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November 17th, 2010
Psalm 131
Sometimes you just have to stop and pray.
Psalm 131 is about these times, when you’ve done all you’ve known how to do, and you’ve run out of steam, and you just need to stop and rest a while, and pray.
I know, the world keeps turning, the show must go on, and all of that. But just because the world never stops, doesn’t mean that sometimes we all don’t individually, need for a moment to take a break.
The need for stopping once in a while is built into all of creation, and is a Scriptural reality from the beginning. Even God takes a break once in a while. It’s built into our biology, with rhythms of waking and sleeping. I can’t remember who it was who said that every time you go to sleep you are engaging in an act of faith: faith that you will indeed wake up again the next day. After all, you could be like the guy whose wife told the coroner, “I don’t know what happened to him. All I know is that when he went to bed last night he was fine, but this morning he woke up dead.”
Psalm 131 is about how, a little more than two-thirds of the way through this marathon book of 150 psalms even the psalmist needs to stop the pondering of all the too great and too marvelous things, to simply put his hope in the Lord and let it all go. Read more: Interlude
October 18th, 2010
Matthew 13:44-45
Two simple parables. Or at least it seems like they’re simple.
First. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Treasure hunting. When I was in the first and second grade, my best friend at the time was a kid named Adam. He lived a block down the street. It was a time back then, before parents had to arrange “play dates” the way we have to arrange for Silas today. We just got together any old time. And, being best friends, we were together most of the time.
And even though both of us lived in ordinary middle-class houses, one summer day as we were playing together, probably out of sheer boredom, we somehow got it into our minds that somewhere in each of our houses, there was hidden a secret treasure chamber.
So one day at his house, we spent most of the day tapping on walls. (I don’t know that we really knew what we were listening for, but one of us had seen on TV or in a movie that you could discover secret rooms by tapping on the wall.) We looked for places where the floor molding had separated slightly from the floor, and tried to peer into the cracks with flashlights. We even, much to Adam’s mother’s horror, managed to pry the upstairs bathroom medicine cabinet out of the wall. Read more: True Value
October 3rd, 2010
Ephesians 4:1-6
A day when we celebrate a baptism and welcome new members into our family is a great day. We celebrate today the fulfillment of this great passage in the Letter to the Ephesians: “one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
So today, without question or qualification, is a great day. Read more: Unity, Not Uniformity
September 26th, 2010
 Photo Credit: Pete Eveleigh John 6:60-68
Neighbor, O Neighbor,
I’m trying hard to do better,
And its harder than you think,
But, neighbor, O Neighbor,
Jesus hasn’t given up on me.
I’ve been reading a lot of Seth Godin lately, and I owe the title of this sermon to a blog post of his earlier this month. It’s an intriguing idea. You can say that what you’ve got or what you’re doing is better than nothing. But is it? He was pointing out that quite often given the choice between something and nothing, people will choose nothing.
Given the choice between voting for someone and staying home, for example, most people choose to do nothing. You have to be an exceptional candidate in some way to really get people out to the polls, whether it’s to vote for you or against you. You have to be better than nothing, and it’s harder than you think.
Another example. Given the choice between buying a piece of artwork and just living without anything hanging on your living room wall, the artwork has to be something you really like and are willing to pay for. The vast majority of the time, you’re not comparing this picture to the something that’s already on your wall; you’re comparing it to the blank wall over your sofa. It doesn’t have to be better than something else; it has to be better than nothing. And, judging by all the starving artists out there, if you’re an artist trying to sell your artwork, better than nothing is harder than you think.
Another example. Given the choice to get up and go to church on Sunday morning, most people stay home. It’s not that the vast majority are choosing to go someplace other than First Baptist Church to get their weekly religion fix; they are choosing nothing, none of the above. Read more: Better than Nothing (Is Harder than You Think)
September 12th, 2010
 Photo Credit: Patricia Espedal Ezra 3:8-13
Neighbor, O neighbor:
I have so many things I could tell you about my past,
But, Neighbor,
I’m more nostalgic for the days ahead.
They say, “There’s no place like home.”
As a matter of fact, we ourselves may have said it on numerous occasions, “There’s no place like home.”
We may have returned to our house after a long day at work, and been able to put our feet up, finally to relax, and have said, “There’s no place like home.”
We may have returned from vacation, those weeks many among is take during the summer months, free from school, and obligations of work and all the usual pressures of life, and we may travel to far-off places, but when we arrive back after all those adventures, we reflect on our experience, and as we unpack our suitcases and start to put all those rumpled dirty clothes into the wash we may say, “Vacation was great, but their’s no place like home.”
We may get so worn down by the world and feel so lost sometimes like Dorothy in the land of Oz, that we may wish we could just close our eyes, and tap the heels of our ruby slippers together three times and say, “There’s no place like home,” wishing when we open them again we will be back in Kansas, wherever our own Kansases are — sometimes we may not even know exactly where they are, we just know sometimes that anyplace must be better than here.
So we are familiar with these words, “There’s no place like home.”
In the days of Ezra, too, there were a lot of people who had told themselves, “There is no place like home.” Let me tell you, or take a moment to remind you, about those people of Ezra’s day.
Ezra’s people lived most of their lives in exile. Which is to say, Ezra’s people had been forcibly taken from their ancestral home, and had they had been forcibly, marched, at sword-point, hundreds of miles from the places they had been born. And these people had been forced to populate and work for the benefit of their captors throughout a long period of time. For some seventy years and more, Ezra’s people had been held hostage in foreign lands, dreaming all the their homes, back in their ancestral Israel. After seventy years and more of working and living in a foreign land, you can imagine the yearning they had in their hearts. You can imagine that if someone had said to them, “There is no place like home,” how much they would have given to be able to go back. And yet, for seventy years and more, there was no returning, no going home, only dim hope, and no future for Ezra’s people. And with each passing year, their hopes grew dimmer and dimmer.
But then, into that darkness, there came an amazing opportunity. In the beginning of this book of Ezra, we can read that one day in the first year of the reign of a new king, King Cyrus of Persia, God stirred up the heart of King Cyrus, and he issued an edict, an executive order, declaring that those people from Israel should be allowed to return again to their ancestral land.
Read more: Back to the Future
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Office Hours Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri 9:30-noon
Pastor’s Office Hours Tuesday and Thursday and by appointment.
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First Baptist Church
100 Maple Street
Glens Falls, NY 12801
518-793-1335
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