So again Christmas has come and gone – all the preparations, the shopping, the decorating, the wrapping, the cooking…and not only is Christmas gone, but school begins again on Wednesday. We are hurtling back to business-as-usual. The Baby Jesus has been born again – it turns out even Jesus needs to be born again – next week we will celebrate Epiphany, the coming of the Wise Men, which will seem very irrelevant because we will have fully resumed our normal routines by then. Christmas ends very fast.
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Text: Luke 2:1-20

There is, in love and family life, sometimes a great drive to perfection – we want things to be just right at the holidays. We’d like to finish decorating the house before we have company. We want to be really prepared before we have a baby. We want to have things just perfect for a special occasion with a special someone.
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Texts: Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:47-55

I have a friend named Len. At least, he thought he was named Len. When his son was born, and he wanted to name him Len Jr., he learned that he was not, in fact, named Leonard. As the story came out, he learned that while his parents were expecting him, they had the same discussion that we heard in the anthem – what shall the baby be named? And if it was a boy, his father wanted to name him Leonard. The mother, other the other hand, wanted to name him Donald. Unlike most couples, who eventually work out these disagreements and come to a shared decision, this couple didn’t. The baby was born, a son, and the mother told the hospital that he was to be named Donald, and so that was his name. The father’s response? “I don’t care what his name is, I’m going to call him Leonard.” And so my brother-in-law thought he was named Len Zencka, and eventually legally changed his name so that his name would reflect what he was called.
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Texts: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Isaiah 11:1-10

[Children’s message] One of the crops that is grown in the Middle East is olives. They grow on trees. The trees can grow as tall as this church, but they produce more fruit if the farmer keeps the tree smaller. So the wise olive farmer cuts the tree back to a stump, and then a new branch grows, which eventually begins to bear fruit again. The farmer doesn’t get rid of the old tree and plant a new one, he just uses his knowledge of the tree to bring new growth. In fact, I looked up olive trees and how to grow them, and cutting them back is an important part of growing them.
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Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

We don’t like waiting. We don’t like uncertainty. And advent combines both. For those who are looking for Jesus to return, there’s a lot of waiting and uncertainty associated with that, too. So we replace Advent with Christmas, and some people replace uncertainty about a Second Coming with elaborate explanations of prophecy. And we resent Advent when we don’t get to sing Christmas carols because after all, this is Christmas time, and we hear them on the radio and at home and in the mall, so why not sing them????
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Texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Luke 23:33-43

Yesterday’s book review in the Chicago Tribune has the review of a new biography of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great uncle Daniel. The biography is simply titled Boone and claims to tell the true story of Daniel Boone, a reality which Publishers Weekly claims is more interesting than the myth. We learn that Daniel Boone didn’t actually like coonskin caps, but preferred to wear beaver felt hats; also that he was a reluctant soldier and Indian fighter, whose real genius lay in building relationships, not achieving dominance. He became a legend during his own lifetime, so that it became harder to achieve the solitude he continually sought; and ironically, his passion for and exploration of the wilderness led to establishing byways which led to more rapid expansion of settlement into the west. It turns out that the more closely we look at Boone, the more challenging it is to characterize him simply as an explorer or a settler, a naturalist or a hunter, an enemy or ally of the Indians, and so on. Looking at the whole picture necessitates recognizing the complexity of both the man and his times. And as we strive to understand what his impact was on his world, we have to acknowledge that the categories we are trying to fit him into come from our world – perhaps our efforts at understanding him tell us as much about ourselves as they do about him. It’s only now, when we are grappling with the effects of over-civilization and unsustainable development that we are able to even notice the irony of his passion for the wilderness leading to it being more rapidly tamed and settled. Continue...

Texts: Isaiah 12, Isaiah 65:17-25

When I was 13 years old, my mom, brother, grandmother and I went to Spain to visit my uncle – tough luck, Dad had to stay home and work. My uncle Jim lived on the island of Mallorca – it’s a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea. What a special vacation! One night during our stay, we went to a beach party on the other side of the island. We had to go by boat to get there, so a large group rented a fishing boat, and my family rode in Uncle Jim’s 2 seater speedboat, along with a Danish family named, I kid you not, Polack, and the American boyfriend of one of the Danish girls. There we were, my Uncle Jim, my mom, my grandmother, my brother Jon, Nita Polack, Eben Polack, both in their early twenties, Nita and Eben’s brother Jan Polack who was about my age, and Eben’s boyfriend Philip. Continue...

Texts: Haggai 2:1-9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

My parents moved last year from the house that they moved into in 1960, as I was entering kindergarten. Because of my father’s job, we lived away from that house for 5 years, and were moving back in as I entered my senior year of high school. One day right before we moved back, I was in the empty living room, and I stood next to the fireplace and was amazed at how small it had become. Why, when I was a little girl, I could barely reach the mantelpiece, now I could look down at it! When I was a little girl, it was a huge house. But of course, it’s the same house. We so often remember things with a fondness that renders them more marvelous than they actually were. Change is hard.
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Texts: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Luke 19:1-10

The Gospel story is one that is familiar to most folks who ever attended Sunday School – but we miss a lot if we stop at understanding it as just a story about a short man who climbed a tree to see Jesus. It’s the story about a man who had utterly accommodated to his culture – who as a tax collector was complicit with the exploitation systems of his time, but who was willing to make the effort to see things from a different perspective, and when he had stepped out of his cultural location, was able to recognize the invitation of Jesus to him, as well as to understand that accepting that invitation created challenges to him. He understood that following Jesus would cost him, but he found in accepting that cost that he was restored to a position not only in his contemporary community, but within a historical community as a child of Abraham – a community which, as Habbakuk reminds us, carries the vision of God for the world, an alternate vision, the prophetic vision that Jesus describes as the kingdom of God.
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Texts: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19

What are you waiting for in your life??
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Texts: Habbakuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

N Nung Yay Dah
N Nung Yay Dah oh-oh
N Nung Yay Dah M Ma Bia
N Nung Yay Dah.

This past week, Deb Knippel and I were in Louisville, Kentucky, for a Mission Celebration, with 600 U.S. Presbyterians, about 50 PCUSA missionaries, and many of our mission partners from around the world, including Rev. Vilma Yanez, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Colombia, who preached here a year ago. We were challenged to rethink our approach to mission and to participate in global and local mission, and we learned about some of the very important work our denomination is doing, with love and respect, in partnerships with people throughout the world.
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Texts: Philippians 2:5-13, Job 8:8-15

When our kids were in grammar school, the school they all attended for a time had mothers as lunchroom and playground monitors, so for a number of years, I volunteered as a “lunch mom” showing up (often with a younger brother or two along) to walk with a class to the lunchroom, watch over the kids as they ate, and supervise with another parent on the playground. And so I learned a lot about cultural anthropology and sociology as they can be observed on the playground – where, as in all cultures, rank and status are very important. The social system on the playground may not be quite as rigid as the caste system in India, but it seems to come close. And I still remember the remark by one very bright but unkind little girl who dismissed a classmate by describing him as “a waste of skin.”
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Texts: Psalm 29, Luke 8:22-25

The sky is grey, and even before the wind builds, there may be a “calm before the storm” that crackles with anticipation – hope or dread depending on so many things. Has it been a dry spell? Is it a dangerous storm?? Do we feel safe? Sometimes that stillness is noticed in retrospect, particularly in storms of the interpersonal variety – where there may be no barometric low to tip us off that the weather is changing.
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Texts: Isaiah 40:1-10; Luke 12:22-34

I recently came across a transcript of a conversation about grass that is supposed to have taken place between God and an angel:

God: “I’m concerned about all the beautiful native plants I provided to beautify the planet Earth. Solomon, in all his glory, wasn’t a match for their beauty. I provided such a wonderful variety of flowers, grasses, and shrubs, too: all sizes, colors, and shapes. And, I set each one in its place—the perfect place where it would flourish and provide blossoms and seeds to attract butterflies, bumble bees, all manner of songbirds, as well as other animals. I’m having some trouble finding them in the Midwest and the rest of the U.S., however. Do you know where they went?”
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Texts: Luke 13:10-17; Jeremiah 1:4-10

A few months ago, I went to a conference on Stewardship given by our denomination, and several of us rode together. One of the other ministers drove, and her car was equipped with GPS. At one point, I suggested that we should take a certain exit, only I was incorrect. (the right exit was the next exit), so as we headed off the highway, the GPS spoke up, and she said, “….Recalculating….recalculating….” I was very impressed. Not only did the GPS know the right way to go, but it was able to just offer us a new direction, and best of all, without saying, “What were you thinking? You idiot!”
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Texts: Luke 12:49-56; Hebrews 11:29-12:2

My family has had a cottage in the Poconos on a small lake. Every morning when eating breakfast at the Lake, we observe the flow of the waves across the horizon. If they are moving north to south, a good day is promised. If they are moving south to north, stormy weather is ahead. Many of us have harbingers in the natural world that we look to in forecasting the weather – although some of us seem stuck at the level of “red sky at night, sailors’ delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”
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Texts: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:35-40

Timing is important – it’s true in telling a joke, it’s true in music, it’s true in investments and it’s true in athletics. One of the places where timing is most important is in hitting a baseball – a perfect swing that cuts the air a nanosecond after the ball has been there is nothing. Well, not nothing. It’s a strike, and three of them will get a batter back to the bench quicker than hitting the ball. But hitting the ball is the goal, and timing is critical in it – critical, but not everything. Coordination, form, and for the home run ball: strength, are also critical. Timing is also critical for celebrity – just ask Barry Bonds, who achieved homerun record status on Tuesday by breaking Hank Aaron’s record – Aaron had held the homerun title for 33 years. But of course the timing of Bonds’ ascendancy to this position in baseball has resulted in considerable ambivalence among baseball fans and baseball writers because it seems clear that Bonds achieved this record with the aid of steroids, and at a time when the culture and the rules have rejected steroid-enhanced performance. It turns out it really isn’t just about winning or losing, but how you play the game, at least at this time. Timing is important.
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Text: Luke 12:13-34

A man was driving along the freeway when a pig falls off the livestock truck ahead of him.  The man stops, puts the pig in his car, and starts chasing the truck to return the pig.  As fast as he's going, trying to catch up, he gets pulled over for speeding.  "Do you know how fast you were going?" asks the officer. "Yessir," replies the man, "But this pig fell off a truck and I was trying to catch up to return it." "Forget it," said the officer, "Just take the pig to the zoo."  So the man drives off toward the zoo. The next day, the officer is on the side of the road when the same car goes by, again speeding. The officer pulls him over, and upon coming to the driver's window, observes that the pig is still in the car, on the front seat next to the man, but this time, he's wearing a baseball cap. "Didn't I tell you to take that pig to the zoo?" asks the officer. "Yessir, and I did," replies the man, "And we had so much fun that today I'm taking him to the Cub game."

Obviously, people can understand different things from the same statement.
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Texts: Psalm 85, Luke 11:1-13

In 1988, David Macauley published a book called The Way Things Work – it was a coffee table-sized book, with diagrams and narrative that detailed exactly that: the way things work. It was the sort of book that I would have enjoyed a lot as a child, and wish I had read more thoroughly before our copy was caught in a flood. Anyway, the new revised version not only explains things like zippers, fire extinguishers, and electricity, but also CD players and the internet. The ways things work tend to fascinate me, and is certainly a huge part of why I loved working as an electrician apprentice in a steel mill for three-plus years – I remember my last night in the mill, watching the red-hot steel rolling out, transformed in moments from slab to plate, and marveling that it still dazzled me, even after over three years of watching it. Even now every time I see that waffle-stamped steel floor plate in an elevator, on steps, or in a sidewalk, think, “I used to make that!” Twenty-seven years later I still get excited over having been part of that manufacturing process – making stuff, real stuff, and knowing a lot about how the process worked. Continue...

Text: Luke 10:25-42

Did you ever have the experience of talking with someone, and feeling like they weren’t really listening?? I’m sure we’ve all had that experience. And if we are honest, I think we all have to admit to providing that experience for others – we’re not always the good listeners that we would like to be. There are lots of reasons that we don’t listen well – sometimes, we are only listening long enough to formulate our own response. We do that in arguments especially.
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Texts: Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Luke 10:25-28

I remember watching TV shows and movies with my younger brother when we were children – like many siblings, we could agree on enough so that we could find things that we both enjoyed watching. And yet, some of what we watched occasionally developed in ways that he found significantly distasteful. Jon is three years younger than I am, and so there were a few years when my girlish heart enjoyed some scenes that made him close his eyes and declare, “Gross…tell me when the kissing’s over.” He was OK with movies talking about love and romance, but he was very uncomfortable being invited into the experience.
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Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Two years ago, Joseph Quinnell went to Thailand to do a photo project as part of his studies as an art major at UWSP. He had heard about the impact of the sex trade on the people of Thailand. He had heard that 25% of Thailand’s economy is from the sex trade. He had read about girls sold into prostitution by their families, and being out of the business by their late 20’s, often having acquired AIDS along the way. He had heard about a school called DEPDC – the Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities – which was founded by a man named Sompop Jantraka, who hoped to rescue the children of prostitutes, educate them, and help them escape living as their mothers had. Joseph conceived of a photo essay contrasting the degradation of the sex trade with the hope provided at DEPDC, so he went to Thailand. When he arrived there he went to the school, and as he watched the children running and playing, the woman who was giving him the tour said, “These children don’t exist.” Continue...

Texts: Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

For freedom, Paul says, Christ has set us free. Presbyterian pastor Joanna Adams points out that freedom is “an idea that originates in the very heart of God.” God could have created us to be obedient puppets, she explains, who would always do the right thing. But, says Adams, “God created us, women and men, with the capacity and the responsibility to act as free moral agents. The desire for freedom is not simply a function of the human spirit. Its source is nothing less that the free will of the Living God.”
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Texts: 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a; Luke 7:36-8:3

Every so often I come across a little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, who is dressed up for some special occasion – perhaps she is a flower girl for a wedding, or maybe it is Easter and she has on a new dress. In any event, often in such circumstances, I have commented on her finery, by saying something like, “You look very pretty today,” and often the response is, “I know!” Continue...

Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-16; Luke 7:11-17

Great. Miracle stories. Not only Jesus, but Elijah. Miraculous food. Miraculous healings. We know Jesus healed people, LOTS of people – but we don’t have to hear each story. I don’t know about you, but I find that the healing stories tend to make me feel left out.
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Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; John 16:12-15

Thinking of famous threesomes, some that come to mind are the 3 pigs, 3 bears, The Three Musketeers; Peter, Paul & Mary; Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx; Tinker, Evers and Chance who brought the Chicago Cubs to 4 World Series contests (winning 2) between 1906 and 1910; various film trilogies including this summer’s Shrek 3 and Spiderman 3; and of course the 3 Stooges, whose “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk…” and “Soitenly!” inspired many a sibling relationship. And then, there’s the Trinity.
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Texts: Romans 8:14-17; John 14:6-17, 25-27

Pentecost, the holy day that the Church celebrates today is the culmination of the Great 50 days of Easter. Most of us tend to think of Easter as a day, but the Easter season, on the church calendar, lasts for 50 days, ending with Pentecost. Pentecost is known as the birthday of the Church, and as the day that celebrates the Holy Spirit.
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Texts: Acts 1:1-11; John 17:20-26

“I am the Church, you are the Church, we are the Church together – all who follow Jesus, all around the world – yes! We’re the Church together. The Church is not a building, the Church is not a steeple, the Church is not a resting place – the Church is the people….”
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Texts: John 5:1-9; Revelation 21:1-5, 10:22-22:5

Anne Lamott is an author who has written a several fictions, a manual on writing, and 3 books of reflections on faith. The first, Traveling Mercies, was published in 1999, the second, Plan B, was published in 2004 and the third, Grace (Eventually) was published this year. Lamott is an irreverent, candid, Californian who wears her hair in dreadlocks, uses language that would be at home in a steel mill, and is – of all things – a Presbyterian. She notices the difference between the way the world ought to be and the way it is, she notices the difference between the way she ought to be and the way she is, she wrestles with those differences and a number of other incongruencies in life, and she marvels at God’s care for her, and she continues to grow in her understanding, or at least in her acceptance, of the way the world really is and the way she really is. And along the way, her observations are at times very funny and at other times very wise. Continue...

Texts: Psalm 23; 1 Kings 19:1-15a

Rod Steiger, the famous actor who was nominated for an Oscar in On the Waterfront, and who received one for In the Heat of the Night, spoke out one night at the Carter Center, founded by former president Jimmy Carter. He was speaking about his own experience with depression.
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Texts: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; John 21:1-19

Almost two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people, and then himself, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. In the days that have followed, first the factual accounts were pieced together, then newscasters, psychologists, and all of us have tried to piece together some kind of understanding of this violence. As I spoke with one of our members, a day or two later, I commented on the phrase New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley had used in describing the news coverage, when she wrote: “Hours before the death toll was certain or the identity of the gunman was known, television was already in an oft-practiced gear: senseless death-as-usual.” I mentioned to our member how struck I was by that phrase, and his response also made an impression on me – he said, “Yes, and that was only 33 people. There have been over 3,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands Iraqi deaths.” And sure enough, the next day there were news reports of another 171 people killed in Iraq bombings. As this member continued in our conversation, “Killing is what we do.” I think we have to acknowledge that this is true. Continue...

Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Psalm 150; John 20:19-31

Poor Thomas – for hundreds of years now, he has been castigated as the doubter, the epitome of disbelief. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair – for two reasons: the first is, doubt isn’t something to criticize, and the second is, it’s not fair to characterize Thomas primarily as the one who doubts.
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Easter Sunday
Texts: Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 24:1-12

We all have our expectations of how things should work – it should snow at Christmas, early spring should have some flowers, faithfulness should be rewarded – by corporations and spouses at least, government should work for the people, children should outlive their parents, and the dead should stay dead.
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Texts: Luke 19:28-40; Philippians 2:5-11; Isaiah 50:4-9a

It has seemed oddly appropriate to me that Palm Sunday should fall on April Fool’s Day. A day of pranks when you’re not really sure what to believe, and what might be a joke. I’m not exactly sure when we started celebrated Palm Sunday as Palm AND Passion Sunday – but it’s hard to do justice to both in a single service. Among the suggested Scriptures are both the reading that Kyle read as we opened the service, and the entire story of the arrest, trial, suffering and death of Jesus. Many churches read them both. We didn’t used to – we used to do just the celebration on Palm Sunday, but it doesn’t seem quite right to go from the celebration of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem that Kyle described straight to the resurrection on Easter, without stopping along the way to contemplate the last couple of days of Jesus. And so because many people can’t come to church on Good Friday anymore (often because of work or other commitments that don’t allow taking that time away), the church has brought Good Friday to the people, and turned Palm Sunday into Palm and Passion Sunday. So we begin with the celebration of Jesus triumphantly entering Jerusalem to the shouts and acclamations of the crowd…and then we shift gears mid-service, and read the Passion account – the story of the death of Jesus. April Fool’s! It’s not a celebration after all – it’s a tragedy.
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Texts: Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14

Each Saturday at noon on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio, you can hear “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” – the NPR news quiz. Yesterday’s show featured as its guest, Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court. It is a very funny show, but the success of its humor is depends on listeners’ familiarity with the news, because it is connected to current events.
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Texts: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Years ago, I came across another version of this story; it goes as follows:

Fable of the Forgiving Father: Feeling foot-loose and frisky, a feather-brained fellow forced his fond father to fork over the farthings. He flew far to foreign fields and frittered his fortune, feasting fabulously with faithless friends. Finally facing famine and fleeced by his fellows-in-folly, he found himself a feed flinger in a filthy farmyard. Fairly famishing, he fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from the fodder fragments. "Fooey, my father's flunkies fare far fancier,” the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, frankly facing facts. Frustrated by failure and filled with foreboding, he fled forth-with to his family. Falling at his father's feet, he floundered forlornly, "Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited family favor. . .” Continue...

Texts: Psalm 63:1-8; Isaiah 55

Billions of dollars are spent every year in our country to help us all feel dissatisfied…and to point us toward the items that will make the difference. The advertising is working – we all want things we don’t have, and keep thinking that getting these things will make us happy. While billions of people around the world have real reasons to yearn for more, in the U.S., Western Europe and parts of Asia, we are like dogs chasing our tails – running faster and faster to catch something that is always just out of reach.
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Texts: Luke 13:31-35, Psalm 27, Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

The Blues Brothers was a movie that came out in 1980, and it is a Zencka family favorite – not only because it is set in the Chicago area, but also because it is the first movie that Carl and I ever saw together, on one of our first dates. Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, of the original Saturday Night Live crew, play Jake and Elwood Blues, the Blues Brothers. The movie opens as Jake is being released from prison, and as Jake and Elwood revisit old haunts, one of the places they visit is the Catholic orphanage where they grew up.
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Texts: 2 Corinthians 3:12, 17-4:1; Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

These episodes, the one with Jesus in particular, are fantastic and amazing. I think part of what’s interesting about them is that the people reporting them felt the same way. They don’t report these occurrences as being normal or normative – that is, they are not saying everyone should expect such experiences. Their response is the same as ours – this is amazing; it’s hardly believable! Peter, in the Gospel story, is so amazed that he is babbling and God finally interrupts him to say, in essence, “Be quiet and listen to Jesus.”
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Texts: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Luke 6:17-38

I think we’re all familiar with those “Good news - Bad news” jokes; and of course, it’s a typical way to frame an announcement “Do you want the good news first, or the bad news??” One of my sons once asked me that -- “Mom, I have something to tell you -- do you want the good news first or the bad news?” I opted for the bad news, which he shared with me, and when I asked what the good news was, he looked at me and said -- “There isn’t any good news.” And so here we are, we turn to God’s word for a sign of hope and we read “Blessed are the poor...” -- this is the Good News??? “Woe to you who are satisfied...???” This doesn’t sound like good news -- maybe my son was right. But we all know that the Gospel is the Good News of Christ.
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Texts: Isaiah 8:1-6; Luke 5:1-11

Excuses, excuses! The University Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has collected the following actual excuses sent in to schools to explain student absences:

“My son is under a doctor's care and should not take P.E. today.
Please execute him.

Dear School: Please ekscuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30,
31, 32, and also 33.

Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.

I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because I don't know what size she wear.

Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.”

Both Isaiah and Peter, when facing the call, came up with excuses – interestingly, both related to their sense of unworthiness. Apparently self-esteem issues are not purely a product of the modern advertising industry. Continue...

Texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13

A recent insurance ad has as its slogan “So easy a caveman could do it…” though we used to say “so easy a child could do it.” That was before the information age when people my age and older started seeking out children to help us program our VCR, operate our DVD player, and use instant messaging on the computer. Soon, the saying will be “so easy an adult could do it…” although maybe that’s the intent of the caveman line.
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