Category: Worship

Preaching about Singing, Singing about Suffering

Yesterday’s sermon came out of Jeremiah 31:31-34. It’s a passage of hope and beauty about the New Covenant. It’s also a text that’s pointing the reader forward. The original recipients, exiled Judah, were being pointed to a promise that even though they were going back into a wilderness, there was going to be something of God for them on the other side. In fact, there would be something better; unfortunately for them, we’re still waiting for that something. For us, too, we are wilderness walkers, even the best of us, on our way to a place where God’s law courses through our veins and worship is worship, not 3 songs and a prayer that we might learn something new from the preacher today.

So, having looked at that text yesterday and still steeping in it today, I was caught by surprise to realize that i was listening to the old song “Wilderness” by The Choir, one of my favorite bands since, well, pretty much forever, as far as musical tastes go. Here’s the chorus:

Is your faith so right
Are you so blessed
Everybody wanders in the forest
Is your heart so true
Are you that good
Everybody wanders in the woods
Everybody wanders in the forest
Everybody wanders in the wilderness

It’s true. Every one of us. Thank you, God, that we’re not alone.

Living in the Desert

We’re in the latter stages of the season of Lent, which is a season inviting us to reflect on Jesus’ time of being tempted in the desert by Satan.  His temptation season parallels both the time Israel spent between Egypt and Canaan, and our lives lived between being set free from slavery to sin and entering into the fully realized Kingdom of God.

Jesus’ victory over temptation is the event of the three which informs the other two: we see how Israel was meant to live, in faithful dependence on God, and how we are set free to live because Jesus is Messiah.

I’m thinking about all of this tonight because we are listening to Jeremiah 31:31-34 tomorrow morning (actually, now, this morning) in worship – a passage in which the Lord gives Jeremiah a word of hope to Israel about how they will live in yet another desert phase – the dry phase after exile from the promised land because of their failure to be faithful.  The other side of that desert is the coming of the Messiah, but they were little able to see that at the point Jeremiah comes speaking to them.  As we, too, can often barely begin to imagine what it is like to live free from the brokenness that besets our world.

But one day, that freedom will come.  Even in Lent, we rejoice on Sundays.

The Wonder of Weather

For the last week, the Chicago area has had an unbelieveable streak of warm weather.  How unprecedented it truly is has been hitting me slowly over the last few days, as I have heard facts like:

  • 7 of 8 days in this stretch have set records for high temperature; if the 8th day had set the record, too, that would have been the longest stretch of consecutive days with a record high temperature in Chicago.
  • Today, Chicago was warmer than Havana, Cuba and Cabo san Lucas, Mexico and Cancun.
  • The low temperatures during the last week have been 10-15 degrees higher than the average high temperature for these dates.

As these bizarre days of warmth have piled up, I have realized that I can’t take the weather for granted.  I can’t fall back on any of the tired cliches about what March weather in Chicago is like.  Every one of those cliches is a statement of boredom at the variety of weather, and God’s provision within it.  Well, for me, I think that’s the case.  You might be different.  But a week of totally un-likely, unbelievable weather has caused me to actually pay attention to the mundane again.  Praise God.

Life Together

This was a communion Sunday in our congregation.  We have traditionally taken communion sitting in the pews, passing the elements out to the people on trays.  Now, for a variety of reasons, we are frequently using the practice of intinction to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Today was one of those intinction Sundays, and so the members of the congregation came to the front of the sanctuary to receive the bread and dip it into the cup, which I was holding.

Many of our people have told me that they value this manner of celebration because they feel more personally connected to the sacrament, and I have felt that I understood this perspective.  This morning, though, I had a more vivid experience than I have previously had when administering the sacrament.  Today, as each person came forward to dip the bread into the cup, I was particularly aware of those ways that I have been privileged to be a fellow traveler with them as their pastor: sitting in a hospital room as a spouse returned from surgery; talking in their home or my office during a special season of trial they had faced; lunches spent discussing the gifts they were recognizing in their lives, and how they might use them; joining together in an exhilarating moment of shared ministry.  In each of these recollections, I was reminded of the presence of Christ Jesus with us, joining us together in those moments, making us one with Him and with one another.

I will only add that it was a sweet sensation to be caught by surprise, to be given a view of another layer of the way Jesus is at work in and among us.  It was a gift.  Thanks be to God.

Shepherds and Angels

Today is the third day of Christmas.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.
(Luke 2:8-9 ESV)

I am a small-church kind of guy; not that I am against large churches, but rather that small expressions of Christian community are especially compelling to me: personal-sized groups of Christians strengthening each other, building each other up, sharing life together.  So, the verses above are the sort that catch my attention.  God comes to the world in a humble way, born human to a modest family, announced to a group of insignificant shepherds – all of it God breaking into the world in a small way.  That’s what I tend to notice most.

But then, I was reminded this morning of what comes next:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:13-14 ESV)

God breaks into the world in a small way, but also comes with a multitude of angels, a heavenly army singing his praises.  A large number, a massive chorus of praise.

God comes in a small way and in a large way at the same time.  Small expressions of praise and faith and joy, and massive ones, side by side.  It occurs to me that this is another way of seeing God’s immanence and transcendence: God is personally present with his people, and more vast than the entire physical world.  God is both small and big, a baby in a manger and a King who holds everything in his hand.  And our praise of him is appropriately expressed in ways small and personal and humble, and in ways as big and vast and grand as we can possibly muster.