grace – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

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.

Momentum for Life: God Loves You Too Much To Let You Stay There

Posted on January 19, 20161 Comment

God loves you just the way you are… and loves you too much to let you stay there.

Those words I heard from Anne Lamott in a lecture she gave at my seminary.

God loves you just the way you are… and loves you too much to let you stay there.

I have really enjoyed diving into Michael Slaughter’s book “Momentum for Life” this January. I think in many ways, he is speaking the same message as Lamott. He is reminding us that God has all sorts of things planned for our lives… a direction, a purpose, a mission.

Slaughter is inviting us to make a commitment and to discover where God is leading us… how God is changing us… through his acronym D.R.I.V.E.

D for Devotion

R for Readiness to Learn

I for Investing in Relationships

V for Vision

and E for Eating and Exercise.

Each of these qualities describe a committed Christian disciple who knows that God loves them just as they are, but who is willing to let God lead them to where they could be.

Over the last two weeks, Pastor Todd has been guiding us through both the concept of Momentum and the first characteristic, Devotion.

So today, we turn our attention to this concept of readiness to learn.

What I find fascinating about Slaughter’s emphasis on learning is that he connects it with our working life. Or maybe to put it a different way, our life’s work.

Now, just a quick survey here.

How many of you have a job you love, that fulfills your life’s passion and gives you a sense of purpose?

And how many of you have a job that pays the bills?

And of course, there are those of us who don’t work, either because we stay at home or are retired or are in school or simply can’t find work at this time.

Some of us are lucky enough to get paid for what Slaughter calls “our life work.” But for others of us, that life work can still be lived out on the job site, in our families, and throughout our communities.

Slaughter describes three characteristics of this life work: that it is creative, redemptive, and innovative.

But I think all three of these can be boiled down to one idea: He is calling us to let God’s sanctifying grace pour into everything we do.

In October, our ten confirmands and their mentors and teachers went on a retreat to Wesley Woods. Over those 48 hours or so, we covered many of the basics of United Methodist theology and teaching… from the creation to the new creation, from repentance to sanctification. We learned a LOT of really big, complicated words over that weekend and to help us remember them, the youth prepared some really amazing skits, drew pictures, and journaled.

But we also had some helpful metaphors to help us.

One of them is a depiction of grace in our United Methodist tradition.

house of grace

We believe that grace is not just a one time thing that happens to us, but is present all throughout our lives.

Before we are even aware of God, prevenient grace is there… preparing us to know and see God. It is like the front porch of a house… there to welcome us and create space for us to enter the Christian life. This idea of prevenient grace is why we baptize even newborn babies… because we believe God is already working in their life. Remember – God loves us just the way we are!

At some point, we consciously choose the grace God has offered to us. We call that justifying grace. It describes the moment when we accept God’s acceptance of us. In some faith traditions, people hold on to and celebrate the day, hour, and minute when they were saved and they are describing the door we have in this blueprint. That door is always open and waiting for us… and some of us walk through early in life and some late and some of us linger in the doorway for a long time.

The last kind of grace, and the one I think Slaughter is referring to in this chapter is sanctifying grace. It is the commitment to keep growing, to keep learning, to keep going on to perfection as we live in God’s grace and love. You see… our Christian journey does not come to an end when we enter the house. We have a whole lifetime of grace awaiting us and God loves us too much to let us stay exactly as we were when we entered.

This grace is what Paul is speaking of in his letter to the Philippians we heard this morning. He starts in our reading to describe justifying grace… the righteousness of Christ he received. But he doesn’t end there. No, he writes:

It’s not that I have already reached this goal or have already been perfected, but I pursue it, so that I may grab hold of it because Christ grabbed hold of me for just this purpose… I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me… God’s upward call in Christ Jesus. (12-14)

Our life work is to let God’s sanctifying grace fill all that we do.

If we close our lives to God’s grace… if we say to God – “Thanks for dying on the cross, thank you for salvation, but I’ll take it from here,” then we are like those described in Psalm 127… we can work and toil all we want, right where we are, and never go anywhere. It’s like we walk through the doorway of grace, but refuse to live in the house!

That’s what Paul had been doing back when he was the Pharisee, Saul. He had all of the right answers. He knew what he was doing and who he was. He was at the top of his game, an expert in the law, and successful beyond all measure.

He thought he knew what it meant to be faithful and thought he had achieved it.

Until he discovered that learning and seeking and changing is more important than having all the right answers.

Until he learned that growing is more important than knowing.

Until he found it’s not what you know, it is who you know.

God loves you just the way you are… and loves you too much to let you stay there.

No matter who you are, or what you do, God can use you. God can pour sanctifying grace into your life to transform even the most mundane or ordinary moments.

And that means we have to keep growing. We have to let go of what no longer works. We have to always seek what God is doing next. “We must forget what lies behind and stain forward to what lies ahead.” One of the practices Slaughter suggests for us is that we are always reading something. We never stop learning. We always are growing in our awareness of what is going on in the world and the new insights that others have to offer.

And it means we choose to participate in God’s redeeming work – to allow God’s love to fill all that we do and every person we meet so that our work is not in the service of money but in the service of God. Slaughter invites us to observe all the time… to look out for those who can teach us, but also to become aware every day of those opportunities to practice God’s redeeming love. In that way, we discover life work that seeks the good for others, instead of simply ourselves.

Finally, we were made to be creative… to dream and imagine, to nurture and to help life grow. You and I… we were made in the image of God and that means God has invited us to be cocreators, to open our minds, to keep pushing forward to excellence. And that means we need to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty… to keep practicing and seeking God every day, never content with what we have already accomplished.

Because even though God loves you just the way you are… God loves you too much to let you stay there.

J&MES: Mercy & Judgment

Posted on September 20, 2015Leave a comment

I love to play games. Board games, video games, card games…

One of my favorite ways to spend time with family is to grab a deck of cards and play all evening long.

Pinochle and 500 in particular. In both, there is some luck involved in the hand you are dealt, but also a lot of strategy during the card play. The games involve bidding, communication with your partner, and risk taking. Because you never know when your cards might get trumped.

You see, in both games, there is a trump suit. And that means that whoever wins the bid gets to pick the suit… whether diamonds, hearts, clubs, or spades… that will automatically win anytime they are played.

No matter how high of a card you play… a trump card can beat it.

In our life of faith, there are a lot of trump cards we can play. Actions we take or words we say that stop a conversation in its tracks or change the trajectory of a person’s action.

As James writes to the people of God, he is basically telling them that they have two kinds of trump cards to choose from: Mercy & Judgment.

The question is… which is more faithful? And which are YOU going to play?

Each of us were handed a card as we walked in this morning. For the purposes of our message this morning, I want you to ignore whatever the number or suit is of the card you were handed and instead I want you to pick your own ranking.

I want you to think about the worst thing you have ever done in your life. The biggest sin you have committed. That one that stays with you. Maybe, it is the one others keep reminding you about. Maybe, the one no one else even knows about.

How would you rank that sin?

Is it a four of stealing?

Is it a jack of adultery?

Is it an ace of lies?

No matter how we have ranked our sin, no matter what suit it is, God has a word for us today.

Because no matter how high of a card you have or you play… a trump card can beat it.

And in our life of faith, we can choose between two suits of trump: Mercy & Judgment.

First, let’s look at what it would mean to play the trump card of judgment.

When you choose judgment as your trump card, then when you see sin in the world, you choose to name it. You choose to treat others based upon their obedience to the Law of God, because you are playing by the rule of Law.

And that means that every one of the Ten Commandments Moses chiseled into the stone tables, every one of the 613 laws of the Old Testament, every single rule of the scriptures applies.

Not just for other people, who you are judging…. But for yourself, too!

This is the same message Paul shares with the Roman community. In chapter 2 of his letter to the Romans, he speaks about the difference between living under the law and living under grace… and specifically is speaking to a Jewish community. “Those who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law… If you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law…. Then why don’t you who are teaching others teach yourself.” (Romans 2: 12, 17, 21)

If you choose to judge others by the Law, you are choosing to live under the Law. And that means all the Law applies to you.

One of the big problems that James sees with this is that Judgment is often arbitrary.

We pick and choose which laws we are going to judge by.

As The Message translation of James 2:1 puts it: “My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith.”

The laws we tend to judge by ARE influenced by the changing tides of culture. We can see how the important sins of the day have changed through time… whether we are focusing on slavery, prohibition, child labor, sexuality, abortion… some sins get elevated to the top and are THE standard by which we judge other people.

If we go back to the game of cards… they are the ones that we think are the Aces, Kings and Queens of sin.

But as James writes, “you can’t pick and choose in these things.”

If you are going to live under the law, you have to live under the ENTIRE law. And Paul says it is impossible: “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” (Romans 2:23)

But we keep trying to play the trump cards of judgment, and we point out to others the exact rank and suit of their cards.

The problem is, we tend to use our life as the measuring stick, rather than the law. We pick out their suits by the Laws we choose to follow and rank them based on our own obedience, success, and failures. Who is rich and who is poor… who is deserving and undeserving… all of these distinctions depend on where we stand and what we believe about ourselves…. Not how God sees them or us.

And God sees all sin equally. It doesn’t matter if you are a serial killer or committed adultery or if you stole a candy bar when you were seven… we are all sinners.

Every single sin, no matter how we rank them… whether it is an ace or a three… they are equal. They all get trumped by judgment.

The other option is to choose mercy as your trump card. When you do so, it is grace that sets the rules of the game.

A very simple definition of mercy is to give someone something they do not deserve.

And as we just heard, none of us deserve grace. “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory,” Paul writes… and then continues, “but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace.” (Romans 3:23-24)

The Law of God helps us to see how far away from God’s intentions we have fallen, but it is only the Grace of God that gives us the freedom to get back up and reclaim who we were truly meant to be.

On Tuesday of this week, Pastor Todd and I were in Ames to hear a presentation from Bishop Ken Carter who presides over the Florida Annual Conference.

First and foremost, Bishop Carter reminded us that we were all made in the image of God. Before the fall, before sin entered the world, we were made in God’s image.

And in our tradition, we believe that no sin, no matter how big, can ever take that image of God away from us. It is there… deep within our lives.

Every person has it… whether they are aces by the world’s standards or fours and fives.

And God’s grace enters our lives while we are still sinners and sets us free.

In our tradition, we talk about the justifying grace that saves us, but again, grace has nothing to do with anything we have done, with our gifts or our merits…. It is simply our acceptance of the fact that God has already accepted us.

It is our decision to stop playing by the rules of Law and to start living by the rule of grace.

Or as James puts it, “talk and act like a person expecting to be judged by the Rule that sets us free.” (2:12)

When we live by the rules of grace and play the trump card of mercy, then again, we have to treat every person in this world the same. No kings or threes here, either.

And the trump of mercy allows us to see others not as the worst thing they have ever done, but instead to see the image of God in their lives.

Bishop Carter also shared with us this past week a really concrete picture of the difference between playing the trump of judgment and playing the trump of mercy.

He pointed to two well-know, important people of faith: Pope Benedict and Pope Francis.

Both of them are holy men. They have both dedicated their lives to God’s word.

Yet, their words of response to one of the big “sin questions” of our time are striking.

In regards to homosexuality, Pope Benedict said: “although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil.”

Pope Francis: “Who am I to judge?”

The world saw Pope Benedict as a continuation of a church that was declining in relevancy, pointing out the sins of the world and judging without paying attention to its own sins.

But we have seen the world respond in a different way to Pope Francis, and his focus on mercy has everything to do with it.

He washed the feet of prisoners on Good Friday. He lives a life of humility. He has declared a season of mercy and forgiveness of those who have had abortions. He is calling the church to treat every single person with mercy, love, and grace.

He has not abandoned the churches official positions on any of these controversial subjects, but he has let go of the trump card of judgment. He refuses to play it.

Bishop Carter pointed out that the more we approach holiness, the more humility we should have and the more we leave judgment in the hands of Jesus.

And what we see is that others’ lives are transformed not by playing a trump card of judgment and pointing out their sins.

No, transformation happens in the presence of holiness and grace and love… when the trump card of mercy wipes away whatever suit or rank has defined us and allows us to remember the image of God that is in our lives.

Mercy or Judgment?

James is pretty clear… Mercy trumps everything…. Even Judgment.

Love before Knowledge

Posted on February 8, 2015Leave a comment

There are two things I have come to hope for on Communion Sundays:

Welch’s grape juice in the cup, and Hawaiian Sweet Bread on the table.

And that’s for a couple of reasons:

First, they both taste better than most other options available.

Second, the Hawaiian Sweet Bread is the perfect combination of soft and easy to tear and yet not crumble into pieces all over the place – which is a good thing when you are the one breaking bread every time.

And third, the Welch’s are Methodist.

In fact, the birth of Welch’s grape juice came out of our desire to stop using fermented wine during the temperance movement. Thomas Welch was a dentist and a communion steward at his local Methodist Church. He heard about how Louis Pasteur had begun to pasteurize milk, so he decided to try and apply the process to grape juice in 1869.

His son, Charles, marketed the pasteurized grape juice to these temperance-minded churches. In fact, he quit his job as a dentist to do so and created the Welch’s Grape Juice brand in 1893. (from Welchs.com/about-us/our-story/our-history and http://www.gbod.org/resources/changing-wine-into-grape-juice-thomas-and-charles-welch-and-the-transition-)

While the roots of our “unfermented juice of the grape” go back to the late 19^th century, we have continued to emphasize using grape juice, even long after prohibition was repealed.

Our 1964 Book of Worship included this phrase which we have continued to use until today: that while the “historic and ecumenical practice has been the use of wine, the use of the unfermented grape juice by The United Methodist Church and its predecessors is an expression of pastoral concern for recovering alcoholics, enables the participation of children and youth, and supports the church’s witness of abstinence.” (BOW p 28)

I share the brief history lesson, because I think it relates to our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this morning.

As this community struggled with what it meant to be unified, they realized that a lot of different types of folks were part of their church.

Some of them were life-long Jews who had followed the way of Jesus. They had only ever worshipped one God. Yet some of the new believers in the faith were pagans. They had spent their entire lives worshipping at the temples of various Roman deities like Apollo and Poseidon.

So how were these people all supposed to share one roof? They had different histories of practice and different understandings of what it meant to worship.

One particular place where their practices conflicted was around the practice of eating meat. In the ancient world, almost all of the meat consumed was done so at a temple. That lamb or beef or whatever was the result of an offering given to the local god.

And here is where the conflict came.

Those who had been followers of Christ of a while, many from the Jewish background, KNEW that there was only one God. Intellectually, there was no worship of these various gods because they simply didn’t exist. So who cared if they partook of a little steak at the local temple?

Well, for those who had recently converted away from that temple worship, it was a big deal. The new converts were working hard to keep on the way, to follow Jesus, and all that alluring smell of roasted meat was making it awfully difficult. And when they peeked in the doors of Apollo’s temple and saw the elders of their new church eating – well, they got pretty confused. Was Apollo real or not? And if Apollo wasn’t real, why were those Christians worshipping him?

So Paul lifted up a practical solution for the faithful long-time Christians: just stop eating meat. It is the loving thing to do. And even though you know it isn’t idol worship, you have the ability to choose to act a different way in order to help your brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the same way, we lift up grape juice when we break bread together, so that all might be welcomed at this table. It doesn’t mean wine is bad. It doesn’t mean that some of us don’t drink. But choosing to consume grape juice together means that everyone has a place here.

There is a line in Paul’s letter that I think is key for us to remember this morning: You sin against Christ if you sin against your brothers and sisters and hurt their weak consciences this way.

Now, here Paul doesn’t mean they are weak as in bad… he simply means they are new to the faith. They still have a lot to learn. They are growing into what it means to be a Christian. And so they need to have as few barriers to their faith as possible.

Do you remember, with the children, when we talked about evil spirits? When we talked about those things in our lives that keep other people from knowing Jesus?

Knowledge is sometimes like that. We can flaunt it and it can puff us up and keep us from really and truly showing love to another person.

Love is what is important. Not rules or knowledge or what we eat or drink. Love binds us together. If we remember that we sin against Christ if we sin against our brothers and sisters and hurt them, then love leads us to ask the difficult question of how our actions keep others from Jesus. Is there something about what we are doing that is harming the body of Christ?

I am tempted to keep this a surface level conversation about grape juice on the communion table, but the truth is, there are all sorts of really tough and difficult things that threaten to break apart our churches. There are all sorts of things we do and say as Christians that hurt our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters and neighbors.

And perhaps the one that is on many of our minds in recent weeks has been same-sex marriage. Perhaps you have read in the newspaper, or seen on television, how a retired pastor in our conference, Rev. Larry Sonner, officiated the wedding of a same-sex couple and then turned himself in to the Bishop. In our Book of Discipline, our tradition and teaching does not support same-sex marriage, even though our state laws do, and so a process was begun seeking a just resolution.

What is amazing is that we have a process of just resolution at all. According to our Discipline, “a just resolution is on that focuses on repairing any harm to people and communities, achieving real accountability by making things right in so far as possible and bringing healing to all the parties.” (¶363.1).

It is a powerful witness to the love and grace and mercy of God in a world that is so focused on punishment and retribution. In his article on the Des Moines Register, columnist Daniel Finney wrote:

“It’s especially admirable considering how poor our public dialogues are relating to just about any issue today. Here you’ve got a veteran pastor questioning the laws of a church he has dedicated his life to serving and not a voice was raised, not a fist was shaken. Instead, there was thoughtful discussion, prayer and resolution.

Regardless of how one feels about the specific issue, there’s a powerful lesson for peaceful negotiation in this story.”

This is how we act in a church when love and not knowledge is our guide. And this is the witness we have to offer to the world… a witness of finding a way forward in spite of our differences. A witness of acknowledging the harm we do by our actions and inactions. A witness of seeking the good for our brothers and sisters.

So today, I want to share with you portions of a pastoral letter that our Bishop, Bishop Julius Trimble sent to all churches last week:

Grace and peace to you as we journey in Christian discipleship in 2015.

One of the early prayers and initial responses to the formal complaint was that we would be “perfected in Christ love” and engage, rather than ignore, the difficulties the current conflict between what is prohibited in our Book of Discipline and what is legal and celebrated in Iowa.

The reactions to same-gender marriages and relationships and the serious subject of covenant accountability to church polity remind me of a Nigerian proverb: “Children of the same mother do not always agree!”

Questions and conflict regarding our future as a Church require much prayer, graceful conversations and decisions that may spell a different future for the Church…

When I was consecrated Bishop, I promised to work to uphold the unity of the Church. I believe that unity has, as its foundation, our love of God and neighbor. I also believe we can have unity of heart and not necessarily all be of one mind. While this Just Resolution is a response to a specific complaint, it recognizes the division of our church on the issue of human sexuality. This Just Resolution is an attempt to honor our disciplinary process, maintain accountability, and seek a deeper, more prayerful, listening to each other and, most of all, to God.

As your Bishop I invite you to join with me in a time of intentional listening to God and each other, remembering that as the Body of Christ, the Spirit can speak through each of us.

Be Encouraged, Bishop Julius Calvin Trimble

We don’t have time in worship to spend time listening or really go over the content of the just resolution, but I want to extend to you that invitation for a time of intentional listening to God and to one another. And I want to let you know that I am always available for conversation about this and any other topic that affects our life as a congregation and your lives as individuals.

We won’t all agree. We come at the conversation from various perspectives. We read the scripture through the lenses of our own experience. But above all, we are a people of love, service, and prayer. And together we can put love at the forefront of our conversations and we, too, can seek a prayerful way forward.

And that way forward starts at the table. The table of love and grace and mercy. A table, set with grape juice. Amen and Amen.

Them, Too!

Posted on January 26, 2015Leave a comment

When I was looking at seminaries, two of my top schools were in Chicago right across the street from one another in the Hyde Park neighborhood. My mom and I went to visit and we started to imagine what life would be like if I was there. My brother, Tony, was also attending school in Chicago at the Illinois Institute of Technology – right near the White Sox stadium. I started envisioning hopping on the L and going to visit him and all of the possibilities.

But I remember as my eyes lit up, my mom looked back at me with a tiny bit of fear in her eyes. “Katie Marie” she said. “I don’t want you traveling alone in that part of town.”

It was hard enough to send her son to the big city… but her daughter?

We ALL have some definition of what “that part of town” is like. But it is different for each of us.

For some of us, “that part of town” is the street where all the shops are boarded up and folks loiter on the corner.

For some of us, “that part of town” is full of expensive houses and we might get pulled over because of the color of our skin.

For some of us, “that part of town” is where we read about shootings and crime.

For some of us, “that part of town” is where we were a parent or relative was spit on or discriminated against.

It is the place where people aren’t like me. Where we are afraid of what might happen to us if we went there. It is the place where we just can’t wrap our minds around what life must be like there.

And the truth is, we all live in somebody else’s “that part of town.” Or “that part of the country.” Or “that part of the world.”

Each of you were handed this morning a slip of paper.

I want to invite you to take it out right now and hold it in your hand.

This morning, I want to invite us to think about those places where we refuse to go. The people we aren’t sure we want to talk to. The situations we would rather keep our distance from. Maybe it is because you have been hurt. Maybe it is because you are afraid.

This is just for you… not for anyone else to see or read… and what I’m going to ask is not going to be easy.

I want to invite you to write on that paper a place that you stay away from. I want you to think about someone you have intentionally not tried to build a relationship with and write their name. I want us all to spend a minute or two in silence as we reflect and are honest with ourselves and with God. What people or places come to your mind…

[ pause ]

That might have been the longest minute some of us have ever spent in worship. I know that wasn’t an easy exercise and I thank you for giving us that time.

Now, fold up that paper and hold it in your hand.

I want you to know that you are not alone.

We all are afraid at times.

We all hesitate to go to certain places.

We all have baggage and prejudice and facts and excuses and our reasons for staying away.

You are not alone.

In fact, Jonah, is just like each of us.

If he was with us this morning, Ninevah would be written on that sheet of paper.

The city of Ninevah was full of horrible, terrible people.

In the book of Nahum the prophet, chapter 2 and 3, we read about their misdeeds:

“Doom, city of bloodshed – all deceit, full of plunder: prey cannot get away. Cracking whip and rumbling wheel, galloping horse and careening chariot! Charging calvary, flashing sword, and glittering spear; countless slain, masses of corpses, endless dead bodies – they stumble over their dead bodies!”

That’s not a pretty picture!

It’s not surprising that Jonah doesn’t want to go.

How would you feel if God asked you to go to this violent, wretched city and tell them all they were about to be destroyed by God’s wrath?

Jonah bought a ticket and headed as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Well, if you remember the story of Jonah, that didn’t work out so well. He got kicked off the ship, swallowed by a whale, and spit up on the shoreline.

And finally, reluctantly, with fear and trepidation in his heart, he goes.

He goes to “that part” of the world. To “those people.”

He goes to the city and preaches a one sentence sermon:

“Just forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

He repeats it over and over again as he walks across the city.

Think about “that place” you have written down.

Could you do that?

Not just go to that place you fear, but actually proclaim their destruction?

I think the core of this one sentence sermon was the message that all was lost.

The people were too far gone.

They were just too terrible and God was ready to wipe the slate clean.

And Jonah thought so, too.

He thought the world would be better off without them in it.

What a terrible thing to say.

And yet, if we thought long and hard about the people and the places we have written on our little scraps of paper, I wonder if that phrase maybe had crossed our mind the past.

Anytime we write off someone as hopeless… or treat a community as if it didn’t exist… or think “wow the government would be a whole lot better off if (insert political party here) weren’t around”… we are doing the same thing.

We have done it throughout history… and we have had it done to us.

Whenever the line has been drawn of us/them, good/bad, right/wrong, folks of all sorts of different faith traditions have felt divine calls to pronounce judgment.

The good news is, it isn’t up to us.

Because even when we have declared something hopeless, God isn’t ready to be done yet.

God could have just sent a plague or rained down fire from above upon Ninevah.

But God didn’t.

God called Jonah.

God warned the people.

God gave them a chance.

And even though Jonah didn’t even offer up the possibility of hope in his one sentence sermon of destruction, the people changed their ways.

They repented.

They turned to God.

The entire kingdom, from the king to the lowest in their midst put on sackcloth and ashes.

As Rev. Bill Cotton pointed out in his reflection this week, some translations say even the cattle repented!

Over this season of Epiphany, we have been exploring the light and the dark. We have been wandering back and forth between the two, and one of the things I hope we are discovering is that the dark isn’t a terrible awful place.

There is possibility in the dark.

There are the seeds of creation and re-creation.

And even a place like Ninevah… Even a place or a person like (hold up your piece of paper)… isn’t lost. It isn’t hopeless.

The question is, are we willing to look for the possibility of change?

Will we open our eyes to see the good in a neighborhood or another person?

Will we lay aside our fears and prejudice and assumptions and go to build relationships?

Will we celebrate when we witness transformations?

Will we ourselves be transformed?

Yes, you, too.

Because God is working on your life also. All those pieces of you that are bent out of shape and bruised and dented. You aren’t hopeless either.

So in the words of Christ, “Now is the time! Here come’s God’s Kingdom! Change your hearts and lives and trust in the good news!”

What God Has Sown

Posted on November 16, 2014Leave a comment

In this past month, I have found new appreciation for the Apostle Paul.

You see, on top of being an apostle and a scholar, a writer and mentor; in addition to the work he did as a tanner to pay his own way through ministry; he was also a fundraiser.

I think that tiny detail skipped my attention for so many years, because I didn’t know what it meant to be a fundraiser. I wasn’t aware of the strategies and the prayer and the faith that goes into soliciting money from perfect strangers.

But I do now!

I have spent my entire life hearing that phrase, “God loves a cheerful giver” out of context… and you probably have, too.

While Paul has many other topics to cover in this letter to the people of Corinth, chapters 8 and 9 represent a sort of “stewardship letter” much like many of you received in the mail last week.

Corinth was a rich and powerful city in Greece. The ports had made them wealthy beyond measure. So it is natural that they had resources to spend and to invest and to, yes, even donate to the church.

Paul was encouraged by the apostles in Jerusalem to remember the poor and needy in the city (Galatians 2), and he wanted to honor those who had sent him out in ministry by sending back gifts that could support their work. Much like our apportionments today, the funds he was raising would be used for ministry in the other places the apostles had influence. And Paul knew Corinth would be the place where gifts could be abundant.

In his letter to them, Paul first of all talks about these poor people in Macedonia who have absolutely nothing but the love and grace of God, but somehow managed to pull together an incredible offering to send with Paul. He writes that though they were impoverished and struggling, they heard his plea for money to help the needy in Jerusalem.

From chapter 8: 3-4: “they gave what they could afford and even more than they could afford, and they did it voluntarily. They urgently begged us for the privilege of sharing in this service for the saints.”

And Paul says, all the while, I was telling them about YOUR generosity, you people of Corinth. I was telling them about how much YOU had promised to do. They wanted to be a part of that… part of this incredible opportunity we have to care for the needs of others. They gave out of their poverty, and now it’s your turn.

Paul asks the Corinthians to carefully consider their obligations and to take note of where their resources are needed and then to give cheerfully and jubilantly out of their abundance to the Lord. He wants them to give only what they know they can. Paul didn’t want them to make a commitment they couldn’t fulfill. He wanted them to give freely, and not out of obligation. He wanted them to think long and hard about what they could give and then to do so generously.

I was in Paul’s shoes many times over my work with Imagine No Malaria. And I know what a fine line it was to walk between challenging people to give more than they thought they should and yet not more than they actually could.

On one occasion, a well-intentioned person filled out one of our pledge cards and sent it in with an extraordinary commitment to give over three years $5000. I added the donation to our totals and celebrated reaching a milestone! But then they called me a few weeks later when reality set in and told me, “I want to support this project so very much, I see how much good it is doing and I am so excited about being a part of it, but I simply can’t afford to do so at the level I told you I could.”

And you know what. That’s okay. I told that person we were so thankful for what they could share. We were overjoyed that they felt called to give and worked to make the adjustments they needed.

In chapter 8 of his letter, Paul writes that he wants the Corinthians to give what they can afford. If they can make some adjustments to their life and want to make a sacrifice here and there – great. If they have great resources at their disposal, then by all means, they shouldn’t look upon this call and drop in a few dollars. They need to give what they can actually afford to give. The goal is not to make them suffer or create financial difficulties. The goal is to prayerfully ask what God has blessed them with that they can bless others with.

Not one of us should feel guilty about what we can afford to give. We shouldn’t feel pressured to end our support of other good things in order to give here. Every one of us should hear the call, look at the needs, and then joyfully respond from our resources… whatever they might be.

In the early eighteenth century, a scholar and pastor Matthew Henry wrote: “Money bestowed in charity, may to the carnal mind seem thrown away, but when given from proper principles, it is seed sown, from which a valuable increase may be expected.”

Paul asks the Corinthians to think of their gift as an investment. To sow whatever seeds they can so that the Kingdom of God might bear fruit in the world… and so they might personally experience the joy and grace and abundance that come to us when we freely give.

Our commitment to give financially to this church might not make a lot of sense to the larger world. But we do so because we have seen the good it can do.

In the United Methodist Church, we understand that our gifts not only provide this wonderful space for ministry in this neighborhood, but also help to support Women at the Well and help to build churches other parts of the world. Our gifts help our children to learn more about Jesus, but they also help educate communities about diseases like Ebola and Malaria so that every child has the chance to grow up and live an abundant life. Our gifts raise up leaders among our youth here in Des Moines, but they also are providing scholarships for new pastors in Eastern Europe and the Philippines.

Every dollar given to the church is an investment in the gospel. It is a seed planted. And in time, God will reveal how Faith Hall and our children and the women in Mitchellville and communities like the Bo District in Sierra Leone… how all of these investments and seeds will bear fruit for the Kingdom of God.

That is why we are here, after all.

We are here, in this place, for the Kingdom of God.

We are here to worship and to praise God… the source every breath and snowflake and every good thing.

In our passage from Deuteronomy this morning, Moses encourages the people to remember the long road they have been on… the road that was sustained every step of the way by the grace of God.

God was the one who rescued them from Egypt.

It was the Lord who led them through the desert.

It was God who fed them and gave them drink out of rocks and manna.

And he wants them to remember when they get to the promised land… when their lives settle down and they find good work and have food on the table every night… he wants them to never forget who it was that God them there.

Everything we are and everything we have is a gift. It is grace. It is a blessing.

We are here today because God spoke and light and life came into being.

We are here today because God wanted a relationship with us.

We are here today because God moved in the lives of people like Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the Israelites, James and John and Paul and the Corinthians.

We are here because of the faithful people who were led by God to turn a farmhouse into a church in 1925. We are here because the Holy Spirit moved and breathed life into this congregation.

Today, we are the beneficiaries of God’s grace and love and power that moved through countless generations before us. All the resources and abilities we have are gifts from our Lord and Savior.

And like the Israelites, we should never forget that simple fact.

It is not our own strength that has produced our abundance. No, it is the strength of God that has brought us here.

And God has sown his power and blessing in our lives SO THAT we might bear fruit for the Kingdom.

You see… God made an investment, too. God planted gifts and resources into our lives. God has nurtured this church and helped us to grow so that we might in turn be a blessing. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace.”

Grace for living.

Grace for giving.

Grace for working.

Grace for singing God’s praise.

God has made sure that you have what you need in order to serve him.

The Macedonians gave out of their poverty.

The Corinthians gave out of their wealth.

But each gave because they believed they were sowing seeds for the Kingdom of God. And each gave out of joy and thanksgiving for the abundance of what God has planted in their lives.

So today, as we make our commitments to the Lord, may we always remember where our abundance comes from.

May we commit without hesitation.

May we commit without guilt.

May we commit what we have and trust that as God has blessed us, so God will bless others. Amen.

Life's Not Perfect #NaBloPoMo

Posted on November 15, 2014Leave a comment

It was a lovely day.

We slept in.

The Hawkeyes won.

Friends came over and we binge watched some television (Newsroom is FANTASTIC, btw).

I figured out how to do a double crochet front post and a double crochet back post for an afghan I started.

My husband made apple pie.

The snow fell and it was so lovely.

And then tonight, as I’m setting my clothes out for the morning, I find it:

A nice little pile of poop.

A present left by Tiki or Turbo.

It rarely happens. I could guess at the reasons, but whatever, I’m not a cat.

*sigh*

Tomorrow, I’m preaching on thankfulness and gratitude, so I’m led to say these things:

I’m grateful for the invention of paper towels and carpet cleaner.

I’m grateful messes can be cleaned up.

I’m grateful for the companionship of those two little furballs.

I’m grateful for imperfections that ground us and humble us and help us to not take life so seriously.

I’m grateful for the grace that I have received when I have messed up.

I’m grateful for people who have helped me to clean up my own mistakes and fumbles.

Justice, Kindness, and Mercy

Posted on September 22, 2014Leave a comment

As we began worship today, we sat for a bit with images that reminded us of the story of the prodigal son, or daughter in this case.

The question that I asked was simple:

Do you celebrate and rejoice when someone who is lost has been found?

Or are you like the brother or sister who stayed at home, the good child, the one who has always done everything right?

Do you feel like you are entitled to more because of your faithfulness and obedience and your work?

It is the question we wrestle with again in our parable from Matthew’s gospel.

It is the question the laborers must ask of themselves.

Do we think that we rightfully deserve something more than others? Are we resentful of what others get, when we are the ones who put in the time and the effort and the energy?

As we continue to think about the difficult relationships in our lives, competition, resentment, and jealousy can all play a role.

We can hold a grudge against someone that we feel has gotten an unfair leg up in this world.

We get caught up in that counting game of wrongs and rights, in who is ahead, and who deserves what.

And these kinds of sentiments can destroy relationships with friends, family, and co-workers.

The idea of fairness is built into our economic system. We believe everyone has a shot at the American Dream. We want the playing field to be level and we search out those who are cheating and throw them out of the game.

We want everyone to have an equal chance at greatness.

We want to be able to start at a place of fairness… and then the chips fall where they may.

Those who exceed expectations or break records or make billions have our attention. They have worked for it. They have earned it. They deserve it.

After all, we have worked hard for the things we have, just the same.

But when someone comes around who does little to no work whatsoever and gets paid the same as us…. Or when someone who has made millions does so by cheating the system… or when we lose our jobs because someone somewhere else is trying to save a little bit more money for themselves – then we start to feel that maybe the situation isn’t fair again.

As much as we like to use that word, fair, I have often found that the scriptures are full of stories that are unfair.

Like the prodigal son being welcomed back home after squandering his wealth.

And like our parable from this morning:

A wealthy man had a vineyard and needed workers. So he did what all landowners did: he went out and hired some laborers for the day.

Now, all of these day laborers started out with an even playing field. All of them were without work for the day. All of them were willing to work.

The problem was, there were always more people looking for a fair day’s work than there are jobs to go around.

In this story, if you got lucky, you would expect to work for 12 back breaking hours out in a field for minimal wages. You got to go home with your hands dirty, your head held high, and with bread for supper tonight.

But if you weren’t so lucky… then you went home to your family empty handed. You would have spent the entire day standing in the hot sun waiting for work, and you would have nothing to show for it.

There was no safety net. No food stamps, or welfare or unemployment.

No matter what you think about how our government today responds to the needs of the unemployed, the poor, the disabled, and yes, sometimes the lazy and the freeloader, that doesn’t change the fact that in the day and time of Jesus – if you did not get hired for the day, then you would not have money for that day’s food. It was as simple as that.

The laws of fairness would say – well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. No work, no pay. Little work, little pay.

But this is not how Jesus’s story goes.

Our landowner hires some workers first thing in the morning. They are eager to get to work and head out in the fields for their 12 hour shift.

But the work is plentiful and so the landowner keeps going back in to town to hire more people. Some at 9, some at noon, some at 3, and the last group gets hired just an hour before quitting time at 5pm.

And then they all get lined up to come forward and receive their daily wages.

Those poor souls who were hired for just an hour went into the fields because they were desperate for work. A few bucks would help buy a piece of bread for dinner, if nothing else. But as they were called up, they found themselves being paid the full wages for an entire day’s worth of work!

Well, the rest of the workers were simple peasants, but they could do basic math. And if they had worked for twice as long, they expected twice as much! Can you imagine how the mouths of those who had been working for 12 full hours watered?!

But as each group came forward to receive their wages… each one received one full day’s worth of pay.

And, boy… were they mad!

“It’s not fair!” those workers cried.

And they were right. It wasn’t fair.

But as the landowner spoke, do you remember what he said? “Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

There has been a meme going around on facebook illustrating the difference between what we might call equality and justice.

If we related this image to our parable for this morning, equality would look like each worker being paid the same wages per hour of work.

At $10 per hour, those who were hired at 6 in the morning would have walked away with $120 and those hired at 5pm would have walked away with only $10.

This would have been fair.

But as we look at this first image, we sense that something isn’t quite right.

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher defined justice as proportional equality.

And in the second image, we see how the proportions of are changed, so that each person has the same capacity as another.

The parable of the laborers in the field is the story of God’s grace and forgiveness in our lives.

Each one of us is given exactly what we need.

Not what is fair.

Not what we deserve.

But what we need.

You see, each of us are like day laborers when it comes to our salvation.

We have no land, no rights, no security. The kingdom of heaven, like the vineyard doesn’t belong to us.

We don’t deserve anything.

But then God reaches out to us and says, come my children. Come and walk with me. Come and work with me. Come and be a part of what I am doing.

The thing is, we aren’t all the same. And when it comes to how God hands out love and grace, we discover that

God’s justice lifts up those who are bowed down and sets at liberty the oppressed.

God has compassion for the poor and the sick.

God shows mercy to sinners… no matter how small or great their wrongs.

In the incredible grace of God’s love, we don’t get what we deserve… we get what we need.

I think sometimes in our human relationships, we can grow resentful of one another when we feel like someone has gotten more than their fair share of grace.

We watch someone who continues to squander God’s love and keep making the same mistakes over and over again and don’t think it’s fair.

Or see someone live their whole lives away from God only to turn to our Lord and Savior at the last moment and start to imagine they won’t be living in the same patch of heaven as us!

But I think the lessons we are learning in our Forgiveness book study need to be applied not only in those situations where someone has willfully wronged us, but to all of our difficult relationships in general.

This week, Adam Hamilton introduces us to a simple acronym: RAP

R. A. P.

First, we have to Remember our own story. In the case of forgiveness, we need to remember the wrongs we have perpetrated. But in all of our relationships, we need to remember the blessings we have received, the advantages that have been afforded to us. We need to remember the times when undeserved grace flowed through our lives.

We have to remember.

Secondly, we have to Assume the best about another. We need to listen for their story. We need to pay attention to how God is working in their life. We might have one impression of what has led them to this moment in their life, but is it the most truthful one? Does it represent their struggles and triumphs accurately? Do we know their life well enough to discover what they truly need… even if it might not be what they deserve?

We have to assume the best.

Lastly, we need to pray for one another. We need to pray for patience. We need to seek God’s will in our relationships. We need to pray that the person we are encountering is experiencing the love and grace of God in this world. And, as a disciple in God’s kingdom, we need to pray that our eyes might be opened the the ways we are invited to love those who don’t deserve it. We need to pray for the strength to live lives of justice, kindness and mercy to all we meet.

We have to pray for each other.

When we focus on these three things: Remembering our Story, Assuming the Best, and Praying for one another, I believe the resentments and jealousies that plague our relationships will fall by the wayside.

We will discover instead that we all live, but by the grace of God, and will work together towards that day when God’s justice and kindness and mercy will reign – that day when we don’t get what we deserve… but what each one of us truly needs.

And on that day, we will rejoice with the lost who has been found.

On that day, we will celebrate with those who have come late to the party.

On that day, we will delight in bountiful gifts of another.

May that day come, and may it come soon. Amen.