Becoming Disciples: Know and Be Known John 10:1-10 Have you ever noticed how much preachers like to talk about sheep?  Seriously.  I cannot tell you the number of sermons about sheep I myself have heard, sermons peppered with stories of traveling to theMiddle Eastand seeing Bedouin sheepherders…or information about the temperaments and behavior of sheep…or stories about what it’s like to be a shepherd.  I know you will remind me that I myself have preached a few, too.  I confess... Read more

Becoming Disciples: Watch for Signs Luke 24:13-35 If you haven’t heard me tell it, maybe you’ve heard another preacher give it a spin…it’s a story that has almost become legend among my sermon-writing crowd, anyway.  It happened right here in our town on January 13, 2007 and I read about it in April of that year in the Washington Post magazine—do you remember the story of Joshua Bell in the Metro? Joshua Bell, you may know, is a 40-year-old, one-time... Read more

We Are the Champions?  Seriously? The song was playing on the car radio when I got in to go to work this morning.  It took awhile to realize that the radio station had been changed by my children the day before and thus was not tuned to NPR as it customarily is, but still. Still.  How shameful, pride-filled, and arrogant the notes of that song seemed to me in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death.  Along with that radio... Read more

Becoming Disciples: Ask the Questions John 20:19-31  We’ve just celebrated Easter, the highest and most holy day of the Christian year.  Perhaps, just like in you and me, last week brought out the very best and the very worst in the first disciples of Jesus.  Around the table that Passover dinner, you remember, The Last Supper, was Peter—the disciple whom Jesus renamed “the rock” for his future as a leader of the church…but the one who had also denied Jesus... Read more

A Time to Dance Easter Sunday Matthew 28:1-10 King Kamehameha Day is celebrated every year on June 11th.  Growing up inHawaii, it was a day that rivaled the Fourth of July, for sure, when we would have the day off of school to celebrate.  The whole family would wake up very early in the morning to make our way downtown and stake out a place onSouth King Street, as close to the front of I’olani Palace as we could get. ... Read more

Some pastors sing all the time in their sermons.  Lucky for those who regularly hear me preach, I am not one of those pastors.  Only once did I ever sing in a sermon–snippets of a lullaby my Mom used to sing to us when we were little.  You can’t hear me sing it here, but here’s the meditation in written form–some thoughts for these days we’re walking through.  Blessed Holy Week. Read more

A Lament: I’m Scared Psalm 140 If I have to confiscate the Nerf guns my children were given by a family friend one more time, I think I will scream.  One of the most popular activities in our house seems to be running through the house, knocking things over, shooting each other, and many other things, with the soft foam bullets that come with a Nerf gun.  It’s generally a pretty evenly matched competition, but in the end it always... Read more

Continuing my (very) long list of things I never knew pastors did as part of their work, today I planted a tree.  Okay, trees.  There were eight of them, four of them flowering cherry trees! And, technically, I didn’t actually plant the trees…a whole team from Casey Trees and Cesar Chevaz High School (along with some hardy Calvary members) did the actual dirty work.  After the trees were in the ground, we all got together with folks from the Downtown... Read more

A Lament: I’m Sinful Psalm 130 We’re still lamenting these days of the season of Lent, and our focus this morning is another Psalm of Lament, a portion of scripture in the Psalms that was born in some unknown circumstance of deep anguish.  We don’t know exactly who wrote it or why it was written, but we surely recognize the sentiments expressed in Psalm 130—a cry of lament not unlike the others we’ve read these past weeks. Today, though, our... Read more

I find that it’s a constant personal struggle to feel holy.  This can be somewhat problematic, as I have a job that usually causes people (who don’t know me) to assume that I am more holy than the general public—thus upping the ante and imposing even more pressure on this poor, unholy pastor.  I want to feel holy—I want to be holy, in fact, but I confess that sometimes it just doesn’t come too naturally to me. Take for example,... Read more