St. Patrick Presbyterian Church, EPC

If you haven't heard the news, we finally have flying cars. Last night, Tesla announced their new Roadster, complete with vertical and horizontal thrusters and suction fans. You may have scrolled past what you assumed was an AI video, but it's shockingly not. I'll never own one, and most likely you won't either, but that's okay. It's fun to think about a world where they exist!

I think it's fun because it's one of those moments where what we always assumed would be future is becoming the present. In fact, it feels like engineers are seeing something in the future and pulling it into the present. Hope has a very real way of doing that, as we see in 1 Thessalonians.

This Sunday we'll look at chapter 3 where Paul declares his firm hope in the future of the Lord's return. But he's not content to leave it in the future. His prayer for the Thessalonians sees the eucatastrophe of the future, the Thessalonians abounding in love and established in holiness, and yanks it into the present. This is the invisible hope of intercessory prayer. 

So drive or fly to church this Sunday, and let's dwell in this hope together.

As a people, we are obsessed with power, and typically we like overt displays of it. Even the people who heard Jesus speak were wired that way. Whether it was people telling Jesus that if he would just do another miracle, or the taunts for Jesus to come down off the cross so that they would believe, power fascinates us.

I can’t help thinking about Paul, longing for this small church he planted, wondering if he has wasted his time, wondering if he has any power at all. I mean, he was run out of town by real power. It was overt power that kept people in fear, because with power and money they could put people in jail, easily dismiss Paul, quiet the crowd, and keep the status quo.

However, as we have seen, it seems that the person who has all the power is the one with no army, no money, no government title. Something happened when Paul went to Thessalonica, and its aftermath makes Paul look like the real power broker!

Gandhi once said, “Power is of two kinds: one is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love.” One kind of power is external. The other aims at the heart, so that people are changed because they want to, not because they have to. Real gospel ministry works like that. This Sunday we will talk about it, because in this passage, like nowhere else, we see Paul’s heart.

Already in 1 Thessalonians we’ve seen that the anger driving some Jewish teachers to persecute Paul and the early Christians was jealousy. People were listening to Paul and not to them, and this more than irked them – it was costing them socially and financially. I’m a teacher. I’ve spent thousands of hours and dollars developing an area of expertise in communicating the truth of God’s Word and world to his people. And my livelihood is connected to this work. So, it’s easy to identify with the desire to be heard and believed when I say something is true, and to be, let’s say, annoyed, when my word isn’t taken for truth. Teachers can be egomaniacal like that. 

But the truth is, we’re all teachers. We’re all constantly putting forth ideas to be accepted by those who are under our authority or influence, and we are all committed to being taken seriously. The words of men are in plentiful supply. Yet a really great teacher is more concerned that the student is growing in truth than that students are merely accepting our word for it. A teacher has to get out of the way. The truth is everything. And sorting through the difference between God’s word and my pet theories is hard but really necessary work. 

I’m grateful for the insistence of the EPC motto: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” It challenges us to make a clear distinction between the Word of God and even the best words of men, and to be generous and loving regardless of what we are trying to communicate to others. It’s not that non-essentials aren’t important. The ways we organize ourselves to accomplish our shared vision of the good life together are profoundly important to us, and they really do matter. But they are not essential. They are not the Word of God. And His Word is the only hope we have for learning to get ourselves out of the way and to fix our eyes and our hearts on Him. 

So, let’s behold the essential together this Sunday as we hear His Word. Thanks be to God. 

Costly Love

There are different ways to view anything. For instance, you can read the Bible like a story, and it looks something like this: Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration. Another way we read the Bible is thematically, considering major themes that show our need for the gospel, and it looks like this: Who is God? What is sin? Who is Jesus? How do we receive the gospel? Both are ways of looking at the Bible, and both get at essential truth. We need both to get a fuller picture of the glory of the Gospel.

In a similar manner, our text this Sunday reflects a different perspective on what God was doing in Thessalonica and how Paul made disciples who then made disciples. If last week we saw a flyover of the explosion of the church Paul planted, this week we go inside the living room of Jason and see what happened up close and personal in seeing Christ being formed in the souls of people. It can only be described as costly love. You can feel the tension, see and hear the pain Paul feels in his body from the beating he received in Philippi, and see the strong images Paul uses to describe pouring out his life for the people. Costly love indeed!

Join us this Sunday as we consider gospel ministry up close and personal, which is the only way the gospel goes forth. If you are new and interested in knowing more about St. Patrick, consider joining us in the Sunday School hour for St. Patrick Essentials. Or we also have a class studying Leviticus, and, of course classes for all ages for our children.

Simple ChurchI love to make gravy. Especially breakfast gravy. I suppose it is what introduced me to my love of making sauces. The idea of starting with some kind of meat juices or drippings, adding other flavorings, and then thickening it and reducing it to come up with something that sets off a piece of meat or makes a biscuit and scrambled eggs something special. My love for sauces would come later, but gravy—breakfast gravy—was my introduction to a whole other world of culinary delightfulness.

My mother made the best breakfast gravy I have ever tasted. It was special. When I moved off to Mississippi to go to school, plant a church, and start a family, I started thinking about making gravy myself. I had a growing brood of children, and they loved grandmother's breakfasts. So I called her on the phone and asked her how to make it—bacon drippings, scraping the fond off the bottom, flour until it browned, milk, and stir continually. I tried it a few times, and it was a disaster. I couldn't understand her instructions because I had no categories for what happened to flour when you added milk.

On a trip to Memphis, I told my mother she was going to have to show me because I couldn't get what was happening. (There were no YouTube videos then, only a living tradition!) And she did. My mother took me by the hand and said, "Look!" It was a revelation—just watching her one time turned information into knowledge and later into expertise.

Paul in our passage says something he never said about any other church he planted! They were examples, models, or the pattern of what the living community of God's people ought to look like, and because of that our antennas should go up. It all starts with how Paul discipled a new group of converts who believed the gospel when he preached at the synagogue. That got them started, but where they were formed was in a man named Jason's house. There, with a small group of people, Paul took them by the hand and said, "Look!" And then he left, and while he was gone, the church just took off. It was simple but profound. We will talk about that this Sunday!

Remember, Sunday School for all ages is back in swing at 9:15, as well as St. Patrick 101 for those new and interested in our vision and values.

Eucatastrophe- The Feel of Ministry

It may seem strange to start a sermon series with such an unusual title — and yet, what if the word you're looking for to describe what a book is about isn't available to you? That happened to Tolkien when he was trying to describe what happens in a fairy story. You know the plot of the fairy story, and for that matter every great story that has ever moved you: it feels like a tragedy for most of the story, and then suddenly, out of nowhere (if the storyteller knows their craft), an unlooked-for rescue comes, and you have a happy ending. That, Tolkien says, is a eucatastrophe, or good catastrophe. There is a sudden turn, and Tolkien describes it like this: "…it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur… giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world." (J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories)

He goes on to say the story of redemption is the ultimate eucatastrophe — and it's true. The disciples certainly felt this as they watched Jesus die, only later to see him alive and experience joy beyond the walls of the world. Such joy turned the world upside down. Well, this week we will see Paul experience an eucatastrophe; indeed, the Thessalonian church is born out of it. The whole book is pastoral, and one of the first and earliest letters Paul wrote. I can't wait to begin this journey deeper into the mystery of grace!

Also remember, Sunday School for all ages and St. Patrick 101 both start this Sunday. If you're new to St. Patrick, I hope you'll join us for this class — and for our Newcomers Feast after worship.

Imagine you’re the parent of teenage twins. In some ways, you’ve prepared for this - the human part, at least. You’ve been on the planet for decades. You know what it feels like to make the leap from childhood. But then there’s the parent part, which is pretty new. You’re not much more than a dozen years in, and the game keeps changing. 

Last week, the cut list was released for the competitive lacrosse team the twins have both been working to make. You blow it immediately: as soon as they get home, you ask them how it went. Rookie move. You can see it on their faces before the words leave your mouth: one got the spot on the roster, and the other didn’t. The one who didn’t make it chimes in with what most people would consider an extremely mature and healthy response. He rejoices with those who rejoice, smiling and saying he’s happy for his brother and that this frees him up for better things. But you know your son. You know he’s hiding his heart, and you think you know why. So, a while later, you try again. You get him alone and don’t say a word. Just sit next to him and pull him into your chest as he sinks into sobs. 

Can I suggest to you that that was an even more mature, healthy response? But he needed the invitation, and he needed to come away from everything else first. Maybe he’s a kind soul and he loves his brother and didn’t want to ruin the moment for him. Maybe he was embarrassed and wanted to downplay what felt like a failure. Either way, he was hindered by the other cares he had in that first moment from his core needs. He needed a place where it was just you and him, to express the pain of unfulfilled desires. Of being “not there yet.”

This week we talk about the last of the five doctrines of grace: “the perseverance of the saints.” Contrary to popular misuse, these doctrines aren’t simply eternal truths about other people. And this one in particular is very much the opposite: it’s intimate comfort for me. We’re going to do our best this week to get alone with God, (a better father than we’ll ever be), and let the troubles of living in this already-but-not-yet world melt on His chest as he comforts us in the way that only He can. 

There are things in this world that defy explanation. There are events that happen that you would say are impossible. I just read an account of that in David Grann’s book, The Wager. It is the story of HMS Wager, a British ship that was lost at sea rounding Cape Horn—the southern tip of South America in 1741. It was reported by other ships in the squadron that it just vanished. However 2 years later, various factions of the ship made it back to England, telling tales of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder.

You read the book, and you can’t believe it is possible that anyone would survive this shipwreck given the weather, the desolate island they were initially stranded on, the privation they endured, and the navigational feats they achieved, and yet they did. It has been a week like that for me. On Sunday I will tell you another story where the seemingly impossible happens. That is not just from my estimation of the situation, but also from everyone I asked, including the car body shop I went to. He heard my story and looked at one of his guys who worked for him and said, “I don’t believe in all our years here we have ever seen this before".

We do love stories of the unlikely and the unimaginable, don’t we? Well, this week we turn to look at how the redemption that Jesus accomplished at the cross actually comes to us, and let me just say this—in the Gospel, the impossible becomes possible. I will say no more until Sunday!

I hope you will join us. I don’t know about you, but it was good to get back into a rhythm this past week. Now if we could just get some coo

The first debate I ever heard about the atonement of Jesus was at my grandparents' house in Northeast Mississippi. I was only about ten or eleven at the time, but from time to time the debate would come back up. My grandfather was a Calvinist, and my grandmother was not. My grandparents were some of the finest people I have ever known. They loved the Lord a whole lot. I have my grandfather's Bible, which has a cloth cover sewn on it, and I can still see him in a recliner reading it after lunch until he fell asleep for a short nap before we headed out to the fields. My grandmother was quietly poetic, and I can still see her at the stove with a calico apron on, a spatula in hand, a little flour on her face—grinning as she quoted some piece of poetry to my cousin and me.

They rarely argued, and this point of theology may have been the only argument they engaged. But here is what would happen. A conversation about Jesus's death on the cross would begin, and my grandmother would say this—and when she said it, she would direct her scripture to my grandfather. She would say, "Olen, Jesus said, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you under my wings, but you would not.' See, Olen, that is free will—'you would not.'" She would articulate this with poetic flair and pathos. My grandfather was a man of few words and, totally undaunted by the passion of her delivery, would say this: "Now, Marie, the angel that announced Jesus's mission said this: 'You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.' See, Marie—'his people.'"

This Sunday we will be talking about the atonement of Jesus and looking at the story of the cross and why the whole image of Christianity is gathered up in this one symbol. We will be pondering the question: did Jesus really make an atonement for sin, or just make atonement possible? I hope to see you Sunday as we continue to marvel at the grace of God!

I didn’t grow up in Reformed theology circles. We were part of a branch of Presbyterianism that had rejected its confessional roots and only partially retained the governmental structure. I think I knew in my late teens there was something called “5-point Calvinism,” but I didn’t know what that meant, or anyone who believed in it (other than my grandfather’s hermit cousin). Fast forward 25 years, and now it’s not just an optional feature of the Presbyterian package for me. It’s a foundational part of how I understand the God of redemption. I teach it several times a year and each time my faith is always enriched. 

One of the things I’ve heard many times along my own journey of discovery is someone claiming to be a “4-point” Calvinist. Often the “point” these folks don’t want to adopt is the one of the two we’re talking about the few weeks: unconditional election and limited atonement. But the deeper concern is actually a collection of unspoken logical implications drawn from the flow of the entire argument. When I learned what they were objecting to, I was quick to recognize the logical inconsistency of this pick-and-choose method. The whole rational nature of the doctrines of grace collapses under that kind of buffet-style theology. Why would people do that?

What takes much longer and much more love is to see how this is not a quibble with the theology, but commitment to God’s holiness paired with a confession of grief. When you are a broken person in relationship with broken people, Biblical terms like election and predestination (and theological counterparts like eternal security and assurance of salvation) aren’t just ideas. They carry heavy implications for those we care about. We are not just rational creatures. We are affectionate too, and very protective of our loves. And the secret is that this tension we feel is not just a problem: it’s a hint at the solution. 

This week, I hope to help us repent of a separation between the rational and relational aspects of our souls that puts us between the rock of our salvation and the hard places of our experience.  If God is as gracious as we Reformed folks claim He is, then the way we talk about the so-called “doctrines of grace” should reflect that. And He certainly is.