April 2023 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

Safe This Far

1 Chronicles17:16-17 Years ago, a young man named Samuel Jones felt the overwhelming sense of being called to Christian ministry. He went to his pastor with this news. To his surprise, the pastor immediately set him up with a date to preach. It would be a Sunday evening service. Samuel threw himself into preparations for a sermon that he hoped would impress everyone. That Sunday evening, he stood in the pulpit and looked out at a full congregation, all there to hear and encourage him. He began to preach his prepared sermon, full of big words and clever arguments. But soon he began to stumble. And he was lost. He could not remember anything he wanted to say. He was ashamed and stepped down from the pulpit feeling so much the failure. But as he walked away, he felt God asking him a question: Samuel, have I really given you nothing? The […]

Trusting the Dark

Luke 1:26-38 John 19: 38 – 20:1 New life starts in the dark. The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes this in her book called, Learning to Walk in the Dark. New life starts in the dark. Growth happens in the dark. Right now, every day, I am watching so much growth happening in our yard – trees budding, leaf unfolding; liriope, hosta, lilies all bursting up from the ground, one day there is nothing there, the next day there is a green leafy plant. Last summer I planted some sweet woodruff under a tree. “Grow,” I told it, “spread like you’re supposed to.” It didn’t respond last summer. But this week I Iooked out and saw how much more ground it is covering as it comes up out of the dirt. Clearly, it was doing some work, growing down there in the dark. New life starts in the dark. Like […]

Telling Stories

John 20:1-18 Many years ago, my parents moved into a nice rental house in a nice neighborhood. This was shortly after I graduated high school. Most of the years I was growing up, we had lived in town houses, in neighborhoods where they were all rentals. They were okay; there was nothing wrong with them. But this place was different; it was pretty nice. I don’t know how they found this place, probably from an ad the owner had put in the newspaper. And we didn’t know why he was renting out the house, he just was. But nothing abhors a vacuum like the imagination. My mother was great at developing stories. My mother’s favorite words were, “I wonder…” as she began to let her imagination spin out a tale that would give meaning to whatever was on her mind. When she began wondering about our landlord, she went to work. She asked aloud, “I wonder […]

The Unexpected

Matthew 21:1-11 There is a film called The Banshees of Inisherin about a man named Padraic. He is a sweet, gentle guy. He lives on a little island off the coast of Ireland, sharing a cottage with his sister, Siobhan, who loves him. Padraic has a friend Colm, who he thinks loves him, and life is fine – until it isn’t. Something that is said again and again throughout the story is that Padraic always thought of himself as one of the good ones; never harmed anyone, always a kind word for everyone. But when he gets pushed hard enough, it turns out he is capable of some pretty horrific things. Padraic is changed through the course of this story. But in the end, he’s not a different person. He is just showing something that has always been inside of him. It was unexpected. But, in truth, it’s something that is inside of all of us, if we are truthful; […]

The Liberator

John 11:1-45 I was once a guest at a family’s dinner table, when they were talking about people they knew. And when the name of one particular person came up, the tone became sharply negative, critical. The matriarch of the family looked up with surprise and a little bit of confusion. Apparently, she had not received the memo: this person is on our bad list now. She looked around and said, “Oh, we don’t like them anymore?” She shrugged. “Okay.” And that was it. The unwritten rule in the household was everyone had to think alike, because disagreeing led to conflict. And “our family,” they would say, doesn’t have conflict. To be fair, all families desire agreement, want harmony in the home. Even if we are willing to harbor some disagreement, we pick our battles carefully. We don’t want conflict for the sake of conflict; if we are going […]