Saint Matthew's

Right before I finished up here at church this morning, I checked my email and found the following:

Dear Father Iovine,

I was searching the internet looking for people who have Billy Joel tickets and I came across your blog where you mentioned that you bought tickets for his July 18th concert at Shea Stadium. My girlfriend and I have tickets for the July 16th show, but we can’t make the concert because of a previously scheduled arrangement.

What I am proposing is swapping tickets. Our seats are in the upper deck down the right field line. You mentioned that your tickets are on the field. You can send your tickets to me at (address deleted by me). I will send my tickets to you when I receive yours.

Thank you very much.

Of course, this is an email scam. The address was a post office box in Hicksville on Long Island. I was going to respond with a terse, “No.” Instead, I deleted the email.

The Rangers lost ugly.

The Yankees lost ugly.

The Mets won an ugly one.

Ugh.

There are times when even pastors get angry and rage and hatred fill their hearts.

It has happened to me a number of times as pastor, as I am sure many of you have been hit by fierce anger and hatred toward others. Sometimes, I just want to drive that person’s head through a wall.

How someone can make me so furious and put me in a place where I don’t want to be … I don’t understand why.

There I sat recently, my heart marinating in a vat of hatred toward another person. I hadn’t seen this fellow human in months and months, yet when my eyes fixated on him, the anger that raged in me sometime ago came gushing back.

Yes, the person knew how I felt because I used warm and deep-felt vocabulary to express my displeasure to him some time ago. And no, I didn’t drive his head through a wall back then … or even now.

But I wanted to, oh, so much.

As you can see, sinfulness takes many forms. No one is immune from the fraility of the human condition.

We just give thanks to God for rescuing us from this sin through our Lord Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son.

Did you know that there is a blog dedicated to beer?

Yup, there is one out there, which just so happens to be sponsored by Miller Brewing Company. They cover all things beer.

It’s name? The Brew Blog.

You’ve got to love it, especially if you are a Lutheran.

The terrific Wall Street Journal put it on their front page today (you’ll need a subscription to read it). Gotta love a newspaper that reports on beer.

A pastor friend out in Indiana blog posted about rocker Alice Cooper and his opinion on Christianity. He makes way too much sense.

“Being a Christian is something you just progress in. You just keep progressing. You learn. You go to Bible studies. You Pray. And it’s not easy because there’s so many things in the world that pull you away. But I think it’s an ongoing thing.”

He makes too much sense. Christians regularly struggle with their faith. It is not easy. But you keep trying to learn. You keep praying. You keep asking the pastor about the meaning of Scripture and how it is to take part in your life.

I’ve always loved Cooper’s rock. And he’s a decent actor, as well.

Our Circuit 1 Ascension Night service will be held here at Saint Matthew’s on Thursday, May 1st beginning at 7:30pm. Please make a note of it.

I have been getting complaints that Firefox in both Mac and Windows is not rendering our church blog very well. My advice – stop using Firefox.

Instead, use Safari, Apple’s browser which is very fast and renders the blog perfectly.

This morning, I had an interesting conversation. When I told the person that on Monday, I had lunch with a friend at a bar, he excoriated me for actually stepping into an establishment that serves alcohol. You could only imagine his shock when I told him that I was at another bar last Tuesday night and even another on Saturday night. I thought he was going to keel over!!

Clergy people are real people. As I’ve written before, we didn’t give up being human beings when we were ordained. Do we have an obligation to uphold standards that would not degrade our ordination vows? Of course. But it doesn’t mean we can’t go to lunch with a friend and eat a chicken club sandwich with a Dr. Pepper that just so happened to be served in a bar.

Yes, for my lunch on Monday I drank a Dr. Pepper … in a bar.

However, on Saturday and Tuesday, I did partake in an adult beverage … or two.

Yes, I know I haven’t posted in a week, and considering all the hot topics in religion and hockey these past number of days, I really should have taken the time to write something.

But I didn’t.

Sue me.

But to show that I am thinking about you, I was reading the Rangers blog over at LoHud.com and came across this funny clip posted by Sam Weinman.

I wasn’t too happy last night. The Devils beat the Rangers, both in score (4-3 in OT) and in aggressiveness, at the Garden. The Rangers took way too many moronic penalties (Tyutin, what the heck was that catch and release thing with the puck?) and lacked a fighting spirit during parts of the game that let the Devils take one.

The Parise goal – ha! – that bounced over Lundquist should have told all Rangers’ fans that the game wasn’t going to go our way.

There is always Wednesday night.

And then Friday at the Rock in Newark.

I was at The Valley Hospital this morning (and it is important to put the “The” on the front of Valley Hospital, I am told; something like sports fans of Ohio State when they proclaim their team to be “THE” Ohio State Buckeyes). I was there to visit a member of Saint Matthew’s who is recovering from open heart surgery.

As I was walking through the lobby to leave in the early afternoon, I was stopped by a 12-year old girl waiting for her parents to come downstairs from visiting her grandmother. Walking down towards the front doors, she came up to me and asked me to pray for her grandma. She wasn’t really sure what was wrong with her grandmother, but she came to the hospital on Thursday for tests. The young girl was nervous.

So we prayed.

Afterwards, she just smiled as her eyes teared up.

She mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

And it warmed my heart.

In an age where God is forgotten by many, many people … an age where people put God last more and more often in their lives … this young girl didn’t forget her Creator, her Redeemer, and her Sustainer. 

I left the hospital happy. I started thinking about friends who were having tough times, whether it be at work, in their personal lives, or they just hit rough patches. And I emailed all of them while sitting in my car.

Amen. 

Last night, we got back into the swing of regular Bible classes and our Midweek Divine Service. I took a couple of weeks off because of the aftereffects of the concussion I received during Holy Week. As always, our discussions are lively and sometimes we deviate from our intended topic. Overall, last night’s service and study went well.

Our friends from the Bethesda home in Dumont joined us for our Divine Service. We thank them for joining us.

And yes, I missed the Rangers victory over the New Jersey Devils last night. I DVR’d it, but after watching the highlights on Sportscenter, why watch it? They play again on Friday night back at the Rock, better known as the Prudential Center in Newark.

This morning, I am spending a good chunk of my morning preparing for this weekend’s services – have to get that sermon nailed down, you know. Afterwards, I will be heading out on visits in the early part of the afternoon. By 3pm, I should be back here at the parsonage doing something. From 3pm on, I really have nothing on my schedule. That doesn’t mean a thing since “stuff” always pops up.

And while this is going on in my life, our church office is being painted.

Ah, a busy Thursday around Center Street.

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Tonight, the Rangers take on the NJ Devils in the First Round of the Stanley Cup tournament. Of course, I am pulling for the Rangers, even though the Devils are the "hometown" team here in New Jersey, across the River from MSG. The so-called newspaper experts made their picks the past two days – most for the Rangers, a couple for the Devils. Truthfully, I don’t care about predictions. I care about the Rangers’ power play.

Learned something today – Rangers Head Coach Tom Renney is a country music fan. Who would have thunk that?

I always knew I liked him … and if you haven’t guess it yet, I am a country music fan myself.

On tonight’s game, thank goodness for DVRs. We have Divine Service followed by bible study tonight. I will be lucky to get home in the middle of the third period. So I have programmed my DirecTV HD DVR to record it. Go Rangers!

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Well, after more than 40 years, our 100-gallon water heater at church finally konked out for good. It started leaking all over the floor, never a good thing. A smaller and more effecient water heater was installed yesterday. Tons of thanks have to go out to Marty and Martin for spending nearly all day installing the new one.

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For some reason – one that will no doubt baffle me when I get an answer – my workshop series was "changed" a bit. Instead of meeting in small group sessions from 9 till 3, the powers that be decided that today was just for registration. No meetings, no gatherings, no nuthin’. Just  a day for plain old registration. I don’t know if they sent out notifications to people who had already registered, but if the numbers of people who showed up today and left in anger is any indication, someone dropped the ball.

Considering that I already registered, I didn’t need to travele today. And I am not happy.

Aaaarrrggghhhh.

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