beloved – Salvaged Faith

Soul Reset

Posted on September 11, 2022Leave a comment

Text: Luke 3:21-23

This July, I walked back into my gym for the first time in more than two years.

When everything shut down in March of 2020, I tried to do the online workouts for a bit.

When the gym reopened, I wasn’t ready to go back and sweat and breathe with large groups of people in a small space.

I tried to make my own plan and we bought a weight bench and put it in the basement.

But I never really got back into the swing of doing things on my own.

I definitely wasn’t paying attention to other areas of physical health like what I was eating.

And you know what… my body felt it.

I started going to the chiropractor and physical therapist because of aches in my shoulders and back.

I had less energy and I was drinking a whole lot more coffee to get through the day.

And I realized that I was treating symptoms instead of going back and looking at the cause.

I had stopped taking care of my body and I no longer had a group to be accountable to.

So, in July of this year, I signed back up for classes and I’ve gone at least four times a week for the last two and a half months.

My family has been more conscientious about eating healthier food.

I pushed the reset button.

And I’m starting to feel better.

How many of you can relate to some part of that story?

To falling away from a practice that was working for you?

To trying to solve the problem by focusing on symptoms instead of causes?

To finally pushing the rest button and starting again?

You know, I just shared that experience about my physical health… but I could just as easily have told the exact same story about my spiritual health.

The other day, I was sitting in my office,

juggling an email from someone who needed rental assistance,

preparing for a meeting about episcopal elections,

trying to figure out what prayer to add into the worship service,

when my smart watch buzzed at me.

It said, “Your stress level seems high. You should take a breathing break.”

Oh.

Thanks.

I looked up from the keyboard and my star word from Epiphany is taped to the wall.

“Contemplation” it reads.

Contemplation in the Christian faith is a form of prayer or meditation where we sit still in order to experience the divine.

Next to my desk is a pack of these little 20 minute candles.

Each is designed to burn for just 20 minutes so that you can take a short break to unplug, pray, and renew.

They were a gift from a dear friend and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

But here I was, sitting at my desk, swamped with important ministry tasks, with a thousand signs all screaming at me saying the same thing.

Maybe you need to stop and be still with God for a minute.

Maybe you need to stop rushing around to fix all the problems and recenter yourself.

Maybe you need to recharge your spiritual battery.

Maybe you need to remember who God made you to be.

Maybe you need to push the reset button in your spiritual life.

Just as I could tell you about the symptoms I was trying to treat with my physical health, I can tell you about some of the symptoms of an unhealthy spiritual life:

Reacting out of our emotions – like lasting out in anger… or ignoring them all together.
Pretending like we don’t have flaws and we haven’t made mistakes.
Dividing our lives into “secular” and “sacred” compartments
Getting busy doing FOR God instead of being WITH God.

Do any of the items on that list resonate with you?

Maybe we all need to push that reset button.

Maybe we all need to stop focusing on the symptoms like stress and busyness and instead start taking care of our spirit.

And the good news we hear from the book of Lamentations that God’s mercy and grace are new every morning.

We may not have been consistent… but God is faithful.

God keeps showing up.

So whenever we are ready to push that reset button… there God is waiting for us.

Where do we start?

You know, one of the things that I have heard from several people is that they stepped away from church for a time during the pandemic and realized that they weren’t missing a lot.

It had simply become one more thing to do, in the long list of things that keep us busy.

If anything, the pandemic has been a time to refocus on what is really essential in our lives… and maybe Sunday morning worship just didn’t seem so essential anymore.

I think part of that is because of how we have gone about worship.

We have treated it like another item on our to-do list rather than an opportunity to be in God’s presence.

We have isolated our spiritual life to an hour or two on Sunday morning and then forgot about it the rest of the week.

We showed up in our Sunday best and didn’t give ourselves… or others… space to be vulnerable and real about what is happening in our lives – the good and the bad.

In some ways, we’ve been playing right into those symptoms of spiritual unhealth.

Peter Scazzero calls this “using God to run from God.” (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality)

But you know what… one of the things that we have remembered and tried to embrace during this pandemic is that God is not contained solely within the four walls of this building.

God goes with us wherever we are.

United Methodist pastor and consultant, Rebekah Simon-Peter recently researched what happened to churches during the bubonic plague – which lasted for several centuries in Europe.

One of the positive things she discovered was a growth in lay-led spiritual movements.

The church of the time had been consumed by power and wealth, influence and politics.

But when the plague stopped everything in its tracks, she noted that people were hungry for a relationship with God, for relationships with each other, and found new ways to reach beyond the walls of the church.

The Black Death forced a kind of reset.

Covid-19 has, too.

I think that’s part of the reason that John the Baptist went out and set up camp at the Jordan River.

He knew that people were going through the motions of their faith.

They were focused on checking the boxes and doing what they were supposed to do… and not on focused on their relationship with God.

But once he started issuing that invitation… “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!”… people started flocking from all over the place.

People really and truly were hungry for that experience of God.

They… we… are yearning for a chance to let go of our pasts…

To be made new…

To connect with something larger than ourselves…

John reminded them that this experience of baptism and washing yourself clean was only the beginning…

It couldn’t be compartmentalized but needed to become a part of their everyday experience.

It needed to change the way they lived and interacted with others.

He knew that all by ourselves we don’t have what it takes, but that with God’s help…

Well, with God anything is possible.

One day, as all of those people stepped into the waters to be baptized, Jesus stepped into the water, too.

The skies broke open.

The Holy Spirit descended.

And God spoke: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

But as Debie Thomas wrote, “In receiving baptism, Jesus doesn’t set himself apart from us; he aligns himself with us.”

What that means is that we are invited into an experience of God with Jesus.

And, “to embrace Christ’s baptism story is to embrace the core truth that we are united, interdependent, connected, one. It is to sit with the staggering reality that we are deeply, deeply loved.”

I have been doing some soul searching these last few months about what it is that we do in worship.

If we are just going through the motions, there really is no point.

God doesn’t want or need our busyness.

And God doesn’t want to be relegated to just an hour of our lives.

What if we pushed the reset button on what we do in worship?

How can we instead experience in this time that core truth that we are “united, interdependent, connected, one”?

What would it mean for worship to help us “sit with the staggering reality that we are deeply, deeply loved”?

I remember the day my youngest brother, Darren, was baptized.
Because they moved churches, he ended up as a junior in a confirmation class filled with sixth graders.

He was a foot and a half taller than the other students, and while he looked slightly out of place, those young kids looked up to him and they grew to be great friends.

And as he knelt to be baptized on confirmation Sunday, the pastor invited friends and family to come up and lay on hands… just like we do here.

Every single one of his classmates came and stood around us and reached out their hands, too.

Darren’s baptism was not just something to check off or going through the motions.

It was an experience of grace.

It was an experience of connection.

It was an experience of the reality that we are deeply, deeply loved.

I think part of pushing the reset button is coming into our time of worship EXPECTING to EXPERIENCE a connection with God and one another that affirms that we are loved.

I think it is creating space for us to be still and simply be in God’s presence so that we might hear and know that we are beloved.

And it is about being in a community of people who will not only affirm that love, but give us the opportunity to connect and share that love with others.

And my hope filled prayer is that what we experience here, with God’s help, will empower us live out that love in our everyday lives.

So we experience in worship a baptism…. And then in our daily life whenever you touch water… whether you are washing the dishes or stepping into the shower… let that water wash over you and remind you that YOU are a beloved child of God.

We experience in worship stillness and prayer… and we can find a quiet moment in each day to sit in God’s presence and simply be still.

We pray and confess in worship, and it helps us remember as we work and study and care for our family that your worth in God’s eyes does not depend on what you have done… but you are loved simply because God has declared it so.

We greet people with the love and peace of Christ… and as you go about your day and encounter other people, think of them first as a beloved child of God… see how it changes your interaction with them.

You see, that’s what our acts of praise and words of confession and moments of fellowship in worship are all about.

They are moments to encounter the holy, yes.

But they also train us to see others… to see ourselves… through God’s eyes for the rest of the week as well.

And YOU my friend… no matter what the world says or what kinds of labels it throws at you…

YOU are a beloved child of God.

Renew Our Whereabouts

Posted on January 13, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

This weekend, I’ve been gathered along with our confirmation students and mentors and teachers for a retreat. Our focus has been what makes us distinctly United Methodist. We’ve talked about our church structure, the way of discipleship, how we discover wo God is, and what we believe about grace.

Along the way, I keep thinking about how our time together was kind of a boot camp, a crash course in the foundations of who we are.

We’ve been talking about our shared theology as Christians and our place in the history of the church, but this was a chance to really step into a tradition.

To learn about it.
As questions.
Get ready to claim it as their own.

Earlier in the week, I read a lovely reflection by Debie Thomas. Her weekly essays at Journey with Jesus help pastors and laity alike reflect on the what the lectionary texts mean for us today.

This week, she wrote of her own experience being baptized and how it felt like such a personal commitment. She was choosing Jesus. It was all about her and her faith in that moment. As a young girl, she believed it was all about what she was doing, her obedience, her choice.

But when she thinks back on the story we just shared with you of Jesus going to the River Jordan to be baptized by John, she didn’t see it as a personal stepping out.

Instead, she saw it as stepping in.

“A stepping into a history, a lineage, a geography, an identity. In receiving baptism, Jesus doesn’t set himself apart from us; he aligns himself with us.”

For a normal person, that wouldn’t be a big deal…
To identify with others…
To join in what they were doing…

But this was Jesus!
He didn’t need us.
He didn’t need to repent and be forgiven.
He didn’t need to humble himself that way in those dirty waters of the river.

But he did.

Debie Thomas reminds us that the very first public act of Jesus was to step into our lives.
He submitted to John the Baptist… because he gives away his power.
He entered the Jordan River, that sacred place filled with so much history.

“Jesus stepped into the whole Story of God’s work on earth, and allowed that story to resonate, deepen, and find completion.”

Although it was only last week we were thinking about the babe in the manger and the wise ones who visited, this was really the first public act of Jesus.

For many at the time, this moment was the beginning of their encounter with Christ.
It was the first moment that they recognized what God was doing in their midst.
And when the Servant of God, the Beloved One, appeared before them, it wasn’t a spectacle.
It wasn’t to take over.
It wasn’t to transform everything in an moment.

It was an invitation.
An invitation for us to step in as well.
An invitation for us to surrender.
A invitation for us to enter that tradition, that history, that community of faith that has gone before us.

As Debie Thomas writes,

“To embrace Christ’s baptism story is to embrace the core truth that we are united, interdependent, connected, one. It is to sit with the staggering reality that we are deeply, deeply loved.”

I remember the day my youngest brother Darren was baptized.
He and my mom had transferred to a new church and they had missed a window for confirmation, so when it came around again, he signed up.

Unfortunately for Darren, this new church held confirmation during the seventh grade year, and he was a junior in high school.
He was about a foot and a half taller than the rest of his classmates, but Darren went through the entire class with them and was confirmed that spring.

I got to be there the day my little brother was confirmed and baptized and it was such a special moment.
All throughout the class, while he had been slightly out of place, those young kids looked up to him and they grew to be great friends.
As Darren knelt to be baptized, the pastor invited friends and family to come up and lay their hands on him.
Every single one of the kids in that confirmation class came forward and stood around us and reached out their hands to affirm and bless him.
It was quite powerful.

Darren’s baptism reminded me that whether we are young or old, whether we remember it happening to us or not, our baptisms are not private or personal events.

We are baptized in the midst of the church because those who surround us are also making commitments and vows:
the church affirms its own faith
the church pledges to act as spiritual mentors for those being baptized
the church vows their ongoing support.

In our United Methodist resources on baptism it claims that the covenant of baptism “connects God, the community of faith, and the person being baptized; all three are essential to the fulfillment of the baptismal covenant.”

Every baptism is a chance for the whole congregation to reaffirm our faith and to progress farther on the journey with Christ.

We are all stepping into live together.
“United, interdependent, connected, one.”
We are remembering that each of us, every single one, is deeply loved.

And whenever we remember our baptisms,
We have a chance to refocus on Jesus.
We have a chance to renew our whereabouts.
We have a chance to re-engage our spirits.

As we heard from the book of Isaiah this morning:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations… I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness… I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations”

And this calling, this ministry is sealed when the Spirit of the Lord descends upon him in the waters of the River Jordan.

We are remind of the spirit of God hovering over the waters in creation and God speaking, “Let there be light.”

God shows up and new life is among us.
The new creation.
New things that God declares.
A new journey for us to take.

And through our baptism, Isaiah’s servant of God… Matthew’s beloved… invites us to follow.
The light of Christ becomes part of us.
His mission becomes our own.
His journey becomes our path.

I’m reminded of a poem from Wendell Berry called the Gift of Gravity.

For those of you who don’t know Berry, he is a writer and a farmer from Kentucky who often writes about the ordinary and mundane ways that God shows up in our lives. Hear these words about the river, about the light, about the cycle of giving and taking.

All that passes descends,
and ascends again unseen
into the light: the river
coming down from sky
to hills, from hills to sea,
and carving as it moves,
to rise invisible,
gathered to light, to return
again… “The river’s injury
is its shape.” I’ve learned no more.
We are what we are given
and what is taken away;
blessed be the name
of the giver and taker.
For everything that comes
is a gift, the meaning always
carried out of sight
to renew our whereabouts,
always a starting place.
And every gift is perfect
in its beginning, for it
is “from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights.”
Gravity is grace.

The rain and snow that falls upon us comes from God.
It washes us clean.
It surrounds us and refreshes the ground upon which we walk…
But the light comes down from God as well.
It melts the snow and ice and warms the earth and the moisture evaporates.

It is a cycle necessary for life.
“for everything that comes/ is a gift, the meaning always/ carried out of sight/ to renew our whereabouts,/ always a starting place.”

To renew our whereabouts… always a starting place.

Like rain and light, grace is poured down upon us from God.

Whether you first stepped into the faith through baptism 1 year ago or 90 years ago, grace always gives us a fresh start.

As Berry writes, it comes down upon us to renew our whereabouts… it is always a starting place.

These waters are new life for us now.
They are the chance to re-enter the journey.
To recommit to these people.
To re-energize your spirit.
To refocus on Jesus.

After all, as Debie Thomas reminds us,

“He’s the one who opens the barrier, and shows us the God we long for. He’s the one who stands in line with us at the water’s edge, willing to immerse himself in shame, scandal, repentance, and pain — all so that we might hear the only Voice that will tell us who we are and whose we are in this sacred season. Listen. We are God’s chosen. God’s children. God’s own. Even in the deepest, darkest water, we are the Beloved.”

This is the promise of God… Amen.

Listen!

Posted on January 14, 20181 Comment

About nine years ago, we were in the midst of one of those bitterly cold Januarys… not unlike the one we have experienced here!
The snow was falling and the temperature was below zero, but I bundled up that afternoon and went to the local nursing home where I held a monthly worship service.
I really enjoyed this time of worship there. While I rotated with other community pastors for this afternoon time of singing and preaching, I was one of the only pastors who also celebrated communion with these folks. Other denominations were more exclusive about who is welcome at the table. So it was always a joy to walk around the room and share the bread of life and cup of salvation with those dear folk.
On this particular cold day, we shared the same text that we are focusing on this morning. As we heard about how Jesus entered those waters of the Jordan, we remembered our own baptisms.
I carried around the circle a basin of water and invited each one to dip their fingers in and remember that God has loved them and called them each by name.
As I came to one woman, she had fallen asleep, as often happens with that group, and she was gently nudged awake by her neighbor.
Hopefully, you won’t have to nudge your neighbor awake this morning!
I kept working my way around the room and came to another woman who proclaimed with joy, “I was baptized in the Iowa River!”

There was another woman whose name was Grace and all throughout the service, she would interrupt to ask who was going to take her home.
At the end of worship, I had the chance to sit with her and chat and with the bitter cold outside, she kept asking who was going to come and get her and take her home.
She openly began to weep because she had been forgotten and no one was coming to take her home.
I reminded her gently that this was her home now…
this was where she belonged…
But more importantly… I reminded her that she was not alone.
In fact, she was loved.
She was a child of God, blessed by the Lord, and touching those waters a voice from heaven was pouring out upon her, reminding her that she was beloved.

As I listened to Grace’s insistence that she go home, I knew that dementia was speaking loud and clear… but there was something of all of us in her words, too.
Don’t we all want to go home?
Don’t we all want to experience the kind of belonging where we are called beloved?

I said earlier that I really enjoyed worshipping there at Rose Haven in Marengo… but there is another part of me that found those times and moments extraordinarily sad.
Some of the residents were vibrant and full of life, but others were barely functional in mind, body or spirit.
Many had been forgotten by their families.
This was not the highest quality facility in the county… and there were many things that made me pause when I thought about the care that I would desire for my own loved ones.

In that moment of worship, I had a chance to name each and every single one of those residents as beloved…
but I also found wondering how my own community of faith was living out our baptisms…
How did the call of God that poured out in our baptisms invite us to be present in the lives of these people in a different way?

You see, on the one hand, our baptism is an echo of the one Jesus experienced… so we proclaim that each and every single one of us is also called beloved by our God.
You are beloved.
You are beloved.
You are beloved.

But so often, we hear those words falling upon our own heads in our baptism and then we stop listening.
I am a beloved child of God, we hear in our hearts. Period. End of story.

But that is not how Mark tells this story.
No, his version of this tale is urgent and messy.
He starts with John the Baptist at the Jordan River, inviting people to come and be baptized as a sign that they were changing their lives.
Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell reminds us that, “the Jordan river was where people went to wash their dishes and their laundry. It’s where they went to bathe. In other words, the river flowed with [the] filth and muck of human life… this wasn’t water that washed clean, but rather water that acknowledges the muckiness of our communal lives.”
John knew that his baptisms were not the end of the story, but that someone was coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit.
And then Jesus shows up.
This guy from the dump of a town, Nazareth…
A nobody from nowhere…
And yet, the very presence of God in the world.
And as God-with-us, Immanuel, Jesus Christ, waded into those filthy waters of the Jordan River, the very heavens split open.
And in that moment, the ministry of Jesus begins.
The Spirit flows upon him like a dove, names him beloved, and then forces him into the wilderness.

“What are our baptisms for?” Ted Smith asks in his lectionary reflection (Feasting on the Word).
Baptism is not simply something that makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside.
It is also the reminder that God’s power, God’s spirit, God’s life has poured out upon us… the very heavens were torn open and now YOU are sent out, like Jesus, into the wilderness of this life.
Because not only are you beloved… but so is every other child of creation.
No matter where they have come from or what their life has been, they, too, are beloved by God.
Whether they are from a place that is beloved or a place that has been condemned by others, they, too, are beloved by God.
Whether they are surrounded by love or whether they are forgotten and alone, they, too, are beloved by God.
And in our baptisms, the power of heaven itself pours out on us and calls us into the world to act on the behalf of our brothers and sisters.
To create opportunities.
To open doors.
To work for justice.
To call one another to reconciliation and repentance.
To make God’s love real in this world through our worship, through our work, through our play.
It is the call that drove Martin Luther King, Jr. to proclaim the dream that one day the children of slaves and slave holders would be able to sit down and share a meal together.
The dream that children would not be judged by color of their skin or where they were born, but by the content of their character.
That little children of different races and abilities and backgrounds would be able to join hands with one another.
That we can work together, pray together, struggle together, stand up for freedom together.

Our baptism is the foundation of every single thing we do as a church. Because this is not my place of ministry, but ours.
You are a beloved child of God.
The heavens were tore open as you were baptized and the Holy Spirit sends you out into the world to share the life you have found here with others.
On this day, let us shout with joy for the presence of God is in this place, leading us, calling us, shoving us out into world and reminding us with gentle words that every person we meet is a beloved child of God.
Amen.