Get Her Words Out

Back from Detroit

I made it back home from my trip to southeastern Michigan.

I had a great time and met some wonderful people.

There's a couple of galleries in the side bar.  "Detroit" has pictures from the zoo and from the Tigers game I went to.  "Ann Arbor" is mainly pictures of the University of Michigan campus.

Yet Another New Sermon

Three sermons in four days.  Two of the new, one of them recycled from Anna's "Preacher and the Poet" class last spring.

This one was for the That All May Freely Serve -- Michigan Breaking the Silence service in Detroit.

"To Keep Silence"

Before I start, I feel like I should give a short summary of the plot of the book of Esther, for those of you who might need it.

Esther takes place during the time of the Jewish exile to Babylon.

The main characters of the story are the Persian king, Ahasuerus, who is  sometimes also identified as Xerxes; Vashti, the queen of Persia; Esther the beautiful young, orphaned Jewish woman; Mordecai, Esther’s cousin who has been caring for her and who works in the palace; and finally, the  bad guy, Haman, the prime minister.

The book opens with the end of a 120 day long feast.  The king, very drunk, orders his queen Vashti to come down and show all of his drunk friends how beautiful his wife was.

Vashti, being a sensible woman, refused.  Unfortunately for her this meant that she had to be banished from the kingdom.

The king then begins a search for a new queen, and after a twelve month process, he chooses Esther.

Somewhere during that time, Mordecai uncovers a plot against the king, which makes him very popular with the king.

Every thing seems to be turning out just fine until Haman enters the picture.  Haman is a very proud man and very much enjoys the power that comes with his office as prime minister.

Haman even gives orders that when he goes riding through the town on his horse, everyone he passes has to bow down before him.

Well, Mordecai won’t bow to him, Mordecai won’t bow to anyone but God.  This annoys Haman so much that he decides not only to kill Mordecai, but to order the death of all the Jews in Persia.

Our text this evening begins after Mordecai has sent word to Esther asking her to use her influence as queen to save the Jews.

A New Sermon

For Southfield Presbyterian Church in Southfield, Michigan

"A Christology of Scars"

John 20:19-29

My first career, before I gave it all up to become an unemployed preacher, was in the theater.

For almost 20 years I worked in theaters from Duluth, Minnesota to Monroe, Louisiana, from Ogunquit, Maine to Ashland, Oregon.

Because almost everyone who works there comes from some where else, theaters become a community and a family pretty quickly.

The bonding happens, usually over beer, at gatherings that have existed longer than the people attending have worked for the company.

When I was at Oregon Shakespeare, it was called “Beer School” and it took place at Cook’s Tavern on Main Street.

At the Alabama Shakespeare Festival where I worked for eight years, it was called “Dock Party.”

Almost every Friday there was a Dock Party, but there could be an impromptu one any night of the week if there happened to be beer left in the fridge.

The loading dock of ASF’s scene shop was well known as the place that chairs go to die. Therere was always at least one couch and probably 10 to 15 chairs of all sorts, half broken office chairs, ratty old recliners, what ever turned up.

They weren’t there because we needed them for our work, they were there so that when the work was done for the day we could gather in a circle, and with the beer providing conversational lubrication we would tell our stories.

My Useless Skills (#2)

Turning those paper rings that restaurants wrap around napkins and silverware into little crowns.

Buffy Season Eight, Issue 2

"As a friend of mine once said . . . I'd like to test that theory."

Final PIF Question

What are the key theological issues currently facing the church and society, and how do they shape your ministry?

Because it seems to be the most hotly debated issue in the current theological divide within the Presbyterian Church (USA), many of us consider the ordination of LGBT persons of faith to be the key theological debate within our denomination; but, I believe this debate around ordination is merely a symptom of a deeper divide among persons of faith.

It has occurred to me recently that there are people in the church with diametrically opposed views of what their role as Christians should be.  In my mind I have named this the “yes/no divide.”

On the one side are what I think of as “No Christians,” who believe that their job as Christians is to find reasons to exclude people.  Driven by a desire for doctrinal purity they go through life with a mental checklist, “does this person have the right Christology? Do they have the right view of biblical authority?”  And so on until they get a “no” and then they have a reason to exclude someone.

On the other side are the “Yes Christians,” they too have a checklist, but when they meet someone they go down the list looking for even one “yes” and then they have a starting point to include someone.

I am unashamedly a “Yes Christian,” and my ministry is shaped by the radical Good News that we are all children of God, that Christ’s sacrifice was for all of us and that God loves all of us, no matter how many noes there are on our checklist.