What Kind of Character are You?

In literature, the Bible, and life, there are basically two types of characters – round and flat. Which one are you?

Round characters are characters who are complex and realistic; they represent a depth of personality which is imitative of life. They frequently possess both good and bad traits, and they may react unexpectedly or become entangled in their own interior conflicts. These characters have been fully developed by an author, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and are detailed enough to seem real. A round character is usually a main character, and is developed over the course of the story. A flat character is its opposite, having hardly any development whatsoever.

A flat character is distinguished by its lack of a realistic personality. Though the description of a flat character may be detailed and rich in defining characteristics, it falls short of the complexity associated with a round character. A number of stereotypical, or “stock” characters, have developed throughout the history of drama. Some of these characters include the country bumpkin, the con artist, and the city slicker. These characters are often the basis of flat characters. Supporting characters are generally flat, as most minor roles do not require a great deal of complexity.

For a sermon on round and flat character, go to this link:  Round or Flat – Beyond Formula to Faith, Magic to Miracle 

 

 

Absurdus – We Pray! (Coming Soon)

COMING SOON: 

Absurdus: (Latin) ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, having no rational or orderly relationship to known rules of human life.
  
   Christianity is taking a giant stride into the absurd. Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them. It’s when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to worry.  Soren Kierkegaard

   COFFEE
   Look for God.
   Look for God like a man
   with his head on fire looks for water.
   Elizabeth Gilbert

   Imagine God invites you out for a cup of coffee. You go to the coffee shop and sit down. It’s a nice coffee shop where they have servers and spell it Shoppe.
   The waitress takes your order. You have yours with cream.  God orders it black but with three sugars.
   You sip on you coffee, then get up the courage to speak, “Can I ask you something?”
   “Anything,” God replies.
   “About the Bible…”
   “Yes?”
   “Is it Your Word, or not?”
   “What do you mean?” God asks.
   “Well, did you write it or did people?”
   “Yes,” God replies.
   You are unsure whether God said, “Yes.” or “Yes?” wanting you to say more, so you add, “You know, did you write the book or did people just guess at what you would write?”
   “So, you think the Bible is a book?” God asks.
   “Isn’t it?” you say.
   “Is it?” God asks.
   You sit silently.
   “A lot of people think so,” God says. “Maybe it is a book, maybe it’s many books. Maybe I wrote it. Maybe people, lots of people, wrote it. Maybe it’s both. Maybe…” God goes on with a continuous list of maybes that you can’t follow. Then God asks, “What do you think?”
   “What do I think?” you say. “I want to know what you think.”
   “Do you think I think?” God asks.
   “Don’t you?”
   “Do I?”
   “I think so,” you say.
   God sips coffee and looks out the window. You look and see a bird. You watch as it falls to the ground, lifeless.
   “Ahhh!” you sputter.
   “You know how the saying goes,” God replies, “not a sparrow falls from the sky…”
   You go back to your coffee. Not sure if you should look at God or not.
   God takes another sip. “Mmmmm, that is good!” God declares returning the cup to the table. “So, you want to know what the Bible is?”
   “Yes,” you say resting your cup, “but what I really want to know about is You.”
   “Come, and I’ll show you.”
   God rises and moves toward the door.
   You follow, then realize that God is walking out without paying the tab. God is going to stiff the Shoppe. You pull out money and leave it on the table, enough for the coffees and the tip.
   Hurrying after God, you keep thinking, ‘I can’t believe God was going to just walk out without paying for the coffee. Did God want me to pay? God invited me. What kind of universe is this where the creator can walk out of a restaurant without paying, or invite someone and then leave them with the tab?”
   You hear God whisper, “You think about the stupidest things.”
   Looking around, you don’t see God anywhere. Navigating the outside of the building, you spy God in the nearby park behind a tree, but when approaching it, God is gone.
   You pause to ponder returning to your car or going back inside the restaurant to get a bagel, then you hear God whisper, “So, are you going to look for me, or not?”

(Look for Absurdus in March 2019)
  

 

Words Worth Sharing

read more21The path of least resistance in our house is to the couch and turning on the television.
“What do you want to do?” one of us will ask.
“I don’t know, what do you want to do?” we live forty minutes from the glory of the beach and the wondrous Atlantic, but after a reflective pause, someone says, “Want to watch tv.”
We watch television together, on the same couch, in front of the same set, speechless during and after. The television does the work for us. The adventures and the dialogue are all set out before us. Little is required. The greatest distance crossed is to get some popcorn if we can agree on a show and a snack.
We are losing the power of words shared, of life expressed. Books, especially poetry, are often life giving when shared together. My favorite example is from D.C. Berry,

Continue reading “Words Worth Sharing”

Perceptions and Prejudices

Read the following paragraph. How easily do you adjust the words to fit your expectations?

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In John 1, Philip invites Nathanael to come and see Jesus. Because Jesus was from Nazareth, the ‘wrong side of the Israel tracks,’ Nathanael was certain that Jesus could certainly not be the Messiah, and even more was up to no good and was no good as a person. He filled in the blanks in his mind without even meeting Jesus. Here is there encounter:

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

Go to John 1 to see the rest of the story…

Have a Funky Christmas

My favorite Pat McLaughlin quotes…

When asked to sing at church, “I don’t know any sacred songs. Well… perhaps they’re all sacred songs.”

After I finished worship, “That’s the best #*^##* sermon I ever heard.”

This song is not a carol, and it won’t ever be in a hymnbook, but it brings me joy inside. Shouldn’t all Christmas gifts bring us joy inside? With that intention, have a Funky Christmas.

Don’t know what to get your music lover for Christmas? Support quality song writing in Nashville and have yourself a funky Christmas.  http://www.patmclaughlin.com/

Seek Don’t Get Stuck

I grew up in a textile mill neighborhood in South Carolina where the language we spoke was far from prose, yet it had a poetic cadence and was often quite colorful. Returning to my roots, here is my retelling of Saul’s conversion in Acts chapter nine.

There once a fellow named Saul. He was going about, hounding all of Jesus’ followers in the early church, throwing them in jail as the lawbreakers he thought they were. He’d even promote a lynching or stoning if there wasn’t a prison close by. Saul believed in God, and in a way that the confident often are, he was certain he was carrying out God’s will by preserving the right, the true, the holy tradition.

The risen Jesus was getting tired of Saul’s shenanigans. While on the road to a place called Damascus, Jesus caught up with Saul and smacked him to the ground. Jesus appeared in a blinding light, the kind of light you go toward when you’re dying but don’t want to see until then. Then Jesus spoke, “Saul, what the hell are you doing? Why are you being such a pain in my backside?”

Saul didn’t have any idea who would smack him down in such a way and then accuse him of doing wrong when he was so sure he had been in the right persecuting all of the followers of Jesus and shutting that movement down before it could get going good.

Saul asked, “Who is this?” Continue reading “Seek Don’t Get Stuck”

Shalom Now, Shalom Here, Shalom Within, Shalom Among

 

The more things change, the more trouble I have staying the same.

As the new year begins, I was fascinated by this list of statistics for 1915. Only one hundred plus a few years ago.
I’m not sure how accurate this numbers are, but they do represent the amount of change over the last century.

Continue reading “Shalom Now, Shalom Here, Shalom Within, Shalom Among”

New Year’s Resolution – What Would Jesus Have Me Do?

Here is a wonderfully creative take on that popular question, “What Would Jesus Do?” by an artist better known for his movies like Dumb and Dumber, but he’s no shabby guitar player and these lyrics are not only, not stupid, they are quite wise…

As you’re thinking about New Year’s Resolutions, or avoiding making any resolutions at all, I challenge you to take this question a bit further. “What would Jesus do?” is a challenge, especially since we have no record of Jesus stuck in a traffic jam or trying to help their child with calculus or chemistry. So, a more helpful and more applicable question is, “What would Jesus have me do?”

You are the only you. You are a character like you in all of God’s story throughout history. Jesus was one in a billion, Messiah, Christ, Emmanuel, but so are you. You are also one in a billion. No one else has been you in all of history. How you live out your story has some particular challenges that you must face. “What would Jesus have me do?” is a better compass. If we all gave that question a little more consideration, not only would 2016 be a better year, but the world would be a better place for all God’s children to develop their characters in God’s story.

Amazing Peace

Even as a professional Christian for three decades, I still find it difficult to feel spiritual on demand – especially at Christmas.  I find it just as difficult to feel tidings of comfort and joy in December even if it is the hap-happiest season of all. Perhaps my heart just won’t settle for tinsel when I need something more along the lines of silver, or even better, gold, frankincense, or myrrh. Fortunately, God seems to work not because of me but in spite of me (or sometimes even to spite me). For my reorientation, God sends the wise ones to point beyond my melancholy to the holy. When the carols won’t cut it, and even the prophets fall shy, I look to the poets. Maya Angelou reorients my heart for a greater peace on earth than a simple silent night. Continue reading “Amazing Peace”

The Parable of The Joy Handle

You can’t buy love or joy. You’ve got to bring it.
Instead of trying to buy the right gift to bring joy, bring joy as the right gift then any object can be a joy handle.

Galatians 5: 22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

Audience of One

In the theater to the right, where would you place the following?

sanctuaryPreacher
Choir or Singers and Musicians
Congregation
God

The common response is to place the preacher, choir, and musicians on stage, the congregation in the audience, and God everywhere. We discuss worship as in any theater. Soren Kierkegaard challenged our thinking of worship and said that we have the audience wrong. The congregation is not the audience. God is the audience. Those who gather for worship are on stage. The preacher, singers, and musicians are all backstage prompting the congregation. It is not our pleasure which is the final judge but God’s. It is not whether or not we consider a service meaningful but whether God finds meaning in our service, in church and out, on holy days and every days. God is our audience of One. Continue reading “Audience of One”

Put Down the Phone or Remote and Pick Up a Book!

read more1In the Bible, words, especially God’s words have power. God speaks and the worlds are created,

Genesis 1: 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good…

Psalm 33: 6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

The gospel writer of John refers to Jesus as The Word or expression of God.

John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Continue reading “Put Down the Phone or Remote and Pick Up a Book!”