Sermon from August 2 (Wall-E)

Yup, it's been a month since I last posted. During that time I've stepped foot in all of the time zones in the continental U.S., preached to over 1500 folks, took the kids to Disney World, and helped to produce the worship for the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts 2009 National Convocation. What a summer!

Below you will find the manuscript of the sermon I preached at AUMC on August 2 during our AUMC At the Movies sermon series. I hope you will find it stimulating! Of course, I deviated from the manuscript quite a bit!

Tomorrow I will post the manuscript for a sermon I preached this past Sunday night at Custer Road UMC in Plano, Texas.

Script for Our End is Our Beginning

Voice 1 (Recording of): Tammie Nuoci
Media
Djembe ensemble

Media: House lights and stage lights fade to black—Eno’s Under Stars begins

Live djembe groove begins

Media: Moving images of creation, transitioning from rural to urban scenes

Voice: Now it’s time for a story. Many of us in this place know the beginning of this story, but, many of us, perhaps, don’t really know its end.

The story begins like this…

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. And God called the creation not only good, but very good! From the smallest particles that constitute every thing, to the largest interstellar event, God called all that God had made very good!

Media: Begin Wall-E clip at around the 1-minute mark (without sound)

Voice: And then, as you know, because of our own selfishness, humanity messed things up. And we messed things up pretty badly. The earth, a key part of God’s very good creation, began to change in ways that God had not intended. Life cycles and ecosystems began to fall out of balance. The kingdom of death began to expand, separating creation from its fullest life. It all began to change.

(dramatic pause, djembe crescendos to a loud stop!)

It was in a time like this that the prophet Ezekiel was led to a vision.

Media: All Light’s Full

Joe reads The Valley of the Dry Bones passage, Under Stars continues…when the passage about the bones coming together begins the drums make lots of random noise and stop at the end of that section. When the breath part begins a rain stick slowly plays to a crescendo to simulate breath.







Can these bones live?
It is a question that has been with us for thousands of years, from Ezekiel’s time, to the time of the Israelites when Christ was alive, to folks imprisoned, oppressed, and enslaved throughout all time.

Can these bones live?

Can you and I, imprisoned as we might be by our addictions, by personal choices, by circumstance, by regret and disappointment, can we live again. Not just survive but LIVE!

This question, "can these bones live" is posed by the film Wall-E about the Earth. Can these bones live again?

Can the earth live without proper care, without love and stewardship from those who have been given dominion of her?

In the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 2 we find that God created humanity to till the earth, to be it’s steward. But over the course of thousands of years, we have traded, myself included, the amazing responsibility of being stewards of God’s good creation for things that are all together lesser than the gift we’ve been entrusted.

Friends, the science on climate change is firm: the earth is warming because of the emissions from burnt fossil fuels. Every other possible reason for the warming of the earth has been examined thoroughly by the global scientific community, including our own U.S. National Academy of Science (a non-partisan group of the nations top scientists that has over 200 Nobel Prize winners at the moment that is highly respected by folks on all places of the ideological spectrum) and found to be untenable. The best minds in the world say we’ve got problem on our hand in climate change.

Friends, this is real. The debate about whether climate change is fact or fiction is closed. But the debate about where we go from here is just beginning. As followers of the way of Christ we must have an important voice in this debate.

It would be easy for us to relegate our responsibility to other people, to the scientists and engineers, to the activists, to the politicians. It would be easy for us to ignore the groaning of creation itself and to believe that our primary goal as Christians is to be about “spiritual matters” to the exclusion of all else. To choose to follow that road would be to disregard the Bible in a massive, massive way.

Did you know that there are over 3,000 verses in the Bible that talk about how we are to care for the poor? There are over 1,000 verses in the Bible that deal with creation. There are 530 verses about love, and 490 verses about heaven. It is clear where God’s priorities are!

Can these bones live?

The apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans 8:19 when he says (read Romans 8:18-23)

Do you see it? God’s salvation is for humanity yes, but it is also for the entire cosmos! As N.T. Wright has said, “The whole creation—sun, moon, sea, sky, birds, animals, plants—is longing for the time when God’s people will be revealed as God’s glorious human agents, set in authority over the world. And if one dare say it like this, as God sent Jesus to rescue the human race, so God will send Jesus’ younger siblings (you and me) in the power of the Spirit, to rescue the whole created order, to bring that justice and peace for which the whole creation yearns.”
That’s bold claim! Given our track record, why would God trust us?
But why would Paul say something like this? He said this because Paul knew of God’s ultimate will: God’s dream’s for Creation will ultimately be fulfilled. What God began in the garden in Eden will be transformed and perfected in the New Jerusalem.

In the end of the Bible, we see glimpses of God’s ultimate dream for the fulfillment of his creation.

Read Rev. 21:1-5

Friends, God’s ultimate will is to dwell with us, in the new creation here on THIS earth, just as God dwelt with Adam and Eve in the garden!
Our final resting place will be back on this earth, where God has not made all new things, but rather, has made all things new. God will choose’s to dwell with us in this place, as newly resurrected beings.

Can these bones live? God gives a resounding, absolute YES!

So what we do on Earth and to Earth matters. How we conduct ourselves as stewards of God’s creation matters.

If this earth is to be our final resting place, if all of God’s dreams are pinned upon the reclamation and transformation of God’s creation through the life, death, resurrection and sending forth of Jesus Christ, and his people, we need to get on board with what God is doing in our midst!

We must align our priorities with God’s priorities; we must put our story into God’s story, and not the other way around.

God desperately wants us, God’s creation is groaning for us, to reclaim and to live out our original roles as stewards, as tillers of God’s creation.

And so even though the science of climate change is less than comforting and, perhaps, your personal situation might look bleak right now, we must remember that:

GOD IS IN THE TRANSFORMATION BUSINESS

And we are called to participate with God in transformation!!!!

When we participate in what God is doing in the world around us, partner with God in the transformation of this creation we ourselves are transformed!!! We do this by aligning our priorities with God’s priorities, just like we heard last week.

We can be transformed into the people God has made us to be! We can be made new! Regardless of what we are coming out of, God can transform us! And God will transform and renew his creation.

So are you ready? Are you ready to partner with God? Are you ready to put your story into God’s story? Are you ready to reclaim one of the roles you were made for? Are you ready to serve in ministry with the poor? Are you ready to become a better steward of all that God has created? Are you ready to cease doing that which separates you from God, and to be made new? Are you ready for your ending to become your beginning?

Sometimes our ends and our beginnings are magnificent! And sometimes they are culmination of small steps. One of the spiritual practices that we are going to embrace as a church is the wasting of extra bulletins. (Walk back to the church and encourage people to participate in the new recycling project by giving money for the program.)

Friends, let’s us give up the things that lead to death, and embrace that which leads to life! As you come to God’s table, be fed by Jesus, be welcomed and loved by him. And, if you are called, which you most surely are, put your story into God’s story and be ready to be transformed!

I am back!

I can finally let go of some guilt with the writing of this brief post.
These last four weeks have been crazy-full! Four weeks ago we had vbs,
three weeks ago I was so blessed to serve as a choral clinician at the Texas
Conference Choir Camp, and last week I have been preparing to be out of the church
for two weeks and for the 2009 Fellowship Convocation.

But now, the family and I are in Orlando, preparing for five days of amazing worship
and then a few days of vacation.

If you are on Twitter I will be twittering the conference at #FUMMWA

well, it's off to the character breakfast! grace and peace!

An Article for the Church Newsletter...about Sabbath

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

I hope this edition of our newsletter finds you well. I am continually amazed how fast time flies: how can we possibly find ourselves in July? Clearly, we must relish every moment of our lives and not let the things that need to be done remain undone! However, we must also find time to rest in God, to savor the beauty of the Creator’s work amongst us, and to enjoy being human. The balance between work and rest, between struggle and Sabbath, is a place of equilibrium that we, as Americans, tend to wrestle with more than other cultures. Our fight with the demon of busyness is often brought to the fore during the summer months: the mercury rises, causing us to want to slow down, the days are longer, providing more opportunity to be together in our neighborhoods, and yet, between our time at work, privacy fences, and the smart phones that surround many of us (I do love my new iPhone!) it is so easy for us to miss what God is doing around us, to forget to rest and to renew, and Sabbath, that we wither in the heat of life.

The Sabbath is vital to who God has made us to be and to become. If we truly believe that if we cease our work for one day a week, than the world will stop functioning without us, than we have made ourselves and our busyness into an idol. Yahweh is pretty clear about his feelings regarding idols. Our God dreams for us to be whole, fully integrated and balanced creatures. How can we become what God dreams for us if we never stop to listen for God? How can we find the peace that Christ promises us if we don’t trust God enough to rest, as he commands us to do?

You know, the Holy Spirit will move where she will. I am mostly greatful for that! My intent for this column was something entirely different, content-wise, than what it has become! If you are feeling out-of-balance these days, perhaps God’s calling you to reexamine your life in light of the Sabbath. There are at least two moral/theological documents that most of us produce: our budgets and our calendars. Take some time this summer, examine both of these documents and see if they really reflect what you believe, who you are, and, more importantly, who God is calling you to become! If these documents disappoint you: DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Friends, time flies. Our time is, quite possibly, the most important gift we have, though, if we are to be honest, we ought to admit that it really isn’t ours to begin with. Before our very eyes, the seasons of our lives move forward and we find ourselves joined into the “endless line of splendor” as Wesley says. What will you do with this and the remaining seasons of your life?

Perhaps this summer would be a good time for a little Sabbath and reflection upon what God is calling you to become? Equally as important, the Sabbath is a day that reflects what the coming Reign of God will look like in its fullness. How would your life look if you lived in the reality of the coming Kingdom of God, a place where lions and lambs lay down together, where everyone has enough, where there is no more war, or hunger, or violence and abuse? How can you participate in what God is doing in this regard? How would living into this reality change who you are and how you live and treat others?

Our Jewish sisters greet one another with a beautiful phrase when the weekly observance of Sabbath begins: Shabbat Shalom. This beautiful, God-kissed phrase translates into English as Sabbath harmony, or Sabbath peace. My prayer for you this summer is for Shabbat Shalom! Have a blessed July, friends! I look forward to seeing you soon!

Grace and peace,

Rev. Joe Stobaugh

An easy opportunity to help two families in need!

Hello friends!

I hope all is well! Yesterday I had the chance to chat with a friend of mine who works for a Christian social service agency. During the course of our conversation, she told me about two families that she is currently working with and some of their needs. God has provided us with a great opportunity to help two families who need a little bit of assistance!

These families, led by two single mothers, together have nine children. The mothers, who are identical twins, are both making the transition from shelters in Dallas to their own homes. The children did not live with them in the shelters but are now thrilled to be with their mothers! Both moms have full-time jobs (that have no benefits) and have not asked for assistance. Friends, they have very little in the way of basic items for their homes, and by little, I mean that they have a roof over their heads and two blow-up beds. They have nothing, no pillows, sheets, towels, cups, silverware, tables, chairs., etc.

So, any kind of household items imaginable are needed! They don't have to be new. They can be items that you have multiple copies of, or that you need to clean out of your home. The children, several of whom are straight-a students, don't have any books or toys. Below you will find a list of items these families need. If you can help, please contact me and I will come and get these materials or arrange for someone to pick them up from you and deliver them to the agency in Dallas.

Friends, God has blessed us richly so that we can bless others!!! Now is the time to return to God what is God's, to love your neigbhor as yourself! Please let me know how you can help!

Items needed:
KITCHEN
Plates
Silverware
Glasses
Pots & pans
Dish towels
Pot holders
Kitchen utensils
2 non-electric can openers
Big bowls
Food storage containers
Small kitchen table and chairs
or children's picnic table
Beginners cookbooks
2 dishpans

BATHROOM
Towels
Wash cloths
Bath mats
Shower curtains

BEDROOM
Sheets-any size
Pillow cases-regular size
Pillows-regular size
Blankets-any size
Small Chest of Drawers
Plastic Bins to Store Clothes

MISC.
Laundry bags or baskets
2 brooms
2 mops
Sponges
Cleaning supplies
Laundry detergent
Band-aids
Toys for kids 20 months-8 yrs old
Balls to play with outside

FOOD
Any canned or boxed foods.

BIBLES
Adult- easy to read, big print
Childrens' Bibles

CAR SEATS
4 regular carseats
5 booster seats

NASA is headed back to the moon

I came across this article tonight from cnn.com:
http://tinyurl.com/l5wfr6
NASA is headed back to the moon! I'm excited to see any news coming out of NASA at all these days, none-the-less exploratory trips to the moon! Any thoughts?

Monday Morning at Annual Conference

At this moment I am sitting in the opening session of 2009 North Texas Annual Conference gathering in the Plano Center, in Plano, Texas. I am growing to love Annual Conference! Even with all of our challenges as United Methodist's, we can do amazing things! A report was just given regarding the status of Africa University (in Zimbabwe): what God is doing there is INCREDIBLE!!! Our conference set a goal two years ago of raising a million dollars to build a student health facility on campus. While the original goal was set to be completed in one year (it took us two years to complete the goal) the building will be opened in July! We just heard that this facility, once completed, will be the largest and most comprehensive health facility in the country of Zimbabwe! This is, of course, a wonderful and sad thing!
THe wonderful piece however, is that the North Texas Conference was able to do this! What a testament to connectionalism! We can do so much more together than we could individually!
God is good and faithful!

A Quote from Mother Teresa

A big thanks to my colleague in ministry, Todd Mead, for sending me this quote:
"I am but a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world."
--Mother Teresa

Practicing Resurrection

Due to a variety of circumstances, this little column never made it into our church's newsletter. There is a great line in here from the poet Wendell Berry that I would encourage us all to live by!

Grace Notes

Greetings!

Grace and peace to you in the name of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ! I hope this column finds you well, living as a resurrection people. Currently, we are in the middle of the Great Fifty Days, the time from Easter Sunday that leads up to Pentecost Sunday, which falls this year on May 31st. During this time you will notice in worship that the music, liturgy, images, etc. are celebratory, because these Great Fifty Days are the biggest celebration days of the church year.

The last Sunday of May this year is Pentecost Sunday, where we will celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit as well as the birthday of the church. Please don’t miss this important Sunday! In between that, we will observe Mother’s Day on May 10th, and the Ascension of Christ on May 24th.

The observation of these days and the telling of these stories are vital to God’s work in shaping us into who God wants us to be. Attendance to the means of grace (including taking Holy Communion, being a people of prayer, searching the scripture, and attending corporate worship) is, frankly, mandatory to growing in our walk with God. I hope you will be able to join us every Sunday in May!

As we are in the middle of the Great Fifty Days I have been thinking about a phrase from one of my favorite poets, the great Wendell Berry. The phrase is this: “practice resurrection.” How are you practicing resurrection these days? Where do you see new life in your midst? What are you doing to renew and restore and rebuild relationships in your life? What practices are you engaged in that bring you life?

Whatever it is, I hope that you are finding new life during this season of resurrection! I look forward to worshiping with you this month and growing with you into the Body of Christ that God has called us to be!

In Christ,

Rev. Joe Stobaugh

A Prayer for this weekend!

Two years ago from yesterday I had the great privelage of serving as "Minister of the Day" for the Texas House of Representatives. As I am reflecting upon their work during this season I thought I would check back in and see if I am still onboard with what I wrote back then. Turns out, I mostly am, but with a few years of hindsight I would change a few things. As I'm in-between services this morning I thought I'd post the last half of the speech with the prayer for this weekend. May God bless you as you seek to bless others through love and service!

Representatives of the people of Texas you have been called! You are called to work for the common good. You are called to help make the great state of Texas a blessing of a state that seeks to bless all of its inhabitants. This blessing looks like healthcare that is available to all, regardless of their economic background. This blessing looks like a healthy and sustainable environment where humanity works in partnership with the earth and not as its adversary. This blessing looks like quality education for every child in this state, regardless of where they live. This blessing looks like affordable higher education for all who desire it, not just for the wealthy and middle class. This blessing looks like the eradication of extreme poverty and of the HIV/AIDS virus. These things, brothers and sisters are for the first time in human history actual possibilities within not only my very young lifetime but yours as well! You have the possibility to change the world in ways the rest of human history has never known! Imagine the world that you can leave for our children, for my sixteen month old daughter Eleanor Grace, imagine what that world could look like. May she never know the trials and struggles that so many in this generation have known. So much of this is up to you.
Please remember this day and always the words of the prophet Micah: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
As you go about your important work today, know that these words can serve to guide you. Know that as you finish this busy season that the people of Texas have great hope for you, we are praying for you to be wise, to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly.

Let us pray:
Eternally gracious and loving God, we come before you this morning seeking your presence in this place and striving to do the work that you have called us to do. Lord, as this body struggles with issues that affect all of us, we ask that you send your Spirit to be run amongst this House so that it’s inhabitants would be ever seeking to work for justice for all, towards dignity and respect for all of your Creation, from the smallest insects to the beasts of the fields, from the shallowest ponds to the deepest seas, from the plains to the mountaintops, guide these servants in taking care of your Creation. Yahweh, bring the concerns of your littlest ones to this body. Bring the dreams and hopes and visions of all who reside in this great state to the attention of these women and men. Inspire the hearts of all who legislate in this place to realize that we indeed are responsible for one another: we are our brother’s keeper. Open our eyes to the greatness of this responsibility. As we search for security in this world, teach us the important truth that the fastest way to security is to have justice for all peoples. God, you called these your children to a great work: grant them your wisdom as they deliberate so that your Spirit of unconditional love and justice for all of your people might be made a greater reality, for it is we who are your hands and feet in this world. Be with these people today, God; give them an extra dose of your grace, your love, and your unrelenting passion for justice.
Let all of God’s children say: Amen.

For Direction

Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings,
with your most gracious favor,
and further us with your continual help,
that in all our works,
begun, continued, and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally, by your mercy, obtain everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Another rainy Monday!

It's raining, again! To be honest, I love it! We just purchased a rain barrel for our house so I'm hopeful that I can get it working in time to take advantage of this recent round of weather.
A few pieces of news, one good, two terrible:

1. It has just been announced that Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist is going to be freed tomorrow!

2. Over the weekend it appears that 125-130 civilians were killed in the western Farah province in Afghanistan during a battle with the Taliban that involved U.S. air strikes. No knows yet who is responsible for this large loss of civilian life: all the parties involve blame the other parties.

3. In Sri Lanka at least 378 civilian died from artillery shelling, over 100 of the dead are children.

As it turns out, you don't have to live by the sword to die by it, you just have to be around people who wield them.

Tuesday's Endorsements

Several issues ago, Esquire magazine came out with a great issues of things that they endorse and it got me to thinking, what would I list as things I endorse. One has to be careful with these things!

Here are the things I'm endorsing today:

1. Haircuts for men at actual barbershops. I went to one yesterday for the first time since I've been out of college and it was great! The hot lather shave piece is completely worth the price! (The haircut was pretty strong as well.)

2. Speaking of Esquire, I endorse the book "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs, who is an editor-at-large for Esquire. If you haven't read this book yet, stop reading this post, go to Amazon, and order a copy for yourself and one for a friend.

3. The movie "Slumdog Millionaire." I saw it last night for the first time and it is truly amazing! Difficult, challenging, uplifting, and overall incredible.

So, if you are looking for something to do tonight, first of all, tivo Jamie Cullum's appearance on "Dancing with the Stars" (I can't believe I just wrote that) then, hit the redbox or blockbuster or netflix, check out "Slumdog Millionaire" and then get to reading!

Random thoughts for a Stormy Monday

So, I came into work early today to prepare for a worship meeting but between the rain, a window in my office, hot espresso and the daily office, I just have to stop down for give thanks for a refreshed soul. God has been incredibly faithful to me, especially during the times I have not deserved God's faith, love and grace. God has always, always been faithful and good to me. I have no words to express my thanks (hence, my thankfulness for the daily office today).

My gratefulness this morning has something to do with death. Of late, I feel like the powers and principalities are making a bigger push these days. (Perhaps that suggests that we are on the brink of something amazingly wonderful!) I have been struck by the fact that, until the latter half of the 20th century, the average human life ended somewhere in the the late twenties or early thirties. Now, the average world-wide life expectancy is 70 (except for most of Africa, which is much lower).

While I certainly wonder if I have accomplished much of value during my life, I am more and more thankful for the chance to have been alive this long, coupled with thoughts of what to do (and what to value) in the remaining years of my life. (May there be many!)

More and more I believe that loving and serving people, in as many ways as possible, is what we are really called to do with our lives. I want to do more than just pay lip-service to this for the rest of my life!

When we give ourselves away for others we gain our lives. When we love others we inch towards becoming what God dreams for us to become!

Well, I had better get to worship planning, that meeting is in two hours and I've only got sketches of where to go in my mind.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit will see fit to join me this morning as I prepare?

May you have a wonderful, God-drenched day!

Another thought-provoking editorial from Bono

Check out Bono's recent op-ed piece for the New York Times:
http://tinyurl.com/da3vh3

Leonard Pitts

I remember reading this editorial the day after it came out (in the Dallas Morning News, no less!) and it rang so true, I thought I had to post it. Granted, it's almost a month after the original publishing date but it's a great and important read nonetheless!
Pitts: What drives people from God

Leonard Pitts Jr., THE MIAMI HERALD

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

We are losing our religion.
That, with apologies to R.E.M., is the startling conclusion of the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by researchers at Trinity College of Hartford, Conn. The poll of more than 54,000 American adults found a sharp erosion in the number of people claiming religious affiliation.
A few highlights: The number of people who call themselves Christian is 76 percent, down 10 percentage points since 1990.
Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious ceremony.
Better than one in four Americans do not expect a religious funeral.
It is important to reiterate that we are talking about overall percentages. In raw numbers, there are actually about 22 million "more" Christians now than in 1990.
Still, the trend is clear, particularly as illustrated in one telling statistic: In 1990, 8.2 percent (about 14 million) of us said "none" when asked to specify their religion. Last year, 15 percent (34 million) did.
Some have suggested our loss of faith is due to increased diversity, mobility and immigration. I'm sure there's something to that, but I tend to think the most important cause is simpler: religion has become an ugly thing.
People of faith usually respond to that ugliness — by which I mean a seemingly endless cycle of scandal, controversy, hypocrisy, violence and TV preachers saying idiot things — in one of two ways. Either they defend it (making them part of the problem) or they regard it as a series of isolated, albeit unfortunate, episodes. But irreligious people do neither.
And people of faith should ask themselves: What is the cumulative effect upon outside observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker living like lords on the largesse of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart's pornography addiction, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the name of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, multiplied by the church that kicked out some members because they voted Democrat, divided by people caterwauling on courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied by the square root of Catholic priests preying on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those "traditional values" coalitions and "family values" councils that try to bully public schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then subtract selflessness, service, sacrifice, holiness and hope.
Do the math, and I bet you'll draw the same conclusion the researchers did.
Who can be surprised if the sheer absurdity, fundamentalist cruelty and ungodly hypocrisy that have characterized so much "religion" in the last 30 years have driven people away? If all I knew of God was what I had seen in the headlines, I would not be eager to make His acquaintance. I am thankful I know more.
Including that God and religion are not synonymous. God is, for the faithful at least, the sovereign creator of all creation. Religion is what men and women put in place, ostensibly to worship and serve Him. Too often, though, religion worships and serves that which has nothing to do with Him, worships money and serves politics, worships charisma and serves ego, worships intolerance and serves self.
The ARIS survey should serve as a wakeup call to organized religion. It continues in this manner at the risk of irrelevance. I am reminded of a line from the movie "Oh God," with George Burns as the deity and John Denver as the grocery store manager reluctantly recruited to spread The Word.
"I don't even go to church," says the manager.
And God says, "Neither do I."
lpitts@miamiherald.com

Catching Up

Today is my first day back in the office after Easter and I am so behind!!! Between moving to the new church, Holy Week and Easter, I am feeling the crunch now to catch up! So, as I see things of interest I will post but it could be a few days before too many more posts come!
God bless you and Happy Easter!!

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen! I hope you had a wonderful, amazing Easter! I know that we did in Argyle! May God dwell with you richly in the coming days!

A Beautiful Service and a New Tool!

We had a beautiful service tonight at Argyle UMC for Maundy Thursday. I will be posting more about the service later. We employed a variety of media and it the worship experience was well received!
I am so excited to welcome a creative tool to the proverbial shed: a new MacBook Pro! I do love it so! I remain deeply committed to my PowerBook G4 (first loves, you know!) but her best days are long behind her. I just got my new MacBook today. Of course, I know it's just a tool but wow, I love it so! I am so excited to see what creative endeavors we will attempt together. All right, that's a bit too much! It's time for me to call it a night, as a big day awaits tomorrow in Good Friday. May God continue to dwell with you richly during this week.

First Sunday in the New Church!

Yes, it's been a crazy long time since I last posted but I've been doing real work as of late! We had our first Sunday in the new church on April 5th, on Palm Sunday no less! The above picture is of our 11:15 traditional service.
Once Holy Week has passed I will get back in the habit of posting!

First Choral Rehearsal in the New Building

Well, we just had the first choral rehearsal in the new building and it was wonderful! The choir worked through lots of heat and noise and still made some lovely music. Being in a new acoustical space is proving to be very beneficial to me as it forces me to hear things I haven't heard (or chosen to ignore) for a while. For example, in the new acoustic, improving our diction is not optional! The new space will really require us to bring our diction up a notch, which will be a great thing! I am excited to see what more the space will reveal over time!

I am also excited to be heading out on a road trip tomorrow to see my amazing sister Chelsea and her incredible husband James in Austin. I will be mircobloging on twitter for most of the trip.

I hope all is well in your world! If you can, join us in Argyle on April 5th for our first Sunday in the new church!

The Prayer of St. Patrick

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Below you will find a prayer that is commonly attributed to St. Patrick. The prayer is beautiful and filled with images of Christ's sufficiency for our lives. Have a blessed day!

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;

Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Swiftness of wind,

Depth of the sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's hand to guard me.

Afar and anear,
Alone or in a multitude.

Christ shield me today
Against wounding:

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,

Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,

Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in me.

I arise today
Through the mighty strength

Of the Lord of Creation.

--Prayer of St. Patrick

A Quick Run Down of the Last Few Weeks

As usual, I am not terribly faithful in my blogging habits. To be honest, I am a much better Twitterer!

These are exciting times for me in ministry for several reasons:

1. We are preparing to move AUMC to a new campus! The building looks great and is so close to being ready to be moved into I
can just taste it!

2. I feel like we have a lot of "ministry momentum" and that is always a precious commodity to be valued!

3. The FUMMWA Convocation Worship that I am chairing is starting to look very good!

4. I've got a summer gig coming up as the middle school choral clinician for the Texas Conference Choir Camp, which will be a
blast!

5. I just got back from ACDA and it was amazing!

Personally I am feeling exceedingly blessed today because it is Sarah and my eighth anniversary! I don't know how she's made it this long with me but I am incredibly thankful!

Well, time to finish preparing for my next handbell rehearsal!

I hope all is well in your life!

Ash Wednesday Homily

I had the pleasure of preaching tonight at AUMC's Ash Wednesday Service. Below is the outline of the homily. I hope your Ash Wednesday was God-haunted!

Ash Wednesday Homily
February 25th, 2009

Three thoughts about death. Depending upon your sense of humor, you might find some of them funny!

1. Ryan’s story: On the Florida/Georgia Border a farmer has painted a large sing that hangs next to the interstate that says: “Welcome to Florida! State mortality rate: 100%”
2. Your sign on the dorm room door in college that I now recant as bad theology: “Don’t take these things too seriously, no one gets out of here alive anyway.”
3. “Memento Mori”: a Roman way of reminding the greats that they are only human.

I. Death

Just like the Ancient Romans, we remember our own mortality tonight.

No matter how good you are at what you do, love, good shape you are in: you will die.

It is an inevitable part of life. We are mortal, we do not live forever.

God made us from dust, breathed the breath of life into us and it is to dust that we will return. We are truly humble creatures in this respect.

That is why you will have the option of dust placed on your forehead tonight.

From dust you came and from dust you will return.

II. Sin

We also remember tonight and during this season of Lent that we are sinful people, that we are broken.

We don’t like to recognize, nonetheless talk about our sin, because it’s embarrassing, hurtful, perhaps humiliating.

But recognize it we must. Because this is what sin does:

Sin dis-integrates our life with God.

In the very beginning of the Bible we see the perfect picture of what life with God is like: God made us to partners with God in tending to God’s creation, to be helpers, stewards, caretakers.

But our sin causes us to push ourselves away from God.

It is important to note that God NEVER leaves us because of our sin! God’s grace is always radically present in us in the form of previent grace.

You see, God has dreams for God’s creation; God has hopes and plans for you, and for the world. But when we sin, we take what God has planned for us and we remove ourselves from it.

We dis-integrate our lives. God calls to be a part of what God is doing in the world, to live a fully open and integrated life that partners with God. When we sin, we push ourselves away from God.

And so, we must acknowledge our sin because our sin is devastating us. Whether our sins are personal or corporate or both, they are keeping us from being fully apart of what God is doing, right here and right now in the world!

III. Metanoia

That is why we God heard through the prophet Joel calling the people of Israel to return to God.

One of the most important words in the New Testament is from the Greek language and the word is Metanoia.
We often translate that in English to the word “repent.” But metanoia means more than just repentance: it means a fundamental change of mind, a reorientation, and a transformation of outlook and of life.

We are called tonight to metanoia: to leave behind the roads that lead us to a dis-integrated life with God and to choose new life, and new paths and new ways of being.

We must recognize our sin, the things that keep us from living fully in God’s plan for our lives and then we must turn away from them and lead lives that integrate our story with God’s story.

During this season of Lent we have the opportunity to try to lay the things that hold us down, that keep us from being truly free to love God and our neighbor, to the side, and to embrace life-giving and freeing practice.

That’s why some people things up for Lent. The spiritual discipline is that you give up something that is not good for you in order to spend time with God and embrace practices that lead to life.

Our worship tonight is not supposed to be fun, but rather solemn. And that can be a tough thing for us. But, it is necessary to truly walk with Christ on a day-to-day basis. For if we don’t acknowledge our mortality and our sin, and our need to turn to new life then the grace that we claim to receive is cheap grace.

We want to move right to Easter but new birth requires death. It requires it. In order for us to take the joy of Easter seriously, we have to take the rest of the story seriously as well.

IV. The Cross

Tonight we will impose ash on your foreheads, if you wish. But we won’t impose in just any old way.

We will make the sign of the cross on you. Because death and sin isn’t all there is!

There is so much more, because our hope as followers of Christ is that, Jesus, through his life, death, resurrection sending forth and ascension has defeated death, sin, and the powers and principalities!

God wins! God is in the business of making all things new! God’s ultimate plans for God’s creation, including you and me, cannot be ultimately defeated!

And, so, even in recognizing our own mortality, our sin, and our need to be reintegrating our lives into God’s Life, we proclaim that God loves us and that God is making all things new!

So during this season of Lent, remember that you are a mortal being. Remember that we are called to live justly and righteously, and that our faith should impact how we life on everyday basis.

Won’t you turn from the things that hold you down and embrace the way to life and freedom in Christ?

God has made you for wonderful good things. God has plans for you, God has ministry for you to do. Because God loves you, God loves you so much that He doesn’t want leave you the way you are. But rather wants you to become what God made you to be: fully human, fully alive, fully free, and fully integrated into a life with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer, may it be so. Amen.

Going to see Branford tonight!

Tonight, Branford Marsalis is playing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and I am headed there to check it out! Branford Marsalis is one of the leading saxophonists of our generation. I have loved and admired his playing for years. He can play in seemingly every style, from classical (tonight he is playing, among other things, the Glazanouv Saxophone Concerto, which is one of my favorite works for saxophone) to straight-ahead jazz, to funk, to rock with Sting! That's the kind of musician I aspire to be! The concerto that he is playing tonight is lovely! I had the opportunity to learn it and play it in undergrad. Rare is the time when a saxophonist can attend the symphony and have played the concerto is on the bill!

The Most Recent Soul Cafe

Two days in a row! Watch out! This posting thing could become a habit!

Three Sunday's ago we held another Soul Cafe worship experience at Argyle UMC. This time around the choir led the congregation in a choral evensong. My lecture notes are below. If you'd like to see the ordo, leave a comment and I'll send it to you!

Soul Café
A Choral Evensong
January 25th, 2009

I. Prayer and Worship
• “(worship is) the glorification of God and the sanctification of humanity.”
--Pope Pius X, 1903
• “setting forth of God’s honor or glory and to the reducing of the people to a most perfect and Godly living.”
--Archbishop Thomas Cranmer

II. Two Traditions of Corporate Worship
a. Lord’s Day Services (from the earliest days of the Jesus movement we find examples of Christians meeting on Sundays. We see Paul in both Acts and 1st Corinthians participating in and encouraging services on Sunday.)
b. Benedict’s Daily Office (also used in a modified form for personal devotion time and is a complement to the Sunday service)

III. St. Benedict and the Daily Office
St. Benedict’s Daily Office
(circa early 500’s—Vatican II)
• Vespers-end of the workday
• Compline—before sleep
• Nocturnes (Vigils, Matins)—middle of the night (midnight and three a.m., respectively)
• Lauds—sunrise
• Prime—early morning
• Terce—mid-morning
• Sext—noon
• None—mid-afternoon
• In the Benedictin model, the entire Psalter was read once a week. Post-Vatican II is was read once a month

IV. The Liturgy of the Hours
• Morning and Evening Prayer are primary!
• In addition to its use in monasticism and in certain denominational services, the Liturgy of the Hours is often used as a private devotional time now.



V. Thoughts and Practices from John and Charles Wesley
• As Anglican Priests, John and Charles Wesley were very familiar (and both practiced) morning and evening prayer, as Thomas Cranmer had combined matins, lauds and prime in Matins as well as putting vespers and compline into Evensong in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.
• John Wesley believed that daily prayer was such an important spiritual discipline that in 1733 he complied his “A Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day of the Week.”
• This text has been updated to modern English by David A. deSilva and is available at Cokesbury.

VI. How do we organize our daily prayer life?

• The daily office?
• The Psalms?
• The Upper Room? (founded at Travis Park UMC)
• One hour a day as well as writing down our confession?
• John Wesley’s and the Church of England’s indications?
• The Didache (and early Church manual, circa 100, that contains orders of worship and instructions by baptism, communion, and the Christian lifestyle) tells us to pray the Lord’s Prayer Three times a day.

VII. Tonight’s Worship Experience

VIII. Song Practice

IX. Web resource
• The daily office online: www.apostleschurch.org/spirituality_daily.php
• Daily Lectionary www.pcusa.org/lectionary/

A few random thoughts for a this Sunday

This is a strange sensation for me! I am more prepared than usual on a Sunday morning and am finding myself with 15 minutes of free time before worship begins! Crazy! So, a few quick thoughts before I head out to visit with folks (which I should be doing instead of blogging right now).

1. I've somehow managed to spill hot coffee into my left eye this morning (don't ask), which, while painful, has washed the irritant that was previously lodged in my eye, out!

2. Tonight I get to go to a John Bell BIG SING, which is one of the greatest things in the entire world! If you ever get a chance to participate in one, don't miss it!

3. Radiohead, B.B. King, John Mayer, Coldplay, U2, etc. all performing at the Grammy's tonight! Thank goodness for dvr!

4. I read in the paper yesterday that the number of suicides in the U.S. Military eclipsed the number of those killed in combat in January. There is so much to be said about this, from the actual task of being a soldier to the lack of appropriate transition procedures to pastoral care for veterans, the list goes on and on. Terrible.

5. Even in the midst of darkness, God is faithful.

Have a blessed Sunday!

The blog is not dead!

Yeah, I've been neglecting the blog. Sorry about that! The last few weeks have been crazy! I've been to Buda, Texas, where I had the privilege of working with the Buda UMC Praise Band and catching up with the amazing Paul Harper and Teresa Wellborn, leading a Soul Cafe, working at the church, of course, checking out Dmin opportunities and attending Ministers Week at Perkins. Minsters Week this year is excellent! Karen Ward, Doug Pagitt, Tom Sine, Elaine Heath and Mark Stamm are a few of the amazing speakers that we've heard so far: tomorrow is the last day. I feel right at home!
Some of today's content is really challenging me to re-think the idea of "programming." More and more I am becoming convinced that I need to build the worship, music, and the arts ministries at Argyle through organic means. I will hopefully write more about that later!
I am also going to re-ignite our liturgy guild. The time has come!
I hope life is treating you well, if any one still reads this blog! Have a great few days!
Joe

Last Sunday's Sermon

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to preach as my poor senior pastor got a bad case of the flu on Saturday night. The phone rang at 6:30 Sunday morning and so I had to scramble! The manuscript below is what I preached from on Sunday. I figured the John text was an acceptable bridge piece coming out of Epiphany as we head towards Lent.
Well, back to my new U2 station on Pandora.com
Have a great day!

Melody and Countermelody: John 1:1-18

Let us pray: Gracious God, Lord of all Creation and author of all good things, open our hearts, our ears, and our minds to your Word this morning. I ask that your Spirit might run amongst your people, that we might be able to see your love for us in new ways and so that we might be about taking your Light into a dark world, as we leave this church a changed people. God, may the words of my mouth and the mediations of my heart be pleasing to you. If they be your words, let them be long remembered, if they are not, please let them be quickly forgotten. Let all of God’s children say: Amen!
This morning I want to share with you the most famous of all Christian poems, the prologue to the Gospel of John. Normally, I would ask you to open your Bibles and read along with me but our passage for this morning was originally a hymn! It’s meant to be sung first and read second. So I pray that you will open your ears, your hearts, and your minds to hear what God has to say to you this morning, because, make no mistake about it, God has a word in this passage of Scripture for you!
Read John 1:1-18
I love those words, don’t you? Parts of the passage are really stunning poetry. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Beautiful, hopeful words. These words are poetic and confessional, but more than that, they draw me, and I hope you, into mystery, awe, contemplation, and worship. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not overcome it.
The great preacher and author, Fredrick Buechner, along with many Johannine scholars (that is, those who study The Gospel of John for a living) have pointed out that, in essence, there are two voices speaking in this passage. I hope you’ll forgive the musician in me but to put it in musical terms; there is a melody and a counter-melody here. One voice speaks with beautiful poetry, singing for us lines of stunning theological beauty, while the other voices tends to interrupt that poetry with commentary. This morning we are going to look at these two voices and what they might be singing to us today.
At the very beginning of the Gospel, the voice of the poet is asking his community to sing some amazing claims! John the Evangelist, the one for whom the Gospel of John is named, is telling us who Jesus is and asking us to sing it! He asks us to affirm with our voices that the Word, before the universe was formed, was with God. More than that, he asks us to proclaim that Jesus is the incarnation of God and that not one thing came into being without the Word! He asks us to sing that Jesus brought not only light into the world in his human form but that he also brought true life, eternal life, with him, for all of the people of the world. Jesus is God’s Word! John is telling us something about Jesus that is very significant: Jesus is more than just a good guy, more than just an excellent moralist, more than just a person who was born, lived his beliefs to the fullest and was killed because of them, Jesus is the incarnation of God! Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King! Without the Word none of us comes into being, according to John. I find this to be beautiful, amazing, and, in my darker hours, a hard thing to sing! But sing them I do, because I believe them and I have experienced it. Have you?
In the original Greek, the term used for the Word is Logos. The poetic voice from John claims that Jesus was the Logos. In Greek thought, the Logos was the divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links the human mind to the mind of God. So this claim, that Jesus was the Logos, would be an incredible, almost incomprehensible statement in the fluid Hellenistic worldview of the time. Many of you may struggle to believe this as well.
For many of us, this is where wrestling with faith, tradition, Scripture, and reason come in. I can tell you that I believe this because I have had a great many experiences in my life where I have known God is a personal, vibrant way. I grew up in and have studied the traditions of the church, that is the incarnated body of Christ, that show me that, throughout the course of human history, I am not alone in my experience of God. The Scriptures tell me many stories of God and of what God is like. I reason that all of this together has allowed me to accept and proclaim what John is asking of us here.
The amazing piece of all of this is that God chose to condescend, that is to say God chose to take on human form so that God could be in relationship with us, so that God could love us in a more complete way, and so that God could show us how to live so that the Reign of God could come about on earth. Jesus is the bringer of LIFE, something more than just life. He is our shining example of God, because he is God. Jesus shows us what God is like, what God is about, how God loves us, and what God desires for us and of us. Can you imagine it? Have you experienced the state of knowing that God loves you so much, that God would take human form out of love for you and for God’s creation?
Because God desires us to be in relationship with God, and to be reconciled with our Creator, God became human so that God could reveal Godself fully to us. It is amazing, isn’t it?
The second voice jumps in next, the voice of one who seeks to clarify. Here, in verse 6, we hear a voice that is far less poetic and much more practical. This voice tells us that John the Baptist came “as a witness to testify to the light.” Clearly, there must have been some controversy in the latter part of the first century between those who followed John and those who followed Jesus. The controversy must have been such that John the Evangelist needed to address who was who and what was what. The author is telling us that John the Baptist was not the light, that Jesus was and is the light, and there should be no mistaking the two!
Certainly, in our lives we experience similar challenges, don’t we? There are so many good things in life to believe in, so many wonderful places to put our faith, our trust, our lives, and the lives of others. The most immediate example I can think of for me is The ONE Campaign. I’ve even got my ONE Campaign wristband on. I contribute to their work and try to participate however I can. They are advocates for what I believe are the two biggest challenges facing humanity today: extreme global poverty and HIV/AIDS. The ONE Campaign is trying to unite Americans with one voice against global poverty and AIDS with the hope of eradicating both in our lifetimes. The campaign brings together people from across barriers that are usually insurmountable. Both George Clooney and Pat Robertson are members, if you can believe that! The General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church is on-board with The ONE Campaign. I love not only what they are doing but also how they are doing it, and it would be easy for me to pour my life, my faith, and my resources into it, because it is a good thing!
The ONE Campaign is not, however, the greatest thing. It is merely good. It is an organization that is trying to improve life for the least of these and to spread a little light into the world. Jesus, on the other hand, the Logos, the Word of God, is the greatest! Jesus is not just trying to spread the light, Jesus is the LIGHT!!!!
I have to be honest with you, on my best days; I do what I do because I love Jesus. I live in this Christian Community because I love Jesus. My wife Sarah and I give money to the church because we love Jesus and the Scripture that Jesus commands us loved to do that. I know many of you get up on Sunday mornings and head to church for that exact reason. I know many of you go on mission trips, or teach Sunday School, or sing in the choir because you love Jesus. I know many of you do what you do out of love for Jesus.
On my worst days, however, I try to do the right things for the wrong reasons. On my worst days I try to do the right things out of a sense of duty, or out of a sense of, “it’s just the right thing to do.” As followers of Christ we are called to be a transforming and reconciling force in our world. So here’s the problem with acting with the wrong motivation: people are not transformed when you do something because it’s just the right thing to do. People are transformed because of an encounter with the living God! People are transformed because of the experience of the love of God given to them through others, so intentions matter! It’s important to do the right things for the right reasons! We must be vigilant and prayerful for it is easy to lose the Logos in the everyday things of the world.
In verse twelve the poetic voice jumps back in here with the pronouncement that to all who receive Jesus, to all who believe in his name, than they are granted the power to become children of God, who are born of God. In essence, all who believe in Jesus Christ are given the gift of eternal life. This eternal life, though, doesn’t begin when you die, it begins now, in this life! It is the difference between life and LIFE!!!!
The passage concludes with our melody and countermelody bouncing off of one another. The poetic voice tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us and that we have seen the glory of God’s only Son, full of grace and truth while the pragmatic voice reminds us that the Word is Jesus and not John. The poetic voice ends by telling us that, from Jesus, we have received grace upon grace. The earthy voice reminds us that the law came through Moses while grace and truth came through Jesus Christ and that no one has seen God but that it is through Jesus that God is fully revealed.
John gives us the basic essence of Jesus’ life and mission on earth in these 18 verses. Do you see what this mission is predicated upon? All of this, all that we have remembered in the Advent and Christmas Seasons, and what we will remember in Lent and Holy Week and finally Easter, as we trace the life of Jesus Christ, all of this came about because of love!
Only love would make a deity do this! Only the desire to be in relationship with us would make a deity come to earth! Instead of wiping us out and starting over (something God had been known to do in the past) God chose to sacrifice, to come to us, to love us, to teach us a better way to live, and to begin to reclaim God’s creation through Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, and through us, one person, one system, one creature at a time. Jesus, God, did all of this out of love!!!!
Can you fathom that kind of love, that you would give up everything for a relationship?
I pray that we all can recognize the light, that we can be with the light, and that we will not let the darkness overcome us! With Jesus, we can fight back the darkness!
Many of you have lived through darkness, you’ve walked through the shadow of the valley of death, and many of you have dwelled in that valley for years. But Jesus, Jesus has been there to! Jesus cannot be overcome by the darkness, for Jesus is the light of the world! The Light of the Universe cannot be overcome by darkness!!!!!!! See the light, love the light, work with the light, and do not let the darkness overcome you!!!!!
I have prayers for you and I pray for you! I pray that you will look for the light in your life and in the lives of others. I pray that you will merge your life with the LIFE that only Jesus can offer you. I pray that you, with the help of God, will fight back the darkness in your light and that together, you and I can fight the darkness in this world and seek to spread the light of Christ to a world that desperately needs to see the light of Jesus made visible in us! Friends, we have light to offer the world! We have grace to extend to God’s creation. It is our responsibility to do this! Moreover, it is our honor and pleasure to send grace and love out into the world. People of Argyle United Methodist Church, children of God, please don’t hide your light under a bushel basket this year! Let us join together to bring more light, more peace, and more of God’s grace to the world! Let us be the hands and feet of Christ, restored and redeemed and ever seeking to be partners in helping bring about the Reign of God in the world!
Let all of God’s children say, Amen!

What a weekend!

I can't believe it's been almost a week since I last posted, oh wait, yes I can! Seriously, you would think as a musician I would be much more disciplined!

I intended to post several times over the weekend about some of the worship things I've been doing but the last few weekends were so full that I decided to spend more time with the family.

Two weekends ago I had the pleasure of leading two contemplative worship experiences at the Perkins School of Youth Ministry. I lead a Taize service that lasted a little less than an hour and then set-up our worship environment with prayer stations for a forty minute session. I've been told it was well-received but I look forward to getting the evaluation sheets back. Following those experiences we had a very informal "mini-lecture" about the afternoon's worship (I took a mystagogical approach, for those of you keeping score at home) and then we closed with communion, celebrated wonderfully by the Rev. Marti Soper.

One of the most interesting moments for me in that entire experience involved the music during the prayer stations. I got to be a dj! I created two different loops for the event and then interspersed them with the music of Aaron Parks, Brad Mehldau, and, when nearly everyone had left, I mixed in some Lauridsen and Branford Marsalis. What a blast! I look forward to our April Soul Cafe at AUMC when we will offer an alt worship experience.

At 6:30 a.m., Sunday morning, I got a call from my senior pastor saying that he had the flu, so I had the opportunity to preach four times yesterday, in addition to being a music minister, and also mixed in a children's choir rehearsal, some acolyte training, a brief praise band rehearsal, and I had the chance to play in the modern service!

Today I've had the great fortune to work on this weekend's worship, both the Sunday morning experience and the evening's Soul Cafe, where we will be offering a Choral Evensong led by our adult choir.

Tomorrow, is, well, of course, the inauguration! I also will be playing at the Denton Wesley Foundation's weekly worship service and giving a brief devotion.

What a great week!

I hope all is well in your world!

Until then, may we breathe peace and life into the world!

Seeds DO sprout

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the annual Dallas Chapter of the Choristers Guild Mid-Winter Conference and the greater pleasure of hearing Sid Davis, the minister of music at St. Luke's UMC in Houston, talk about youth choir. Much of what he said resonated with me but I have been pondering on this particular thought quite a bit: seeds do sprout.

In my experience, it's true. Seeds DO sprout.

As I keep in touch with folks from my previous churches I see seeds sprouting quite a bit! We all have those moments, don't we? We look back in our lives and see that some of the seeds we have sowed have sprouted.

My preoccupation of late has been with the seeds that will sprout that we will never see. As I currently serve in a growing church that is just starting to build an entire new campus and is in a thriving and growing area, as much as any area can grow in our current economy. I am aware that, if God deems it, we are in the process of building a church that could possibly be a light in this community for hundreds of years to come. I wonder, what seeds are we sowing now, what will they eventually become, and, more importantly, are they good seeds?

As of late a few of the works of van Gogh have been at work on me even more than usual. As I reflect on his life (especially when contrasting his works "The Sower" and "Wheat Field with Crows") I am so struck by the power of the idea that seeds DO sprout. We often won't be able to see the end result, however.

It is important to hold on and to trust in God's good grace.

Epiphany Sermon

I had a wonderful opportunity to preach three times this Sunday at Argyle UMC! It was a blast! I preached on the Wedding at Cana and Epiphany. In the early church Epiphany was the second most celebrated feast day (after Easter, of course) and the Wedding at Cana was one of the most frequently read stories in worship on Epiphany. Below you will find my outline for this past Sunday's sermon. Following the sermon we had an offertory and then we celebrated Holy Communion. I set-up two stations of votive candles with tapers and invited the congregation to light a candle of thanksgiving for where God's glory had broken into their lives in 2008.

Epiphany Sunday 2009
The Wedding at Cana
John 2:1-12

I. Explain Epiphany
• Christmas Decorations are still up and it’s January!
• Epiphany Sunday: the Last Sunday of the Christmas Cycle and the first Sunday of the Epiphany season
• In the early church this was the second most important feast day (the first being Easter)
• It’s important to not skip Epiphany because during the Epiphany, we celebrate more than just the birth of a baby.
• We celebrate the fact that the light of God, Jesus Christ, has made God’s love and God’s gift of salvation available to everyone and to all nations! No one, for any reason, is excluded from the opportunity to experience God’s incredible love and amazing grace.
• The early church loved, during the celebrations of Epiphany, to read in worship the story of the Wedding at Cana because in the story Jesus revealed his glory in the Gospel of John for the first time, his inaugural act, as it were!
• I’d like to share that story with you this morning. Before you hear this story, let us pray:

II. Read the Story
• What an incredibly rich story!
• We find Jesus and his disciples, along with his mother out at a big community event: a wedding!
• Jesus decides, after telling his mom he wouldn’t, for some reason unknown to us, decides to manifest his glory through making wine.
• And the wine: wow! We are not talking about two bottles of wine off the lowest shelf here! I did the math and, assuming 30 gallons, Jesus’ created 151.4 bottles of the best wine, that’s 12.5 cases in our time.
• The amount and quality of the wine is significant because, in the words of Gail O’Day, “in a culture of scarcity it represents the shattering of the boundaries of the conventional world, and the disciples become willing to entertain the possibility that this boundary breaking marks the inbreaking of God!”
• This miracle of turning water into wine, and into incredible wine in great abundance at that, shows us how deep and wide the grace of God is!
• And it also foreshadows for us how the world will be transformed though God’s amazing love and grace through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus!
• The miracle reveals God’s glory!

• It is also fascinating that, outside of the disciples, the only people who see the miracle and understand it for what it is are the servants, not the wedding party, not the host, but the servants.
• It reminds me of the Nativity Story: the first people to see the baby Jesus were the shepherds and not the wise men.
• Throughout the Bible, God chooses to be revealed in the most unexpected people and places. God most often chooses to reveal God’s glory to those on the margins of our societies.
• I wonder, if God continually chooses to be revealed on the margins of society, where would we be most likely to encounter the living God today?
• This question is worth considering, for it has significant implications.

III. Irenaeus
• But before you do that, I’d like to introduce you to a hero of our faith: Irenaeus.
• A pretty important guy: he was theologian/bishop that was born somewhere in the second century (between 115-142) in what is now Turkey, he was the second Bishop of Lyons France, and his teacher, Polycarp, was a student of John the Evangelist (the beloved Disciple), which means, Irenaeus was two generations removed from Jesus.
• Irenaeus is also important because he was one of the earliest champion’s of including what we now call the canonical Gospels in the Bible (which had not yet been formed in the way we have it now)
• “The glory of God is a human being fully alive!” Write it down in your notes.
• This is something to think about on this Epiphany Sunday, as we celebrate God’s glory being revealed through Jesus Christ, and then, through us!

IV. Becoming “fully alive”
• As followers of Christ, we are called to be fully alive, fully human, in order that we might become vessel’s for Christ’s glory to be made more and more manifest in us.
• So what does it look like, to be fully alive?
• Obviously, because God made us as beautiful and diverse creatures, we all look different when we are fully alive.
• But, I think we can see three areas that come of out the story of the Wedding at Cana that can point us in the right direction to becoming more fully alive.

1. Community (we are not meant to be alone)
• We are made for community! God does not want us to be alone
• It is not possible for us to become who God made us to be by ourselves. We have to do it together.
• There is an important concept that comes from Africa that can teach us in this matter.
• Ubuntu it is not really a translatable concept in English but it basically means, “I am because you are.”
• In other words: a person is a person through other persons (identity through community) the only way I can be all I am made to be is if you can be all you can be. If you are not fully you, than I cannot fully be me.
• We see this concept at work throughout Jesus’ entire ministry.
• Jesus calls each of us to work for the dignity and humanity of all people
• We must fight against the things that dehumanize others. We must fight against extreme poverty, torture, abuse, terror, and pandemics.
• In essence, by applying ubuntu to our lives we seek to follow the words of Jesus’ inaugural act of ministry in the gospel of Luke, where Jesus stood in the temple and preached the following words: Luke 4:18-19
• We are more fully alive when we are in community and when we are serving others.
o How can you be more engaged in this community in 2009? Join the choir, get in a Bible study, work with the children, go with the youth to the Martin Luther King Center in Denton. Get involved!

• Where is God calling you to serve this year? Maybe it’s working with AIDS Service of North Texas, or Spirit Horse, perhaps it’s working at Argyle food bank, maybe you are being called to advocate for peace and justice with your elected officials.
• How is God calling you to embrace your life by serving others?

2. Faith
• We see in the Gospel story that the disciples “believed.” The root for the word “believe” in Greek in this passage is pisteuo (pist yoo’ o) which means, “to place confidence in.”
• The disciples were placing their confidence in Jesus. These men, with the exception of John, the beloved disciple, would go on to eventually give their lives for Jesus, the one in whom they had placed confidence and trust.
• When we place our trust in something larger than ourselves it dictates how we live, and how we act.
• What are you placing your confidence in this year?
• In many respects that’s challenging question!
• How can we become more fully alive by contemplating what we place our confidence in?

3. Creative Practices (these give life)
• We need to embrace practices that give us life.
• For each of us these practices are different!
• Jesus made wine because it was necessary but also because wine can be a symbol of the celebration of life! Psalm 104 tells us that God gave us wine to gladden the human heart.
• Life-giving practices for some of us include cooking for others, or baking, or making music, some of you probably quilt; I think of our awesome banner team that is making beautiful new banners for our new sanctuary that will point us towards God.
• For some of us life-giving practices include working on your short game, or writing poetry.
• What do you do in your life on a weekly basis that is creative and enriches your life?
• The very first thing we learn about God in the Bible is that God is creative. We are made in God’s image and therefore we are inherently creative beings.
• I challenge you to find something in your life that you can do on a weekly basis to help you become more fully alive, because, the glory of God is a human being fully alive!

Community, Faith that leads to Action, and Creative Practices are just a few of the things that help us become all that God has made us to be.

These things help us to claim the rich abundance that God has provided for us in the midst of times that are filled with talk of scarcity.

One of the practices that we have as a faith community is that of Holy Communion. As we celebrate it, we experience community, for we do it together! We experience faith, in that we put our trust in Jesus. And even if we can’t, we can still come up and receive God’s grace and our neighbor can proclaim our trust for us until we can claim for ourselves. And, we experience creativity in the music being played, the juice that was made for this meal, the liturgy, and the bread that was baked for this moment, we taste, we touch, we smell, we hear and we experience creativity.

Friends, we are called to celebrate a God who has intervened on our behalf! We are called to celebrate a God who continues to show light in the darkness. A God who has saved all that he created and a God who desires each and every one of us!

During the offertory time I would invite you to consider where God’s light has shown in your life this previous year. And, if you feel so moved, I would invite you to take a taper, and light a candle of thanksgiving to God for how God has been at work in your life.

Sisters and brothers, we are blessed: though we are broken, God will make us whole. Though the world can be filled with darkness, God’s light cannot be overcome. Though we may struggle with one another, God has given us the ministry and the power to be reconciled. God love us! Friends, God is good: all the time, all the time, God is good. Amen!

One other awesome Christmas Album!!!

I am a firm believer in celebrating the Christmas season to it's fullest, so if you roll by my neighborhood at night, I'll probably be the only guy with the Christmas lights going on January 6th! So, in that spirit, here's one more Christmas album recommendation. I don't know how this one escaped me: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones "Jingle All the Way." The album has plenty of excellent banjo, saxophone, bass, and drums, as you might imagine. But one of the real treats for me is hearing a Tuvan throat singer performing "Jingle Bells." I mean...wow!!!! Check out the "Jingle Bells (Reprise)" on iTunes and the Flecktones arrangement of the "Christmas Oratorio" by Bach. Incredible!

Christmas, Blogging Failures, and other thoughts

Christmas with a three year old is pure, unbridled joy! I saw pure joy on Christmas Day this year (Christmas Day is also my daughter's birthday and she turned three this year). Watching Ellie interact with all of the Christmas traditions that we are blending in our house was simply wonderful. Pure, pure joy!

Sorry about being so behind on posting during the Christmas season, it was very full this year with our worship services being at the high school! (On the whole, they went very well, btw.)

I am preaching this week on Epiphany and will be preaching on the Wedding at Cana. In the earliest church lectionaries the Wedding at Cana was one of the gospel readings for Epiphany. The Eastern Church has retained this reading while the Western Church has not. My contrarian nature rears it's ugly head again! :)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours!!!

O Antiphon's 2-4

Thursday's Antiphon: O WISDOM, who came forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end, and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: Come, and teach us the way of prudence.

O come, thou Wisdom from on high, and order all things far and nigh; to us the path of knowledge show and cause us in her ways to go. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Friday's Antiphon: O ADONAI and Leader of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the flames of the bush and gave him the law on Sinai: Come, and with your outstretched arm redeem us.

O come, O come, great Lord of might, who to thy tribes on Sinai's height in ancient times once gave the law in cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Saturday's Antiphon: O ROOT OF JESSE, who stands for an ensign of the people, before whom kings shall keep silence and to whom the Gentiles shall make their supplication: Come, and deliver us and tarry not.

O come, thou Root of Jesse's tree, an ensign of thy people be; before thee rulers silent fall; all peoples on thy mercy call. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

"O Antiphon" 1

Since we are now seven days away from Christmas Eve, I hope you will consider joining me in praying the "O Antiphons"!

O Antiphon 1: O EMMANUEL, our King and Lawgiver, the Expected on the nations and their Savior: Come and save us, O Lord, our God.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

A Christmas Thought from Bonhoeffer

A thought on universal redemption from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"in the birth of Jesus Christ, God took on the form of all humanity, not just that of a single human being."

Truth from Parker Palmer and Henri Nouwen about community

Parker Palmer and Henri Nouwen are purveyors of truth: check out this quote from a speech Nouwen made to members of Fadica in 1994, the speech is called "Discovering Our Gift Through Service to Others":

"Parker Palmer, a spiritual writer of the Quaker tradition, says community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives. So community is not like a place where you love each other sort of freely and warmly and affectionately. Community is in fact the place where you are purified, where your love is tested, where your childhood of God is constantly put through the mill of human relationships. That is what community is. Community is a place where Judas always is and sometimes it is just you."

I came across this quote from an excellent Advent devotional book called "Advent and Christmas Wisdom from Henri J.M. Nouwen" published by Redemptorist Pastoral Publications.

My new favorite quote (for today, anyway!)

This quote popped off the page at me several weeks ago as I was finishing a book called "A Heretic's Guide to Eternity" by Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor. I think it jumped out at me because it is profoundly true.

"The greatest tragedy of theology in the past three hundred years ahas been the divorce of the theologian from the poet, the dancer, the musician, the painter, the dramatist, the actress, the movie-maker..."
--MD. Chenu (a French Dominican Theologian who was very present at Vatican II)

My sad little Apple...

Wonders never cease! I thought my Mac was indestructible! As it turns out, it's not. The cd/dvd player/burner is no longer working. I can't believe it! This is terribly troubling to me, as the Mac is one of my closest collaborators and I don't know what I will do with out it for a few weeks if it has to go away to be serviced. single...tear...rolling...down...my...cheek...

A Beautiful Advent Poem

One of my favorite poet's is a very fine gentleman (who also happens to be a United Methodist Minister) named John Thornburg. He has written many wonderful poems, hymns, and anthem texts that can be found in all of the mainline hymnals. He recently sent out a poem for Advent this year and I asked him if I could post it on my blog. He graciously agreed! I found this poem to be a powerful reminder of my all-too-often complicity with the powers and principalities of this world. Thankfully, God's grace can help us turn from these things and embrace the life God wishes for us. What does it mean to you?


We want the rules to bend our way;
to fight a war but hear no cry,
to overeat and never die,
to burn the fuel but clean the sky.

Dominion is our favorite sport;
to claim whatever we can see,
to dictate our idea of 'free',
to do our business by decree.

We share this attitude with Rome,
with Herod, so emmeshed in lies
he could not fashion how the skies
were filled with wonder and surprise.

The time is ripe to claim the news;
that all is level in God's sight,
that greed is wrong and love is right,
that Christ can put all fear to flight.

Be instant, O Eternal God,
to turn our minds from selfish gain,
to still our hands from causing pain,
to set our minds upon your reign.

--used by permission given from John Thornburg

An Advent Devotional

It is gloriously chilly at the moment! My office has not heat and is not very well sealed, so when the wind blows, I feel it at my desk. Currently, it is 34 degrees outside with a wind chill of 24 and "wintry mix" is beginning! Below you will find an Advent devotional that I wrote for the congregation I serve. The collect at the end is original.



"Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting, however is a art that our impatient age has forgotten...We must wait for the greatest, most profound, most gentle things in the world; nothing happens in a rush, but only according to the divine laws of germination and growth and becoming." --Dietrich Bonhoeffer

These words, from one of the greatest 20th century theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, are a great reminder to us during this season of Advent that we are called to wait upon the Lord. Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart!

Prayer: Most gracious and loving God: to you a day is but an instant, you created all things and have remained steadfast with your creation since its beginning. Teach us to wait for you, to watch for you, so that we may not miss your the coming of your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Christmas Albums (CD's, mp3, records, whatever you like)

We all have our holiday rituals, don't we? Today I am enjoying one of my favorite rituals! Every year around this time I pick up a few "holiday" albums to check them out and to try to stay fully engaged in the season. This year, I've picked up three very different albums and have enjoyed them all. Below you will find a super brief review of each one:

1. "What a Night" by Harry Connick, Jr. If you've ever heard any of his other Christmas albums you will recognize the formula immediately. Interesting big-band arrangements, good vocals, fairly sentimental and one or two surprising tracks that provide good theology along with funky music! My two favorites off of this particular offering are "O Come, All Ye Faithful" and "Song for the Hopeful." Both are available on iTunes.

2. "The Dawn of Grace" by Sixpence None the Richer. One of my favorite guilty pleasures: Leigh Nash's voice! It has such character and purity. She doesn't oversing (and could be accused of not using enough breath support but I don't care because I love it). :) Honestly, I can't give too much of a review as I'm only four songs into it but so far, it's delightful! Very sparse and light arrangements, beautiful repertoire choices. Good stuff!

3. "Songs of Joy and Peace" by Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo Ma, along with Branford Marsalis are two of the musicians who inspire me the most! Their ability to collaborate with artists in every style is simply stunning to me. This glorious album features Yo-Yo Ma, Diana Krall, Chris Theile, James Taylor, Joshua Redman, Renee Fleming, Dave Bruebeck, the Assad Family, Alison Krauss, Paquito d'Rivera, Chris Botti, the Silk Roads Ensemble, and several others. What a line-up! I can't recommend this album highly enough! I've about worn it out already!

The Rev. Kathleen Baskin-Ball

The Church lost one of it's most faithful and gifted leaders this week. The Rev. Kathleen Baskin-Ball, a United Methodist minister who was an inspiration to me and thousands of others, lost her two-year battle with cancer on Tuesday. So many others have been able to articulate her loss with such grace and art in their words! Perhaps the best thing I can say is this: St. Irenaeus once said, "the glory of God is a human being fully alive." That, for me, is the perfect description of Kathleen. She was fully alive when she lived and as she died. Christ lived through Kathleen, and continues to do so in the lives of all that she touched. Every time I had the blessing to being around her, she radiated God's love and grace to all she encountered.

I once read a story (I can't remember where) where a Catholic priest told a parishioner, "I don't think God has favorites, but I do think God has special friends." Undoubtedly, Kathleen was a "special friend" of God's!

Rev. Baskin-Ball was an incredibly gifted leader and mentor. I, along with all who knew her, have no doubt she would have been elected bishop and would have excelled in the office. Kathleen is the kind of leader The United Methodist Church needs! The loss of Kathleen's voice and vision leaves a great hole in her local church appointment, Suncreek UMC, the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church and the church as a whole.

As I told my congregation on Sunday, there is no replacing someone like Kathleen. We pray and give thanks for the inspiration she gave us in the way she lived her life and the way she so graciously modeled for us how to die with grace and dignity. And we mourn, together. And we hold her family, especially her husband Bill and son Skyler in prayer. And then, we keep going. We keep working on becoming who God made us to be. We keep serving, we keep loving, we keep laughing, we keep trying to bring good news of liberation to those who are oppressed, we keep feeding the hungry, we keep working for justice, we keep introducing people to our Brother and Lord Jesus, we keeping shining light into the dark. It's what we do. It is who we are. It is being faithful.

I am so thankful for the life and witness of Kathleen Baskin-Ball!

Glory be!

If you follow the link below, you will find a very brief video from her memorial service:

http://www.dallasnews.com/video/dallasnews/dmnphoto/index.html?nvid=310992

An Amazing Sunday with Dr. Michael Hawn!

There are really five major weeks in the life of the average church musician. The first is "lessons and carols" week before Christmas. The second is the week of Christmas Eve. The third Holy Week and Easter. The fourth is choir tour week and the fifth is vbs. Of course, there are lots of other big events that occur outside of the afore-mentioned weeks but really, for most of us, those are the big ones.
Yesterday we wrapped up our lessons and carols week at Argyle UMC. I should say that I am using "lessons and carols" as a catch-all phrase for special Advent/Christmas worship events. At our service yesterday we had a truly amazing worship experience with Dr. C. Michael Hawn, chair of the sacred music department at the Perkins School of Theology. I could write many paragraphs on how incredible he is but let me just say that he is truly one of the greats! He is a legend in the field of sacred music, so to have the opportunity to have him lead us in an Advent service was really a gift and a blessing.
He is an incredible song leader and had the congregation singing songs from all over the world quickly and easily. I was especially enthralled with the way he lead the liturgy in the Eucharist! He brought out the inherent drama in the liturgy: it really felt like it mattered! He is such an effective presider that you can just feel the grace, the love, and the "realness" of the sacramental mystery.
Below you will find the order of worship with rubrics:

Thy Kingdom Come:
The World Celebrates the Coming of the Savior

Argyle UMC
December 7, 2008

Welcome, Gathering Songs and Community News

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
[Choir hums “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” over a organ pedal point as the following litany is spoken:]

“A Litany of Darkness and Light” (New Zealand)

Voice 1: We wait in the darkness, expectantly, longingly, anxiously,
thoughtfully.

Voice 2: The darkness is our friend. In the darkness of the womb, we have
all been nurtured and protected. In the darkness of the womb, the
Christ-child was made ready for the journey into light.

Voice 1: It is only in the darkness that we can see the splendor of the
universe—blankets of stars of the night, desert peoples find relief
from the cruel relentless heat of the sun.

Voice 2: In the blessed darkness, Mary and Joseph were able to flee with
the infant Jesus to safety in Egypt.

Voice 1: Sometimes, in the solitude of darkness, our fears and concerns, our hopes and our visions rise to the surface. We come face to face with ourselves and with eh road that lies ahead of us.

Voice 2: In that same darkness, we sometimes allow ourselves to wonder
and worry whether the human race is going to make it at all.

[Choir comes to a rest on final note “e” and sustains it.]

Congregation:
We know you are with us, O God, yet we still await your
coming. In the darkness that contains both our hopelessness and our expectancy, we watch for a sign of God’s Hope.
[Organ intro picks up on Stanza 1 of “O come, O come Emmanuel”]

Congregation (Singing):
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns on lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

Lighting of the Advent Candle

Reader 1: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

Reader 2: The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

Reader 1: I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Reader 2: Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let hour heart take courage.

All: Wait for the Lord!

Born to Set Thy People Free

[Drum establishes a steady beat. Voices continue over the drum.]
Prayer of Praise (Iona Community, Scotland)

Voice 1: We have heard about you, God of all power.
You made the world our of kindness, creating order out of confusion; you made each one of us in your own image; your fingerprint is on every soul.

Voice 2: We have hear about you, Jesus Christ: the carpenter who left his tools and trade; the poor man who made others rich; the healer who let himself be wounded; the criminal on whom the soldiers spat not knowing they were fouling the face of God; the savior who died and rose again.

Voices in alternation:
We have heard about you, Holy Spirit. You broke the bonds of every race and nation, to let God speak in every tongue: you made disciples drunk with grace; you converted souls and emptied pockets; you showed how love made all things new and opened the doors to change and freedom.

[Drum continues and song segues]

“Freedom is Coming” South African Freedom Song

From Our Fears and Sings Release Us,
Let Us Find Our Rest in Thee.

Preparation for Prayer “Lord, Have Mercy” Lim Swee Hong

Prayer of Confession A prayer from an ecumenical group (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, Pentecostal) in the former Yugoslavia

Let us seek the forgiveness of God and of each other
for the divisions that have hindered Christian witness:
Lord, we have sinned against you and against each other.
All( Singing): Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy on us.

O Christ, our divisions are contrary to your will,
and have impeded our common witness to you.
All( Singing): Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy on us.

Lord, we have not loved you enough in our sisters and brothers,
created in your image, but different from us.
All( Singing): Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy on us.

Creator God,
stop us wandering in alienation from one another.
Satisfy the longings of our hearts,
grant our rightful requests,
and unite us soon in one holy church
through your Son Jesus Christ
who with you in the communion of the Holy Spirit
lives and reigns eternally.
Amen.

Silent Prayer of Confession
Assurance of Pardon
The Savior of the world, the Refuge of the repentant,
forgives and strengthens all who truly seek his grace.
He accepts you as his sons and daughters,
and sets you free from the bondage of your past.
For Christ died and rose to new life that we might all share his wholeness and abundant life. (Church of South India)

Hear the Good News:
God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.
(Col. 1:13-14)

[Recorder that I will play introduces the next song.]

(I can't put the printed music here for copyright reasons.)

Response (Choir and Congregation) “Gloria” (Taizé Community, France)

©GIA Publishing. Reprinted by permission under copyright license OneLicense.net#A-714998

Israel’s Strength and Consolation

Psalm 22
Leader: I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”

People: Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.

Leader: To Jerusalem the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.

People: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.

Leader: For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say,
 “Peace be within you.”

Hymn 2091 (FWS) “The King of Glory Comes” (Israeli Melody) KING OF GLORY

Hope of All the Earth Thou Art

Narration

Hymn 241 “That Boy-Child of Mary” (Malawi) BLANTYRE

Offertory Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel arr. Timothy Bandy

Doxology Tune: Siyahamba

Praise to God from whom all miracles flow.
Praise to God from all creation below.
Praise to God you heavenly hosts from above,
Praise to Father, Son and Spirit of love.

We are praising, praising, praising, praising,
Praise to Father, Son and Spirit of love.

Dear Desire of Every Nation, Joy of Every Longing Heart

An African Affirmation of Faith From the Masai of Kenya

We believe in the one High God,
who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it.
God created people and wanted them to be happy in the world.
God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth.
We have known this High God in the darkness,
and now we know God in the light.
God promised in the book called the Bible, the word of God,
that all nations and tribes of the world would be saved.

We believe that God made good this promise by sending Jesus Christ, the Son of God, a Jew by tribe,
born poor in a little village,
who left his home and was always on safari doing good,
curing people by the power of God,
teaching about God and people,
showing that the meaning of religion is love.
He was rejected by his people,
tortured and nailed—hands and feet—to a cross and died.
He lay buried, but the hyenas did not find his body,
and on the third day, he rose from the grave.
He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord!

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him.
All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins,
be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God,
live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love,
to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again.
We are waiting for him.
He is alive! He lives! This we believe. Amen!
(Vincent J. Donovan, Christianity Revisited, Orbis Books, 1978, p. 200)





Response Amen Siakudumisa FWS# 2067 South Africa
Amen siakudumisa Amen, we praise your name O Lord
Amen siakudumisa Amen, we praise your name O Lord
Amen bawo; amen bawo Amen, Amen; Amen, Amen!
Amen siakudumisa Amen, we praise your name O Lord.
(C.F. Molefe; as taught by George Mxadana)

EUCHARIST

Hymn 196 Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus HYFRYDOL

Blessing of Peace From a litany based on a traditional Kikuyu form (Kenya)

Let us pray to the God of our forbearers, through Jesus Christ his Son,
in the power of the Holy Spirit.
May the leaders of our churches have wisdom and speak with one voice.
Praise the Lord: peace be with us.
May the leaders of our country rule with maturity and justice.
Praise the Lord: peace be with us.
May the country have tranquility and the people be blessed.
Praise the Lord: peace be with us.
May the people and the flocks and the herds prosper
and be free from illness.
Praise the Lord: peace be with us.
May the fields bear much fruit and the land be fertile.
Praise the Lord: peace be with us.
May the face of our enemies be turned towards peace.
Praise the Lord: peace be with us.
May the path of the world be swept of all danger.
Hallelujah! The Prince of Peace is with us.
(from With All God's People: The New Ecumenical Prayer Cycle, WCC Publications, pp. 112-113)

Congregational Response (Singing):

O come, Desire of nations, bind
All peoples in one heart and mind;
Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;

Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

Postlude

Draft 6.8 for Christmas Eve

Since it is the first full week of Advent, I've decided to post the most recent draft of this year's Christmas Eve service at Argyle UMC. Well, I wish it was going to be at Argyle UMC! We were supposed to be in our new building but that's not going to happen in time for Christmas Eve, so now we are graciously being allowed to use the auditorium at Argyle High School. (We'd love to host it in our sanctuary but we are expecting over 1,000 folks and our sanctuary seats 175 people.)
For obvious reasons the high school is not real keen on the possibility that we might burn down their facility, we are not going to give everyone a candle to raise during the singing of "Silent Night" and since they don't want their carpet stained, we will not be serving communion. So, the trick has been to create a meaningful Christmas Eve service that forgoes those two traditional components.
Since we do not really celebrate Epiphany (which is quite a drag, since Epiphany is the older and, arguably, richer festival) we are mixing in a bit of the "follow the star" kind of motif.
I look forward to any comments that you might have!

Argyle UMC-Christmas Eve Worship
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Christmas Eve
5:00 & 7:00 p.m.

PRELUDE: Anastasia Markina or the band

*CALL TO WORSHIP Rev. Joe Stobaugh
Leader: When the time was right, God sent the Son;
Women: sent him and nourished him,
Men: reared him and risked him,
Women: filled him with laughter and tears and compassion,
Men: filled him with anger and love and devotion.

Leader: Unwelcomed child, refugee and runaway,
ALL: CHRIST IS GOD’S OWN SON

Leader: Feeder and teacher, healer and antagonist,
ALL: CHRIST IS GOD’S OWN SON

Leader: Lover of th unlovable,
Toucher of the untouchable,
Forgiver of the unforgivable,
ALL: CHRIST IS GOD’S OWN SON.

Leader: Loved by women, feared by men,
Befriended by the weak, despised by the strong,
Deserted by his listeners, betrayed by his friends;
Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh,
Writing heven’s pardon over earth’s mistakes
ALL: CHRIST IS GOD’S OWN SON

LeaderL The Word became flesh:
ALL: HE CAME AMONG US, HE WAS ONE OF US . LET US WORSHIP HIM AND PROCLAIM
HIS COMING!
--Iona Community, 20th century, Scotland

*SONG OF GATHERING No. 234 O Come, All Ye Faithful st.1-4 THE PEOPLE

LIGHTING OF THE ADVENT AND CHRIST CANDLES

GREETING/REGISTRATION/THE LORD’S PRAYER Todd Mead

PREPARING TO HEAR THE WORD: evensong band (band stays seated during sermon)

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 2:1-11

MESSAGE Follow the Star Rev. Kory Knott

MUSICAL RESPONSE: Light is Shining by Daniel Doss evensong band & Chancel Choir

PRAYERS FOR THE WORLD Rev. Joe Stobaugh

CONFESSION (from Grace Community in England)

ASSURANCE OF PARDON
(Sing the Last stanza and refraind FROM WE THREE KINGS)

TITHES AND OFFERINGS: Follow the Star by Theorn Kirk Chancel Choir

DOXOLOGY: Something from a Carol

THE CHRISTMAS STORY: Luke 2:8-20 PRE-RECORD IT WITH A CHILD READING THE CHRISTMAS STORY: EMILY YOUNG
(Silent Night underneath it) light’s come down with the focus on the star


*No. 239 Silent Night THE PEOPLE

*SONG OF CELEBRATION No. 246 Joy to the World THE PEOPLE

BENEDICTION Rev. Kory Knott

POSTLUDE Anastasia Markina

Quantum of Solace

This weekend I had the chance to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, and wow, I loved it! And I struggle with the fact that I enjoyed it so much. Here's why: I do not buy into the myth of redemptive violence at all. In fact, I am sure it's the main cycle that Jesus broke with his death. There is something compelling, however, about cheering for the good guys and for being glad when the bad guys "get there's." The violence is well shot and impressive, from a film making standpoint, and the character development is much better with the Daniel Craig James Bond, but still, I wish I wasn't so taken by the violence of it.