healing – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

a day in the life of a reserve delegate #gc2012

Posted on April 26, 20121 Comment

The morning starts at 6:45 with showers and hotel room coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made from groceries I picked up yesterday.

As a reserve, I get to observe most of the time, and so when I arrived at the conference at 8am, I made my way to the Superintendency committee. I’m not sure why I picked it, but there I was. Devotions were led by the committee chair and then we got down to business… mostly. The group started with two easier ones – and chose to not support an item to allow for laity to become bishops and an item that would require district superintendents to serve outside of their annual conferences. And then the fun began. 5 proposals all dealing with term limits for bishops had to be dealt with. Which would they chose? How would it affect central conferences? Are term limits a sign of distrust or a tool for effectiveness? Is being a bishop different than being an elder? The process was long, and at one point, the group decided to return to language allowing central conferences to chose their own term limits for bishops (current practice). Which then left the question of what to do with US bishops. As the debate went on, and an amendment was made by a delegate from a central conference, a woman from Germany stood to speak. She gently spoke to the fact that the committee had allowed for contextual local control for the central conferences to make their own decisions and asked that other central conference delegates would refrain from editing the proposal that was before the body so that the US delegates could make decisions about their own context. It was a gracious act of kenosis.

Lunch gave me the opportunity to sit down with other young adults and have a Q&A with Adam Hamilton about the Call to Action and Interim Operations Team proposals. Adam was extraordinarily gracious and did his best to listen and answer what he could. There were still many questions and not enough time and not enough dialogue back and forth (the format and sheer number of YP who turned up – 50+) didn’t allow for it. BUT – you could sense there was a change of feelings… it didn’t hurt that the backdrop for the conversation were the words “HEAL” – our theme scripture for the evening.

After lunch, I tried to catch up on some social media conversations. I sat outside in the sun, recharged my phone (which I used excessively b/c of the poor internet), talked with some other reserves and rested. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon session observing the Faith & Order sub-committee which was discussing qualifications for ordination. One of the most interesting parts of their work was watching the difficult work of the translator and the difficulty of not only multiple languages, but the added language of Robert’s Rules to complicate matters. It was an exercise in patience for all involved and they truly lived out the process graciously and beautifully… in spite of fumbles and human missteps. That happens… keeping the spirit is the hard part and they succeeded.

The hardest part about the process is that you can’t talk. You can’t add information. You can’t help to clear up problems. You can just be there. I tried to be available by offering to move chairs, by shushing folks next door who were being too loud, offering markers, etc. As a reserve you really are support. You can love and care and pray, but you can’t really participate in the same way. For anyone who knows me, that is a difficult thing for me to do. I like to be actively engaged and twitter has been one way for me to communicate and share even though I cannot use my physical voice.

Tonight’s plenary greeted our Pan-Methodist brothers and sisters from across the globe and featured nominations for important general church positions. It also featured a point of personal priveledge that lifted up the failure of the process of holy conferencing (not enough time, guidelines, compassion, importance) the day before – specifically in regards to LGBT issues. It was evident there was pain and hurt felt by many…

but the beautiful thing about a church conference is that God is in our midst. Our theme for the day was healing and plenary led into worship where we sang Balm in Gilead and talked about the healing power of Jesus’ love in our lives and we were challenged to lift up to God the places where we have hurt or been unkind or have sinned… the places we need spiritual healing as well as physical healing. It was powerful. Tears freely poured. I prayed with one of the marshals for her sister who is ill. We sang, we prayed, and God moved in that place.

10:00 – time to head back to the hotel… with stops for conversation, and witness, and sharing. It’s nearly 1am now… the blogging is done, the mind is clear, and I can sleep.

Strength for the Weary

Posted on February 5, 2012Leave a comment

This morning, I have 13 reasons why I am a little bit tired and weary.

First of all, it is only 6:15 in the morning Hawaii time. It took me about a week to get myself on Pacific time, and time changes are always more difficult when you head east. This time next week, I’ll be operating on central standard time once again… hopefully =)

My other twelve reasons can be summed up in this one picture.

Last night we had a mini-lock-in to prepare for SouperBowl Subday and we had 12 awesome young people here to help out.

After two hours of work – slicing, cutting, stirring, scooping and sandwich making – we had a couple of hours of games to play and finished with worship and communion at midnight. It was a fun evening!

After getting all of the hard work done, we played JESUS bingo for prizes, had an indoor snowball fight… with all of that scrap paper and played a rather disgusting game of “Chubby Bunny.”

I want to thank everyone who has ordered subs and soup for today. All the money we raise from the food is going to help continue ministry with these young people and to send us on our mission trip this summer to the Twin Cities in July.

So those are my thirteen reasons for being weary this morning… but as the scripture reminds us, I have one very good reason for being strong…

28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Will you pray with me?

Before we dive into the meat of today’s readings, I want to give you a little background on this passage from Isaiah.

Isaiah was a prophet of Judah, or the southern part of what used to beIsrael. After King David died, thekingdomofIsraelwas basically split into two. The green part on this map shows the part which was known asIsraeland the purple shows the southernkingdomofJudah.

Isaiah is called upon by God during a very difficult time in the history of the faith. You see, all God wanted from the people was for them to follow Him. To trust in Him. To let Him be the King of their lives. But both of these kingdoms had said – No thank-you, Lord… we are going to do it yourself.

This is the God of all creation! This is the one who sets the stars in the sky and raises up nations and kings! This is the one who had brought them victory and had given them thelandofIsraelin the first place! And they turned their backs on him.

As a result, God let them fall. AndIsrael, this green portion on the map, has just been conquered by the Assyrians. They have been wiped off of the map and out of history.

And the word of God that comes to Isaiah is this: I am the God of all creation. I am everything that you need. Tell the people ofJudahthat if they don’t start to follow me, if they try to trust in their own might, they will only find ruin.

For 39 chapters, Isaiah carries this word to the people ofJudah. He warns them. He pleads with them. All he has to do is point to the north and remind them of what happened to their neighbors. But his words fall on deaf ears. And disobedience has its consequences. God sends the Babylonians in and the kingdom of Judah is conquered.

But here is the really important part. God does not forget the people in exile. He sends Isaiah to them again, this time with a message of comfort and hope. From chapter 40 on, the whole feel of this book of scripture changes. Now that the people realize that they can’t do it on their own… now that they realize how futile it is to try… now that they are at rock bottom… God is right there, offering strength and hope and life.

Yes, Isaiah reminds us that even young people like myself will faint and be weary if we try to go on our own. We will fall absolutely exhausted by the side of the road. Simple youth is not a prescription for strength. Military might will not save us. Protein shakes and lifting weights will not build the kind of muscles that we need here.

If we want to be spiritually strong and whole and full of life the only place that we can turn is the Lord.

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

The question that I really wrestle with is: what does it mean to wait?

After all, that seems to be the key to that verse of scripture. Those who wait for the Lord…

Does it mean that we sit quietly and patiently? That we stop everything else we are doing and just see what happens?

Not at all.

In fact, the Hebrew word for “waiting” is the same as the word used for twisting – like making a rope. (It is not a passive state, but one of tension as you are being worked on. It also means to expect, gather, look patiently, tarry, wait (for, on, upon) and bind together. (from Lindy Black)

Blogger Lindy Black asks – Is it possible that waiting on the Lord is more than just passing time? Is waiting on the Lord also being open and available to the will of God?

There is the old joke about the man who prayed to God that he might win the lottery… but he never went out and bought a ticket.

If we dive deep into what this word “wait” means… it is not passive, it is active, expectant, full of hope and tension as we not only wait for God to act, but we also wait upon the Lord in service and worship.

I have quite a few friends who are pregnant right now, and as they “wait” for these new lives to come into the world – they can tell you that waiting is not passive. It is painful. It is full of uncomfortable moments. But in the midst of it all, your life and the life of that child are one. What you eat matters. What you drink matters. How you move matters. A relationship is formed in the process of the waiting. Your life and their life is bound together – it is entwined.

That’s how it should be when we wait upon the Lord… our life becomes entwined with God’s as we serve him… as we are bound together… and in the process, his strength becomes our strength – he takes our single cord and with others in the church we are made into the many… we are made strong.

[retell the story of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law – a woman who found her strength and her salvation… what is the first thing she does? She serves.]

In her book “On Your Mark: Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross,” Megan McKenna talks about this amazing act of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law:

I am often amazed that this last line offends many, especially women, who may cynically respond, “That’s why she was healed, to be a servant to the men.” But they have missed the meaning of the phrase “to wait on them,” which is the term used for a deacon. She “ministers” to him, just as the “angels ministered to him” during his time in the desert. Jesus has gone out to Simon’s mother-in-law in her disease and grasped her by the hand for the victory of justice. In gratitude for his taking hold of her and giving her life to do his work, she responds wholeheartedly. Now the first four followers of Jesus become five in number.

I think her strength comes not only from the healing power of Jesus. Her strength comes from the fact that she is serving Jesus. That she has bound herself to him. That she has let him come into her life and now it is Christ’s strength that flows out of her.

Suzanne Guthrie writes:

Peter’s mother-in-law is lifted up, as in the Resurrection… And she begins to serve – just as the apostles are sent out… She is the church’s first deacon. She announces the Gospel by her action. Healed, transformed, and readily at service she slips into her role as easily as if her life-time had prepared her for it… She serves, like Jesus himself… She receives the Light into her home, she is raised up by the Light, the Light shines through her as she ministers to others.

That is what we are also called to do. Whether we are old or young, rich or poor, weak or strong. To accept the light of God into our life and to let it transform us and give us strength.

What Isaiah was trying to teach the people of Judah is that our power has nothing to do with us. Our power is God’s. Our strength is the Lord’s.

those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

time heals all…

Posted on June 24, 2011Leave a comment

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My church has not had a choir for about 10-15 years. And this large brown filing cabinet with boxes overflowing next to it in the church office is full of sheet music and photocopies (oops) and sample scores. For 10 years, we have not used a single piece of music… and in fact, when we brought together a special choir last spring, most of the music was too difficult and too many parts for us to use.

A faithful member walked into my office the other day. She has been working on passing on some of the music to the local community choir, but they are more interested in music with accompaniment CD’s rather than the sheet music with piano scores we have. So she volunteered to pay the postage to send the music to someone who really could use it. With so many tragedies and natural disasters this year in Alabama, Missouri, and even here in Iowa, certainly there were churches who had lost their collections of music.

So I put out a general announcement via facebook searching for a home for this music.

A church less than 30 miles away responded. Salem United Methodist Church, three years ago this month, was underwater when the Cedar River flooded. Three years ago, three temporary worship spaces ago, they had a choir room full of music they had collected through the years. And it all washed away down the Cedar. It was all left covered with muck.

Three years have passed and they now find themselves in a new home. And settled, though busting at the seams in their new gathering space, they were eager and excited about the possibility of having filing cabinets full of music once more.

While my mind immediately went to those places that have recently been hurting, when I first got the word about Salem UMC needing music, my heart sank. The churches in Tuscaloosa and Joplin and Varina are not ready for choir music. They are probably still sorting through rubble. They are probably still trying to figure out what to do next. They are still grieving, and they have a long journey ahead of them to recovery.

The thing about healing and rebuilding is that it cannot happen over night.

Whether it is rehabilitation after an injury to your body, or repairing a damaged relationship, or restoring a structure that sustained damage… it takes time.

Just ask the residents of New Orleans… Just ask the people who lived in Czech Village or Time Check in Cedar Rapids… Just ask that neighbor who had a heart attack a few years ago, or your family member who broke a rib… just ask the couple across town whose marriage was strained by adultery or the siblings who didn’t talk for seven years after a falling out.

There are a few places in this world where miraculous healing occurs in an instant… but I know of very few of them. And even when the healing does come – like in the scriptural stories of the leper or the hemmoraging woman or the demoniac – it is going to take a while to figure out what to do next… how to live your life without the disease or the illness or the demons that plagued you. Relationships might never be the same as they were before. You will have discovered something about your self or others that changes who you are and what you value. You may not want to get back to your old “normal” at all.

My church has been through its own ups and downs throughout the years. We have had our good times and our bad. As we are being re-energized by God, we pray that we simply won’t be what we were in the past. And part of that is letting go of past ideas of “success.”

And so, this morning, seven boxes of sheet music found a new home. And a flooded out church choir finds itself, three years later, further down the road to recovery.

Setting the Table: The Cup

Posted on October 17, 2010Leave a comment

On a brutally hot afternoon, a lone woman makes the long trek from her village to the nearby well. She brings with her an empty jug. All of the other women had come out to draw up the water early in the morning – before the sunlight would beat down upon the earth. All of the other women had come out together to gossip and laugh, to share stories and to work. But not her. No, this lone women was more likely to be the subject of their gossip and their stories. She was more likely to be laughed at. So instead, she preferred the company of the radiant sun, the dust in the air, she preferred to risk facing whatever dangers might await her alone than to face her peers.

On a brutally hot afternoon, a lone woman walks to a well with an empty jug… and there she meets the source of life and life abundant.

So many times have we heard the story of this Samaritan woman and her chance meeting at the well with Jesus. So many times have we talked about how Christ broke through so many barriers – religious, gender, social barriers – to speak to her, to show this woman love. So many times have we marveled at the transformation in her life as she ran back to the village – to those same women she avoided every day – to share the good news.

So many times we tell this story and we walk away feeling warm and fuzzy… another life saved…

But we forget that one day on a brutally hot afternoon, a lone woman made a long trek from her village to the nearby well… and her jug was empty.

We forget that before the good news there was pain. There was heartache. There was desperation. We forget that a woman was yearning for a God who seemed absent. We forget that a community shut another person out and refused to invite her in. We forget the sting of judgment. We forget the bitterness of disappointment in herself and in her husbands.

Before the good news of living water… there was thirst.

When we set the table this morning with a glass, it is because we, too, are thirsty. We, too, are waiting for God’s spirit of love and compassion and healing to fill our lives.

When we bring this empty glass to the table, it is because we are thirsty.

Or if we are not thirsty today, we have been in the past.

We have experienced pain and disappointment and mistrust in the past. We have experienced the drought of faith when our lives were too busy for God. We have experienced dry and brittle seasons of prayer when God seemed absent. We have been alone and lost in the wilderness when others that we thought we trusted turned their backs on us. Maybe the well itself was blocked because your family or work… maybe you abandoned going to the well of God’s love because you no longer felt like you belonged.

And as much as we wish that didn’t happen in the church – it has. No matter how faithful we try to be, we are human and we make mistakes, and this body of Christ has suffered in the past.

But just as last week, we remembered that God can set a table of plenty even in the wilderness – we remember today, that Christ offers us living water… even in the midst of a brutal and painful drought.

I want you to take those cards that you have been given again today.

As we prepare to come to the table… we prepare to bring ourselves… I want us to honestly come before God with empty jars and pitchers and glasses.

These cups are empty because we have experienced hurt and pain in the past. Prayerfully think of a time when this church body did not live up to it’s calling as the people of God. When have you been disappointed by this community? When have you been hurt and alone because of a divorce or the death of a loved one? Write down on a card a moment of emptiness – a moment when you were thirsting for God’s love and righteousness to fill your life and to make you whole.

We are preparing ourselves to come to the table… and that means we need to bring the full history of our church before God. Now these cards can be turned in anonamously – you don’t have to put your name on them or the full details of the situation. But make note at the very least of a time when you felt empty and dried up… I was hurt. I was disappointed. And as we add to the timeline of our church we created in 2008, I want to ask you to include the year or the decade that this time of emptiness came.

Take a few minutes to prayerfully write these things down.

Hang on to each one of these. Hold them in your hands.

In the book of common prayer, we hear that those who go through desolate valleys will find it a place of wells.

For those of you who wrote about a past time of drought and emptiness in your life – How many of you eventually found a deep well of God’s compassion and love?

How many of you made it through that dry time?

How many of you experienced the outpouring of grace and with joy can now draw water from the wells of salvation… show of hands.

As the woman at the well was reminded… sometimes in our darkest moments, Christ speaks to us. And he offers living water like a spring that will gush up to eternal life. There is plenty. There is hope. There is comfort. There is salvation.

For those of you who raised your hands… part of that healing was finding community once again. Like the woman at the well, you were able to return or fully participate again in the life of Christ through this church… and we are so glad that you have =)

And for those of you who are still carrying around empty jugs and glasses… hear these words from the prophet Isaiah – Come, everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters. You that have no money; come…. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. (Isaiah 55:1)

Come and wait for God with us. Bring your true selves. Bring your struggles and disappointments… because in those places too, God speaks. Bring your empty glasses and wait with us at the table. God promises to hear us. God promises to speak to us.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout… so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty. “

God has a word for us. It is a word of restoration and healing. It is a word of comfort and peace. And that word is waiting for us to come. To come and to listen. To open our hears and our hearts to receive it. Place your empty cup on the table…. Come.

Send Me!

Posted on August 30, 2009Leave a comment

God said, “Whom shall I send?” And immediately, without hesitating, without knowing what on earth he was getting into, Isaiah responded, “Here I am, Send ME!”

Now, I have thought and thought and thought about this sermon. In some ways, it is the inspiration for this whole series on worship – because fundamentally, I believe that what we do in worship gets us ready to say yes. What we do in worship helps us to place God at the center of our lives as we praise. What we do in worship helps us to let go of the pasts that weigh us down. What we do in worship re-presents us with the Word of God. And ALL of those things prepare us, shape us, form us, so that when God cries out, “Whom shall I send?” we will all cry together – SEND ME!!!!

If you look at the structure of our worship services – about a third or more of our time is spent responding. We respond to God by lifting one another up in prayer. We respond to God by giving generously to the work of Christ’s church in the world. We respond to God by coming forward to the table of the Lord and sharing in the heavenly banquet. We respond to God by heading out into the world with a blessing. And the most important part? We respond by living every minute of our lives between 10:00 on Sunday morning to 9:00 the next Sunday in a way that says yes to God.

That, my friends, is the tricky part. We read in James that we are supposed to be doers of the word and not hearers only. That we shouldn’t just talk about loving God and others, but we are actually supposed to go out there and love God by loving others.

As we have talked about all this month, the core of our gospel message is: God loves you, God forgives you, and God has a job for you.

Every single day, in a thousand different ways, God is inviting us to participate in the reign of God’s kingdom. Just on Thursday as I sat down to write down some of my thoughts, I was struck by four invitations in particular.

1) Mary Lanning passed away on Thursday morning and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to comfort those who are grieving?”

2) The rain kept falling all day Thursday and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to fill sandbags in Palo and Central City and Marion and bring hope to those who are flooded?”

3) I looked at some of our curriculum for Sunday School, and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to teach the high school class and provide support and encouragement for our young people?”

4) Our lay leadership team met on Thursday evening, and I heard God say, “Whom shall I send to serve the people of this church in Marengo, Iowa?

Now – in school, I was always the kid who wanted to answer all of the questions. And so I’d be sitting there in my seat, eagerly raising my hand, halfway standing out of my chair so the teacher would notice me.

That’s kind of how I picture Isaiah. He just had something AMAZING happen to him – He is standing before God and in spite of all the things he has done in his life, he has lived through the experience. Even more than that – he was forgiven, given a whole new lease on life. And now this same God that is full of grace and mercy needs someone to help him out. And Isaiah raises his hand and says “Hey God!!! I’m over here!!! Send ME!!!!!!”

If I took each of those questions from Thursday individually and just stood up here and asked them, I would be willing to bet that you wouldn’t be eagerly responding. I myself have gotten out of that habit of eagerly saying yes to things that come along. Our lives are so busy. We have legitimate reasons to be gone. We are already committed to many good and wonderful other projects. We are serving the community through our jobs or through the school already.

We have lots and lots of good excuses.

Or are we just letting ourselves off the hook?

There is a twenty year old young woman is a missionary in Uganda who has adopted 13 children who have been orphaned. She also shares God with the people in the village through bible studies and worship. One day recently, she was handed a baby that she thought was dead… until the baby breathed. The mother had HIV and had stopped breastfeeding the 9 month old, for fear of passing it to her child, but there was no other food for the baby or the mother to eat. None, at all. The missionary pleaded to take the baby to a hospital, scooped the infant up in her arms and also purchased formula.

She brought the child into her home to nourish the little girl back to health. She wrote “For the first 24 hours, I could hardly stand to look at sweet baby Patricia … The hurt and the hunger in her lifeless little eyes was simply unbearable…”

“I am sad and I am angry…but this is my blog and I am going to say what I feel like. I am MAD. I have been sad and broken for these children for so long and it has finally turned into a hardened anger… I am angry that in the “Pearl of Africa” and the most fertile region of it at that, a mother has literally NO food to feed her baby, not to mention herself or 6 other kids. I am angry that the result of this is that these sweet ones suffer in their innocence.

“I have said it before and it still holds true: I DO NOT BELIEVE that the God of the universe created too many children in His image and not enough love or food or care to go around. In fact I believe that He created the Body of Christ for just that, to help these little ones, the least of these. And I believe that except for a handful, the Body of Christ is failing…

“According to several different resources, there are 168.8 million needy children like … Patricia. Seems like a big number, huh? It shouldn’t, because there are 2.1 BILLION people on this earth who profess to be Christians. Jesus followers. Servants. Gospel live-ers. And if only 8 percent of those Christians would care for just ONE of these needy children, they would all be taken care of.” (http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/)

Katie the missionary is right – there are 2.1 Billion people on this earth who profess to be Christians… but Gospel live-ers? That might be a different story.

In our epistle from James, his main concern is that people aren’t living out their faith. They aren’t letting God’s truth become planted in their lives. And in verses 22-25 he gets to the root of this problem. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listening when you let the Word go in one ear and out the other. You have to ACT on what you hear! If we just hear the word and do nothing about it , then you are like someone who looks at themselves in a mirror, walks away and two minutes later has no idea who they are or what they look like.

It’s the same wisdom that school teachers know well. Edgar Dale once said that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see… 70% of what we discuss with others, 80% of what we personally experience and 95% of what we teach others.

We can spend all the time we want reading the bible or listening to sermons – but if we aren’t actively engaging with the Word of God – if we aren’t discussing it with one another, and living it out – then we quickly forget what God has said.

Real religion, James says, is reaching out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping oneself unstained by the world.

Real religion is for merely 8% of us Christians to live out the gospel by caring for the orphaned, hungry, homeless children of the world.

Real religion is speaking up on behalf of the “least of these” in our country – the homeless, the unemployed, and the underinsured.

Real religion is listening for who God wants us to care for here in Marengo, Iowa and getting on board behind it 110%.

And… real religion is clothing ourselves not with excuses for why we can’t do something, but with the whole armor of God.

The thing I realized, just this week as I felt God calling me to speak up and say something concrete about health care reform, is that it was incredibly scary. I felt very ill equipped and I was incredibly worried about what other people might think. About what you might think.

Perhaps you have noticed this, but I tend not to take sides in big issues. I would be willing to bet that most of you don’t know who I voted for in the past three elections and that most of you would be surprised at the answers. And that is intentional. Because I take seriously the call in James to be quick to listen and slow to speak. I have been working very hard at biting my tongue so that I can be the pastor to all of you: republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives, libertarians and well, whatever the opposite of a libertarian is.

But when I read from Ephesians the passage about being strong in the Lord and the strength of his power, I felt like God really wanted me to respond. In particular, verse 12 spoke to me because it reminds me that our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh – this is a life-or-death battle with cosmic powers. In this debate about health care, we are not enemies because there is a more important battle to engage in.

“But in the framework of hope for God’s kingdom they [stories of Jesus healing] cannot be forgotten, for in that framework they become reminders of hope.
“All severe illnesses are heralds or foretokens of death, and we have to see Jesus’ healings as heralds or foretokens in just the same way: they are heralds of the resurrection… In every serious illness we fight for our lives. In every healing we experience something of the resurrection. We feel new-born, and as if life had been given back to us.”

– Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World.

(remainder of sermon to be posted later)

Lectionary Leanings

Posted on August 12, 2008Leave a comment

“Throw me a bone here!”

My local pastors gathering talks about the lectionary a week early, and so last week I came up with the core of my message and my sermon title.

Jesus tells the woman he can’t help her because he has a mission… which the text says she isn’t offended by, but simply responds… yeah, but even the dogs get crumbs don’t they?

My translation: Throw me a bone here Jesus!

additional throughts from my weekly roundtable pulpit group:

1) There are always leftovers and crumbs. So as Jesus set about his mission to preach “only” to the lost sheep of Israel – there were bound to be people evesdropping and picking up the leftover pieces along the way.

2) lots of thoughts about the desperation of the woman with the possessed daughter. We talked a lot about parents today who have problematic children – either because they are mentally ill, handicapped, or simply troublemakers. The notion that God never gives us more than we can handle came up – but it seems as this woman is at the end of her rope. She needs God’s help to keep going.

3) we have no idea what Jesus was thinking. And we can’t put words into his head. So from the persepective of the disciples and the woman, they at least saw a “changed” Jesus – and certainly the disciples had the rug pulled out from under them.

4) we talked about having one mission and one purpose to focus on – it clarifies and allows you to really make an impact in one area. But there will be spillover as you work, “crumbs” that will appeal to others. Ironically, you may end up feeding the “crumby” people more than those you intended to (especially if the children keep throwing their food on the floor!…. aka Israel rejecting Jesus)