Prior Sermons
Don't Be a Chimp, Reverend Dr. John Judson (9/20/2009) – He was the badest dude on the block. He was bigger, stronger and more powerful than anyone around. Wherever he went other moved aside. Some would bow. Others would follow him because they knew he was the one true leader. Few if any wanted to challenge him because of his power and prowess. His name? Click to continue…
Whose Friend are You?, Reverend Ernest F. Krug (9/27/2009) – One thing appears certain. Praying for the sick does not always result in their cure from disease. In fact, I suspect all of us have prayed for a person to be healed of a disease, without seeing the result we were praying for, and we have experienced this disappointment and sadness many times. Click to continue…
The Never Ending Journey, Reverend Dr. John Judson (10/11/2009) – It was a bet I was bound to lose. Every year while we were living in the panhandle of Texas and would drive to San Antonio for Christmas, Cindy and I would make a bet about when it would begin. Now the first part of our trip was always pretty easy, and it never showed up. The children were young and so we would get them up early in the morning still in their pajamas. We would bundle them into the car and then we would head out before sunrise. Click to continue reading or listen online…
Are You Being Served, Reverend Amy Morgan (10/18/2009) - Today I want to start imagine that Americans have finally gotten tired of all those reality talent competitions like “Dancing with the Stars” and “America’s Got Talent” and “American Idol.” So the producers of these kinds of television programs are looking for a new angle, and they want to try out a Christian American Idol, if you will. They’ve come to our church seeking advice on how this show should be developed. Click to continue reading or listen online…
We Can Get It!, Reverend Dr. John Judson (10/25/2009) – So what do Nemo, Aladdin, Wall-E and blind Bartimaeus have in common? I know that that is the question that each of you had whirling through your brains since you saw the bulletin cover this morning. No they are not all Disney films, or Pixar films or animated films…since Bartimaeus does not fit those categories. What do they hold in common? Click to continue reading or listen online…
This Stinks. Christine Gannon (11/1/2009) – Our gospel reading this morning comes from the 11th chapter of John…verses 32-45. It’s a passage not found in any of the other gospels. It’s the story of two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus. The gospels tell us that the members of this family were some of Jesus’ closest friends. In the verses immediately before our passage today we have Jesus being summoned back to this family’s home. He’s told that Lazarus has died. Yet he doesn’t return immediately. Click to continue reading or listen online….
Let's Talk About Money, Reverend Dr. John Judson (11/8/2009) – “Let’s talk about money.” Those words, or some similar to them were the opening words from my Economics 101 professor at Trinity University. I remember them all of these years later because they were so straight forward. At my house growing up we never talked about money. But that professor did. Click to continue reading or listen online….
Its the End of the World As We Know It, and I Feel Fine, Reverend Amy Morgan (11/15/2009) – Don’t give money to the church. That’s right. I mean it. I don’t want you to give money to the church, anymore. In fact, I don’t want you to go to church, either. Click to continue reading or listen online…
Waste or Worship, Reverend Dr. John Judson (11/22/2009) – It was the announcement of a life time. It was the announcement that every Christian ought to hear. It would change the lives of whomever was listening. I have to say that kind of language caught my attention. I was headed out to do a hospital visit in San Antonio and was listening to the Christian music station there when the DJ came on almost breathless with anticipation encouraging all of us to stay tuned. In just a few minutes, he said, one of the Christian rock world’s icons would be on to announce something that God had showed him. Curious I actually stayed tuned. Finally the moment arrived. The DJ asked the artist, what is it that you discovered that will be so life changing for our listeners? Click to continue reading or listen online….
Getting Ready for Company, Reverend Dr. John Judson (11/29/2009) – So which is it? Is it asteroids dashing through space on a collision course for earth? Is it terrible tornadoes that swallow entire towns? Is it space aliens invading earth and making a mess of our major cities? Is it giant winter storms that engulf all of the northern hemispheres and let wolves looses in New York City? Or is 2012 when the Aztec Calendar says the world is going to end. Click to continue reading or listen online…
A Love Letter, Dr. Walter Brueggemann (December 6, 2009) – How would you like a love letter addressed to you in Advent, in anticipation of Christmas? That is what we have in the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul’s love letter to his friends in the church in Philippi. He loves them dearly and writes to tell them so. Like a good love letter, he celebrates them with their best features, dreams of their future well-being, and uses elegant phrases about the on-going process of their lives. If Paul had known about the church in Birmingham, he would no doubt have written us such a love letter. Since he did not know about us being the church here, we will read this letter a though it were for us. Click to continue reading or listen online….
Company's Coming, Let's Get Ready, Reverend Amy Morgan (December 13, 2009) – We have a guest coming over. We will spend days and weeks preparing for this guest’s visit – cooking, cleaning, decorating, anticipating his every desire. But we just know that the minute he walks in the door, he’s going to look at all of our stuff and decide it’s either too nice – because we like to show off our wealth – or not nice enough – because we didn’t put our best foot forward. Our house will either be too clean – because we have misplaced priorities – or not clean enough – because we are a lazy slob. Click to continue reading or listen online…
Company's Coming, Let's Rejoice, Reverend Dr. John Judson (12/20/2009) – I knew something was up. Two of the priests at the table were speaking softly with one another, looking at me and smiling. I was at a continuing education event at Oblate seminary in San Antonio. Oblate is a very old and venerable Roman Catholic seminary that offered wonderful events where their professors would take pastors through all of the texts for Advent, Lent and other seasons. This time I was attending a series on Advent and we had just finished studying the lesson that was read for us this morning, the Magnificat of Mary. Click to Continue Reading or Listen Online….
Under New Management (Reverend John Judson, January 10, 2010) – I want to take quick survey this morning. First how many of you while you were with family and friends over the holidays heard a story that you have heard at least two times, three time, more? Second, how many of you told a story to your family or friends that you have told at least two other times? Now I don’t know about you but what tends to happen to me when I hear one of those stories coming is that I tend to zone out or get up and move. “Oh, I know that one, where is the food?” Click to Continue Reading….
Staying the Course (Reverend John Judson, January 17, 2010) – “Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come. They will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever…amen.” Do the words sound familiar? OK, sure they because they are part of the prayer virtually every Christian learns. Most of us I would guess, once we learn it pay little attention to the particulars. Click to Continue Reading….
Releasing, Renewing, Restoring God's World (Reverend Amy Morgan, January 24, 2010) – Richard King wanted a 1961 Pontiac the moment he got his driver’s license. He loved the design of the car. His father had developed the tooling in that car’s engine. He had grown up in the city of Pontiac, surrounded by images and talk about the car company shared its name with the city. Click to Continue Reading…
Expanding the Vision (Reverend John Judson, January 31, 2010) – He was the boy wonder of the seminary. Bob had been one of the seminaries most brilliant students. He was a wiz at Greek. He understood theology as if he had been studying it all of his life. Upon graduation he had enlisted as a military chaplain and served with great distinction. Upon his retirement he went back to seminary this time to earn his PhD in New Testament Greek. Once that was completed he moved to Houston and founded a new congregation. From a handful of members his congregation grew to several thousand. People packed the pews to listen to his in-depth and erudite translations and explanations of the text…which he did directly from the Greek. Click to Continue Reading….
You Can Do It (Reverend John Judson, February 7, 2010) – I’m not sure you could find two people form scripture who were more different than the two we read about this morning, Isaiah and Peter. If you can picture the commercial with Shaquille O’Neil and Ben Stein talking about Comcast you get a sense of how different are Peter and Isaiah. Isaiah is a member of the aristocracy. He has access to kings and princes. He is highly educated and an amazing poet. He is at least a prophet if not a priest himself. He has disciples who record his every pronouncement. Peter on the other hand is a blue collar small business owner. He and his family have a small fishing business in the Galilee. He has not access to power and knows no one famous. Click to Continue Reading….
The Best of Both Worlds (Reverend Amy Morgan, February 14, 2010) – Leslie Butler, our Nursery School Director, has told me that the way you get a child to listen to you is to get down on the child’s level, put your hands on either side of his or her face, and turn their face toward you so you have their full attention. That feels like what God is doing here with the disciples. Everything on the mountaintop represents a crystal-clear picture of who Jesus is. Jesus goes up the mountain to pray, showing the disciples that he is God’s servant – he talks to God and listens to God. He gets his power and authority from God. Click to continuing reading….
On the Road Again….and Again (Reverend John Judson, February 21, 2010) – I was always a bit jealous. Every month during my growing up years my father got to fly away and travel for business to far away exotic places. He got to go to Calgary, Los Angeles, Denver and San Francisco. He got to stay in hotels and eat out…you have to understand that we never ate out as a family. He got to collect those tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion. It seemed such an adventurous sort of life. Click to continue reading….
Friends of God (Reverend John Judson, February 28, 2010) – Father: “Where are you going?” Daughter: “Out.” Father: “Who are you going out with?” Daughter: “Friends.” Father: “Do I know them?” Daughter: “I don’t know.” Father: “Is Seth going to be there?” Daughter: “Why do you want to know?” Father: “Because I told you I don’t want you hanging out with him!” Daughter: “You don’t trust me.” Father: “No I trust you…I just don’t trust him. So no you can’t go.” Daughter: “You are so mean.” Have you ever been in a conversation like that? Click to continue reading….
Jesus Freakonomics (Reverend Amy Morgan, March 7, 2010) – "The most sensible way to calculate fear of death would be to think of it on a per-hour basis." So say the authors of the New York Times best-seller Freakonomics. They claim that "while it is true that many more people die each year in motor vehicle accidents than in airplane crashes…it's also true that most people spend a lot more time in cars than on airplanes…The per-hour death rate of driving versus flying…is about equal." Click to Continue Reading….
Someone's Looking for You (Reverend John Judson, March 14, 2010) – It was a moment of sheer terror, followed by a moment of overwhelming gratitude. As the day had begun there was no way I could have anticipated what was going to happen. The year was 1988 and Cindy and I had taken our two children, ages five and one, with the youth group from Pampa (that’s Pampa, Texas and not Tampa, Florida) to the Texas coast for a retreat. It was break time and so all of us headed down to the shore. Click to continue reading….
Pressing On (Reverend Ernest F. Krug, III, M.Div., M.D., March 21, 2010) – He was one of the most powerful prelates in the United States but more importantly a deeply spiritual man of prayer. He was a healthy man who, at age 67, suddenly found himself diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He had extensive surgery at a cancer hospital and awakened from surgery with pain that felt overwhelming. He wanted to pray, but could not. To visiting friends he commented, “Pray while you’re well, because if you wait until you’re sick you might not be able to do it.”1 The patient was Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, formerly Archbishop of Chicago. Continue to think about his statement. I will have more to say about him later. Click to Continue Reading….
Staying on Message (Reverend John Judson, March 28, 2010) – So how did he do it? How did a junior senator, without a national following, with little name recognition, from a Midwestern state…who was African American manage to defeat a host of big names and win the presidency? It is after all a very remarkable story. Growing up with single mom, living overseas, attending a liberal church and being a young black man would seem to disqualify one for any sort of high office. Yet Barack Hussein Obama managed to do it. And one of the reasons people give for his victory was that he was able to not only create a campaign theme which touched the hearts of many…but he stayed on message with that theme throughout his campaign. And so here is the quiz… Click to Continue Reading….
Hope Gone Wild (Reverend John Judson, April 4, 2010 Easter Sunday) – I was late. I was in fact very late because I could not find my glasses and without my glasses, well let me say, I could not see the broad side of a barn door. And since I drove myself to school I needed them. I had scoured the house looking for them. They were not beside my bed. They were not in the bathroom. They were nowhere to be found. As I was in the process of my hunt my mother spotted me and asked me why I hadn’t left for school already. Trying to contain my irritation I told her the obvious, I could not find my glasses. In that moment the look on my mother’s face became that look that only mother’s can get when they wonder how they could have raised a child like this. Then she said, “John, you have them on.” Click to Continue Reading ….
Love Amidst Certainty (Reverend John Judson, April 11, 2010) – Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. For any of you who are Star Trek fans you will recognize those as the words of the Borg, the machine like species that defeats and assimilates every life form they encounter. But if you were a first century Christian, you would recognize it as well. It was the mantra of the Roman Empire. What we need to understand about the Roman Empire was that it had learned some lessons from the Empires before it. One of those lessons was that you do not try and annihilate your enemies…you absorb them. Click to Continue Reading ….
Keep the Faith (Christine Gannon, Pastoral Associate, Director of Skyline Camp & Conference Center, April 18, 2010) – Continuing the sermon series for this Easter season…started last week on the book of Revelation and the message to the seven churches…we look at the second church this morning…from the book of Revelation, chapter 2, verses 8 to 11…listen for God speaking…And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of the first and the last, who was dead and came to life: “I know your affliction and your poverty, even though you are rich. I know the slander on the part of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Click to Continue Reading ….
Everybody’s Got to Serve Somebody (Reverend John Judson, April 25, 2010) – He had had it. The guy was getting on his nerves. My friend J.D. had been a draftsman and designer in the petrochemical industry since the early fifties. He was one of the most respected men in the business. So it bugged him that one of the new engineers in the firm was questioning almost every one of his decisions. And it really bugged him because … Click to Continue Reading ….
Truth and Consequences (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, May 2, 2010 )They really did not know what to do. Everything they had tried failed. Their son was out of control. At first he had just been defiant. Then it was sneaking out of the house. That was followed by his drinking with friends and staggering home. Then it was shoplifting, stealing money from his parents’ wallets, taking their credit cards and charging what he wanted. Then there were the drugs; pot, cocaine and more. The older he got the more difficult it became. They gave him consequences. They sent him to counseling and even a boot camp program. Nothing worked. Finally the day after his seventeenth birthday the phone call came. Click to continue reading ….
The Church of the Living Dead (The Reverend John Judson, May 9, 2010) It was supposed to be an easy walk. I was 13 and my family was taking their very first vacation to Colorado. We had been there a couple of days when my father asked the Park ranger what would be an easy hike. After a few moments the Ranger said, “Flattop.” It was only about four and half miles and only about a 3,000 foot elevation rise. Great my father said, and he packed up my older brother, my mom, me and himself for the hike. When we arrived at the trail head I said, “This is great,” because we were surrounded by lakes, aspen trees and animals of every kind. What only dawned on me later was that … Click to continue reading ….
Strong Faith on Shaky Ground (The Rev. Amy Morgan, Confirmation Sunday, May 16, 2010) How many of you have ever locked yourself out of your house? When I graduated from college, my whole family made the trip out to New York, and we were coming back to my apartment in Queens late at night after all the graduation celebrations. We were all wearing our best duds, and we were exhausted from the excitement of the day and the mile-long hike from the subway station to my apartment. When we walked up to my apartment building, I suddenly realized with dismay that I wasn’t carrying my purse. Click to continue reading ….
How Are We Doing? (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, May 30, 2010) Gary had the perfect life. That is the way he described it. He was a proud graduate of Texas A&M University. He had a great job with one of the fastest growing and most profitable companies in the world. He was married to, and these are his words, a beautiful, long legged blond who was the best wife anyone could have. He had three beautiful and healthy daughters. He had a great retirement composed of company stock which would allow him to retire early. Every day he would get up and go to work in the building on the cover of your bulletin, being grateful for all that he had. Then one day at work a rumor began to spread. Click to continue reading ….
The Three R’s (The Rev. Dr. John , June 6, 2010) Prostitution or begging…those were her choices. Chances are that she never imagined that her life would come down to those two choices. When her husband had died at least she had her son to provide and care for her. But now that her son was dead there was no one to turn to. Her family had no responsibility and neither did that of her deceased husband. We might imagine how such a weight of decision was compounding the grief she was already feeling as the funeral procession was leaving the city limits. With her mind so preoccupied, odds were that she did not even notice the happy throng which was headed in the opposite direction. It only came to her attention when one of the men in the passing crowd stepped out and stop her procession in its tracks. She had no idea who this person was or why he was stopping her and her friends. Click to continue reading ….
What World Would You Choose? (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, June 27, 2010) They could taste it. They could taste vengeance and it tasted good. They had been oppressed and excluded from virtually everything that their country could offer them. The color of their skin had made them outsiders and virtual slaves in the land their ancestors had inhabited for centuries. Apartheid, the legal segregation and subjugation, of blacks and mixed race members of south African Society had crushed their lives but not their spirits. But now it was their time. Apartheid was over. Black South Africans had been given the right to vote and they had elected Nelson Mandela, their iconic leader as the first black president of South Africa. Mandela, having been kept in a tiny cell on Robbins Island for 27 years, was to be their agent of vengeance. It was time for the majority in South Africa to take back what had been taken from them and make the whites pay. They could taste it. Click to continue reading ….
Why Would They Do It? (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, July 4, 2010) Why would he have done it? Why would he have risked everything for a very uncertain future? Born in 1733 Joseph Pheland was forty six years old when the Colonies declared independence from England. He was a farmer with a wife and five sons and five daughters. He was not well educated or a politician. He was not driven by youthful enthusiasm to do something brave. Yet soon after the war began Joseph enlisted in the Hampshire County, Massachusetts militia to fight against the British. The paper on the cover is the commission he received just before the end of the war because of his service for the cause of the Colonies. I have often wondered what would have caused my great, great, great, great, great grandfather to risk his life, his land and his family to fight against the most powerful nation and army in the world. It was a crazy notion…that a bunch of farmers and sometime soldiers could defeat the most powerful army on the face of the earth. Yet he and thousands of others risked everything in the fight. So why would they do it? Click to continue reading ….
Who’s In Your Circle? (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, July 11, 2010) The book shocked America. Its contents were such that it caused the President of the United States to call the author a crackpot. It caused meat exports from this nation to drop by 50%. The outcry was so great that the President was forced against his will to assign two of his most trusted aids to see if the accusations were true, even after he had declared them to be false. Ultimately the content of the book and the findings of the two friends led to the creation of the Meat Inspection and Clean Food Acts. These ultimately led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Any of us might consider such results to be considered a success considering the difference that agency would make. Unfortunately for the author of the book, he considered his work a failure Click to continue reading ….
Driven to Distraction (Rev. Ernest F. Krug, III, M.D.,July 18, 2010) We live in a world where we feel distracted by many things. The Internet has produced in us what NY Times writer Tom Friedman calls a “continuous partial attention.” Consequently. we can identify with Martha far more easily than we can identify with Mary. Yet, there is a Mary part' of us and to that I will return later. The context of this passage: the story of the Good Samaritan and our reading today are purposely coupled in Luke. In the first, a certain man is walking from Jerusalem to Jericho; in the second, a certain woman welcomes Jesus into her home. Both stories are introduced by the question of a lawyer about what he must do to inherit eternal life. Click to continue reading…
Spiritual Alignment (The Rev. Dr. John Judson,July 25, 2010) She was my favorite cousin. Lisa was only a few years younger than me and since we were lived only about 15 minutes apart our families spent lots of time together. There were holidays, trips to the beach and time spent at that neighborhood pool. Lisa was one of those persons who seemed to have her act together. Tall, athletic, blond, cheerful and very, very committed to her faith she did well in school and was surrounded by friends. She married her college sweetheart…they met as collegiate swimmers…they moved to Colorado where she became the mother of three fabulous children and was a pillar in her Presbyterian church there. The only issue was a nagging cough. It just never seemed to go away. Her doctor tried a variety of remedies but none worked. Finally she mentioned it to her father, an internist himself. Alarmed he had her see another doctor in her area. Click to continue reading…
Personal Pronoun Abuse (The Rev. Dr. John Judson,August 1, 2010) Francie was in love. She had met Frank and fallen for him. He was good looking, honest, and hard working. His job kept him on the road a lot but he was around enough to date and eventually marry. Soon there were two children and a move from Florida to Texas. Francie loved Frank and her new hometown of Dallas. Without blinking an eye two more children arrived on the scene along with some disturbing information. The disturbing information was that her husband had another family…that he was already married when they had wed. along with this horrible new however came some slightly better news. Her husband’s name was not Frank…it was H.L. Hunt and he was the richest man in the United States. Click to continue reading…
Great Expectations (The Rev. Dr. John Judson,August 8, 2010) So we begin this morning with a quiz. What do the following years all have in common? A.D. 30, 60, 90, 120, 365, 375, 500, 968, 992, 1000, 1005, 1033, 1147, 1179, 1205, 1284, 1346, 1496, 1524, 1533, 1669, 1689, 1736, 1792, 1794, 1830, 1832, 1843, 1844, 1850, 1856, 1881, 1891, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1940, 1941, 1975, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1993 and 2000? What do they have in common? They are all years when someone predicted the second coming of Christ and the end of the world as we know it. The best of the lot were 1988 and 1989 when booklets were published giving 88 and 89 reasons respectively why Jesus would return in those years. Click to continue reading…
Talking About the Weather (The Rev. Amy Morgan, August 15, 2010) A few months after I began seminary, I sat with my friend, Kelly, comparing notes on the people we’d met so far.
Risks and Rewards (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, August 29, 2010) It was a strange beginning. They year was 1948. India was in the throes of violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims as they fought for power in what would soon be an independent nation. Into the heart of the city of Calcutta strode a small woman, a nun who believed that she had a call from God to make a difference. At first she tried to start a school but more and more her heart was drawn to the thousands who were dying on the streets of the city, forgotten and ignored by all. Two years later she appealed to the Vatican for permission to create a new order of nuns whose task it would be to care for… "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." Her request was granted and soon 13 other sisters joined Teresa in what would ultimately become one of the most admired missions in the world… Click to continue reading…
The Price is Wrong (The Rev. Amy Morgan, September 5, 2010) In thirty-eight years, the game show The Price is Right had never seen a contestant guess the exact value of prizes in the Showcase Showdown. For those of you who might not be Price is Right fans, the Showcase Showdown is the finale of the game show. Two lucky contestants get the chance to bid on a showcase of products – luxury vacations, cars, pool tables, high-end bikes. Whichever contestant comes closest to the actual retail price of the items in their showcase without going over, wins.Several people over the years had come close – within $10 of the actual retail price on packages worth tens of thousands of dollars. But only one person has ever been perfect. On September 22, 2008, … Click to continue reading …
Lost and Found (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, September 12, 2010) Let’s begin this morning with one of our popular informal surveys. So how many of you have ever lost something? How many of you have ever lost something that is really important to you; your keys…your wallet…your purse…your credit cards…your cat or dog? How many of you can remember the feeling of panic that began to well up inside when you realized whatever it was that you lost was not where you thought it was; the feeling of panic when you know it was lost? If you can then you know the emotions that Jesus was trying to conjure up with his two stories this morning. Jesus tells two stories about people who lost things. The first is of a shepherd who lost a sheep and the other is of a woman who lost a coin. What I have learned over the years is that few of us feel a sense of panic when we hear these stories. But let me tell you those around Jesus would have. Click to continue reading …
Learning From the Worst (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, September 19, 2010) It was a stroke of luck. We had just moved to a tiny town in the Texas Panhandle so I could be the pastor of the only Presbyterian church in town. Our son was five and had left behind all of his friends. Fortunately just down the street was a boy exactly his age. They soon began hanging out together and seemed to get along well. It was, in church lingo, a blessing. After a while we began to wonder however if it was such a good thing…then we knew it wasn’t. This revelation came one day when Andy and the child who shall remain nameless were playing and asked Cindy if they could have a snack. Since it was close to dinner time Cindy told them no. Andy, knowing his mother, took that no at face value. A few minutes later though Cindy heard whispering. Listening carefully she heard this conversation. Other child: “Let’s get some snacks.” Andy: “My mom said no.” Other child: “Who cares, women are stupid.” For those of you who know Cindy you can imagine how that went over. The unnamed child was no longer a guest in our home. All of us as parents know the drill. Click to continue reading …
A Fly in my Soup (The Rev. Amy Morgan, September 26, 2010) Cellophane. That’s what he felt like. You could look right through him; walk right by him; and never know he’s there. Mr. Cellophane, as he calls himself, is Amos Hart, a character in the musical Chicago, the husband of death-row celebrity Roxy Hart. He’s eclipsed by the fame and drama surrounding his wife, to the point where everyone completely ignores him, they don’t see him at all. He’s an invisible person. He’s like cellophane. There’s a Mr. Cellophane in this story Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke as well. Click to continue reading …
Just Doing My Job (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, October 3, 2010) Katie had never seen anything like it. About 9 years ago my wife Cindy, my daughter Katie and I traveled to Manila, the capitol of the Philippines where I was interviewing for the pastorate of a large protestant church. While we were there we had lunch with members of the search committee who had a daughter Katie’s age. While Katie and the young woman were up in the young woman’s bedroom, the girl asked Katie if she wanted something to drink. Sure, said Katie, and began to get up from her chair to go get something. Don’t get up, the girl said, watch this. With that she got her cell phone and called downstairs to the maid and told her to bring up some cokes. Katie was amazed. So here is my first question, how many of you would like to be able to do that? Pick up the phone and have your drink delivered? Pretty cool huh! Well let me tell you the rest of the story. When the maid arrived Katie began to thank her for bringing the coke. The girl whom Katie was visiting, stopped her and said, no we don’t thank her. She is just doing her job. So now how cool do you think it is? How many of us would like that job of serving without ever being thanked? Not one many of us would volunteer for. Click to continue reading …
The Heart of the Matter (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, October 31, 2010) So who can tell me who is on the cover of this morning’s bulletin? That’s right it is the Grinch and Zacchaeus. Now many of you adults out there you are probably wondering why I would have anyone other than Zacchaeus on the cover…since the passage this morning is his story. Well I could simply say that I have the Grinch in here because he is my favorite Christmas character. I like everything about his Christmas cartoon. I like the animation. I like the music. But above all I like the story. I like the story because it is a tale of sin and redemption. That’s right, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas is a story of sin and redemption. Now when I talk about sin, I am viewing it as a constricted heart. If you look at how Dr. Seuss describes the Grinch, it is as someone whose heart is too small. Click to continue reading …
The Mission to Restore Hope – not Fear (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, November 7, 2010) So how many of you here this morning were wishing that the election could have been pushed back another couple of weeks so we could see some more campaign ads? Ok, let me try another one. How many of you are glad that the election is over? My guess is that most of us had gotten pretty tired of the attack ads which seemed to fill every moment of commercial time for the past year. But less you think that this sort of behavior was only invented recently, think again. It is exactly what Jesus faces in our morning’s story. Jesus is minding his own business when he is approached by some Sadducees. Now, as a reminder, the Sadducees were a First Century Jewish political party that wanted to sway the hearts and minds of the Jewish population to buy into their theological program; which was that there was no life after death. Dead was dead. Granted, at least to me, that does not appear to be a vision which would win many converts, but nonetheless … Click to continue reading ….
The Mission Remains the Same (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, November 14, 2010) It was a night that was going to permanently change the political landscape of the United States for decades to come. States that had traditionally been a single color switched sides. Parties that had long been in power suddenly found themselves on the outside looking in. Long sitting senators and representatives were no longer employed. And above all the United States elected its first African American president. Oh, wait, you thought I was talking about last week? No I am thinking about two years ago. The election of 2008 was supposed to signal a permanent shift in American politics from which the Republican party was to never recover. I can still remember the pundits on that evening proclaiming that that congress would be Democratic for decades and that the Republicans would struggle to remain viable as a party. Even when a few long time political observers predicted that, as is almost always the case, by the first mid-term elections the Republicans would take back much of what they lost they were laughed at. It was an impossibility. It would never happen. Click to continue reading ….
Jesus and the Scottish Play (The Rev. Amy Morgan, November 21, 2010) Macbeth was a king who was not a king. After being told by three weird sisters that he would be king of Scotland, he decided to help fate along by murdering the sitting king. It indeed happened that Macbeth was crowned king, but it was a brief reign marked by murder and madness. When Alec Baldwin played the role of Macbeth, he acted with perfect incompetence. His Macbeth shouted, threw tantrums, whined, and jumped on the furniture. In short, he did everything a king would never do. Because he wasn’t really the king. He was a usurper, a traitor, a murderer. He wore the crown briefly, but he was never really the king. Click to continue reading …
God is Coming (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, November 28, 2010) They appeared out of nowhere…or so it seemed. I suppose the billboards had always been there but I had never paid much attention to them. Suddenly they leaped out at me. Maybe it was their solid black backgrounds with plain white lettering. But more than that I think it was that each was a message from God. That’s right, God had gotten into the advertising business. On a regular basis the messages changed. Some were OK. Some were great. And here are four of my favorites. “If you are going to curse, use your own name.” “Why don’t we visit at my house before the game?” “That love thy neighbor thing…I meant it.” And last but not least, my all time favorite. “Don’t make me come down there.” Click to continue reading ….
Repent or Else (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, December 5, 2010) He thought he owned the town…and rightfully so. David’s grandparents had come trekked to this remote part of the Texas panhandle and had been one of the founding families of Pampa, Texas. This meant he and his family knew everyone, including the sheriff and all of his deputies. This meant that David was untouchable. So one night when he and a couple of his buddies vandalized some property it did not concern him to be picked up and taken to the county jail. After all, the sheriff, Ruff Jordon, was a family friend. So as he walked into the station he figured Ruff would be waiting with a smile on his face, give him a slap in the wrist and let him go. David was shocked then when Ruff, without a word, grabbed him by the arm and threw him into the elevator. Now you have to realize that in Pampa there were only two elevators. One downtown and one in the jail, and the one in the jail was one you never wanted to go into with Ruff because people who went in, never came out the same. Click to continue reading ….
Signs Tell the Tale (The Rev. Amy Morgan, December 12, 2010) I was talking with a friend this week who knows two Lutherans. One is the son of a Lutheran pastor. He grew up in the church, and happens to still love the church for its sense of community and care for those in need. But, at present, he happens to be an atheist. The other Lutheran did not grow up in the church. In college, he was a professed atheist. At present, he is a Lutheran pastor. How do such radical transformations of faith come about? How can a person go from being so sure and certain of their faith in God to being just as adamantly certain that God does not exist? How can a person whose heart seemed dead-set against belief come to believe so strongly that they find their life’s calling in spreading the Gospel? In our text today, we find a similar reversal. Click to continue reading …
It’s a Savior? (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, December 19, 2010) The world held its collective breath. They held their breath because the fate of humanity hung in the balance. The fate of humanity hung on the decision of a single human being. The year was 1962. The month was October. The Soviet Union had secretly placed offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba; weapons which could reach virtually any city in the continental United States. When the Kennedy Administration learned of their placement they first considered invading Cuba, but instead chose to blockade Cuba until the missiles were dismantled and removed. The leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, wrote a letter to Kennedy contending that such a blockade was tantamount to a declaration of war and that it would lead to nuclear conflict. And so the world waited. They waited knowing that Kennedy could not back down and that only a decision to remove the missiles by Khrushchev would insure the world’s future. The fate of humanity hung in the balance. Click to continue reading …
Just Doing My Job (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, October 3, 2010) Katie had never seen anything like it. About 9 years ago my wife Cindy, my daughter Katie and I traveled to Manila, the capitol of the Philippines where I was interviewing for the pastorate of a large protestant church. While we were there we had lunch with members of the search committee who had a daughter Katie’s age. While Katie and the young woman were up in the young woman’s bedroom, the girl asked Katie if she wanted something to drink. Sure, said Katie, and began to get up from her chair to go get something. Don’t get up, the girl said, watch this. With that she got her cell phone and called downstairs to the maid and told her to bring up some cokes. Katie was amazed. So here is my first question, how many of you would like to be able to do that? Pick up the phone and have your drink delivered? Pretty cool huh! Well let me tell you the rest of the story. When the maid arrived Katie began to thank her for bringing the coke. The girl whom Katie was visiting, stopped her and said, no we don’t thank her. She is just doing her job. So now how cool do you think it is? How many of us would like that job of serving without ever being thanked? Not one many of us would volunteer for. Click to continue reading …
The Heart of the Matter (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, October 31, 2010) So who can tell me who is on the cover of this morning’s bulletin? That’s right it is the Grinch and Zacchaeus. Now many of you adults out there you are probably wondering why I would have anyone other than Zacchaeus on the cover…since the passage this morning is his story. Well I could simply say that I have the Grinch in here because he is my favorite Christmas character. I like everything about his Christmas cartoon. I like the animation. I like the music. But above all I like the story. I like the story because it is a tale of sin and redemption. That’s right, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas is a story of sin and redemption. Now when I talk about sin, I am viewing it as a constricted heart. If you look at how Dr. Seuss describes the Grinch, it is as someone whose heart is too small. Click to continue reading …
The Mission to Restore Hope – not Fear (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, November 7, 2010) So how many of you here this morning were wishing that the election could have been pushed back another couple of weeks so we could see some more campaign ads? Ok, let me try another one. How many of you are glad that the election is over? My guess is that most of us had gotten pretty tired of the attack ads which seemed to fill every moment of commercial time for the past year. But less you think that this sort of behavior was only invented recently, think again. It is exactly what Jesus faces in our morning’s story. Jesus is minding his own business when he is approached by some Sadducees. Now, as a reminder, the Sadducees were a First Century Jewish political party that wanted to sway the hearts and minds of the Jewish population to buy into their theological program; which was that there was no life after death. Dead was dead. Granted, at least to me, that does not appear to be a vision which would win many converts, but nonetheless … Click to continue reading ….
Jesus and the Scottish Play (The Rev. Amy Morgan, November 21, 2010) Macbeth was a king who was not a king. After being told by three weird sisters that he would be king of Scotland, he decided to help fate along by murdering the sitting king. It indeed happened that Macbeth was crowned king, but it was a brief reign marked by murder and madness. When Alec Baldwin played the role of Macbeth, he acted with perfect incompetence. His Macbeth shouted, threw tantrums, whined, and jumped on the furniture. In short, he did everything a king would never do. Because he wasn’t really the king. He was a usurper, a traitor, a murderer. He wore the crown briefly, but he was never really the king. Click to continue reading …
Born to Run (Christine Gannon, December 26, 2010) Our Gospel reading this morning is from the second chapter of Matthew 2…verses 13-23…I’ll be reading from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase…the Message…if the passage was rated like the video games it would have a M for mature users only because of the violence…so…you’ve been warned…listen for God speaking…
After the scholars were gone,
God's angel showed up again in Joseph's dream and commanded,
"Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.
Stay until further notice.
Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him."
Joseph obeyed.
Click to continue reading …
The Pull of Grace (Rev. Ernest F. Krug, III, MD, Sunday, January 2, 2011) If you have ever wondered who Jesus of Nazareth really was–and specifically, what his relationship with the Creator of the universe is–the first chapter of John’s Gospel was written for you. But if you are like most Christians, you are still not sure that you understand it. One reason for this confusion is our confusion about who God is. We don’t understand why our all-powerful God allows innocents to suffer, and we have even less understanding of how God was in Christ. The core of the passage we read is, I believe, in verses 10-13. There, John tells us that the goal of humanity should be to receive Christ, to believe in his name, and to be transformed. For 2,000 years Christians have struggled to understand what that means. For many Christians “receiving Christ” means to be baptized and later join a church; to believe in Jesus Christ’s name is to believe that being “a Christian” is superior to any other religious identity and gives the believer a host of blessings and benefits in this life; to be transformed is something that occurs after death when one awakens in heavenly bliss. The fact is, John is not talking about any of these things. Click to continue reading …
Into the Muck and Mire (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, January 9, 2011) It made no sense. It made no sense what so ever and John knew it. John the Baptist knew that it made no sense for him to be baptizing Jesus. To the uninitiated, and to those around John, it would have made perfect sense. After all John the Baptist was a rock star. He had followers. He had fame. He was the talk of the town and even the power brokers had come to him to be baptized. Yet the moment Jesus arrives to get dunked John understood that this was just wrong. Jesus was greater than he was and it is the greater who baptizes the lesser. Jesus was the one who was sinless and not in need of baptism. So John tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized and in fact requests that Jesus baptize him. Yet Jesus not only refuses to turn the tables but insists on being baptized by John. And in so doing explains his desire with a cryptic response of, “So that all righteousness could be fulfilled.” So what’s the deal? Why should Jesus insist on going through with this charade of baptism by sin as if John is the greater and he the lesser. It made no sense then and it has made no sense for the church over the last 2,000 years for the same reasons that it made no sense to John; Jesus was sinless and greater. Click to continue reading …
Saving Private Benjamin (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, January 16, 2011) When Judy Benjamin was eight years old she confessed her deepest secret to her best friend. All Judy wanted out of life was nice clothes, a big house, two closets, a live in maid and a professional husband. So begins the movie Private Benjamin. It opens with scenes of her wedding, and then her wedding night, on which her new husband dies of a heart attack. Bereft she calls a radio talk show to air her grief where she complains that she is now all alone. One of the listeners tells her he can give her friends and meaning to her life. She is intrigued and so meets with him the next day. It turns out that he is an Army recruiter. When she says that she is not the Army type he tells her that this is the new Army..the Army of the 80’s in which everyone gets their own room and live in condos and get to live in places like Fort Ord in Monterey California. The final part of the pitch is that the Army will get her in the best shape of her life…which Benjamin takes to mean like going to Club Med. In the end the appeal of this life of ease and friendship seems to make sense and so she signs up. Click to continue reading ….
The Doctor is In (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, January 23, 2011) Have you ever been sick? And when I say sick I don’t just mean you feel bad, but that you are so sick that you can’t remember what being well feels like? And have you ever been sick such that you were contagious and had to be isolated from family and friends? I have to say that this is for me the worst kind of sickness there is. It is the worst for two reasons. The first is that it means not only do you feel bad but that you are alone. There is no one who can come over and commiserate with you; no one who can help you pass the time make you feel better by their presence. It is also the worst because even when you feel better and want to get back into the swing of things with others, you can’t. One of my childhood memories was of coming down with chicken pox in the middle of Little League baseball season. And even after I was feeling good I was not allowed to go and play because I was still contagious…though my mother did make sure I played with my younger siblings so they would get it and get the disease over with. Any of you ever been there? Click to continue reading ….
Do-gooders (The Rev. Amy Morgan, January 30, 2011) In this section of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been teaching and healing in the towns around Galilee. Some of his teaching and healing has been well-received, but, as we heard last week, some people, especially those in religious leadership, didn’t take well to Jesus’ teachings. Here again, we find Jesus in conflict with some of those religious authorities. Click to continue reading ….
God’s True Family (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, February 6, 2011) So which is God’s true family? On the cover of your bulletin are a couple of choices, each of which appeals to a particular segment of the church as the likely candidate. First we have the Cleavers. This well known and well scrubbed family represents the classic American ideal. Father who works. Mom who stays home and mops with her pearls on. Two kids who always learn the right lessons in life. This family is backed by the more conservative end of the Christian spectrum as those who are the ideal family of God. Next we have the Pritchert family. We have the patriarch who is divorced and married to a much younger woman from Columbia. His daughter is the mom in a classic family while his son is gay. His gay son and partner have adopted a child from Vietnam. They are the modern family; inclusive and multi-racial. These candidates are backed by the more liberal end of the church. So which of these would we choose as the perfect family of God? Click to continue reading ….
Tuning In (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, February 13, 2011) So why bother? So why should Jesus bother at all if his true assignment was to speak to people in order that they do not understand? That hardly seems like a worthwhile goal in life. But at least at first glance that appears to be what he is telling his disciples is his reason for telling these strange parable things. And this assignment is not new. It was the same one that was give to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah in our reading has this amazing experience of the presence of God in which God asks if he is ready for an unknown, but important assignment. When Isaiah agrees, he is given the assignment of telling people that they will listen and not understand, they will look and not see in order that God not heal them. In a similar way Jesus has had this amazing experience of God in the wilderness but now is called to confuse people. Chances are that this seems odd to us. After all we have been taught that Jesus was the original Great Communicator. He was the one who knew how to turn a phrase and inspire all of those around him. Yet if we are to believe Matthew that is not the case. No, Jesus is there to confound and not clarify. So why bother at all? Click to continue reading ….
Drive-Thru Jesus (The Rev. Amy Morgan, February 20, 2011) Ichthus (Ik-thoos) – Greek word for “fish,” but the letters also stand for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” It was a sign early Christians would use to tell each other secretly that they were Christians. Isn’t that funny that Christians would choose the symbol of a fish for one of their earliest symbols? Not a cross, not a crown, not even bread or a cup. But a fish. An ordinary, everyday food. When people remembered Jesus, what he did and said, they remembered a story involving two of these ordinary fish. The story we heard today is the only miracle story to be remembered by all four gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It’s a story that many of us have heard before. Click to continue reading ….
The Moment (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, March 6, 2011) It was the moment. It was the moment we knew was coming. It was the moment we were waiting for. As soon as the movie had begun we knew there would be a time when Melanie Griffith and Tom Hanks would meet. And not only did we know they would meet but we knew that they would fall in love….instantly. It was fate. It was kismet. It was a romantic comedy, and that is the way romantic comedies work. What it made it even better was that they met on the top of the Empire State building on Valentine’s Day, thus fulfilling an unmet promise from the movie An Affair to Remember. And in that moment everyone in the theatre either sighed or cried. It made Sleepless in Seattle a hit people could watch over and over. Click to continue reading ….
Ancient Promises: Belonging (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, May 1, 2011) We both noticed it. We had been at the Bealton Presbyterian Church for about a month while I served them as a student pastor. Each Sunday we would look out and notice that there were certain groups of people that sat on the right hand side and certain people that sat on the left hand side. Being somewhat of a novice to seating arrangements in a church I asked someone if there was a reason people sat on one side or the other, or was it simply preference. Interestingly enough, I was told, there was a reason. The reason was that the longtime members sat on one side and the new comers on the other. Being curious I asked, “well how long have the newcomers been here?” “Those folks,” was the reply, “They have only been here about 30 years or so. Belonging, I mean really belonging, is sometimes hard to come by. Click to continue reading ….
Ancient Promises: No Favorites (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, May 8, 2011)Every morning at a few minutes before 7:00 am the buses would arrive and unload their precious cargo of children at the elementary schools in Southside ISD. And there to greet them were their principals…or at least that is what the superintendent wanted. When he discovered that some of the principals were not getting there until after the children he instituted a new system of electronic check-in. Each of the principals had to arrive at the building and trigger the system that proved that they were there on time. If they were not they would hear about it at the principals’ meeting that week…except for one principal who was always late. And the reason she was late was that she was always trying to take care of her two dogs. Each day she had to drop them at doggy day care and if that took longer than expected then she would be late…which again she always was. What fascinated the other principals was that not only did she never get in trouble, like the rest of them, she was actually the superintendents favorite. After a while they knew what to call her, “teacher’s pet.” Click to continue reading ….
Ancient Promises: Redemption (The Rev. Dr. John Judson, May 15, 2011) I had become a criminal. At the age of six I was headed for the big house. In order to escape such a fate I was trying to remain as invisible as possible under my bed. The events that led to my descent into a life of crime were simple. I had followed my older brother and his friends to a home construction site down the block. There they had decided to take dirt clumps from a large pile beside a house under construction and throw them on the roof of the house. The winner would be the one that could throw the dirt clods the farthest. Not wanting to be left out I searched out the perfect clod, picked it up and heaved. You could hear the breaking glass for miles. Needless to say mine did not reach the roof. Instead it went right through one of the newly placed windows. Before the last shard had hit the ground we were all running. Within a half an hour there came a loud banging on our front door. As my mother opened the door a very angry man was outside shouting that whoever had done this was a criminal and was headed for jail. Now my mother being the Texan she was quietly, but very firmly explained that her son was not going to jail and that she would be happy to pay for any of the damages. After an extended angry exchange the man agreed to that solution and left. I think I waited under my bed until I was old enough to go to Middle School, but when I finally emerged not a word was said. It was as if my criminal record had been expunged and I was a free man. Click to continue reading ….
