The Pulpiteer

Here is a piece I wrote for our July Newsletter.  I thought it would be good to share via the blog.

I really enjoy my garden. I don’t know how good of a gardener I am, but I’m good enough to have tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies to eat at the end of the summer. There is nothing like vine ripened tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers from your own garden. We celebrate the harvest with BLT’s, stuffed peppers, homemade coleslaw, and fresh broccoli. This year I’ve tried growing lettuce for the first time, and already it has been fun to step out the back door and grab some fresh lettuce to top our grilled burgers. Continue Reading »

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This week’s sermon comes from 2 Kings 2:1-14 and it covers the story of Elijah ascending to the heavens, and Elisha continuing his ministry.  For this message I raise the question of our legacy as a church.  Will our community be positively impacted because we were here?  Then I show the parallels between Elisha and the church today.  The program that I mention, Kids Hope USA can be found here.

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This past week I had the pleasure of preaching back at my home church in Portland.  It was such a joy to be able to share a message with the congregation that has had such a hand in shaping my faith.  I preached on Revelation 6:1-8 and tweaked a sermon I did last fall called the 5th Horseman.  The point of the sermon is that we are in trouble (now) as conquest, warfare, famine, and death have been a part of human history.  We have one hope, one hero, and that I Christ, the 5th horseman found in Revelation 19.  Much of the material about Rwanda can be found in the amazing book, “As We Forgive,” I’ll link it below.

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As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda
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50 used & new available from USD 2.49

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Another, fairly brief point I can bring up from the Naboth story in 1 Kings 21 has to do with Ahab’s statements about Naboth’s reason for denying Ahab his vineyard.  Naboth’s reason for not selling or trading his vineyard is found in verse 3, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”  Ahab repeats this once, muttering to himself in verse 4, “I will not give you my ancestral inheritance.” And once more he restates it as he explains to Jezebel why he did not get his vineyard in verse 6, where he claims that Naboth said, “I will not give you my vineyard.”  If we compare the responses side by side we can see the changes: Continue Reading »

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I do happen to enjoy our vegetable garden...

The story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21, is full of challenging little bits.  Since I couldn’t get to them all in this past week’s sermon, I wanted to do a few posts on some of those elements.

Naboth had a vineyard. Ahab wanted to purchase it and make it into a vegetable garden. Little details like this are the things that make the Old Testament so fun for me. Israel is compared in scripture to a vineyard (Psalm 80, Isaiah 5), and since vineyards take a while to become established, the vineyard tended to be symbolic of a place being established and having had some peace for a time. The vineyard is a sign of God’s abundance. The only other time the word for “vegetable garden” is used in the Old Testament is in Deuteronomy 11:10. It states, “For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.” Continue Reading »

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