If you don’t have one already, Holy Week will give you a low anthropology. It shows us at our worst. It’s not just the story of good vs. evil. It’s also the result of such human sentiments. Disagreements, jealousy, moral posturing, denial, betrayal.

It’s not an easy thing to reckon with, that when God in the flesh comes to spend time among us, we nail God to the cross. 

Hence the great Lenten prayer of confession: Lord, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those thing which we ought not to have done; there is no health in us. Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. 

Perhaps that’s why Martin Luther said, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.” But, thankfully, Luther wasn’t God. God is God, and God doesn’t kick the world to pieces. No, God so loves the world! God keeps entering into the world, marching into our little fickle Jerusalems. God keeps showing up, by grace, and keeps blessing our broken lives.

Or, as the musician Kevin Morby puts it: “Everything we do is a mess, but, oh honey, may this mess be blessed.”


The Liturgy of Love

Matthew tells of an angel who comes like lightning to roll back the stone. Mark recalls the women waking up early to go anoint Jesus’ body, John starts with Mary running back to tell the disciples about the empty tomb.
	
But when Luke is finally ready to describe the power of Easter, he begins with the word “but.” The previous chapter ends with Joseph of Arimathea wrapping up Jesus dead and forsaken body and leaving it in a tomb. 
	
“But” Luke begins, “on the first day of the week, at dawn, the women came to the tomb and found it empty.” But, yet, however, nevertheless. These are the words that signal a sacred intrusion into reality. 
	
The gospel always turns on a great but... 

Good music, and I mean good in the true and beautiful sense, good music has a magic to it. It hits us, brings forth from us feelings we didn’t know we had. Music can travel us through time, backward and forward. Music moves.

And its not always entirely clear how music does to us what it does. We can take a song that has shaped us, play it for someone else expecting similar magic, only to have them look back at us as if to say, “That’s it?”

But that’s also the beauty behind the bands and artists that make the magic we call music. Even though the songs, melodies, and words stay the same, we all receive them differently.

Just as music has a magic to it, so does scripture. It might not appear as such, hidden away under the dust covered Bibles of our sanctuary or living rooms. But, if you take out the Bible, and flip near the middle, it’s like finding an old mixed tape or CD. 

The psalter is a playlist of the prayers of God’s people.

Today Is The Only Day There Is

God works in ways seen and unseen. The psalmist can only sing this song as one who has made it to the other side and is able to look back and see how God was in the business of deliverance. Maybe you’re able to look back and see the same. But if you’re in the pit right now, hear me when I say, it’s okay to not be okay, and this isn’t the end...

Graves Into Gardens

The world rings with praise only because the whole of creation is in on it! 

Praise the Lord! The sun and moon, the sea, fire and snow, speckled frogs and spotted dogs, wrens and thrushes, old men with walkers and little babies who do little more than drool and sleep. The world joins up in the praise parade not with words, but with being. The snow whirls, the fires roar, the frogs croak, the cows moo, the birds sing, the old men sigh, and the little babies burp. 

In short, we learn to praise God not by paying compliments, but by paying attention. 

Have you ever watched a forest dance in the wind? Or listened to the symphony of a thunderstorm? Or sat in the silence and sound of a church service? Or experienced the fog lifting while you’re on the back of a motorcycle on your way to the zoo?

We can praise when all is well and when all is hell because, as Frederick Buechner puts it, “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”


Praise Is What We're Made For

Hear the Good News: The mercy of God is going to catch you. It might happen in a backyard summer celebration. It could happen in church on a Sunday. Or it might happen when you spin a record with some friends. But the mercy of God is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it...

Pursued By Mercy

Saint Augustine said, “You are the Body of Christ. In you and through you the work of incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken. You are to be blessed, broken, and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love.”

In other words, we come together to be blessed in order that we become blessings to others.

Blessed To Bless

Idolatry is real and it is more destructive than anything we can imagine. 

Idolatry is believing that social media is actually social when it fact is is constantly tearing us apart.

Idolatry is believing the number at the bottom of our bank statements is indicative of our true worth and value in the world.

Idolatry is believing that if our kids get on the right team, or the right score on a test, or into the right college everything will finally be forever perfect.

Idolatry is believing that the names on our bumper stickers are more important and determinate than our relationship with people who happen to have a different name on their bumper sticker.

Idolatry is believing we can know everything we ever need to know about another person by what type of music they listen to.

And God says, “I am tearing down your idols, I’m busting them up into a million tiny little pieces. Nothing can ever get between us.”

Faith in the Lord is a crazy thing. Keep at it long enough, keep singing these songs and praying these prayers, and all the sudden the idols don’t wield the power they once held over us.

Faith is the antidote to idolatry.

Faith, the faith gifted to us by and through the church, will keep us from putting all of our hope and effort in things that just aren’t up to the task.

Faith teaches us to cherish and build and rejoice in small things.

Faith, which is just another word for trust, tastes like raspberries and cream, it sounds like Bach’s cello suite No.1 in G major, it looks like the stars stretched across the night sky, it smells like freshly baked chocolate brownies, it feels like someone holding our hand when we don’t have anything else to hold onto.


Praise Is Awe Leaving The Body

There’s only once church that matters, and it’s not a church that’s wealthy, or powerful, or prestigious, or bursting at the seems, or filled with acclaim.

The only church that matters is a church that looks like Jesus.

Jesus, the tiny vulnerable baby who is totally dependent on others. 

Jesus, the young child ready to challenge the status quo of those who have lingered too long in the temples of yesterday. 

Jesus, the faithful one who spurns the temptations of the devil in the desert days of life. 

Jesus, the story teller re-narrating the reality of existence.

Jesus, the embracer of the last, least, lost, little, and dead.

Jesus, the friend who stays with those who abandon him even to the very end.

Jesus, the forgiver of those who do not know what they are doing.

Jesus, the resurrected, who returns, reconciles, and receives everyone.
	
The Spirit is poured out among us, working in and through us, giving us everything we need to look like Jesus.

The Early Church

One day, in the city of David, shadows darken as a cross is raised. Upon which is nailed the last king to come from the line of David. What does God do with us sinners gathering at the foot of the cross? What does God do with us Davids who take and break and sin and suffer?

My sin, oh the bliss, of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more; praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

The cross is a sign of truth. It is a sign of our sin, our shortcomings, our situation. And the cross sets us free. But not before shaking us to the core, not before confronting us with the truth.

The Slippery Slope of Sin

thirty something pastor, podcast host, and fan of parables

Praise Is Awe Leaving The Body

Taylor Mertins

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