Love Not Fear

With the COVID19 situation, my church Northminster Presbyterian in Pearl River, LA is experimenting with providing worship online. The idea is to let us gather together if only in spirit, and hopefully be a voice of God's peace and grace to the world. I'm going to document here what we did, in case it's of interest or use to other small churches. I'm quite the geek, so it's probable that this can be done more simply. I doubt it could be done cheaper, though... The team was our pastor (Sue Loper), my wife and church pianist Christie Ruppel, my daughter Emily Ruppel, and I. The four of us worshiped together and recorded it. Design We were hoping to approximate our weekly worship as closely as we could. Normally, we have a slideshow with the parts of worship, the hymn numbers, the Scripture passages, and some of the responses, along with some graphics in support of the sermon. So, I wanted to display the slideshow on screen, and also Pastor Sue. I considered ...

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 h...

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...

Last Sunday (July 29, 2018), I was asked to talk about 5 minutes on some of the mission work I do with  an emphasis on why I do it and what it means to me. It was part of a worship service where the sermon  was made up of several of us giving similar 5 minute talks. Here's mine: I’ve been asked to talk about Miramon Center and Okra Abbey. I promise I’ll get there… For a long time I thought that  the best ways to spread the Good News was to argue with people, or to  advertise to them. And that the way to measure my discipleship was by the number of people and  pledge dollars I brought into church on Sunday. But that’s wrong. The way to spread the Good News to people is to show them hard, solid, difficult love. For me, part of doing love is telling people the truth that I wish I heard when I was younger, and sometimes the truth I wish I heard more often now. So I sit down with the preschoolers here once a month or so and listen to them, ...

[ I preached this at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Pearl River on August 20, 2017. It is based on a sermon by my friend Dedie Kelso. I recorded the video the day before while I was practicing.] Goodness Grace Us: A Sermon on the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18: 9-14) The opening number of the Broadway musical Wicked has the citizens of Oz celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. “No one mourns the wicked,” they sing. Later, they sing, “Goodness knows, we know what Goodness is.” But do we? I’m sure there are people who would disagree, but I think the Bible, and Jesus, take life as we know it and turn it upside down. In the Bible, and particularly in the teachings of Jesus, it’s often true that the people most of society thinks are wicked and bad are in fact good, and the people that most of society thinks are good and righteous are anything but. Jesus frequently points out that our idea of “bad” and “good” simply aren’t God’s ideas. Consi...