hope – Page 7 – Salvaged Faith

Lectionary Leanings

Posted on August 26, 2008Leave a comment

I’m beginning a sort of series at the church – each week is one way that we are called to be the church.

I’m tying in very loosly “I Am who I am” with “Who do you say that I am” from last week and the fact that although Peter gets that Jesus is the Messiah, he doesn’t fully understand what it means.

Our word this week is “Accept” – it’s not enough to have the right answer to the question, we have to live out our belief that Jesus is the Messiah and that the God who wouldn’t even give us a name is the one who tenderly holds our lives in the palm of her hand.

Living it out is a lot different than just saying it. I think that’s why Peter had such a hard time… he wanted to follow a Messiah who would save him here and now, who would elevate him, who would give them liberty without the struggle. And to be honest, that’s how we have painted Jesus in our culture today – just say these simple words and believe.

But Romans tells us how we have to live – what embodying and truly accepting “You are the Messiah” means for our lives.

Last night, Michelle Obama said these words in her speech: “They’ll tell them how this time we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.” It’s a different context, but I think the words apply. We have to stop being afraid of what will happen to us if we truly follow Christ and we have to have hope that if we truly follow Christ, amazing things will happen and the world will be transformed.

That’s where I’m going…

gone

Posted on August 4, 20084 Comments

I found out yesterday that the house I grew up in burned to the ground.

It was a beautifully constructed old farmhouse. The woodwork was beautiful throughout the entire house, with built-in cabinetry throughout the house – stuff that you just don’t see made any more. Some of the walls had been painted years and years ago and were practically frescos. When I was born, there still wasn’t running water in the house (according to my baby book) and the entire time we lived there, there was no electricity in the upstairs bathroom. It had a beautiful cast iron clawfoot tub and I grew up taking baths in candlelight. We had a woodburning furnace in the house and as kids we would help dad chop wood and toss it into the basement through one of the windows.

My family still owns the property, although no one has lived in the house for eight years. We decided to build a new house and as we moved on with our lives, that house remained as a part of our past. There were no plans to sell the house and so we gradually moved out stuff into our new house – and what we didn’t move, was just left.

We moved right after my senior year of high school, and the new house didn’t quite feel like home yet, so as I prepared to go to college, many of the things that I just didn’t have room to take with me, things from my childhood remained. Books that I had read as a child and then a teenager, scraps of memorobelia, clothes that I had grown out of, but didn’t take the time to sort through and donate.

A few years ago, as I moved into my first apartment in divinity school I went back and got a table and chairs and an old writing desk to take with me. I keep trying to remember if there were other things in the house that were left behind and are now gone.

I always have had so many dreams for that house. While it was beautiful and had so much history, it was a sort of embarassment to me growing up… it always was in the need of repair and more love than we had the time or energy to give it… but I had dreams of someday restoring that house to its original beauty and either living there or turning it into a bed and breakfast or something. It would probably cost a half a million dollars to do so… but still, it was a dream.

I had so many plans this summer, now that we are back in the state, to head over there and sort through things. Throw out what we never intended to keep, find those treasures all over again and give things away. I even had a dream right after we had the tornados north of us that this same house had been completely wiped out by a tornado – and I woke up with the same regret and emptiness that I have today. I think I might have done something about that feeling, but with all of the flooding that hit a week later, there just wasn’t time. I needed to be in other places, with other people.

All of that is now gone. My husband and I stopped by to see what remains. The charred ruins smouldered still. All that was recognizeable was the stone foundation and the porch that was right below my window. I sometimes used to sit on the roof of the porch – careful to avoid the weak spots. But not anymore.

Priorities

Posted on June 22, 2008Leave a comment

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This morning’s gospel passage is not one of those that tend to make us all warm and fuzzy inside. On the surface, it appears to offer no real “good news” at all.

But that is because the gospels have this fantastic ability to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable all at the same time. To those who are facing persecution and pressure because of their faith – this passage from Matthew offers encouragement, and offers hope – it is a reminder that while those around them might be able to destroy their bodies, their lives in the fullest sense, rest with God and not man. Jesus tells those who are persecuted three times in this passage to not be afraid. As our missionaries minister to people in China, a place where there are real persecutions because of the name of the Lord, this message is one of comfort.

But here in the United States, we don’t typically face that kind of conflict. As much as we hear it being lamented on television these days, Christianity really isn’t under attack in this nation. There are isolated instances where someone is forced to confess or deny their faith under threat of death, like the young woman whose admitted faith in Christ propelled another young man to kill her in the Columbine shootings. And those events stay with us – but they are not our daily experience.

Brian Stoffregen is a Lutheran pastor in Arizona and in his weekly reflections upon the scripture, he brought these questions forward: “Does the lack of opposition to our faith mean that it is strong or that it is weak? … If we aren’t suffering in some way, why not? Is it because we are surrounded by people who are already in Jesus’ “household,” or because we are failing to be witnesses?”

Let me repeat that: is it because we are surrounded by people who are already in Jesus’ “household” or because we are failing to be witnesses?

I think the answer to that question is both. We are not daily facing persecution because we are both surrounded by people who are already “in” and because we fail to be witnesses.

For a long time, we have thought of ourselves as a Christian nation. There is a strong Judeo-Christian ethic and language that is used in politics and government and in the culture in general.

In these last few decades however, that unity between Christians and the nation has started to unravel a bit. The United States today is one of the biggest mission fields in the world with many who are not only unchurched, but to whom church is a strange and scary place. And the alliances between various flavors of Christianity and political parties is beginning to dissolve as many evangelicals find themselves looking at both moral and social issues.

While many people are feeling very anxious about this separation, about being one religious group among many, about not having the “in” with the state, I for one, am celebrating. I cherish our separation between church and state, not only in politics, but also in our schools, and in the various other places where the state and church act together – and it’s for a very simple reason: I don’t trust the state to do church.

When the state or government and the church are in bed together, things get complicated. You suddenly have multiple duties’ pulling you this way and that, and I think in the end, the church loses. We lose precisely because of this passage from Matthew this morning – we lose because we are already surrounded by people who are supposedly “in” and we also fail to be witnesses – we let the state tell us what to believe and we lose our prophetic voice.

Above all, we get confused about who we are serving.

At the very beginning of this passage from Matthew we find ourselves in the midst of a discussion about servants and masters, disciples and slaves… the question being asked of disciples in Matthew’s community, in Matthew’s time would have been: Whom do you serve? It is a question that is very pointed, very direct and gets us to the heart of the problem.

As we wrestle with that question today, I want us to really think about it personally. And as we start to do so, we need to think about the multiple things that demand time and energy and commitment from us.

At the end of each set of rows, there is a pad of paper and some pencils or pens. Take one of these and pass them down the row and then I want us to take some time to really think about the five things in your life right now that you are called to be faithful to – that demand something of your life. They may be things like your job, your family, the country… or something much more specific to your calling. What are the things that you feel like you have some responsibility to in this world? Write them down and then order them 1-5, with 1 being the thing that is the most important to you.

(5 minutes)

I don’t know about you, but writing down those things was extremely difficult – and tiresome. There are so many things that demand something from us and I think that most of us, most of the time, feel stretched and pulled in so many different directions that it is hard to know which way is up. It is hard to know which is the most important and it seems to change with the circumstance.

We are all here this morning, however, because of a shared commitment to follow God and to follow Christ. Let me just cut straight to the point and ask how many of you have God or Jesus on that list of five things?

This morning’s scripture is about allegiances, it’s about priorities, and it’s also about what happens when those priorities conflict.

Matthew was writing to a community that followed Christ, and they did so at their own peril. Day after day, they kept getting into trouble for the same kinds of things that Jesus did – because they were trying to live out the Kingdom of God in the face of a different kind of kingdom.

Sarah Dylan Bruer writes:

“They believed that only God could claim the kind of power over others that so many [like the Emperor, the family patriarch, the slave owner had taken] — and so they proclaimed Jesus’ teaching, “Call no one father on earth, for you have one father — the one in heaven” (Matthew 23:9). Their belief that God was calling every person — male and female, slave and free, of every nation — led them the build a community in which women and slaves were received as human beings with agency to make their own decisions and gifts to offer the community — and they didn’t ask anyone’s husband, father, or owner for permission to do so. They built pockets of community living into a radical new order that looked more like chaos to many onlookers, and that threatened to undermine the order of the Empire. And so their neighbors, their friends, and sometimes their own family turned them in, hauling them before governors as agitators, to be flogged, or worse.”

In their attempts to follow Christ faithfully, to make that allegiance the first priority in their lives, they came into conflict with the Empire and their roles as citizens, and they came into conflict with their families. But they were clear as to which of those things were the most important, and they were willing to sacrifice, even their own lives to be faithful to Christ.

In my own experience, these kinds of conflicts are messy and painful. In March of 2003, our country started to go to war with Iraq and I was a naïve college student. I kept thinking about all of those things that I had learned from Jesus and felt deep in my bones that this military venture was wrong. And in conversations with my roommates and other friends, we all found ourselves similarly moved. Matthew 10:27 reads “what I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”

And so, as Christians, we stood in opposition to the war. We kept coming back to the notion that all human beings were children of God, the hairs on all of our heads are numbered and we are all valuable in God’s eyes. If that was true, any life lost, was something to be mourned. A group of us got together and began to erect crosses on the lawn in front of the chapel – as a reminder that there was a real human price to this conflict.

The morning after the crosses had all been put up, we walked onto campus to see one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. The crosses were torn down, many broken apart, and some of the broken pieces were used to spell out “God Bless the USA”

That day, I learned how messy our priorities can be. I learned what happens when we start to equate something like patriotism with faithfulness to God. And I also learned how important it was to be clear on who you serve.

Our campus was torn in two that semester. We learned what it meant that Christ brings a sword not peace. The truth is that we are faced with a choice and that we must choose who we will serve. We must choose which one of those things that pull on us, and that we love, which of those things that are in and of themselves good, which one will be the guiding force for everything else.

And it will cause conflict. Any of you who have chose at one time or another to put your family before your job knows what a strain that puts on work relationships, or vice versa. Priorities and allegiances matter. Who we serve matters. But Christ tells us that if we chose to serve him. If we chose to be known as his followers, then we are in the palm of God’s hand. We should not be afraid, because we have life in Christ. We will find our lives and our fullness, when we follow him.

It will not be easy. And it doesn’t mean that we give up everything else. It means that when we make our relationship with Christ our first priority, all of those other relationships change, and we learn how to witness, we learn how to love, and we learn how to truly live God’s kingdom in this world. Do not be afraid and follow him. Amen, and amen.

Despair to Hope

Posted on June 15, 2008Leave a comment

There are only two things that I really want to comment on this morning – and then I want us to turn our hearts and minds to a time of prayer – because Heaven help us, this is going to be a long summer in Eastern Iowa.

First of all, I was so surprised last night when I again read the scripture from the book of Romans in this week’s lectionary. Not realizing what the situation would be, I had actually planned on not sharing this passage of scripture – I wanted to instead focus on hospitality and use the text from Genesis… the story of Abraham welcoming the three strangers.

But again, knowing that what was happening around us was more important than any preconceived notion of mine, I went back to our texts this week and was ready to use something completely different. Until I read Romans. (5:1-5)

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

When I wasn’t helping out my husband’s family in the past few days… helping to calm worried spirits, getting meals for 11 people on the table, trying to get to places around Cedar Rapids to help sandbag… I was glued to the television. I’m sure many of you were also. And what continued to amaze me were the statements of hope and strength that kept being shared with the community.

Rev. Linda Bibb is the pastor at Salem United Methodist Church. It is on the corner of First Avenue and 3rd Street West and on Thursday evening, their stained glass windows were almost completely under water. And when she was interviewed on KCRG she said: “that the church is not the building, so they Salem church is doing well and proclaiming that they do not fear the future because God is already there.”

Gail Gnaughton – President and CEO of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library had this to say:

“The Czech and Slovak peoples have endured many devastating events in their history and have survived to become stronger. Iowa is filled with the strength of those who settled here and built the Cedar Rapids community. The museum will rise again from above the flood waters to continue as the touchstone for Czech and Slovak cultural heritage in the United States.”

In Walter Bruggemann’s reflections upon this passage, he shares that the amazing thing about both the Jewish and Christian communities is that memory produces hope in us, in the same way that amnesia produces despair. “We hope in and trust the God who has done these past miracles, and we dare to affirm that the God who has done past acts of transformation and generosity will do future acts of transformation and generosity.”

He shares the hope of Israel even though their communities and cities were destroyed and they were sent into exile. In the prophetic words of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah, the people heard “a vision that defied and overrode circumstance…” They heard about a restored temple in Jerusalem, a new covenant with Israel where God would completely forgive them and would start again, and they heard of a wondrous, triumphant homecoming to Jerusalem. “So these exiled Jews – the most passionate, the most faithful – took these dreams and hopes as the truth of their life. They acted toward that future.”

In the same way, Christians refuse to see “the present loss as the last truth (for it is) a community that knows that God is not finished.” We can call the dreaded Friday on which Christ died “Good” because we know that it is not the end. This passage from Paul is a refusal to give in.

Bruggemann goes on to say that our ability to turn memory into hope, even in the midst of loss “is not about optimism or even about signs of newness.” In fact, if watching the images on television and even seeing the waters recede in Cedar Rapids, there is little hope there, little sign of newness anywhere – the streets, the buildings, and everything inside is covered with a disgusting brown film.

No, claiming that hope does not disappoint is according to Bruggemann, “a statement about the fidelity of God who is the key player in our past and in our future… “ and so we have the ability to say: The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the Good News.
(Walter Bruggemann- http://www.icjs.org/clergy/walter.html – “Suffering Produces Hope”)

Secondly, I want to share with you the call that is before all of us from the Gospel of Matthew. Here again these words at the end of chapter 9:

35Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

The phrase that strikes me the most in this text is that Jesus had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless. The Message translation says they were “confused and aimless” and the American Standard Version says they were “distressed and scattered.” In any case… these were people who needed some guidance. They were having a tough time and they needed some love and compassion and some real help. And Jesus said – we can do this. There are so many of them and there are so few of us… but we just need to pray to God that more people will be sent our way and that we can do this!

At about 10pm on Thursday night, I was watching the news and heard a cry for help. The last remaining water pump in Cedar Rapids was in danger and there was great need to secure the well with sandbags. Evidently only about 10 people were helping there and it simply wasn’t enough. I desperately wanted to help, but I couldn’t get there – it was on the other side of the river, and with the interstate being shut down, it would have taken at least an hour to travel the half mile it would normally take. I couldn’t do anything but pray.

The next morning, they showed footage about what happened that night. More than one thousand people had showed up and created a HUGE fireman’s brigade to get the sandbags to where they were needed. And within a very short time, they had saved and protected that well and in doing so – saved the whole city’s limited water supply. It was extraordinary. A simply cry for help on the television resulted in that amazing response.

Two weeks ago, we heard about the communities north of us that were suffering from tornadoes and flooding, and we quickly sent out a plea for people to head up to that area and help in any way we could. With very short notice, we were able to get a team of 13 people together and go up and make a significant difference in one woman’s life.

The truth of the matter is, in these next weeks and months – the harvest that Jesus talks about is plentiful. There are so many hurting and helpless people in these communities that have been affected and they are going to need more help than what FEMA can provide. They are going to need more than money and flood buckets (although those things are necessary and we should give all we can). They are going to need people to stand beside them and to believe with them that there is hope for their lives. They need people to work along side them and to share the good news that this present circumstance is not the final word of God. And we can be the people who do so.

In your bulletin there is an insert… and it shares the ways that we can respond as a church to the disaster that has struck our part of the world. Two weeks ago I shared with you that Teresa of Avila once wrote: Christ has no body on earth but ours… with which to look with compassion on the world. And that statement is as true today as it was two weeks ago, as it was two hundred years ago. There are so many people out there, right now, who need our help, and we can respond with our hands and our feet and our hearts.

In the Message translation of the bible, the commission of those disciples who go out to serve in the name of Christ goes a little something like this:

“Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously.
“Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment…”

You are the equipment. You are all that Christ needs to help those that are hurting… and we can share that love freely, because we have been given that love freely by Christ. We can help others and freely give of our time, because we know that others have freely given of their time to help us in the crises of our own lives. We can freely give of our hearts to others, because we know that others would freely give to us if we were the ones in need today.
So take the time to look over the call to help. Take some time to pray about it. And then I hope and I pray that you will say yes. Let us together walk with those who are suffering, and let us together find hope. Amen. And Amen.