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language – Salvaged Faith

Nehemiah: Renewing Our Commitment

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Text: Nehemiah 8:5-10; 9:1-3, 38; 10:28-29

Last week, we talked about some of the opposition that the builders and Nehemiah faced while building the wall. 

He had to deal with scandal and oppression perpetrated by his own officials…

but he also had to create plans to protect the people from enemies who wanted to attack and destroy their work. 

And then suddenly, the work was complete.

It took just fifty-two days to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. 

FIFTY-TWO DAYS!

My drive home takes me down 63rd and they have been working to rebuild the bridges on Highway 28 over the Raccoon River since last summer and are only halfway done. 

But these everyday folks rebuilt the walls of the entire city in fifty-two days. 

So… what happened next? 

Did they throw a party?

No.  Nehemiah counts up the people.  

He takes a census of all of the Israelites and counts up 42,360 people, an additional 7,337 slaves, 345 singers, 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and 6,720 donkeys. 

And they take up an offering. 

You know, like you do. 

And then do they throw a party?

Nope.

Because all along this has not been a story about rebuilding a wall.

It has been a story about rebuilding a people.

Rebuilding a community that was centered on God. 

As we talked about in the first week of this series, in order to get to the good stuff and address their needs related to belonging and identity, they first had to make sure that they cared for safety and security needs. 

But once the walls were built and the gates restored and the officials were brought back in line from oppressive practices… well, the people could breathe. 

And they could begin to refocus on their relationship with God.

In fact, rather than Nehemiah initiating the next steps, he writes that the people gathered together and asked the scholar Ezra to bring out the Law of Moses. 

Ezra also had a calling… to rebuild the faith of the people, and his story can be found in the first half of the Ezra-Nehemiah saga.

As a priest, he understood that a right relationship with God was the only true source for security for the people. 

And he understood that God’s law was the foundation for that “right relationship.”  

The people are ready to listen.

So Ezra pulls out the scroll of the Law of Moses.

Many scholars think that this was likely what we know today as the Book of Deuteronomy, or “Second Law.” 

And from early in the morning until noon, he reads aloud from the scroll to the people. 

But friends… here is just how far away from the faith and their heritage the people were…

Ezra read the words, presumably in Hebrew… but the Levites, the priests, had to translate.

These, after all, were people who had grown up and spent their whole lives in Babylon and Persia. 

Or, they were the everyday folks who had been left behind and lived under oppression and they didn’t have priests and schools and institutions in place to continue their traditions.

They were all strangers to their own culture and they didn’t understand their own language 

And when they understood what the laws of Moses were asking of them, they wept.

Out of shame.

Out of guilt.

Out of frustration. 

This did not feel like a joyful discovery… but rather it only highlighted in their hearts how far away they were from God and who they had been called to be.

At one of our meetings with Global Ministries, we spent some time listening to the stories of Native American United Methodists. 

I can’t help but think of how the United States brutally removed indigenous people from their lands, when I think about the time of exile in Babylon for the people of Judah.

And in so many instances, our federal government and the religious partners who helped manage schools, focused on assimilation and removal of native culture, rather than allowing their traditions to flourish.

The same happened to Africans who were captured, sent halfway across the world, and forced into slavery. 

As the General Board of Global Ministry, we watched together, “More than a Word,” which explores the use of Native American mascots. 

What struck me among the stories were the voices of younger people who grew up either on reservations or even in more traditional white culture, but who were rediscovering their cultural identity.

Their identity had been forgotten.  Or even worse, it had been described to them as shameful, something that had to be destroyed. 

And it was hard for some to find a safe space to explore what that identity and history meant in their lives. 

So part of their weeping was about a loss of that identity.

But the other part of their grief came from knowing just how far they had been from keeping God’s laws. 

Suddenly, the rules were laid out for them plain as day, and they didn’t know how they could possibly ever make up for what they had left undone. 

But Ezra and Nehemiah don’t see this as a moment to pile on shame. 

They urge the people to dry their tears, to end their lament, to let go of their guilt and instead to gather in their homes and feast and give thanks.  

Because this is a fresh start!  

As one of my favorite hymns reminds us:

This is a day of new beginnings,

Time to remember and move on,

Time to believe what love is bringing,

Laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

This is their chance to let go of the past and put into practice the word of God that they have rediscovered. 

What has come before this moment is in the past. 

This moment they get a clean slate to start afresh and rededicate themselves to God. 

As they continue to hear God’s word read, they rediscover rituals and traditions.

One of these is Festival of Booths that takes place in the seventh month… and lo and behold, they are in the seventh month!

So they follow all of the instructions and for the first time in generations, they honor this week-long holiday.    

They also hear once again words that shape their identity as a people.

They remember how they were called together out of slavery in Egypt to be a people, set apart and holy.

That meant things like following a certain diet, refraining from intermarriage, and being dedicated to the Sabbath…

None of which were things that they had been practicing.

So, later that month, they join for a fast of repentance and recommitment. 

They rededicate themselves to the law, trusting in the God who has been steadfast and merciful. 

All of the officials, priests, and officers, singers, temple staff, gatekeepers and all of the people who were old enough to understand joined together in a binding oath to follow what they read about in Deuteronomy. 

They recommitted themselves to the law.

Their focus was on crossing every t and dotting every i. 

Keeping the Sabbath.

Refraining from intermarriage. 

Practicing Jubilee.

Offering to support the temple. 

Dedicating their first fruits.

Bringing in the tithe. 

As we think about what it means to rebuild our community, a huge part of what we need to do is remember who we are. 

A key difference between us and the people of Judah at this time is that we have a different frame of reference and a different calling.

We are not called to be a people, set apart and holy, isolated, focused on following every letter of the law.

God knows that we will fail if we try… because the people of God failed over and over again.

Last year, we joined together in UMC 101 and we explored together some of OUR foundational beliefs and practices. 

We remembered things like:

Our focus on grace and faith put into practice.

The call to reach out and share the love of God with all people.

A charge that makes room for difference and invites us to use our brains and celebrates diversity. 

All grounded and centered in the core of Christian tradition… praising the God of all creation who became flesh and lived and died and rose again so that we might truly know life. 

In Jesus Christ we have been redeemed and made right… not because we followed the law, but by his grace, and God continues to empower us by the Holy Spirit. 

And we remembered that our congregation exists for a purpose.. to help people accept and confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to live their daily lives in light of their relationship with God. 

This is who we are. 

A people who love God and accept the grace God offers… and then live out that love and grace in our daily lives. 

We are called to be a witness… a light and a leaven in society, a reconciler in a world that is divided, to go into places of pain and show Christ’s hope. (Book of Discipline ¶220)

In just a few minutes, we will be invited to the table. 

Just like the people of Judah embraced their traditions and practices, this is a practice that is at the core of our being.

This is a place where we are empowered to start again.

This is a place where we recommit ourselves to God and one another.

This is the place where we find God’s strength and grace for the new beginning that awaits us.

Friends, it doesn’t matter what has come before.

There is no reason to weep or grieve or feel shame for what has been done in the past.

Because here we receive the grace of God that is our new beginning.

So may we, too, come and recommit our hearts to God on this day. 

Sing! Play! Summer! – How Great Thou Art

Text: Psalm 8

There are moments in our lives when we cannot help but sing our praises to the Creator of the universe.

Maybe you’ve felt it standing on the side of a mountain…
resting on the sand with your toes in the ocean…
quietly sitting on a deer stand in the middle of the woods…
kneeling in the garden amongst the zinnias…
staring up into the heavens on a cool dark night…

That sense of awe.
Wonder.
Majesty.

Swedish pastor Carl Boberg had those feelings overcome him in the aftermath of a thunderstorm.
As he later reflected:
It was that time of year when everything seemed to be in its richest colouring; the birds were singing in trees and everywhere. It was very warm; a thunderstorm appeared on the horizon and soon there was thunder and lightning. We had to hurry to shelter. But the storm was soon over and the clear sky appeared.
When I came home I opened my window toward the sea. There evidently had been a funeral and the bells were playing the tune of “When eternity’s clock calls my saved soul to its Sabbath rest”. That evening, I wrote the song, “O Store Gud”.

As a paraphrase and reflection on Psalm 8, it allows us to pause in praise as we reflect on the wonders of creation. How could we not think of the Creator? How could we not sing of the Lord’s goodness?
As I’ve shared with you over these years, astronomy and physics have always had a special place in my own call story. While I began my studies seeking to better understand the universe, that search led me straight to religion and faith and deeper questions about God.
Dr. Olsgaard and I were working on an independent study when he handed me this book, God and the Astronomers, where Robert Jastrow describes precisely this shift:
It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation… [the scientist] has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (p. 106)
When we stop.
Really stop.
Stop and think about the vastness of the universe, the mystery of how it all came to be…
How could we not worship and bless God’s name?

So this morning, as we think about this hymn, I want us to spend some time in awesome wonder considering the world’s that God has made and our place in it.
And rather than talk about it, I want to invite you to see it from a new perspective with this short film from National Geographic.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee… how great thou art.

You know it is amazing to hear those voices of astronauts who describe being able to hide the whole planet behind their thumb.
Just as the psalmist invites us to notice, when we start to pay attention to this great expansive cosmos… we begin to recognize just how small we are.
Just how insignificant our place.
Just how little we know.
And the incredible wonder that the Creator who made all of that, also made me.

Who am I in vastness of the universe?
As Eugene Peterson writes in the Message translation of Psalm 8 asks God:
Why do you both with us? Why take a second look our way?

Who am I that God would notice me… much less come to earth, take on human life, live and die for me?

The version of “How Great Thou Art” that has made its way into our hymnals and hearts holds in tension that awe of creation and the story of redemption and salvation.
As many of the songs we have experienced this summer, the hymns journey from the original author to our hymnals was long and winding and was carried by missionaries. Originally, the eight verses were sung to a Swedish folk tune and was published in the songbook of the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden.
In the early 1900s it was translated to German by a nobleman who heard the song in Estonia.
That German version made its way to Russia and was published in a Russian-language Protestant Hymnbook.
It was there that English missionary Stuart K. Hine and his wife came across the song. As they traveled through the Carpathian Mountains, he created a paraphrase of the first three stanzas in English and finished the final one back in England after WW2.

Hine’s version starts with the wonder of creation from Boberg, but he adds verses three and four with a focus on atonement and salvation.
The third verse was inspired by a woman named Lyudmila. She had learned to read by studying the Bible and when the Hines arrived in their village, they heard her reading aloud from the gospel of John to a houseful of guests. While they remained outside, they listened in as these folks heard for the first time the good news and literally cried out how amazing it was that Christ would die for them.

In the vast scope of the universe…
The sun and moon and stars…
How awesome is it?
How incredible?
How breathtaking?
That God notices you.
That God loves you.
That God went through death for you.

What is our response?
How could we possibly begin to give thanks?
We start with praise… singing, shouting, giving thanks to our God.

But we also respond with a life filled with gratitude, service, and love.
As a lesser known verse, translated by Hine, reminds us:
O when I see ungrateful man defiling
This bounteous earth, God’s gifts so good and great;
In foolish pride, God’s holy Name reviling,
And yet, in grace, His wrath and judgment wait.
For as the Psalmist is quick to remind us, we were placed here in this moment for a reason and a purpose.
To have dominion over creation.
Put in charge of God’s handcrafted world.
Tasked with responsibility for the ground beneath our feet, the air we breathe, and all creatures that inhabit it… including our neighbors.
O mighty God! Brilliant Lord! How great thou art!
May we ever live up to this task.

Bible 101: From the Septuagint to the Message

Text: John 1:1-14, 2 Timothy 3:16-17

First question I have for all of you… how many of you felt like last week’s discussion of quantum mechanics and elephants was a tiny bit over your head?
That’s okay!
Each week we are going to explore a different way of approaching the bible and a different part of its history, so to make up for all of the science last week, I thought we might start this morning by playing a little game.

NAME THAT TRANSLATION!
I do not promise that you will get all of the answers right… but I do promise you will learn something in the process!!!

John 1:6-8 The Message (MSG)
6-8 There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

This bible was created and translated by Eugene Peterson between 1993 and 2002. He went back to the original languages and his goal was not to translate word for word, but to get the sense of the phrases in the original text and convey the idea. This is an idiomatic translation – or translating phrases rather than words.

 

John 1:6-8 Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
6 A man was sent from God, to whom the name was John.
7 This man came into witnessing, that he should bear witnessing of the light, that all men should believe by him.
8 He was not that light, but that he should bear witnessing of the light.

The Wycliffe bible is a whole group of translations that were made in the 14th century into Middle English. Most Christians at this time only had access to scriptures through hearing them orally or through seeing verses in Latin. In some ways, his goal was the same as Peterson’s – to translate the bible into the common vernacular. They worked not from the original languages, but from the Latin version of scripture – the Vulgate.

 

John 1:6-8 Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament (MOUNCE)
There came on the scene a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear testimony about he light so that everyone might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear testimony about the light.

This version of the bible was created for people who wanted to study the bible and explore the original languages… but who didn’t actually know Greek! The purpose is to help teach a little bit of Greek at a time. A traditional “interlinear” bible would use the Greek word order and then show the English word for word correlary – but that makes the sentence structure hard to understand. So the Mounce version starts with the English sentence structure and then adds in the Greek words.

I will often use a version like this to discover what the Greek was and then I can go back and consult a Greek dictionary to see if there are other meanings or how it is used elsewhere in scripture.

 

John 1:6-8 King James Version (KJV)

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

The King James Version is a translation into English that took seven years from 1604-1611. King James oversaw the translation himself – giving instructions to make sure that this translation would capture the structure and polity of the Church of England. 47 scholars were used in the translation and they went back to the original languages for their translation, adapting them slightly with known Septuagint and Vulgate texts.

Fun fact: The English alphabet at the time had no J!  So it was King Iames Bible which talked about Iesus Christ.

 

John 1:6-8 Common English Bible (CEB)
6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light. 8 He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.

This is a very new translation of the bible which is distributed by Abingdon Press, the United Methodist denominational publisher. The goal was to make the bible accessible for people today and easy to read, aiming for a seventh-grade reading level. They also wanted it to appeal broadly to many cultural contexts over 120 scholars from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. More than twenty-four denominations were involved in its work. The key feature is that instead of churchy and traditionally biblical words, you will find more seeker-friendly words.

 

In various letters,Paul writes to the young man, Timothy, whom he is mentoring in the faith. Along with advice and doctrine, one of the things he reminds him is that the scriptures help him to be wise and give him the words he needs to help others grow. He includes that famous line “every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
We read that passage within our own biblical texts and we automatically apply that sentiment to the whole of scripture. This entire text has been inspired by God and it is useful for helping us understand who we are and whose we are.
One thing that often fails to cross our minds is that the Bible that Paul and Timothy were reading was very different than the ones we have in our hands today.
Early Christians spoke Greek – the language of the empire – and the scriptures that they would have been basing their teaching and writing from would have been a Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures known as the Septuagint.

When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire (which would have included Jerusalem and the people of Israel), Greek became the common tongue. He was known not only for conquering vast swaths of land, but he also collected books and scrolls for his library at Alexandria.
Seventy-two scholars were employed to translate the Torah, two hundred years before Christ, and it took them only seventy two days to recreate those first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The very name, Septuagint (LXX) comes from the seventy days and seventy people.
Tradition has it six scholars from each of the twelve tribes (or seventy two people) were each asked to do so independently… and independently recreated identical versions of the Torah.

Talk about inspired!
The authors of the New Testament frequently relied upon this Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in their own writing, so it is likely that Paul and Timothy were referring to the Septuagint in their own discourse and as they were teaching others about the faith.
Christian father, Jerome, however, working around 400 years after Christ, instead turned back to the original Hebrew. His translation of the scriptures into Latin is known as the Vulgate and was used by others in their further translations into English.

But something I think we often don’t think about is how we got from there to here… how that inspiration of God works… and what it means when we open up our bibles and read vastly different things.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the passages that we were all invited to read as part of the Bible 101 challenge was a selection from Job 38.
In some of the final chapters, as God kind of puts Job in his place by rattling off a whole series of ways that God is superior and cosmic and knows everything from the time when eggs will hatch to the course of stars in the skies… some of us read about a gigantic hippopotamus… and others read about the behemoth. Some of us read about a huge alligator and others read about the Leviathan.
There is a world of difference between a hippopotamus and a mythic beast.
So what gives?

As we went through some of those various translations, one of the things that you may have heard is that the purpose of each of our translators is different.
Some are trying to give us a word for word exact replica into a new language… and if there isn’t an equivalent word, sometimes they just use the word from the original text.
Some are trying to merely get the sentiment of a phrase, with idiomatic translations and so they might try to say the same thing or explain the original phrase with more words in the process.
Others are trying to make the bible as accessible as possible… and to use words or concepts that are foreign to our ears like behemoth don’t help. They find the closest equivalent in English, in this case, and simply allow the meaning to change slightly.

It is always good to understand what the motivations might have been behind the translation of the bible YOU are using, because it might help you get a sense of how to approach that text. And when you read from a variety of translations, you get a fuller sense of how God has been speaking to people throughout time and place.
Because in the end, each author and translator began their work, inspired by God, in order to help bring to a new generation in a new time and place the messages of God.
While the exact words might differ and the phrases might not match, they are inspired to share what is “useful one way or another – showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 MSG) Thanks be to God. Amen.

From Everywhere to Everywhere (2.0)

This Sunday, I was making my way back from our bi-annual Global Ministries meeting and so took the opportunity to do a brief rewrite of the message I preached at Ingathering:

This quadrennium, I have the honor of serving on our General Board of Global Ministries:

Last fall, in our opening worship, we read the names of the missionaries who have died in the last four years, like we do on All Saints day.  It was holy and humbling to think about all of those people who had spent their lives serving God wherever they were sent.  But I also noticed that they almost all had very white, very Anglo sounding names.

That evening, and since then, I have met missionaries who remind me that the focus of our global ministries has truly shifted.  Katherine fits that traditional model and is from California. She has served through Global Ministries in a variety of far flung places including Japan, Iowa, and now Nepal.

But Alina is a native Bolivian and she is serving in Nicaragua on behalf of Global Ministries.

Luis is from Brazil and will be heading up the new regional Mission Center in Buenos Aires.

Another leader from Brazil will work with the new regional Mission Center in Africa focusing on Portuguese speaking countries.

There is an African American who speaks Japanese who will serve in the new Mission Center in Seoul, South Korea.

And we heard about a missionary from Zimbabwe who is heading to Canada to serve an African refugee community there. 

Our Executive Director of Global Mission Connections was just elected a bishop in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but last year, Bishop Mande wrote:

“Mission used to be thought of as coming from the center (churches in developed countries) and going to the peripheries (people in developing countries). But our sense today is that there isn’t a center anymore—that doing mission lies in mutuality, looking at each other as equal partners and learning from one another. Our heritage from the Wesleyan movement tells us that God’s grace is everywhere and everyone shares in it.” (http://um-insight.net/in-the-church/umc-global-nature/no-center-no-periphery-a-regional-approach-to-mission/)

 From everywhere… to everywhere…

 

Fundamental to the shift in our global ministries is the recognition of prevenient grace.

The idea that God is moving in our lives long before we know who or what God is.

The idea that grace and truth, beauty and holiness, forgiveness and love are not gifts we enlightened people bring to the heathens, but that we can discover God’s work in the midst of people we meet… whether or not they know God, yet.

 

I think the shift we are experiencing in mission is paralleled in Paul’s ministry in Athens.

As we start the scripture reading today, he is preaching and sharing the good news of Jesus on the streets. And the people don’t get it and they don’t get him.

Some translations say they take him, or brought him, others that they asked him, but if you look to the original Greek the word is “epilambanomai” – to lay hold of or to seize. 

The Common English Bible translates this passage… “they took him into custody.”  The people REALLY don’t get him.  Paul is trying to shove something foreign down their throats.

This is the same word used when Simon the Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’ cross as we remembered on Good Friday.  And it’s a word used twice to describe how Jesus grabs hold of someone to rebuke or challenge and heal them.

Paul is not taken to Mars Hill by choice.

He is brought to the council and placed in the middle of the people…

 

And then something in Paul shifts.  His language changes.  

He realizes that speaking of foreign things isn’t making and impact.

He starts to contextualize the good news of Jesus Christ.

He recalls an altar he saw, “To an unknown God” and uses that altar… in a city filled with idols… to begin explaining the God he has come to know.

What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you… God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him.  In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us.  In God we live, move, and exist.

 

In our Wesleyan heritage, the idea of prevenient grace is that it goes before us.  God’s grace is all around us. In God, we live, move, and exist.  Even if we don’t know it yet.  And by grace, some of us reach out and find God.

 But there is another side to prevenient grace… that God doesn’t just sit back and wait to be found, but actively seeks us.

God enters our lives and our stories.

God takes on our flesh.

God speaks our words and breathes our air and tells stories about our lives.

The incarnation was as much a part of the good news as the resurrection.  

And so Paul, at Mars Hill, adopted an incarnational ministry and spoke the words of the people, pointed to their objects, entered their stories, and showed them where he saw God.

Or as he writes in 1 Corinthians: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews… to the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor 9:20-22)

 

Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren, in “Introducing the Missional Church,” claim this is the same type of ministry Jesus commissioned the disciples for – sending them out in pairs into communities, inviting them to live deeply in the midst of strangers… eating what they eat, relying upon their customs and hospitality. It was incarnational ministry.

It is the life so many of our United Methodist missionaries take on – going from everywhere to everywhere.

 

In my work earlier with Imagine No Malaria and now with Global Ministries I am so proud of the fact that we do not seek to impose our ways upon communities, but partner with people and seek mutuality.

We no longer fly into a community and drop off bed nets then leave… we work with local leaders and partners and build community health workers who can help us explore best practices, share with us their customs, and ultimately be that incarnational presence on the ground long after an initial distribution of nets has occurred.

Those same community health workers were also then in place when the Ebola epidemic struck so many Western African countries and we were positioned to make a difference because of the relationships we had already established.

And now, we are applying that same model to our disaster response through UMCOR – not sending in support, but nurturing local leadership to be the disaster response coordinator in places like Mozambique.    

 

Our Global Ministries Board of Directors only meets twice a year to evaluate and govern the work of the staff who do this ministry daily.   And in these past three days when I was in Atlanta, I learned that the biggest challenge and blessing facing our work today is Global Migration.  

65.3 million people today are forcibly living outside of their own country.  

65.3 million.

And while about a quarter of these are refugees fleeing from conflict in their homelands, we are also seeing increasing numbers of people who are being forced to migrate because of climate change.

One of our United Methodist communities in Fiji has been forced to leave their island home because of rising sea waters.  

Changing weather patterns contribute to droughts and immense hunger and poverty that cause others to flee.

But other severe weather events like hurricanes and cyclones are also increasing, both numerically and in strength, sending many from their homes.

So not only are we needing to listen to the people in local contexts, but we are also learning how to listen to the world around us and are positioning ourselves to be in place to respond and be proactive for the disasters that we know are coming that will impact our ministries.  

 

The work of Global Ministries is from everywhere, to everywhere.

The only question I have for you is… why do we leave it to the work of our missionaries?

Why are we not living out the gospel in our communities in the same way?

Because if our call is really from everywhere to everywhere, then we become aware of the reality that our neighborhood is a mission field, too.

Corey Fields writes, “today, in the attractional model, the church expects the opposite. We program and advertise and try to do just the right thing that will compel others to come to us as the stranger on our turf. It is the church that is to go, however, taking on the flesh of its local context. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “If the gospel is to be understood…it has to be communicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed.”  (http://soapboxsuds.blogspot.com/2013/05/taking-on-flesh-incarnational-theology.html )

Our neighborhood is filled with people from nations all across this world.  And it is filled with people who have been in the United States for generations, but for whom the good news of God has become a distant and unknown reality.  

Our churches need to learn more than we teach.

We need to listen more than we speak.

We need to go out into our neighborhoods more than we sit back and wait.

Like Paul, we need to start paying attention and figuring out how to speak in the languages of the people we encounter.

 

Because only by being present with our communities will we ever see how God is already present and how the people of this place live, move, and exist in God.

 

From everywhere… to everywhere… God is present, God is living, God is breathing new life and hope.

 

A Spotlight and a Platform

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Martin Shkreli, the man who raised prices on various life-saving drugs purely for profit, testified before Congress recently:

https://www.facebook.com/quartznews/videos/1103849949648706

 

What really struck me in this video, was the plea of Mr. Cummings.

He lifted up the truth of the impact of Mr. Shkreli’s actions, but did not merely question or shame or condemn him.  Instead, he turned the interrogation into a witness to the power of transformation.  While so much of the world has written off Mr. Shkreli as a terrible, rotten person who deserves the worst the world can throw at him, Mr. Cummings spoke to his better angels.

“You have a spotlight and you have a platform.”

“I truly believe you could become a force of tremendous good.”

“There’s so many people that could use your help. May God bless you.”

 

And you could see, for a moment, Mr. Shkreli squirming in his seat.

 

How do we, as the church, speak the truth to people who have power?  We do it in love.

Shouting has its moments, but sometimes truth-telling happens with a quiet voice… a persistent voice (“are you listening?”)… that requires the other to pay attention.

Sometimes, it is the vision of what could be that is just as effective as what has been.

Sometimes, we appeal to the Kingdom of God by naming the small kernel of possibility and hope we see in the humanity of another person… even if it is really, really, really tiny.

 

Our politics and discourse with one another these days is so vicious and dividing.  It happens in elections and in our capitols and it happens in our church life as well.

What if instead we reached out to one another like Mr. Cummings?

What if instead we listened to the words of Christ in Matthew 5:43-45?

Love your enemies and pray for those who harass you.

 

Just as Mr. Shkreli has a platform and a spotlight, so do you, with every action you take every day.  And you have a chance to stand there and speak for truth and justice and love.

home #gc2012

The processing of what exactly happened these past two weeks will take time.  My brain is still too full and jumbled to even begin to dig deep. 

But in response to some initial thoughts by the chair of our Iowa delegation, I started to think about some things that I am bringing home:

1) a reminder that we cannot legislate trust
2) the amazing experience of working together with people who are so different from myself and loving one another
3) knowing that all of the things we do… in the grand scheme of things what really matters is that people have a place at the table in our local communities. 
4) a desire to learn French
5) a deeper understanding of the process and the people who lead our church – and a recognition that we are all just people… people who care, who make mistakes, who put make-up on in bathrooms and drink coffee and say the wrong things and the right things, who deeply desire what is best for our church and yet might disagree on what that is.  It is humbling and inspiring and beautiful and messy.

thinking ecumenically and maybe a little politically

Lately, I have been having quite a few conversations, theologically and politically with fellow pastors.

It would be fair to say that my current colleagues are more conservative than my colleagues in seminary or college. And what amazed me was the fear that “liberal” colleagues expressed 8 years ago over the Bush administration are the same fears being expressed now, under a new administration by my “conservative” friends. In both places, I heard words like “facism” and “homeland security” being thrown around with fears that their rights to the things they hold most dear would be stripped away. Each is afraid that their most important values will be tossed to the side.

In that same conversation, we also talked about the differences in how we recieve God’s grace in each tradition. In United Methodism it’s through the means of grace – which include works of piety and works of mercy. In the Lutheran tradition, it’s through the word – in preaching, study, baptism, etc. In the Reformed tradition God’s grace isn’t limited and yet there was a strong hesitation to say that grace comes through works.

All of these things together – both the political and theological conversation – have me feeling like we aren’t even talking the same language with one another. We are looking at the exact same thing: political decisions on one hand and God’s grace on the other, and we interpret each in completely different ways. After our conversation we got to a place where we could agree to disagree theologically – but we didn’t really even touch the political difference (well, we did debate torture for a bit).

I don’t know that I have ever wished for full unity within the Christian tradition. I understand that there are important theological differences in what we claim to believe. We can agree on the fundamentals, but how those fundamentals are played out – woah. VAST differences. Same with the political landscape. The idea of a one party system would be a terrible plan… in fact, I would be in favor of lots of political parties, each articulating clearly their perspectives.

Debate and conversation are important (in United Methodism, we call it conferencing). They help us to form and reflect upon our beliefs. They call us to know our own positions well enough to speak for them. But they also call us to listen and to be aware of when our positions are in need of reformation. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in… to help us reach a consensus… to help us reach God’s will… in the midst of our vast differences.

That last piece of the puzzle isn’t happening. In politics and in the church, we hear what we fear from the other side. We interpret the actions of the “opposition” as being tactical moves to wipe us out. And especially when we throw around labels like facism, we are invoking the idea that we need to stand up and fight back – not have a conversation, but stage a full out rebellion. I was there and listening to those points of view in 2001, I am there and listening to those points of view now in 2009. I’m hearing those same arguments in the church around our constitutional amendments right now. And it doesn’t work. It creates dissension instead of making room for the Holy Spirit to move and perhaps change all of us. Fear and unwillingness to listen only makes us more rigid in our points of view and more ready to see subtle differences as vast gulfs.

Jon Stewart had a guest on earlier this week, Cliff May, and they discussed torture. And I mean discussed it. They both spoke clearly about what they believed in an informed and articulate manner. And they respected each other. That doesn’t mean that neither made mistakes. But at the end of it, they both understood one another better.

I pray that we might all do this. We might all listen more and fear less. That we might ask questions instead of making assumptions. That we would be willing to look at our own positions through the eyes of another. And then, if after we have done all of that, we still have fears – if we still believe that the foundations of our beliefs and values are crumbling around us – YES! stand up and speak loudly and be the prophet you are called to be. But listen first.

And… fyi – I’m extremely disheartened by the Pew Research Center poll (altho it was a small sample) that going to church – especially a mainline church – makes you more willing to support torture.

dos lenguas

I have been blessed to be able to work with other pastors in our district on a new hispanic ministry opportunity. We are working to build a monthly bi-lingual worship called “Two Languages, One Flame” and we had our second official meeting to plan today.

We talked a lot about how in many senses, most of us are gringos trying to do this for others. But what is really important is that we do have some partners in the hispanic community who are partnering with us, and we are just the starting point. Ideally, this is a shared cultural experience, where we have the opportunity to learn and worship in Spanish, and the hispanic community learns and worships in English. And as we worship, we help one another to discover gifts and talents and our dream is that a church will be born out of this community.

As we begin planning, one thing we are not aiming for is perfection. =) At least not yet. For me, it is much more important for the worship to be vital and authentic and from the heart – and if we make mistakes in translation along the way, we will laugh together about it and move on. We just want to praise God in two tongues through the power of the Holy Spirit that we share. If we do that, nothing else matters.