David – Salvaged Faith

Laboring for God

Posted on September 6, 2020Leave a comment

Well, friends, we made it.

We made it to the final stop on our Summer Road Trip through the national parks and monuments.

And today, we actually aren’t too far from home in St. Louis, Missouri at the Gateway Arch National Park.

A large ship in the water

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Today on Labor Day Sunday, I chose this location because Gateway Arch National Park is the ONLY national park in the middle of a city and the ONLY national park centered on a human-made structure instead of a natural feature of the landscape. Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty and even Effigy Mounds are labeled as monuments, rather than having the designations of national parks.

On this weekend in which we celebrate the labor of so many, it seemed appropriate to visit a national park that required the skills and talents and hard work of engineers and welders and workers.

This site, this project, this feat of imagination and engineering, is an ode to western settlement and expansion and the key role that St. Louis played as the launching off point for so many. It is a symbol of opportunity and the path to wide open spaces.

Our scripture for this morning speaks of another feat of human construction… the temple.

Last week, we touched on how King David rescued the ark of the covenant and returned it to Jerusalem and he was determined to build the house of God.

As he cries out in 2 Samuel 7: “Look, I am living in a palace made of cedar wood, but the Ark of God is in a tent!”

Unfortunately, God really didn’t care about living in a tent.

God moved among the people, tabernacled in their midst.

It was not God’s desire that we build a grand, permanent structure for the presence of the Lord to dwell.

It was ours.

And God saw that yearning, that impulse to settle down and give glory and praise to God through a magnificent structure.

God saw David’s desire to have a centralized place of worship and devotion.

And God relented.

So like Eero Saarinen pulled together teams of welders and craftsmen and laborers to construct the Gateway Arch, David began to stockpile supplies and stonecutters and carpenters and weavers and craftsmen. He carefully discerned by the Spirit all of the plans for the temple and the treasuries and the dedicated things and the people who would fill every task.

There was only one problem.

God didn’t want David to build the temple.

There was too much blood on his hands.

Too much violence and too many missteps.

David was still beloved in God’s eyes, but the temple was not his to build.

His son, Solomon, a man of peace and rest and prosperity… in Solomon’s time the temple would be built.

I’ve been to the Gateway Arch multiple times. I’ve seen it towering over the city as you drive in. I’ve stood beneath it’s glimmering structure and laid on the grass to try to capture the whole thing. I’ve take the ride up to the top in the carnival-like tram.

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But before this summer and this series did I realize that this National Park also contains the old St. Louis Courthouse. This is the historic location where the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford was heard twice. Dred and Harriet Scott were both born into slavery, later married, and eventually found themselves the property of John and Irene Emerson who moved them to Wisconsin and Iowa before returning to St. Louis.

Because they had been taken to free territory, they legally had a case for their own emancipation. Yet the Missouri Supreme Court and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them.

In Scott v. Sanford, the highest court of our land declared that all people of African descent, free or enslaved, were NOT U.S. citizens. According to the majority opinion, our Constitution demonstrated a “perpetual and impassible barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery.”

The decision also nullified the Missouri Compromise, a congressional act which declared free all territories west and north of Missouri, because it violated the 5^th Amendment – denying slaveowners their property.

In this National Park we have an incredible juxtaposition.

Where 100 years earlier, freedom was denied for our African American siblings, people came together and selected a design for a new monument… a gateway, celebrating the spirit of western pioneers and the opportunity and freedom and persistence of creating a new future.

Though the past of this location, like King David’s own troubled past, was filled with missteps and harmful decisions that impacted the lives of people who were enslaved for decades to come… there was later a time of peace and rest, just like in the time of Solomon.

A time in which people could build different sort of reality for their community – one of revitalization and celebration of the spirit which leads us onward.

Skilled builders and artisans and welders and more all came together to create something that would outlast them all.

Something that would stand as a testament to who they were and where they had been and where they were headed.

On this Labor Day, the question that is at the back of my mind is: how are we using the gifts and the skills that we have been given today?

Is this a moment in which our gifts are being used to harm or divide or separate?

Will we look back upon this time and see the missteps and the failures?

Did we spend our time and talents sowing conflict?

Or is this a time we are invited to use everything we have been given in labor for the Lord?

Are we using God’s gifts to create hope and life and possibility?

Is the Spirit preparing us, equipping us, to build something new?

I’m not talking about a monument. Or a temple. Or even a church building.

This is a beautiful building.

Skilled artisans have crafted our gorgeous stained glass.

Teams of carpenters from the church built this chancel area.

Craftsmen created and installed these pews and chairs just last year.

Over the course of the next week or two, some incredibly talented folks will come in and dismantle our organ, and send it off so that technicians can refurbish and refinish all sorts of little pieces and parts.

This is a building that much of your… our… blood, sweat, and tears has gone into.

But that isn’t the kind of building and craftsmanship I’m talking about.

You see, the future that God wants us to build, the church Jesus has in mind, has nothing to do with 2x4s or levels or hammers… or even pews or organs.

But it has everything to do with the people God has called together to build it.

If we go back to our scriptures and look at the word used for church in the original Greek – ecclesia – it literally means the “called out ones.”

Every one of us has been called out, called together, called into this place to BE the church Christ is building.

We are the 2x4s.

We are the nails.

We are the foundation.

We are the supporting structure and insulation and windows and doors.

We are the organ and we are the pews.

We are the church!

Jesus began the work and drew up the blueprints and started laying the foundation for the Kingdom of God with Simon Peter.

He gives him the nickname Peter, or petra in Greek, which literally means rock.

“On this rock, I will build my church.”

It’s as if he is telling his friend, YOU are going to be the foundation of this ecclesia, this called out community.

YOUR ministry, Jesus proclaims, will lay the groundwork for the Kingdom.

And then I remember that Simon Peter made countless mistakes in the gospels. He took missteps. He denied Jesus three times and seemed to fail in every way possible.

Kind of sounds like our carpenter was using shoddy materials and faulty labor, doesn’t it?

And yet, like King David, Simon Peter came to know God’s love and grace and forgiveness extend beyond our failures.

Peter Gomes, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, once said “the church will never be any better than we are.”

Let me say it again, because I think it’s important.

The church will never be any better than we are.

If we can’t offer up our failures to God, and let God transform them, then they will always be a part of us.

If we can’t offer our mistakes up to God and let God forgive them, those mistakes will always be carried through.

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If we can’t admit that we have had blood on our hands, like King David did, and create space for those who come behind us to lead in a different way, then that history will be embedded into the future we create.

In the only National Park that is contained within a city there is a gleaming arch that is a testament to human creativity and ingenuity and the persistence that drove us westward.

But there also sits a courthouse, that reminds us of the darker side of our past.

That history pushes us onward and we are invited to walk through it, transform it, redeem it, by how we build our future.

In the same way, the church will never be any better than we are and it is our responsibility to clearly examine who we are and who we have been so that we can embrace who God wants us to become.

The future of the church God wants us to build.

You see, Christ is the one with the blueprints… and he has the ability to take all of our mistakes and shortcomings and put us together with one another and strengthen us by the Holy Spirit.

It’s God’s design… not our own.

Our job is simply to do our part.

To listen.

To confess.

To repent.

To embrace our gifts.

To labor for God’s glory.

Every day.

In every way.

God is using us to build the kingdom. Amen.

An Interview on Improvising Ministry

Posted on August 30, 2020Leave a comment

Transcript from last Sunday’s Conversation in Worship

Text: 1 Chronicles 15:25-16:3

Katie: Well good morning to all of you! I have some special guests with me here today. They are familiar faces because they have been with you these past two weeks while I have been on vacation. Pastor Paul and Pastor Beth, both from Women at the Well.

Today we are making this trip to New Orleans for the Jazz National Monument and one of the things I kept thinking about was this idea of improvisation and how when things get difficult or get tricky sometimes we have to find a new way of doing things, a new way to make music, to change the pace and try something different. So I actually thought this was a great opportunity, talking with these two, about some of the things that have been different with Women at the Well.

So we are going to have a little conversation for our message today. I want to start by talking about this passage. David has gone off to rescue the Ark of the Covenant because it has been stolen away during the time of Saul and he is king now and he thinks his job as the king is to go and take it back and bring it to where it belongs. So he charges after it with his army. But this isn’t like a couch you can pick up and throw in the back of the truck! He charges in and they aren’t prepared, they aren’t quite sure what they are doing. This is a holy object and God’s presence is there. There is a man along the way, the ark starts to fall off of the wagon cart and this man named Uzzah, reaches out and touches it to pick it back up and God kills him right then and there. It is dangerous to touch!

So, David stops the caravan right there. He stops the caravan and for three months nobody moves. They leave it there, they go home, and they say – okay – we have got to try something different.

I’ve been thinking about how as pastors and leaders of communities we kind of pushed pause on everything because things were dangerous and things were unsafe. There are times when we hit those roadblocks in ministry and the things that we have been doing no longer work. And I know that has kind of been the case for Women at the Well. So I wonder if you can talk about how you have experienced that in your own ministry. The roadblocks and the times you have had to take a momentary pause because the things that you were doing couldn’t happen anymore. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?

Paul: Sure. Well, I love the pause button. I actually like all of the buttons on the remote control. No big surprise there. And I use those inside the prison when we do a re-entry workshop. And the pause button in particular is a good tool. I try to remind the women of that. But really it’s for all of us, and I think the pandemic has been an enormous global pause button. And I think all of us have experienced that and we are like enough of the pause already

Katie: Yeah, we are so done with the pause.

Paul: Resume. Fast forward. Something. Skip. I think it is a very helpful tool for people in recovery, women going through re-entry and thinking about coming back home to pause and not do the first thing that comes to their mind. First thought, bad thought, is something that gets a lot of people in trouble.

And I think in ministry that is probably true, too. Sometimes we think, Oh, well the Holy Spirit told me to do it. Well, did you pause and are you sure it is the Holy Spirit. That’s not a bad question. Maybe it is the Holy Spirit. And David may have had a moment too where, you know, the Holy Spirit told us to get going and then – pause – maybe that wasn’t the Holy Spirit. Maybe that was our national pride or some other thing, some other agenda at work there.

And then, Pastor Beth comes on board here while we are in this pause. I don’t know what that has meant for you, to think about the pause, and even since. The ministry still continues even though we can’t be in the prison. We haven’t since March. But there are still opportunities to pause…

Beth: So when I came to Women at the Well it was just a unique experience for me because it was a different kind of ministry and I have not been able to see the people that I’m serving. But I think through the course of these last several months when I was receiving training for this ministry, it has occurred to me that this isn’t my ministry anyway, it is God’s ministry. Through these women.

I’m reminded of that scripture where Jesus is at Jacob’s well and this woman who is serving… she is having to undergo a new way of looking at the world and after she understands what Jesus has explained to her, she goes and tells the people in the village what they need to know. In the course of these events, you know, I was reminded reading those scriptures again that we are called to go out and share the good news. And that these women [in the prison] are not able to do that right now, but we can do it for them.

And so as we have gone through some strategic planning, we have had a transition team and as we have been going forward we have realized that we maybe need to expand the ministry for the women at the well.

Katie: Yeah, you know I think that is really helpful. Both of you have hit on the idea of the pause being a time of listening. And I think that is what happens with David. He takes these three months. The Ark is kind of parked in this guys barn, basically, and he spends some time with God and improvises a new game plan but really a lot of that time is spent listening to God and what God wants him to do. And not just charging in with what his plan had been.

So what has that been like for Women at the Well to spend some time in intentional listening? What are some things that you are hearing about how ministry is going to be different in your contexts?

Paul: Well, I’ll let Beth talk a little bit about our strategic plan, our ministry action plan, we’ve been through a lot of transitions, really since prior to when Beth came on board. We had a transition team that helped us to improvise a new plan and transition leadership. And then through conference leadership we had a second process and we improvised it a bit more, we finessed it a bit more, we rewrote and edited it.

But the one constant through that has been: a significant part of our plan involves spiritual practices. Which I think is a reminder that we know the importance of stopping, listening, reading scripture, having a daily practice, engaging and helping others to engage as well. So we have breath prayer and centering prayer and lectio divina. And just anything… The review: You know when I talked about the buttons on the remote control. There is a rewind! There is actually a spiritual practice, right, the daily examen, or looking back over your day. I think that is a wonderful way of sort of thinking about that. And so we have all of these and they are a wonderful part of our ministry action plan. For us as leadership, for the women, for the council, whenever we gather, whenever we have a meeting, lets make time to listen and make sure we are connected to the divine source, is how I would say it.

Beth: Yeah, I think just to dovetail on that. There are so many ways that we can practice our, I’m going to call it, emotional agility. Where we are improvising during our lives. We aren’t getting stuck in any one place, but we are able to move forward in new kinds of ways. You know, I think in the process of this creative time, listening to all of the different kinds of ways we can worship. So here is David. And he is practicing worship in a new way. And maybe it is an OLD way, where he was dancing around, well, he’s got an ephod on.. [ laughs ] … and so I can see that…

Katie: Which is kind of like undergarments

Beth: Yeah!

Katie: It’s not much!

Beth: Right! So for people to realize that there are other ways that we can move forward in our worship of God and in our celebration of that. It just draws us closer together and helps us to integrate our emotions and helps us to realize we are all going through this same thing and there are lots of different ways we can go about it.

Paul: It is important to say this, too, when I think about improvisation. I’m thinking about we are a church, inside a prison. So we are a church and all that goes along with that in terms of being spirit led and organized. We are a Methodist church, with all of the structure that we have to adhere to there. And then we have to operate within the framework of a prison system, the Department of Corrections.

And I was thinking about improvisation. You know I was trained as a classical pianist. I spent many years studying classical piano where you play every note that is written, as it is written. You can add your personality to it with sound and technique, but you don’t play what is not written!

Katie: Right!

Paul: And over the years, I’ve played with it, I’ve gotten a little better with improvisation. But the idea with jazz, in the New Orleans jazz scene, there is a structure within which you work. But then you have all of this freedom to rip and riff and jam… whatever word.. you can do a solo that stays within the key and the structure and the rhythm, but you have a lot of freedom.

I think our struggle continues to be where is the freedom? Are we just classical musicians here? Sometimes it feels like the Department of Corrections says, you can only play these notes…

Katie: This is the box…

Paul: Right this is the box, and you have to do this rhythm. I think one of the cool things about jazz is that there is sometimes one rhythm over here and there is another rhythm over there, right? It plays against itself. That’s what we have to figure out. Where is there freedom?

So one of the women in the prison sat down next to a visitor and the visitor asked her what she liked about this place. And she said, “Oh, I love the freedom.” This is a woman serving a life sentence and she loves the freedom.

Katie: Because she knows where her bounds are and so within that she has a lot of freedom. That’s very true!

I know we have had a long partnership with Women at the Well here at Immanuel and there have been a lot of things that we have been involved in – from re-entry teams to joining you at the prison for worship and I know some of those things are outside the box of what is allowed right now.

There is a little bit of grief with that, I know, as we have all experienced that. And I can kind of think about David experiencing some grief as well. He had some ways he thought he would be doing this. He went out the first time with his military garb on, ready to charge. And the second time he goes out, he goes basically in his undergarments, this linen cloth, and he is dancing and he is singing and he casts aside what he thought he was supposed to doing and listened to God. He just gets kind of carried away by the rhythm and the music. He starts leaping, there is dancing, there is all of this joy.

In fact, it is so great that his wife who is watching this procession come into town from home… she looks out and sees him and she is really embarrassed for him and of him. It is not becoming of a king, and you find that line in the scripture. You know we all have roles that we thought we might be playing and then we discover that it is not exactly like that. How has your improvisation with Women at the Well been like that? Where are some new things you are doing and where you finding the joy and the excitement and where are you kind of just being carried away?

Beth: Well, I think there have been lots of different directions that we have looked. I think that is one of the things when you are going through a time of change like this and you know the wind is blowing… new things! Sometimes it is nice to go down this road for a while, and then you go down that road for a while, and you somewhere you begin to see where it is a little brighter. There is a path that seems to be a little easier. And sometimes to be able to move forward down those roads, to help see that God is the one leading. You aren’t the one leading.

And so what we have discovered is that it is possible for us to maybe take some classes, educate our selves a bit more. Just like with Black Lives Matter. We, white folks, need more education. We have to realize that there is more to learn. So one of the subjects I have found myself rediscovering and checking in on is social justice, restorative justice, in particular. Paul and I have been going to visit with lots of people, in lots of different Zoom sites, to learn more about this subject. We’ve met this woman by the name of Norah Jacob, and she has helped us to discover some new curriculums that maybe we can share. In fact, I think we are ready to do that. And she has helped us to recognize there are a lot of connections between restorative justice and what’s going on with the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s not just a matter, it’s a movement, as was explained to us by Jackie Thompson. There are so many other things, relationships between trauma… Many of the people who are in prison have been traumatized. Most of them, by a long shot, have had to go through trauma. And so, recognizing that that is another area we need to discover about. And to see the connections between all of these. Between the war on drugs, between addition.

As we make these connections in our lives and realize that we need to discover more for ourselves, take a step back, sit for three months, like David did, and discover that we don’t have the answers. So instead of reacting, to sit back and learn more, to discover what God is trying to teach us and then we can be proactive in moving forward.

Katie: Paul, do you want to add to that?

Paul: I find joy… you know we’ve had to reinvent how we worship, since we can’t go into the prison. We’ve been doing it on facebook live. Come see us – Thursday Nights at 7 on the Women at the Well facebook page. And through that, unexpectedly, we are connecting with former offenders who are in Florida, and all over Iowa, and before we could not intentionally reach out and connect with these women. And we can now, just because they know about our facebook page, now they know we are doing worship. So we are still ministering to former offenders, returning citizens, and their families.

You know there is one guy, he is the husband of a person who is serving a long sentence, and he likes our Facebook page every week and I think he visits our worship. It is really nice to know that we are offering worship, hope, prayer, music, and inspiration to a whole community. That otherwise, like this husband, you know there is no way he could ever come in and worship with us on a Thursday night, and now here he is. Unfortunately, she is not worshipping with us, but we are working on that! That is another roadblock we hope to overcome. But maybe we can record these and get them inside the prison. Especially if this is going to continue, as it looks like it will, for however long. So some new connections, that wouldn’t otherwise have happened, is something that I celebrate.

Katie: Absolutely!

Well, I’m so glad that you guys were able to come and take this time to be with us, so we can hear this update on what is happening with Women at the Well and what ministry looks like. And I am also so grateful that you have been with us these last two weeks to lead worship while I have been gone. And I want you to know that our whole congregation is praying for both of you and for your ministry.

If you didn’t know, the offices for Women at the Well are now in our building, right below us, on our lower level, because of some of the reasons that you can’t be in the prison in the same way as before. We are so glad to be able to support your ministry in multiple ways and prayer is one of them.

Paul: And we thank you for your partnership and your support and hospitality

Beth: Hospitality indeed! Several months ago, when I moved in here, there was an internet issue. Can I share that this lady – she was crawling up into the ceiling, helping us to thread the wires to make it all work, and so thank you for your hospitality and your welcome.

Katie: Yes and I know some of our trustees folks have been working hard on that, too, so thanks to Wendell and others who have been so instrumental. As we close up this time of learning, let us now turn our hearts towards prayer.

Sing! Play! Summer! – Lord of the Dance

Posted on August 26, 2019Leave a comment

Text: 2 Samuel 6:14-22

There was a stately, beautiful church on the corner of Main and Broad streets. The members were known for their love and care for one another.
On Easter Sunday, the pews were full of folks in their Sunday best, smiling graciously to one another and all of the guests who were among them. Everything was perfect.
Worship had begun, when all of a sudden a scruffy man in a faded shirt walked in. His jeans had holes in them and his sneakers were tattered. He looked around for a seat, but they were all taken.
Every eye followed him as he walked all the way to the front of the church, still looking for a place to sit.
Reaching the first pew and not finding a spot… or anyone who would make room, he sat down cross legged in the aisle.

Everybody was wondering who this was, but even more than that, they were wondering who was going to do something about it.
The organist began to play the opening hymn, but nobody was really listening.
Then, Mr. Sims, a stately older gentleman who had served as an usher for more than half a century, made his way from the back of the church down the aisle.
Somebody had to do something, after all.
Everyone watched as the old man bent down and said: “I just want to say how good it is to have you here.”
And Mr. Sims slowly lowered himself with great difficulty and sat down by the young visitor. He handed him a bulletin, and offered to share his hymnal.
They sat and worshiped together.

What does it really mean to fully worship God?
What does it mean to join in the dance of faith?
It is not about comfort or safety or the clothes you are wearing.
Worship is a risk.
It is a personal and corporate encounter with the divine and we are not in charge.
When we really place our lives before this God, we will not be the same.

Think of those two men in the story. Both took a risk in the presence of God.
The young man was a stranger, coming in off the street, and while everyone was dressed in their Sunday finest, he didn’t care what others thought.
He didn’t care if everyone else was watching.
He was coming to the Lord – and nothing was going to stop him.
The older gentleman had just as much, if not more to lose.
He was established and respected.
Everyone in that church expected him to ask the young man to move.
But Mr. Sims broke with convention and let the Spirit guide him to the front of the church to sit down with that young man.

In 1987, Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh’s song, “Come from the Heart,” included the lines –

“You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work.”

The young man and Mr. Sims joined in the dance of faith and didn’t care if anyone was watching. They just put their heart into it.
And in our reading from 2 Samuel, David embraces that same heartfelt abandon leading the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem.
Let’s explore for moment the risk of this moment of worship and the courage it took for David to truly dance.
For years, the ark has been in the hands of the Philistines.
David wants to show that his rule is connected to the lordship, power, and presence of God so he has decided to go and recapture the ark and bring it to Jerusalem.
He gathers thirty thousand of his best men and they go and capture the ark from their enemies.
You might expect a solemn and formal military processional bringing this prized possession back to the Israelites. But King David led a celebration march and they praised God with all of their might with songs and instruments and drums.
In fact, the people were so caught up in their celebration an accident occurred.
Passing over rough terrain, one of the oxen stumbled and the ark nearly fell to the ground.
But a man named Uzzah instinctively reached out to grab onto the ark and lift it to safety.
Whew, we might think to ourselves… disaster averted.

But just the encounter Isaiah had in the temple which we discussed a few weeks ago, this moment reminds us of the holy, other, awesome power of God.
This ark was not a box holding some important documents – it was a sacred object that could bring both blessing and harm.
It was to be touched and handled only by those who had properly prepared, only by the Levites.
The young man was immediately struck dead.

In the middle of the road, in the middle of their journey, all of the celebrations stop.
David is so troubled by these occurrences, so angry at God for what has happened, he refuses to carry the ark the rest of the way to Jerusalem.
He is afraid of what will happen when God’s presence comes into his royal city.
You see, David isn’t perfect. He knows about the sin of his own life and fears for how God’s holy presence might alter the course of his reign.
So instead, he puts the ark in the safekeeping of a family in a village nearby.

David’s heartfelt abandon is closed off because of the fear of being burned, of being rejected, or being found unworthy.

Can you imagine how the story of our faith might have gone had Jesus been afraid to dance?
Sydney Carter’s famous hymn tells the story of Jesus Christ, without ever using his name.
The dance of creation and his birth in Bethlehem…
The call for Pharisees and fishermen to follow… and the refusal of many to join.
The holy people shame him for his acts of love and power.
He is arrested, abused, and killed…
And yet, not once did the dance stop.
And never has the Lord of the Dance stopped inviting us to join in.

There are a lot of people in this world… probably even here in this room… whose hearts are closed off.
People afraid to let God in.
People afraid to make a fool of themselves for God because of what others might think.
People ashamed of their past and whether they will be welcomed.
People who aren’t quite sure they can celebrate with all of their might before God.
Kate Huey writes,

“Jubilation is a word we rarely use, perhaps because such a feeling has been limited for many, for the most part, to sports and, perhaps, the occasional political victory. But what if we felt deep-down-in-our-hearts jubilation over what God is doing in our lives? Would we dance, too?”
Henry Brinton has compared worship… to a modern dance solo by Paul Taylor, the dancer/choreographer who “simply stood motionless on stage for four minutes….The dancing we do in church tends to be quite similar to Paul Taylor’s solo. What we do is nothing – we just stand still, hardly moving a muscle. Our worship of God involves our minds… our tongues, but rarely our whole bodies.”

What would it take to get our bodies more involved in worship?
What would give us the courage to let go and let the dance carry us along?
Maybe, we need to give up control.
Maybe we need to let the rhythm of the song shape and move us.
Maybe we need to let Christ lead.

In the book, The Soul of Tomorrow’s Church, Kent Ira Groff advocates for including rhythm instruments in every worship service. He notes composer Brian Wren’s understanding that “rhythm tries to move you bodily.”
No wonder that from forever and everywhere the drum has been an instrument of healing, reminiscent of the heartbeat of God – use in primal caves, rock bands, sophisticated symphonies. The pipe organ is a wonderful instrument… but in combining many instruments in one, it decreased the participation of the many…
Let me say that again… when we combined many instruments into one, we decreased the participation of the many.
You see, when we clap our hands, or tap our toes, or play along on other instruments, or use our own instrument, our voice, we are joining in the dance.
We are taking a risk.
We are offering ourselves.
We are participating is something bigger than ourselves.
We join the rest of creation and cry out with our whole being – the Lord is Good.

You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work.

Just like we might be afraid to step beyond our comfort zones and truly praise God with our whole bodies…
just like we might be afraid to truly welcome into our midst those who don’t look anything like us…
just like we might be afraid of what will happen if we open ourselves up to God’s presence…
King David was afraid of what it meant to invite God into his city. He was afraid of what might happen to himself and his reign.
In many ways, he had a healthy understanding of the holy power and otherness of the Lord… but he let his fear overwhelm his ability to truly trust God.

But then he decided to try again. He worked up the courage to let God lead.
They took the ark out of the house and had moved just six steps down the road when David was so overwhelmed with joy and thanksgiving… with jubilation!… that he sacrificed a bull and a calf in praise to God.
And he took off his royal garments and there in front of all the people he danced before God with all of his might.
He shed his fear, he shed all of the expectations people had of him, he shed his denial of God’s holiness, and he worshiped and praised with heartfelt abandon.

As the dancing proceeded back to Jerusalem and as they got close to the city gates, David’s wife Michal saw him out there.
She saw him without his royal robes, dancing among the commoners.
She saw him making a fool of himself, rather than maintaining his composure.
And then, she confronted him about it.
But David replied, “I was celebrating before the Lord, who chose me… and I will celebrate before the Lord again! I may humiliate myself even more, and I may be humbled in my own eyes.”
He spoke with that same spirit Paul did when he said that we should be fools for Christ – laying it all out on the line to praise and honor the God who gives us life.
Michal, the scribes, the Pharisees, those people in the pews on Easter morning… they could get so caught up in tradition, on what was supposed to happen, in what was appropriate or required…
But as Jesus reminds us over and over again in the gospels, outward trappings are not important.
They don’t make us righteous or unrighteous, worthy or unworthy.
It is our hearts that matter.
What we give to God that matters.
Whether we leave behind ourselves and join in the dance.
So friends, wherever you are, whoever you are, let’s dance.
Amen.

A Way Forward? Fixed And Free

Posted on August 12, 20182 Comments

The United Methodist Church is at a crossroads.

On the one hand, we do incredible work together because of our connection across the globe. Missionaries go from everywhere to everywhere. We are present amid disaster and crisis providing relief. New faith communities have been formed in West Des Moines, Camaroon, and Russia. And these things happen because we pool our resources to do the most good.

On the other hand, we are a diverse, expansive, global denomination working in many different contexts from many different backgrounds. Within that diversity is blessing and also conflict – including conflict about the role of LGBTQ+ persons in the life of the church – particularly whether they can be married in the church or ordained/consecrated by the church.

Next week, we’ll turn our attention to scripture and dive deeper into how they relate to what it means to be Lesbian, Gay, or Queer today.

But for today, we wanted to start with the big picture of how we got to this place as a denomination. Behind any particular verse is the tension between flexibility and permanence.

What is written in stone?

What is subject to change in time and context?

How do we know the difference?

In February, our denomination will hold a special session of General Conference and how we answer these questions will determine our identity for the future.

How did we get here?

As people of faith, we are heirs of both the tabernacle and the temple.

That is the premise that the pastors of Lovers Lane United Methodist Church shared with their congregation when they addressed our current dilemma at the beginning of this year. (https://soundcloud.com/llumc/sets/fixed-and-free)

As we heard in our scriptures for the day (Exodus 25:1-9 and 1 Kings 6:11-13), as the context and the people of the Bible changed, God had different ways that the people could come to know and worship God.

In the midst of the wilderness, the people had no home. They were always on the move, never setting down roots, everything was always changing and uncertain.

And so God sends them instructions to build a tent – a tabernacle – a movable place of worship that would go with them wherever they were.

Every person within the community was called upon to contribute something – richly colored yarns, gold, silver, wood, leather, precious stones – all of them used to create a moveable place for God to dwell among them on the journey. Wherever they traveled – God was with them. (Exodus 25:1-9)

Generations later, the people stopped moving. They had established themselves in the land and they wanted permanence. They wanted a king like the nations around them. And they wanted to build God a temple.

King David himself looked around at the palace he was living in while the Ark of the Covenant was still residing within the tabernacle. But it wasn’t until his son, Solomon, was established on the throne, that the temple in Jerusalem was constructed.

This temple, this permanent dwelling place for God, was important for the people in the time of the Kingdoms. No longer did the people all travel together with God in their midst. Now they were settled in far off places. The temple represented something stable and unchanging, the home base to which they could return. God now dwelt somewhere a part from the vast majority of the people – but if you followed the rules and went to the temple, you could be with God. (1 Kings 6:11-13)

That tension between what is fixed and free, an institution and a movement, is at the core of our struggle and our identity.

Are we focused on the God of the tabernacle – who hears the cries of the oppressed and marginalized and who makes a home among the people wherever they might be?

Or are we focused on the God of the temple – who has made a covenant and established laws and who calls us to repent and return home so we might experience life abundant?

It is both… a tension we must hold… but sometimes it becomes a tug of war that threatens to tear apart the church.

Even when we focus on the Word – both the one who walked among us and the living word we discover in this text – we see this tension.

As the gospel of John reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word… the Word became flesh and made his home among us.” (John 1: 1, 14) The roots of this passage are that the Word tabernacled among us.

But Jesus also said that upon the rock of Peter, he would build his church. Solid, foundational, able to withstand time and changing winds. (Matthew 16:18)

Too often, what we find reflected within the words of scripture are our own predispositions towards temple or tabernacle.

And, we must be aware that there is also a shadow side to either of these inclinations. If we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the tabernacle, we might be tempted to believe that wherever we are, whatever we believe, must be okay because God is right there with us. On the other hand, if we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the temple, we might be tempted to believe that faith means being rigid, legalistic, unmoveable. The tabernacle needs to be balanced with accountability. The temple needs to be balanced with grace.

There is an awful lot of history between the time of Christ and our denominational roots in the 18^th century. The church spread and conquered and fractured and reformed. The bible itself was put in the hands of everyday people. The Holy Spirit moved, and institutions grew.

One of our beginning points lies with John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England. The institutional church around him was very removed from the people of the day. And so, he felt a call to leave the cathedral and John Wesley went out into the fields, where the people were.

He preached in homes, and from the top of tombstones in the graveyard, and his brother, Charles, took old drinking songs and turned them into hymns. They gathered people into small groups for accountability and care and formation, but always encouraged them to remain connected to the established church.

Now, something that is important here is that Wesley never wanted to start a new church – he simply wanted to reform his church and help the people reconnect and experience the power of God in their lives. From England to Scotland to the American colonies – wherever the church was, small groups of Methodists were growing.

If you ever have trouble placing our history as a church, remember this – the Methodist movement grew up alongside the American Revolution. And when England lost and the Church of England left the colonies – all of those in the Methodist movement were left without churches and leadership. And so reluctantly, John Wesley ordained Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as superintendents or bishops and sent them to lead the people called Methodist in the new country.

And because we were established around the same time as this nation, our governance matches the governance of the United States. Our church is a democratic based structure with three branches – a Judicial Branch, an Executive Branch, and a Legislative Branch.

When the people wandered in the wilderness, God dwelt among them in a tent that was free to move.

When the people were established in a kingdom, God dwelt among them from an established temple in the capitol.

And when the people were forming a new nation, our church came to look like the new democracy with a book of laws and rules at the center of who we are.

I know we’d like to think that book is the bible, and… well, it is… but there is another book that holds us together as a denomination: The Book of Discipline.

In many ways, this has been our attempt to hold the tension between the fixed and the free, the movement and the institution.

This book provides stability in the sense that it is our reference point and foundational document of our identity. It contains the Articles of Religion that have been handed down through generations and a constitution describing who we are and how we function, and which is very difficult to change.

But it also provides flexibility in the sense that everything else within this book can be changed every four years by a simple majority of delegates to the General Conference.

Like the United States Government, we have a judicial branch – a Judicial Council of 9 persons who are elected to rule on matters of disagreement. We also have an executive branch, our Bishops, who are tasked with upholding the Discipline and caring for the ministry of the church.

Lastly, the General Conference is our legislative body. It is our version of Congress, only our gathering time is much shorter – for a couple of weeks every four years. It is where we gather to discern God’s will for the future of our church in the world. It is the place from which we boldly proclaim where God is and sometimes we have gotten it wrong and sometimes we have gotten it right.

If you look at the history of our church, it has not been one continuous solid history.

If you trace the line from the Church of England, the lighter brown set of roots, (and the side of our history that I know better), we can see that our lack of welcome and inclusion for African American siblings led to the formation of not one, but three new denominations.

Conflict over slavery and the authority of the bishops split the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844 – years before the Civil War.

Sometimes splits were the result of contextual differences. Sometimes because there was greater freedom needed that the more established church couldn’t hold within itself.

But the church has also merged and reconnected and joined with others for missional reasons. In 1939, previous splintering was repaired as we became the Methodist Church.

And in 1968, we merged and formed a union with the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

One of our own – Rev. Harold Varce was a pastor in the EUB at that time and he was there at the founding of the United Methodist Church. In fact, thanks to Harold, that “United” from the EUB tradition made its way into our name.

What would be the witness of this new denomination?

How would we hold in tension the call to find God at the margins with the oppressed and to boldly proclaim the established truth of God?

One of the first things that we undertook was to write our Social Principles. While not church law, they are “the prayerful and thoughtful effort on part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in United Methodist traditions.” (Preface)

And so in 1972 – with the denomination only four years old, much of the attention was focused on our section regarding human sexuality. It was a time of great experimentation and misconduct in society at large and this was our first opportunity as a church to speak.

In the midst of our larger statement was a phrase “persons of homosexual orientation are persons of sacred worth.” An amendment was made and approved which said, “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider it incompatible with Christian teaching.”

In many ways – right there in the midst of that statement which says two very different things – is that tension between tabernacle and temple. God’s presence dwells in the life of LGBTQ+ persons – they are of sacred worth… and the practice of their orientation is sinful to God and requires repentance.

Since 1972 – we have experienced a back and forth, push and pull, tug of war over whether we will fully embrace and include gays and lesbians in the life of the church or if we will stand firmly against the tides of culture upon the traditions of our established church.

That tension has reached such a point in the life of our denomination that it has overtaken much of our witness and work.

And so we reached a point in 2016 where we could not move forward without discerning a new way forward. Over these past two years folks have gathered to pray, discern, converse, pour over scriptures, wrestle, and finally we are at a point where their recommendations of various possibilities will come to a special General Conference, focused solely on this topic in February.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll back up and look at the scriptures behind our conversation. We’ll look at the landscape of our current dilemma. And in the final week, we’ll explore together the implications of the various proposals.

Here is what I want us to remember today.

When we were in the wilderness AND when established as a powerful nation – God dwelt among us.

When the temple was in ruins AND when the church was being persecuted – God was with us.

God has been leading, calling, pushing, prodding, rebuilding, connecting, pruning, and forming God’s people from the very beginning.

Not once has God left our side… although sometimes we have turned our backs upon God.

In some ways, I think God gives us what we need as far as a structure for whatever moment we might find ourselves in history. Anything that will help us grasp onto the very simple fact that God love us and calls us to be God’s people.

Through the ups and downs of churches that have split and reconnected and reimagined their existence, what is constant is the Lord and Savior of us all.

So whatever comes, whatever changes, whatever new possibilities lie before us, I pray that we would trust that God is present in the midst of it all.

Amen.

In the Desert

Posted on November 12, 2017Leave a comment

In these weeks before our season of Advent starts, we’ve been exploring the Psalms of our scriptures.
Rev. Andrea Severson joined us at the end of October to talk a bit about times of transition and journeying and the songs the Israelites wrote to accompany them on the way.
Last week, as we remembered our saints, Pastor Todd reminded us of how God walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death.
Today, we turn our attention to one of the Psalms of Lament. These songs of lament, frustration, and longing make up over half of the psalms within our Bible!
They are the words that we cry out when we are troubled, persecuted, frustrated, and hopeless.
“There’s got to be more than this,” we say. “There’s got to be more than this.”

This particular psalm is one written by David and the note in the scripture itself indicates it was during a time when he had fled to the wilderness. Likely, it was written after he had become the King of Israel. His very own son, Absalom, led an insurrection and David was forced to run for his life.
And there, in the desert, he cries out…
Not just for water…
But for the very presence of God.
Robin Gallaher Branch writes that “although his body wastes from dehydration, his spiritual longing for God takes precedence. Hunted and afraid for his life, the psalmist remembers God’s protection and loving-kindness… his soul longs for God.”

In the midst of our trials and tribulations, in the midst of the pain in this world, do we, too, cry out with the psalmist?
Do we believe “there’s got to be more than this?”
Do our souls hunger and thirst for God?
And can we hang on to the vision of God’s enduring love in the midst of our longing?

Last week, brothers and sisters in Christ gathered in a sanctuary in Sutherland Springs, Texas for worship. They were there to pray and to sing and to worship God… and twenty-six of them lost their lives.
Yet another mass shooting in America.
Yet another tragic loss of life.
And I feel like we are lost, wandering the desert, parched with our longing for the violence to end. Parched with exhaustion from debating types of weapons. Parched with weariness from trying to understand the motivations for such acts.
There has got to be something more than this.

And so, we are gathered here, today, seeking God… thirsting for God… turning our hands and our lips towards the divine…. Clinging to the one who has upheld us before.

What comes next?

Do we turn inward and lock the doors?
Do we get lost in debate about causes and solutions?
Do we stop loving and trusting our fellow human beings?
Or is there something else?

In some ways, I wonder if the lessons of Veteran’s Day are precisely the ones we need in the midst of a desert like this.
After the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the “Great War” finally saw peace on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. It was believed to have been “the end of ‘the war to end all wars.’”
The next year, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as Armistice Day… a day commemorated “by paying tribute to the heroes of that tragic struggle and by rededicating ourselves to the cause of peace.”

You see, in the midst of all of that loss and pain and grief … in the midst of the desert of destructions and sacrifice… as they looked out upon that broken world and believed that there had to be something more than this… they named what they were longing for – peace – and they set it before them as a vision for what they would pursue.

In 1926, Congress officially recognized the date as a legal holiday – a “recurring anniversary of this day, commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”

And yet, even with that vision of peace before us, it was not the war to end all wars.
There was a second world war, and then the Korean conflict, and we know that since those days countless of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors have served our country around this world.
In 1954, aware of this reality, President Eisenhower proclaimed that we would expand this day to honor the veterans of all wars and to “reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”

In the midst of our own desert of perpetual war and violence, we believe there has got to be something more than this.
And so we cry out every year, longing and thirsting for God’s peace to prevail across this world.

Maybe the question is… have we truly reconsecrated ourselves to the task of peace?
Simply marking a holiday is not enough…
How are we called to live differently in order to help God’s peace to be known all across this world? How do we lift up our hands and call upon God’s name and allow the divine power and glory to shape our world?

This past week, a colleague wrote a reflection about the kind of preparation she plans to do in the wake of more violence. Instead of preparing her church for someone who might burst in with a weapon, she wants to prepare her church to work against violence in this world.
And friends, there are lots of ways we can do that.

We can mentor students in our schools who are at risk for joining gangs.
We can work to provide better mental health care for our neighbors.
We can respond to domestic violence and take seriously the stories of women who are assaulted and work to not only keep them and their families safe, but provide help for those who are perpetrators.
We can get to know our neighbors and become a part of creating a community where people have one another’s backs and look out for what is happening.
We can talk about the gospel stories that teach us how to respond to oppression and injustice and hatred – often by heaping on extra doses of love and compassion and working for justice.
We can be a church that helps our children, especially our boys, learn healthy ways to express their emotions and to play so that they don’t grow up to believe that anger has to be expressed through violence.

If in the midst of this desert of violence, we turned our eyes to God and allowed that vision of peace to quench our thirst…
if that was the deep well from which we as a church and as a community chose to drink from…
if in the midst of this barren and hopeless struggle we chose to turn our eyes to the Lord and to bless God’s holy name and to cling to the one who has been our help…
then like David, we might find our souls satisfied.

May it be so. Amen.

The Spirit of Goodness

Posted on July 30, 2017Leave a comment

We’ve heard of goody-two-shoes…
Good riddance…
Goodness gracious great balls of fire…
Goodbye…
Things can taste good, we like to read good books and tell good stories.
We tell our children to be good and to get good grades.

But what does it really mean to be good?

The Random House dictionary has 41 different definitions for the word… and that’s just the adjectives.
But in general, I think we usually say that something is good if it fulfills our expectations – if it does what it is supposed to – and if we get some kind of benefit from it.

Take the cookies we just gave the children, for example. If they had taken a bite of the cookie and it was old or dried out… they wouldn’t be so good. They wouldn’t have been all that they were made up to be.
In the same way, we are good when we fulfill the expectations of ourselves and others and if we benefit others as we do so.

I keep using the word benefit, and that is because there are lots of things that fulfill their purpose that we would never call good.
An example – those cookies might taste good – but for all of you adults who didn’t get to eat them, since we didn’t have enough to share, they are only good for our children.
Or, think about what makes a good chef’s knife.
It is sharp, it cuts the way it is designed to, and we can use it to prepare food and eventually be fed. We benefit from the design and use of a good chef’s knife.
But, in the hands of someone unskilled, like a child, the knife becomes dangerous and what we thought was good could harm them.
In the hands of someone who is angry or revengeful – the very thing that we called good only a moment ago, can turn into a weapon.
It still has the same qualities that fulfilled its purpose… only it is being used to harm instead of help.

So… to be good, something or someone must fulfill the expectations and be a benefit.

Throughout the scriptures – we hear stories of men and women who were good:
Noah was a good man and so his family was saved from the flood.
Lot was a good man and so his family was rescued from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Even Rahab the prostitute was good. She fulfilled the expectations God had of her by taking in the spies from Israel, benefitting the people of God, and because she did so, her family was saved in the battle of Jericho.

Culturally, morally, we might wonder how could such a person be considered “good.”
Well, God has a tendency to upend our assumptions about a person’s worth or value. All throughout the scriptures, God chooses unlikely people to accomplish God’s will.

Throughout the scriptures, there are also people that are not good.
They didn’t do what was expected of them.
They lived not to benefit others, but only themselves.
And It is to such people as these that the prophets were sent.
Prophets like Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Hosea… and our prophet for this morning: Nathan.
Today’s story is one of paradox.

You see, David was a man after God’s own heart.
We always think back on all of the good things that he did – his trust in God, his loyalty to Saul, his music, and his love…
But in some ways, David was a kind of bad dude.
As we heard this morning in our scripture, David breaks two commandments all in a week’s time.

First, he sleeps with another man’s wife. Bathsheba was married to one of his soldier’s Uriah and David saw her from afar and decided that he wanted her. Her husband was away at war, and so David took what he wanted.

Then, to cover up the fact this terrible thing he has done, David breaks another commandment. He has Uriah killed out on the battlefield.

Neither of these are good things. His actions go against God’s expectations for David and they harm both Uriah and Bathsheba and they mar his moral leadership, harming the entire nation.

Nathan’s job here is simple. He is called, he is expected, to bring God’s judgment upon David for these acts.
So this morning, we are going to look at how the goodness of Nathan shines through and how WE might be called to be good in the fact of another person’s wrongdoing.

First, Nathan helped the truth to come to light.

In Ephesians 5 we hear that God’s children should live as children of light and that “the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth.”
With the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we are expected to allow the truth to be seen in the world.

Grace and mercy, forgiveness and love are all good and holy things, but they only have meaning in relation to the truth of what has gone wrong.

When I attended the General Conference in Tampa, Florida five years ago, we spent one evening participating in a service of truth-telling about how United Methodists and our predecessors had harmed Indigenous Peoples across the world. As people of faith and in the name of Jesus Christ, we perpetuated crimes against our brothers and sisters. We took land, forced our values upon others, and destroyed cultures. We actively resisted peace processes and in some cases were the instigators of violence and bloodshed. That night, we heard stories about the role that Methodists had played in the Trail of Tears, and in the slaughter of peoples in Philippines, Africa, and Norway.

The act of betrayal that hit closes to home was that of the Sand Creek Massacre. A Methodist preacher, U.S. Army Col. John Chivington, ordered the attack on an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho. These native peoples had come to that site to fulfill their side of a recent peace treaty that had been made with the U.S. Government. While their men were away hunting, Chivington attacked the camp, killing mostly women and children.
It was hard to hear. It was hard to re-live. It was hard to dream that the damage could ever be reversed and that wounds could ever be healed.

And that night, one of the things our leadership focused on was that this night was not the full act of reconciliation. That night was only the first step. Repentance has to begin with understanding what we have done.
Nathan did not ignore or shy away from the wrongs and the harm that David had perpetrated. Rather, he made sure that the truth came to light and that David knew that he had done wrong.

Second, Nathan provided a way for David to turn away from his harm towards good.

The prophet was fully aware of David’s sin.
Had he followed the letter of the law, the right thing to do as soon as David confessed would be to have him stoned. The law was clear that the punishment for adultery and murder were death.
But Nathan shows us that goodness goes beyond simple righteousness. It is far more simply pointing out the wrongs in others.
Nathan spoke the truth about David’s sin, but his first instinct is not to carry out a sentence, but to wait for a response from David.
As people of faith, too often we are quick to bring judgment and condemnation upon others. We are good at bringing unrighteousness to light. We demand that justice be carried out swiftly through every possible means available.

What we aren’t good at is leading people into repentance.
When righteousness is only about the letter of the law, judgment can become a weapon, leading us to harm people or communities.
But by telling David a story, Nathan creates an opportunity for David to confess, to repent, and to choose to live a different life.
In the years that have followed that night at General Conference, United Methodists in various parts of the world have been working to listen and to repent of the various ways we have harmed indigenous peoples. One group in particular was formed to learn more about the tragedy at Sand Creek and to explore whether or not healing could be possible.
Four years later in Portland, a member of the Northern Cheyenne, William Walks Along, shared that although that date “can never be erased from the memory of our people… together let us discover the treasurers we can learn from hardships and from the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow human beings.”

He was extending a hand of friendship to the United Methodist Church and the willingness of fellow descendents of those victims to reconcile and move forward together.

Third, Nathan blessed David because of his repentance.

Not only did the prophet bring the truth to the light, not only did he invite David into a spirit of repentance, but Nathan also gave him the encouragement he needed to faithfully follow God in the future.

Nathan did what was needed to set David back on the right path… what was needed to build him up so that he could once again fulfill God’s expectations for him and live to benefit the children of Israel.
That does not mean that there were no consequences of his actions…. But Nathan reminded David that there was also room for God’s grace and mercy to flow back into his life.

That is a reminder that we all need.
As Christians, we have all have fallen short of the glory of God.
That is the plain and simple truth.
Every single one of us have places in our lives where we need to repent, where we need to turn around and seek God’s forgiveness.
On our own, we are unrighteous and our hearts seek our own benefit and expectations instead of God’s.
And yet, through the grace of Jesus Christ, we are made righteous.
I believe the basis of righteousness is fact that God sets us right.
God forgives us.
God leads us on the right paths.
It has nothing to do with how many answers we get right or how many good deeds we do.
It has everything to do with God and the divine goodness that exceeds every expectation and whose great love seeks only our benefit.
And when we are made righteous, when we are made good, we are meant to let that goodness become contagious. God’s grace and mercy is not ours alone… it is meant to be shared.

Friends, you are armed with a powerful tool that can be used for good or for harm in this world.
The truth of God, the reality of God’s expectations in our lives is now in your hands. And you are invited to let that truth to be know, but you are also invited to share it in a way that brings blessing and benefit to all.

Dance Like No One is Watching

Posted on August 9, 2009Leave a comment

Perhaps you have heard the story of the church on the corner of Main and Broad streets. It was stately and magnificent in structure and style. Much love and caring were shared
between the members.

One particular Easter Sunday, the seats were filled to capacity. Participants sat in pews wearing their Sunday best, smiling graciously and nodding to acknowledge each other and the guests. Everything seemed perfect.

Worship services were well under way when an unshaven man in a faded shirt came through the front door. His jeans were torn at the knees and ragged at the bottom, his sneakers tattered. His eyes searched for a seat at the rear of the room, but they were all filled. All eyes followed him as he made his way to the front of the church, still looking for a seat.

Reaching the first pew and still not finding anywhere to sit… or anyone who would make room, he folded his legs underneath himself and sat on the floor of the aisle.

Everybody was wondering who this was, but even more than that, they were wondering who was going to do something about it.. The organist began to play the opening hymn, but nobody was really listening.

A hush fell over the congregation as Mr. Sims, a stately old gentleman who had served as an usher for more than half a century, made his way slowly from the back of the church down the aisle.

Everybody knew what he was going to do. Somebody had to do something, afterall. Dressed in his usual three-piece black suit, he steadied himself with his silver-tipped cane. He walked down the aisle and he came up to the young man.

Everyone watched as the old man bent down and said: “I just want to say how good it is to have you here.” And Mr. Sims slowly lowered himself with great difficulty and sat down by the young visitor. He offered him a bulletin, and offered to share his hymnal. And they sat together, and they worshiped.

This morning – as we listen for what it means to worship God fully – to gather together and to praise our Creator – that story of the old man and the young man really speaks to me. You see, both of them took a risk to come together in the presence of God.

The young man was a stranger, coming in off the street, and even though everyone around him was dressed in their Sunday finest, he didn’t care what others thought. He didn’t care if everyone else was watching. He didn’t care if what he did by sitting there before God upset other people. He was coming to the Lord – and nothing was going to stop him.

In a similar manner, the older gentleman had just as much, if not more to lose. He was established and respected. Everyone in that church expected him to tell the young man to move, or to walk him out of the church for acting so “inappropriately.” But Mr. Sims broke with convention, broke with tradition, let go of his ways and let the Spirit guide him to the front of the church to sit down with that young man.

There is a quote, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain that goes:

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth

That is exactly what our older gentleman and the young guy were doing in that warm little story. And in our passage from the book of Samuel this morning – that kind of heartfelt abandon is depicted as King David leads the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem for the very first time.

For years, the ark has been in the hands of the Philistines – but to go and recapture the ark and to bring it to Jerusalem… the place David has set up as his royal city… means that David is showing how his rule with connected to the lordship, power, and presence of God.

At the outset of this journey, David does what is expected of him. He gathers thirty thousand of his best men and they go and bring the ark up out of the place it has been. One would expect a solemn and formal military processional bringing this prized possession back into the hands of the Israelites. But our scripture tells us that King David led the celebration and they praised God with all of their might with songs and instruments and drums.

In fact, the people were so caught up in their celebration, that an accident occurred. As the ark was being carried over the terrain, one of the oxen stumbled and the ark nearly fell to the ground. But a man named Uzzah instinctively reached out to grab onto the ark and lift it to safety.

Whew, we might think to ourselves… disaster averted. But just like Isaiah’s encounter with God in the temple, we are reminded about just how holy – just how other – God really is. This ark was not simply a box holding some important documents – it was a sacred object that could bring both blessing and harm. It was to be touched and handled only by those who had properly prepared, only by the Levites. Just like the King Uzziah who later is cursed for entering the temple and burning incense to God on his own, the military commander Uzzah is punished for his act. He is instantly killed as a result of touching the ark.

Here, by the side of the road, in the middle of their journey, all of the celebrations stop. David is so troubled by these occurrences, so angry at God for what has happened, that he refuses to carry the ark the rest of the way to Jerusalem. He is afraid of what will happen when God’s presence comes into his royal city. He knows the wrongs he has done in his own life and doesn’t think he will last long in the power of God. David closes himself off to the promise and power of the ark and puts it in the safekeeping of a family in a village nearby.

David’s heartfelt abandon is closed off because of the fear of being burned, of being rejected, or being found unworthy.

I think that there are many people, probably here in this room this morning, whose hearts have been closed off. People who are afraid to let God in. People who are afraid to make a fool of themselves for God because of what others might think. People who aren’t quite sure they are ready to take the risk to celebrate with all of their might before God. Am I right?

One of my favorite biblical commentators, Kate Huey writes, “Jubilation is a word we rarely use, perhaps because such a feeling has been limited for many, for the most part, to sports and, perhaps, the occasional political victory. But what if we felt deep-down-in-our-hearts jubilation over what God is doing in our lives? Would we dance, too?

Henry Brinton has compared worship… to a modern dance solo by Paul Taylor, the dancer/choreographer who “simply stood motionless on stage for four minutes….The dancing we do in church tends to be quite similar to Paul Taylor’s solo. What we do is nothing – we just stand still, hardly moving a muscle. Our worship of God involves our minds, our hearts, and our tongues, but rarely our whole bodies.”

In the book, The Soul of Tomorrow’s Church, Kent Ira Groff writes that we need to include rhythm into every worship service. He quotes Brian Wren in saying that “rhythm tries to move you bodily.” No wonder that from forever and everywhere the drum has been an instrument of healing, reminiscent of the heartbeat of God – use in primal caves, rock bands, sophisticated symphonies. The pipe organ is a wonderful instrument… but in combining many instruments in one, it decreased the participation of the many…” When we clap our hands, or tap our toes, or play along on other instruments, we are joining the whole of creation in crying out with our whole bodies – the Lord is Good.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth

Just like we might be afraid to step beyond our comfort zones and truly praise God with our whole bodies… just like we might be afraid to truly welcome into our midst those who don’t look anything like us… just like we might be afraid of what will happen if we open ourselves up to God’s presence… King David was afraid of what it meant to invite God into his city. He was afraid of what might happen to himself and his reign. In many ways, he rightly understood the holy power and otherness of the Lord… but he had let his fear overwhelm his ability to truly trust God.

For three months, things went on like this, until word came to David about the blessings that had come to the family the ark had been left with. A glimmer of possibility and trust began to burn again in David’s heart and he decided to try again.

The ark was taken out of the house and after just six steps, David was so overwhelmed with joy and thanksgiving that he sacrificed a bull and a calf. And he took off his royal garments and there in front of all the people he danced before God with all of his might. He shed his fear, he shed all of the expectations people had of him, he shed his denial of God’s holiness, and he worshipped and praised with heartfelt abandon.

When Michal confronted David about his actions his words were clear: It was before the LORD, who chose me that I danced—I will celebrate before the LORD. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.”

He spoke with the same spirit that Paul did when he said that we should be fools for Christ – laying it all out on the line to praise and honor the God who gives us life.

That is a very different attitude towards worship than the one espoused by Michal… or by the Pharisees that Jesus encounters in our gospel reading. They were so caught up on tradition – on doing what they were supposed to, on what was appropriate and required, that they left their heart and mind and soul and body out of worship.

But Jesus words remind us that the outward trappings are not important. They don’t make us righteous or unrighteous, worthy or unworthy. It is our hearts that matter. It is what we give to God that matters. Or as our Psalter puts it…. we should come with clean hands and pure hearts before God… that we should come bringing our full selves with the right intentions.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth