Author Archive
Bert Montgomery
Mardi Gras – For Baptists
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
It’s been almost 26 years since I left Louisiana with my parents, and I still really miss the Mardi Gras season. Mardi Gras is one long, enormous party – in the best, and sometimes the worst, sense of the word. Every single day for a few weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday there is something exciting going on all over the New Orleans region.
It was only in recent years that I began to reflect a lot about the Christian meaning behind the season of Mardi Gras, and I’ve discovered that as a Baptist, I may have missed out on what Mardi Gras can teach me about faith and celebration.
We Baptists need to lighten up, let our hair down, and live it up from time to time. Even King David got so excited he danced through the the streets in a big parade, eventually stripping down to his Fruit-of-the-Looms. Sounds like Mardi Gras to me.
Of Jaws, Fishing for Men, and the Kingdom of God
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Quint the fisherman, played to perfection by the scene-stealing Robert Shaw in the 1975 Steven Spielberg masterpiece, Jaws, was a rugged, thick-skinned, and independent man who played by his own rules and offered to hunt, kill, and bring back to shore the shark that was terrorizing a small coastal town – for the right price, of course.
I’ve met some fishermen like Mr. Quint down on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. You’d have to be tough and unlikable to some degree to choose to live alone or in small groups out on the open waters, far from shore, with little or no shelter from the terrible storms.
“Come, follow me!” says Jesus to some Quint-like fishermen along the Sea of Galilee.
“Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” Mark’s Gospel simply records that two sets of brothers dropped what they were doing and walked away from their boats to follow Jesus.
If You Wanna Get to Heaven, You Might Wanna Listen to the Ozark Mountain Daredevils (Ode to Dale and Mary)
Saturday, January 14th, 2012
Dale and I became fast friends a few years ago because of our love for the music of that Missouri band of rural hippie farmers known as the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Their song “Beauty in the River” is one of my favorite all-time hymns (of the “not-actually-a-hymn” variety).
there’s a beauty in the river
there’s a beauty in the stream
there’s a beauty in the forest at night
when the lonely nightbird screams
Dale and his wife, Mary, loved the song “Beauty in the River” so much that the lyrics were printed on the back of their 1979 wedding program. He and his groomsmen even sang it after the ceremony.
Love Comes to Town
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:1-2, 14a).
Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (The Message).
Eighteen years ago this past Christmas day, my son Rob was born. Eighteen years ago, life presented itself to my wife and me in all of its messy and glorious wonder. Christmas will always be a time for Jency and me to remember that life has come.
Christmas is a time to celebrate life. You will be together with your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, spouse, children … and you will be filled with joy and wonder at all the life that surrounds you. You will be reminded that life has come.
Of Mice And MIN…ISTERS (Ode to Advent and Axl Rose)
Sunday, December 18th, 2011
I’ve heard it said that Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was, and still is, an angry, angry man. I have no reason to doubt it.
There simply is no denying that they literally burst forth into the nation’s consciousness with a vengeance in late 1987, and for the next five-to-six years, until their utter implosion in 1993, they were perhaps the most important, exciting, terrifyingly self-destructive and unpredictable rock and roll band ever (sure, Axl has a bunch of guys playing with him today in a band he still calls “Guns N’ Roses,” but that’s like Paul McCartney hiring all new musicians and insisting it’s still “the Beatles”).
How To Satisfy Jesus (via the Gospel of Elvis)
Sunday, December 4th, 2011
I wish I had a nickle for every time God spoke to me through Elvis. Like Elvis’ song “A Little Less Conversation”:
A little less conversation, a little more action please;
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactionin’ me;
A little more bite and a little less bark;
A little less fight and a little more spark;
Close your mouth and open up your heart,and satisfy me.
Sure, on the surface it’s just another Elvis song pleading with a woman for some more active lovin’; but when paired with the Gospels, with repeated teachings of Jesus, and particularly Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and the Goats (see Matthew 25:31-46), it’s just as clearly a song that can be heard as Jesus’ pleading with the Church for some more active… well… lovin’.
