failure – Salvaged Faith

Sing! Play! Summer! – My Lighthouse

Posted on August 18, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

For the last couple of weeks it has been so incredibly dry around here. It was such a blessing this morning to wake up around 5am with the sounds of thunder gentle rolling and raindrops hitting the earth.
You know… it was in a dark hour like that – during the fourth watch or sometime between three and six in the morning – that a storm is brewing out on the lake with a boatful of disciples hanging on for dear life.

The truth of the matter is, we are all a little bit like those disciples.
We are all here because at some point in our lives we responded to the call of Jesus and showed up.
And we got into the boat, knowing who was guiding the journey.
But we don’t always know where we are going.
In this particular instance, we are heading off to get ready for some new ministry adventure, but the truth is, there is all sorts of stuff going on outside of the boat… Jesus is no where to be seen… we think we might capsize or crash… we feel like we are barely keeping our heads above the water…

You might think I’m talking about some symbolic and imaginary boat.
You picture yourselves floating down the Raccoon River on a kayak or on a little john boat on Saylorville Lake.
But friends, I’m not talking about something imaginary!
We have all – literally – stepped into a boat this morning!

I’ve shared this fun little fact about churches with you before a few years ago, but a refresher is always good.
This part of the sanctuary where I am standing is called the “chancel”. In much older churches, there would have been a screen used to separate this altar area from the rest of the congregation. It created a separation between the people and the sacraments. Because our church is far more egalitarian, the communion railing is the closest thing we have to such a dividing line today.
This part of the sanctuary is the “nave.” The word comes from the Latin navis, which means boat or ship. While that is the technical name for this space in all churches, no matter what architectural style they might have, our church building utilizes a very special design.
Imagine you were building a large wooden boat… you’ve got the frame of it and the beams to hold it together…. Now flip it upside down and you will have something like our vaulted roof today!
So, yes, we are all hanging out here, in the boat we call church, hanging on for dear life, trying to figure out what comes next in the midst of a storm.

You know… sometimes I think that this passage of scripture is just about the storms of that moment, but the reality is, there has been pressure building on the disciples for some time.

If we go back twenty or thirty verses, there have been some trying times for the disciples lately:

Back in 13:54 – Jesus heads to his hometown and tries to do some ministry, but they reject his teaching. They don’t want to hear from this guy that they watched grow up among them. They start naming off his sisters and brothers and parents… who does this guy think he is?
Hmm… the people we know and love are less and less interested in what the church is doing. They’ve stopped coming or are more hostile towards religion. They are quick to point out the faults, rather than listen to what we’ve really been up to.
Sound familiar?

Then, as chapter 14 starts, we get the story of how John the Baptist – the very same one who kicked things off for Jesus and baptized him and started calling people to repentance. Well, he got arrested by King Herod and beheaded, and word had just reached Jesus and the disciples. John found himself in this position because he challenged the political establishment and the way they kept breaking the rules. He raised his prophetic voice and was killed for it.
Can you imagine the impact such news might have had upon this rag tag bunch of disciples?
Were they looking around, wondering if they would be next?
Our political climate here in the U.S. is very different from that of the disciples, because swirling all around us are people who are speaking out and challenging the political structure… from both ends of the theological spectrum.
But there is also a spirit of animosity and silencing that has a chilling effect. It feels like we have never been more divided and while we might not fear for our lives if we say something, we do fear rejection.
I also remember that King Herod was not just a political figure, but a religious one as well. He was appointed as a governor by the Romans over his own Jewish people. So this is also a faith conversation within the family.
And I can’t help but draw parallels between conflicts we are experiencing today in the United Methodist Church. In some places, the move towards inclusion is being challenged by more theologically conservative folks. In other places, including right here in Iowa, LGBTQ folks are being brought up on complaints and put on trial for challenging and breaking rules they believe are unjust.
Whether in Jesus’ time or today, when the air is charged like that, it makes it hard to figure out what to do or say next.

Well, you know what Jesus does as this tension and pressure is mounting?
He says: Goodness gracious friends – I need a break! And he tries to step away and center himself for a bit.
But who shows up there in that quiet, deserted place, but large crowds of people who are hungry to hear and see and touch and experience God’s grace.
So Jesus invites everyone to sit down and takes a meager offering of fish and loaves and turns them into a feast for thousands.
The disciples didn’t think it was possible. They couldn’t see the potential miracle all around them. But Jesus did… and he brought it into existence.

And we, as a church, experience that, too, don’t we?
In the wake of General Conference, we’ve all tried to take a collective breath and wait and see and pray for what comes next… but the reality is there is still work to do.
There are still hungry people around us and folks in the hospital and the precarious nature of life and death continues. We aren’t always sure what to do about it.
But then the Holy Spirit shows up and puts us to work.
Last week, we raised around $2100 and collected 490 items for the DMARC Food Pantry and we met some really great neighbors at the Benefit Concert.
You’ve been showing up for one another in the hospital through surgeries and illness.
We’ve come together as a community for funerals and shared loved and hospitality with people that we might not have known very well before we sat down to share stories and break bread.
Thank you, to so many of you, who have rolled up your sleeves, and shown up and gone the extra mile.
Ministries of healing and compassion and love had been growing all around us this summer by God’s grace, but it is also hard and exhausting work.

Then… and only then… does Matthew’s gospel put us on the boat.
Jesus sends the disciples on ahead to the other side of the lake and so they climb aboard.
But you know what? They don’t really know what’s waiting for them over there.
I think that the disciples, really wanted Jesus to come with them and so they tried as hard as they could to stay near the shore and wait for Jesus.
In the midst of all of the mounting pressure and tension and conflict… they don’t want to do this alone.
They don’t want to take a step in the wrong direction or land in the wrong spot.
They doubt themselves. They don’t want to fail.
And that’s when the storm hits.
And out there on those stormy waters, in that unfamiliar territory, they get overwhelmed by the chaos of it all.
They are so terrified and shaken that when Jesus walks out to them on the water and shows up in their midst, they don’t even recognize him.
Because why would Jesus be out there?
Out in those scary and unfamiliar waters?
They felt lost, confused, disoriented…
And Jesus shows up, because that is precisely when they… when we… need him the most.
In our Conspire service, we’ve been doing a number of songs by the band, Rend Collective. They are a group from Northern Ireland whose upbeat music grabs hold and lifts you out of your seat and a lot of their work, unlike a lot of other contemporary artists, is focused on creating space for people to sing together.
Our favorite song for this week is “My Lighthouse,” and they wrote this song thinking about the experience of those disciples out there on the troubled seas.
Gareth Gilkeson said, “we sing about the failures and doubting, and knowing that God doesn’t walk out on us.”
God doesn’t walk out on us.
Let me say that again… God doesn’t walk out on us.
Instead, Jesus walks right up to you.
He walks through the waves and the wind and gets in the boat with us.
The very light of the world draws close, leading us through our troubles, showing us how to love and take the next step, reminding us that we are not alone.

Yes, maybe things feel like they are building up and there is uncertainty and we don’t exactly know what tomorrow is going to bring. We might take some changes, like Peter stepping out of the boat, and we might fall flat on our face. We might struggle and doubt and feel like giving up, but here is what that song reminds us:
God isn’t going to let us go.
And just like Jesus reaches out and grabs Peter’s hand and pulls him back in, Jesus is reaching out for us.
When we hold on to that light…
When we hold on to that love…
When we hold on to those promises…
Christ will help us make it back to the shore.

We can have questions and doubts.
We might wrestle with what we are supposed to do next.
We might try something and fail.
We might be at a complete loss for words.
But friends, don’t let the storm completely overwhelm you.
Because there is a light already shining in the darkness ready to guide us to where we need to be.
We might not see it yet and we definitely might not be able to glimpse the shore… but its there. And if we keep turning to Jesus, he’ll lead us there.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rising Strong: Failing and Falling

Posted on May 21, 2017Leave a comment

In this “Rising Strong” series, we have remembered a few things so far about what it means to live as children of the resurrection.

First – we have to be ourselves. God has uniquely created us with gifts and skills and has put us in this place for this time. We shouldn’t spend our days trying to be someone we are not. We need to learn to love and embrace who God has made us to be.

Second – we should wholeheartedly put ourselves to work for the Kingdom of God. If you are a fisherman – go out there and fish for people. If you are an accountant, go out and count people for Christ. If you are a mom or a dad or a grandparent, love every person you meet as a child of God. Take the life God has given you and use every minute of it to serve the Lord.

We are called to take both of those things and put them into practice. So, if you haven’t already filled out or turned in the “Gifts and Talents” booklet that we handed out last week – this is your opportunity. It is one way you can let us know here at the church what are some of the ways you are willing to be yourself and go all in for God. There is a box at the back of the sanctuary to turn them in, or you can drop them off in the office. There are also some blanks there, as well.

Today, we are going to ask what happens next…

What happens when you figure out who you are and you give it all to God?

Let’s pray:

In the past six weeks, I joined a gym… a “transformation center”… and spent some intentional time focusing on my own health and well-being. I’m now twenty pounds lighter and trying to figure out how to keep up the effort without the strict diet and accountability of the group I worked out with.

One of the things that we talked a lot about during those six weeks was failure.

Every week, there would be at least one exercise where our goal was to do as many as possible. Whether it was sit ups or planks, a dead lift or overhead press, the goal was to increase either the weight or the duration of the exercise so that you physically could not do one more rep.

Now, this was not how we were supposed to exercise every muscle every time. But the general idea was that if you weren’t pushing yourself and trying to really grow, you wouldn’t.

Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “the last 3 or 4 reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack: having the guts to go on and say they’ll go through the pain, no matter what happens.”

What most people lack is the guts to go on.

We lack the drive to be willing to push ourselves to failure.

In our gospel reading this morning, the disciples of Jesus Christ are in a boat. They have been sent by Jesus to head off and get ready for a new ministry adventure, but they have been kept up by everything that is going on outside of the boat. The wind is blowing, the waves are strong, and they are a bit fearful of what lies ahead. They really don’t know if Jesus will be on the other side of the lake in the morning.

We are a lot like those disciples. We are all here, because at some point we responded to the call of Jesus Christ in our lives and we showed up. We heard the call and got into the boat, even if we didn’t quite know where this boat was headed.

But, like the disciples, we also really want Jesus to come with us, to be with us, and we are afraid to push off from the shore out into the world.

In some ways, I think that is where our church is right now. We are hanging out in this boat that has kept us safe. You’ve been kept your heads above the waters and have navigated lots of storms. But the winds of the spirit have been blowing and have been moving among us, and I think that in many ways, we are now finding ourselves in uncharted waters – we are just a little ways from the shoreline that we are used to.

Right out there with the disciples. They found themselves in stormy waters, in unfamiliar territory, in a place they thought Jesus couldn’t possibly be. So much so, that they didn’t recognize Jesus when he showed up in the middle of the night.

Only Peter was brave enough, courageous enough, only Peter had the guts to go on and seek Jesus out there on the water.

He remembered who he was and who God was.

He remembered the ways that Jesus had called him to follow and the amazing things that could be accomplished in God’s name.

And he took the risk to step out of the boat… to be foolish and daring and to trust where the Spirit is leading.

He didn’t let his head tell him “no” when his heart was screaming “yes”.

And he walked on water.

Well, for a minute.

He got scared. He stumbled. He started to fall.

By all accounts, Peter failed.

But the thing is, he took the chance where no one else had.

He pushed himself far enough that he could fail, that he might fail, and while he did – it also meant that he was the only one who was in a place to grow from that experience.

In his book, Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, neuroscientist Stuart Firestein points out all the ways the scientific process guarantees failures and flops.

There are very few eureka moments or big discoveries compared with the thousands of failures and flops that happen along the way.

But every one of those failures is an opportunity to learn, tweak, grow, and do something different.

Every one of those failures allows you to learn a new limit or boundary and to push past it.

As a church, maybe we should embrace not only the art of ministry, but also the science of ministry.

We should take big enough risks and have the guts to try new things if the Spirit is leading us.

And we should not be afraid to fail and to fall flat on our face.

Because every time we do, we have the chanced to process, evaluate, and make adjustments.

When you turn in your Gifts and Talents booklet, here is the thing I want you to remember. You don’t have to be perfect in order to offer your gifts to God. None of us are. You will make mistakes. You will need others to help you and teach you. And you might even discover that something really isn’t for you. But you will never know what your limits are and how God might stretch you unless you offer yourself!

As a community, that also means that we need to be open and ready to surround people with love when they offer themselves and work for God’s kingdom, fully expecting that there will be mistakes along the way.

Innovation and discover take time, patience, grace, and a familiarity with failure. Holy failure. The kind of failure that means you are constantly moving on towards perfection – without judgment for where you have been.

God isn’t done with us yet… so may we have the courage to be ourselves, go all in, and make a whole lot of holy failures… knowing that Jesus (and this community of faith) is right here, ready to catch us.

Amen.

Renegade Gospel: The Red-Letter Rebel

Posted on February 21, 2016Leave a comment

There was a challenge issued TWICE by Mike Slaughter in chapter one of this Renegade Gospel book we are examining during this Lenten season: to read through one of the gospels and pay specific attention to the red letters… to the words of Jesus… spoken there.

I pulled out my bible and started with Luke. Luke is the gospel assigned for this particular Lenten season according to the powers that be. It is the gospel we will be following most weeks during worship.

The very first time Jesus speaks in Luke’s gospel, it is in the synagogue in his hometown and he is preaching.

Jesus reads from Isaiah, explains a bit about what he has read, and makes everyone so angry they drive him out of town and try to throw him off a cliff.

I really hope you don’t try to do that to me this morning!

Now, many of his words, like the ones we find today in the reading (Rod/Natalie) just shared with us, are words of healing or forgiveness or calling.

“Woman, you are set free from your sickness” (Luke 13:12)

But almost every single time, like we found in our reading today, when Jesus does so, he really makes people angry.

He calls the wrong people, he forgives the unforgiveable, he heals on the wrong day…

The synagogue leader, in this particular healing, was “incensed” (as my bible puts it) that Jesus was healing on the Sabbath.

And all of this anger and frustration on behalf of the system was slowly coming to a boil, as we find just a few verses later.

As our reading continues, the Pharisees (the religious leaders) are plotting together with the political leader, Herod, to be done with Jesus for good.

Now, Herod’s father was the one who had tried to kill Jesus as an infant because he thought he might be a threat to his power.

And this Herod has already beheaded John the Baptist.

Both Herod and the religious leaders were upset about the populist movement stirring up in response to the ministry of John and Jesus.

As Mike Slaughter writes in Renegade Gospel:

“Jesus could never be perceived as a protector of the status quo” (p. 27)

I think the same is as true today as it was then.

Jesus is never satisfied with things the way they are, because Jesus has a vision of the way things can and should be.

He is constantly getting into trouble for doing what is “right for the sake of people” … even if it was against “the rules.”

I think, at the core, Jesus is always pushing the status quo, always challenging us to do more and to be more faithful, because his goal is nothing short of the Kingdom of God lived out on earth… and friends, we aren’t there yet!

Those of us gathered in this room are incredibly blessed… even if we struggle… because we have more resources at our fingertips than most people in this world.

But even here, in a great city, in a great state, in a great country, can we agree that we’re not in heaven yet?

And the KINGDOM is the standard Jesus is holding us to. The KINGDOM is the standard Jesus is holding the political and religious leaders to. The KINGDOM OF GOD is the standard.

And so even today, as a modern religious leader of the Christian faith, I read these words of Jesus and I am still challenged and pushed to really think about the teachings I share with you and how I call us to live them out together.

And all of those harsh words Jesus has for the Pharisees…. well, they are for people like me, too. Because too often, as your leaders, we have simply not preached the gospel! We haven’t shared the vision of the Kingdom of God and we haven’t given you the tools to truly be the Body of Christ, in the world, helping to bring that Kingdom to fruition.

And friends… I think that’s what we, the Body of Christ, are supposed to do.

When I re-read Luke’s gospel, over and over again, Jesus asks us to not only hear his words, but to obey them. Just on a glance back through this morning, I counted at least 9 times (Luke 6:47, Luke 8:21, Luke 9:48, Luke 10:1, Luke 10:28 & 37, Luke 11:28, Luke 12:1, Luke 18:22)… Jesus asks us to not only hear but to do them. To live them. To go and do likewise.

We are trying to be faithful Christians and put into practice what Jesus says.

And, here is the good news I discovered in these commands to “go and do likewise.”

Jesus is NEVER angry at ordinary people who doing the best they can to live out their faith.

He never shames them.

He never scolds them.

He invites them! But he doesn’t get mad at them for where they currently are in their journey of faith.

He is never upset with someone if they aren’t ready to do it. Jesus simply sends them on their way. Maybe another day, in a different sermon, they’ll be ready.

In our United Methodist tradition, we call this “going on to perfection.” Discipleship is a lifelong journey and you are wherever you are today without any judgment.

We are called to be like Jesus, and we fully acknowledge and admit that we aren’t there yet!

And why would we be? Jesus is divine! The Son of Man AND Son of God. The standards are the very KINGDOM OF GOD!

We are mere mortals, trying to live up to the standards of the divine.

There is a quote by Barbra Brown Taylor in her book, “The Preaching Life” that has always stuck with me:

Over and over, my disappointments draw me deeper into the mystery of God’s being and doing. Every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so I can see what I have propped up in God’s place – no, that is not God, so who is God?

It is the question of a lifetime, and the answers are never big enough or finished. Pushing past curtain after curtain, it becomes clear that the failure is not God’s but my own, for having such a poor and stingy imagination. God is greater than my imagination, wiser than my wisdom, more dazzling than the universe, as present as the air I breathe, and utterly beyond my control. (p. 10)

Every day, when we read the gospels, we pull back the curtain, as Barbara Brown Taylor writes, and we discover that we aren’t Jesus yet… we still have a ways to go!

We still have discoveries to make about what it means to be a faithful Christian.

But here is the beautiful and amazing thing about “going on to perfection”…

Every day, we also have an opportunity to grow more faithful.

Every day, we also have a chance to be more loving.

Every day, we also get to be a better Christian than yesterday.

The words of Jesus are NOT easy. The standards he sets for us are incredibly high! You know, Kingdom of God level!

But even in the midst of those Kingdom standards and Jesus’ never ending call for us to respond accordingly, there is grace upon grace upon grace.

One of my favorite lines in the chapter for this week from Mike Slaughter was this:

Although Jesus always called his followers to enter the small gate and take the narrow road to the Kingdom, he repeatedly taught mercy and relationship over rigidity and judgment. (p. 28)

And he points to Peter as the prime example.

You know Peter… the disciple who constantly questioned Jesus motives and got it wrong.

You know, Peter… the one who fell asleep in the garden.

You know, Peter… the one who denied Jesus three times when he needed him the most?

Jesus has ridiculously high standards. But when we don’t meet them… when we fail… and we will… Jesus keeps welcoming us back.

Keeps loving us.

Keeps showing mercy and love.

Keeps pouring God’s sanctifying, perfecting grace into our lives so tomorrow we can pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and try it again.

There is life and power and love and grace and mercy in the red-letter words of Jesus.

Jesus is constantly pushing our world through these words to rebel against what is… in light of what could be.

Jesus is asking us to examine ourselves, our church, our world, and to ask:

Can we be greater tomorrow than we are today?

Can we be more like Christ tomorrow than we were today?

Can this world look more like heaven tomorrow than it does today?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Always.

Thanks be to God.

Practicing Our Religion in Public

Posted on February 11, 2016Leave a comment

By some accounts, yesterday morning I did exactly the opposite of what Jesus tells us in Matthew.

Some of us gathered at a local coffee shop, a public place, to pray and impose ashes and remember we are merely human.

We were out there, practicing our religion in public.

I always find this passage from the gospel of Matthew such a very strange text to be assigned for Ash Wednesday, but there it is. Every year, on this day, these are the words that are proclaimed.

When you pray, shut the door and pray in secret.

When you give, don’t look for praise.

When you fast, don’t let it show.

All of these seem to speak against exactly the kind of public activity of gathering in a coffee shop to impose ashes.

Or the rather public display of walking outside of the church after worship with a big black cross on your forehead.

We are starting a series in worship here at church called, Renegade Gospel, and are reminded that Jesus didn’t come to start a religion. Jesus didn’t come to hand out new rituals for us to follow.

But you know what, Jesus did come to start a revolution.

Jesus did come to re-instigate a relationship.

Jesus came because of the simple fact we remember today. We are nothing but dust and to dust we shall return.

When we look deeper and contextually at our gospel reading in Matthew today, we come to understand that Jesus isn’t warning against being religious people in public.

No, he is asking us to stop pretending to be religious just because we are in public.

Jesus is calling us back into relationship… with God, with ourselves, with one another.

He is calling us back to the reality of our sin, our failures, our outward trappings of religion that demonstrate little or no faith on the inside.

As the Message translation sums up this passage: When you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production… Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. (Matthew 6:5-6)

That sentiment is echoed in the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:13. He is reaching out to them and asking that they listen, that they heed his words, because of what they have seen and heard about his faith.

He hasn’t hidden it. He has lived it. Fully. And living his faith has gotten him into lots of trouble.

The kindness and holiness of spirit, the genuine love and truthful speech… all of it has brought dishonor, ill repute, punishment… and yet he and the other disciples persist. They are not afraid to live out their faith publically for all to see and directly in the face of the religion of the day.

We might think of religion as the rituals and rules, the culture and conditions of faith. It is the box we put our faith in.

But Jesus comes to break the box apart and pull us out into the world.

Jesus comes to help us understand that our relationship with him is about far more than prayerful words and pious actions.

The gospel is yearning for us to be so caught up in its mercy, love and goodness that we can’t help but live into its revolutionary reality.

We are called to stop pretending to be religious and start living faithfully.

Whether this morning, gathered in a public space, or right here, tonight, in this community of worship, we are proclaiming the revolutionary message of the gospel.

We are dust.

We are nothing.

We are sinful.

We need help.

And those words are anathema to our culture. In a world where we try to show how strong and powerful and successful they are – they are tantamount to treason.

But we stand on the street corner and say them anyways… because they are true.

And because Jesus has come.

The one who created us out of dust will re-create us from the dust of death.

There is mercy and forgiveness in this place.

There is life, even in the midst of death.

And that, we should proclaim from every place we find ourselves.

We should invite every friend and stranger alike into that revolutionary truth.