Let Us Rise Up and Build
Was Spring Break even a thing when I was a kid? Maybe it was, but that should tell you how little emphasis was placed on it in my circles. I think maybe Easter break was a bigger deal, but I suppose a movable feast becomes a moving target for year-over-year planning. So possibly there came a point where the emphasis shifted. Or perhaps, like Chinese food, it was always there and just made very little impression on me as a youth. Either way, by the time I became a teenager, Spring Break was really only a thing we shouldn’t be curious about, which happened on MTV, a channel we didn’t even have. (And I had it on good authority that it would probably melt my soul out of my eyeballs if I tried to watch it at a friend’s house).
So, the fact that I now live in a world where virtually one quarter of the year is built around this week is astounding to me. Who even knows how government people make decisions? This is not to say I’m not grateful that most of the local school boards have finally coordinated their Spring Breaks. It’s now far easier for the church to organize our calendar around our people, a large portion of whom organize their lives around their schools. For a few years there, we had three weekends each semester hit with cascading breaks, which made it impossible to schedule anything for the months of March or October! And it seems to be the right week, since it also softens the blow of Daylight Savings (another governmental decision I can’t wrap my head around).
Yet, by far the most piteous casualty to our having anchored Spring Break to the 3rd week of March is that the entire community is shut down on March 17th, of all days. Of course, I will take this misfortune personally, considering that my maternal clan’s name is Patrick. But I am also a pastor at a feasting church named St. Patrick. This should be a massive blowout day for us all! We should be glorying at the center of festivities to rival the town's fireworks display! There should be a festooned parade down a river of green beer, ending at 710 West White Road!!! But instead… it’s not really on our radar at all. Our own namesake feast day came and went yesterday without much ado, like Harry Potter wishing himself a happy birthday in the cupboard under the stairs. Tragic.
Still, we believe grace is everything in this complicated world. Even though my dreams of tater cookoffs and various lepre-chauntests will probably never come to pass, we are still a people who feast well and often, and who honor our namesake’s passion for gospel ministry by making sure there’s a place at the table for those who need to hear a better story. And looking ahead, Easter falls on March 25 in 2035, so Spring Break and Holy Week would be back-to-back. Maybe the school board will swap it for Shark Week and we can finally have our corned beef and eat it too! Until then, I hope to see you and yours at next weekend’s Crawfish Boil. We’ll have shrimp and hot dogs too, for the less adventurous among us, and you might even see me in a shamrock t-shirt, pretending it’s still St. Patrick’s Day.
- josh
Let Us Rise Up and Build
March 20, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Nehemiah 2:9–20
Holding, Folding, and Going All In
January 30, 2022 • Rev. James M. Holland • Ezra 4:24—5:4
Years ago, Kenny Rogers had a song called “The Gambler”. It was about a young man riding on a train, bound for nowhere, and meeting up with a gambler. The gambler decided after looking at the young man that he needed some advice. He basically told him, every hand is a winner and every hand is a loser, so you have to know when you hold, when to fold, or when to walk away. Israel found themselves in a situation where they were looking at the hand they were dealt and decided to fold and walk away. They read their hand through the eyes of the opposition they faced and the odds against them looked bad, so they stopped working on the temple. They started with great zeal but, when local pressure and political pressure mounted, they folded. For fifteen years, they folded. We learn, however, that it wasn’t just political pressure; it was just not a priority. Finally, Haggai the prophet takes them to task for neglecting the temple and urges them to “go all in.” In fact, he suggests that the reason they work hard but have no satisfaction is because they have relegated God to the side. This is the subject we’ll consider this Sunday. What does it look like to be “all in”? How do we sustain passion? How do we stay committed over the long haul? Tough questions in a day of infinite browsing and little commitments. But it should be eye-opening and will suggest a way towards real freedom. I hope to see you Sunday! Remember, if you are new to St. Patrick and would like to know more about our vision, values, mission and ministries, join me at 9:15am in the Adult Sunday School area for our Inquirers’ Class. Just make it to the coffee machines, and we will find you and get you in the right classroom. Blessings, Jim
The Shape of Kingdom Story
April 3, 2022 • Rev. James M. Holland • Nehemiah 4—7
The Shape of Kingdom Story Every year in the early spring, anger starts to build. I look out over my garden and it is fallow; yet weeds are starting to sprout everywhere. I survey my yard and the brown dormant grass is sprinkled with spring weeds. Teri’s beds are a mess, as well. For months this has been okay, but now it is not okay. My vineyard is also a depressing sight—it looks like a bee hive of branches, in no particular order. So, I am ticked. For this to be beautiful, something has to be roused from lethargy; priorities will have to shift—what I want is on the other side of hard! I belong to this place—that is why I feel anger. For it to bloom, I will have to push back the weeds that threaten to overrun everything. Anger is not enough. Anger just gets me going. The real work is in inventorying the needs for weed control in my yard, followed by trips to TSS and Russell’s Farm Supply. Cleaning out my sprayer, mulching leaves, picking up sticks. I have just a few Saturdays to get this done and other good things will have to wait, while hours upon hours are spent in back-breaking labor. Everything is out to wreck what I am trying to achieve—weeds, moles, raccoons, deer, bugs beyond reckoning, and weather. Not to mention, my own laziness and desire to do other things. Trouble without! Trouble within! Last week we saw Nehemiah set his people’s hair on fire. With the exception of the Tekoian nobles, everyone showed up to do work they were not good at, sacrificing personal glory for God’s glory. They were angry for God’s glory and so they came to work. This Sunday we see it takes much more than anger to get things done. Without anger, I suppose nothing worthwhile gets started, but what it takes to keep going is more like virtue. All kingdom building has a similar shape. There will be trouble without and trouble within, and it is so discouraging you want to quit. And yet, real kingdom-building perseveres. That is the part of the story we enter into this Sunday. I hope you will join us. We also have a bunch of new family members to introduce you to as well. Speaking of perseverance, I don’t know about you but I am ready for the dog days of Lent to give way to resurrection. It is coming––hang on! Blessings, Jim
Remember Me For Good
May 1, 2022 • Rev. Joshua Smith • Nehemiah 13:1–14
Remember Me for Good I ran into an acquaintance today who asked what I plan to preach this summer. When I told him we’re going to be exploring the Messianic Psalms, he lit up. “I’ve been asking this question and no one knows: why do the Jews want a Messiah when they don’t believe in Hell?” I was a bit taken aback at first, because, while I do earnestly believe that salvation from Hell is a primary eternal benefit, it’s been a long time since I assumed that Jesus’ only earthly objective was securing a heavenly afterlife. As a Cordovan, I grew up in the shadow of Bellevue Baptist Church, whose be-sainted Dr. Adrian Rogers famously said, “Some people just want to make the world a better place to go to hell from.” He was rightly pushing back against the idea of a social agenda without respect to the eternal state of souls before God. Indeed, “for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” And yet, Jesus also teaches us to pray that God’s “will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” and to reduce his insistence on love of neighbor to perpetual altar calls would be a tragic violation of the text. So, what is the relationship between eternal salvation and social reform? As we finally wrap up our semester-long series, Nehemiah seems to be wrestling with this tension, too. He doesn’t have our separation-of-church-and-state baggage, which, as we will see, really muddies the waters for him when it comes to the use of force. (Ezra pulls out his own hair; Nehemiah will pull out yours!) Still, his position as governor of a theocratic region gives him perhaps a better vantage point from which to explore the relationship between eternity and the here-and-now. Does he get it right? No. But, as it turns out, an anticlimax at the end of the Old Testament does exactly what it’s designed to do! And "the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." So, join us for one more week of Muddling Toward Messiah before we turn our attention to a summer of Psalms that speak with much more clarity and comfort about the God-Man, Lord and Savior of Heaven and Earth. - j