grace – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

Over and Over and Over Again

Posted on September 14, 2014Leave a comment

Earlier this week, I was tired and worn out, and I kept being lazy and forgetting all kinds of things. I didn’t put the dishes in the dishwasher and left them on the counter. I forgot the previous day’s laundry in the washing machine and when we opened it, everything smelled a little musty. I left a light on in the family room all night long.

Each time, my husband reminded me of what I had left undone.

Each time, I found myself saying, “I’m sorry.”

Each time, it felt like a bigger deal, like straws being added, slowly and surely to the camel’s back.

I don’t know if Brandon was counting, but I was. I kept making note of all the times I messed up and did something wrong.

The little things just kept piling up.

And I felt so rotten about the whole thing that when I noticed something that he had left undone, I jumped on it.

In my head, I thought – HA! Here is something that will cancel out one of those mistakes I made.

In reality, I was not my most grace-filled self.

In our relationships, we spend far too much time keeping track of the wrongs we and others have done. Adam Hamilton, in his book Forgiveness, describes these sins and injuries as rocks that we carry around with us.

Some are small like pebbles. You know, like leaving a dish on the counter. [drop a few pebbles into your bag]

Others are medium sized stones, like forgetting a birthday or anniversary. [drop a medium sized stone or two into your bag]And then there are the boulders. Major hurts like cheating on your spouse or getting someone fired. [drop a brick into your bag]

When we spend our days keeping track of the mistakes and sins of others, what we are doing is metaphorically carrying around the weight of those wrongs with us. It doesn’t matter if it is one big boulder or a thousand little pebbles… it’s heavy! It’s a burden.

In my relationship with my husband, I was counting up my faults. And it wasn’t that he was unkind or not forgiving… I just took it personally every time he pointed out where I had made a mistake.

I found myself mentally adding a stone to our relationship each and every time.

I foolishly thought that pointing out one of his faults would take a stone away.

It didn’t.

It made everything worse.

Because now I wasn’t just thinking about my own faults. I was actively seeking out his so that I could even the score.

In doing so, I only piled a bunch more weight in our bag.

The only way to truly let go of the stones is to forgive.

The weight of sin and debt and grievances will overwhelm us if we try to carry them on our shoulders.

Jesus knew this.

And so when Peter asked how many times he should forgive his brother or sister in Christ, there was only one answer.

We aren’t to forgive once or twice or seven times… we are to forgive over and over and over again.

We are to forgive always.

We are to never stop forgiving.

To help Peter, and us, understand more fully this imperative to forgive, Jesus tells a little story. A story about someone with unimaginable financial debts who was forgiven by the ruler of the kingdom. Only, when that debtor turned around and was asked to forgive a small debt from a neighbor he refused. The king heard about how the debtor would not forgive another, and took back the pardon that was offered.

A long time ago, a monk named Anselm used this analogy to teach about how we could never make amends to God for our sin. Our sin is like a debt that we will never be able to repay.

If we think about our sins as little mistakes, the cost or weight of that sin is the price we have to pay. In the past, we might have tried to pay for our debts by counting up each one and offering the sacrifice that would counteract each grievance.

But in Anselm’s view, our sin can pile up into one gigantic, big, rocky mountain. It is overwhelming trying to even imagine, much less quantify, the ways we have let God down and have strayed from God’s will in our lives. We simply can’t keep up with the payments and they compound with interest and before we are even aware of it, we owe God an infinite debt. We simply could never repay God for the price of our sins.

Like the debtor on his knees before the king, there is nothing left for us to do, but fall on our knees before our Lord and beg for mercy.

There is nothing we can offer that can make it right.

Even if we gave our very lives, Anselm wrote, it wouldn’t be enough. The weight of our sin is overwhelming.

Our God is a loving God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast mercy.

Our God created us and loves us, even when we don’t deserve it.

Our God comes to us and lifts us up out of our despair and sin and mistakes.

I forgive you, God says.

I have already covered the price of your sin. It is wiped clean. It is no more.

And so, like the debtor before the king, we have experienced incredible compassion and forgiveness and mercy.

This morning, we baptized little Adelyn Rohde. In that act of baptism, God’s forgiveness pours into our lives.

The point is not that baptism covers all of our sins before we find this water. It’s that God’s love and grace and mercy overwhelms us with forgiveness before we even know we need it.

That’s how abundant and powerful the love of God is.

The question is… what will we do with that unimagineable gift of grace?

What we shouldn’t do is live like the debtor. He took advantage of the mercy of the king and hoarded forgiveness for himself. As soon as he was given the opportunity to pass grace on, he refused. He counted every penny of his neighbor’s debt and forced them to pay it all.

That is not what God desires for us. Our Lord and Savior wants the gift of grace to fill in every aspect of our lives.

God wants forgiveness to transform every relationship we have… not just with Jesus Christ, but with our spouses and children, with neighbors and strangers.

God wants forgiveness to transform how we see ourselves.

The debtor in the parable this morning… he went right back to counting sins. He went right back to piling pebbles and stones and rocks up and forcing others (and himself) to carry them around.

God wants us to stop counting.

In the book many of us are reading right now, Forgiveness, a woman talks about her relationship with her husband. Like my husband and I, she had been looking for the mistakes and keeping a mental count of the wrongs in their relationship. But one day, she stopped counting.

“I find that when I make up my mind to stop being bitter or annoyed at my husband that our love is the best. It’s all in what I make up my mind to do.”

God wants us to stop counting.

We aren’t supposed to forgive once, or twice, or seven times.

We are to forgive over and over and over again.

The point of such an extravagant number like 70×7 is that you can’t keep track. You are just supposed to keep forgiving.

Even before Jesus answered Peter’s question, he had been trying to help the disciples learn this life lesson.

We forgive because we have been forgiven.

It is what he taught us in the Lord’s Prayer.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who have debts against us.

Friends, we don’t have time to count the sins of others, and we don’t have time to keep track of all the mistakes we have made in our lives either.

A life of love and grace and mercy means that we have the freedom to simply live.

We will make mistakes.

We will forget to put the dishes away.

We are going to not always be our best.

Adam Hamilton writes that “We are bound to hurt others , and others are bound to hurt us.” (page 1)

But we can let the love and grace of God transform our hearts. We can clothe ourselves, as Colossians invites us to with kindness, compassion, humility, and patience.

And we can choose to forgive over and over and over again.

Finding Faith at the Lunch Table

Posted on May 21, 20141 Comment

If I think back to the first moment when faith sunk in deep into my life, it would be sitting around a lunch table at Simpson College.

I wasn’t actually a college student then, but a sophomore in high school participating in our Youth Annual Conference. It was hosted there at the college every year and it was an opportunity for youth leadership to be developed, new friendships to be made, and for us to explore faith in a totally different way.

I had been floating around the periphery of church for a while. I went to Sunday School a few times as a youngster. We went on Christmas Eve with my grandparents. I had been to funerals and weddings. And I had a number of friends who were Christian and often invited me along to church. But their experiences of faith were not my own. I wanted to know more about Jesus, but I never quite felt like I totally fit in with their traditions. Looking back, they were more conservative and evangelical than where I eventually ended up, so perhaps early on I was sensing that wasn’t where I belonged.

I remember vividly in the fall of my sophomore year, however, that my mom realized I had not yet been confirmed and we started going to church as a family. Both sides of our family had been United Methodist, so we went to the biggest church we could find nearby. And I was instantly hooked. I joined the youth choir and the youth bells. I started confirmation. I went to youth group. Because it was a large church, my social circle instantly expanded with students from other area high schools all becoming my new best friends. It was a really amazing time.

And that spring, we went to Youth Annual Conference. We were a small group, even though it was a large church – just my mom; the youth pastor, Todd; another student and myself. It was my first experience of holy conferencing and resolutions and voting on legistation. It was my first experience of a praise band. It was my first chance to really understand what it might mean to be United Methodist.

But it was a conversation around the lunch table that really got me hooked. Others had been debating about whether or not we should listen to pop music, but Todd had just been rapping in the lunch line the whole “Fresh Prince of Bel Aire” song. And when he finally joined in the conversation, he talked about how he had used a Judas Priest song in youth group one night. This was many years ago, but I remember he talked about redeeming rather than rejecting culture. He talked about asking better questions in the face of music and narratives and people we don’t on the surface agree with, finding out what makes them tick and what they are trying to say, so we can speak with them. And I knew, right then, that I could claim that kind of faith.

In his book, Falling Upward, Richard Rohr talks about the two halves of our lives. The time we spend creating the container for our lives (identity, security, relationships) and then the time we spend living in and discovering the life we have built for ourselves. He writes that a type of spiritual awakening or falling apart happens in between the two of them…. when we realize we can’t just keep going on and building that container for ever, we actually have to start exploring what it means to live in this life we have created.

In the life of faith, one way this can be described is the move from law to grace. In the first half of our lives, we need the rules of faith: don’t kill, love God, pray this way. Rules lay the foundations… but the law itself is not the end. Rohr quotes the Dalai Lama here: “Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.” Grace is helping the man get his oxen out of a hole on the sabbath. Grace is releasing the adulteress and telling her to go and sin no more. Grace is meeting people out of love rather than judgment.

Because I came to my faith a little bit later in life, my religious experience was never steeped in law and judgment language. That being said, I was one of those “good girls” who tried to always follow the rules. I got straight A’s. I never drank in high school, or smoked, or experimented in any way. I had enough formation in rule following in other aspects of my life.

In fact, I think in many ways, the church I discovered in places like that lunch table helped to break down and expand that initial container I had built for myself. My experiences of Jesus and religion were the catalyst for some big changes in my life. I moved from a desire to be a scientist/meterologist to a religion major. I found myself moving towards people who were all about breaking the rules…. in both healthy and not so healthy ways. But because my initial experiences of church were fairly traditional, I have maintained an ability to see and converse with all sorts of different faith languages. We don’t discard the containers we build in the first half, Rohr says, but they become the stuff we build from.

I am living in a very different sort of faith life than I ever imagined was possible sixteen years ago, when I sat down at that lunch table. I have been an advocate and fundraiser for global health. I have ministered in cities and small towns. I’m about to become the senior pastor of a mid-sized church in the city. But as I continue to live into my relationship with God, the desire to get to know and understand someone or something where it is and start from there is what continues to drive me.

The Side of the Road

Posted on November 20, 2013Leave a comment

I had an experience last week that deeply shook me.

My dad asked me to come help him move farm equipment as he moved from one set of fields to another for harvest. In essence, I was a chauffeur and would follow the tractor or combine and then take him back to the farm to pick up another.

As we came around a corner on the quiet gravel road, we discovered a person lying on the edge of the road in the ditch.

It all happened so fast. We stopped the car and leapt out and into action. 911 was dialed. We assisted the person the best we could – the wind whipping around us, the cold seeping in, the reality that we really had no unique skills to care for someone in a medical emergency causing anxiety and yet we were there and help was on its way.

After the emergency responders arrived and the statements had been made, and we breathed a little bit deeper, my dad and I made our way back to my car… which I then discovered was still running. We had been so quick to rush into helping, I forgot to turn off the car.

I remember later that day, after I had time to process what had happened, feeling incredibly angry. Someone had mentioned in passing the idea of being a “Good Samaritan” and all I could think about was how I didn’t have a choice. Of course we were going to stop. Anyone who could have passed by and kept going… well, that’s where the anger came in. Having experienced a person in need on the side of the road, I cannot understand how a pastor or religious leader could have crossed to the other side and not stopped to help.

Luke 10: 25 A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”

26 Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?”

27 He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”[a]

28 Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

29 But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right, so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 Jesus replied, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves, who stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death. 31 Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. When he saw the injured man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. 32 Likewise, a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man, and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. 33 A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion.34 The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, ‘Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.’ 36 What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?”

37 Then the legal expert said, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Part of me wants to take that priest and Levite by the shoulders and look straight into their eyes and demand to know why on earth they refused to stop. The scripture doesn’t tell us. We make plenty of excuses for them… they were on their way to worship, they were maintaining ritual purity, the law prevented them from helping. But to see a person dying on the side of the road and to NOT stop… There is no excuse.

Lately, instead of a person in need on the side of the road, I’ve been witnessing a church that is not quite sure what part of the road we are on. In the midst of the work of ministry and church we are also distracted and focused on statements and trials regarding pastors who performed same-sex marriage ceremonies.

As I read the testimony of Tim, whose father, Frank, was found guilty this week for officiating his wedding, I couldn’t help but think about the injured man on the side of the road. Too often, the church has played the roles of the thieves in this story – battering and bruising our LGBT brothers and sisters by telling them they have no place in the church and leaving them on the side of the road… without hope, grace, or mercy.

I’ve listened to voices on all side of the arguments about homosexuality and the United Methodist Church and I try to be someone who does more listening than talking. I try to hear the good and find common ground. And the deep nugget of difference lies in the fact that one side believes that to be an LGBT person is to be who God has created them to be and the other side believes that six verses of scripture demonstrate that the actions of LGBT persons are sinful and therefore incompatible with Christian faith. One side is talking about conscious, willful decisions to sin that requires us as people of faith to hold one another accountable… but the other side is talking about the core of a person’s identity that includes gender and sexual orientation and ethnicity. Because it appears as if we are talking about two very different things the conversation and conferencing is immensely difficult. We are all people of faith but right now we are stuck.

I know the deep faithfulness of persons who are trying to uphold the ideals of Christian teaching and I do believe we need to hold one another accountable in love and grace for our sins. But today, I have to speak from the experiences in my life and prayerful nights and studying of scripture and admit I am faithfully standing on the other side of the argument. I believe in many of those passages we are taking the words of God out of context; the scripture is actually talking about pedarasty or ritual sex and not LGBT relationships. In others, the passages are simply wrong for our time; just as we have come to understand scriptures on slavery and the prohibition of female pastors and divorce differently in a different time, through the Holy Spirit, God is leading us to new understandings of what it means to be faithful people today. My friends and family who are gay and lesbian and bi and trans do not choose their reality. They are some of the most faithful and compassionate and God-fearing people I know. And as they work out their own salvation with fear and trembling and experience attacks that shoot to the very core of their identity… it does harm. Tim Schaefer is simply one voice among many who have been turned away at one point or another and who felt like his very existence was “incompatible.”

Part of who I was, my sexual orientation, was broken and evil, according to them. I felt incredible shame.

Every night I prayed, begging God to make me normal. I pleaded with God to fix me. Many nights I cried myself to sleep. I was in the 10th grade when I came to the realization that my attraction to men was not going to change. I began to think that the only way to avoid bringing shame to my family and community was to take my own life.

But thank God, Tim’s family supported him. Thank God there are churches who surround LGBT brothers and sisters (and all people) with love and compassion. Who allow God to speak through them. Who baptize their children and who hold their hands as they watch loved ones pass. Who serve them communion and welcome them into the church and allow the gifts God has blessed them with to bear fruit in the kingdom of God. Thank God there are people who have stopped on the side of the road to be engaged in acts of ministry and care and love.

These past few weeks, the core of what we are debating in official circles and in church trials is whether we are going to be a church that stops by the side of the road to do the work of Jesus… the work of the gospel and the core of the Law… or if we are going to hold fast to tradition and rules and step over to the other side of that road and keep going. If we are going to focus on “upholding the Book of Discipline in its entirety” or if we are going to get about the ministry of Jesus in his world.

Do you know what I hear in Luke 10? That we are called to go out into a harvest that is “bigger than you can imagine.” That we are to locate ourselves among the people God has led us to – healing the sick and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. That we are to love and serve God with all of our heart, being, strength and mind. That we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. That the law demands mercy. That it is more important to sit at the feet of Jesus than to do the upkeep of the house. I firmly believe these things we can all agree on – no matter what side of this particular division… and that is what gives me hope.

I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m traditionally a rule follower. I love our church. I love our connection. I love our accountability. I even love our Discipline. But I have been called to love and serve God and God’s people and sometimes I just want to weep at how we set up barriers to the kingdom.

Christ have mercy, for the times we have been so distracted by rearranging the chairs that we forgot you were among us.

Lord have mercy, for costly trials that distract all of us from the work of saving the lost and hurting in our very midst.

Christ have mercy, for the times we have focused on following the letter of the law and didn’t help you lying on the side of the road.

Driving Behind a Trooper

Posted on May 1, 2013Leave a comment

I hopped on the interstate, fresh from an invigorating meeting, ready to put the pedal to the metal and get home. I had an hour and forty minute drive ahead of me, so with an energy drink and a bag of pretzels in my passenger seat I was prepared to settle in, set my cruise control at 76 and go.

Yes, I speed. Not excessively, but fast enough. Six or seven over…

And on Interstate-80, many do.

My dad always told me that if you aren’t going with the flow of traffic you are a hazard to other drivers.

So I flow.

I picked up speed coming from the onramp and fell in pace behind a number of vehicles. I set the cruise. I turned up NPR.

And then the tail lights ahead of me started turning red.

Slowing up.

Cautious.

State Trooper.

And not a trooper that sits in the median and everyone slows down for a few minutes and then keeps right on going…

No, this state trooper was driving, with the rest of us… at 71 miles per hour.

The cars traveling ahead of me gradually got into the right hand lane, directly behind the state trooper.

No one was passing.

And then there would be that vehicle coming up from the left, going 75 or 77 and they would zoom on by only to hit their own brakes, and slow up, and sheepishly get in line with everyone else.

I followed that state trooper for an hour and fifteen minutes, so I had a lot of time to think about how we behave when we think “big brother” is watching. When the authorities are present. When we suddenly feel the need to fall into line and be on our best behavior.

Having just come from a meeting with pastors and the Bishop, I thought about how we do this in ministry.

We may not have speed limits or fines for going too fast, but we sure do know how to stiffle creativity and cause people to fall in line.

Many times I have watched as things were just gaining momentum… Just as we start putting the pedal to the metal with risky new ministries, someone speaks up: you can’t do that. We watch someone else stumble and falter and fear creeps back in and we don’t take the risk. We slow down and take baby steps, rather than charge ahead.

And just like on the interstate… when everyone is going 71 mph, driving in the right hand lane, behind the state trooper… the passion, the energy, the thrill of the open road is gone. We get stagnant. We get in each others way. We get anxious. Brake lights come on over and over again. No one wants to get in trouble… but secretly we hope someone does so that the rest of us are off the hook for a little while. We are constantly aware of someone watching us and it limits what we are able to accomplish.

I’m not saying we need to break the rules… well, maybe… depends on what the rules are!

What I’m really trying to say is that we need to create room and space for risky ministry…. for open and free ministry… for ministry that is okay with failure and taking chances and trying things. We need to not be so concerned with the authorities who are watching and we need to feel free to do something creative and new in our local churches.

Who is going to be courageous enough to drive 73 or 74 and pass the trooper?

These things we try… they might not work. We might find ourselves a bit down the road and have to switch gears. That’s fine! But then, we need “authorities” who encourage and support those who are feeling the wind at their back and the spirit blowing them forward.

At one point on our drive, the trooper slowed down to 68 mph as he found himself behind a semi-truck. But he stayed there longer than he needed to.

One by one, cars moved into the left lane and picked up a little speed.

They passed.

They weren’t pulled over.

I think that might be called grace.

A little breathing room. Backing off a bit so that others can move forward freely. Flexibility. Awareness. Making space.

The open road awaits.

Scars

Posted on April 22, 2012Leave a comment

I have a couple of scars in my body.

Right below my left knee the area is numb and without feeling and there is a small whitish mark. That scar is from the time I thought it was a good idea to do a cartwheel in the girl’s locker room and I ended up hiting my leg… hard… against the corner of the wall.

I have a few tiny scars on my belly from my gall bladder surgery a few years ago. They are nearly imperceptible… unlike the scars many have from days when that surgery was performed open and not lapriscopically.

And I have a scar on my left forearm from an iron last summer. After going through the entire pile of t-shirts for Vacation Bible School and getting all of the transfers ironed on… I reached over to unplug my iron and my arm hit the hot plate. There is a triangular shaped mark on my arm to this day!

But none of those are extremely noticeable. Especially not compared with some of the scars that others have in their lives.

My dad is one such person. In an accident at work, his hand was caught in a gear of a machine that processes hot sugars. After months of surgery and rehabilitation, he lost two fingers on his right hand, part of his pinky finger, and had a large skin graft around his thumb and forefinger. His right hand will never be the same. And while his hand looks a bit gnarled and ugly, to me it is a sign of his perseverance, his incredible work ethic, and a reminder of how he got through that difficult part of his life.

The scars in our lives tell stories. Whether they are small marks or large ones, they are visible reminders of the lives that we have lived. Maybe it is not a physical scar, but a nickname you bear, or a tattoo, or an item that you keep around in your life to remind yourself and others of something important that has happened.

I want to invite you to turn to a neighbor or a small group around you and share what kinds of scars and battle wounds you might have. If you feel comfortable, share a story about that scar with the group.

…

There was a classmate of mine in high school who had a large scar that ran down the center of her chest. She had had open heart surgery when she was fairly young, but will carry that scar with her for the rest of her life. And I remember the day I discovered that scar. We all went swimming at a friend’s house and for the first time, she revealed her scar. She had kept it carefully covered up all those years. She wore shirts with high collars, or scarves, or jewelry, anything that would keep people from seeing the scar she thought was ugly… and embarrassment. But when she told us about the story of the scar, I thought it was such a powerful sign of her strength – that she got through that journey and came out on the other side a strong and healthy and powerful young woman. She continued to feel uncomfortable about her scar, but that scar helped me to see the strength and the beauty inside of her.

Did anyone learn something about a friend based on those scars? Anyone want to share?

Will you ever look at that person the same way again?

There is a reason that twice in our gospel reading for this morning Jesus hands and feet are mentioned.

The first time is when he appears to some of his disciples on the evening of the resurrection. They were huddled together – scared, frightened, unsure of themselves – and suddenly the Risen Lord shows up. He breathes into their lives peace. He forgives them. He gives them a job to do. AND he shows them his hands and his side.

He shows them who he is.

He shows them what he has been through.

He shows them what he has overcome.

And then, a week later, the disciples don’t seem to have moved. They are still there, in the house, only this time Thomas was there also. Thomas missed the first appearance, and said that unless he had seen the nail marks and put his finger where those nails were, that he wouldn’t believe.

So when Jesus stands among them, the first words he utters are: “Peace” – but then he offers an invitation. An invitation for Thomas to come and to reach out his hand and to touch his scars. And Thomas recognizes those scars, remembers what they have all been through together and cries out – “My Lord and my God!”

The Rev.Dr. Janet Hunt writes:

Our scars tell part of the story of who we are, what has mattered to us, what has happened to us, the risks we’ve taken, the gifts we’ve given. And as we are reminded in the story before us in John’s Gospel, this was surely also so with Jesus, too.

Which is why Thomas insisted he needed to see, no more than that, feel the scars in his hands and put his own hand in Jesus’ side to be sure that it was him. One would think he would have recognized him with from the features of his face or the sound of his voice, but no, for Thomas, Jesus had become something more since that long walk to the cross a week before. Jesus’ very identity was now defined by the sacrifice he had made in our behalf. A sacrifice made most visible in those wounds that by then could have only begun to heal. (words.dancingwiththeword.com)

So what are the lessons that we learn by seeing the visible wounds of Jesus? What are the lessons that we learn from seeing the visible wounds of one another?

We see Jesus wounds, and in spite of how the disciples failed him… in spite of how we have failed him, Jesus tells us that we are loved… we are forgiven… that peace is freely offered… and that we have a job to do.

1) We are loved: Jesus comes to us. When someone shares a scar with us, when they are vulnerable with us, it means that they trust us and care about us and are willing to share their lives with us.

2) We are forgiven: Each of us played a role in the crucifixion of Christ. Each of us is responsible for the wounds he bears. And yet, he tells us we are forgiven. When we encounter wounds in our lives, they can be symbols to us of our failings… but they can also be symbols of forgiveness, healing, and love.

Story of running into a pole in Brandon’s car… I was in a bad place, my grandpa had just died… he wasn’t happy, but his love for me in the midst of that experience of loss and grief that got me through. My mind was in a million places when I was backing up the car and I did not even notice the parking pole before I slammed into it. The bright yellow scrape on his car marred it in the same way that my soul was grieving and broken and needed some healing. But just as that car was patched up good as new, so too, with time and love, did we both make it to the other side of the grief process.

3) Peace is offered: This may seem to go with the idea of forgiveness, but it really is about releasing ourselves from a heart full of fear.

In her reflection, Kathryn Matthews Huey talks about life one week after Easter… when we return to life as usual: “wars and uprisings that drag on for months and years, with hundreds and thousands dead and maimed; an economic crisis that still threatens thousands with foreclosure and bankruptcy, high unemployment, high gasoline prices, high health care costs, and a political season poisoned with ugly rhetoric and personal attacks. And then there are our own private griefs and burdens: health problems, kid problems, too much work, too much worry, too much coming at us, so much to run away from, so much to fear. What’s an overwhelmed person of faith to do? Even one week after the music of the trumpets and the splendor of the lilies have faded, how are we to live “as Easter people”?
William Sloane Coffin once said, “As I see it, the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight….You can’t think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart’s a stone, you can’t have decent thoughts – either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind. When our hearts fill with a fear we can’t organize or get our arms around, a fear that makes us feel weak and small and inadequate, all of us disciples receive that same gift of grace, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit, a gift that limbers up our minds and our hearts, turning them from hearts of stone to hearts full of love.”

4) We have a job to do: The visible wounds of Jesus and of our own lives can also remind us that there is a job to do.

Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners, and there is a world full of people who need to know that love and grace.
Jesus takes our wounds and scars and uses them to ministry to others
There are wounds in this world that need healing. And in the end, Jesus sent his disciples out from that upper room… and “Jesus sends us out into the world, to put our hands on the marks of its suffering, to bring good news and hope to all of God’s children.” (Kate Huey)

Amen!

Going All In

Posted on February 26, 2012Leave a comment

This morning, as we enter the season of Lent, we do so with the book of Romans at our side. As a church, we believe we have been called to reflect the light of God and much of that vision that we have affirmed comes right from these verses in chapter 12.

So this season, this time in the wilderness, will be a time of exploration for us. We will dive deep into this chapter and discover together just where and what God is calling us to.

Today, we start with verse one – which Zoe read for us a bit earlier. I want to share it with you again from the Message translation:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. (MSG)

Take your everyday ordinary life…. Every moment, every second, every action… 100% and give it to God.

I want to share with you a prayer… and you tell me if you think this describes the kind of faith Paul invites us into:

Prayer of a Half-hearted Christian
I love thy church, O God;
Her walls before me stand;
But please excuse my absence, Lord;
This bed is simply grand
A charge to keep I have;
A God to glorify;
But Lord, don’t ask for cash from me;
The glory comes too high.
Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
Yes Though I seldom pray or pay,
I still insist I am.
Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No Others, Lord, should do their part,
But please don’t count on me.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below
Oh, loud my hymns of praise I bring,
Because it doesn’t cost to sing

We just finished singing, “I surrender all,” but so many of us… including myself… don’t really surrender all. We surrender some. We surrender on somedays. We surrender ourselves half-way… but not all.

In fact, many of us are like this dimmer switch up here. We waver in how much light we let out into the world. Our lights are not off completely – but neither are they shining at 100%, 100% of the time.

I did some research on how these dimmer switches work. Specifically the old style knob dimmer switches – where you turn the dial and the lights get brighter and dimmer.

It turns out what makes these switches work was something called a variable resistor. The resistor doesn’t conduct electricity well and in this design, the resistance is increased or decreased by moving the contact arm.

Right here, the arm is all the way on the right, and so it has to travel through all of that resistance to complete the circuit. As the charge works its way through, it loses energy, the voltage drops, and then the light is dimmer.

In this next image, the contact arm is at the top, and so there is about half of the resistor to go through and the lights are only halfway on.

In this image, there is very little actual resistor that the charge has to go through and all most all of the energy travels through the circuit and the light is fully bright.

(you can play with a flash version of these images here. Thank you to “How Stuff Works” for helping me with my sermon!!!)

Now… I find that these old styles of dimmer switches really help us to talk about our faith. You see, we put up all kinds of resistance in our lives. Just like the person in the prayer I read for you, we make excuses, we want to stay where we are, we think living out our faith costs too much. And on different days and different seasons, the amount of resistance we put up varies.

Some days we want to shine brightly and we are very open to God. We remove obstacles and barriers and let God’s love shine through us.

But some days, we throw every barrier in the world before God. I’m too tired. I’m too old. I’m too poor. I’m not going to listen, God.

What is amazing about these older styles of dimmer switches – is that no matter how much resistance we put up, and how dimly the light shines – it still takes a considerable amount of energy.

The input on the right side is at 100% power. That energy is being used to heat the resistor and then it is lost, dissipated, gone.

In the same way in our lives. God gives us everything. He is right there beside us, shining into our lives, calling us into his service. And every barrier we put up, every bit of resistance that we give, takes all of that God energy and it is used up, dissipated, gone.

When Paul calls us in Romans 12:1 to become a living sacrifice, he isn’t talking about dimmer switch faith… he is inviting us to throw out the resistor – and to let all of that amazing love and power and grace of God to shine through – 100%, 100% of the time.

In our weekly Lenten study this morning (and again on Tuesday night for those who want to join us) we are taking apart that verse piece by piece. But for this morning, I want to explore just what this means for our lives.

I think one of the best ways to understand this idea of going all in is to look at our gospel reading for this morning. As we walk with Jesus, we can see how he lived out this idea of a living sacrifice.

First of all, our passage starts with his baptism. As Jesus rises up out of the waters, the voice of God speaks – This is my son, the Beloved.

Before we can even begin to think about being a living sacrifice, we have to remember God’s mercy. We have to remember what God has already done for us.

God has created us, claimed us, named us, called us and saved us.

Through Jesus Christ, we become the sons and daughters of God and we too hear the voice calling out – You are my beloved. You are mine.

God’s love and grace and mercy are flowing into our lives at full power. It’s there without us having to say or do anything.

But we don’t stop with the baptism. We don’t stop with our declaration of faith.

No, as soon as Jesus hears that voice, the Spirit of God whisks him away into the wilderness. There, for forty days and forty nights, he is tempted, the wild beasts surround him and angels take care of him.

Jesus didn’t try to plan ahead. He didn’t back an emergency kit. He didn’t give excuses for why he couldn’t go. He went and completely and utterly put his life in God’s hands.

We, too, are called to dependence. We are called to place our lives, our time, our energy, our resources in the hands of God.

This time in the desert – this time of living and holy sacrifice – is us taking away all of the barriers, all of the resistance. We relinquish control… because we trust that God will take care of us.

You see, this time in the wilderness, this act of living sacrifice ONLY works if we believe the first part…. That God loves us and forgives us and gives us life.

And then, after he had experienced absolute dependence upon God and let all of his temptations and resistance go, Jesus came out of the wilderness and went straight to work.

Placing our lives in God’s hands mean that all of that power is flowing directly through us… and we can’t help but shine.

Our worship and our service and our ministry are one and the same thing. In every moment of every day, we are responsive to where God wants us to go. We serve him. We let him shine through our hearts.

As Lent begins, we are invited to walk with Jesus. We are invited to enter the wilderness, knowing and trusting that the power of God is 100% behind us. And we are called to let shine.

Give up any resistance you might have in your life. Because of the amazing things that God has done for you already – trust him. Know that he will take care of you. Let go of your worries and your resistance and let him have your life. Then your light will shine brightly for all the world to see, 100%, 100% of the time

Feasting, not fasting…

Posted on February 23, 2012Leave a comment

Mark’s gospel is known for its haste. Jesus is here and then there and everything is so urgent and busy. We spent four weeks in Epiphany just in chapter one because everything happens in such a short span of time. Life is all crammed in and there is no time for details.

That could also describe my entry into the Lenten season. In a whirlwind of activity and meetings and work and hospital visits and writing, there wasn’t time to breathe! I think on Ash Wednesday I actually might have had two pots of coffee just to get me through. Go, go, go. Rush, rush, rush.

But then, we got to worship. Everything was finally set and we were sharing in familiar liturgy, age old hymns, quiet moments of reflection and confession and challenge.

We had 27 people in worship that evening… And while that might not sound like a lot, it was double what we had any other year I’ve been around. As people began to trickle in, as they came forward and I placed those ashes on each of their foreheads, as we broke the bread and shared the cup, it felt like home. A family gathered to remember we are human. A family gathered to say that we were sorry. A family gathered to start putting our lives back together… Together.

We always have a meal after Wednesday worship and before youth group starts, so we told folks to bring a dish to share. We feasted together on Ash Wednesday, and it never felt more right. Marked with the ashes, we knew we were mortal. We knew we had fallen short. But we also couldn’t stay there because the good news of God was also our story that night.

I sat with a couple who ocasionally attend our church – when they aren’t off being caregivers for aging parents. We shared stories. We talked about our hopes for the young people all around us. And they shared with me that even in these last few months, something is happening in our church. God is moving and the excitement and eagerness is building.

I learned two things last night.

1) all that rushing and moving was worth it. There is urgency in what we are doing because it is important and there is not a moment to waste

2) but we also have to stop and remember why. We have to slow our hearts and really listen.

Ash Wednesday has always had such a somber and holy and serious personality in my practice and theology. It was a day of darkness and despair, wailing and pleading.

But last night, when I stopped to look at all of us gathered around those tables in fellowship, I realized just how joyous Lent can be.

We trust in a God who brings light out of darkness, life out of death, strengh from weakness. I know, liturgically we have a few weeks to sit in our repentance… But God is good… All the time.

So pass the pie, and the baked beans, and the pistacio salad… Happy Lent!

the wedding garment

Posted on October 9, 2011Leave a comment

When a girl gets married these days, one of the most important decisions she makes is what to wear. On television, you can watch Bridezillas and Say Yes to the Dress and Four Weddings – or even an hour long special on Kate Middleton’s wedding gown – and I guarantee, one of the most expensive items included in any of those celebrations and the one that causes the most anxiety is the dress.

I try not to watch those shows.

And… I tried really hard to “NOT” be one of those girls. I wanted to throw off the shackles of consumerism and find a nice, simple, elegant dress that did not cost me an arm and a leg.

As my mom and grandma and sister-in-law and maid of honor walked into the bridal shop, I made them promise: I was not trying on a dress that cost more than $200. I was not going to fall in love with something that I could not afford.

And seven or eight dresses into the experience, I found the one. It was simple and elegant, understated and yet gorgeous. It was MY dress. And after sashaying around the room and standing in front of the mirror, and picking out bridesmaids dresses that matched, I looked at the price tag: twelve-hundred dollars. I had done it. I had fallen in love with something that was far too expensive.

Unfortunately for the bridal shop, but lucky for me, I am a skilled online shopper. I found the exact same dress for about half the price a few months later. And the dress did make the day. It was and still is – MY dress. And it helps me tell the world who I am. One look in my direction, and people not only knew I was the bride, but also that I wasn’t showy, or stuck-up or traditional.

I love this dress… I really do… but the simple fact is, I can’t wear it to any other wedding. 😉

Wedding garments seem to be the theme for the day, because in our gospel this morning, Jesus tells the crowds a parable about a wedding feast. And he tells them – what you are wearing matters.

Will you pray with me:

We could spend hours talking about the first half of this parable… about how the king threw a wedding feast for his beloved son and how the guests one by one declined the honor, made excuses, and in some cases slaughtered his servants when they showed up with the invitation.

As we have discovered in the past few weeks, there are a number of people in this world who think there are more important things to do than respond to the call of God. There are some who are so caught up in being religious, they forget about who they are accountable to. And as the gospel makes clear, they do so at their own peril.

But for today, I’m more interested in the second half of this story.

You see, when the king’s guests don’t show up, he doesn’t cancel the party. No, he just invites more guests. He has his servants go out and pull people in off the street. Homeless folks, addicts, fishermen, swindlers and thieves, families with children, small town merchants, teachers, retirees… the good and the bad, the simple, the unworthy, the unprepared, the underqualified. You and me.

Never in our lives would any of us ever dream of being invited to a king’s wedding feast. Through the miracles of television, some here got up very early in the morning to watch the latest royal wedding festivities, but our television screens are the closest we are ever going to get to that kind of celebration.

And for most of the people gathered around Jesus as he told this parable, that would have been true as well. They just didn’t bump elbows with those kind of people.

This unexpected invitation, this outpouring of love and acceptance, this grand gesture is one more reminder that God’s ways are not our ways… It is a reminder that the Kingdom of Heaven is opened up to all who will receive the call – the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad… as long as we accept that invitation and drop what we are doing to respond.

Here WE are. In one way or another, you have responded to the call of God upon your life… to the invitation from the great King to participate in the holy celebration.

In the church, we often like to talk about how faith saves us. How belief in Jesus Christ and his righteousness leads us into the Kingdom of God. Jesus died for my sins, I accept what he has done for me, bing-bang-boom, one way ticket to heaven.

But you know what… this parable throws a wrench in that simple formula. You see, while everyone was invited… while the invitation and the gospels tell that each one of us is now entitled to heaven through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross… not everyone at the party is allowed to stay.

“When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” and the man was speechless. Then the King said to the attendants, “bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Sheesh – all because he wore the wrong thing?

If you are anything like me, you are utterly grateful for the grace of God in Jesus Christ that invited you to the Kingdom party. And you were more than happy to drop what you were doing in order to accept that grace and be found worthy of the feast.

We understand that our being a part of the Kingdom of God has very little to do with our actions, but everything to do with the righteousness of Christ, freely given to us through repentance and communion and baptism and faith and prayer. We know we don’t deserve to be here, we know we don’t deserve the grace that has been given to us, and we know that “deserving it” isn’t the point…. Christ is. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, that proves God’s love for us…

But (there is always a but, isn’t there), But, if you are anything like me, in the middle of the party, you start to worry about that guy who wasn’t wearing the right clothes… and maybe you look down at your own clothes.

At weddings today, the bride’s dress is gorgeous, the bridesmaids look lovely and the groom and his men are dressed to the nines. But who really cares what anyone else is wearing. As I have officiated weddings lately, I’ve seen people in suits, people in polos and khakis, jeans and t-shirts, cotton summer dresses, flip flops and sunglasses. And in my experience, no one has been thrown out of any of these weddings I have been to for what they were or were not wearing.

But there it is. At the end of this beautiful parable that has us feeling all warm and fuzzy because we didn’t deserve the invitation, we have a conversation about proper wedding attire.

As scholar Alyce McKenzie reminds us,

Though his actions are harsh, they are not completely unjustified, when understood in the first century context. It was the custom in Ancient Near Eastern weddings, that the guests would wear a garment that symbolized their respect for the host and the occasion. Often the host would provide a rack of such garments at the entryway for guests who had [not] brought theirs. Not to be wearing a wedding garment, when one could have chosen one on the way in, is a sign of disrespect for both host and occasion.

Ahh…. A missing detail from the parable.

When we, the unworthy, accept the invitation and show up for the wedding, we are supposed to “put on” this special garment as we come in the door. AND – it is something that the Lord our King will provide for us, if we only chose to accept it.

I am reminded that there are many places in the New Testament “putting on clothing” was used as a symbol for new life in Christ.

From Galatians 3:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

From Colossians 3:

Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self… Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience… And over all these virtues put on love.

From Ephesians 4:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self… to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

In his sermon, “On the Wedding Garment,” John Wesley describes this special clothing as our personal holiness. He claims that while the cross of Christ and his righteousness bestowed upon us entitles us for the Kingdom of God… only personal holiness with qualify us to continue there. The first makes us children of God and heirs of the kingdom… but the second makes us worthy of have the inheritance of the saints.

If we think about all of those New Testament scriptures – they have one thing in common – we are called to put on a different life in Christ Jesus. We are called to actually BE different. As Wesley describes it, “holiness is having ‘the mind that was in Christ,’ and the ‘walking as Christ walked.’”

The righteousness of Christ saves us… but as the parable reminds us, we have to show up… we have to honor the King through our actions… we have to participate in the Kingdom… we have to put on the life that he has prepared for us.

I keep my wedding dress hanging in my closet, in part, as a reminder of our wedding. But I have to admit, that it is also a reminder that I no longer fit into the dress. It is a goal, a challenge, staring me in the face and daring me to start exercising again. This dress has become like a mirror in which to evaluate my physical health.

In the same way, we all need to evaluate our spiritual health. We need to take time every now and then to look at what we are wearing and decide if it still fits. We need to remind ourselves of the wedding garment that God has provided… of the holiness that he asks of us… of the new life that has been prepared for every single one gathered here.

Are you putting on Christ?

Are you practicing patience and gentleness?

Are you humble?

Do you forgive others?

So you seek peace with your neighbors and your enemies?

By the grace of God and the strength of Christ do you seek to love everyone you meet?

Are you walking as Christ walked?

And if not… what are you going to do to get back into those wedding clothes? What are you going to let go of so that they fit once again? Which person in this room will be your accountability partner, pushing you and reminding you and walking along side you?

As John Wesley concluded his sermon, he reminded us that “The God of love is willing to save all the souls that he has made… revealed by the Son of his love, who gave his own life that they that believe in him might have everlasting life… But he will not force them to accept of it; he leaves them in the hands of their own counsel… Choose holiness, by [his] grace; which is the way, the only way, to everlasting life…. This is the wedding garment of all that are called to the “marriage of the Lamb.” Clothed in this, they will not be found naked.

May the power of the Holy Spirit fill us all with knowledge and guidance and strength as we seek to not only be children of God, but to be found worthy through his grace.