers of the Allied Expeditionary Force onto the beaches of Normandy, beginning the liberation of France. 

My Church Looks Like a Bar

When people walked into First Christian Church on a Sunday morning not long ago, most of them were not prepared to see the newest fad in popular worship music sitting in the front of the sanctuary.  Some of them had enough musical background to know they were looking at a percussion instrument.  For a lot of people, the one thing they knew was it made their church look like a bar.  

Glorious Jargon

To be honest, common sense sometimes isn't.  Here's an obvious truth: To help the church move forward, take out of worship any strange archaic vocabulary rooted in some bygone age.  This is especially true if the words or phrases would not be understood by a visitor.  Out with churchified jargon! What could make more sense than that?

Sermon: Rachel Weeping at Sandy Hook

In addition to teaching at Ozark Christian College (Joplin), I also serve as the interim pastor at the small Christian Church of Liberal (Liberal, MO).  

This Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, my sermon addresses the apparent contradiction between the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and the message of the Nativity.  You may download it or listen to it streaming online. 

Rachel Weeping at Sandy Hook