Hello friends!  Today I’m feeling hopeful about spring: here in north-central Illinois, we’re having temperatures in the mid fifties.  This morning, I saw my first two red-winged blackbirds of the season—and then my first two robins!

I’ve been working on a new project, putting short sermons online for my church, the Open Prairie United Church of Christ in Princeton, IL.  Here’s one with a valuable tip: how to feel beautiful.  (Because you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!)

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Best blessings!

Hello, Merry Mystics!  I preached a sermon last Sunday that I’d like to share with you. Our text was Matthew 4:12-23, which is the story of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and the calling of his first disciples. That text got me thinking about change: how much I hate it, and how much the church needs it.

The video from the church didn’t turn out so well, so I’ve made a new one for you:

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Here’s that ninefold repentance, in case you’d like to put it up on your door:

1. Repent of teaching that Jesus’ life was a sacrificial offering, required to appease an angry God.
2. Repent of valuing right belief more than right action, and creeds more than kindness.
3. Repent of slandering God as a punisher who sends sinners to an eternity in hell.
4. Repent of stubbornly insisting that the world is about to come to an end.
5. Repent of our belief that God has a tribal bias—that God is more interested in us than in them.
6. Repent of treating our guesses as dogmas, and our words as God’s words.
7. Repent of our contempt for spiritual paths and religious traditions other than our own.
8. Repent of treating scientific curiosity and skeptical investigation as threats to God.
9. Repent of our indifference to the damage humankind has inflicted on the life of the earth.

In my church last Sunday morning, our gospel reading was Matthew 3:1-12.  It’s one of those Advent eye-openers.  It’s not about good tidings of great joy, but about John the Baptizer’s apocalyptic threat: those who do not bear fruit worthy of repentance are about to be burned with unquenchable fire.  Damn!

It seems like we always trip over that tension at Advent, which is partly about the delightful anticipation of Christmas, and partly about the terrifying threat of hell.  But that tension isn’t unique to Advent; it’s at the core of the melodramatic way we’ve told our Christian story for centuries.

Here’s a short sermon about it.  (Sneak preview: I don’t actually think God is going to burn anybody with unquenchable fire.)

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Hello, friends!

This one is by request.  Fair warning: it’s a straight-up sermon, it’s serious, and it’s twenty minutes long.  As you know, I am the pastor of the Open Prairie United Church of Christ in Princeton, Illinois; this is what I did in church last Sunday.  My text was the Good Samaritan parable from the Gospel of Luke.

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I treasure the Bible—even though I don’t always agree with it—and it really gets under my skin when people misuse it, as Jeff Sessions and Sarah Sanders have been doing recently. The Bible has quite a lot to say about how we are supposed to treat aliens and strangers. And—spoiler alert!—it isn’t exactly the way our current administration is treating those poor souls fleeing to our country from the south…

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Here are some lessons I learned from a friendly apple tree. I meant to do this episode of The Merry Mystic while sitting in a tree, but it just didn’t work out that way …

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While we’re on the subject: do you know the children’s book The Giving Tree? Depending on your perspective, it’s either a parable about selfless giving, or a sad tale about an abusive relationship. For my part, it bothers me that the boy/man in the story takes everything the tree gives, killing the tree, and never even says thank you. But some people really love this book. What’s your take?

It’s been a long time since The Merry Mystic brought you any outright preaching or teaching. Usually, I prefer something more casual, like music or humor. But I just couldn’t help myself this week. (I had a former career as a professor of computer science, so every now and then, I just have to bust out with a PowerPoint.)

My subject comes from an open-ended question I received this week: what is faith all about? My answer is from my own Christian perspective, of course. But I’d love to hear what you think about that question too, so please scroll down when you’ve seen the video and leave a response.

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