St. Patrick Presbyterian Church, EPC

St. Patrick Presbyterian Church, EPC

Sermon podcasts of St. Patrick Presbyterian Church in Collierville, TN (from 2017 forward). Check out our old podcast for sermons prior to 2017 - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/st-patrick-presbyterian-church/id860820566?mt=2

Episodes

  1. 12h ago

    The Aroma of Gladness

    A sense of smell is a powerful thing. Around this time of year, I have a trauma response when I smell fresh-cut grass. It reminds me of 2-a-day football practices when I was in high school. August in Memphis is brutal, especially in pads, getting run and beaten to death! And that was 50 years ago! Or most often, there are intoxicating aromas that signal memories of Christmas or Thanksgiving, and immediately we have a visceral reaction. Our Psalm for this Sunday got me to thinking that this is also true with gratitude and thanksgiving, especially to the Old Testament believer. Psalm 100, the subscription reads, A Psalm for giving thanks. Many psalms are about giving thanks; only this one is so designated. Many scholars believe this Psalm is the thanksgiving offered when an individual came with his sacrifice and bread to the temple to give a thanksgiving offering. When the believer was especially grateful for God’s blessings, he would bring this offering, which was also a meal to be shared with those he chose to bring with him.  That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Gratitude can’t be contained; it overflows to our friends with whom we must share the joy with us. And yes, it usually calls for a grand feast! That is the setting of our final Psalm in a summer of Gratuitous Gladness. I hope to see you Sunday as we share the feast together.

  2. Jul 26

    His Love Endures Forever

    The more I think about gratitude and thanksgiving, the more I am convinced that gratitude is more a matter of being than an emotion. What I mean is we tend to think of gratitude as just a feeling we have as a result of a perceived kindness. And while that is true, I think there is more. When I say it is a matter of being, I mean that gratitude actually affects and shapes what one is capable of seeing. I think this litany we will look at Sunday is a good case in point.  A litany is a kind of call and response liturgical device. In this particular Psalm, a statement is made about something God has done, and after that statement, throughout the whole Psalm there is a response that says, “For his steadfast love endures forever.” The thanksgiving ranges from thanksgiving for God’s lavish creation, his glorious redemption, and all the way down to his continued care of his people. It is like the Psalmist is trying to beat it into our heads that there are things we might doubt, but the evidence is in: God’s love endures forever. In other words, if there is one thing that shapes how we know and perceive the world, it is this: God’s love endures always.  I read somewhere long ago, and I can’t find the quote anywhere, a writer who was talking about how we learn to love, and he says this about his child, “I kiss my child because I love him. I kiss my child in order to love him.” In other words, love is more than a gush of feeling that then spontaneously is expressed in an embrace; it is also a learned habit, practiced even when feelings are not exactly bubbling on the surface. I think gratitude is like that. We express gratitude when we genuinely feel grateful, but also, we express gratitude to be grateful. Like this litany, we are practicing being grateful, because we know this is the correct posture of seeing and perceiving the world. That is what we will talk about this Sunday. Speaking of grateful, how ‘bout this reprieve in the weather this week! I don’t know about you, but I am so grateful for this small kindness!

  3. Jul 19

    Yahah Yadah Yadah

    I have thoroughly enjoyed the World Cup this summer, and I hope you have as well. The celebrations, the underdogs, the brilliance, the world stage, it's an incredible experience. There's a deep sadness creeping in with the thought of it coming to a close this Sunday and having to wait another four years for the next edition. Forty-seven teams from this World Cup will go home and face reality. They will be forced to acknowledge that they were not the best, they could have been better, and they have work to do and four years to do it if they want glory in 2030. But they also must acknowledge the incredible blessing of getting to play in the World Cup, a dream of billions of children across the globe. The tension between acknowledging our own weaknesses and acknowledging our great blessings can be tough. It forces us to admit we didn't earn much of the good we experience. There's a word for that in the Bible and it's used over and over again, especially in the Psalms. And in that word is the better story of the Gospel. So before watching the World Cup Final on Sunday afternoon, let's consider the good news together on Sunday morning from Psalm 107.

  4. Jul 12

    Generation to Generation

    Most of the conversation around generations these days, particularly among those who are “terminally online,” revolves around what are actually micro-generations: Silent, Boomer, X, Millennial, Z, and Alpha. I’m told there’s now a Beta designation. As is the case with most online discourse, the general tenor is one of negative comparison and resentful competition. Generational prosperity and cultural dominance have become a zero-sum game for the living only. The losers haven’t even been born yet.    When we log off and enter the Biblical world instead, we see a better story unfolding. It’s all an expression of what is sometimes called “The John 3:16 of the Old Testament.” Exodus 34:6-7 is the most internally quoted and referenced revelation of God in all of Scripture. When Moses asked God to show him his glory,  “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And that’s exactly what we see is driving this whole plot: God’s desire to show favor to those who draw near to him in such a way that has generational consequences.   What if the things we think of as our generations’ greatest strengths are actually iniquities incurring debts that our children’s grandchildren will be forced to carry? If you know your genealogy back that far, I’ll bet you’ve already traced some of your brokenness to the choices of a quarter century ago. If you could cast your eye (and some of you can) to your great grandchildren, you’ll notice that some of your own failures already have compounded interest for their lives.     What can we do? That’s what Psalm 145 is all about. The Psalmist places his allusion to the mercy of God from Exodus 34:6-7 in the center of our text, between an impossible standard and a childlike faith. It’s enough to make us gratuitously glad!

  5. Jul 5

    Gladness When It Doesn't Resolve

    Late Monday, I stood in my garden in sadness and consternation as I looked at my tomato plants. I had only been gone four days, but as anyone who gardens in the heat and humidity of Memphis knows, you can do everything right, and things still go wrong. Good soil, proper watering, spacing, sucker to give room for circulation, and spraying regularly —and suddenly you look at the bottom leaves, and they begin to yellow and spot—blight. It can mean you lose your tomatoes and have to pull them up.  But with care, ruthlessly stripping the dead leaves off, until there is not much left, spraying with fungicides and proper feeding, the plant revives, and by August you have a crop above the blight line, and by August you are rewarded with great ripening on the vine.  This week, we have a Psalm written from the perspective of the blight. The Psalmist is totally honest about the conditions around him; all is bleak, the throne thrown down, the wall breached, the line of promise to human eyes cut off. The promise of God looks as dead as my tomato plants. I won’t lie to you, this Psalm is not for the faint of heart, but it is for those who hang on to God even and especially when it doesn’t look like it will ever resolve. This Sunday we will talk about it. The Psalm is jarring, and it is meant to be. It is honest about the conditions in which spiritual formation takes place, and I, for one, am glad we get to experience this together in worship. That is where all honest lament takes place, or should take plac

  6. Jun 28

    How To Dance

    Our High Schoolers just got back from a three-day mystery trip, and I applaud their courage and eagerness. They are incredible! It's no easy thing to enter three days without a phone, without a plan, no idea where we're going or what we're doing until we're actually doing it. When's the last time you had a moment like that? When you were three years old maybe? It's a rather terrifying and counter cultural way to live. All our high schoolers were left with was the present moment, the present place, and the present people around them. The power of the mystery trip is you have to be present, and that's where God is at work. It was such gladness for me to see our students enjoy that. A mystery trip, much like a mystery moment in life, is disorienting. It's a liminal space where we've left one room but haven't yet entered the next. We've left stability, and we're floating over the threshold waiting to move forward. This time of disorientation is waiting for not just a return to the old way, but a new orientation, a new perspective, a new way of living.  The Psalm we're looking at this Sunday, Psalm 30, is all about the gratuitous gladness found when we've gone through disorientation and God has given us new life on the other side. And this new life, as well as this Sunday's sermon, might just include some dancing.

  7. Jun 21

    All Nations!

    I’m just aware enough of sports to know that North America has been hosting the World Cup. I catch little snippets of cultural celebrations on restaurant TVs and wonder at the way a team can represent and stir national pride. I don’t follow the games or standings much, but there’s a lot to affirm in the effort. It’s a pure and joyful expression of what it means to be from somewhere. We do our best to set aside the geopolitics of state and focus on the indelible glory of a unique people. That’s a tall order these days, but I do think these athletic events help.    It can be hard to separate our understanding of what the Bible calls “the nations” from the way we’ve been shaped by the modern idea of the nation-state in a global economy.  We’ve developed polar ways of thinking about these things. On one side, there’s the view that each nation is equal and that tolerance is the highest good. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a belief that one kind of government is best, and all others should conform. Often we toggle back and forth between these convictions depending on which seems more advantageous at the moment.    When we read in the Psalms about “the nations,” or in the New Testament about “the gentiles,” it’s clear that the authors are speaking from the particular reference point of Israel among and even above the other peoples of the earth. There’s a kind of exceptionalism on display for sure, and if we’re not careful we can miss the purpose and heart of God’s plan in blessing his “special possession.”  What does the Bible teach about the future of the nations, and what does all that have to do with us? Let’s talk about it this Sunday.

  8. Jun 14

    Works and Wisdom

    When I was a child, the entirety of human knowledge was contained on the bottom shelf of my parents’ bookcase, in alphabetical order. It was basically the internet printed out, bound in 26 volumes, and called The Encyclopedia Britannica. The problem was, you could familiarize yourself with most of it and still not know what it was like to have a girlfriend. Not that I’m speaking from experience; I’m just saying there’s more to know than knowledge.  I’m meditating on T.S. Eliot’s “Choruses from ‘The Rock’” this week, thinking about how much truer this is in the so-called “Information Age” than it was a century ago.  The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust. Psalm 111, like the Britannica, is presented as an acrostic: the A-Z, (or, if you like, Alpha to Omega) of Wisdom. Yet it presents a very different vision of understanding than mere trivia recall, avoiding all the fascinating details and diving instead to the whole heart of the matter. Knowledge can be downloaded, transferred, quantified. Wisdom is not like that. Wisdom is relational, contextual, and fruit-bearing. Knowledge measures matter, but wisdom measures meaning. What does it all mean? Let’s explore it together this Sunday.

  9. Jun 7

    Human Again

    When I was in my late teens, my grandfather invited me to bring my girlfriend over for “Sunday Dinner.” He was going to grill us steaks and sit down with this young lady he’d heard about. I loved my Pop and was proud to show off this gorgeous girl I’d snagged. So, we went to worship in the morning, grabbed a light lunch, and hung out for a bit before making the drive down to the farm in Germantown. We planned to get there around 4pm since we knew old people like to eat a bit early and we didn’t want to be rude.  Allie and I were bewildered by his unusually gruff greeting. Honestly, he seemed a little put out to see us! It didn’t take long for us to realize that he had finished his cold “dinner” hours ago without us. He must have really leaned into his Silent Generation status by stewing instead of following up when we failed to appear at what was to him a clearly appointed hour! We apologized and explained the confusion, that we were used to the word “dinner” meaning the evening meal. Pop wasn’t one to hold a grudge against his grandchildren, so it was quickly forgiven. But I haven’t forgotten.  We do something similar with the word “Sabbath.” We’ve adopted the word from another generation and culture and adapted it to serve our own ends. For all practical purposes, a Jewish Sabbath and a Christian Lord’s Day have very little in common. So, it can be a bit of a feat for us to connect the dots between Biblical teaching on the weekly sundown rituals and what we do with our Sunday morning worship. A lot of assumptions are being made that might make us miss our precious appointment. Hopefully, Psalm 92 can help us bridge the gap this Sunday morning at 10:30am.

  10. May 31

    Sense and Senselessness

    At the top of my list of summer goals this year is to eat way too much ice cream. There's nothing like a delicious frozen treat on a hot summer day.   Put me in an ice cream shop, and I start to get a little impatient with the people in front of me, sinfully so if they're a Sampler. You know the type, maybe you are the type. "Oh my, so many choices, flavors I've never had before, how many miniature spoonfuls can I get you to scoop for me to try..." Come on now, did you really need a taste of 'Triple Chocolate Fudge' to know what you were getting? Step aside, some people came prepared.   Sorry, I better stop before I have to repent.   It's the desire behind these misdirected people that's actually the encouragement of our Psalm this Sunday. David is calling us to bring your senses to attention, take a taste of the goodness of God, and savor it until it results in praise. Join us this Sunday as David calls us out of senselessness and to a new experience of the glory of God.

  • 10 Episodes

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Sermon podcasts of St. Patrick Presbyterian Church in Collierville, TN (from 2017 forward). Check out our old podcast for sermons prior to 2017 - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/st-patrick-presbyterian-church/id860820566?mt=2

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