Presby-Musings

Today, we will conclude the sermon series "True Religion: Lessons for the Church from James" that we've worked on for the past month.  James' letter to the Church seeks to answer a vital question for Christians for all times and spaces:  How do we define what it means to be a Christian? Like the audience of James' letter, we struggle to follow Jesus in our current culture. I can't think of a more important question for Christians right now.  Today, we will be focused on understanding prayer.  Have you ever wondered why your prayers may not have been answered?  Are your prayers being heard at all?  Have you ever become frustrated because God is silent when you pray?  Well, James has something to teach us.   But before we get to that, I've learned that Pop Culture has much to teach us about prayer.  Let's look at famous and heartfelt prayers from TV and film to see how.  From Talladega Nights:  Dear 8 pound, 6 ounce newborn infan...

  Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God more than anything else.  He also talked about money more than heaven and hell, so there's that.  So why do so many Christians tend to focus on the heaven and hell bit and let the whole idea of the Kingdom of God go by the wayside when it comes to their expressions of faith?   For a lot of people who say they follow Jesus, Christianity comes down to a choice.  You choose to follow Jesus and go to heaven when you die, or you don't decide to follow Jesus and spend eternity in hell.   If Jesus was less concerned about what happens to us when we die than what we do when we live, why do so many Christians make the ever after the main point?  I think it's because so many of us are enamored with imagining a place without suffering, challenges, or hardship.  A great deal of Christian theology and doctrine backs this up.  Christians of all types seem to hold on to the hope of a day when they'll finally...

The late theologian and author Henri J. Nouwen once wrote:  The whole message of the gospel is this: Become like Jesus .   This blunt and straightforward statement belies the fact that becoming like Jesus is extremely difficult, if not seemingly impossible. This fact has led many of us to give up trying.   Or, at the very least, we do our best to mitigate his teaching, finding loopholes in the commands and exhortations Jesus gives in the Gospel accounts or glossing over them altogether.   Most expressions of the Christian faith tend to rely too heavily on the writings of the Apostle Paul, which can be problematic because Paul's writings are often contradictory, obtuse, and sometimes seem downright antithetical to the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels.  I say this with all the experience of a person who has spent most of their life reading and studying the Bible and who still finds the scriptures compelling, inspiring, and filled with excellent les...

  I've been reading a book about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel because I have been feeling lately that Christianity in the US has come to largely ignore it, and I want to understand why.  You don't have to look far in our current culture to discover that the message of Good News that Jesus proclaimed in his most famous teaching has been relegated to the sidelines by far too many people who call themselves Christians.  It's been replaced by a triumphalistic, fear-based, bastardized version of something that passes for Christianity but doesn't resemble at all what Jesus taught and lived by example.   Sadly, many politicians and Church leaders have so wholeheartedly embraced this shadow side of the Christian faith as a way of focusing on what they consider "Christian values," most of which Jesus had little or nothing to say about.   It's like a sleight-of-hand trick.  If you keep people afraid these values are being compromised, you ...

I don't spend much time on social media, but a couple of times a day, I scroll through my Instagram feed for a bit when taking a mental break. This is mainly because it's a mindless exercise, and I need to shut my brain off for a while. Some of y'all feel me on this, I know.  I have noticed that more than a few social media "influencers" love to post about how they are "manifesting" positive outcomes or "feeling gratitude."  It typically sounds something like this:  "Today, while writing in my gratitude journal, I began manifesting good things for my day.  I am manifesting courage to be my best self.  I am manifesting success and wealth.  I am manifesting whatever I need to get you to follow me on Instagram while I manifest. Also, I'm grateful for all the manifestations, and I'm just feeling gratitude while I manifest"    I paraphrased some of that, but you get the idea.  Before you think, "Wow, Leon, you sound like a gru...

One of my favorite novels is Gilead  by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilyn Robinson.   The novel tells the story of a small-town pastor struggling with issues of life and faith.  It is told from his perspective, which gives you a glimpse at the inner life of a man who often wonders how to think about things like love and grace.   There is a line from the book that captivated me, and I'll share it here:   “Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.” First, Marilyn Robinson deserved a Pulitzer because this kind of writing is simply amazing. This one line is full of multi-layered meaning and beautifully written. It also has a poignancy that just hits me right in the feels.  As I write this, I can't help but think about the song "I Don't Believe In Love" from the 80s metal band Queensryche because that's how my brain works.   The chorus goes something like this:  I don't bel...

I came across a quote recently that got me thinking about the effects of grief on our lives and how we can reframe grief and loss to grow and change.  I'll get to that quote in a moment, but first, I need to say a few things about my own grief and loss to better understand how that quote resonated with me so powerfully.   Several years ago, my mom passed away and left a gaping hole in my family that will never fully close.  She was our family's loving, caring center, and her presence is sorely missed.  It was also the death of a dream of mine in so many ways.  We moved to Austin with the intent of having our whole family, including my parents, under one roof, and we had the joy of that for almost a year.  Her death marked the beginning of the end of that dream, and I've been grieving both for a very long time.  And now, there is more to grieve.   For those of you who don't know, my wife and I decided to end our marriage after thirty-two ...