Date: January 12, 2020
Scriptures: Matthew 3:13-17
Some of you have heard me share of my experience as a federal prison inmate. I share a piece of that experience again today: a powerful lesson I learned in my first few days in prison of the personal and impersonal meaning of baptism.

A word of context is in order: Based on life-altering experiences working with Central American refugees a quarter century ago, I took a leap of faith in 2001 I had never dreamed of taking. That year, at an annual funeral procession that trespassed onto a U.S. military base – a base that taught Latin American military officers how to “neutralize” their insurgents – I became one of thousands of witnesses to-date who have committed an act of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Date: January 5, 2020
Scriptures: Matthew 2:1-12

The year was 1998. And I was preparing to leave my first church to serve my second church as an ordained pastor.

I was delighted by the interest a church in Ann Arbor, MI was showing me, a small-town rookie parson in Oklahoma. Everything about the Michigan church seemed aflame with the light of today’s Star of Epiphany. For one, it was a More Light church, as LGBT-inclusive congregations such as this one are called – and we became one here at BPC in 2010. More Light: at that time, that Michigan church was one of about 100 congregations of over 11,000 in our denomination at bound more to its mission to be LGBT-inclusive than to be institutionally exclusive. Bound more to the principles of Jesus, that church believed, than to the powers of Jerusalem.

In Honor of Michael, Lisa, Alan, Brian, Diane, Beth, Kelly, Rose, Jenny, Patrick, Fred, Ed … and countless others who have taught me and those around us, “Just BE the Church”

Date: June 30, 2019
Scriptures:  Genesis 3:1-13 | Galatians 3:23-29 | Mark 12:38-42  

I have one word of job advice for my son, Andrew, who is present with us this one Sunday before we embark on a two-week excursion together …

Son: Always look for a job from a job. In other words: If at all possible, don’t leave a job without another opportunity in-hand.

Not that I have always followed my own advice. For in 1998, I tendered my resignation from my first pastorate … without a new pastorate in-hand. 

For after serving the minimum of three years I had agreed to serve at my first congregational call in rural Oklahoma: I was done.

Date: June 23, 2019
Scriptures:  Isaiah 65:1-9 | Luke 8:26-39  

Prayer: Lord, save us on one side from our easy comfort – and on the other from any liberal guilt – that we might be aware and assume our share of responsibility of the dirty laundry piled high in the basement of our society.  That, in that awareness, we may discover your grace. And in your grace, discover your peace.  Amen.

Date: June 16, 2019 — Trinity Sunday
Scriptures:  Romans 5:1-5  

“Where my life was broken and healed is the greatest gift I can give anybody.”

These are the words of an old friend of mine named Tom. At the age of 24, in an alcoholic blackout, Tom ran over and killed two young people. In the 50 years since, he became the first ex-con hired by the state of North Carolina to serve in corrections – rising to the top to design programs for rehabilitating youthful offenders like he was. Tom has grown in sobriety for over 50 years into a man of admirable and astonishing wisdom.

Date: June 9, 2019 — Day of Pentecost
Scriptures:  Genesis 11:1-9  |  The Acts of the Apostles 2:1-12

For twenty centuries – in all places and spaces – the Christian Church in its life and ministry has struggled with the dilemma of The One and The Many. How to situate our one good news story of Christ that the kin-dom of God is near, in the midst of the many cultural situations we have found ourselves.

 The Tower of Babel story today presents us I believe with one response to this One and the Many dilemma – our 20th century response. The Pentecost story, on the other hand, presents us with a vision more compatible with being church in this 21st century.

5/26/19: Easter 6
Scriptures: Acts of the Apostles 16:9-15 … John 14:25-29

I would like to begin my message this Memorial Day weekend by honoring the legacy of someone who returned safely from war and knew so many who did not.

His parents allowed him to leave high school to enlist for military duty in World War II – and his formal education ended there. And yet Melvin “Red” Allen, a parishioner in my first pastoral call in rural Oklahoma, possessed a perspicacity for our English language far beyond his knowing what perspicacity means. (It means perceptiveness, by the way.)

One day, while we were fording a swollen stream in his pickup truck, I commiserated with Red how difficult it must be to go back and forth over this brook in wet weather.

Red stroked his chin. “Wellll,” he said, “I wouldn’t say it’s difficult to go back and forth across it. I would say it’s difficult to go forth and back.”

“Forth and back?”