Day1 Weekly Radio Broadcast - Day1 Feeds

I wonder if we are willing to abide in anything, to immerse ourselves wholly in something, to allow anything to captivate our heart and life, to view our whole existence through that one lens . . . At first I want to say, no, no one would be willing to give of him or herself in that way. It sounds too constricting. But then I begin to think about the many things that we give ourselves to: our jobs, our families, our hobbies, interests, or activities. I begin to think about the things that we spend our time doing, the things that we give our lives to. Many of us are sports fans, we dress up, we go to games, and we make the time.  Some of us love our television programs, so we sit there and even "binge-watch." We cannot wait for the next season to begin again. So as it turns out, we are constantly abiding--constantly living in, taking residence in, fixing ourselves permanently on, many things in our lives. Our abiding speaks to our rooting, and it turns out that we are rooting in different ways every day. We do so every moment of our lives. We kid ourselves if we think that those things that root us are not affecting us, shaping us, and transforming us. The proof of our shaping is evident all around us. That which we value, which we spend our time doing, the activities that we engage in, our attitudes and ways of engagement, all speak to the things that captivate our hearts. These things are the fruit of our abiding, the fruit of our rootedness.

Some time ago there was an article in TIME magazine which described how over 100,000 former Christians have downloaded "certificates of de-baptism" in a bid to publicly renounce the faith. The website, sponsored by the National Secular Society of London, invited visitors to "liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had," and allows them to print out a paper certificate that uses quasi-formal language to "reject baptism's creeds and other such superstitions." "Churches have become so reactionary, so politically active, that people actually want to make a protest against them now," the society's president says. "They're not just indifferent anymore. They're actively hostile." He says that every time a preacher or religious leader says something outrageous, like hateful comments about Muslims, or calling gays an abomination, or blaming the poor for their poverty, they get another rush on the demand for certificates. And, of course, there is a tidy profit to be made. You can get these certificates printed on parchment at only $4.50. That adds up! It seems to be catching on. In Italy, the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics sponsored the country's first-ever "de-baptism day," in which the no longer faithful had a de-baptism ceremony and signed de-baptism forms.[i] I wonder what a de-baptism ceremony looks like. "I de-baptize you in the name of"...what? "I de-baptize you in the name of Secular Humanism"..."In the name Atheists and Agnostics?"..."In the name of the god of the Omnipotent Self."

  A number of years ago I knew a young woman who was looking for a church in which to get married. She nearly drove her fiancée and her mother crazy, scouting out just about every sanctuary in the city, looking for just the right one...the one with the prettiest stained glass windows, the one with just the right length of the center aisle, the one most accessible to the interstates and hotels, and so forth. Finally, she made a decision. She ended up getting married in an old, cinder block, rectangular building with florescent lights, and electric organ. A few homemade felt banners that the youth group had made in the 60's or 70's were still up on the walls. Why the change? She finally realized something very important. She realized that this was the church where she had been baptized, where she had gone through confirmation class and had met her husband, where her grandparents' memorial services had been held. This was where she had come to know something of the love and grace of God, and she finally realized that, yes, the building was important, it was a sacred center, but its importance was in being a means to an end and not an end in and of itself. This has not always been the case in our tradition. When the evangelist Luke was putting together his story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, he was living in a time in which the sacred center of religious people had been taken away. For the Jew, the Temple in Jerusalem was the sacred center. It was more than just a building; it was the dwelling place of the Most High. The closer you got to the center of it, the closer you got to the Holy of Holies. The temple represented the presence within the world of the true and living God. 

We have very limited parking available around our church which poses some special challenges for us, especially on top attendance Sundays, like Easter. We've developed a diligent and committed parking team to help with the problem, and one Easter a few years ago the parking volunteers were out in full force, wearing orange vests and carrying walkie-talkies, trying to make the process of parking seamless. The major challenge for our parking team was going to be helping cars exchange spots between services. Well, as you might imagine, the spots nearest the sanctuary had been re-filled well before the second service was set to begin, when a parking volunteer noticed one lone car backing out of a really prime spot. He was delighted to see that the next car approaching his turn-in to the lot was driven by an older woman who was coming alone, and he thought, "Well, how wonderful that I will be able to help her get this desirable parking place on Easter." So the parking volunteer began enthusiastically waving her from the street into our lot, as you might direct a plane toward its airport gate. At first, the woman seemed a bit confused about heading into the apparently full lot, so he increased his waving and pointing, so she'd see where he wanted her to go...such a prime spot! Well, she finally pulled in and parked, and our proud parking volunteer walked to the car to wish her Happy Easter and help her get out. But she rolled down her window, still looking a little confused, and said, "I don't go to this church! I've been a member of the Baptist church down the street for over 60 years!"

In the summer of 1979, I left Harvard for the priesthood. I was twenty-four years old, newly married, and had been a first-year graduate student working towards a Ph.D. in American History. I was a restless student, less interested in history than I had thought I'd be. Something else was pulling me. I had been raised in church. My father was a bishop. Now I wondered if God was calling me to ministry. Not knowing quite how to sort that out, it occurred to me to sit down and read the New Testament, which I had never done before in one sitting. Of the gospels, it was the Gospel according to St. John that struck me. Scene after scene, it invited belief that in Jesus Christ the world was face to face with God. I wanted to believe that. My heart said yes. But now my head was bothered by a question. These things the Bible said concerning Jesus--were they true? If so, why weren't we discussing them at Harvard? In history seminar, Christ was seldom mentioned. A little anxious, I began to poke around the Cambridge book stores, sampling scholarly perspectives on the history of the gospels. The results were mixed. Randomly, I opened a book by Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, which fueled my doubts. A Harvard friend recommended Hans Kung's On Being Christian, which I found reassuring. Then I revisited C.S. Lewis, who so confidently reinforces St. John's message. Lewis readers are re-invited to believe that in Christ the Lord above had visited our world.

At the church I pastor, a Sunday School class for parents of young preschoolers decided to rename itself. They kicked around several possibilities, such as Seekers or Searchers or maybe Learners. But all of these seemed too removed from the everyday wear-and-tear of their lives. Finally, one idea rose to the top. It was simple, truthful, inclusive, and playful.   Last Sunday, when I walked by the classroom, I saw the name on the door. The laminated sign simply read: "Tired Parents Class." And that said it all. Though change is constant in this 'ole world, it seems as if change is coming at us with an ever greater velocity. Parents or not...we are all tired.   Often, it feels like we are no longer living the lives we have, but rather barely dealing with life as it comes at us. I no sooner get use to my new cell phone or computer software or doctors on my insurance plan...and then the technology is out of date, my choices are no longer "supported," and the decisions I just made are as expired as a gallon of two-week-old milk The evening news is no help. Instantly, we can feel the fear of Ebola or the rise and fall of the Stock Market or the spread of wars and rumors of wars from anywhere in the world.   Just ask anyone, "How ya' doing?" and then listen for the word overwhelmed. It's like we are not so much living our lives, as it is that life is coming at us too fast to handle.

"People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." These familiar words come from legendary adventurer and leader Theodore Roosevelt...but it is a safe bet to say that a certain first-century adventurer and leader named Paul would nod his head in agreement. In many ways, it is exactly what Paul was constantly trying to tell the Christians in Corinth, and certainly similar to his opening comment in today's reading: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." What is our goal: to be right-minded...or big-hearted? Now we live in a different time, a different place, speak a different language, face different problems, from what Paul describes in First Corinthians. And for these reasons we may be tempted to skip over readings like today's. After all, the issue of meat offered to idols is quite foreign to most of us. We are probably more likely to be sensitive about providing vegetarian or vegan alternatives when hosting a barbeque. But if we move beyond the surface, we might well discover that the situation described by the apostle is far more relatable than we first imagined. Let's take a closer look. Corinth in Paul's time was already centuries old. And whether always accurate or not, it had quite a reputation. The Roman poet Horace once said, "Not everyone can afford to go Corinth," or "It is not everyone's lot to go to Corinth," depending on the translation of the original Greek. Some argue that he was speaking of the difficulty of getting to a city that was strategically placed on a narrow strip of land known as the Isthmus of Corinth, linking the Peloponnese peninsula with Greece's mainland. Many more, however, understood Horace to be speaking of the high costs of life in Corinth, especially when it came to the price of certain...enticements like the famed courtesans at the temple of Aphrodite. "Sin City" is a modern term that has often been applied to first-century Corinth.

"Doc, are you telling me that you built a time machine...out of a DeLorean?" A memorable line from the popular film Back to the Future. Let's face it, time travel has been a recurrent theme in movies, in books and short stories, in television episodes and graphic novels. At the heart of all the various tales is a bold attempt to go back to a critical moment in order to change or undo a word, an act, that unwittingly leads to some awful consequence, whether a global cataclysm or a personal heartache. Unable to time travel in reality, we make whatever technological improvements we can in order to make our lives easier. Letters give way to memos, to emails, to texts and to tweets, and still we struggle to keep up with the demands on us, the demands on our time. Ever embattled, we look forward with worry, look back with regret. Time is what we don't have enough of...is not on our side...is catching up with us...is passing us by. We spend it, waste it, lose it, need more of it. And still we worry, still we regret. Time plays a significant role in the Gospel of Mark, from which today's passage is taken. Although it is the second Gospel in our New Testament canon or authorized collection, Mark actually was the first of the four to be written and served as a literary model for the others. Matthew and Luke added their respective parables and extended teachings onto Mark's streamlined template. As commentators have frequently noted, Mark's Gospel is a Gospel of action. While Luke often uses the phrase "in those days" to signal a change in scene, and Matthew the phrase, "when Jesus had finished saying these things," for Mark the key word throughout his account is "immediately!" Things happen fast in his tale...and if you blink, you just might miss a crucial detail.

  In a 2010 biblical commentary entitled The Africana Bible--Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora, published by Fortress Press, Dr. Randall C. Bailey, a noted Old Testament scholar from Atlanta, writes: Traditionally, the book of Judges gets its name from the charismatic leaders who rescue the Israelites' from foreign oppression, such as Jephthah, Abimelech, and Gideon, who are called Major Judges. With a surface reading of the book and an appreciation for the patriarchal nature of the biblical materials, one would think that the book is designed to lift up new heroes for the people. The problem is that all of the male heroes are flawed. Othniel cannot speak up to get a good land allotment. Barak will not go to war without Deborah. Gideon keeps testing God. Ehud is left-handed (which parenthetically was regarded by the ancients as a defect). Manoah cannot get the angel to recognize his authority. Samson fails to free his people and fails to curtail his womanizing. Bailey goes on to recommend that it may be time for another reading of the book. Dr. Bailey's recommendation is not inconsistent with the words of a very dear family friend, now deceased, who invited my wife and me to her home for tea on a fall afternoon about 15 years ago. A devout Christian from Lebanon with a magnetic personality and the gift of hospitality, she served our tea on a silver platter and filled three fine porcelain cups with an aromatic Middle Eastern brew. As she poured, her eyes sparkled and she encouraged us to drink all of it so that when we finished she could read the leaves in the bottom of our cups. 

Sometimes, I wish it were harder to join the church. I mean, honestly, sometimes I think it's harder to get a membership at Costco than it is to become a Christian.  And that's a bad thing. It's bad, specifically, because if the church is easy to join, then any notion of the responsibilities of membership can just fly right out the window. Sometimes, talking about what it means to be part of the whole Christian enterprise can start to sound like that part in a car commercial where the announcer starts talking legalese at a thousand miles an hour. You know: Baptism is terrific but please plan on tithing, attending, and experiencing regular frustration and discomfort. Be advised that Christmas and Easter Sunday come only once a year respectively. Who can blame people for just tuning that part out? And so, I can't help but wish that joining up--signing on the dotted line--were understood to be a much bigger commitment. That has me thinking about baptism. What if.... What if instead of a little chaste sprinkling of water on the forehead or even a full immersion on the banks of a local river or something in between...what if the only way to join the church was by skydiving? The very idea makes my stomach do backflips. But think about it. Free fall, then the rip cord, and then a gentle floating down to the ground.

We've come to love the Christmas star so much. Even in the weeks before Christmas, you start seeing it everywhere. It's on bulletin covers and Christmas cards and the stole hanging around the preacher's neck. A Christmas crèche may be part of your home or your church decorations, or it may not be...maybe your kids live halfway across the country, so you're leaving the stockings off the mantle this year, but by Herod's beard, you almost certainly have a star. Quite often, it's at the very top of the tree--that star--the highest point in the living room. I remember the year when I was a kid, taking part in my Confirmation class, and I noticed for the first time that the starlight pictured on most of our Christmas cards was in the shape of the cross--a quiet reminder of what is to come--the silent night at what seems to be the end of the story. That was my first encounter with the possibility that, if you think about it, there can be something ominous about the Christmas star. So it's interesting to note that Matthew's gospel seems to agree. In a passage that some churches will read today and others will read on January 6th, Epiphany proper, Matthew describes the encounter between the wise men and King Herod. This is what Matthew says: "In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, 'Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.'"

At this season of the year we live between two worlds:  one is dying and the other is struggling to be born. To live this way is as dangerous as eating wormy figs in the dark. Our scripture focuses on Simeon and Anna, two faithful servants of God who served for years in the temple at Jerusalem. We see their joy when the Christ Child was presented to them. As I read this passage, my mind took a detour around its main thrust and wondered about all those years they had waited for this event. Did they ever wonder if God would be faithful to His word to them?  Did they ever wonder if they had been deceived by the teachers in the temple about the Messiah? In short, did they ever doubt?  For doubt infects even the best of God's servants. Doubting Thomas has spiritual children throughout the Bible as well as in our present day. As a pastor I have encountered more doubt during the holiday season from those who would be honest about their feelings than I have experienced during any other time of the year. The reason for this is complicated. But I would guess it is rooted in the letdown that comes after the excesses of the holiday season and the anxiety about the coming year. With this in mind, let's allow Simeon and Anna, along with Thomas and others, to help us with our struggle with doubt. A word of caution as we begin this journey: Don't assume I have jumped to the wrong conclusion here. I am aware that I am making a case in silence, but silence speaks as loud as audible sound. Nevertheless, any experience of great joy as expressed by Simeon and Anna must be preceded by long periods of doubt, anxiety, questions--in a word, darkness. They were human and not excused from the pattern of doubt expressed throughout the Bible as well as human experience. Doubt is the back side of faith. Faith is the front side of doubt. The two are linked together as Siamese twins. Anyone as joyous as Simeon and Anna over the vindication of their faith must have had a season of doubt.

  If your house and your life are anything like my house and my life at this time of year, then maybe we should spend these next 15 minutes in silent meditation. It is four days before Christmas.  Many of us have family coming into town if they are not here already.  The kids are out of school.  There is food to prepare, presents to wrap--maybe, even yet to buy--and there's a house to clean. It is four days before Christmas. The waiting is almost over...and for some, like the children in my house who provide daily lamentation, the waiting has been hard.  It is four days before Christmas. A time that--for many of us--is so often full of emotion: where we feel the extra weight of a loss or a broken relationship. Yes, if your house and your life are anything like my house and my life, then perhaps you know how easy it is to speed right through Christmas, to be in such a hurry that we miss the holy rhythms of this season, miss the joy, miss the gift of being with family--even if they sometimes drive us crazy--and miss the wonder of the babe in a manger who entered our world that we might have life. I have a guess that there is something else we miss because we are so busy and because it is so familiar; and that is we might miss the audacity of this story, a story that stands at the beginning of the gospel, this story about how the One we call Lord came to be--fully human and fully divine.

No. No. No. So begins the public ministry of John the Baptist according to the Gospel of St. John. It's not what we have come to expect. Spend much time around Christian congregations during any Advent season, and John tends to come off as loud, disruptive and socially inappropriate. A wild man from the wilderness in stark contrast to the more serene images we associate with Mary and Jesus. Yet, in this passage from the Prologue of St. John, John the Baptist is anything but the hothead prophet. Upon being asked by the religious leaders of his day to make himself known to them, John starts by telling them who he is not. He is not the Messiah. He is not Elijah. He is not the prophet. Was there any doubt? Did those sent out to inquire of John wonder if they were heading out to meet Elijah? Or did John ever wonder if his call to proclaim the coming of the way of the Lord was not as forerunner but as main act? This story, given and heard now, is not a suspenseful one. Of course, he is the forerunner, the one to go before and point towards Jesus. Of course he is not Elijah. It is enough that he is John the Baptist. But if Advent has any connection to beginning again, to attempting to hear the story afresh, then  why are the religious leaders questioning John and why does he spend time first telling them who he is NOT? The gospel writer gives us no indication that the questioners of John are trying to trap him. Rather, like the first hearers of this gospel, they also want to know who is the "man sent from God, whose name was John?"

From our booth at the Shoney's, we had a clear view of the Malco Twin movie house. It was 5 p.m. on a Thursday evening in early June of 1977. At this hour, the parking lot of the Malco Twin was still empty. The three of us had all ordered Big Boy platters because we always ordered Big Boy platters. My older brothers, Craig and Gary, were just home from college and my parents had made them take me to the movies. The night before, Craig and Gary had gone to the movies by themselves, without their nine-year-old little brother in tow, in order to see Star Wars. They got there as the movie was about to start, only to discover it was sold out. So they drove back home across the Arkansas-Missouri line and told us the news. The movie was sold out. We thought they were kidding. How could it be sold out? How could anything in our part of the world draw that much of a crowd to take up every seat in a movie theatre?  Basketball games didn't sell out. Church didn't sell out. People were never turned away at the Fourth of July picnic at the park. Star Wars, we would soon discover, was different. It had sold out. There was no room for Craig and Gary. They would have to try again on Thursday. And they would have to take me because Mom and Dad said I could go. My brothers decided to leave nothing to chance and so arrived at the Shoney's just before 5 p.m. so we could eat dinner and keep an eye out for the first cars to pull into the movie house parking lot. By the time we finished our dinner, it was still over an hour before the movie was to begin. The parking lot was still empty.