The Lord is Our Righteousness

Jeremiah 33:14-18

Confusing Kings and THE King

2 Kings 22:1-20

It’s Complicated

Hosea 11:1-9

In Praise of Praise

The topic of praising God is not something we folks in the mainline Christian community do a lot of talking about, or at least in the places that I’ve served and been a part of over the years. Even when I was a teenager and ensconced within a Southern Baptist setting, I don’t remember a lot of conversations about what it means to praise God and why we humans do it or should do it. Maybe it’s nothing you’ve ever thought about twice, because we often are given the words with which to praise God, in hymns, songs, Scripture readings, like the one you heard a few minutes ago from Psalm 150. Honestly, I had never really thought twice about our praise of God until something early on in my ministry, in which I was told how to praise God in a particular kind of worship service. As you know, I once worked in a large congregation that had multiple and different kinds of worship services during the week. As some point, the Senior Pastor asked/told me that I would be leading up the Wednesday evening service, which at that time was a contemporary worship service with a 30-minute slot for preaching/teaching, usually connected to some clever and contemporary hot TV show of the moment. One time they had a series on relationships based on the Simpsons, another time it was around the first round of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy series, but it was renamed Queer Eye for the Soul. Yes, some of it was a bit much, but I didn’t get to pick the themes or the contemporary connection to pop culture! Anyway, so all of sudden I am leading a Wednesday evening worship service with a 6-piece band, all them quite good, with 6-8 gifted vocalists leading us in a contemporary Christian worship style. This means that in this particular service there was a lot of music for the first 20 minutes of the service for the 200 souls gathered there, with the lyrics projected onto the screen, and lots of repetition, singing the choruses of these songs over and over again. And there were people raising their hands in praise, often standing up with their eyes closed and their bodies swaying. Then I would preach or teach for 30 minutes, do a prayer, and then the service with another round of repetitive choruses, all of which usually were short, uncomplicated and effused with words of praise for God. I had not grown up in that worship style, and here I was leading a worship service that was built around it. It probably wasn’t the best decision the Senior Pastor ever made putting me as the lead on that service – I think he was desperate after a number of our clergy were fired or resigned – since it was pretty clear early on that I couldn’t easily engage in that style of worship – it just simply wasn’t in my bones. One Wednesday he was standing next to me in the front row, with his hands raised and closed eyes, and he leaned over asked me and told/asked me to do the same. I just shook my head “no,” because, frankly, it just wasn’t me, it just wasn’t the way I showed my adoration of the Divine, my praise of the Holy. Needless to say, that experiment of me leading that service was a short-lived one, though I like to think that I wasn’t that bad at the preaching/teaching part of it. Now, to be clear, just because I didn’t easily fit into that style of worship, one that tended to focus heavily effusive and emotional it its way of praising God, doesn’t mean that I think it was the wrong way of praising Divine – it just wasn’t my way of offering praise to God. One of the things I often say to the confirmands was that Protestant Reformation gave birth to such an incredible diversity in the church, diversity that was there from the very beginning and was just waiting to come out when the authoritarianism of the Roman Catholic Church at that time got challenged in the 16th century. It allowed for new ways of engaging and praising God, rather than the one-size-fits-all way before the Reformation. Some people may find diversity in the church disconcerting, but I find it excit

The Courage To Move On

Ruth 1:1-17 During the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. A man with his wife and two sons went from Bethlehem of Judah to dwell in the territory of Moab. The name of that man was Elimelech, the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the territory of Moab and settled there. But Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died. Then only she was left, along with her two sons. They took wives for themselves, Moabite women; the name of the first was Orpah and the name of the second was Ruth. And they lived there for about ten years. But both of the sons, Mahlon and Chilion, also died. Only the woman was left, without her two children and without her husband. Then she arose along with her daughters-in-law to return from the field of Moab, because while in the territory of Moab she had heard that theLordhad paid attention to his people by providing food for them. She left the place where she had been, and her two daughters-in-law went with her. They went along the road to return to the land of Judah. Naomi said to her daughters-in-law, “Go, turn back, each of you to the household of your mother. May theLorddeal faithfully with you, just as you have done with the dead and with me. May theLordprovide for you so that you may find security, each woman in the household of her husband.” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. But they replied to her, “No, instead we will return with you, to your people.” Naomi replied, “Turn back, my daughters. Why would you go with me? Will there again be sons in my womb, that they would be husbands for you? Turn back, my daughters. Go. I am too old for a husband. If I were to say that I have hope, even if I had a husband tonight, and even more, if I were to bear sons— would you wait until they grew up? Would you refrain from having a husband? No, my daughters. This is more bitter for me than for you, since theLord’s will has come out against me.” Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth stayed with her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is returning to her people and to her gods. Turn back after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to abandon you, to turn back from following after you. Wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May theLorddo this to me and more so if even death separates me from you.”

Laughing at God's Promises

NEXT: The Loneliness Cure

Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-25

Ask the Pastor Creative Evolution

Revelation 21:106a

Ask the Pastor

Where did ideas such as celibacy and the secondary role of women come from? And when and why did progressive churches like the United Church of Christ abandon them?

Why we Don't see big events?

Why don’t we see big events like in the past? Is God afraid of us because we have become so mean, dangerous and careless?