One of my very favorite movies is Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 classic The Ten Commandments. Is it a perfect movie? By no means.  Is it faithful to the Biblical account? By no means.  Is some of the acting over the top? Oh, very much so. Does it capture the spirit of biblical account? I believe it does. 

BUT. Does it have the GREATEST single special effect in all of cinema? Oh, most definitely. 

prayer  /prɛər/noun   An act of communication by humans with the sacred or holy.

symphony  /ˈsɪmfəni/ noun
A long piece of music that is usually in four large, separate movements, that is performed by an orchestra

A Symphony of Prayer. A service in several movements, interweaving scripture, and music, offered by God’s people as a prayer. 

When it comes to the Bible, Colossians is one of those books that once I’ve finished reading it, I want to turn right around and read it again! It’s hard for me to turn loose of something that hasn’t turned loose of me! I’ve enjoyed preaching through it this summer, and I’m sad that after this Sunday, I’ll be done. I hope you feel the same. 

Christianity is about relationship: we were estranged from God; we have been reconciled to God. We were estranged from one another; we are reconciled to one another. 

When we were estranged, we lived like it! But now, since we’re reconciled to God and one another, we live differently. 

Well, it is finally here! Those verses that we have been memorizing since the spring – remember them? They are my text for Sunday:

12Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  Colossians 3:12-15

Last Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns, a verse of which I’ve often used in my daily quiet time since I was in grad school:

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of Thy peace. 

Much of unhealthy Christianity centers around power - but not the power of the Holy Spirit! Unhealthy power is centered in leadership that determines who is in and who is out, and the sign of belonging is often expressed in “boundary markers.” Boundary makers are those things that create a clear division between “us” and “them.” They can be as diverse as dictating the way women wear their hair to forbidding any criticism of a “pastor’s authority.”  Those who violate the human-made (and often literally “man made") boundaries are no longer welcome. 

I had a conversation with a young atheist a while back that reminded me of our need to be able to understand and to clearly express what we believe. He gave me his reasons for not believing and mostly I said, “You haven’t really read the Bible. You’re just repeating what you heard someone else say.” (He’s a lazy atheist – he won’t do the work himself). 

Deep inside the prison vaults in Edinburgh castle you’ll find scratched into the door one of the oldest depictions of the American flag outside of the states. Among the pirates and soldiers from all over the world that were held as prisoners in those dungeons was an American prisoner of war in 1780. Nothing is known about him, but his mark remains some 250 years later.

When the Bible says that Jesus turned water into wine and Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake, I hear a lot of preachers twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain the context of these passages and turn wine into Welch’s. But these same preachers will read phrases like “women should stay silent in church” and “I do not allow a woman to teach” and declare they are the clear, plain and obvious word of the Lord – no context needed. 

Many of you may not know that for the last 4 years or so I’ve been co-leading a weekly men’s group that meets on either Monday afternoons or Tuesday mornings. All of these fellows have had difficult pasts – sometimes because of their own choices, but sometimes as a result of others’ choices. Self-esteem is a serious issue with many of them. A few weeks ago I was teaching from the early chapters of Genesis and a question jumped out at us that I hadn’t really considered before. And, honestly, I haven’t been able to turn it loose since then. 

Someone recently asked me what my vision was for Christ Church.

It’s a good question. 

And there are a variety of ways to answer a question about vision. The usual way I’ve heard vision expressed is in terms of, to be a little crass, “butts, bills, and baptisms” (in other words, attendance, income, and conversions). 

Since I am away this week and after a conversation reflecting on last week’s Pastor’s note, Kim volunteered to write a guest note for our newsletter: 

From my earliest memories my grandmother led the music at my little church, and each Sunday we sang the Doxology in the service. Sometimes she incorporated responsive readings in her worship planning which were found in the back of the hymnal. I can also remember watching her toward the end of the preaching as she thumbed through the hymnal trying to find an “altar call” song that would align in some way with whatever the preacher had preached. There was not much preplanning or intentionality about worship services. I don’t know that she ever met with the pastor to plan anything. What was intentional was the rather “spur of the moment” and “Spirit led” quality of each week’s service. That was the liturgy. I became curious about other church liturgy later in my life. 

I was 14 years old the first time I played piano for congregational singing. For some reason, our regular pianist couldn’t finish the service, so Dad, who was directing, looked at me and said, “Come here.” 

I was on an island off the coast of Turkey, praying with and for anyone who stopped by our missions table. One lady from Bulgaria came to me for prayer. I didn’t speak Bulgarian and she didn’t speak English, but we both spoke just enough German for me to understand that she wanted me to pray for her father’s healing. It was a struggle, but we managed it!

Blame it on Babel. 

For me, one of Christianity’s mysteries is why the Ascension of Jesus doesn’t get as much attention as Easter or Christmas.

I never thought much about Ascension until about 10 years ago when  I made the mistake of going to Amish country on Ascension Day (which is always on a Thursday). They were shut up tight! For the Amish, Ascension Day is a holy day and they spend it in worship. So I did some reflecting on just what it means that Jesus ascended — here’s some of it and I’ll get into more of it Sunday. 

Some of my favorite memories as a young minister were around my senior pastor’s breakfast table while we were going through some discipleship training. We would meet at 7:00 AM on a Tuesday, which was great for our youth minister, who led the group, for our pastor’s wife, and for me because we were all morning people. My day typically began at 5:00 AM anyway, so 7:00 AM was prime time for me! 

However, the senior pastor and the children’s ministry guy were not morning people at all and would sit at the table like zombies! 

I’ve written about how we had so many people in and out of our home when I was growing up that we joked that ours was the “Jackson Home for Lost Boys and Wayward Women.” 

Well, now I can add to that: “The Jackson Home for Lost Boys, Wayward Women, and Sick Pups.”

You all know I love classic movies and try to catch them whenever they’re shown on the “big screen.” One year, the Monaco at Bridge Street was showing the 1962 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

I wasn’t much of a Mr. Rogers fan when I was little. He was nice enough, and I liked his opening song, but when he broke out the hand puppets, I was gone. I mean, I could turn to Sesame Street and those guys – Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Kermit – were REAL. 

But the older I got, the more I appreciated Mr. Rogers’ wisdom.