Author: Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Wilburn

I just purchased “The Essential Johnny Cash” music CD.  I’ve always been a Cash fan.  I am drawn to his melancholy brooding, his angry and all that Black.  I like his bold pointed lyrics, including the songs he chooses but didn’t write.  I am thinking Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt.” Cash is a prophet.  All musicians are supposed to be prophets (instead of rich superstars).  Poetry and lyric are the tools of prophets, so says Walter Brueggemann in his old work, The Prophetic Imagination.  The prophets like Jeremiah bring down the hegemonic king with weeping, with symbols like baskets of fruit and plumb lines, shattered clay pots… while sitting in dung and ash.  Moses defies Pharaoh and wins over the powers with “Thus says the Lord…” and then Moses brings on the gnats.  Pharaoh’s magicians can’t fake the gnats.  Pharaoh is brought down by gnats.  Go figure.  And figure Brueggemann and Cash do.  Cash’s beat, that drivin’ walkin’ doin’ time kind of beat drills deep into the settled comforts of affluent America.  Brueggemann says the Powers will pretend to not notice – they need do nothing and the prophet will not have any affect.  But still they hammer on, the pronounce, they walk on, they smash symbols in front of us suburbanite Pharaohs… “Thus says the Lord!  Some day you who care not about the poor and oppressed will be...

I did it!  Yes, I hung a white ribbon over the front porch today, this banner day, this day of the Holy Saints – Hagios Santos.  I love it when I follow through on the little things.  Man, it bugs me when people leave up Halloween decorations on All Saints’ Day.  It’s like leaving up Good Friday decorations through Easter and on into Monday, Tuesday, etc.  What a...

“All Saints’ Day” – the day of the hallowed ones, the saints. Here it is again, the scary decorations, the kids are out having fun trick-or-treating, and I get to stay home and manage “the bowl” – the candy handouts.  I decided this year I wanted to try to ACTUALLY celebrate All Saints’ Day – some kind of declaration or decoration.  In our church tradition we don’t have a Mass or even a prayer.  Nothing on November 1st.  I never have liked this free-church deficiency.  Each year no celebration of All Saints Day bugs me because so much is put into celebrating the demons, devil or scary ancestors.  It’s just unfair – and telling about our society.  But the demons’ time is up.  The demons are not scary as much as scared.  They know their day is done.  They thrive off of chaos, fear, competition and compulsion.  Demons are most like hyenas I think; nervously laughing, snapping, crushing – skittering about.  They’d kill each other if they could get by with it. I read the news today, O boy.  The demons should be feasting.  Tuesday November 2nd is election day and politicians are mud-slinging and avoiding content as usual.  Nothing will change, just the names.  The economy is at a snail’s pace to “recovery.”  Venezuela started a “currency war,” the Economist states.  China, the EU, USA – all attempting...

In 2006 I wrote a poem (song) based on Ephesians chapter five, “Awake O Sleeper.” I forgot I wrote it though. But I was just digging through a pile of papers and there it was! According to Ralph Martin, Worship In The Early Church, the Ephesians hymn was a very early hymn used at baptism. I picture it used at church as well, which very likely included baptisms. I imagine it used on the first day of the week, Sunday at sunrise. Paul speaks of “light” in chapter five. I imagine the first light of sunrise breaking across the gathered people and they recite and sing this hymn: Wake up O sleeper,rise from the deadand Christ will shine on you! I believe we need richer, deeper and more victorious modern hymnody. I believe we need this victory to not be “split” – not escaping earth and traveling up to heaven, but awakening to the divine presence, waiting and ready for Christ’s return. Upon his arrival we must be ready to show him all that we’ve been working on: stopping violence and oppression, feeding the poor, housing the homeless. I think that’s a proper thought for this day, Saint Francis of Assisi Day. Anyway, I have written a few songs attempting this goal over the past few years. But I don’t share them. Here’s the poem: Wake Up, O Sleeper...

Well now, this might be dangerous.  Why my sermons are not interesting: allow me to state the most obvious reason – I am not interesting, nor am I a good preacher, and I just might not be interesting – uh, I said that, right? After we get past that (and there may not be much past that from your perspective) if my sermons are not interesting it is not because I don’t have anything to say.  I have tons to say – I am just not sure anyone wants to hear it.  Now I think, pray, serve, worship and preach from a deep center, a mystic place.  In this day of “what’s-in-it-for-me?” church, I wonder how interesting my sermons are.  Of course, it doesn’t help that I am reading Jeremiah right now:  nobody wanted to hear him either! A few years ago I stopped reading all the consumer (tertiary) Christian books by popular authors like John Ortberg, Erwin McManus and Rob Bell… blah blah blah.  For a variety of interior spiritual reasons I just couldn’t read them anymore.  I just read a few deep theology books… N.T. Wright and Simon Chan… and I read a whole bunch of mystic and spirituality books. My monthly times of solitude and contemplation began to rephrase my reading of Scripture.  Each week I steal away and read.  I read Christian spiritual mystics.  I...