It happens every year.  We send out a batch of Christmas letters and a few weeks later the post office returns a couple of them, or a family member writes with the sad news that a once-a-year friend had died.  It happened this year.  A son wrote that both his parents had died in the past year. Nam was in his 80s and Lin, perhaps a decade or so younger.

Nam and Lin and their three sons – well, two of their sons; the third was their American baby – came to the United States as refugees from Vietnam during the Boat People crisis of the 1970s.  The story of their escape was one of great drama and danger as they became separated at sea and not reunited until months later at a refugee processing center in the U.S.  In time, the church in Oregon I would serve in the 1980s sponsored the family and provided a home for them in a small house on the church grounds and a job for Nam as church custodian.  Nam would serve the church for nearly 40 years, and I shared eight of those years with him.

I have been thinking about Nam since we received the word of his death.  I had forgotten what a good friend he was.  Nam was a tailor by trade but had been a bartender on an American base during the war years.  His English was good enough to take drink orders in an officers’ club, but sometimes difficult to understand in deeper conversation.  But we had deep conversations.  I had deeper and better conversations with Nam than with anyone on the ministry staff or others on the support staff. Nam was a friend. Continue reading →

Sunday will be the last day of the year and the last day of my term as ad hoc interim pastor at Ossian First Presbyterian Church in Ossian, Indiana.  Retrospectives on 2023 abound online, so I will confine myself to a retrospective on my 20 months at OPC, as the congregation calls her.

Just after Easter 2022, I received a call from the chair of our presbytery’s Ministerial Committee.  A good friend, he told me the story of one of our congregations that had just gone through a difficult separation with their pastor.  Would I be willing to moderate their upcoming session (board of elders) meeting?  Sure, I’d be happy to give a Tuesday night to a church in need.

The third Tuesday in April 2022 became 20 or more Session meetings as the elders worked through the immediate and then the longer term “what next?” questions, and, in time, called a congregational meeting to elect a pastor search committee and then, some months later, another meeting to call a new pastor. Continue reading →

Becky and I are with family this week, and wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!  Perhaps sometime in the next two or three days you might find time to read these accounts of the Nativity as told first by Luke and then by Matthew:

Luke 2:1–20

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Continue reading →

The word joy is making its annual appearance in our joyless world this month.  We might call joy a crossover word – explicitly linked to the story of Jesus’ birth, it also appears with holly and candy canes for completely secular purposes. “Christmas Joy” is the title of a cheesy Hallmark movie I have not seen and don’t plan on seeing (If I haven’t seen it, how do I know it is cheesy?  As I said, it’s a Hallmark movie.)

So, what is joy? Specifically what is Christmas joy, if not a cheesy Hallmark movie?

The small group Becky and I are a part of, our Life Group, met earlier this week and we talked about joy using as our text the story of the angel’s message to the shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night.  “Good news of great joy that will be for all the people” the angel says.  And then he fills the message with meaning, “For to you is born this day in the City of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

But what is joy, this response to the good news of the birth of Christ? What is Christmas joy, Christian joy? Joy is  mentioned nearly 200 times in the Old and New Testaments, but our lexicons won’t help much in getting at its meaning.  The Hebrew word is said to mean “gladness, joy, mirth, rejoicing.”  The Greek word is defined as “joy, rejoicing, happiness, gladness.” Joy is common to the human experience.  We know it when we see it. Continue reading →

I will be preaching to wise people this coming Sunday.  For sure those in the congregation at Ossian First Presbyterian Church, but also those plaster figures behind me.  Each Advent the church displays a classic nativity scene in the chancel right in front of the communion table.

No Second Commandment comments are planned, but I will tell those wise men – Magi the NIV pew Bibles will say – that they don’t belong.  Yeah, a quick rehearsal of what the text in Matthew does and does not say.  Gifts of three kinds but not three wise men.  No Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. Not a stable and a manger bed, but a house with a baby perhaps as many as two years after the night an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds who were sore afraid. No angel choir and no friendly beasts.

But after the great debunking, I won’t ask the Magi to leave the chancel.  They’re welcome to stay.  I’ll be talking to them. Continue reading →