When a Worship Pastor Preaches
Well, this is the week the Smith family heads to Orlando to finally celebrate our 10-year-old’s eighth birthday! I’m sure you can imagine how devastating that pandemic-enforced deferral was for her. There was a lot of that going around back then. I honestly don’t know who mourned their respective delayed trips more – her, or Jim Holland! But what was longed for, has at last come near. The bags are almost (over)packed and sprinkled with pixie dust, and we’ll pull out as early on Sunday morning as I can muster the troops.

Another joy was delayed for that couple of years while we readjusted our plans and expectations. I’m so thrilled for you to finally benefit this Sunday from the pulpit ministry of our only teaching elder who has never preached at St. Patrick! As my crew travels south, you’ll have the rare privilege of being led by Rev. Will Weir to the right hand of our Lord, where the pleasures forevermore dwarf even the freshest mouse-and-wizard-themed attractions. Don’t believe me? Just read Psalm 16 and come hear him expound it on Sunday.

As a former worship pastor, I have a great appreciation for both the leap and the continuity in moving from one side of the stage to the other. I know Will is the right man to guide you through these words of glorious inheritance in our Messiah. Aside from his great story-craft sensibilities, he is a careful student of Scripture and a profoundly kind man. And you’ll need both, since there’s a treacherous road between here and there, to be sure, and it leads much farther south than we want to go. But as our Senior Pastor always says, “Everything you want is on the other side of hard!” Praise the Lord that his under-shepherds are plentiful, His Spirit is at work and his grace is everything!

- j

PS: Each week during this series, I’ll also be including in this space two playlists – Messiah’s Mixtape, where you can hear fantastic song versions of the Psalms we’re preaching through, and also a “Staff Member Mixtape,” where you can enjoy some of the songs that have shaped us in the past or are inspiring us today. This week, it's Will!

Psalm 8: "What Is Man?"
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Yes, that little cutie in the Prince-of-Pop-inspired ‘fit is none other than yours truly. He just wants to listen to some tunes with a “big person.” He will perhaps that very day discover songs that range the gamut of emotion and thought. Songs that cut through style and genre across the decades and even centuries to reflect those elements common to the human experience. Words and music that will seep down into his soul and become the language he uses to express that experience ­– and through those expressions to know what it means to be truly known by others. Now, he doesn’t know any of that yet, but still, he reaches.

Language seems to elude us these days, especially when it comes to defining a human – when and how one begins, what its unalienable properties are, and especially what its purpose is. The very first principle of debate is that parties must agree upon the definition of terms. They need to be clear and rich enough to contain the content of our conversations. Unfortunately, much of public discourse today is thwarted before it can even begin, in this initial phase. Yet as I said before, songs go a long way in shaping our internal dictionaries. When we reach for expression in a profound moment, it is more often than not in a song lyric or poetry that our tongues find purchase. And Psalm 8 is a song above all others to give us our definition of Humanity. First, and quite ironically, it defines us as the kind of creature who would even ask such a question!

I’m so grateful I get to preach this passage on a Sunday where we are honoring graduating seniors, (a rite of passage into the responsibilities of adult humanity) – and again on Sunday night at our sister church in Huntsville, (where we’ll be ordaining and installing a master of divinity to his pastorate). I love that spectrum and how Psalm 8 hangs in the balance. It’s just like my usual Sunday morning prayer, where I always acknowledge that it is Christ who is the frailty of humanity met with the fullness of divinity, and in Him alone where we may ultimately find ourselves.
- j

PS: Each week during this series, I’ll also be including in this space two playlists – Messiah’s Mixtape, where you can hear fantastic song versions of the Psalms we’re preaching through, and also a “Staff Member Mixtape,” where you can enjoy some of the songs that have shaped us in the past or are inspiring us today. I’ll go first!

Mary’s Mixtape

Last summer, I had a revelation. If you had asked me before then to describe the formative music of my childhood, I would have immediately launched into hard rock, beginning with Led Zeppelin and tracing the thread through the arenas of the eighties and grunge of the nineties. But last July, a favorite artist of mine released somewhat of a throwback album, drawing on what he has called his “mom’s music.” A departure from his usual blues infused riff-rock, this was more the easy listening of Steve Winwood, Phil Collins, and Toto.

All of a sudden, I realized that although I had often preferred and chosen the music I heard in my dad’s pickup, it was the songs aimed at my mother and her peers that formed the more frequent soundtrack of my childhood. Air Supply was what played in the doctor’s office waiting room and grocery store aisles. Acts like Don Henley and Jackson Browne were the gentle score of everyday life. And I believe they were every bit as formative to my sensibilities as the stuff I chose for myself.

That’s why, although we are officially launching our series on the Messianic Psalms this week, I’m beginning with a New Testament text. (Happy Mothers’ Day!) You see, when Mary was told she’d be the mother of God, she immediately burst out in Psalm. Lots of them, actually. Her Magnificat is like a greatest hits mixtape, just like the ones we used to make and wear out in the days of Magnavox. Her theology is richly layered and broadly sourced from the music of her people. And there is no reason whatsoever to believe that she didn’t fill her house with the sounds of her soul, immersing her children in a world of poetic imagery that forever shaped the way they would see the world.

The whole book of Psalms is Messiah music; what Calvin called “an anatomy of all parts of the soul,” spelled out across individual experiences and scaled to the story of Israel and the nations. And Jesus rightly saw himself as the keynote and melody of that whole collection. His mom’s music was his own.

I often have lunches with folks who say, “I just don’t know what to do with the Psalms.” And I tell them, don’t try to drink the seven seas. Just swim in them. To be immersed in the Psalms is to be awash in language for every aspect of the human condition, and thus to see the heart of Jesus. So, in addition to joining us for worship this summer as Will and I lay open the heart of Jesus in the Psalms, here are 3 things you can do to get good and saturated in them:

1. Join us in the Soul Room each weekday morning and pray the Psalms back to God.

2. Pick up and savor a book like Open and Unafraid by David Taylor or Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis

3. Find a playlist (or make your own mixtape!) of Psalms sung by gifted musicians like The Corner Room or Poor Bishop Hooper

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

Renewal
We simply are not the people we want to be. Whether you are a Christian or a pagan, if we are honest, we know this. I really wish I was like nature and knew that, when spring hit and the sun warmed the days and the soil temperature heated up, I would burst out in a renewal of color and fruit. But alas, it is not so; and since we are fallen creatures who continually fall short of what we were designed for—we need renewal.

This Sunday we will meet a people who need renewal. This becomes abundantly clear as they read from the Torah and have the Levites explain it to them. As more light gets in, it exposes how far they have missed the mark and reveals that human thriving will not happen apart from their design. This sets off a whole chain of events which we will unpack on Sunday. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Also, this is my last Sunday before I leave on Sabbatical and will unplug for four months. Every day, as the time draws closer, I ponder what a gift this is, and I am so thankful for St. Patrick and that I can be your pastor.

Blessings,

Jim

Good Friday Service

Hungry Is Better than Sorry
This weekend we celebrate Palm Sunday, a tradition tied to the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem and the beginning of his Passion. Jesus is welcomed through the gates of Zion as their long-awaited Savior-king, but by the end of the week he’s being executed as a criminal outside its walls. These are, by the way, the same city walls (massive improvements notwithstanding) that we just saw Nehemiah and company rebuild over just 52 days despite “decay from within and from without.”

Who could have imagined that the city built (at great cost!) to be a dwelling place for God and man would ultimately reject the perfect God-man? After decades of celebrating this series of events, I am still amazed by the reversal. Which is weird, because it’s not like my heart isn’t just as fickle. I’m like Paul in Romans 7: I do what I don’t want to do, and I don’t do what I do want to do. (Who will deliver me from this body of death!?) Scripture is a faithful mirror to the soul.

It reminds me of the young man who tried to order his steak well done at a fancy-schmancy Manhattan restaurant. When the waiter refused to fulfill that request, the man protested, “But that’s how I like it!” To which the server deadpanned, “With all due respect, sir, you don’t know what you like.” It really does come down to desires, and how our crooked affections must be trained to love the lovely.

In our passage this week, we find Ezra and Nehemiah tag-teaming the remnant, lovingly reminding them that they suffer from something far worse and yet somehow also mercifully better than guilt. Humanity’s great shame is that we have a tragically unsophisticated palate! We settle for and even learn to crave things that simply do not satisfy the hunger with which we were created, which was intended to drive us to the One for whom we were made.

Their surprising solution? Less weeping; more feasting.

I can’t wait to show you!

- josh

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

A Bit Player in a Bigger Story
I have done mission work where I was put in charge of the roofers. Though it is not my vocation, at one time it was. I roofed houses with my dad for a few years, then worked for my uncle through high school in the summers. There isn’t much I can’t roof.

So, of course, they put me in charge of the roofing crew. There I was with a bunch of youth, eager to roof this house and full of dreams and aspirations of how I would turn these teens into roofers. It didn’t turn out that way. It was more like a monkey with a football, and I found out I had less virtue than I thought.

Something like that is happening in Nehemiah 3, except we are dealing with adults who have professional vocations that don’t look anything like masonry and carpentry. There are professionals that lead these crews of people, and they are tasked with rebuilding 10 gates and 2.5 miles of wall. I had PTSD reading this, imagining what this must have looked like. However, it worked! It worked in the same way it has always worked when God is building his kingdom. He takes people very competent in their professional life and asks them to do jobs and ministry they are totally unequipped for. How is that possible? You will have to join us on Sunday to find out!

Here is to a great Crawfish Boil on Saturday! Hope you’re planning to join us!

Blessings,
Jim