Love Not Fear

The Parable of the Unjust Judge is a parable of Jesus found in the Gospel of   Luke . Luke gives it a little preface that says, in essence, "Jesus told us a story to get us to pray and not give up." And then comes the story: So there's this judge who is as corrupt as possible. He doesn't care about God, people, morality, or justice. Under his jurisdiction is a widow who keeps asking him for justice in some matter. (Widows in that time had very little social status, no financial security, and no connections.) Now, the widow knew that being right was not going to do her much good, so she just bugged the judge day and night, making herself into a royal pain in his rear. So, eventually, the judge realizes that even though he doesn't care about justice, and cares even less about this nasty, annoying widow (even admitting it out loud), he does care about being able to get a decent meal in peace now and then, so he does what she wants to get rid of her. Jesus t

[I preached this sermon on October 13, 2019 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Pearl River, LA]   I have superpowers. No, I can’t fly or bend inch-thick iron bars or explain why there are 14 schools in the Big 10 football conference and 10 schools in the Big 12. But I have my own superpowers, and at the risk of drawing the attention of some three-lettered government agency, I’d like to tell you about one of them: super-hearing. I can’t hear dog whistles or people whispering a mile away. It’s more subtle than that, and I can’t really control it. Let me explain with an example. Last Saturday, I had nothing written down for this sermon, and it was starting to bother me. I had ideas, but I never know whether an idea is any good until I try to put it into actual words, in actual sentences and actual paragraphs. So, I got out of the house and went to McDonald’s to get a drink and try to write. I had a notebook, an obscene number of pencils and pens (just to be sure I had o

I preached this sermon on June 23, 2019 at Northminster Presbyterian Church. I was filling in for our pastor, whose husband was in hospice. He died earlier that morning. You know, almost everyone who preaches on that second bit of scripture focuses on the demons or the demon-possessed suicidal pigs, and I understand, because how often do you get to say the words “demon-possessed suicidal pigs”… in church yet? But for today, I’m not going to focus on the demon-possessed suicidal pigs. I’m going to focus more on the naked guy, but first, a story and some poetry talk. Recently, the father of Richard, a co-worker and friend, died. I got a card for Richard, and passed it around the lab so that we could all sign it for him. Now this was right before Father’s Day, so the greeting card shelves were a little sparse on anything that wasn’t birthday or Father’s Day related. There was one sympathy card, and it was blank inside. That meant that I had to write something, and that meant everyo