Messiah's Mixtape
A Progression of Pilgrims
July 31, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 68:24–35
“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.” ― Abraham Joshua Heschel “This hill, though high, I covet to ascend; The difficulty will not me offend. For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear. Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.” ― John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” — Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad ---------------------------------------------------- Well, we’ve come to the end of our Messiah’s Mixtape Series. While I love starting a new thing, I’m learning not to rush on to the next event without reflecting carefully on what’s passed. Mostly Allie has taught me this discipline, which has an element of healthy grieving to it. Maybe that’s why we don’t stop to process our experiences often enough: because it feels too much like a death. But I can’t begin to tell you what a blessing it is to grieve as those who have hope. It’s a kind of gratitude to look back and remember all the providence of God, and I have so loved this provision. We began our summer in the Psalms by looking at Mary’s Magnificat, wondering at the womb that nourished our Messiah with the songs of Israel. Then, we dug into those Psalms and considered Jesus from so many angles: One who is not only God, but is also truly human. Alongside us He desires, and mourns, and suffers, and longs, and hopes. And He does so within and on behalf of a people, a family, made out of love. I’m honestly so glad we had Will to preach three of those Psalms. His keen perspective and pastoral kindness are a daily gift to me personally and I love that we got to share that part of him with you, too. If you missed any of those, they’re all archived on our website on the “our worship” page, under the “about us” tab. For the past few weeks, we’ve been wrapping up and hinting ahead to the next series by looking at the Messianic Psalm of Ascension. This final week in Psalm 68 zooms out on the covenant community and sees them joyfully ascending Zion behind their conquering Messiah. What we don’t see (and what the first readers of this Psalm would have known) is the backstory to this part of the Psalm. It’s 2 Samuel chapter 6, where King David undertakes to establish the permanent Temple. All the fanfare and celebration are still there, but we also get two tragic incidents that so haunt the memory of Israel as to sometimes hinder her upward progress. They’re a window into the kinds of things that can hinder our procession of pilgrims, too. I hope you'll join us and be encouraged by the fact that the same grace that brought us safe thus far shall also lead us home. - joshua
The Way Up Is Down
July 24, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 68:11–23
The Way Up Is Down I got a text today from a friend who’s sitting on a beach finishing reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time (oh, to be in his sandals!). He said it had been well over a decade since he’d watched The Return of the King and he had totally forgotten one of its biggest twists. The Witch-King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl, who could “never be hindered by a man” was very much hindered by… a young woman, and a hobbit (half a man, some would say). As surprising and rewarding as that little verbal loophole is to the new (or forgetful) reader, imagine the shock to readers in the decades before women were commonly seen in battle at all! Yet by far the most surprised of creatures was that vile Ringwraith. He never saw it coming, and wouldn’t have believed it if you told him. Those who operate according to the ways and powers of this world cannot conceive of the economy of God. How can it be that the weak could so shame the strong? He was like the Mount of Bashan in Psalm 68 (our text again this week), looking down on “halflings,” like Pippen, or a little hill like Zion, with utter contempt. I was so pleased to discover that the background to this Psalm is formed in part by the story from Judges of Deborah and Barak, and Jael, the brave young woman who brought down the commander Sisera with a tent peg through his temple. What an exhilarating tale of the lowly defeating the exalted! A church member invoked the saying this week as she unexpectedly found herself in a hospital waiting room: “Where dependence is the goal, weakness is an advantage.” I repeat it ad nauseam to you guys because I have found it to be one of the kinder truths I have ever encountered. Don’t get me wrong: I resist feeling or being seen as weak with every fiber of my broken little heart. But that is also exactly where I have most felt the abiding presence of God, for Whom I am made. And He’s been so faithful to show me that the way up is down. So, I hope you can join us this weekend as we continue on to part two of three in plumbing the depths of our final Messianic Psalm this summer. - joshua
God Shall Arise
July 17, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 68:1–10
God Shall Arise Sometimes you just happen onto the right thing. For example, today I ordered a muffin because it looked good in the display case. But it ended up being pumpkin chocolate chip, the smell of which transported me to my childhood in a way that was exactly what I needed in that moment. It reminds me of how I didn’t fall in love with my wife as a result of some rigorous evaluation process designed to match me with the perfect companion and partner. I met a bewilderingly beautiful girl and asked her on a date and she just turned out to be all of those things (and more!). God often uses our non-reflective desires to put us right where he wants us. That is, in fact, how I came to spend a good bit of my study leave this week reading Plato’s Republic with the Dean of the honors program at one of my alma maters. There are many good reasons one would do such a thing, but the first of them is simply that I am a nerd and it sounded fun to me. But as it turns out, since I am preparing to launch us into the Book of Acts this fall, it’s also been a perfect complement to my other studies. After all, the cultural background for the vast majority of New Testament characters and letter recipients was profoundly shaped by the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, I didn’t have the foresight to plan these things to line up so well, but that didn’t stop God from being awesome to me. It’s true that Paul told some of these Corinthian Greeks that to their own people the cross is folly – actually the opposite of man’s wisdom. But he also spent precious time in Athens, the birthplace of these philosophies, using their own arguments to defend the very gospel that would eclipse them. He showed us that understanding a world is an important element in bringing them good news. Likewise, our own internal wrestlings to receive the gospel are helped along when we can identify what exactly it is in us that objects to His love. As Paul Harvey taught us, it’s often the rest of the story that makes sense of the more striking events. No matter how our background sets up our objections to the gospel, for God to have lived on earth and died on a cross only sounds like folly or a scandal if it is not then followed by the truth of His unassailable victory on our behalf. So, for the next three weeks, we’re going to work our way through one last epic song in Messiah’s Mixtape: Psalm 68. Here we will be given a glorious extended picture of the victory of God that follows from the cross of Christ by his resurrection, ascension, and a procession of gifts. - josh
Blessing in Betrayal
July 10, 2022 • Rev. Will Weir • Psalm 41
Blessing in Betrayal On the day of the Collierville fireworks our house becomes, for one glorious evening, party central. We get a huge water slide, invite all the neighbors and nearby community groups, and party down. What a way to live into our victory over Britain, right? Well imagine, then, that in the afterglow of victory’s fireworks, you immediately turn your attention to one of the war’s more painful chapters—the treachery of Benedict Arnold, one of George Washington’s most trusted generals. It would be like the best man bringing up a cheating ex in his reception speech. In a weird way, that’s where we find ourselves as we approach Psalm 41. Last week, Josh led us through Psalm 45, the song of the bridegroom, the King of heaven come to earth to prepare for himself a royal bride. Psalm 41 turns our focus to one who tried to derail the whole project - Judas. But what we find even in the midst of Jesus’s worst suffering at the hands of rebellious humans is that he is still about the work of caring for his beloved. Join us as we reflect on Jesus’s own experience of betrayal and how his suffering in it informs and redeems ours. See you Sunday! - Will
The Work of Waiting
June 26, 2022 • Rev. Will Weir • Psalm 40
Greetings from sunny Michigan, where it feels pretty great outside, and people still keep apologizing for how hot it is. Josh and I have been here this week for our denomination's annual conference, and it's been rich. We've connected with friends and fellow pastors from all over the country, bouncing from meetings to breweries to worship services, and I am both filled and ready to introvert for a bit. During one of our services, they offered a time where people could come forward and receive prayer, and I saw what I think is a pretty good picture of living fully and faithfully here as we try to embody Jesus in the everyday. One of the military chaplains, a tall, very fit guy with fatigues on, was walking to the front carrying a box of kleenex. It's a good picture because it's who Jesus is for us. He is strong, he fights for us, and he wields his strength with meekness, ready to dry our tears. This Sunday we'll look at what it looks like to wait faithfully, and to feel Jesus sustain us in that with strength and kindness. In the meantime, Josh and I have just gotten word that our flight is delayed, so we’ll see if I can walk the talk when it comes to waiting. See you Sunday, unless I fail waiting badly enough for the Air Marshall to intervene. - Will
Enthroned on the Praises
June 12, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 22:21–30
Enthroned on the Praises Have you had the experience yet of running into someone you haven't talked to since before COVID? It was great to catch up with my friend Greg recently, as we hadn’t talked much since he launched a new church plant in that "BC" era. When he shared all that has transpired since then, I was blown away. He’s still planting the church, but that’s about the only thing that didn’t change! No matter how much time I spend with church planters and other pioneers, it never ceases to amaze me how wrong we always are about how the future will unfold. That’s not only true in the birth and life of a church: how much of your own life has come to pass exactly as you predicted? As the military strategist Helmuth von Moltke famously declared, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” It seems making a detailed plan is a really great way to get down on paper exactly what won’t happen. So why do we even bother? I think the reason we do it (and should!) is because making a detailed plan helps us imagine our ideals, our vision and values, in concrete form. It allows us to talk about the dreams we share together. Looking back on the year’s expenses can be an exercise in accountability and discipline, but it’s also often a litany of things we never saw coming. Writing it all down helps us better to see who we desire to be, and who we’re not, despite all our intentions and efforts. But I hope more than anything it’s an opportunity we use to celebrate, not how faithful we were, but how faithful God is. As we prepare to review our church budget this Sunday, I want to encourage us to remember that our greatest responsibility is in asking ourselves questions like, “Is this plan a faithful picture of who we want to be?” and, “Can we offer this budget as a prayer of supplication, asking the Lord to bless our earnest desires to glorify him in all the ministry these digits represent?” The budget is not an interruption in worship to handle the church’s administrative necessities. It is most purely an act of worship. And as we will see in this Sunday's text, worship is first and foremost the overflow of praise in gratitude. So, let’s make sure we remember that the table where we balance our checkbook is the same one where we’ve received the body and blood of Christ our Savior. Thanks be to God for that! - joshua
My God, My God
June 5, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 22:1–10
My God, My God! The halls around me are transforming into the dusty streets of the Ancient Near East. There are seder meal menus and ancient Hebrew scripts on the copier. Veggie Tale songs resonate in the rafters. Yes, Vacation Bible School starts on Monday and soon we will see Jerusalem transposed to a juvenile key. It’s a program lovingly crafted to immerse our children and their neighbors in the world of Jesus’ passion. Amy and I were just laughing about some of the more ridiculous accommodations we make in order to make these things make sense to kids. But that’s just what love does: we speak to be heard, and often this means bringing things down to the young beloved’s level. When God does this kind of thing for his children, theologians call it “divine condescension.” That word “condescend” gets a bad rap these days, but it’s really a kindness: God comes down to us in our inability to ascend to him. I thought about that as we began the infamous Leviticus this week in the Soul Room. Even though it’s a notoriously difficult book to make it through, Leviticus is infinitely valuable source material for a feasting church (peep chapter 23!). More than that, its weirdness is a perfect illustration of the lengths to which Yahweh goes to have his love heard and understood by people whose thoughts are so far below his own. He assumes images, rituals, and languages they already know, and then He exalts those cultural artifacts by using them to express his profound fondness for sinners. What wondrous love. He's doing the same thing for us when Jesus quotes Psalm 22 on the cross. It was common practice those days to reference the first line of a work as an allusion to the entire text. The High Priest Jesus wanted us to be comforted by the fact that in his moment of perfect self-sacrifice, he was relating to us not merely as a substitute, but also as a co-sufferer. To feel alone in our pain is a universal and deeply disorienting human experience. And yet that’s good news too, because, in the words of the ancient father St. Gregory Nazianzen, “That which is not assumed is not redeemed.” Now, no one can ever again be in that place of feeling forsaken without sharing the company of Christ. Let’s talk more about it this Sunday. - joshua PS: Each week during this series, I’ll also be including in this space two playlists – Messiah’s Mixtape, where you can hear fantastic song versions of the Psalms we’re preaching through, and also a “Staff Member Mixtape,” where you can enjoy some of the songs that have shaped us in the past or are inspiring us today. This week, it's Luke!
Refuge, Restoration, Resurrection
May 22, 2022 • Rev. Will Weir • Psalm 16
When a Worship Pastor Preaches Well, this is the week the Smith family heads to Orlando to finally celebrate our 10-year-old’s eighth birthday! I’m sure you can imagine how devastating that pandemic-enforced deferral was for her. There was a lot of that going around back then. I honestly don’t know who mourned their respective delayed trips more – her, or Jim Holland! But what was longed for, has at last come near. The bags are almost (over)packed and sprinkled with pixie dust, and we’ll pull out as early on Sunday morning as I can muster the troops. Another joy was delayed for that couple of years while we readjusted our plans and expectations. I’m so thrilled for you to finally benefit this Sunday from the pulpit ministry of our only teaching elder who has never preached at St. Patrick! As my crew travels south, you’ll have the rare privilege of being led by Rev. Will Weir to the right hand of our Lord, where the pleasures forevermore dwarf even the freshest mouse-and-wizard-themed attractions. Don’t believe me? Just read Psalm 16 and come hear him expound it on Sunday. As a former worship pastor, I have a great appreciation for both the leap and the continuity in moving from one side of the stage to the other. I know Will is the right man to guide you through these words of glorious inheritance in our Messiah. Aside from his great story-craft sensibilities, he is a careful student of Scripture and a profoundly kind man. And you’ll need both, since there’s a treacherous road between here and there, to be sure, and it leads much farther south than we want to go. But as our Senior Pastor always says, “Everything you want is on the other side of hard!” Praise the Lord that his under-shepherds are plentiful, His Spirit is at work and his grace is everything! - j PS: Each week during this series, I’ll also be including in this space two playlists – Messiah’s Mixtape, where you can hear fantastic song versions of the Psalms we’re preaching through, and also a “Staff Member Mixtape,” where you can enjoy some of the songs that have shaped us in the past or are inspiring us today. This week, it's Will!
What Is Man?
May 15, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Psalm 8
Psalm 8: "What Is Man?" [photo] Yes, that little cutie in the Prince-of-Pop-inspired ‘fit is none other than yours truly. He just wants to listen to some tunes with a “big person.” He will perhaps that very day discover songs that range the gamut of emotion and thought. Songs that cut through style and genre across the decades and even centuries to reflect those elements common to the human experience. Words and music that will seep down into his soul and become the language he uses to express that experience – and through those expressions to know what it means to be truly known by others. Now, he doesn’t know any of that yet, but still, he reaches. Language seems to elude us these days, especially when it comes to defining a human – when and how one begins, what its unalienable properties are, and especially what its purpose is. The very first principle of debate is that parties must agree upon the definition of terms. They need to be clear and rich enough to contain the content of our conversations. Unfortunately, much of public discourse today is thwarted before it can even begin, in this initial phase. Yet as I said before, songs go a long way in shaping our internal dictionaries. When we reach for expression in a profound moment, it is more often than not in a song lyric or poetry that our tongues find purchase. And Psalm 8 is a song above all others to give us our definition of Humanity. First, and quite ironically, it defines us as the kind of creature who would even ask such a question! I’m so grateful I get to preach this passage on a Sunday where we are honoring graduating seniors, (a rite of passage into the responsibilities of adult humanity) – and again on Sunday night at our sister church in Huntsville, (where we’ll be ordaining and installing a master of divinity to his pastorate). I love that spectrum and how Psalm 8 hangs in the balance. It’s just like my usual Sunday morning prayer, where I always acknowledge that it is Christ who is the frailty of humanity met with the fullness of divinity, and in Him alone where we may ultimately find ourselves. - j PS: Each week during this series, I’ll also be including in this space two playlists – Messiah’s Mixtape, where you can hear fantastic song versions of the Psalms we’re preaching through, and also a “Staff Member Mixtape,” where you can enjoy some of the songs that have shaped us in the past or are inspiring us today. I’ll go first!
Soundtrack for a Savior
May 8, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Luke 1:46–55
Mary’s Mixtape Last summer, I had a revelation. If you had asked me before then to describe the formative music of my childhood, I would have immediately launched into hard rock, beginning with Led Zeppelin and tracing the thread through the arenas of the eighties and grunge of the nineties. But last July, a favorite artist of mine released somewhat of a throwback album, drawing on what he has called his “mom’s music.” A departure from his usual blues infused riff-rock, this was more the easy listening of Steve Winwood, Phil Collins, and Toto. All of a sudden, I realized that although I had often preferred and chosen the music I heard in my dad’s pickup, it was the songs aimed at my mother and her peers that formed the more frequent soundtrack of my childhood. Air Supply was what played in the doctor’s office waiting room and grocery store aisles. Acts like Don Henley and Jackson Browne were the gentle score of everyday life. And I believe they were every bit as formative to my sensibilities as the stuff I chose for myself. That’s why, although we are officially launching our series on the Messianic Psalms this week, I’m beginning with a New Testament text. (Happy Mothers’ Day!) You see, when Mary was told she’d be the mother of God, she immediately burst out in Psalm. Lots of them, actually. Her Magnificat is like a greatest hits mixtape, just like the ones we used to make and wear out in the days of Magnavox. Her theology is richly layered and broadly sourced from the music of her people. And there is no reason whatsoever to believe that she didn’t fill her house with the sounds of her soul, immersing her children in a world of poetic imagery that forever shaped the way they would see the world. The whole book of Psalms is Messiah music; what Calvin called “an anatomy of all parts of the soul,” spelled out across individual experiences and scaled to the story of Israel and the nations. And Jesus rightly saw himself as the keynote and melody of that whole collection. His mom’s music was his own. I often have lunches with folks who say, “I just don’t know what to do with the Psalms.” And I tell them, don’t try to drink the seven seas. Just swim in them. To be immersed in the Psalms is to be awash in language for every aspect of the human condition, and thus to see the heart of Jesus. So, in addition to joining us for worship this summer as Will and I lay open the heart of Jesus in the Psalms, here are 3 things you can do to get good and saturated in them: 1. Join us in the Soul Room each weekday morning and pray the Psalms back to God. 2. Pick up and savor a book like Open and Unafraid by David Taylor or Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis 3. Find a playlist (or make your own mixtape!) of Psalms sung by gifted musicians like The Corner Room or Poor Bishop Hooper