St. Patrick Presbyterian Church, Epc

Jim is undergoing knee surgery today. I'm confident we will get the complete rundown and color commentary upon his return, and I’m looking forward to the high drama of it all! What you may not know is that Jim’s not the only one of our pastors who spent some quality time in the hospital this week. Our second-oldest ordained staffer also had quite an eventful time surrendering his aging body to medical professionals.  A kidney stone is rarely a life-threatening event. It’s relatively common, with 1 in 10 adults experiencing them. Yet, they say the discomfort is up there with gunshot wounds and labor pains. Listen, I would never suggest that I now know what giving birth feels like. That’s a ridiculous thing for a man to say, and I would never even mention the comparison. It might help instead to put this in strictly scientific terminology for you: it’s like a demon tunnelling through your innards.  It occurred to me at one point that I didn’t want my last words to be “We have to find the remote; I just can’t ta

Jayber Crow is a novel by Wendell Berry that I have been thinking about recently, as I ponder generosity and building a new addition which will include a playground, pavilion and kitchen at St. Patrick. It is a story of a boy orphaned at age 10. After his parents die, Jayber is sent to an orphanage. He grows up rootless and placeless. When he leaves to make his way in the world, he tries preaching but drops out of seminary because he doesn’t really believe all the religious nonsense they are teaching him. Thirteen years later, he winds up back to his hometown which, though he was born there, holds no memory to him.  By default, Jayber Crow becomes the town barber and part-time grave-digger for the town. He comes as a stranger but winds up finding himself, as he is generously taken into the community of Port Williams, a small rural town in Kentucky. In later years, he speaks of what that felt like: “There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven tog

That we will be talking about generosity for the next three weeks after a couple of weeks of extreme neediness is not lost on me. As I have turned my attention to our subject, I feel like one who has been bathed and marinated in generosity. My family is blessed beyond measure, and our hearts are full of gratitude for the overwhelming outpouring of love during the time of my father’s convalescence and death. Cards, notes, texts, phone calls, food, flowers—so many people I have yet to thank keep popping into my head. Words are too cheap to express how thankful all of Daddy’s family are to the folk at St. Patrick for doing a lot of heavy lifting during this time and for giving us space to be present and remember. A priceless gift.  One of the marks of discipleship—that is, a disciple that loves God, loves people and loves life—is and must be a life of generosity. We exist in a playground of good things because at the center of the Holy Trinity is generosity—a God who lavishes his people with good things and then

I got back into my study this Wednesday, after being away with my family for over a week as my dad worsened in the hospital and we brought him home to die with his people. The worst storm in ages was playing havoc with the roads, and it was cold the day my father went to be with Jesus. The next day, my daughter was calling for sledding and snowball fights, as I worked through obituaries, funeral arrangements, and getting our house back to normal.             Josh met me at the church to catch up and asked if I needed him to preach. I told him how much I appreciated it, but I needed to be in my study with all the familiar tools of my trade around me. I figured it would be therapeutic; it ended up being even better than I thought, and it did clarify some things for me, in my own thinking and reflection. I can’t wait to share it with you.             Psalm 96 is all joy: it overflows with joy and brims with hope. It is eaten up with singing and praising, and the end of the Psalm pictures not the world as we know

When my kids learned the popular story behind “Ring around the Rosy,” they were mortified. According to some folklorists, it’s actually about the Plague! But, that’s just part of childhood: having your everyday life soundtracked with catchy songs about weighty things you don’t understand. If you grew up in church, some of them had titles like “Father Abraham,” and “Who Built the Ark?” These deceptively simple tunes have lain dormant in your subconscious for decades, until out of the blue one day some sick pastor writes an email mentioning them. Then you spend the rest of the day catching yourself compulsively humming the tune, desperately trying to replace it with something else, (anything else!).  One of those for me was “Deep and Wide.” To my knowledge it only has a single line: “Deep and wide, deep and wide, there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.” The gimmick is that the tune repeats, faster and faster, as each word gets replaced with silly onomatopoetic sounds, until all the participants collapse giggl

I don’t know about you but I come through the holiday seasons a little spiritually dry. It seems to always happens. I have tried to change it but not been very successful. I suppose I get out of rhythm. It seems my spiritual life has diminished, my prayer life seems shorter, and I am restless. My physical appetites have been satiated but my soul is hungry for something.             C. S. Lewis explains why this is true of many of us:Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to

If internet origin stories are to be believed, the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song is not about an eccentric bird lover at all, but is a coded catechism in which each number corresponds to a foundational doctrine of the faith. It’s not a likely story, but it is still a really fun application for the song. In fact, I use it this way with my own family throughout the Christmastide season. We add a new verse each night as we talk about one Savior, two testaments, three virtues, four gospels, and the like.  The famous five gold rings are supposedly the Law of Moses, or Torah. You might sometimes hear the word “Pentateuch” used, which simply means “five books.” These five are the foundational stories of the Hebrew faith and the bedrock of all other Scripture. Just like the less obvious bird gifts, even the books that don’t seem to have anything to do with them are still just riffing on the books of Torah. Here we have the people, place, presence, and promises of God laid out, to which all the rest of Scripture res

Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Advent. As it is also Christmas Eve, we’ll have two services at St. Patrick to ponder the greatest mystery of all times—God taking flesh. Every year in our Advent preaching series, we seek to get at this mystery from different angles—this year we have been in Luke 1. While it is popular to skip right to mangers, stars, and wise men, there is enough wonder in the angelic announcements to an aged priest and a young girl to make your head spin.            This week we ponder with Zechariah his song of redemption known as “The Benedictus.” Here we see an elderly priest praising God for bringing to pass the promises of redemption, not just for Israel but for the whole world. For nine months, Zechariah has been mute, unable to speak, but his song of praise basically brings together all the Old Testament promises that are coming to pass in the births of a couple of infants. And while Zechariah is thankful for the coming of his son, it is not surprising that most of his praise is for th

One of our staff members is the foster mother of a preternaturally perfect baby boy. As an occasional attendee of our staff meetings, this young fella contributes to the overall productivity by boosting morale to historic levels. His big smiles and gentle cooing create an atmosphere of joy that’s just impossible to measure. Even his rare moments of pouting motivate us to work harder for our little mascot. A ministry resident commented this week that he’s not being paid near what he’s worth, and that is most certainly true.  I recently heard someone describe how having a baby around amplifies everything. On a quality-of-life scale from one to ten, it’s like levels 2-9 have simply been removed. The fader on extreme feeling is turned up all the way to a Dickensian “best of times; worst of times.” We haven’t had a baby in the house for some time now, but that resonates with my memory of the thing. There’s a texture of unbreakable joy that lies underneath these extremes and wraps the whole thing up in swaddling cl

Years ago, Teri and I did an internship in Yazoo City. We were almost through with seminary and just had our first child. I was 22 hours short of graduating from seminary and was deciding if I would take all the classes in one semester or stretch it out over two. But we were broke, Teri wasn’t going back to work, and everything we had was old and worn out. Many of you have been in a similar situation of wrestling money, an expanding family, and school so you can relate to our predicament. And then God showed up! I got a chance to do an internship in Yahoo City, Mississippi, a place I wanted to be. So we moved, put off school for a year, and got settled into raising a family and starting a life of ministry. We immediately loved Delta life, except for one thing—we were not prepared for the smell. Mississippi Chemical Company was located just outside of town and a smell hung over the town like a fog, sort of like living downwind from a paper mill. Anyway, we commented how we could never get used to it. But the b

Advent! The world literally means, coming. That is, the coming of God into the world. This Sunday marks the beginning of our celebration of Advent at St. Patrick; and, especially if you are new, I can’t wait for you to journey with us the next four weeks leading up to Christmas. It is a time of obvious joy and celebration. I mean, if you can’t celebrate the coming of God in our flesh, what can you celebrate? But it is also a time of reflection and examination because we ponder the second coming of Jesus as well.  When I was growing up, we took a more subdued view of this month-long enactment of God’s coming, at least at church! We celebrated Christmas with relish in our home, but at church the festivity was limited to a few Christmas carols, a sermon on the Incarnation, and a little decoration. Our reasoning was, we should celebrate the coming of Jesus all the time, and too much falderal and excess would be a distraction. One day of hoopla was enough.  The only problem with that is our imaginations will not a

As I write this, I am thinking about Thanksgiving. I’m trying to send in blogs, sermons, slides, so I can get on to preparing for the Thanksgiving Feast tomorrow. I must say, I have the elven magic on me earlier this year than normal. Addy and I broke our family’s standing tradition of putting our tree up after Thanksgiving and put it up two weeks ago while Teri was out visiting her mother. Space matters, so it feels like we have a jump on Christmas this year. As I was thinking about this, it hit me—the only reason we can be really thankful at Thanksgiving is because of Advent, so I have justified my actions.  Anyway, we start out looking at Luke’s narrative this week and will continue this through Advent. We will be looking at just the first seven verses, but it occurred to me that what is found here could be the true story of the whole Bible. There is a lot here…Apologetics, I mean Luke spends four verses grounding the story he is telling in space, time, and history, and taken from people he could “fact che

We’re wrapping up a whole semester of sermons haunted by the prophecy of Habakkuk. His potent and provocative image of a world “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord” has influenced our own vision statement: “Saturating our neighborhoods with feasting families who tell a better story by setting tables of God’s grace for the lonely.” So, as our energy turns toward family holidays over the next several weeks, I think it would be helpful for us to consider just what exactly elevates a shared meal to the status of a feast. There are three main features that overlap to form a feast – focuses that make sure our holidays are holydays:Love – Genuine affection for and self-denying service of both family and guests.Luxury – Gratuitous sensual provision, far beyond what is necessary for survival.Liturgy – Grateful acknowledgement of God’s glorious story in every event and detail.All three of these features are needed for a Biblical feast, and to neglect one or two is to miss out on the formative practice al

Most of my aquatic experience with boats has been with the motorized variety, but not all... I have known the thrill of taking a skirted kayak down river rapids in North Carolina, or the more mundane pleasure of working a canoe down a stream in Arkansas or Tennessee. While in Mississippi, my experience on the water was fishing farm ponds, using a single paddle to move the boat along. Only a few times have I been in an actual row boat, the kind that has two oars that fit in oarlocks (which are a kind of holder that attaches to the gunwale of a boat and acts as a fulcrum for rowing).             This work with oars to propel a boat to a destination is different than what you do in a kayak or canoe or paddling a boat. In this position, you actually face the opposite way from where you are trying to head the boat. You are actually looking backwards to go forward.             This is actually a good picture of the vision we see in Habakkuk. When faith ebbs, hope is almost extinguished, and the heart is broken, God

We have just come through Halloween. It is a festive time to be really present in your neighborhood and have some fun while getting your steps in, as you follow wild, costumed children trick-or-treating down the middle of the street. Vats of chili are cooked, hot dogs are roasted, and themed cocktails with outlandish names are served. The reason we do this is somehow lost on us or has been forgotten. In the original sense, Halloween was done to mock evil. Yes, that is right—the way Satan is defeated is through laughter and joy. This week we see something similar in Habakkuk. Without giving too much away, the vision God gives Habakkuk is not only that the just will live by faith alone—sort of socially grinding out a righteousness—no, this week we see the rest of the story. The bulk of the vision is a series of taunts or mockery of evil. Five taunts are leveled at Babylon. It is like God is making fun of Babylon and showing God’s people that, as they live by faith in the midst of a reign of terror, they are not

Sometimes you have serendipitous moments in life. We have all had them, usually not big things, like I had this week. I have been fighting armadillo in my yard. Armadillos are right up there with moles as prey that will destroy your flowers, grass, and beds. Not to mention they carry leprosy. Teri is threatening to not plant flowers anymore unless I get rid of them. I have eradicated them in the past when we had an influx of these scaled menaces, but this time I had not been successful. Until the other night.             Piper is our dog. She is a therapy dog, bought for that purpose, and she is amazing. However, little did I know there was more to her than meets the eye. We were about to get ready for bed when Piper goes to the bay window in the kitchen and starts trying to tear the window out. I put on a head lamp, opened the garage door, and there it was, rooting up my Zoysia. With little trouble, I eradicate the problem.             I was rejoicing over Piper pointing this out and let her in the backyard

One of the things that keeps coming up among those who have left the faith (or are deconstructing their faith) is that when they brought their doubts about Christianity or matters of faith to their parents, youth leaders, or church leaders, they were told, “We don’t ask those questions here.” Or, "Just accept it on faith.” As if doubt were the cardinal sin or, if you are a believer trusting in Jesus, doubt is not part of a life of faith.            Habakkuk would beg to differ. Habakkuk prayed to God for revival at the beginning of the book and God said, I am bringing judgement. We don’t know how long Habakkuk sat in that grim truth before he makes his second complaint to heaven, but when he does, we see faith on fire with all the dynamics of a living person interacting with a God he knows intimately. We see the whole world of a living faith navigating a fallen world, where the unimaginable happens, and it doesn’t resolve into a nice neat box with a ribbon on it.             This Sunday we will talk about fai

I was between meetings in East Memphis last week and thought I would camp out at a coffee shop where one of our residents works part time. Walking in, I ran into a young man I’ve had a few spiritual conversations with but hadn’t seen in a couple of years. He asked what I was preaching on next and when I told him Hebrews 10, his eyes lit up. He quoted the entire passage from memory and said, “But what does it mean!?”  Whenever we start talking about how “the righteous shall live by faith,” the conversation inevitably turns to questions of eternal security and the assurance of salvation. How can I know I’m saved? What happens to people who seemed to believe and now have walked away, or “deconstructed,” or apostatized? As Greg mentioned last week, we’re doing an excursus from our current series (taking the scenic route, maybe), to see how the New Testament authors use the key phrase from our Habakkuk series. Now we’ve come to Hebrews 10, which seems to work against a reformed understanding of the perseverance of

Let's take a bit of an excursion together! Or more specifically, an excursus. An excursus is a moment where an author moves away from the main topic to take a journey somewhere else that might fill in the main topic with more information and meaning. This is something you find in Moby Dick as Melville devotes entire chapters to ropes and cetology. Or more recently, you can find it in Star Wars with excurses (Solo, Rogue One, etc) giving meaning and depth to the main Skywalker Saga. We've been in the book of Habakkuk for the last three weeks, looking at Habakkuk's burden and the first complaint/response cycle. Before we get into the more well-known second complaint/response cycle with its famous phrase, “the righteous shall live by his faith,” we'll take a two-week excursus to the New Testament to see the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy. I believe it will provide clearer telos, meaning, and application to the phrase before we encounter it in Habakkuk. This phrase is picked up in Romans, Galatians, and He