The Last Prophet
Hungering for God
January 7, 2024 • Rev. James M. Holland • Psalm 63
I don’t know about you but I come through the holiday seasons a little spiritually dry. It seems to always happens. I have tried to change it but not been very successful. I suppose I get out of rhythm. It seems my spiritual life has diminished, my prayer life seems shorter, and I am restless. My physical appetites have been satiated but my soul is hungry for something. C. S. Lewis explains why this is true of many of us: Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” (C.S. Lewis, https://stpatrickpres.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ba3413bb6fa020132a4bc21a5&id=aba891a60e&e=b77c6e6023) The Psalmist says it like this: O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. In an age where we can glut our senses and desires, the hallmark of our age is restlessness—never finding real deep satisfaction. This week we look at causes and cures of our malaise in Psalm 63. Please go read it before Sunday. It has been like medicine for my starving soul. I hope it will be for yours as well.
The Benedictus
December 24, 2023 • Rev. James M. Holland • Luke 1:57–80
Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Advent. As it is also Christmas Eve, we’ll have two services at St. Patrick to ponder the greatest mystery of all times—God taking flesh. Every year in our Advent preaching series, we seek to get at this mystery from different angles—this year we have been in Luke 1. While it is popular to skip right to mangers, stars, and wise men, there is enough wonder in the angelic announcements to an aged priest and a young girl to make your head spin. This week we ponder with Zechariah his song of redemption known as “The Benedictus.” Here we see an elderly priest praising God for bringing to pass the promises of redemption, not just for Israel but for the whole world. For nine months, Zechariah has been mute, unable to speak, but his song of praise basically brings together all the Old Testament promises that are coming to pass in the births of a couple of infants. And while Zechariah is thankful for the coming of his son, it is not surprising that most of his praise is for the One who is coming to “forgive sins.” As I mentioned, this Sunday we have two services of worship—our morning worship will be at the regular time, 10:30am. (Please note we will not have Sunday School this week.) Then, at 5:00pm we have our Christmas Eve Service where in music, song, Scripture, and prayer we walk with prophets of old to behold Him who created the world lying in a manger. If you can, please arrive early to our evening service, as it is usually packed. Until then, may your preparations for the Feast of Christmas be marked with joy, generosity, and wonder.
Blessed Are You
December 17, 2023 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Luke 1:39–45
One of our staff members is the foster mother of a preternaturally perfect baby boy. As an occasional attendee of our staff meetings, this young fella contributes to the overall productivity by boosting morale to historic levels. His big smiles and gentle cooing create an atmosphere of joy that’s just impossible to measure. Even his rare moments of pouting motivate us to work harder for our little mascot. A ministry resident commented this week that he’s not being paid near what he’s worth, and that is most certainly true. I recently heard someone describe how having a baby around amplifies everything. On a quality-of-life scale from one to ten, it’s like levels 2-9 have simply been removed. The fader on extreme feeling is turned up all the way to a Dickensian “best of times; worst of times.” We haven’t had a baby in the house for some time now, but that resonates with my memory of the thing. There’s a texture of unbreakable joy that lies underneath these extremes and wraps the whole thing up in swaddling clothes of wonder and beauty. This Sunday, the third in Advent, has for about a thousand years been referred to as “Gaudete,” or Rejoicing Sunday. It represents a break in the penitent nature of the season, where the nearness of fulfillment is brought to the middle of the waiting. It’s fitting, then, that we take a look at the passage in which the unborn infant John leaps with joy in Elizabeth’s womb at his first encounter with Jesus, only days newly arrived in his own mother’s body; still close to 40 weeks from his birth. It’s a perfect Advent text, just brimming with the already-but-not-yet nature of the Kingdom. Shot through it all is a sense that whatever is happening, however complicated and burdensome, this is nothing short of blessing. - js
The Annuniciation
December 10, 2023 • Rev. James M. Holland • Luke 1:26–38
Years ago, Teri and I did an internship in Yazoo City. We were almost through with seminary and just had our first child. I was 22 hours short of graduating from seminary and was deciding if I would take all the classes in one semester or stretch it out over two. But we were broke, Teri wasn’t going back to work, and everything we had was old and worn out. Many of you have been in a similar situation of wrestling money, an expanding family, and school so you can relate to our predicament. And then God showed up! I got a chance to do an internship in Yahoo City, Mississippi, a place I wanted to be. So we moved, put off school for a year, and got settled into raising a family and starting a life of ministry. We immediately loved Delta life, except for one thing—we were not prepared for the smell. Mississippi Chemical Company was located just outside of town and a smell hung over the town like a fog, sort of like living downwind from a paper mill. Anyway, we commented how we could never get used to it. But the body is amazing, and eventually our senses just sort of filtered it out so that we didn’t even notice it anymore. After a while, we would actually be shocked when people would visit and ask, “What is that stench?” The magnitude of the Incarnation is like that, as well. We are so familiar with the birth narratives—those of us who grew up with this—that, as time goes by, we just don’t see it with the kind of awe and wonder we once did. So my prayer this Advent, as well as all Advents, is that we will see the magnitude of what God was doing 2000 years ago as if it were the first time. I mean, God showing up as an infant? A virgin having a child? Angels singing from on high? If we can’t be struck by awe at this, what will move us? Join us Sunday as we ponder the Annunciation, the time when God essentially tells a baby (young woman) she will be having a baby, but not just any baby…
In The Fullness of Time
December 3, 2023 • Rev. James M. Holland • Luke 1:5–25
Advent! The world literally means, coming. That is, the coming of God into the world. This Sunday marks the beginning of our celebration of Advent at St. Patrick; and, especially if you are new, I can’t wait for you to journey with us the next four weeks leading up to Christmas. It is a time of obvious joy and celebration. I mean, if you can’t celebrate the coming of God in our flesh, what can you celebrate? But it is also a time of reflection and examination because we ponder the second coming of Jesus as well. When I was growing up, we took a more subdued view of this month-long enactment of God’s coming, at least at church! We celebrated Christmas with relish in our home, but at church the festivity was limited to a few Christmas carols, a sermon on the Incarnation, and a little decoration. Our reasoning was, we should celebrate the coming of Jesus all the time, and too much falderal and excess would be a distraction. One day of hoopla was enough. The only problem with that is our imaginations will not allow us to minimize the magnitude of the sublime, or memorialize the most memorable moments of our lives. For instance, birth, death and marriage are all rather mundane events if looked at from the fact that all of us were born, all of us will die, and most of us will get married. And yet, try as we might, we can’t brush over a birthday without cakes, silly hats, treasure hunts, and gathering all our friends and relatives around. For weddings, we spend lavish amounts of money, prepare an extravagant feast, and make it a huge celebration. Funerals are the same, except in a more somber remembrance. We don’t quietly bury the dead. We have to gather together publicly, dress in drab clothing, weep together, and hallow the passing with a meal. Why? It is because of our nature. We are not saying our little child is special only on this one day of the year, heaven forbid. But we tend to forget, as we chase multiple children around in the endless cycle of feeding, clothing, and cleaning up after them. So we set aside times of ceremony to sort of remind ourselves of what is true all the time. So when it comes to celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus, a fact that is just as true in June as it is in December, why all this fuss? Why all this festooning of the church, this gilding the lily with trees, candles, wreaths, and garland? Is this mere play-acting? No, and here is the reason. I will let Tom Howard explain it: The answer is to be found in the profoundest mysteries of our humanness. Of course the Lord is here. Of course one needs to keep moment-by-moment account of one’s heart, so to speak. But as we have seen in the case of birth, marriage, and death, somehow ceremonializing what is true does have the effect of assisting us. We are not seraphim, who, we are told, can gaze unblinkingly at reality all the time. We have to come at it by fits and starts. To enact something by an act of will does turn out to have its effect in our hearts. If the principle were false, then the early Christians would have been mistaken to have gathered on Sundays to mark the Resurrection. Somehow the weekly ceremony brought home to them what they believed hourly and daily. (Tom Howard, Evangelical is not Enough) During this time of remembrance at St. Patrick, our liturgy is different and our messages sound the note of what happened over two thousand years ago that—in the fullness of time—Jesus came. We are pondering this from the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, and this week we look at the least preached text of all the birth narratives of Jesus. It is about the time an ordinary parish priest went to the temple and got the surprise of his life! With no expectation of children, he was told by an angel not just that he was having a child. No, he got the pregnancy news, the gender reveal, the naming, the upbringing, and career of this child—all in one throw. I can’t wait to begin this journey with you again. This never gets old! If it has for you, join us and we will help you brush off the Scrooge-ness and enjoy the feast!
The Coming of the King
November 26, 2023 • Rev. James M. Holland • Luke 1:1–7
As I write this, I am thinking about Thanksgiving. I’m trying to send in blogs, sermons, slides, so I can get on to preparing for the Thanksgiving Feast tomorrow. I must say, I have the elven magic on me earlier this year than normal. Addy and I broke our family’s standing tradition of putting our tree up after Thanksgiving and put it up two weeks ago while Teri was out visiting her mother. Space matters, so it feels like we have a jump on Christmas this year. As I was thinking about this, it hit me—the only reason we can be really thankful at Thanksgiving is because of Advent, so I have justified my actions. Anyway, we start out looking at Luke’s narrative this week and will continue this through Advent. We will be looking at just the first seven verses, but it occurred to me that what is found here could be the true story of the whole Bible. There is a lot here…Apologetics, I mean Luke spends four verses grounding the story he is telling in space, time, and history, and taken from people he could “fact check” with. He then opens up the story of the human condition and shows us the limits of human ability, even when we have the correct forms in place. Finally, we see the God who works in the places that feel like death, so that we will know, it is all grace. I prayed this week that our Thanksgiving Feast would tell a better story, a gospel story, and I am praying that for all of us this season. What a time to celebrate Jesus! I hope to see you Sunday! One more thing, remember we don’t have Sunday school this Sunday. It will resume the following week on December 3. Blessings, Jim