I’m just back from a study leave trip to California. I couldn’t have asked for a better trip, though there was the matter of both the flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco and the flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia being delayed by mechanical issues on the planes.  The outbound flight was flight was two and a half hours late because the original and the replacement plane required repairs of some sort. The passengers never knew exactly what that was all about.

The return trip left San Francisco 90 minutes late because of a missing screw somewhere on the tail rudder.  Apparently the repair took about 20 minutes and the paperwork to document the repair took over and hour to prepare and file.  The passengers were told all about it.

It is a tale of two pilots. Continue reading →

I’ve lost track of exactly how many times I have attended the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors Conference.  I know the number is well over 30.  I began to attend when I lived on the west coast, but before I was a pastor. I have been nearly each of the 25 years I’ve been a pastor, but as a pastor I’ve never lived on the west coast.  Kent will be my roommate once again.  Kent was also the best man at our wedding. Kent and I met our first year of college. We go back a ways. Jonathan and Kristy will be there, as well. We go back only ten years, but in recent years they have come to add even more joy to attending the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors Conference.

The West Coast Presbyterian Pastors Conference always begins eight days after Easter and it is always held at Mount Hermon Conference Center in the redwood forest above Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay on the central coast of California.  The speakers are almost always good and the friendships are of the best sort. Continue reading →

While we were doing some calendar work at our last staff meeting, Tyler, our youth director, noticed that his calendar showed this coming Sunday first as April Fools Day then as Easter. A quiet commentary on our world, if nothing else.

The last time Easter Sunday fell on April 1 was 1956. Only we senior citizens have a memory of an April Fools Day Easter.

My twin brother was the master of April Fools Day.  I fell for his lines more than once in the 1950s. It was probably more like 1959, but I remember the April 1 when Joseph ran excitedly into the house to announce snow was falling. April 1. San Diego, California. I ran to the window to see the never in a lifetime phenomenon. “April Fools!” he shouted victoriously. Continue reading →

I took the photo of our Easter Worship sign on the curb in front of the church yesterday around noon.  Though the melt was on, the snow from Wednesday’s nor’easter was still piled against the sign, maybe a sign that Easter is not about daffodils and butterflies after all.

Most likely our English word for the day we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter, comes from an Old English word, Ēostre, the name of the Germanic goddess of spring.  The Christians borrowed the goddess’ name and festival and converted it to their own uses. The pagans have been unhappy ever since.

Ēostre’s influence over our remembering of the Day of Resurrection has always lingered, usually a benign metaphorical use of the things of spring, daffodils and butterflies, bunnies and eggs, to remind us of new life in Christ. Continue reading →

The message at Sunday’s 9:45 service will be brought by the 40 plus voices of our choirs through “Sanctuary: A Cantata of Hope and Peace.”  One of the many things I like about “Sanctuary” is that it does not hurry us along as we make our way to the empty tomb. We will travel slowly through Holy Week, lingering in the Upper Room, the Garden of Gethsemane, and elsewhere, seeking to find the sanctuary, the refuge, that Jesus and his disciples may have found in the quiet and safe places of those chaotic days.

The cantata avoids a common church trap so aptly, if a bit coarsely, described by Kate Bowler, the Duke Divinity School professor who lives with metastasized colon cancer and whose story I have referenced here and from the pulpit.  Bowler describes the Lenten trap of “Easter-ing the crap out of people’s Lent, where we just want to make it joyful. We imagine that because everything is going to turn out, we can skip the suffering.” (More on that at our 8:30 and 11:30 services.) Continue reading →