community – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

Look. See. Live. #growrule

Posted on February 10, 2016Leave a comment

As part of my Lenten disciplines, I’m using a tool from The Society of Saint John the Evangelist called “Growing a Rule of Life.”

As Marjorie Thompson writes:

Certain kinds of plants need support in order to grow properly. Tomatoes need stakes, and beans must attach themselves to suspended strings… human beings are much like these plants… we need structure in order to have enough space, air, and light to flourish. Structure gives us the freedom to grow as we are meant to.

And a rule of life is just that kind of structure and support. There have been times in my life when I have practiced this kind of rule of life: a college covenant discipleship group comes to mind. But it has been a while since I have formed one and I’m looking forward to this season of structured discernment.

Today’s question from SSJE asks: How might the rhythms you observe in nature inform the way you live?

I was struck today by the snow falling outside of my window. During this time of year, it seems like we find ourselves in an endless cycle of snow, melting/slush/dirty heaps of snow, and then it snows once again.

This morning, we gathered for Community Ashes at a local coffee shop. We gathered to remember our common humanity and sinfulness. We gathered in solidarity with those across this world who are suffering and mourning. And when I pulled up to the coffee shop at 6:20 am… there was that gross, dirty snow all along the sides of the road. I pulled out the supplies and we began to impose the dark, sooty, ashes – signs of our mortality and repentance – upon one another’s foreheads.

Then a snow flake fell.

And another.

And before long, the whole world outside the window was blanketed in silent, fluffy, pristine snow.

On the very day we echo the words of Psalm 51, pure white snow fell from the sky.

Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love!

Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean;

wash me and I will be whiter than snow.

I am a human being, like any other human being. Though I strive for perfection and seek to become more and more like Christ, I have a long way to go.

Just like nature spoke aloud today that fresh snow or bright sunlight will take away the grime, so my life needs God’s mercy and the joy of salvation to cover my mistakes, to melt away my imperfections, to renew my spirit. Over and over again.

Tables and Holy Experiences

Posted on February 3, 2016Leave a comment

I have a sense of my first Maundy Thursday service, but I can’t quite place where it falls in my history. I was not a child, but not yet fully grown. Perhaps it was high school, or maybe somewhere in my college years. I have a sense of a fellowship area, a place not just for worship, but for eating and laughing as well. Classmates and adult leaders alike are present as we strip off our socks, giggle about stinky feet and toe lint, and form a line to wash one another’s feet.

When I began serving in a congregation and had the opportunity to craft the service for my people, that sense of communal life was an important sense memory to hold on to. So we gathered around tables in our fellowship hall and worshiped with food on the table, candles lit, everything set as it might be for honored guests. There were dates and figs and olives, bread and apples, glasses of grape juice and almonds. It wasn’t meant to be authentic. Or a seder meal. It was meant to nourish your soul and invite you in to an experience of the table. We worshipped with prayer and singing, celebrated the great thanksgiving, washed one another’s hands, and feasted with laughter and stories and finger food.

There is immense joy and comfort in the Maundy Thursday celebration. As Jesus ate and drank with the disciples, he knew what was coming, but perhaps that only made the stories longer and the fellowship more sweet. It was a time to teach them, to be with them, to love them just as they were…. knowing fully that in mere hours they would fall away one by one. He knew they would fail, and yet he washed their feet. He knelt before them. He showed utter devotion and compassion. He left them with words and memories that may have seemed normal in the space of that moment, but would become so much more in the reality of their betrayal and his death and resurrection.

We cannot be bystanders to that kind of experience. We must dive into it. We must sit at table with friends and family and strangers and break bread. We must feel the cool water rush over our skin and the warmth of another human body as we slowly and deliberately and carefully take the time to wipe and dry away their fingers or toes. If we are going to sing “let us break bread together,” then we must take the bread and feel the crust and one by one tear off a section and give it to our neighbor.

Okay, maybe “must” isn’t the right word. But when we do, when we let ourselves be transported in worship and word and action and song from our day to day hustle and bustle of life to another physical/spiritual/emotion place… then we do encounter the holy.

This year, in a new church, I dug through my files and found the service that had sustained me all those years. With some flexible space at the front of our sanctuary (due to a few rows of pews being replaced by chairs) we made room for tables and gathered in that holy ground for some fellowship.

I watched as one or two couples reluctantly took their places at the round tables. They were longing for the comfort of the pew. The experience of sitting back at watching from a far. The distance. We don’t realize it is there at first, but it is when we are ten rows back with all of those wooden seats between us and the front.

But they sat down. And participated. And the moment took over.

As we pulled ourselves back together as a large group from table conversation and we were about to pray our prayer of thanksgiving following the meal, one of those women raised her hand.

“We should do it like this every time,” she said.

Not every Maundy Thursday… she meant every time we break bread together and celebrate the Lord’s supper.

“We might have to get rid of the rest of the pews,” I gently responded with a smile.

I’m not sure what is next or what the path forward might be, but experiencing one another and God and the divine mystery in that holy space opened up a world of possibilities about what it could mean for us to worship that has little to do with pews or hymn books or standard orders of worship.

I have been blessed to be a part of amazing worshipping experiences that grew organically from a community of faithful people. Some were traditional and some were emergent. But each was an outside of the box opportunity to personally and communally encounter God with sight and sound and smell and touch and taste. Each gave me the space to be fully present in mind, body, and spirit. What better way to worship the one who created us, inside and out?

An Examen for Ministry #NaBloPoMo

Posted on November 3, 2015Leave a comment

Too often, we simply don’t stop to ask questions, to examine our lives.

We do things without thinking about the consequences or implications.

We do it because we always have.

We do it because everyone else is.

We do it because it seems like the best option in the moment.

And we do it in ministry, too.

An unexamined life is not worth living (Plato, quoting Socrates)

Well, maybe, unexamined ministry is not worth doing.

We should always be mindful of the implications of our words and actions.

We should take time to pause, reflect, and see if we really are acting according to our values and goals.

I really started thinking about this after having a dialogue with Rev. Bill Cotton on Monday of this week. We were out at Taproot Garden for “Organic Ministry.” One of the big themes of our classes is that we need to pay attention… to the soil, to the water, to the microorganisms, to the weeds, to everything! It’s all related. And what happens to one has implications to everything else.

One of our guides for “Organic Ministry,” Tim Diebel, shared with us the nautical terming “kedging.” When you run aground with your boat, it is a method for getting back to where you want to be. You throw or take your anchor to where you actually WANT to be, and then you winch yourself there. Taking time to examine your life (ministry) is like asking if we have gone off course and tossing the anchor into deeper waters.

The next morning, I sat down with a congregation member who is concerned about the potential addition of lazer tag to our nearby UMC camp. As she paused to reflect upon values and goals, she is troubled that in a culture of so much violence, so many deaths of children via firearms (7 every day), as we prepare for a day of praying for peace and the end of gun violence as a conference, we want to install a recreational option at camp where we give kids toy weapons to point at each other for fun. And her words hit me like a ton of bricks. We had taken our youth to play lazer tag at a local business and hadn’t even paused to wonder about the underlying messages, the glorification of violence… it was simply for fun. We just didn’t think about it.

So we are now talking about the values of our ministry and whether or not this type of activity is in line with the ends God has in mind for us.

Then, in Covenant Bible Study, we were exploring Paul’s writings to the Corinthians and I kept running into the idea that freedom means everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. The only way we can live into the freedom of Christ is to ask, in every situation, if what I’m doing is beneficial for myself AND for the community/world.

So here are four questions that I want to start incorporating into “an examen for ministry” in my church.

Could this be a bridge?

Is this ministry/event/class for insiders of the church only? What are the possibilities for transforming it into a “bridge event”? There are so many things we do as a church without every imagining they could be bridges for us to go to the community or the community to come to us. For example: we have a Veteran’s lunch coming up: we have always done this special lunch after church for our veterans to thank them for their service. What would happen if we sent invites to local American Legion or VFW groups and invited them to come for a free meal so we could stay thank-you?

Who could this impact?

Who could this ministry/event/class impact? How do we reach them? What would it look like if every ministry in the church asked this question? If they thought outside their current make-up to share what they have experienced with others? We get so comfortable with our groups we often don’t think to expand. Or maybe we do, but we neglect asking how to reach them. We need to be reminded that what we are doing isn’t reaching them… or they would be there. Do we change how we promote something? Do we change the event itself – day, time, format? For example: we have a monthly senior fellowship that hasn’t been able to get newly retired folks to attend. One of the realities is some of these newly retired are the children of active attenders! We are starting to imagine how the event might need to change so all feel welcome.

Does this fall within our vision frame?

We have been using a tool called a vision frame this past year. Does this support/enhance our vision and mission? Is it in line with the core values of our church? Is it part of our strategy? Will it help us to reach the measures we have set? Our mission at Immanuel UMC is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Our vision: In Christ, live lives of love, service, and prayer. Our core values: hospitality, caring community, stewardship, missional outreach, worship/music, and growing in discipleship. Our strategy and measures include the goals we set at charge conference. This one seems fairly obvious… but how often don’t we stop to ask the question. This frame allows us to truly zoom in on our calling from God in this time and place… and it means we won’t do some things so that we can do these things well. This next year, our two main areas of focus will be children and seniors and it means we will shift away resources and attention from other things for this season.

What kind of world does this create?

What kind of world/community does this event/ministry/class create or support? What are the implications for the neighborhood; for the generations that follow; for the world? And this question asks us to think long term about the consequences of any particular ministry. One of the tensions of ministry is that what might be needed in the short term isn’t always what is best for the long term. Asking this question allows us to weigh options as we seek God’s future. It invites us to think about the values of the world we are implicitly supporting by our actions or inactions. As United Methodists, we have social principles and resolutions because we believe that we can and should have an impact on the world. The conversation we have begun about lazer tag as staff is one example of how we are starting to wrestle with this question.

What questions would you add to this examen?

Keep P.U.S.H.ing!

Posted on July 19, 2015Leave a comment

My aunt Barb has been diagnosed and treating uterine and ovarian cancer for about two years now. She has been through a few rounds of surgery, chemo, and radiation. Some of it has been successful! Some of the cancer has returned. It has been an up and down journey, but she has had quite a few healthy months in the midst of it all.

Through everything, family and friends have been a huge support and together they have participated in Relay for Life the past two years.

As Team Triple B, their slogan is “Keep PUSHing”

For them, PUSHing means that you Pray Until Something Happens.

Pray Until Something Happens.

In these past six weeks, we have talked a lot about prayer. We started out by talking about prayer as group activity… something we do together. Pastor Todd talked about prayer as an intimate relationship with our parental God. Trevor invited us to think about prayer as something that is always hard and always necessary – a sweet devotion. Our guest preachers, Pastors Ted and Mara, have led us in a variety of disciplines and continued to stretch our thinking on how we practice prayer.

While I was away on leave, I spent every single morning in prayer. I wish I could say that I always spent every morning in prayer, but as Trevor so eloquently stated in his message, prayer is hard work.

Yet, on my renewal leave, my only real task was to pray. To pray for you. To pray for our ministries. To pray for God to guide me and us. And I read a lot about prayer as well.

One of the things that kept striking me is that we need to pray like we mean it.

We need to pray about those things in this world that we really want to change.

We need to pray until something happens!

In our gospel reading, Jesus was walking into Jerusalem and he passed by a fig tree. Even though it was out of season, he looked for fruit and didn’t find any. So he said, “No one will ever again eat your fruit!” The tree withered, dried up, and died within 24 hours.

Jesus prayed… and something happened!

Now, I’m going to be honest… this is a rather strange story that leaves us with all sorts of questions:

Why would Jesus punish the tree when it couldn’t help that it was the wrong season?

The scripture says he was really hungry… so maybe he was just really grouchy, like I often get when I haven’t eaten in a while…

Because, I mean, what kind of Jesus is this that arbitrarily causes things to die?

United Methodists don’t typically buy into the kind of prosperity gospel that says if you pray for what you want, you will get it.

We are fully aware that all kinds of faithful people pray for things like healing and miracles and help and the answers aren’t always what we want.

Maybe that is why even though it is a story mentioned in both Matthew and Mark, most of the cycles of scripture readings pastors use completely ignore this passage. We’d rather Jesus didn’t have this encounter with the fig tree.

Yet, the core of the message here… aside from the weird stuff with the fig tree… is repeated over and over again by Jesus.

Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7-8 and Luke 11:9)

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains… nothing will be impossible (Mt 17:20)

If we ask for anything in agreement with God’s will, God listens to us… we know that we have received what we asked from God. (1 John 14-15)

If we pray… stuff will happen! Not little stuff… BIG. GIGANTIC. POWERFUL. MOUNTAIN SIZED stuff!

That’s what scripture tells us.

That’s what Jesus keeps reminding us.

Prayer is powerful.

There is a important thing to remember in this power of prayer, however.

This power only works when our prayers are aligned with God’s will.

If I started praying for a bigger house today… I probably wouldn’t get it. Because that is not about God… its about me.

As 1 John puts it: If we ask for anything in agreement with God’s will, God listens to us… we know that we have received what we asked from God. (1 John 14-15)

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for what he wanted… but he ended that prayer: not my will, but yours be done.

What I love about my aunt’s prayer during this time is that while she has all sorts of hopes and wants and desires for her treatment, their goal is for God’s will to be done.

They are going to Pray Until Something Happens.

That might be good news and healing. It might be deeper relationships. It might not be the ending they want, but they are open to discovering God’s blessings and God’s answers along the way.

And through it all… they are going to pray.

I have found that we don’t hesitate to lift up prayers asking for healing. We are even pretty good at lifting up prayers of gratitude.

But there are things in this world that we are called to do and change and work towards… and we forget to pray about it!

We get so caught up in what we are doing that we forget to ask God to be a part of it. We keep thinking it is all about us.

And when we do so, we forget to tap into the mountain-moving power of prayer that is right there at our fingertips.

And that is what we need to do.

Last fall, we sat down and spent some time asking God what we were supposed to do here at Immanuel. And out of those conversations as leadership, we set some goals around places we have passion and we felt God was moving. Now… we need to pray about it.

We need to Pray Until Something Happens.

One of those goals was that we wanted to increase our visibility in the community… We want get to know our neighbors better… And our goal, our hope, is that those new relationships will mean there are 10% more people here in worship at the end of this year.

But you know what… we haven’t really prayed about it. We haven’t asked God to help us with this work. We’ve been trying to do it on our own.

Another goal we set last year was create space for people to serve here at Immanuel. We want to make sure that everyone is connected to some kind of ministry beyond Sunday morning. And one of the pieces of this goal is to encourage new people to embrace God’s gifts in their life and we wanted to find a place for 10 new people to serve on our ministry teams.

But we haven’t been praying about it. We haven’t asked God to help us.

And as the Iowa Annual Conference, we have this amazing new goal. As United Methodists, we want to make a significant impact on poverty in our communities and we think we can do something really big by addressing the opportunity gap in education. And so, we are being asked to get involved with an effort to distribute half a million books and to give a million hours of time over the next year. And it is a big and awesome and mountain sized goal and we are just getting started…

So you know what… we had better start praying for it.

In fact, we need to start praying for all of these things.

We are going to need God on our side if these things are going to happen.

If the world is going to change… if the kingdom is going to come… if God’s will is to be done, we need to ask for God to be involved.

We need to start praying until something happens.

As we leave worship today, you’ll find that there are some tables at the back with three different stations.

Each station relates to one of those goals I lifted up in the message this morning.

And at each station is a prayer card I want to invite you to take with you.

I want us to commit to praying for mountains to move.

I want us to commit to praying every day that God’s will be done in our midst.

You don’t have to pray for every single one of them… but pick at least one.

Commit yourself to prayer by name.

If we have at least 50 people here in the church praying for every one of these goals do you think God will hear us. Do you think God will sense we are not only people who care about these things, but we are ready for change. We believe. We have faith that God can make a difference here.

Ghandi once wrote:

If when we plunge our hand into a bowl of water,

Or stir up the fire with the bellows

Or tabulate interminable columns of figures on our book-keeping table,

Or, burnt by the sun, we are plunged in the mud of the rice-field,

Or standing by the smelter’s furnace

We do not fulfill the same religious life as if in prayer in a monastery,

The world will never be saved.

We may not share the same faith as Ghandi, but we all believe in the power of prayer. And Ghandi’s words remind us that prayer is not just for the super-religious, and prayer is not only for renewal leave… prayer is something we are supposed to be doing every second of every day of our lives.

We should be praying when we work.

We should be praying as we play.

We can be praying as we brush our teeth and drive to work.

We can pray at the dinner table.

We need to be praying everywhere, all the time, about everything.

And what I want you to do is take one of these prayer cards this morning and pray your heart out.

Put it on your bathroom mirror and pray it every morning.

Stick it in your car and pray before you get to work.

Take more than one if you want to, and put them wherever they might be a reminder to you.

Bring your prayers to breakfast and take turns each saying your prayer together.

Pray… even if your faith is as small as a mustard seed.

Pray that mountains might move.

Pray that kids might learn to read.

Pray that we might meet and grow with new people.

Pray that every person might find a place to connect and serve.

Pray.

Pray Until Something Happens.

Who do you say I am?

Posted on June 26, 2015Leave a comment

I started reading Neil Cole’s Organic Church this morning.

I am highlighting like a fool, but one line caused me to stop and pick up my phone to blog:

Before one speaks about starting or growing churches, one simply must wrestle with this question: “Who is Jesus to you?”

Maybe what struck me so much about this is that less than a month ago, I heard that same phrase. A new pastor took up her post in our community and her first sermon answered this question.

She was inspired by a pastor, retiring from his church who ended his ministry with such a sermon. A parishioner came up after and said: “That was wonderful… Why did you wait so long to share with us who Jesus is?”

As a pastor, I talk about Jesus all the time.

I teach about his life and ministry.

I use big theological words like atonement and justification.

I share what Jesus asks us to do and be.

But, have I ever preached on “who Jesus is to me?”

To me, Jesus is God in the flesh. Immanuel, God-with-us.

One reason I was so excited to be serving at Immanuel UMC is because their very name captures who Jesus is to me.

I shared a few days ago about how much I love being an aunt and getting down on my hands and knees to play with the kids and that is what I feel Jesus has done for me. Jesus comes to us, wherever we are and meets us there. The love I have for them… My willingness to do just about anything for my niblings… is but a pale reflection of the lengths Jesus went to show his love for me. He suffered and died to save me from myself.

And that is because the relationship is always the most important thing with Jesus.

More important than rules or right answers, more important than our histories of successes or failures.

I didn’t earn God’s love… It was there.

I can’t do anything to lose it either.

God-in-the-flesh met me where I was… a young woman, full of plans for my life, naïve, hopeful, everything and nothing figured out…

But that’s not where it ends. It isn’t just a nice feeling of warmth and comfort and safety. Love means wanting the best for someone, and God’s love saves us.

From ourselves.
From sin.
From false realities.

Love is full of expectation and dreams.

And somehow God kept nudging me to where I needed to be.

Jesus opened my eyes to see the broken of this world: some by their own making, others by the sin of others or our corporate betrayals. And Jesus asked me to love them… like I had been loved.

So what does it mean to be like Jesus? To follow this Jesus?

Jesus asked me to do whatever I could to challenge the things and people and structures that tear us apart. To be willing to put my life or safety on the line to meet another person where they are.

Jesus asks me to be in relationship with others. Because relationships are the center of our faith.

Jesus is God-with-us… He is relationship.

And as the Body of Christ, we are called to follow together. A community of accountability and hope that holds on to God’s expectations and dreams for our world. People who love and challenge one another and who seek to always build new relationships… Especially with those who have none.

That is who Jesus is to me.

Plural Pronouns and Prayers

Posted on June 14, 2015Leave a comment

Yesterday, our family was boating on the Cedar River and we pulled into this little cove we like to visit. Often, in the summer, it is full of people, but since it was cloudy and cool with sprinkles here and there it was calm and peaceful.

Another boat pulled up with two little girls inside… twins, five years old.

They hopped on the shore to play in the sand, but that water was just too tempting.

First their toes dipped in.

Then the ankles.

And then there were squeals as they ran back to the safety of the sand.

After a few minutes of this back and forth, they held hands and jumped in together.

They reminded me of mornings at my grandparent’s lake house.

We’d start out the day by putting on our swimming suits and after a rushed breakfast we’d run down to the dock and dip our toes in.

But the water was so cold that early in the morning none of us was ever brave enough to do it on our own.

The only way we got wet before noon is if someone pushed us in…

or if we grabbed someone else’s hand and we did it together.

Today, we, too, are diving in.

We are diving into a series on prayer.

For some of us, prayer is as scary and daunting as the ice cold waters of a lake. We like to dip our toes in, but we run back to the safety of the shore as quickly as possible.

Others of us are more familiar with prayer. We make prayer part of our daily lives like swimming laps at the pool.

But here is what I have learned about prayer… just as I have learned about diving into the waters… it is always easier to do with a friend.

And, as Jesus taught us in the most basic prayer, it is something we are supposed to do together.

In fact, when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he taught them a very simple prayer without any singular personal pronouns.

Let’s say that prayer together… Our Father…

Not once we do we say, “I” or “me”… it is always “us” or “we.”

And that tells us a little bit something about our faith and our life of prayer together.

OUR FATHER: It’s not my father… it’s our father… we are brothers and sisters

GIVE US TODAY OUR DAILY BREAD: our faith is based around the table… we pray for daily doses of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness, but we also practically pray for real food and sustenance to be given to our brothers and sisters. And we become Jesus to one another when we provide food and assistance through our food pantry and when we pray for hunger relief.

FORGIVE US OUR SINS: not just personal sins, but corporate sins: economic justice, our greed, ignoring the cries of the needy. In Iowa, there are 117,000 children living in poverty. And it is a sin that we have allowed that to be a reality. God calls us to respond to the needs of others and when we turn our backs, we need to confess that sin and act.

As the United Methodist Church of Iowa, we are committing ourselves to respond to poverty and reach out to help support and educate our young people. Our Bishop has challenged us to donate 500,000 books to children in poverty and to commit to 1,000,000 hours of reading to children who are in the most need in our communities. And we will be talking about ways to engage in this work in the coming weeks and months. Together, we can help change a child’s story. Read More Here

AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO SIN AGAINST US: read the story of Farmer’s Chapel UMC, forgiving their arsonist and inviting them to worship (pages 20-22)

SAVE US… DELIVER US… We are in this together. We pray for one another, we hold each other accountable. We watch each other’s back. Like recovery groups that provide partners and support, a place where you always know there is someone else on this journey with you, we are that for one another.

Matthew 18: When two or three are gathered, I am there…

Turn to your neighbors. As two or three people, I want to invite you right here and right now to pray for one another. You don’t have to have a specific prayer request in mind, but turn to each other in prayer and lift up those who are closest to you right now…

Amen.

True Worship

Posted on May 31, 2015Leave a comment

“We keep a troubled vigil at the bedside of the world,” writes Howard Thurman, “Thus we clutch the moment of intimacy in worship when we become momentarily a part of a larger whole, a fleeting strength, which we pit against all the darkness and the dread of our times.

I want to invite you to think for a moment about some of the darkness and dread that hangs over our world today…

When in worship have YOU felt a part of something bigger? When have you been given the strength to face those struggles in the world?

The idea that worship itself is a moment of intimacy when we become part of a larger whole is a powerful and timeless truth.

In our scripture this morning, we read about Isaiah, and the very reality of reality was presented to him when he met God in his vision of worship.

To set the stage, to understand just how important his experience was, we need to look at the first words of verse 1:

In the year King Uzziah had died…

King Uzziah was ruler over the southern kingdom of Judah and he came to be king at only 16 years of age. According to both 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, he did what was right in the sight of God and had a powerful and successful reign over Judah for fifty-two years.

But then something happened. All of the success that God had brought the nation went to King Uzziah’s head. In the wake of military victories, Uzziah provided top of the line armor and weapons for his soldiers and fortified the city of Jerusalem with towers and archers and traps. But in these things, he was demonstrating trust in the hands of man, rather than in the power of God.

Our God is on that would take a whole army of the ready and send only three hundred into the battle. When you fight on God’s side, you don’t have to fight with anything else!

But King Uzziah forgot this. His pride became such a problem that he entered the holiest place in the temple… that special room at the very center that only the high priest was allowed to enter and he walked in like he owned the place and burned incense to the Lord.

Now, today, we wouldn’t consider that a big deal. But in the days of King Uzziah, there was a strict boundary between the people and God and just as important of a boundary between the authority of the priests and the authority of the King. This was the separation of church and state for its time… and Uzziah crossed the line.

He snuck into the temple and had just lit the flame to burn incense to the Lord, when 80 priests came pouring into the room. The chief among them cried out, “Get out of the sanctuary, for you have trespassed! You shall have no honor from the Lord God.”

Instantly, leprosy came upon Uzziah as a consequence of his prideful action and he was a leper until the day of his death.

It is in the midst of this culture of pride and success that Isaiah receives his vision from God.

Beginning in chapter 1 of the book of Isaiah, we hear…

What should I think about all your sacrifices? says the Lord… ¹²When you come to appear before me, who asked this from you, this trampling of my temple’s courts? ¹³Stop bringing worthless offerings. Your incense repulses me. …¹⁵When you extend your hands, I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even when you pray for a long time, I won’t listen. Your hands are stained with blood. ¹⁶ Wash! Be clean! Remove your ugly deeds from my sight. Put an end to such evil; ¹⁷ learn to do good. Seek justice: help the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.

True worship, worship that is pleasing to God, is a moment of intimacy.

It is a moment where we are connected, as Thurman writes, to a larger whole.

It is a moment not where we show God how great we are, but we offer ourselves, with all of our flaws and weaknesses, and let God’s greatness strengthen us.

After Isaiah has vision after vision of the failings of his nation, of the people and the bloodshed and the oppression his people have created, King Uzziah dies and Isaiah – in the midst of this moment of transition and change – is mystically transported into God’s presence.

In eight verses, we receive the pattern of a life of worship. We find the structure we need in order to let the spirit of God connect us with reality at large.

These four movements help us keep worship from being all about “me.” They pull us and stretch us and teach us what it means to be faithful.

I want to invite you to pull out your bulletin and look with me at the headings for each section. Each one of these represents a movement we discover in this passage from Isaiah this morning.

We begin with Gathering Together… a time of praise .

I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, the edges of his robe filling the temple. ²Winged creatures were stationed around him. Each had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew about. ³They shouted to each other, saying:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heavenly forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!”

Isaiah finds himself in the temple and he is not alone. The seraphim have joined him and they sing praise to the one who has gathered them all together.

Most importantly however, worship begins with the presence of God.

As we gather with one another, we do so in the name of God, in the presence of God, and in our call to worship, we remember that God is here before us. Whether we are worshipping in the sanctuary or outside or in the park or at home, we gather in God’s presence.

But another key aspect of this gathering is that we are praising God. We acknowledge… no, we can’t ignore WHO it is that is before us. The seraphim are moved to sing in this awesome presence. We, too, begin our time of worship with a song of praise.

Each week, as the hymns and songs are chosen that will begin our time of worship, the first one we sing always points to the God who has called us here.

As we think about what this gathering time means, we can see clearly just how far King Uzziah crossed the line. He entered the temple for his own selfish reasons, rather than to praise and honor God.

As we return to our bulletin, the next heading is a time of confession…

The doorframe shook at the sound of their shouting, and the house was filled with smoke.

⁵I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!”

How many of you have had worship moments where you felt God’s glory filling the room?

Maybe it was during a hymn being sung or a scripture passage or some moment of prayer… whatever it was, in the presence of God’s glory we can feel so uplifted and close to the Lord.

But the flip side of being in God’s presence is realizing just how NOT like God we are.

When Isaiah stood there in the temple with the hem of God’s robe surrounding him and the seraphim singing and the sound of it all so overwhelming that the door frame shook… he felt pretty small.

Instead of trying to prove ourselves to God, like King Uzziah, instead of trying to stand on our own righteousness, true worship is a time to confess who we really are – both individually and as a community.

Confession is a time to lay bare the truth about ourselves. It is a time when we don’t have to pretend. It is a time when we are forced to see difficult truths about ourselves we might not otherwise admit.

We are human. We are weak. We are selfish. We need the Lord.

And in worship, we experience the Lord our God.

Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. ⁷He touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”

⁸Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?”

After we stand before God, vulnerable, open, knowing fully who we are and how not like the Lord we are, we hear God’s word proclaimed.

You are forgiven.

I love you.

I have a job for you!

Now… these might seem like simple words – and they are! – but they are also words we proclaim in our time of worship in a hundred different ways.

Through song and scripture, through the cross above us, through our actions and bodily motions, through painting and dance, through sermons and images, through the smell and taste of Holy Communion, through the touch of a neighbors hand or the smile on a strangers faice, through a burning coal that touches our lip and makes us clean… This is the gospel that is proclaimed over and over and over again:

You are forgiven. I love you. And I have a job for you!

You see, in the very same moment God is helping us get over the past and our failings and weakness, God is getting us ready for the future God has planned.

In the words of Anne Lamott – God loves you right where you are and loves you too much to let you stay that way.

And when we come face to face with God in Christ, we hear that message, too. When we are touched by Christ in the breaking open of the word, we are forever changed.

Worship, therefore, is a time when we let God set the agenda, rather than barging in to tell God what we think, as King Uzziah did.

Finally, we respond in faith.

I said, “I’m here;

send me.”

God said, “Go…”

When we open ourselves up and let God in, when our lives start to change – then we can’t help but respond to God’s call.

In our response to God’s word, we begin to realize that it is not about us. Isaiah’s plans don’t matter anymore.

His problems and failings don’t matter any more

The money he was saving to buy a new donkey doesn’t matter anymore.

When God asks, Isaiah responds – Yes.

In worship, we respond to God’s invitation with prayers. We lift up our own lives and those of others that God has called us to care for.

In worship, we respond by offering our whole selves in love and service and by giving back even a piece of what we have been giving.

In worship, we hear hymns that call us back into the world that is full of darkness and dread with a renewed strength and a word of hope.

In worship, we are sent out into the world, not alone, but with the Holy Spirit as our guide.

Corporate Prayer for the Desperate

Posted on April 9, 2015Leave a comment

Holy and Forsaken God,
We come into your presence knowing that you felt utter desperation and loneliness.
You felt isolated and forgotten.
You felt unimaginable pain.
So you are not unfamiliar with our struggles.
And that brings us comfort.
That brings us hope.

For those in our congregation who have been wrestling in the long dark night and are contemplating suicide, we pray.

For those in this place who are survivors: who have lost a friend or family member who suicided, we pray.

For those here today who have made it through the dark night and are a witness of hope for others, we pray.

For those who are watching a friend struggle and want to reach out and listen and provide support, we pray.

For those who cannot understand why another would take their life, who are filled with questions and anger, we pray.

Holy, Forsaken God, we lift these up to you. Connect us. Help us to listen. Give us courage to speak our truths. And fill us with a hope that will sustain us in the midst of utter desperation. Amen.