disciple – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

Living Among the Dead

Posted on April 4, 2010Leave a comment

Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

Why are you looking for life among places where there is only death?

Why are you looking for light in total darkness?

Why are you looking in all the wrong places?

Those questions all barraged me when I sat down and reflected on our gospel reading. As Luke tells the story, these disciples of Jesus who happened to be of the female persuasion, were heading to the tomb of their Lord. They were bearing spices and oils to anoint and properly lay his body to rest.

They weren’t looking for the living at all. Their light, their life, their hope had died on the cross with Jesus. They were looking for a dead man.

Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

I find that question strange, because they weren’t! These faithful few were coming to the tomb to honor Jesus. They were coming to pay their respects. They were coming because that’s what you do for people you love. It was a duty for them… in the very best sense of the word.

They came to the tomb and they couldn’t even possibly begin to imagine that life, new life, resurrection life was waiting for them.

Two years ago, on Easter Sunday, I shared with all of you one of my favorite stories. It is called “Hope for the Flowers.” And it is about looking for life in all of the wrong places.

In the story, there is a little caterpillar named Stripe and he is looking for something, but he isn’t quite sure what it is. He was happy for a while, but now he is restless… he knows that there is something more out there. One day, he comes across this mound, heap, mountain of other caterpillars. They are all climbing on top of one another, trying to get as high as they possibly can. There are rumors that there is something wonderful at the top of this pile. So Stripe joins in the climb. He is yearning for what is at the top, even though he doesn’t know what it is. And along the way, he makes some terrible, terrible choices. He hurts others. He pushes them out of the way. He has to stop himself from looking in their eyes so he doesn’t feel so bad about what he is doing.

Stripe was looking for life in the midst of the dead. He was looking for life among things that were actually sucking the life right out of him.

The women who went to the tomb had just spent a day and a half weeping and mourning. They felt like all of the hope and light and joy in the world had just been sucked right out of them. And so they went to the tomb to mourn, to weep, to honor, and to say their goodbyes.

And you know what… if those angels hadn’t appeared to ask them a simple question, that is where their lives would have stayed. They would have looked for the dead, found an empty tomb, and gone home in utter despair.

We live our lives that way too often. We look for life among the dead. We seek happiness and wholeness in all of the wrong places. We then we are content with being discontented.

Why are we looking for the living among the dead? Why are we looking for our Lord and Savior among the dead and dying things of this world?

That question keeps coming back to me.

For those women on Easter morning, it was a tomb that they clung so closely to. It was a tomb that kept them from being out in the world where they would find the Risen Christ.

What is it with you?

What are the dead and dying things that you hold on to that keep you from finding the Living One?

For one woman I taught in a bible study, it was her King James Bible. She had been given the bible when she was in third grade and it was the only bible that she had ever owned. She had been told it was the only version of the bible that was acceptable. But you know what? She couldn’t understand what was written in her bible. My friend could only read at the 9th grade level… not to mention the fact that the language used in that translation is so dead and foreign that she couldn’t make any sense of it. She faithfully struggled to read the words in that old Bible of hers, but she couldn’t understand it and so she couldn’t find Jesus in there.

For a colleague of mine, it was his business. For years, he had worked in the corporate world and had purchased his own company. He climbed and climbed to the top, seeking success and power and telling himself that when he got to the top he could enjoy life. But he only found a longing that he couldn’t quite fulfill.

Where is the dead place that you keep looking for new life?

What is it that we as a church are holding on to that keeps us from coming face to face with new and abundant life?

In my two years here, I have heard quite a few answers to that question. We would have new life in our church if only we… This church would grow if … Are we looking in the right places? Are we looking for life – new life – life abundant at all?

If we go back to the story of our sad little caterpillar, Stripe, we find that he is stuck in this endless climb of despair and defeat. But then, one day, he sees something that makes his heart stop. He sees a butterfly. Stripe catches a glimpse, a possibility of something he can’t quite understand and he decides to lay aside this life of climbing, to let go of everything that he thought he knew and he decides to do something very strange. He finds his way to a quiet branch, far away from the piles of caterpillars and he builds himself a cocoon, he dies to the world as he knew it… and on the other side of that cocoon, he finds fullness, new life, as a butterfly.

Stripe was looking for life in the midst of the dead. Until he stopped looking. Until he crawled back out into the world that he was born into and he decided to let go and take a leap of faith and try something new. And new life found him.

This week, I have thought a lot about why we need the resurrection. Why does it matter that there is new life in Jesus? He died for our sins, isn’t that enough?

A friend reminded me that we need the resurrection, we need that glimpse of the butterfly, so that we don’t go back to the tombs, the places of death and hopelessness in our lives and live them over and over and over again.

When those women at the tomb recognized the truth – that their Lord was no longer dead but was alive – JOY flooded their hearts. They couldn’t keep quiet about what they had heard! Their mourning turned into dancing!

When my friend in Bible study realized that the King James bible wasn’t the only one that was available to her… when she picked up a translation that was more appropriate for her reading level – an entire new world of the scriptures opened up for her… she found the living Jesus on the pages of her bible speaking to her, making sense, giving her hope for her life.

When my colleague, went to church one Sunday, he was moved by the Holy Spirit and caught a glimpse of another life that awaited him. He went home and put his business up for sale and he enrolled in seminary.

This morning, I want to invite us to take a courageous leap of faith. I want to invite each of us to come down off of the heaps and mountains that we have been climbing, to come away from the dead and barren places where we have been seeking, and to try something new.

Today, we officially begin a journey towards new life.

Some time ago, Jill Sanders, our Field Outreach Minister invited us to participate in a process called Co-Missioned. It is a two to three year journey where we will discover what God is doing in our midst, we will listen for where God is calling us next, and then we will lay aside our old life as a church and learn to live out God’s will for our community.

Maybe a good way of describing this process is to think a little bit about our caterpillar Stripe. This journey is a lot like climbing up onto a branch and building a cocoon – not knowing what exactly we will look like on the other side.

But we have the faith to do so, because we have already seen butterflies. We have the faith to trust in God and to let go of our baggage and ideas and ways of doing things because we have seen God’s amazing and transforming resurrection power.

The hard part is that it means some things will have to die. Stripe the caterpillar was no more after he entered the cocoon. And we will have to let go of some dead and lifeless things of our own. We may have to set aside age old arguments and grievances. We might have to rip out old carpet – both literally and figuratively. We might say goodbye to old ways of doing things. We might say goodbye to new ways of doing things that just aren’t the right fit for us. We might have to let dried-up attitudes fall by the wayside. We might need to let bad habits of not coming to church regularly or of not using all of our gifts and talents die.

It is scary… but it is also exciting… and I hope you will also hear that we are among good company.

Because as our gospel story continues on for this morning, we find that there are some disciples who have left Jerusalem. They have left behind what was lost and dead and abanadoned and they set out on a road unknown. These disciples know what the next stop on their journey will be, but they aren’t quite sure what awaits them beyond that. But they set out anyways.

And on this journey, on the familiar road of Emmaus – something amazing happens. Out there in the world, and not in some quiet somber graveyard, they find the risen Lord.

He asks them a question. “What have you been conversing about?”

So they talk. And they chat. And for the life of them, they can’t figure out who this strange man is. But they share with him what they know and what they hoped for and what they are seeking now.

And when they stop for some food, and Christ breaks the bread before them – they realize that they have been traveling with Christ all along.

So let us travel on this journey together. Let us have conversations and let us tell stories. And let us break bread together. Because here at this table, our eyes are opened and we see the living Christ who has been with us all along.

Come on the journey. Lay aside the past. Take up the future. There are butterflies waiting!

Come Away With Me

Posted on July 12, 2009Leave a comment

(Adapted from an article written in the Christian Century, 1996, “Watching from the boat,” by Martin B. Copenhaver)

I read this week in an article by Martin Copenhaver, about a pastor who resigned from a suburban church where relentless demands on his time and energy were beginning to wear him down. Instead of leaving the ministry all together, he became a missionary on the coast of Maine. In this new calling, he visits small Christian communities in isolated and remote places. Most of the things that he does there are the same as what he was doing in his church near the city – he preaches, teaches, and visits the sick. But there is a huge difference in doing these things in the hustles and bustle of the city and on the coast of Maine. “Between ports of call he travels long distances by boat. Between sermons he can listen to the wind. Before teaching another class he can study the horizon. After visiting the sick he is anointed with sea spray. Interspersed with his demanding pastoral duties he takes a watery road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

When I read the story of that pastor, I realized how much I cherish the time I have away from this church. And I know that comes off the wrong way – but I, too, need time away from this building and this work, so that I can come back refreshed and replenished… re-created by God. Any afternoon I can get away to play a round of disc golf, or during the summer to sit by the water with family, is a moment that replenishes my body and soul in the same way.

There is a reason that our word for play time – recreation – can also be said re-creation… in our play, in our rest, in our time apart, we find the strength we need to begin anew.

So much emphasis in our world today is placed on productivity – on the hours we spend working and what we make out of that time. What we never stop and recognize is that constant productivity without rest, without renewal, only leads to failure.
This is the lesson that my dad has taught me many times in small ways throughout my lifetime. He has worked with his hands repairing equipment for as long as I can remember. And the rule he tries to live by on the farm is that it is better to fix a piece of equipment once and do it right, rather than patch it up quickly and get back out in the field. In the long run – that equipment will last longer and run better when you take the time out to repair it properly.

Unfortunately, that is a lesson my dad has also taught me through bad examples. While he takes care of his equipment, he doesn’t take very good care of his own body. He doesn’t stop for as long as he needs to in order to rest and replenish his most important tool. He pushes ahead, fitting as much into his day as possible, stopping here and there for a nap before heading out into the fields once more, or before working the night shift at Quaker. And now his body is wearing out faster than it needs to. Like that pastor from the suburbs – something needs to change, or someday he will have to quit the things that he loves all together.

In our gospel lesson from Mark this morning, Jesus has something to teach us about rest – about Sabbath – about re-creation. As Copenhaver points out, “Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee so many times that it is hard to” figure out what they are doing and why they are doing it. “Until the sixth chapter, that is, when the reason for the crossings is clear: the disciples need a break.

“The Twelve had just returned from their first mission. On that mission they discovered, perhaps to their surprise, that they could do much of what they had observed Jesus do. They were empowered to teach, preach and heal. They left on the mission as disciples, but when they returned, flushed with success, Mark refers to them as apostles for the first time. It was a new title signifying a new relationship with Jesus. No longer were they disciples with mere “learner’s permits,” unable to do anything on their own. They had been sent forth with the authority of a commission. They were apostles. When the apostles returned to Jesus they had stories to tell and victories to savor.”

I can picture a scene in which twelve children return home from the first day of school and crowd around their mother or father anxious to share all of the exciting and amazing things that had happened that day. All twelve voices are trying to speak at the same time, outdoing one another with stories, trying to worm their way into the conversation. In my house, there were just three of us children, and even our three little voices could exhaust my mother in about five minutes!

And that was only when we had Mom’s undivided attention! Other days, the phone was ringing off the hook, usually she had just gotten home from work herself and was trying to unload from her day, dinner was waiting to be made… you get the picture.
I remember a little sign that my mom had hanging up in the kitchen when we were kids, that said “take a number.” I’m not sure that we ever used the cute little numbers painted onto die-cut apples, but I remember thinking as I got older that perhaps she didn’t need to be overwhelmed by all of us at once.

The apostles return from their first missionary experience, but they too, had to take a number. Jesus was surrounded by people who needed healing, guidance, who were seeking peace, and there just wasn’t the time or space they needed to stop and debrief.

Those disciples wanted to tell him everything, but they were hot and tired and hungry and exhausted, so Jesus found a small window of opportunity and suggested that they get in a boat and seek a deserted place.

“Come away with me by yourselves… come and get some rest.”

That boat ride to the other shore was a moment of fresh air. It was the sea breeze blowing over the missionary pastor on the coast of Maine. It was the gentle wind that blows through the trees on hole 3 at the Sugar Bottom disc golf course. The apostles relaxed in the boat, took turns telling their stories, took turns listening, dug into their sacks for a piece of bread, and replenished their souls.

“When they reached the shore, however, they discovered that a crowd had followed them… The sick had run, hobbled, or been carried to meet Jesus… The people waiting for them looked like a huge gathering of baby birds, their hunger so constant that their mouths were always opened wide. It was enough to overwhelm a mere apostle. But Jesus had compassion on the crowd and began once again to feed them with his words.”

Can you imagine being in the middle of your rest and renewal, your vacation, your one day off and getting a call from the office? Having a family emergency that pulls you away? Even though it is your work, or your family, or even something that you might love… because your time of re-creation is interrupted, you get a little irritated.

If we were to continue on with our reading in the gospel of Mark this morning, the apostles did just that. As Jesus stood on the shore teaching and healing, his disciples called out from the boat – “Hey Jesus… it’s getting late! We’re in the middle of nowhere. Tell everyone to go home, get something to eat, and come back tomorrow!”

Here’s the part of the story where Jesus gets the disciples to pull a few loaves of bread and two fish out of their bags and he feeds the entire crowd with their meager offering. And it’s a wonderful story – but one we’ll save for another day.

Sensing the apostles’ fatigue, Jesus basically told them to wait for him in the boat, much as a parent might tell tired children to wait in the car while she does one more errand. All they had to do was reach into their sacks and hand over some bread – Jesus did all the rest. He realized that they just couldn’t do any more… at least not tonight.

“The sociologists call it compassion fatigue. All of us are capable of compassion on occasion. But when we’ve seen too many emotional television appeals for hunger relief or walked down too many streets crowded with human sorrow, we discover that our compassion is limited… Only God can extend constant compassion. God is the only one who never suffers from “compassion fatigue.” In the constancy of Jesus’ compassion, his kinship with this God is revealed.”

Wayne Mueller in his book, “Sabbath” puts it another way. He writes that too often, we do good badly. Sure, the disciples could have gotten out of the boat, and lent a hand. They were empowered to teach, preach and heal as Jesus did, but ministry in the name of Christ is exhausting business. They were tired and worn out, and if they had decided to help out, they could have done more harm than good.

Mueller shares a story of an experience where exactly that happened. He had been working as a part of the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1970’s. They were trying to release young people from juvenille centers and institutions and help them return to their homes. The idea was that they would be better rehabilitated living amongst their own families, rather than being locked up. It was a great idea, only very little time was taken to think about the consequences of their actions. No time was taken to listen to the families of these young people, or the communities they would return to. No teaching was done before they were sent home. Mueller writes that they didn’t even take a Sabbath day of rest to consider the implications of what they would be doing.

“Now”, he writes, “the nation is awash in lost children, some violent, many in pain… We, for our part, now rush to blame them for threatening the safety of our society, and we cannot build prisons fast enough to hold them… We were in a terrible hurry to do good, and there was no rest in our decisions. And just as speech without silence creates noise, charity without rest creates suffering.”

“John Westerhoff has remarked that atheism in the modern world is characterized by this affirmation: ‘If I don’t do it, it won’t happen.’ The apostles–even after their newfound success as teachers, preachers and healers–knew better. They waited in the boat.”

All of us who are called by the gospel and by God’s spirit need that reminder too. We need to remember that the power of God chooses to work through us, but that God also can work without us. That sometimes another person is called to respond. That sometimes we have to stand still before we can move forward. When the compassion of the apostles was spent and their ability to respond exhausted, people were fed anyway, as if with manna from heaven, and they could only watch from the boat.

And when the meal was finished, Jesus sent the disciples back onto the lake in the boat… told them to cross over to the other side, and he climbed a mountain to pray.

Even Jesus needed rest. Even Jesus needed to be replenished. Even Jesus let prayer re-create his soul.

Sabbath time is a time of blessing. We pray for strength and courage and happiness. We rest, eat, play, walk, and listen. That is the spirit of the Sabbath prayer that we heard in response to our Psalter this morning.

So today, stop. Take a deep breath. And come away with Jesus.

(I then played the music video from Norah Jones “Come Away With Me“

church growth

Posted on June 30, 20091 Comment

#6) I have never been a fan of the church growth movement. While I went to a large church in high school – and served a large church in Nashville – I just never bought into the whole church growth schtick. As one of my seminary professors put it – the only thing that grows that fast is cancer.

I never realized how much I would love being in a small town church until I got here. It’s amazing folks. People are there to lend a hand instantly, you really get immersed into the community because you are living among your parishoners – instead of everyone traveling in to the church from far off places. They have a great work ethic, they are hungering to learn more and want to get their hands dirty.

My focus has never been to get the church to grow. at least not numerically. Growing in our faithfulness – yes. Growing in our commitment – yes. Growing in our ability to respond to God’s Spirit – yes. Growing in numbers… eh.

But we are! My first year here, we about evened out with our deaths and members joining. But this year, with our confirmation class and so far 4 new members, we have grown our church by 11 in six months.

At an Ad Board meeting sometime last fall, someone commented that if we are doing what God wants us to do – the people will come… or maybe they said that the money would come… either way – if we are faithful, people will see that and they will want to be a part of what we are doing. And I think that is true.

We don’t need to market our church so much as witness to what cool things God is doing in our midst right now. And right now we witnessed seven young people professing their faith in front of friends and family and their church. We have watched God connect us with a ministry in Cedar Rapids and have been called to respond with donations and building of relationships. We had a family join our church who was so excited about doing so that they brought all of their siblings and parents with them.

Stuff like that is pretty cool. And we are going to keep trying to follow God. And if more people want to join us on that journey – amen!

Becoming Disciples through: Service

Posted on May 24, 2009Leave a comment

The other night my husband and I had finished dinner and I stood up to clear the table and take away our plates.

As he handed me his dish he said, “you know, you don’t have to wait on me, I can take my own plates to the kitchen.”

And without even thinking about it, I responded, “I know – but I do it because I love you.”

How many of you are familiar with Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages’?

A long time ago, a friend gave me the book, and I immediately thought about those five languages when I made that statement to my husband.

I try to do little things to help out because that is one of the ways that I most naturally express my love for him. Gary Chapman calls that acts of service.

Service? Hey – we’re talking about service today! And we are exploring specifically how we express our love of God through acts of service.

Curiousity got the better of me, and I took another quick look at how our five membership vows match up with these five love languages Chapman examines in his books.

We started out with prayer as a way of discipleship… and talked about how we should aim to pray more deeply. Using the metaphor of breathing, our prayers should not be shallow quick breaths, but deep, filling breaths in and out. In Chapman’s languages of love, quality time is about focusing all of our energy on another person so that the time we spend with one another is not simply hanging out, but is a deep sharing of who you are. In many ways, our prayers are how we spend quality time with God, focusing our attention on God’s will for our lives, rather than our own wishes and desires.

Then we looked at what it means to be present as an expression of our discipleship. While it isn’t an immediate fit, Chapman lists physical intimacy and touch as one of his love languages. In so many ways, our presence with one another, our physical presence with people who are hurting is an expression of our love not only for them, but also for God. We literally become the hands and feet of God who hold and comfort and who smile and are close to one another. Our Lord and Savior became human and lived among us – touching the sick and the young and the old and the forgotten in order to express the love of God to the world, and we respond by doing the same.

Last week we talked about our gifts. We are not only given amazing and beautiful gifts by God, but in response, we share those gifts for God’s work in the world. Easy tie in to Chapman’s love language of giving and receiving gifts. I think something that we can easily learn from his description of giving gifts is that we are not investing money (or time) in these gifts, but through the gift, we are deepening our relationship with God. People who have shared with me that they tithe regularly often talk about what a joy it is and how it really does bring them closer to God.

I’m definitely going to have to remember this book next time this sermon series comes around, because our fifth vow next week also correlates pretty well to one of Chapman’s five languages – words of affirmation. Now, witnessing to our faith is not quite the same thing as offering encouragement to a loved one – but in both cases, we sing their praises as we share with the world what is great about either our loved one or about God. Next week, we not only will be celebrating Pentecost – the coming of the Spirit that helps us to witness, but we will also be confirming some of our youth – and will be encouraging them in the faith as they witness to what they have learned in this past year.

But for today – it’s all about service.

And not only for Chapman, but also in our life of faith, service is about love.

Attitude is everything when it comes to service – and our call to service is a call to act out of love and not obligation, to act not out of resentment or guilt or fear or even duty – but out of the depths of our hearts.

In every way, Memorial Day, is about honoring the service of men and women throughout our nation’s history who have done just that. They showed their love for friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens in such a way that they were willing to give even their lives.

In both of our scriptures today, we are reminded that there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for one another. From our Epistle reading, we are commanded to love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

While accounts may vary, Memorial Day began initially as community celebrations honoring the fallen soldiers who gave their lives to battle slavery. Their words of equality and love of neighbor were transformed into moral truths and action on behalf of the disenfranchised and they deserved to be honored. But, because initially these acts of memorialization were so closely tied with the fight for emancipation, the Southern states quickly established their own rival “Confederate Memorial Day.”

These community acts of decorating graves were then made official by an order from General John Logan that Memorial Day be on the 30th of May and on the first Memorial Day in 1868, flowers were placed on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers in Arlington Cemetery. But in the effort to put the differences of both sides behind us, the recognition that the Civil War had been a moral battle to free black Americans from slavery was lost. It became more of a generic remembrance of all war dead, while at the same time losing the specific passions of truth and justice that characterized its beginnings.

David Blight wrote about this loss in his book “Race and Reunion.” “War commemorations, he makes clear, do not just pay tribute to the war dead.” They should also honor what those men and women died for – the truth and the action that go along with the sacrifice.

I really struggle with talking about national interests in church. Our time of worship should be focused on God and not on our country. We are coming together to worship the one who is Lord over every nation – not just ours. In many ways, when we become Christian we cease to simply be American.

And yet, in many ways, so many of our soldiers have fallen for that reason – to protect and defend and to free the lives of God’s children all over the world from tyrannies of injustice and oppression. They have put their lives on the line not because of duty but because they genuinely want to make a difference in the lives of people across God’s creation.

They choose to serve in that capacity because they believe that it is in the armed forces that they can make the biggest impact.

Do you remember the question that I asked you at the beginning of this sermon series? I shared with you that the mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. And I asked very pointedly, how many of you thought that was possible. I asked how many of you really felt equipped and empowered by the church to go out and make a difference in the world.

I believe that tomorrow, we should fully honor our fallen brothers and sisters who died because they believed that the world could be different – because they loved other people enough to put their lives on the line.

But today, I believe that we should lament the fact that our church has not shared our story in such a compelling way. I believe that we should lament the fact that we don’t have strong enough convictions in the power of God to change the world. I believe we should lament the fact that we aren’t out there in the world, putting our lives on the line every day in service to others.

Bishop Robert Schnasse has called churches to be fruitful for God’s Kingdom and one of the ways we can do so is through risk-taking mission and service. Just as in our gospel reading from today, we are called and appointed to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, and the root of that fruit is God’s love. Schansse writes that “nothing is more central to faith identity and to the church’s mission than transforming the lives and conditions of people by offering oneself in God’s name. Nearly every page of Scripture shows people serving God by serving others.”

I’m often asked what the difference is between doing community service and serving people through the church. And usually my response has something to do with the fact that God is the reason behind our service when we do it in the church. We have been loved by our Creator and Redeemer and so through God’s power we pour ourselves out to other people.

But as I read a bit more of Schnasse’s book this week, I also realized a big difference comes in the “risk-taking” element. “Risk-taking mission and service takes people into ministries that push them out of their comfort zone, stretching them beyond the circle of relationships and practices that routinely define their faith commitments.” In other words, when God is in charge, we have no idea where we might end up!

This was certainly true for me on my very first international mission trip. I went with youth from my church to Peru and we had this grandiose idea that we could change the world and make a difference! We believed in the power of God to work through us. We definitely had the first part right!

What we never expected was how we ourselves would also be transformed. As we found ourselves in a completely different culture, making friends with people who looked nothing like us, loving people who were unlovable by their society’s standards, we became different people.

Schnasse writes that “the stretch of Christian discipleship is to love those for whom it is not automatic, easy, common or accepted. To love those who do not think like us or live like us, and to express respect, compassion and mercy to those we do not know and who may never be able to repay us – this is the love Christ pulls out of us.”

This is God’s abiding love that gives us the power to respond when we see a brother or sister in need. This is God’s abiding love that gives us the ability to speak truth to power when there are injustices in the world. This is God’s abiding love that leads us to lay down our lives for one another.

Now, the big question is – how do I live this out through the church.

Oftentimes, when I have heard this topic of service mentioned in the church, it comes with one of two demands. 1) we need to get more people to serve on the committees in the church. or 2) we need to get more people involved in mission and outreach.

The truth of the matter is, we need people to serve in all sorts of different places. In order to have people serving on the front lines of God’s Kingdom, we need people serving on the church finance committee who will hold the church accountable for their resources, and we need an administrative board and PPR that will help us to discern and express God’s vision for our church.

But, we also need people who are willing to go wherever God will lead us.

If you are feeling called and led to go and serve God’s children in a malaria ridden village in Africa – and you want to put your whole life into God’s service – we want to support and encourage you and equip you.

If you are feeling called to make sure those who are struggling financially in our community have food on the table every day – and you are willing to put your whole life into God’s service – we want to support and encourage and equip you.

If you are feeling called to listen to the person who disagrees with you across the table in our church office and work together to really make a difference in how we teach our children – and if you are willing to put your whole life into God’s service in that way – then we want to support and encourage and equip you.

The truth of the matter is, if we can’t love and serve the person who sits down the pew from us or across the table in the fellowship hall, then we aren’t ready to be out in the world loving and serving other people. But here is where we practice, here is where we learn. And here is where we are sent out into the world to serve. Amen and Amen.

Becoming Disciples through: Gifts

Posted on May 17, 2009Leave a comment

Over the past two weeks we have explored how we support the ministries of Christ’s church through our prayers and our presence.

We live as children of God and sheep of Christ’s flock, by staying connected to our loving parent God and filling ourselves with the Spirit through prayer. Remember that deep breathing – deep praying we need to do?

And we remain connected to the vine and we are nourished for this task through our presence in this community. When we start to get disconnected from one another, the leaves wither and the fruit fades. And it’s hard to get good ministry for Christ’s church out of dead branches.

Today, we remember that we are not only given power and energy through God, like empty vessels for the Spirit to flow through, but we have also been blessed with gifts to share. We have been given temporary ownership over resources and skills and abilities – not so that we can further our own aims, but so that we can further God’s.

In fact, that is why in Malachi there is such a strong condemnation! “You are robbing me!” God says… “in your tithes and offerings! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house… see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”

A portion of what we already have belongs to God, it is meant for God’s ministry. We have been blessed so that we can be a blessing.

We may forget this occasionally – but in many ways the purpose of the tithe and the offering were not so much about having to sacrifice something to God, but about obedience to God’s commands. God’s command to love our neighbors are born out in the giving back of our gifts – because the temple and later the churches used that money and grain and meat to feed and clothe the priests and to give to the poor. Yes, a portion is used as a part of the ritual, a portion is burned in the case of the temple sacrifices, but the remainder is meant for the community – it is meant for the ministry of God in the world.

Today when we talk about gifts in the church, we aren’t talking about cereal and flesh offerings: bread and meat… but we are talking about spiritual gifts and that dreaded word: money.

And the purpose of these gifts is the same as those given in the temple. We are given much in order that we might be a part of furthering God’s kingdom.

But I firmly believe that in both cases – both in the things that we can do and the monetary blessings we have received – we underestimate and we under appreciate our gifts.

Those two themes – underestimation and under appreciation really struck me when I came across a video on YouTube a little over a month ago. Now, some of you may have seen or heard the story of Susan Boyle before, but I believe it is such a powerful moment, that it’s worth viewing over and over again.

(introduce and watch video of Susan Boyle)

Under-estimation and under appreciation.

When Susan walked out on that stage – everyone underestimated what she could do, what her gifts were. And I would also venture to guess that she probably underestimated herself. The immense joy that came across her face when the judges all three said “yes” she would be going on was AMAZING!

Stored up inside of her, for all of those years were these powerful notes and emotive lyrics, and no one took them seriously. Yeah, you want to be a singer… okay. Whatever.

It wasn’t until she was given the chance to share her gifts that anyone – including herself – realized what a blessing she had received or what it could do to change the world.

In the aftermath of that performance, she has caused millions of people around the world to take a second look at their preconceptions and to give someone a chance – that is the gift that God has given us through Susan Boyle.

In our own lives, we too underestimate the power of our gifts and what we actually have to give.

Reading Malachi this week and hearing the call to bring the full tithe into the storehouse… it was powerful and convicting in my life and helped me to remember Wesley’s old adage: Earn all you can, Save all you can, give all you can.

You see, Wesley was in ministry among the poor at the beginning of the Methodist Movement. He was preaching out in the fields and in graveyards to miners and anyone else who would come near. And there was practically no money to support their ministry.

But as Wesley began preaching about money – about how we need to have a strong work ethic and earn all that we possibly can – but that we also need to be frugal with our money and save all that we can – people began to listen.

The most surprising thing happened when the miners and field workers stopped buying the things they didn’t need like hard alcohol and fancy clothes and jewelry – all of those things that made them try to appear wealthy… When they started to cut back on luxuries and to live a simpler life… the Methodists went from a movement of the poor, to a movement of the middle class. They gave and gave generously to the work of the Spirit in the movement – to their class meetings and to the society – but they found that they also had a bit left over for themselves…

“see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I will rebuke the locust for you, so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil; and your vine in the field shall not be barren, says the Lord of hosts.”

We hear the encouragement to be generous too in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. He tells us about the churches of Macedonia. In a time of severe affliction, he writes, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part… they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, BEGGING us for the privledge of sharing in this ministry to the saints.

Now there is a church that didn’t underestimate the power of their gifts. They knew that they could make a difference, they knew that they were called to make a difference, and they wanted to be a part of it.

I want to invite you to experience what the joy of the Macedonians is like. I am going to need a few volunteers to come forward… as many as we have, but not more than 5.

(give them the charge with the $20)

I firmly believe that love can conquer all. I firmly believe that God’s grace conquers all. And in 1 John, we are reminded that our faith and trust in what God will do with our gifts will conquer the world. John writes that “the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.”

These $20 bills can conquer a portion of the world. They are a gift from God – and I can’t wait to see what fruit is born for mission. I pray that you will not find this a burden – but like the Macedonians that your abundant joy and this meager sum might overflow into a wealth of generosity.

That second theme in relationship to our gifts is underappreciation. In the case of Susan Boyle – many people had heard her sing in the past. In fact, you can now find some of her old performances that are posted on YouTube. And she was just as amazing then as she is now!

But no one stopped to appreciate and to celebrate what she had done, to share in the joy of the blessing she could be to the world.

I think that is why our passage from 2 Corinthians is so important. Because Paul took the time to thank and appreciate the Macedonians for what they had given. We have no idea of how much they gave, or what they gave – simply that they gave. And simply for giving, we need to appreciate one another.

I think this is why the commandment to love is without burden. Because when we love others, it is because we were first loved. And in return for the love we give, we are filled up with love in return. It is a circle that keeps growing and expanding because it continues to be replenished and returned.

But sometimes when we offer our gifts in the world, those gifts are not appreciated and our giving becomes burdensome.

In Ephesians, we find a list of gifts that God has given us through the Spirit in order to build up the body of Christ:

Some are called to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers… in other places we find other gifts mentioned: leadership, speaking in tongues, those who can give money, care givers.

We each have a gift that we have been blessed with and when all of our gifts work together according to God’s good will – then the saints are equipped for the work of ministry, the body of Christ is built up and all of us become unified in our faith.

When they all work together.

But you know what – it’s hard to be the hands of Christ giving out soup cans at the food bank if no one ever says thank you. It’s hard to be the mouth of Christ teaching and demonstrating God’s love when no one is paying attention. It’s hard to be the feet of Christ standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes if no one values what you do.

Because when we give our gifts and no one cares, we start to doubt if we are making a difference. We get burned out because we are continually giving and we are not being replenished.

As a church, as the Body of Christ working together, we need to thank one another when we give of ourselves… we need to encourage one another to keep with it, and affirm that there are gifts present that are shining forth. But what we also need to do is to let others affirm the gifts that are within ourselves.

Maybe there is something that you have not given back to the ministry of Christ for years because you got burned out long ago. Maybe there is something that you are afraid to share with the church because you don’t want to be taken advantage of, or don’t think you have the time or energy.

Know – that I am stating today and I hope that you are all with me on this – that we will take the time to celebrate the gifts that you share with us. We will take the time to affirm what you have given to us. Because it is good. Because it is important. And because through Christ, our gifts will transform the world. Amen.

whew.

Posted on April 26, 20092 Comments

all of the distraction and wrestling and frustration yesterday with my sermon… and in the two weeks worth of conversations on membership and discipleship really paid off this morning.

I think my number one goal was to get us to admit as a congregation (and as the church) that our current journey of faith – the one through membership – right now isn’t transforming us into disciples of Jesus Christ… we aren’t quite there yet. The big problem isn’t that it’s a bad road to travel, it’s that we haven’t held one another accountable to prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. We haven’t fully accepted the path.

When I asked how many people feel equipped and empowered to transform the world as a disciple of Jesus Christ – no one raised their hand. When I asked how many wanted to be equipped and empowered to go out there right now and change the world… everyone looked a little bit uneasy.

Good!!!! We should. Because we aren’t there yet!!! But we are always moving on to perfection, and today – we put that out there in the light of Christ, we confessed our shortcomings and failures and over the next five weeks we will be prayerfully discerning how we can begin to live out our vows. Because we don’t have to be disciples in order to practice these things…. but we might just become disciples if we do.

Becoming Disciples through: Accountability and Practice

Posted on April 26, 2009Leave a comment

1. Our life of faith is a journey

Later on in today’s service, the life of faith will begin for this little girl as her parents and family bring her forward to be baptized. As the water is poured over her head and the Holy Spirit fills her life nm, we are remembering that God blessed us with the gift of life… and life abundant.

As her family and as this congregation – we will make promises this morning. Promises to hold her firmly in this faith to which she is born. Promises to guide her and pray for her. Promises to support her – no matter where on this earth her journey may take her.

That journey begins for her today – at this baptismal font.

But it doesn’t begin in the same place for all of us. Think for a moment – Where did this journey begin for you? Was it through an invitation from a friend to come worship? Was it in a Sunday school class? Perhaps as you were engaged in some community service project –or elbow deep in another person’s pain? Maybe your journey began as you plowed your fields or first saw your newborn child and thought about the miracle of life?

Sometimes we think of our journey beginning the moment we are saved. But I want us to think farther beyond that experience. When was the seed of faith first planted in your life? Believe it or not – you have been on this journey ever since.

Now, I’m going to be completely honest here for a moment. In the institutional life of the church – where we record such things as baptisms and confirmations and those who profess their faith – this is the journey of membership. It is pretty much the way the church is organized to help and support people along this journey. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system – but ideally, as we make members of this body of Christ, we are also in the process of making disciples of Jesus Christ. In my mind, that is what the whole journey of faith is about – becoming a disciples of Jesus Christ.

The question I want us to explore over the next month together is – Are we on the right path?

Will you pray with me?

2. Come into the light

God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If I were to stand up here and say that that membership process I just described is perfect – that it accomplishes the mission of the United Methodist church… I would be lying. I would be walking in darkness.

for too long, I think that the church as a whole has let our system do just that – stay in the dark. We simply let it be and we haven’t taken the time to look at whether or not disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world are being formed (that is after all – the goal)

In this passage from 1 John, we are reminded that when we come into the light of God – reality is exposed

all the stuff that we were hiding in the darkness, or ignoring, is seen clearly. And it is clearly judged. I can honestly say that over the past few weeks, I have been looking prayerfully and seriously at this process and I have felt convicted. Our system is broken. It doesn’t work properly. And as a pastor, I can say that I am part of the problem. We make and take vows to support the ministries of the church through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and now our witness – but if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t really have any expectations on people to live them out. We don’t hold one another accountable to these promises. We say all the right things – but then no one really cares if you aren’t walking the talk.

The amazing gift about standing in the light – is that once we see clearly, once we confess and acknowledge what is broken, than God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is our promise from the First Letter of John. And then we have a chance to truly walk in God’s light once again.

3. So come into the light with me. Come see what it is that I have been so convicted about – what it is that isn’t working. For that, let’s go back to our scripture from Luke. We find ourselves in the midst of the disciples, who have basically stalled in their journey faith. They aren’t going forward, they aren’t going backward. They are stuck.

This passage comes after the women have encountered Jesus at the tomb. It comes after a few of the disciples themselves were witnesses to the resurrection. It comes after two followers of Christ met him on the road to Emmaus and rush back to tell the disciples. There has been a whole lot of talking about the resurrected Christ – but the disciples haven’t really MOVED yet.

As Jesus enters their midst, he doesn’t bring judgment, he doesn’t ask them what on earth they are doing, he brings them peace. He shows them his hands and his feet. He eats a piece of fish. He is the living and breathing Jesus Christ walking and talking among them and he wants to remind them of that.

BUT – because he is the light of the world, he also reveals some truth. He sheds some light on the situation so to speak. And so he says: This is what I have told you… that everything that was written about me in the law and prophets and psalms must be fulfilled: the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations!”

The disciples were not only witnesses to all of these things – but they were also now supposed to be witnesses of these things. They are called to go out, to tell the world why Christ died and rose again – to call people to repentance and share with them that their sins are forgiven.

4. This is pretty much the great commission from the gospel of Luke – it is the sending out of the disciples with the promise that the Holy Spirit will soon be right there with them – empowering them to speak and live out God’s good news.

Let’s not leave our church out of the light either… because here in this church – we hold that commission pretty seriously. It is in fact our mission. Our calling as a community is to make disciples of all nations – First, by baptizing them and then, by teaching them everything that God has commanded us.

Hey – we’ve got a baptism happening this very morning! We are helping this beautiful child begin her journey of faith. We are certainly on the right track! We are reaching out to our families and loved ones and inviting them to be a part of this mission that we ourselves are on.

And we seem to be doing some teaching as well. We have Sunday school classes and confirmation and small groups… I know that I have learned a lot in this past year… but I sometimes wonder if we are doing enough.

Are we truly making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?

Quick show of hands… and I want you to be completely honest here – how many of you feel like you are equipped and empowered as a disciple of Jesus to transform the world? How many of you think that you, as the Body of Christ, really can go out there right now and make a difference?

(might be more than you think) I think that if I come into the light, if I stand firmly in the light of Christ, I have to admit I have doubts. I think my doubts are not so much about our ability to do so (or Christ’s ability to work in us), but about our willingness to do it.

We can only go as far as we think we can go. Which means if we

I think that as much as we talk about following Jesus, we are a bit more like those first disciples of Jesus Christ, hunkered down in a room somewhere, not quite sure if we want to take the next steps… not sure if we are able to take the next steps.

5. I think those disciples drastically underestimated just how much was expected of them. And they did so, because they drastically underestimated just how much was given to them.

I wish I could take credit for this wonderful image, but as I talked with the pastor over at the Lutheran church about this passage, he said that we are like sticks of dynamite sitting on a shelf. We are filled with all of this potential power and energy – extremely dangerous stuff! But as long as we sit on the shelf… or in our pews… or on our couches back home, we are simply potential.

We forget that Jesus promised the disciples that power would be given to them. We forget that power came down from heaven and filled the disciples at Pentecost. We forget that although they were in that room waiting for God to act – God has ALREADY acted in our lives.

The Holy Spirit is loose on the world. It is a spark of fire and energy given life by the resurrection of Christ from the dead and it is ready to turn all of that potential energy inside of you – inside of this church – into the amazing transforming power of Jesus Christ.

And yet… the Holy Spirit is wild and elusive. While I would like to believe that we could all just hold out the wicks on our little sticks of dynamite like we hold our hands up in the air and catch the spark – I can’t guarantee the Holy Spirit will show up.

John Wesley – that founder of our faith – waited for YEARS – to have the holy spirit light a fire in his soul. His ministry up until that point was a series of flounders and failures mixed in with some good attempts – but it wasn’t until the Holy Spirit took hold of him that the Methodist movement really took off. In the meantime, he was the same thing he was afterwards… a preacher – out there proclaiming the word of God.

In the midst of one of his struggles with this dilemma, he asked a friend and mentor Peter Bohler what he should do. Bohler’s advice: Preach faith until you have it, then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”

If I were to translate that to our journey of faith, I would say that we need to practice being a disciple until we have the Holy Spirit, then, once we have the Holy Spirit, we will be a disciple! Until it happens, we shouldn’t sit holed up in the church waiting to be filled… but we should be out there, in the world, actively looking for others to join us on this journey of transformation.

Come into the light my friends. See that we already have a path laid out before us – a way of living as a disciple that we have already claimed as being holy and good. We live as disciples through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness. Each of these things are a means of God’s grace – Each of them opens us up to the Holy Spirit in the world around us. Each one of them will transform our lives – if we truly do them and if we hold one another accountable to do so.

That is the journey of faith that we are invited on in this church. Come and walk in the light of God with me in these next weeks. Amen and Amen.

making members, making disciples

Posted on April 20, 20093 Comments

At my church, we have a pretty significant number of people who are “constituents” of our church and not official members. For various reasons, these people want to be an active part of our congregation but do not want to take the vows of membership and officially become United Methodist. And yet, many of those individuals are just as, if not more, active than the “members” of our church.

At School For Ministry last week, we talked a lot about making disciples, and very little about making church members. And at one point in the conversation, we actually admitted that we don’t really expect people to uphold their baptismal vows. If we did, we would have a structure for responding or holding people accountable to their choices. But we don’t. We baptize them, hold them in our prayers and pray to God that a seed we might have planted would take root.

Contrast that with early Christianity. Baptism was a process you only went through after years of formational training. I’m not sure that “membership” was ever the term used in that time, but certainly one could be excluded from the body for offenses until penance had been made. Confession of faith was extremely important.

Now, our church has very good reasons for upholding infant baptism. It says that baptism is a sign that God’s grace goes before us – even before we are able to respond. But… BUT… baptism is also supposed to be an act of the congregation as we together promise, covenant, commit ourselves to nurturing that baby in the Christian faith.

Perhaps it was because for such a long time, Christianity was just the norm that we lost touch of those promises. The congregation didn’t take seriously their role, because after all, this was a Christian nation and anyone who was raised simply by the culture would be brought up Christian. But that was a false presumption and it has led to whole generations of people who have been formed by the culture’s view of Christianity, rather than God’s view of culture.

So we make members. We ask people to join our club. And we count our success in ministry by the number of people we have on the rolls.

And there is nothing in there about making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

The big question for me is how do we start? How do I help my confirmation kids, or the baby who will be baptized this next Sunday – but whose parents do not even attend my church (her grandparents do), or the members of my congregation who think that simply by showing up once a month they are living out their commitments… how do I begin to show each of those groups of people that ideally, membership is a process of discipleship?

Let’s look first at the process of membership.

1) we ask people to renounce sin and profess their faith
2) the congregation promises to nurture one another in the faith
3) if someone has not been baptized, we do so
4) if it is someone who was baptized before and is now reaffirming their faith (new members or confirmands) we have a blessing over them.
5) we recieve people into the church with the following vow:
as members of this congregation, will you faithfully participate in its
ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness? I will.

In our tradition, being a member means taking on those five responsibilities.

And to be honest – I think that they are good commitments to make. I believe that they can be disciple making activities. But the big disconnect is the part where it says “its ministries.” We expect that all of this disciple making will happen in the congregation, or in some way connected to a ministry of the congregation. And it might not. It may be in a bible study at work, or in helping a neighbor, or partnering with community agencies to share your gifts. Our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness will be evidence of our growth as disciples… but we can’t let ourselves be limited to the church. We have to be disciples for the transformation of the world.

Maybe that is my starting place. As we baptise an infant next week, I need to uplift that it is our responsibility to help nurture her wherever in the world she may be. As we get ready to confirm our youth, I need to encourage them to be disciples wherever they may be. And as we go over these membership vows in teaching and preaching in the next five weeks – I need to remind people that this is their responsibility and commitment… and that we need to hold one another accountable to doing so in EVERY facet of our lives.