So, in the back of my front closet in my house in Chattanooga, are some green photo albums that my Grandma put together so long ago. They have heavy black pages, and in them are these black and white photographs held in place by little triangle tabs that you would lick to glue in place. And while one of the pictures would occasionally break free from the tabs, remarkably, most of them are still held in place. Memories that are stuck in a certain kind of order, a way of remembering things that always were that way, even though they may not really have been that way at all.

So, say what you will, even with all it's translation errors and arcane language, I still love the King James Bible.

So, I am a son of the South and a son of the Mountains. And this means many wonderful things to me. But it also means this: if EVER a weatherman announces some once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, like a full-on lunar eclipse eclipse or a dozen comets about to pass by so close we can almost touch them, on that day it will surely rain.

So, this mountain rises up from the lush Jericho Valley, a harsh, vertical desert of rough rocks, harsh edges, and slippery goat paths. It is Mount Quaratania, also known as the Mount of Temptation. After Jesus was baptized, he left the Jordan River and headed here, making his way up the mountain, for his encounter with what was ahead.

"Don't just stand there; do something!" That's what my brain says every time I get a new toy or tool or piece of equipment. I rip open the box, dump everything on whatever surface is handy, and immediately start doing things...whether they are the right things or not.

So, Moses is giving his farewell speech today. He has led this wild, complaining, endearing, loving, rough group of people for 40 years. It has, indeed, been an adventure. Escape from slavery. Miraculous interventions. Meeting God, hearing God, listening to God. Getting on the wrong side of God. Getting back in God's good graces. All while driving a car with thousands of unruly kids in the backseat.

So, generally I shy away from political themes in sermons. I tend to think they don't do much good, and in this current environment, you can be guaranteed that you'll make half your people angry, and the non-angry half will probably miss the point completely and so you've wasted your time, accomplishing nothing.

“I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me. But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well. 

Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green sticks dip sharply.” And just like that, after 85 days, the old man in Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea has caught a fish.

So when I was in high school, a group of friends and I used to love going to watch professional wrestling. Now this was before it got really, REALLY popular. This was before Randy Savage was the Macho Man, or Dusty Rhodes was the American Dream, or Jerry Lawler was the King. This was even before Ric Flair was the Nature Boy.

So I've mentioned a few times that Brooks and I went to Israel for a two week pilgrimage back in our seminary days. Now, Brooks and I, well, most of y’all have seen us. You know we’re gonna make our way as faithfully as we can, but we’ll also sneak away or crack up in the back row. We’re not disruptive, we’re just differently attentive. But we are attentive. And, with God’s help, we try to stay open.

So, in high school, I had this friend named Kevin. Kevin was what we would call that big, silent type. Linebacker, a fairly good student, worked part-time at the local garage. He lived down the street from me in a nice split-level house with nice parents, a nice dog, and a nice cat. When he got his driver's license his dad bought him a used Alfa Romeo Spider that didn't run, but Dad was a mechanic and showed Kevin all he needed to know to get that car up and running.

So, this is a weird time of the year for me. It always has been. As a kid, I was coming up during the time when the commercialism of the holidays was really taking off. Holidays would start when “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” came on TV, leading to Halloween.

So, I've told some of you this story before, but it bears repeating tonight. I have a seminary friend that would nightly read Bible stories to his children when they were younger. And whenever he got to a part when an angel appeared, his kids would laugh and cover their ears and hunker down, because he would always shout at the top of his lungs. “BEHOLD!” he would yell. “I'M A BIG HEAVENLY ANGEL!” he would mean.

Many years ago, when I was an engineering student at Georgia Tech, I worked for a year at Dow Chemical in Michigan. During that time, I had to spend the winter in the Upper Peninsula at Sault Ste. Marie. Surrounded by Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron, I got a pretty good idea of what lake effect snow was all about.

So, Brother Max was a street preacher in West Lafayette, Indiana. Or rather, he was a preacher who hung out on the commons of Purdue University.

So, I'd like to compliment my neighbor down in Chattanooga. As many of you know, I own my grandparents' house in Chattanooga, in a little town called Red Bank. And my neighbor is one of a kind. Her nickname is “Squatty,” because she's always outside squatting. Pulling weeds or planting flowers or getting things ready for yet another garage sale, she's always squatting while she works. I don't really know how tall she is, because I don't believe I've ever seen her standing.

So, I was pumping gas over in Norwich the other day, and a group of hunters were next to me, also pumping gas. And one of them came out of the store and was all flustered and got in the truck. As the other guy finished pumping and was about to get in, this other guy came whipping out of the store and started cussing the hunters. I mean loud! Everyone was watching.

Then he yelled, “If I see you around here again, I'm going to cut you!”

And then I did something stupid.

You know, if I were to let myself, I would be forced to admit that I'm pretty useless. Now, I know I'm fairly good at my job. I know how to preach; I know how to teach; I can make my way around a prayer book.

So, the Great War started in 1914, brought on by the growing economic rivalry and the fight for hegemony of the main European powers. The ongoing tensions in the Balkans eventually led to the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on June 28, 1914.

For some reason, lately, I've been thinking about my first time to visit what is now my home up here in Central New York. I was remembering watching everything so intensely, realizing that life up here is proof that Southerners don't have a corner on the weirdness market, but that wherever I go, as long as there are people around, there will be stories to be told. And sermons to be preached. And here's the first one I remember telling when I got back to Kingsport, Tennessee.