Puddleglum's Pensees

Today's sermon was a bit of an experiment: a series of meditations on Charles Wesley's hymn, "And Can It Be?"  It is composed as a series of six meditations which were interspersed among prayers and songs. For audio, click here . Conversion May 21, 1738.  It was the evening of Pentecost Sunday and a middle-aged Anglican priest sat, reading Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians. Oxford educated and one of the founders of The Holy Club, a minister of the Gospel, hymnwriter and missionary. His methodical approach to Christian living earned him the nickname Methodist early on. The nickname stuck. Were we to look at his life of simple and radical discipleship, we would likely be at once attracted to the seriousness with which he took his Christian commitment and annoyed because that life would silently expose the flaccid and contradictory threads of our own. And yet, he was fighting with God. Why? Several years before, he crossed the Atlan...

That's an unhappy title, isn't it? It conjures images of the aftermath of an urban battle: broken buildings, stone-strewn streets, silence and a stray dog. The people are long scattered; everything that the city once was, its cafes, shops, homes and offices, is gone.  It's not an inaccurate image, but perhaps an overdrawn one. So keep it in mind as you consider this. "Desolation" is a technical term that comes from St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises . It is his name for the experience of the absence of God.  There are three things more we need to say about this experience.  First of all, desolation is not any form of emerging atheism or agnosticism. Christian believers who experience desolation may well experience doubt about aspects of the faith, even to the point of wondering whether the whole Christian thing isn't the result of some sort of delusion that has been passed on from previous generations. Such doubts are neither to b...

For audio, click here . “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Until that day, accept this gesture as a gift on my daughter’s wedding-day.”   Do you know that quote’s source? It is the conclusion of the opening scene of my favorite movie of all time:  the  Godfather. In that scene, the local funeral director, a man named Bonasera, comes to the local crime boss, Vito Corleone seeking justice for his daughter. She had been assaulted and hospitalized by two boys who were arrested, but essentially unpunished. Bonasera had, he tells the Godfather, embraced the American way of life. Now, America has failed him and his daughter.  So  he has come to the Godfather for old-world justice. But he makes a serious mistake when he asks this question: “How much shall I pay you?”   “Bonasera, Bonasera,” replies the Godfather, genuinely hurt, “what have I ever done to you that treat me so disrespectfully?” Come, ...