Rev. Zach

Luke 15:1-31 “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” Today is part two of a three-part series exploring the themes of the Triennium Youth Conference. Today we’re talking about sin. You should be glad to know we talked about sin. We didn’t shy away from it. We talked about sin as a thing we do, but also as an orientation and as a system. We sang, “O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wand'ring heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above” I love that tune. I even loved singing In an Age of Twisted Values to the same tune earlier this morning. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking, “Didn’t we do the whole sin and repentance thing in Lent? Isn’t the prayer of confession at the beginning of the service enough? It’s kind of like a “mini Lent” even Sunday anyway,...

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20        2 Corinthians 5:16-21        Luke 19:1-10 You guys look so great today! Let’s take a selfie! Thanks, now I want to make sure that I have your consent on how I use this image. This is going to sound weird, but please close your eyes. If anyone does not want me to post this image on my sermon blog, please raise your hand. Ok, great! Open your eyes. [Sadly, my selfie skills are not the best. Even though they all gave consent, it wasn’t worth posting! Turns out that moderation is also a way to control your narrative, as noted below.] I’m sure we all have mixed opinions about selfies, but this is the way that Sandra Maria Van Opstal , opened her sermon at this year’s Triennium , our Tri-annual youth conference. Today begins a three-part series based on the scriptures and themes of that conference. Today we begin with “ Here’s my heart .” We also began with a selfie. That’s because our scriptures speak of self-offering. They ...

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21 Recently my daughter confirmed something that I have been dreading. She read a few references from a meme that demonstrated the fact that the ’80s are for her as the ’50s were for me. That’s a little depressing, as I have an idealized view of the ’50s and a crassly cynical view of the ’80s. It was, however, a simpler time. In the summer of 1987, I was a junior in High School. We had no internet. I had a car and a job as a clerk in a video store (my generation’s version of a soda jerk). We had no air conditioning, and on warm Georgia nights I would listen to crickets and tree frogs and my hound dog, Penney. I would also listen to a college radio station – 88.5, Album 88 – that played the deft sounds of punk rock. The Ramones and the Clash would lull me to sleep. One night I heard the Godfathers play a song that would stay with me forever. They sang “I’ve been high and I’ve been low, but I don’t know which way t...