"Mission Impossible"

I'm still grinning about the fact that I hummed the theme for "Mission Impossible" at the beginning and near the end of my sermon this morning. :)

I knew I was going to use the "Mission Impossible" idea as a jump off point, but the idea to actually sing the tune didn't occur to me until this morning. I didn't know if I could get through it without cracking up, but I did.

dum dum dah dah, dum dum dah dah, dum dum dah dah, dum dum dah dah,
deedlie dee,
deedlie dee,
deedlie dee... da dum.

:)

I got the idea about Mission Impossible from the Lectionary Homiletics publication. Someone there was talking about how the mission to go cure people and cast out demons may seem impossible. Then they went a different direction with it than I did, going off to talk about the language that we use to describe what we're called to.

I used it as a jump off point to talk about the mission of the the church. The mission the disciples were called to, and how we're called to the same mission of both proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near and being a healing and reconciling presence in the world, and what that might look like here as we try to live into it. I closed by saying that our mission is not impossible because with God all things are possible.

I preached, as I often do nowadays, off of an extended outline. I may try to fill in the blanks of what I did from memory and post it at some point. We'll see.

I don't know where these ideas come from to talk about things like playing Hide & Seek/Sardines in a Can, to use magnetic hematite stones, to use the story about a lady in starbucks, and today to use the story of the two golfing buddies (the one who always invites his neighbor to golf and the other who always declines but never invites his neighbor to church), to talk about the "will you go to heaven, 2 question test reveals answer" booth I saw at a carnival and the fact that people were going up to the booth so there are people out there who are spiritually seeking, and then to hum the tune to Mission Impossible.



I may have written about this before, but I'm of two minds when these ideas occur: this will be fun, hopefully it will be engaging and people will connect to it, or... Ohhhhh, they're going to think I've lost my mind and will it only make sense to me? Fortunately, so far they seem to be engaged by some of the things I've talked about and done. Phew!!

After the stress and anxiety I go through wrestling with a text to figure out where to go with it... it's a relief to know that God's got my back and the Holy Spirit seems to be showing up, especially when I'm new to preaching every week. So I just keep plugging along and doing my best to listen and to be faithful and show up.

Also everyone seemed to like the liturgy we did with our high school graduate and the giving of the walking stick. It seemed to have the tone I was hoping to set with it, so I was pleased with how it turned out and will plan to do that again next year.