Some light-hearted humor for after Christmas… Does someone ever say something to you, but you hear something completely different? Like, when I was a kid and they sang “hosanna in the highest” I thought they were singing about lasagna in the highest. Hmmm, lasagna in the highest heaven… So about a week or so ago I asked the Facebook people on my friends list what sort of funny things they thought they heard in church. Here is a selection of some of their comments below, there are more on my FB page if you want to go check them out. Caution: you may have to read these out loud to hear the humor. Joy to the world, the Lord has gum (come). Joy to the world, and let’s have fun, let earth receive
Dave was in China the week after Thanksgiving. It turns out they celebrate Christmas there. Celebrating Christmas has been a growing trend in China. For younger people, it's a festive day to go shopping, catch up with friends, and party. Shopping malls decorate to show they are keeping up with the international trend. Shelves of pre-bagged small gifts show up. According to a 2014 study, almost 74% of Chinese are non-religious or observe a Chinese folk religion. Only 2.5% practice Christianity. In China, that's still 35 million people. But those are the official numbers. Unofficially there could be 93-115 million Protestants, with most of them involved in underground house churches. According
I have now focused two sermons on being present - being in the moment. Remembering that Advent is a time of contemplation and preparation, it is also a time we try to rush to the Christmas story...I tend to rush it towards the Sunday where we have the story of Mary told to us once again. I have always been drawn to the character of Mary in the Biblical narratives. I have also been drawn to her as a person in history and faith. There is something so captivating of the woman dressed in pale baby blue. The mother of Jesus and the source of many unexplained appearances over time. Yet, to see Mary as a magical figure that appears on toast and water stained walls of the Kennedy Expressway in Chica
An original post on Twitter: Four hours later and we are still singing O Come, O Come Emmanuel. How many verses are in this song, anyway? (@UnvirtuousAbbey) Some of the responses: Actually you're not supposed to start singing this song until December 17th. Then it's one verse a day through December 23rd. It's called the O Antiphons. Each day's verse is the Gospel antiphon for that day. It's never too long. Tradition has its reasons: always anticipation. (@meg_in_richmond) Depends. Do you have all 73 volumes of the hymnal? (@MikeHasty4) and the worst is when the organist plays it like a dirge (@gramasally) O, Come, O Come: verse 87 'distracted': How long, how long, this Advent carol hell? O,
