Sturtz Stuff

I think I was in college when I heard a professor say “Life is hard and people are complex.” That is true especially in our current cultural moment mixed with the Christmas season. Often during Christmas we get focused on and are reminded of the problems we can’t solve. The people we can’t control and the expectations we can’t meet. Truth be told at the heart of our dismay is ourselves. I am the problem that I can't fix. I am the person I can’t seem to control and I am the person setting expectations that others can’t meet.  We say Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year but it often does not seem that way. It doesn’t seem that way because of all of the hecktic things happening in our lives. The Christmas season also highlights who is no longer physically present in our lives. It is no small thing then to remember that the Christmas story tells us that God has not forgotten us. God has not given up on us. Instead God has come to be with us! Christmas reminds us of who is f...

The Sunday worship service was coming to a close. The senior minister that I had been serving with stood on the worship stage to give the closing prayer. Before he gave the closing prayer he announced the results of the vote of confidence that had been held on the Sunday prior. He went on to announce that he had not received 75% of the congregational vote and therefore this would be his last Sunday.  There is a long back story as to what brought about this vote of confidence on the minister. Long story short is that there was some kind of a conflict between the senior minister and some long time members of the church. Those members complained to and colluded with some of those serving as an Elder to have a vote of confidence on the senior minister. On the Sunday of the vote attendance was high. People who had not been in attendance for many months rolled out of bed just to cast their vote.  When the senior minister announced it was his last Sunday some people began to get up a...

There are a lot of things to protest in our culture at the moment. We have witnessed protests that desire to lament racism. We have seen protests that yearn for justice for the disenfranchised and poor. In the midst of all of this I have not witnessed a single protest suggesting that less listening needs to happen. “There is too much listening!” is not the cry of any protester. In fact there is a deep desire to be heard. Not just heard but listened to and understood in some manner.  In all my years of doing local church ministry, serving as a chaplain, being a Father or just doing life I have never had anyone complain about having been listened to well. Nobody has ever complained that they felt someone had truly listened to them. Most of us have experienced the opposite. Perhaps there are a few rare occasions that we might recall in our lives when we could say that someone truly listened to us.  More often we feel ignored. We feel like there was a lot of talking yet nobody was...

13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. 17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. (Mark 12:13-17)  What are your politics Jesus? That is what these questioners sent by the Pharisees and the Herodians want to know. They trot out a specific and highly contentious political issue in an attempt to trip Jesus up. The Pharisees...

I heard a story about a church minister that had put on a marriage seminar. One of the skills that the minister taught the couples in attendance was reflective listening. It is a method of listening to what someone is saying and then reflecting or repeating what you heard the speaker say back to them. It is a slow and methodical way for couples to communicate. Yet it can be highly effective, especially if things between the couple are tense emotionally. Once the minister explained the skill he then asked the couples to practice. After a few moments one of the guys spoke up and said “I don’t think this is going to work for my marriage.” The minister replied “Why not?” The gentleman explained, “This seems nice and all but when I fight I just want to have a fight.” That’s fair. There is some emotional release in fighting. A good fight can make us feel alive and vigorous. Sometimes a fight can remind us about the things that are meaningful and important to us. Anger isn’t always bad. It is...

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” 30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. 31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descenda...

We were all born into a world that is in love with differences. The love language that we have all learned is that of enmity towards those who are different. By the time I was a teenager I had been to Sunday School long enough to learn that all other churches except for those from my tradition were suspect. Their doctrine was wrong. Their view of the Bible was wrong. The church I went to emphasized, almost every Sunday, that our community did things in the manner of the early church. That made us special. Because our doctrine and practices were better, my church was in some sense superior to say a Baptist church or a Methodist church. We knew who the real Christians were. In fact my church community could give you the book, chapter and verse, from the Bible, as to why we were better.  The central question of faith for me as a kid was who is in and who is out. Faith was a debate and faithfulness was about being both right and self-righteous about being right. This kind of posturing ...

When my youngest son Austin was in the third grade I received a notice from his school that the money in his lunch account had all been used. That really annoyed me. I had just put enough money in his account to last a long while. Yet, here is this notice that more money is needed. Is it just me or when your kids are in school you feel like an ATM machine as a parent. Anyway, here is this notice asking for yet more money. I wasn’t happy about that and I began to make up a story in my head based on a series of assumptions.  Obviously Austin had gone on some kind of a school lunch spending spree. He eats breakfast at home. Why would he eat breakfast again at school? How many cookies are the school lunch workers allowing him to purchase? I had questions that were all based on a bunch of assumptions. I decided that Austin’s foolishness needed to come to an end. I was going to get to the bottom of Austin’s lack of financial responsibility and teach him a lesson. When I asked Austin why ...

There are a lot of things that can totally creep us out. Certain foods. A dark hallway. Halloween night with a full moon. Watching a fast food worker cough into their hands and then use their hands to wrap up your burger. Clowns. People who have way too many cats. Lots of stuff creep us out.  For many the number 666 is creepy. The number is often connected to the Devil, evil happenings or viewed as a bad omen. A few years ago I was doing some visiting rounds as a hospital chaplain. I visited a man who was in room 6XX. The hospital knew that people were creeped out by the number 666 so they changed the room number to 6XX. As I visited with the man in the room he informed me that he was a good Baptist, had been going to church for years, and was mad. I mean he was really mad.  He expressed his great displeasure at being in “the Devil’s room.” He got loud, so loud that I am sure the people at the other end of the hallway could hear him. He had quickly figured out that 6XX was rea...

You may have watched the movie This is the End or End of Days with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Perchance you have seen The Rapture from 1991 or one of the many movies with the title Left Behind. All of these movies offer a take on an idea often called The Rapture. None of these movies were any good and the rapture theology behind them, worse.  The word rapture does not appear anywhere in the Bible and was not used by early Christians. In fact, the first time, in the history of ever, that the word rapture appears is in the 1830s in Scotland. There is a more detailed story yet the key figure to know is a woman named Margaret MacDonald (1815-1840). Margaret achieved a place of influence among a tiny community of Christians who believed that the manifestation of charismatic gifts (such as speaking in tongues) was the only way to address the ills of the world. One aspect of what she became known for was to place herself into a trance-like state. After being in that state she would offer up p...