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vacation and part research in preparation for our retirement. When, at last, we purchased the village ruin we would someday call home, we took several "before" pictures. The early photos, like our vacations, had dual purposes. They documented the condition of the property and provided help in our planning. We used them to sketch the revisions, giving the builders the visual aide they needed to help us pull out of these old stones the inherent potential that we saw in them. But the unexpected, perhaps symbolic, purpose of our photographs was seen in the shadows. Our first pictures were marred often by deep shadows created by the angle and fierce brightness of the sun. Pictures of the front elevation of our village house were almost impossible. First, there was the narrowness of the street. We could not get a photo straight on, because we could not get the camera far enough away from the fa├ºade, even with our wide-angle lens. Secondly, there was the shadow cast by the sun. The sun, which highlighted the rustic beauty we wished to capture, also created deep shadows that obscured the architectural and structural detail. In time, we found photographic ways to overcome the shadows. But little did we know, that this was just the beginning of a way of life for us in France.This is not the book I had intended to write. A Bright Sun & Long Shadows is a picture of life in France unlike the many we read during our years of preparation before we made the decision to retire to the Midi. In retrospect, our armchair research, our on-site preparatory vacations, and our personal contacts over a ten-year period heightened our anticipation about the best that France had to offer. We learned too little about the shady side of life in the Midi. Originally, the book I intended was of tales from our first year of adjustment to the new life in France. We expected culture shock and the stress that accompanies major life-changes - even when we so eagerly sought these changes for ourselves. The book, as originally envisioned, would have been like too many others. It would have chronicled our adjustments to French life. It would have reflected its charming curiosities with a little irony, and a lot of "looking at the bright side of things". Yes, A Bright Sun & Long Shadows does reflect our experience of creating our new life in France. But, it has also grown beyond the initial intent; grown into a book that reflects how deeply the building of our new life has been affected by the dark side of French culture and the everyday ways of the people living around us

Parson’s Porch Books is delighted to present to you this series called Sermons Matter.We believe that many of the best writers are pastors who take the role of preacher seriously. Week in, and week out, they exegete scripture, research material, write and deliver sermons in the context of the life of their particular congregation in their given community.We further believe that sermons are extensions of Holy Scripture which need to be published beyond the manuscripts which are written for delivery each Sunday. Books serve as a vehicle for the sermon to continue to proclaim the Good News of the Morning to a broader audience.In this volume, Tom Evans gives us a concert of sermons which challenges the one who reads him preach to examine one’s heart, mind and soul.We celebrate the wonderful occasion of the preaching event in Christian worship when the Pastor speaks, the People listen and the Work of the Church proceeds.Take, Read, and Heed.

The essays in this small volume stand as time-bound responses to specific issues marking my professional engagement in church-related higher education. They represent perspectives and opinions that found their public advent in denominational publications and professional quarterlies, campus newspapers, city dailies, a literary journal for students new to writing, and a couple of collegiate chapels. Each bears a back-story about its origin that may or may not become evident in its reading. For those gaps I beg forgiveness.These days I write sermons and then preach them without the manuscripts that framed their original thoughts. That manuscript stack has grown tall and cumbersome and likely will soon head for the shredder. This varied compendium of focused reflections remains. In many instances motivation for writing arose from one of those unique but incessant interruptions chaplains and my colleagues in higher education ministry readily describe as the heart of ministry. So it is here.Deep gratitude to those stalwart individuals who simultaneously supported and tolerated my collegiality at LSU for eight years and SMU for twenty-nine. In many ways, this last half-century has provided a sometimes-wild but oh-so-wonderfully meaningful journey. Thank you Connie Steele and True Dianne Faust and Mary Ladd Bingham, Betty McHone and Judy Henneberger and Nancy Kasten, Jenny Veninga and Marcy Pounders and Edilson Volfe! Each in your own way has been an amazing colleague on this trek through life. Let me never fail to thank Bob Cooper, colleague chaplain for thirteen years before his retirement, for his ever forgiving liberality of spirit and joyful politics.

William “Will” Finnin and I have been colleagues for almost twenty years. Before that, we came of age in the 1960s, those extraordinary years of civil rights struggles, new visions of social justice, greater inclusivity in government and institutional religion, and uncovering silenced voices, of women, Black and Hispanic Americans, and countless others throughout history. I honor him for his contributions in all of these areas.       But my regard for Will goes beyond our shared generational goals. Rather, it is more about his belief that the redemption of the human spirit is always possible in our uncertain world.       Will is an artist, and his talents are amazing. He is a musician, a painter, author, counselor, and more. But I believe that it is his poetry that has continued to sustain him and others for a lifetime. His poetry has given expression to the flow of his life in all of its moments of pain, joy, survival, uncertainty, and courage. His words are testaments to his vision of transformation.       As a poet, Will understands this job, and he offers this volume from his serious yet playful heart, his life, and his vision of a joyfully transformative human spirit.

Rev. Dr. Ben Mathes is one of the most engaging, thrilling, and articulate storytellers around today.  His words bring you into the story, and the story and its characters come off the page and into your livingroom as you read. For over 35 years, Ben has travelled the world loving people in the name of Jesus. For the past 20 years that has been through Rivers of the World (ROW) www.row.org, the organization he founded. To read the pages of this book is to walk alongside Ben in the jungles of places like Venezuela, Peru, and the Congo. You’ll ride with him in the boat as he travels the Amazon River, the Mamano, the Oroso, and many others. His stories will take you to places you will likely never have the opportunity to visit (and to some places you’d never want to visit either) as he has reached out to provide loving care for God’s people for 4 decades. To know Ben is to love him. For 18 years, I’ve had the privilege of calling Ben my friend. We’ve walked together through war, disease, and famine that you will likely never experience beyond the pages of this book. We’ve experienced great joy as lives have been transformed and hope has been restored where it had been lost for centuries. We’ve laughed, cried, and prayed together, and God has used Ben Mathes to literally change the world.Reading this book will be like sitting in a pew while Ben shares stories of his life in a sermon, or at a table with him over tea as he captivates you with the unfolding of his life’s experiences. By the end of the journey you’ll be different, and you’ll likely want to make a greater difference as well. ENJOY!

H.H. Farmer was quoted as saying that the sermon is the word of God through the personality of the preacher. I think that is absolutely true. The preacher is without cause to speak without the pages of Holy Scripture. The pages of the Bible are brought home when they are communicated through our own lives and experiences. I know that in my own situation, my preaching ministry is shaped by my own life and by the shared experiences I have had with the congregations I have been blessed to serve over the past 38 plus years.Of course my preaching ministry started out under the leadership and nurture of my own Dad, The Rev. Charles F. J. Starzer, who was the ultimate Pastor/Preacher. He deeply loved the congregations he served over the course of his 44 years of ordained ministry. But he knew that being a Pastor/Preacher was probably the hardest job that one could imagine. He never encouraged me to follow in his footsteps and he gave me every opportunity to say that I wasn't called to it. In retrospect the opportunities he gave me early on to preach may very well have been designed to make me stop and think before getting in too deep! The first sermons I ever preached were in the summer before I started college. I spent two Sundays preaching to the congregation which gathered in the "chapel" of Fairview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waymart Pennsylvania. 

On a summer afternoon at the Old Fort Campbell hospital in 1977, Sgt. Mercury L. Lewis and Cheryl Thomas Lewis welcomed a daughter, into the world. They named her Miriam Enochlyn Lewis. Her date of birth was literally 7-7-77. The blessed child was me. I shall tell you of an epic life wherein I have found as well as continue searching for depth and meaning.Three days after my birth, Mom and I were discharged. My infant life was busy, full of trips to Southern states where the Lewis family was to relocate to one at a time, all within a time period of ten years.I recall one road-trip where Dad was asking my older sister Shelbi and me about the street signs. “What does that sign say, Shelbi?”

Grief is a solitary road.Even if we are fortunate enough to have people alongside us during the journey, (as I have been), no one can really travel all the way with us.  Our pain and our path are as individual as the relationship we share with the person we’ve lost. 

The sermons in this book were preached during my second year of ministry at First Presbyterian Church of Marietta, Georgia. This great church, who nurtured me as a child and through adolescence, even supporting me through college and seminary, called me to be their Senior Pastor in the summer of 2017. This call came in the aftermath of division. After our denomination met and approved new standards of marriage equality in 2015, the nearly 200-year-old congregation split. Around 300 members broke ties with First Presbyterian Church to start a new church in a more conservative denomination of Presbyterians, ECO. The three years following this split and preceding my arrival were marked by a genuine determination to survive, great moments of healing, and courageous leadership.The sermons in this book stretch across 2018, one year in the life of this great congregation. This was a year when God moved the congregation beyond survival and healing to growth and celebration. These sermons were easy for me to write and preach because all around me, the Holy Spirit was alive and well, and the Gospel was not confined to the pages of Scripture, for the congregation of First Presbyterian Church was living it.