God – Page 7 – Salvaged Faith

The Gift of Joy

Posted on June 27, 2010Leave a comment

How many of you are happy all the time? Every waking minute of your lives? C’mon now… raise your hands! No one? No one at all?

How many of you are joyful? How many of you have the joy of the Lord in your heart every day? Maybe a few?

This morning – we have the blessed opportunity to remember the Spirit’s gift of JOY in our lives. This IS the day that the Lord has made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it… Let us pray.

The first question that comes to my mind when we think about this thing called joy is: What is it? In the scriptures, we read about joy all the time. We hear familiar scriptures about how we are supposed to rejoice always, about how the faithful break out into joyful song and shouting… but really… what is that allusive thing called joy… and how do we experience it?

Let’s take a journey back into time and revisit one of those familiar stories from our childhood. Shari has already reminded us of this tale of adventure and miracle, as Moses led the people through the waters of the Red Sea.

I want you to imagine yourself for just a second as one person among the masses of people waiting there on the edge of the water. You are tired, you are completely out of your element, and suddenly you realize that the very people you are escaping from are about to over take you. You can see the dust from their chariots rising up into the sky and they are coming closer… and closer… and you are camped by the water and there is no where to run.

Are you experiencing joy? Do you have any sense of happiness pouring through your veins? Probably not.

But then, something amazing happens. Behind you, there on the edge of the water, Moses raises up his arms and the winds start to blow. And though you can hardly believe your eyes, the waters are pushed to the side by this blustery breeze and a path of dry ground begins to appear in the midst of the sea.

The people around you begin to shout and Moses commands you to move through the water and fearfully at first, but then in absolute wonder you pick up your pack and move. It is a long journey across, but something propels you. There were signs and wonders done back in Egypt, but this is something else. These walls of water that surround you and threaten to fold in any minute is proof – is a witness – to the fact the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is with you!

Tired you reach the other shore and turn yourself around to see how far you have come. Your people are still making their way across, but they are making it! And that is when you realize the Egyptians have reached the other shore and are about to come through that same miraculous path that was just your salvation.

But then it happens. That strange pillar of cloud and fire that has been traveling before you and behind you descends upon the Egyptians and their chariots get stuck in the mud. They fearfully turn to make a retreat, but the last of your people have reached the shore and Moses steps up to the waters and in an instant, the sea covers the Egyptians and leaves you safely on the other side.

What do you feel now? Standing there in the awesome presence of God’s mighty works… what comes to your heart… go ahead – shout out the first thing that comes to your mind!

As Shari helped us to remember, the first thing the Israelites did was sing… they sang a song to the Lord saying: “The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation”

This song of praise is but the outpouring of joy in the lives of these people. They have witnessed first hand “God-with-them” and like the hymn we just sang… Joy to the World… in the presence of our God, joy fills our hearts.

In Greek – the word for joy is chara which comes from the word “charis” which means grace. Joy is not a state of emotional happiness… joy does not come from within or from other people or from things… joy is the experience of the presence of our God.

That’s not so hard to believe, is it? As King David pours out his heart in the scriptures, he reminds us that he is filled with joy in God’s presence (Psalm 16). As Paul writes to the Philippians from a prison cell – he knows he is surrounded by God’s presence and so he is able to say “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)

The joy that comes into our lives by the grace and presence of God is not the happiness of this world. For in the midst of some of our most painful and trying and difficult times – in the midst of times of grief and sorrow and tears… sometimes that is when joy surrounds us.

Joy comes to us in those dark times when we recognize that the Spirit of the Lord is still with us. Standing on the edge of the Red Sea, looking back and recognizing their salvation… the Israelites sang for joy. Standing at the graveside of a loved one and yet feeling the comfort of God’s presence – we find the strength we need to sing out of joy a song like How Great Thou Art. In the midst of a battle for health, when all else seems dim, we know that we are surrounded by prayer and by God’s spirit and so a smile does come to our face and laugher does echo across the room.

William Wordsworth wrote about being “surprised by joy”–when the grief and pain from his daughter’s death vanished and for a moment he forgot she was no longer with him. He experienced this amazing feeling of joy and it so overwhelmed him that he turned around to share it with his beloved daughter – only to remember again that she was gone. While the poem is about the grief that he feels nearly constantly… even that dark grief and longing is broken into and light could pour into his heart – even if for a moment – because of joy.

C.S. Lewis took that phrase from Wordsworth and he wrote a book describing his conversion to Christianity called Surprised by Joy – in which he pointed to his “accidental discovery and consequent search for the phenomenon” that he came to know as “JOY.” In Lewis’ mind – joy was something akin to the idea of longing… an experience of something so good and so unattainable that it could not be explained.

Joy is what we experience when we know we are in the presence of God. And joy is also our longing to know that presence of God more fully – each and every moment of our day.

So maybe the question that remains is: why aren’t we joyful every minute of every day?

Let’s go back to that familiar story of Moses and the Israelites and the Red Sea. Because, it’s easy to end the story there and have it all wrap up nicely and neatly. God saved the day and the people rejoiced! YAY!

But, this is not an episode of Veggie Tales Tthis is not some isolated story. . Chapter 15 in Exodus goes on with verse 22: Then Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went for three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter. That is why it was called Marah. (which is Hebrew for bitter) 24And the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’

Three days. Just three days of walking into the desert and already the Israelites have forgotten what God did at the Red Sea. Just three days in the wilderness and they forgot that God was with them. They forgot that God was on their side. The songs of joy in their hearts drifted into songs of despair.

Now, I don’t know about you… but if I learn a new song – it gets stuck with me for quite some time. I think I’ll be singing those VBS songs about God being my hero for weeks to come. In just three days, could they really forget the presence of God?

Apparently they could. And I must acknowledge, apparently we can, too. No matter how beautiful the sunrise is in the morning – sometimes I forget the joy of the Lord by lunchtime. Other things of this world crowd into my mind and my heart and I let the presence of God go unnoticed in my life.

The Israelites began thinking of their calloused feet and their dry lips and the weight of their packs and they thought less and less about how God traveled with them. And so when they reached a place of water and it was bitter, it was the last straw. They sat down and threw a temper tantrum. What are we going to drink?!?!

And in the midst of their despair, they were reminded again of the presence of God. Moses cried out and God showed him a piece of wood, and when Moses threw the wood into the water, the water became not only drinkable… but sweet.

When we believe that God has left us… and when we forget his presence, then joy is not our friend. As Jesus prepares his disciples for his death, that is his reminder. In John, chapter 16, Jesus tells them very plainly that when he is gone from their sight at his time of death – they will weep and mourn. There will be no comfort for them… because everything they think they know about him will have vanished… But that pain would turn into joy for very shortly they would see him again.

In the presence of God, we experience joy. Our hearts are filled with the knowledge that the one who made us is with us… that the one who saved us stands beside us… that the one who loves us leads us on to perfection.

We may not always see God. We may not always recognize God’s presence. But open up your hearts and mind… sit still for just a moment and you will know that God is with you – and you will rejoice.

Amen and Amen.

Four Loves

Posted on February 13, 20102 Comments

** Note: This is a sermon done in pieces throughout the worship service, interspersed with scripture and songs. Also – many thanks to UCC Worship Ways for help with the liturgy that ties all these pieces together (parts are found in the Eros II section) **

A few years ago, I was in Nashville and most of my ministry was to young adults in the congregation. Valentine’s Day was approaching, and I was surprised by the ways in which people without “significant others” felt like they were being left out of the festivities. Left out of the celebration of love. They were depressed and heart broken and lonely. So as we got together to talk with one another about all the mushy, gushy stuff that surrounds this month, we tried hard to remember that love is not an emotion or an action reserved only for two people who “love” each other. It is more than that. It is deeper than that. Love is essential to who we are as human beings. We are creatures who both need to give and receive love. All of us need that.

C.S. Lewis is a great Christian theologian and he wrote a book about love. About four loves actually. The poverty of the English language is that we only have one word to describe this whole range of experiences. And so when this word is co-opted by a holiday or defined in a particular way, we leave out all of the other expressions of this complex and varied thing called love. But C.S. Lewis looked back at the different Greek words that all get subsumed under our conception of love today – and realized that love is a many splendored thing.

PHILIA

As much as our culture talks about individualism and self-identity, the truth is that we would not survive very long in this world without the people around us and the relationships that we have. David would have been absolutely lost in Saul’s court, if it were not for the bond that he had with Jonathan. And love, of one form or another is a part of all of these bonds. It is the glue that cements us together. Perhaps the most common and varied way in which we experience love is through the Greek word, philia, or companionship. This kind of love is always about something, some common interest or activity that draws individuals together for a common purpose.

Just think back to high school. All of the groups and cliques that formed were a result of philia, some kind of shared love. There were the jocks and the band geeks, the popular crowd and the nerds. These relationships, whether we liked it or not, were to some extent exclusive. The jocks just didn’t hang out with the nerds – unless of course you went to a small school like myself, and the jocks were the band geeks, who were the popular kids and they dated the nerds. Anyways. The very nature of philia is that it is exclusive. When you are drawn together for a common purpose, it means that others who don’t share in your love will not be a part of the group. And for the most part, that’s okay because we have multiple circles of friends: our golf buddies, and the people we play cards with; our co-workers.

I do want to say however, that Philia love is deeper than mere camaraderie. When you and others share philia love, you are passionate about the things you do together. You can’t wait for your next opportunity to be with one another.

This is how we think if David and Jonathan. In romantic love, two people stand face-to-face – eyes on one another. But in philia love… those two people… or more… are standing shoulder-to-shoulder, facing their common interests. Both David and Johnathan cared for one another, but their common passion was for Israel even more. Jonathan was willing to give up his claim to the throne, because he knew that David would make a better leader. And as the king, Saul, becomes more and more disturbed and seeks to end David’s life – it is the relationship between Jonathan and David that ends up saving David from death. (Photo by: Mateusz Stachowski)

When we find others who truly care about the same things we do, we find our place. I think that this is truly what it means to be the church. We are drawn into community because we have found others who are in relationship with Christ and because we share a common understanding of what that means. We are connected to something larger than ourselves and find others to travel that journey with us. There is a downside to this Philia love, however. It can become very exclusive. It can shut others out. And when the church only has this kind of love in mind, it is no better than a high school clique. We need to be continually transformed by God’s love, so that our love for one another and Christ will draw us outward and will open the doors of the church.

STORGE

The next type of love is storge, or the affectionate love that we find within families. It is the completely natural warmth we feel towards those people who have also become like family to us – it is a love that cannot be coerced or bought but it is simply present through time. When thinking about storge, I often think about how I felt towards my brothers growing up. My mom would often tell me, “You don’t have to like your brothers, but you do have to love them.” With this type of love, who the person is or what they believe or how they act doesn’t matter. It is our relationship to them and the fact that we are in this together for the long haul that forms our bonds of love.

As I have watched my nephew Aden grow over the last three months, I have witnessed this kind of love. It is the bond between a mother and her child as they nurse. It is the bond between a father and his child as they play. It is made through eye contact, and soft gentle touches, and a warm arm to cuddle into. We enter this world fragile and vulnerable and we need the love of our families to grow and develop. In fact, children who do not receive this kind of love can fall behind in development and have a “failure to thrive.”

This kind of love is about giving and receiving. When families break apart, or when we do not receive love from the people who are supposed to care for us in this way, there is great pain involved. Parents, as hard as they try not to sometimes have favorites and the story of Jacob and Esau shows how it can tear a family apart. But the good news is that we become part of new families throughout our lifetimes; co-workers come to feel like brothers; that wise couple next door, like grandparents. When we open ourselves to others, when we are vulnerable and listen for the vulnerability of others, we can experience this kind of love.

EROS

Eros is about the beloved. It is being in love with the beloved. And it is something we don’t like to talk about in church. When we think of eros love, our minds immediately jump to a sort of passionate sexuality that the church defines, constrains, and then ignores. But physical sexuality is not the sum and total of this kind of love. It is a part, but not the whole.

To love someone with this kind of love is to love them, not because of what we might receive from the relationship, but simply because of who they are, simply because they are the beloved. It is about intimacy with another that is fostered through all sorts of mundane tasks: taking walks, sharing meals, conversing with one another. As Kathleen Norris writes in her book, The Cloister Walk, some of the most sexual people that she knows are celibate monks. She says, “When you can’t make love physically, you figure out other ways to do it.”

This kind of love is a sort of glimpse into divine love. I’ll admit, that I do watch South Park on occasion, and one of my favorite episodes is when Cartman starts a Christian rock band. I thought about showing you a clip of this episode, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find one without horrendous language, so I’ll just have to describe it for you. The kids take popular romantic love songs and simply insert Jesus into the lyrics.

While that may seem sacrilegious… the language of Eros love has often used by mystics to describe their relationship to the divine – as they come to see God as the beloved. Just hear these words from the diary of Beatrice of Nazareth, a thirteenth century mystic: “…the holy woman’s affection was so tender that she was often soaked with the flood of tears from her melted heart, and sometimes because of the excessive abundance of spiritual delight, feels a great closeness to God, a substantial clarity, a wonderful delight, a noble liberty and a ravishing sweetness…”

As we think about God as our beloved… we suddenly remember all sorts of hymns and songs that are in essence, love songs to our Lord… let us join together and sing one of them now… Oh How I love Jesus…

Eros Part II

As we think about the transfiguration of Christ, we often place ourselves in the shoes of the disciples. And we are filled with wonder and awe and love towards this glorious thing taking place right before our very eyes! But the problem is that we can become overwhelmed by the passion that we experience there. You see, even in the presence of God, Eros love, by itself, is never enough. A blind devotion to the object of our affection can be dangerous, be it to our partner or our conception of the divine. And it is because Eros love always begins with ourselves. While it may be directed towards whatever we come to see as the beloved, its source is within us and as such, is far from selfless.

When we fill our lives with Eros love, we become consumed by our passion for the beloved. Peter wanted to stay there in that moment forever. But Christ wants our love to not only be for God, but for others as well. Christ wanted them to leave that mountaintop. He wants to move them to a deeper sort of love.

We often find ourselves searching for these dramatic and holy experiences of God. We want to go up the mountain with Peter, James and John and experience God’s glory. And when we get there, if we have the ability to experience it, we want to say, “it’s good for us to be here… let’s get comfortable.”

We are too often tempted to keep the experience of God’s awesome love to ourselves. We want to enjoy the company of the saints instead of going back down the mountain to continue the work of God. God knows this is a temptation of our hearts, and so I want to invite us now to confess this temptation and to pray for forgiveness together…

God of glory and light, forgive us when we are complacent and comfortable
with keeping the riches of your love to ourselves.
Keep calling us down from our mountains of privilege.
Keep expecting more of us as your disciples.
Keep reminding us to listen to your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

God’s perfect love surrounds us. And it calls us to stretch and to grow and to always look to the concerns of others. The needs of our world are too numerous to name. Shelter, food, clean air and water… Our gifts touch these needs, but the biggest gift we can give is to love the world so much that we give of ourselves.
Nothing will transform need more than sacrificial love. So as you place money in the offering (plate, basket, etc.) today, don’t let your giving be done. Start planning to go deeper. May God now bless our hopes and dreams.

AGAPE

The highest of all the loves is Agape love. It is the kind of love that within the church we talk the most about and find the hardest to practice. It is a completely self-less love, always directed towards others. It is a love that has no pre-requisites, no conditions; agape love doesn’t depend upon any lovable qualities at all. Simply by being, you may receive this kind of love.

As Christians, we are called upon by God to exhibit this kind of love in our daily lives. Agape love is often referred to as charity – a complete giving of oneself without any expectation of reward or acknowledgement – a complete giving of oneself that reflects the love of God towards us. This is the way that God loves.

One of the most important aspects of our tradition, particularly the Wesleyan tradition, is that there is nothing you or I can do to deserve the love of God. We do not possess any quality that deems us worthy of being “beloved” by God. Whether we say this is a result of our fallen nature, or original sin, or simply because we are mortal and God is divine, we do not deserve the love of God. And yet, the scriptures continually remind us, that God loves us anyway. God speaks us into being and sustains us through her spirit. God provides for our every need, fully knowing we can never repay that kind of love. And God does so, not by standing above us, but by walking beside us in Jesus Christ.

This love, agape love, is so great that I often felt in my life like the others just didn’t matter. Why should I care about storge, philia and eros if I can experience and share agape love?! But C.S. Lewis reminds us that we do not need to throw away silver to make room for gold. Yes, agape love is the highest, and it is the truest love in that it comes from God. We simply need to acknowledge that it is superior, and allow it to be a part of our other expressions of love.

As the scriptures that Jack just shared remind us – we are called to live out that same kind of love toward others. We are called to allow God’s agape love to transform our relationships with friends, with family, and with our beloved. We only find the strength to forgive family members when we can love them unconditionally. Friendships based on our common goals wither up without humility and a genuine desire to care for the other. And the relationships we have with our partners need the charity and grace of God in order to love unconditionally and in truth. We are called to love others not because of something good in them, but because God first loved us.

Benediction: While Valentine’s Day is known as a time for lovers, today, we come together as people who love and desire a relationship with God, to celebrate all of the loves in our life. Let us acknowledge those people who have nurtured us, walked beside us, share common passions, and those who have known us most intimately. As we journey down the mountain, we will struggle to embody Godly love, agape love, with all of these people. It is not an easy task– we continually need to be infused with God’s grace and spirit….. God will make our love holy, if only we ask.

the potential demise of “the beast” and whether or not God cares.

Posted on February 10, 2010Leave a comment

Those of you who know me on facebook or twitter will be aware by now that I was in a car accident on Monday. “The Beast,” as many affectionately call my dad’s car is in a ditch somewhere. While I’ve had my share of bumps and taps in a car while driving (I have both bumped a car in front of me at a stop sign and been bumped from behind at a light… and then there was the whole hitting of the cement pole thing that is a very long story) – and even was in another accident when we hit a deer on the interstate, this accident was very scary.

As I have had to recount the incident dozens of times – both in my own head and to insurance adjustors and to family and friends, I’m not necessarily going to do that again here. In part, because it all happened so quickly… or so slowly… I can’t tell if time was speeding by or slowed down and everything took place in half a second or half a minute. All I know is that I had changed lanes to avoid/give room to a vehicle that lost control and as that vehicle came back into my new lane, I hit the brakes and prayed that we wouldn’t collide.

We did.

As a pastor, I’ve thought about where God has been in all of this. It’s easy to both be absolutely grateful and absolutely pissed off. On the one hand, no one was really hurt in the accident and I am utterly thankful for that. It could have been worse – much worse. On the other hand, it could appear that all of those prayers for safe travel fell on deaf ears. I not only was in an accident, but I also couldn’t make it to my ordination interview. Really, God? Was that a part of your plan?

But then as a person of faith who wrestles with God quite often, I also find myself not wanting to do either of those things. I find myself not really wanting to place God in the situation at all. I chose to drive that day. The other driver also chose to drive. The wind changed directions, the road got icy, stuff happens and we collided. No where in that entire scenario does God have to intervene. There were choices made and actions taken and then there were appropriate consequences.

I guess it’s the battle between free will and determinism that is wrestling inside of me. I read the scriptures that says God knows the number of hairs on my head and that God won’t leave me or forsake me. But does that also mean that I think God will protect me from bad things happening my entire life? Not at all. Do I think that all actions have consequences – good and bad? Sure. Does that mean that God intentionally sends things into our lives to teach us lessons or to punish us? Not really.

I know that my little “adventure” on the interstate nowhere near compares to disasters and tragedies and heartache that others have felt in their lives and that we all will continue to experience in this life. At the root, however, I guess what I’m wrestling with here is a question of theodicy.

And the only answer I can come up with is that God was present in how we chose to respond to the situation. The woman who was in the other car and I sat down at a Perkins Restaurant over a pot of coffee and some pie and we talked. We got to know one another a little better and talked about our families and why we were both on the road that day. We cried together over what had happened. And we knew that despite it all, in spite of being far from home and not knowing what to do next, that we were not alone. We experienced table fellowship and allowed this yucky thing that happened to bring us closer together. We felt hope in the midst of despair.

If that’s not God… then I don’t know what is.

the Christian journey

Posted on January 17, 2010Leave a comment

How do you understand the following traditional evangelical doctrines: a) repentance; b) justification; c) regeneration; d) sanctification? What are the marks of the Christian life?

Whenever I think of the Christian life, a quote I heard Anne Lamott give (whether or not it actually originated with her) comes to mind: God loves you just the way you are… and loves you too much to let you stay there. The Christian faith journey is just that – a journey, a process of discovering our true selves as created by God. In many ways, these four doctrines are lacking because they don’t acknowledge one that must precede them – God’s prevenient grace that allows us to see our need for repentance. The wonder of God is that the instant we recognize our sinful state is the same moment justifying grace is extended to us; in acknowledging our sin we are given grace by which we can be transformed. This begins a lifelong process of growth and transformation and practice and mistakes and setbacks and return to God for forgiveness and renewal and going on to perfection that makes the Christian life.

We can see evidence of that growth through the three very basic and simple virtues – faith, hope, and love. Working on these papers, a quote was shared with me from Teresa Fry Brown that claims, “Hope hearing the song of the future. Faith is the courage to dance to it.” I would add that love is inviting others to take your hand and join in. We were created for relationship with God and with the rest of creation. Unless we are willing to take a leap of faith and actively participate in the transformative love of God, unless we are willing to have hope in the promise that all of creation will be renewed, we are denying the precious gift we have been given and continue to be in need of God’s grace.

Photo by: Stephen Eastop

what are we saved for?

Posted on January 16, 2010Leave a comment

What is your understanding of a) the Kingdom of God; b) the Resurrection; c) eternal life?

As I think about this question, the words from the funeral liturgy keep coming back to me: In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. In the past two years, I have buried many individuals that I never had the chance to know in this lifetime. Our denomination is a bit more inclusive that some of the others in our community and so I am often called in to lay to rest people who have had no faith affiliation. In many cases, I am not sure at all what was in their hearts about God.

This question for me is about redemption and about who receives it and about when we receive it. In the resurrection of Christ, we glimpse the radical and transformative power of God. It is not something that we can harness, grasp, or earn apart from the gracious act of God. That power is what re-creates not only individual lives but the entirety of God’s creation and when we talk about the completion of that transformation – we are talking about the Kingdom of God. We began to see glimpses of that reality through the life of Christ and we participate in that Kingdom now only through his power. How it will be finished, when it will come, what it will look like is completely beyond us, yet we are still responsible for embodying that kingdom sacramentally here and now in our own lives.

So when I stand before a family and I place my hand on a cold metal casket and say the words, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ,” I am placing that person in God’s hands. I stand there as a witness to the power of God to redeem. I stand there as a witness to the fact that Christ holds the keys to hell and death. I stand there as a witness to the hope I have for that person’s life – a hope that carries beyond their death. This past summer, I was profoundly impacted by the words of German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann. He said, “…if a life was cut short, God will bring what he had begun for the human being to its intended end and death cannot hinder God to do this, because God is God, and cannot be overcome by death.” So I cannot know the future of the man or woman I bury, but I do have sure and certain hope in the Lord of the Kingdom of God and the power of God’s transformative love and the promise that all things will be made new.

Touching and Tasting God’s Love

Posted on January 14, 2010Leave a comment

What is the meaning and significance of the sacraments?

In the sacraments of our church, ordinary things like bread and grape juice and water become vehicles of God’s divine grace. We gather as a community not only to acknowledge God’s presence with us, but we are each able to reach out and experience for ourselves the holy. We feel the cool water of cleansing beneath our fingertips. We smell the loving warmth of freshly baked bread. We taste the sweetness of God’s grace. We hear the water being poured out like streams of righteousness and hear the bread of heaven being broken for us. We see into the eyes of our brothers and sisters and find Christ there. Our sacraments not only remind us that God-is-with-us… the sacraments enable us to experience God-with-us, Emmanuel.

In baptism, we are washed clean of past transgressions and we are marked as children of God. We are given new life through those waters – a life that begins in community. In the sacrament of communion, we are not only reminded of the covenant Christ made with us, but invited to participate in its coming – we experience a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Time stands still when we invite God’s sacramental presence into our lives and we are swept up into the divine reality. But the sacraments are not merely mountaintop experiences – both of these sacraments transform us so that we become different. We become initiated into the priesthood of all believers and in the confirmation of our baptisms take vows to resist evil and injustice and oppression. We pray that we might be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. The sacraments call us into the world.

Doctrine of God… or something.

Posted on January 9, 20102 Comments

When I submitted my candidacy papers, I had just finished Constructive Theology. I was in a totally heady space, although I also had a lot of practical application involved.

In my first round of papers, here is how I talked about God:

We have come to know and trust in God primarily through scripture – which holds the accounts of faithful witnesses to God’s work in history. There we learn that the God we worship is not a passive entity, but jealous, powerful, and always seeking relationship with creation. While some theologians begin with the via positiva or via negativa to describe God, Wesleyan theology begins with the scriptures and from that place, redefines the “natural characteristics” of God. We come to know God’s nature through the covenant made with the Hebrew people and the new covenant of Jesus Christ, as well as the continuing witness of the Holy Spirit. Above all, these actions tell us that God works in ways that invite human response and gives us the power to respond in faith. This is particularly true in regards to God’s power – which Randy Maddox argues must “not be defined or defended in any way that undercuts human responsibility.” God seeks to work in co-operative ways; ways that build, rather than destroy, relationship…

In his own time, Wesley was familiar with not only the Western notions of the divine, but also explored Eastern conceptions as well, which Maddox claims influenced his theology in subtle, though profound ways. Though he never directly claimed the Eastern Orthodox understanding of perichoresis as a description of the Trinity, it is not disconsonant with other of his claims, and in fact helps us to comprehend the relational nature of God. If our sources and the ways in which God is revealed are diverse (the economic Trinity) and yet always in need of one another, it would make sense to assume that God’s internal relations (the immanent Trinity) are likewise diverse and in need of a constant dance.

I still remember one of my Board of Ministry team members saying: I was a little worried about you after I read the answers to your first question… but then you got more practical.

Note to that team member: I actually did teach perichoresis… in a children’s sermon, nonetheless… we got up and danced in a circle and it was fabulous.

The ordination papers as I understand them are meant to be more practical and experiential. So here is my answer to the question:

How has the practice of ministry affected your experience and understanding of God?

I have always firmly believed that God is relational and so it will come as no surprise that I have found and experienced God in the midst of the congregation. The lives of my parishioners carry on the story of God that was begun with the Hebrew people and we weave together our experience of God with the scriptures that have been passed on to us for future generations.

That understanding of God, however, has been most directly challenged and stretched in the practice of ministry through encountering over and over again the via positiva. So many in my congregation experience God as omnipotent, omni-present and omniscient and therefore see every minute detail of their lives as having been directly set into motion by the God of the universe. On the one hand, it gives me pause as I think about how various pieces of my own life have fallen into place by the grace of God. On the other hand, as a Wesleyan theologian, I also want to fight against determinism. I still hold firmly an understanding of God derived from scriptures – that God works in ways that invite human response and gives us the power to respond in faith, a god that allows it to rain on the just and unjust alike. I recoil when I hear a congregation member talk about how God caused something to happen in their life in order to bring them to faith. While it may be the result of such a time of tragedy that brought about their faith, I refuse to believe God causes pain and suffering in one person in order to reach another.

As I work with congregational members as their pastor and teacher, being able to talk about our Triune God, is immensely powerful. I can share with them my firm belief that in all situations, the Father of us all has always desired a relationship with each one of us. I can talk with them about the sacrificial love of Christ Jesus who died so that we might live… who died to bring us faith so that others do not have to die or suffer for that reason. I can talk about the Holy Comforter walking with each and every single one of us through the valley of the shadow of death. Our encounter with God in the scriptures is so much richer and deeper than any attribute we might postulate about our creator and redeemer and sanctifier.

Photo by: William Vermeulen

Praying for Peace

Posted on December 20, 2009Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about peace lately.

I’ve been praying a lot FOR peace lately.

While this isn’t a family that is facing conflict – many of you know that there is conflict in my family. I am wrestling with the distractions that it brings and must admit that there are days it is all I think about. I wish that there could be some kind of reconciliation or forgiveness between family members, but at the same time I deal with my own hurts and betrayals and wonder if I can forgive. My desire for my grace and healing and yet my holding of grudges and pain are incompatible. They war within me. And all I can do right now is pray for peace.

And then there is another struggle between war and peace that is a reality for us all.

A couple of weeks ago, our president spoke before the nation and an audience at West Point to announce a surge in military personnel in Afghanistan. This on the heels of being named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

The two are in so many ways incompatible. From his acceptance speech in Oslo, Obama himself stated:

Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

Some in this congregation have relatives who are serving our country right now in other nations. Others of you have friends and neighbors that they have said goodbye to far too many times. Many of you have lived through wars and have the memories of sacrifice and bloodshed ingrained deep within your souls.

The reflections of Steve Goodier have been very helpful to me this week and he includes the letter of a man who was serving on a ship anchored in Tokyo Bay in September 1945. Navy chief radioman Walter G. Germann was writing to his son to tell him that the formal surrender of Japan would soon be signed. “When you get a little older you may think war to be a great adventure take it from me, its the most horrible thing ever done by (humans),” he wrote. “Ill be home this Christmas…”

That man knew – as so many of you do – that peace is hard to come by. And even though he would be coming home for Christmas to a world at peace – he wasn’t at all sure if the ends justified the means. He, like many who serve our nation, probably came home broken on the inside – at war with himself as he tried to justify his actions in battle and the horrors he had seen.

I think of the letter of that man, who saw the day of peace dimming brightly in his future, and then I think of the faces of all of the young men and women who were in the audience for President Obama’s speech at West Point – men and women for whom the future is cloudy.

There is not one among us who doesn’t long for peace. And we are unsure whether what we are doing as a nation will get us there. We pray it will. We hope that peace and stability will come quickly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We want our sons and daughters and sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers and neighbors to come home. We watch another Christmas come and go without peace.

As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote at Christmas in 1942, “I could no more say to you a Merry Christmas without feeling a catch in my throat than I could fly to the moon!” We look around us at families with a loved one missing and we recognize that as long as there is war – there will not be peace.

This week, I read from Luke’s gospel the story of Mary going to greet her cousin. I was amazed with how Elizabeth recognized that the child in her cousin’s womb was the longing of all Israel. She was absolutely overjoyed…. and in her joy and in Mary’s song they recognized that the promise from Micah – the promise of the one of peace – was being fulfilled.

Our hearts in contrast… are jaded and worn and disappointed.

The strange counterpoint of the Nobel Peace Prize and our current wars that tells us we cannot look for peace to come from any national leader.

There was no triumphant singing after Obama’s West Point speech… and while there may have been music in Oslo at the Nobel ceremonies, Obama’s own speech tempered any bit of joy and celebration. It has been a sobering reminder that they are not our saviors and that true peace only comes through Christ. No matter the obeisance paid to our president, he is not the one we are waiting for. He, nor any other leader within our world, is not our savior. He is not the Prince of Peace.

No, We are waiting for another.

The prophet Micah describes this one in this way:

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace. (Micah 5:4-5)

Mary and Elizabeth and the child in Elizabeth’s womb cannot contain their joy as they encounter this promise of God – yet unborn. They have been longing and waiting and hoping for so long.

As Elizabeth greets and praises her cousin, she exclaims: Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.

Blessed is she who not only believed in a miraculous birth… but blessed is she who believes that this child is the fulfillment of what God has promised.

Blessed are we who hope and pray and wait and believe in what God has promised.

I know that it is hard to do. We live in a world of cynicism and violence, a world of confusion and hatred.

And yet, we come together as people of faith and we light the fourth candle on the advent wreath because we dare to believe that the Prince of Peace will reign.

We dare to hope that there will be day when nation will not rise up against nation.

We dare to wait for the day when the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the lowly are lifted up.

Steve Goodier, also tells the story of a monument in Hiroshimas Peace Park. This particular monument is in memory of a young girl who died from radiation-induced lukemia after the dropping of the bomb. After hearing a legend that a person who makes 1000 cranes will have their wish granted, she tried to fold 1000 paper cranes. As Steve tells it, “with each crane she wished that she would recover from her illness. She folded 644 cranes before she left this life.” The monument in memory of this young girl named Sadako reads: This is our cry, This is our prayer, Peace in the world.

Now as much as ever, our cry is for peace in the world.

That might be peace in Afghanistan, or peace between you and your neighbors. It might be peace among loved ones, or peace between you and your inner thoughts.
In this season of Advent, we stand in the face of war and suffering and distress and we look for the coming of peace. We stand like Elizabeth, pregnant with hope, that God’s promises are real.
The reality that we long for this and every Advent – The miracle that we wait for this and every Christmas – is that we might wake up one morning and run outside to discover that God is with us – Emmanuel – and that the Prince of Peace rules the earth.