Woodhaven Presbyterian Podcast

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
June 20, 2010 - Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 14: 25-33

One of my favorite Charles Shultz “Peanuts” comic strips reminds me of one of my own childhood trips, and how swiftly childhood passes away.  Picture, if you will, Charlie Brown sitting under a tree and he’s talking with Peppermint Patty, and she asks him, “What do you think ’security’ is, Chuck?”  His answer is, “Security is sleeping in the back seat of the car when you’re a little kid and you’ve been somewhere with your mom and dad and its night and you’re riding home in the car asleep and you don’t have to worry about anything.  Mom and Dad are in the front seat and they’re taking care of everything and they’re worrying abut everything.”  To which Peppermint Patty responds, “Wow, that’s really neat!” 

But then Chuck says, “But it doesn’t last.  Suddenly you’re grown up and it can never be the same again.  Suddenly it’s over and you’ll never get to sleep in the back seat again!”

Peppermint Patty says, “Never?” 

“Never,” says Chuck, “absolutely never.”

To which she replies, “Hold my hand Chuck.”

(…excerpt from podcast)
 

 

 All In The Family [15:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
June 13, 2010 - Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ephesians 4: 25-32 and Psalm 73

A woman was bitten by a dog that they suspected of having rabies.  And she was rushed to the hospital and left in a room to wait to hear the results of the autopsy of the dog.  Only then would she know for certain whether she had the possibility of having rabies.  An intern who was on duty saw her sitting in the room by herself and so he went in to comfort her and console her and he began to tell her what could happen and she wanted to know more and more.  Well, toward the end of the visit he realized he probably said more than he should have because she was visibly shaken.  And later when he came in to look on her she was sitting on the side of the bed and writing occasionally something and then looking off into space and then writing some more, so he decided he should go back in and see what he could do to help.  He went in and he asked her, he said, “Are you writing your last will and testament or a letter to your family?”  And she said, “Oh no, no,” she said, “just in the event that I have been infected, I am making a list of the people that I want to bite before I die.”

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 Anger [19:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Galatians 1: 11-24, John 5: 1-9

This morning I wanted to preach for you a very powerful sermon on motivation, but somehow I just couldn’t get up for it.  You know how it is.  Actually though, motivation is one of the hottest topics that is being discussed in our world.  There are many voices in this discussion that range from Maslow’s charting the hierarchy of human needs, to Ayn Rand answering the question with one word: selfishness.  (By the way she makes a pretty powerful case using human history and the first book of the Bible that we call Genesis.)  Motivation is the force that propels the flow of life.  It is the stimulus to action.  Much like the Big Bang, motivation pushes and it expands and it creates.

(…excerpt from podcast)
 

 

 Motivation [17:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010
John 15: 12-17

It’s a good thing to see so many of you in church on this Memorial Day weekend.  I understand traditionally that this weekend marks the beginning of summer.  And for some odd reason I am now allowed to wear white pants.  Frankly that’s something I have never quite understood but there was some prohibition about white clothes before Memorial Day.  So it is a time for cookouts and baseball and games and for white clothes and Mondays off.  Memorial Day has its roots in what was called Decoration Day and that was when the graves of the war dead would be cleaned and decorated by family members just right after the Civil War. And there were plenty of those graves to decorate.  Over one million people died in that war.  So at the heart of this weekend is the remembrance of the war dead.

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 Memorial Day [15:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
May 23, 2010 — The Festival of Pentecost
Acts 2: 1-21

A teacher of a fourth grade Sunday school class was leading a discussion on the doctrine of the trinity, and all was going fairly well.  One little girl did a nice job talking about God, and a little boy talked a great deal about Jesus, and then there was an awkward silence, a long pause, nothing was said, until finally one of the little girls explained to the teacher what was happening.  She said, “Teacher, the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit is absent today.”  If there’s any criticism directed toward Presbyterians it is sometimes Presbyterians are absent when you talk about the Holy Spirit.

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 The Movement of the Sprit [16:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Julie Riley
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
May 16, 2010 - Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 16: 9-15

I received my first call to ministry in a Dairy Queen.  After I had graduated Seminary I went down to Houston to visit one of my college roommates.  The trip was my own personal R&R after all my hard work in seminary.  During the long weekend I had only one important thing on my to-do list, which was to touch base with the chair of the APNC of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Denton Texas.  Now for those of you who don’t follow that acronym the APNC is the Associate Pastor Nominating Committee.  We had scheduled to touch base at 2:00 o’clock by phone and since I wasn’t going to be at home I agreed that I would call him; I was not going to miss that call.  Now this was in the early days of cell phones, and being a seminary student, I didn’t have one.  And so we started looking for a payphone, and I knew that I didn’t want to talk to the chairman of the pastor nominating committee that I hoped might one day offer me a call standing in a gas station with all the cars rushing by.  So I was looking for a payphone that was inside, someplace that was relatively quiet where I could talk and be heard.  And that’s when we saw it.  A Dairy Queen.  Bonus!  A telephone and ice cream!

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 The Ministry of Interruptions [16:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
May 9, 2010 - Sixth Sunday of Easter
Hosea 11: 1-4

In seminary they taught us that Mother’s Day is a cultural celebration or a cultural phenomenon, and, as such, ministers were not necessarily required to pay much attention to it.  You’d know that would be a professor, and not a pastor.  Because if you’ve been a pastor for very long you know this is a pretty important day not to forget.  Robert Fulghum, in one of his books, talks about his first twenty-five years of pastoral ministry.  And he said that a woman came up to him one day and said, “I just wanted to remind you that next Sunday is Mother’s Day and I am bringing my mother, so you’d better say something about mothers and it better be good.” 

Okay, I will.

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 No Place for Whereabouts Unknown [13:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
May 2, 2010 - Fifth Sunday of Easter
I Samuel 12: 32-49

Ruby Bridges, a six-year old African-American girl, was the first student of her race to attend the all-white William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1960.  Most of you have seen the picture that Norman Rockwell painted of this incident, it was one of the most sold copies of any Saturday Evening Post ever sold.  It was a picture of a crowd of angry white adults, faces are contorted with hate, shouting at a little black girl, four burly-looking U.S. Marshals surrounding her, and in the middle is little Ruby Bridges.  She’s in a white dress, with white shoes and white socks, she’s carrying a book.  And she’s on her way to defeat a giant.  A powerful giant of school segregation and the centuries of racism behind it.  Such is the story of David.

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 The Deceptive Nature of Power [19:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
April 25, 2010 - Fourth Sunday of Easter
Genesis 32: 22-31

And then he said let me go, for the day is breaking.  But Jacob said I will not let you go unless you bless me. 

When I was a boy my brother and I had to share a room because there were only two bedrooms in our house, and we always kept the closet light on and the door just a little bit ajar.  You know why, don’t you?  In the dark, clothes move.  And at the back of the closet there’s a portal, and spirits come through that portal in the middle of the night and they stand by your bed.  As much as we need sleep, the downside of it is that that’s when the subconscious takes all of this unresolved thoughts and fears and all of the stuff that we don’t really don’t want to deal with and puts it in some kind of a dream and shoves it into our consciousness.  I’m a mature adult now.  I have one of those little socket plugs that you put in the wall.  And I use it just in case I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Well, at least that’s part of the function.

There’s a particular human experience that occurs when we’re in the dark, and especially when we’re alone.

(…excerpt from podcast)
 

 

 Unwilling to Let Go [14:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rev. Michael Thompson
Woodhaven Presbyterian Church
April 11, 2010 - Second Sunday of Easter
John 20: 19-31

Garrison Keillor wrote a column entitled, “A Pagan’s Thoughts at Eastertide.”  I thought when I read the title that there must be a sermon in there somewhere, and sure enough, there is.  The column is a candid and poignant confession that Keillor struggles with faith issues particularly during the season of Easter.  He writes this: “I came to church as a pagan this year, though wearing a Christian suit with a white shirt and I sat in my pew with my sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter, whom I would like to see grow up in the love of the Lord, and there I was, a skeptic. 

“Easter,” he writes, “is a good time to face up to the question: do we really believe the story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to good music?”

(…excerpt from podcast)

 

 Doubting Your Doubts [17:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download