Sermon Blog

It was long before “match,” “eharmony,” “christiansingles” “dot coms”; or apps like “tinder” and “Plenty of Fish.” Every generation has had its method or methods for determining the perfect match…all the way back to the times of the village matchmaker.  When I was in elementary, middle, and high school, we had a very scientific way of determining whether a person we were interested in would be our perfect match.  We knew exactly how to determine if it would be true love.  It was a simple mathematical test.  You would take each person’s full name and write them each on a piece of paper.  Then below the names you would make four columns.  The first would have the letters “T-R-U-E” in descending order.  The third would have the letters “L-O-V-E” in a similar fashion.  Then you would count up numbers of “T’s” in both names and write it down in the second column beside the “T,” the number of “R’s,” write it beside the “R,” and so on.  Then you would add the columns downward and total it up

I have to confess that when it comes to watching television, Anita and I are crime show junkies.  We used to watch CSI—all the variations of them—but they have ceased to air, so after the last episode of CSI: Cyber (which I was glad to see come to a close, worst of the variations), we had to decide what to watch.  With Netflix on hand, we settled on trying Criminal Minds—that became our new show (but we have only watched what’s on Netflix, so please don’t talk to us about anything from this last season).  The fourteenth episode of the first season was probably the clincher for me.  It was called “Riding the Lightning.”  In this episode, the Behavior Analysis Unit is sent to interview a husband and wife who are on death row for the murder of 12 girls and their son, whose body has never been found.  The husband has confessed to the murder of the girls (the number of which, during the show goes from 12 to 13 to 14 to 18), the wife has only confessed to killing the son after being direc

It’s happened a lot over the last 21 ½ years.  It happened in Oxford.  It happened in Rich Square.  It happened in Milwaukee.  It has happened a whole lot in Burlington.  It has happened most frequently in that long stretch of hallway that runs from my office to the Fellowship Hall.  I will be walking along the hallway, either deep in thought about something going on, maybe even, on Sunday morning, about the sermon.  Sometimes it happens while I am walking up the hall alongside someone else and we are carrying on a deep conversation.  Maybe we’re at Pilgrimage with the youth group, surrounded by thousands of other youth…I know it has happened there, at least once.  What is happening?  I am walking along and all of a sudden I hear, “Pastor Lee!”  What’s the big deal about that?  Haven’t I told folks to call me either Lee or Pastor Lee?  Yes, I have.  Don’t I hear that repeatedly on Sunday mornings and throughout the week?  Well, yes.  The trouble is, the voices that I heard saying “Pas