Jesus Christ – Page 7 – 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.

Confrontations

Posted on September 8, 2014Leave a comment

[Wild west whistle]

We know how the story goes.

High noon.

Hot dusty street.

People hiding on porches and behind closed windows.

Good Guy meets Bad Guy for a showdown.

10 paces.

And then the confrontation.

As simple and pure and black and white as those old westerns were…. The world we live in is a whole lot more complicated than that.

There are no clear lines marked out in the road to separate the good from the bad.

Here in the church, in this community, we are each a mix of good and bad, saints and sinners, well-intentioned folks who stumble sometimes.

We aren’t perfect.

And even if we were all perfect, we are unique individuals with different perspectives and opinions.

So there are bound to be disagreements.

Rev. Dr. Jill Sanders is a Field Outreach Minister in our conference. She has often reminded me that conflict is simply two ideas existing in the same space.

Let me repeat that: Conflict is two ideas existing in the same space.

Maybe the conflict is over what color the carpet should be.

Or the style of music.

Or who gets to sit in the back pew.

Whenever two or more people have two or more ideas, there will be conflict.

It’s not about who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong…. It is just that we are different.

Now, in the rest of the world when we experience conflict, we often chose to leave a situation. We might quit a job when we disagree with a management style. We might end a relationship if we find that we are no longer interested in the same things. We quit shopping at a store or eating at a restaurant if we have a bad experience. We can unfriend someone on Facebook with the click of a button when they start posting stuff we disagree with.

In a world of choice and options, we don’t always have to resolve our differences.

But Jesus tells us today in Matthew’s gospel that this isn’t how we treat one another in the Kingdom of God. This isn’t how we behave in the church.

If someone in the church offends you or causes a problem for you – you are called to address it… directly… one on one with that person.

And this is for one simple reason.

There is not a good side and a bad side in the body of Christ.

And we simply cannot walk away from one another.

We… the church… are one body.

God has brought us all together to form one community in Christ. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12 – we can’t say to another part of this body “I don’t need you.” And we can’t simply walk away from the church without hurting both ourselves and the community.

Imagine what this body of Christ would look like if every time we disagreed or were offended we picked up our rocks and stones and left? What would be left of the church? What would be left of the witness of Jesus Christ in the world?

As Jin Kim writes regarding this passage, “What makes us Christian is not whether or not we fight, disagree, or wound each other, but how we go about addressing and resolving these issues.” (Feasting on the Word)

Jesus makes it very simple for us. When someone offends you or sins against you or hurts your feelings, tell them!

Respect that person enough to go directly to them and tell them how you feel. Be honest with them. And do it with love.

That doesn’t seem so hard, does it?

And yet, how often do we do exactly the opposite of this.

We sulk.

We go and tell someone else about our problem so that we can get them on our side.

We gossip.

We are passive aggressive with each other.

Or even worse, we yell and preach and emotionally and verbally beat up on the person who has made a mistake.

And in the process, we bring one another down, we bring the community down, and we bring the body of Christ down with us.

Instead, we should look to how our Lord and Savior dealt with our sin. We should approach one another with the same kind of confrontational love of Jesus Christ.

Oh yes, because we have offended Jesus with our action and our inaction.

We have sinned against God.

We aren’t perfect… remember?

And yet God doesn’t talk behind our backs or gossip or turn others against us.

No, God so loved you and me and this whole world that God came directly to us.

Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God-with-us.

Jesus came to you and me in order to show us how our lives had missed the mark and to invite us to get back on track.

Jesus came to invite us to become a part of his body, the church, to find our place… no matter how many times we messed up or no matter how bad we have been.

Jesus ate with the sinners and hung out with the prostitutes and invited the cheats and the swindles to follow him.

And when he came across someone who was straying from God’s will, he told them the truth.

To Peter, “Get behind me Satan.”

To the woman at the well, “You haven’t had just one husband, but many.”

To the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.”

Today, we are kicking off our fall lineup of activities here at the church. Some of us have had busy summers, but here we are, ready to learn and grow, sing and play, teach and serve.

And some things are different than they have been in the past. Some of us are new. Some of us are trying something we never have before.

And in the midst of the excitement and chaos, we will experiment and have a whole lot of fun.

But occasionally, we’ll step on each other’s toes.

Sometimes we will make mistakes.

There will most definitely be conflict, of some kind or another.

But we are the body of Christ.

We are the people of God.

And we need each other.

We need your smiles and your hugs, your questions and your insights. We need your hands to help us wash dishes and your voices to fill our choir. And you need us, too. You need our love and our support.

We have promised to be there for one another. That’s what being the church is all about.

Not taking sides.

Not stirring up problems.

But in love and care, supporting and encouraging one another to be the best we all can be.

So when you have a problem, be honest about it. Go to the person who has upset you and tell them how you feel. Do it in love. Find a way to work out your differences.

And if you are someone who is approached by another person here, listen. Admit where you’ve made mistakes.

If that doesn’t work, then invite someone else to come along and help mediate and help you work through the issue.

If that doesn’t work… if all else fails, then our scripture says to treat that person like a Gentile and a tax collector.

Well, we know how Jesus treated those folks. He loved them. He ate with them. He never stopped inviting them to follow.

Above all else, ask God to help you forgive one another and to mend the relationship.

God has the power to do just that. We know how Jesus gave his life to forgive us and make us his body. And the love of God and the grace of God can give us the strength to live together in unity and peace and we will be a stronger church BECAUSE of the conflict we experience.

Breathe

Posted on August 10, 2014Leave a comment

Shortly after we moved into our new home, there were a number of big, scary storms. It was cool for June, so we had opened the windows to let the cool breeze blow in.

Our cats typically LOVE to sit in the open windows. They look out, smell the world, and watch the birds.

But when those storms rolled through, the curtains blew everywhere. The breeze going through the house was strong enough to move things off the table. I thought it was crisp, cool and refreshing… but the cats were not pleased.

With each gust of wind, my cat Tiki’s ears laid back and he would meowl. He was a bit overstimulated. He didn’t know where to look or what to do. You could just see chest rise and fall with each panicked breath. So, I spent about half an hour petting and reassuring him that morning. The other cat, Turbo, refused to even make an appearance.

The blowing of the wind always makes me think of the Holy Spirit. She blows where she will, she stirs things up and creates a ruckus, and we can either be comforted or agitated by her presence.

When we are ready for the Spirit to blow, it is a refreshing change of pace…. We breathe in deep and enjoy the ride.

But when we are not ready for that change, when we are not looking for the Spirit and she shows up, well, then we feel like trouble is brewing. We complain about how we’ve never done things like that before. We might try to fight back and then when it’s obvious the change is here to stay – we might just hunker down in the middle of the floor and give up.

In our scriptures today, we find two different groups of people who are in the midst of some powerful Holy Spirit changing winds.

In our first story, Elijah is dealing with the shifting winds of culture and a changing political situation. His whole world has been tossed upside down and he feels threatened and afraid. He isn’t sure what he is supposed to do in response and cries out to God for help.

In our second story, the disciples find themselves in a strange in between time. We talked last week about how their friend and colleague John the Baptist had just been executed. They are being led deeper into more dangerous territory in their faith and being encouraged by Jesus to take bigger risks than ever. Their entire understanding of who God is has radically been changing. They are completely unsure where their faith will lead them next.

And in both places, a powerful wind shows up and helps remind them that God is always with them.

As we think about these two stories, it is helpful to imagine ourselves in their shoes.

Sometimes, we run away to a place of safety like a cave. This sanctuary can feel like such a refuge, with its cavernous space and the warmth and protection it offers.

The disciples, were sheltered from the storms in their boat. A boat much like this church…

You may think I’m talking about some symbolic and imaginary boat. You might picture yourself floating down the Raccoon River or on a pontoon out on Saylorville Lake. But believe it or not, we have all, literally, gotten into a boat this morning!

The part of the sanctuary where you are sitting is officially called the “nave.” The word comes from the Latin navis, which means a boat or ship. This sanctuary is constructed, on purpose, to look like an upside down boat. The rafters are the frame and the wooden slats become the hull of the ship.

So we are all together, in the boat this morning. We are all in this boat called church doing our best to be faithful and follow Jesus.

The problem is, sometimes the winds start to blow. And when that happens… well, we can’t always be sure where we will end up!

In the gospel, the wind picks up and pulls the disciples from the shore. Their boat is battered around on the water. The winds whip around and blow the lake water into their faces. It’s not a pleasant way to spend the night.

Out there on the water, they not only sense the breeze, but also the winds of change. Their fears and hesitations and feelings of inadequacy about this journey of faith creep in. In the wee hours of the morning, they start to feel alone, lost, and afraid.

That’s how Elijah was feeling too. Alone. Afraid. The winds of change were against him and he alone was left of the prophets of God. Ahab and Jezebel, the rulers of Israel had turned against God and God’s people and Elijah had done everything he could to try to get them to follow God again. Nothing he did worked. He felt like giving up. He wanted things to go back to how it was before. He wanted the land to be full of God’s power and blessing again.

It is a common experience. Whether it was Elijah looking backwards or the disciples wanting to stay near the shoreline.

It is the tension between wanting to stay near to the shoreline, where we know Jesus has been, and allowing the winds of the Holy Spirit lead us into different waters and a new mission field.

The shoreline is where we are safe and comfortable.

The shoreline is where we have experienced Jesus.

Just close your eyes for a few moments and breathe in deep.

As you breathe in and out, think about where that shoreline is in your life. That experience of Jesus. A Sunday school class, a worship service, a bible study….

PAUSE

The shoreline is our cherished past. It is where we KNOW God has been. So we try as hard as we can to stay near to that shoreline, or to find one just like it in another place. We don’t want to venture out into the world without Jesus by our side, so we want to hang on, right there, and wait.

If the disciples had their way, they would have stayed right by the shoreline, all night long.

That’s what many of our churches try to do. They tread water, anchored in one place, doing their best to stay afloat and keep things as they are.

But sometimes, the winds of change start to blow. The Holy Spirit starts to move us. And like the disciples, we find ourselves drifting farther and farther from where we are safe and comfortable.

Some of those winds might be cultural shifts that move news and conversations online instead of in print or in person.

Some of those winds represent the migration of people and the changing demographics of the state and this very neighborhood.

Some of those winds are changes in styles and preferences of those who would worship with us.

Sometimes those winds of change are finding pink slips in our bulletins instead of those familiar green pew pads.

It can be scary and disorienting to be led somewhere new by the Holy Spirit.

I remember I had this sense of absolute terror when I was called by my district superintendent to go to my first church. I had no idea what the future would bring. I didn’t know what the people would be like. I didn’t know whether or not I would fit in. All I knew were the churches of my past, the familiar boats I had worshipped and been taught in.

The winds of change were blowing and I had two options. I could embrace the call – take a deep breath and hope and pray that the Holy Spirit was truly working through the process. Or, I could try to hunker down and resist and probably would have been miserable. I chose to trust that no matter where the Spirit of God took me, Jesus would be there. And he was.

I think the mistake the disciples made in our scripture today is that they tried so hard to stay by the shoreline, where they knew Jesus had been… that when the winds drove them to the middle of the lake, they believed they were in a place Jesus couldn’t possibly be.

With the breeze swirling around, in that unfamiliar territory, they felt overwhelmed by the chaos of it all.

Their boat was the only thing they had left.

Without a shoreline to cling to, they took a deep breath, said a prayer, and hunkered down.

For Elijah, his mistake was constantly trying to go back to the old king and make them change. Do you remember the saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Well, that was Elijah. Trying to convert Jezebel and fight her religion instead of moving on and looking for new people to minister to.

There is a temptation, when the winds of change are blowing, to retreat into a building like this. This church can become the center of our attention. It is that place we keep returning to, the familiar boat we hold on to for safety.

And so when those winds pick up, we retreat to our cave or hunker down in the boat.

Sometimes, it’s hard to get a sense of when we are being blown by the Spirit and when we are simply being tossed and turned by the breezes of popular opinion.

So, we focus on our people and our ministries And then we get into the rut of doing the same things over and over again, and wonder why it isn’t working any more.

But the biggest danger in doing so is that we no longer recognize Jesus when he shows up out there in the wind and the waves.

All around us are churches that are perishing because they have stopped paying attention to their neighborhoods and the world around them. They are dying because they no longer recognize Jesus when he’s standing out there in the winds of change.

When Jesus came out to the disciples, rocked by the winds on the lake that night, they didn’t know who he was. They were so startled by his presence, they thought he must be a ghost – an apparition – not their Lord and Savior.

Because why on earth would Jesus be out there?

“Hey! It’s me!” Jesus calls. “Don’t be afraid.”

Peter takes a deep breath and raises the courage to respond. He shouts into the wind at this dark figure approaching.

“ Lord! Is that really you? If it’s you… well…. If it’s you, then, tell me to come to you! “

And Jesus says, “Come.”

Take a deep breath and take a step out onto the waters.

Take a deep breath and step out of the cave.

I have new places to send you.

I have a new direction for you to go in.

Take a deep breath and step outside of these doors.

God is waiting. God is patient. And God has plans for us.

When we let the winds of the Holy Spirit move us, we go where our Creator calls us, we will experience amazing and miraculous signs of God.

The winds… they aren’t going to stop blowing.

Change will keep coming.

The Holy Spirit is alive and active in this world.

So pull up the anchor, take a deep breath, and enjoy the ride.

Good News and Good Works

Posted on July 24, 2013Leave a comment

I’ve had some conversations recently about the work of Imagine No Malaria from folks who are concerned that we are doing good, but we aren’t sharing the gospel.

My first response to that question is to seek out and share more stories about how lives are being changed and, yes, saved, because of the work we have done. We are seeking more of these types of stories from those who work in the field and can tell us about how and where the word of God is being planted and bearing fruit through the work we are doing with Imagine No Malaria.

My second response is to push back against the divide between the good news and good works. The book of James reminds us they are like two sides of the same coin, that we can’t have faith without works. Matthew 25 reminds us that our faithful response is to care for the least of these. The good news Jesus preached was about more than simply eternal salvation – it was about release for the captives and recovery of sight for the blind. It was both now and later. Salvation is already and not yet. When we share food and shelter and health with those who do not have them, we are sharing the gospel… we are showing them that God loves them, that we love them, and that we love because we were first loved. We begin the relationship that plants seeds and waters sprouts and eventually bears fruit.

One reality of our missionary work over the last 160 years in Africa is that we have often built churches and clinics and schools side-by-side. We have not necessarily made strict separations between good works and good news… they are one and the same. We are focused on saving lives in all sorts of ways – through a relationship with Jesus, through literacy, through health, through empowerment, through justice, through hope, through the scriptures, through systematic change.

Today, I came across this blog post from a young man who I believe helps to put into words what has been on the tip of my tongue… when we heal the sick and empower the poor and are in relationship with those who are struggling – we aren’t just sharing the gospel, we are living it, we are making it known, and others will see.

I encourage you to read Greg’s story here, but the highlights for me and for our work:

…What is more important is to communicate the message of our faith, the Gospel (hint: it’s about more than just being a sinner).

But unfortunately, we haven’t been taught how to communicate the Gospel. We’ve been taught how to lead Bible studies and have fellowship, how to run prayer meetings, and draw the bridge diagram.

But we haven’t learned to communicate the Gospel.

Why do I say this? Because the Gospel is not only communicated through words, but also how we live our lives. And when I was faced with the opportunity to live according to the Gospel, I felt obligated to abandon it on the street, on my way to being a good Bible study leader…

…So that’s why I quit being a Bible study leader. Not because it’s the wrong thing to be, but because it kept me too busy to do the right thing. Because while I participated dutifully in Christian activities, a homeless man sat outside in the cold and ate popcorn. Because Shane Claiborne reminded me that Jesus would have quit being a Bible study leader too, to sit alongside that man, if for no other reason than to ask him his name and eat popcorn together.

And because Eboo Patel taught me that you don’t have to do that alone. Even if you’re the only Christian eating popcorn with a homeless man while your fellow believers sing songs and socialize upstairs, if you invite them, there are Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Jains, and Buddhists who will join you. And the funny thing is that authentic dialogue begins to happen in these sorts of situations – you build relationships and you share stories, simply because you all agree that no one should have to eat popcorn alone in the cold.

And even though you might not observe the conversion experience your evangelism training taught you to expect, your actions have communicated something deeper than your words, and your stories have taken on fuller meaning. And there’s a good chance that you’ve convinced them all of something about the Gospel.

Our work on the ground is often done in partnership with other faith communities who share our concern for saving lives. In a story written in 2010 about our work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sheikh Usseni Faray talked about the importance of local congregations standing together in this work:

Government can only start things once and they stop. But us, we are the community representing the people, and we preach and work with the people all the time. So if they keep the church people involved, I think it will be a lasting program and many people will benefit.

We do these good works because we are people of faith and because Jesus sends us out to heal the sick and preach the gospel. That gospel is shared through our actions, through every dollar we raise, through every net that is hung in a home, through every relationship built, and every life that is given a reason to hope. Sometimes we are speaking and singing and praising the name of Jesus. Sometimes we are simply present. And sometimes that is enough.

Photo: (top) in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. (right) A United Methodist church choir welcomes visitors to Kamina, Democratic Republic of the Congo. A delegation of United Methodist church leaders and public health workers visited Kamina in observance of World Malaria Day. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.

Prayers from the kitchen sink

Posted on February 21, 2013Leave a comment

We must — at some point along our Lenten journey — be candid about death. Lent begins with the reminder of our mortality, with the ashes from which we are knit together, and the season reaches its climax in the crucifixion of Jesus… Even Jesus, praying at Gethsemane before his death, asked his friends to keep him company. “Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and stay awake with me.'” (Matthew 26:8, NRSV)

Lord, tonight as I stood at my kitchen window washing dishes I thought of my mom and dad.

I’m excited to be traveling with them soon and I can’t wait to see the joy as they hold their newest grandson in their arms.

But to say I don’t worry about them would be… well, untrue.

It surprises me that I feel old somedays.

I know things change and life moves and sometimes it just moves way too fast.

And a scary realization is that if I’m getting older… if I’m an “adult”… then my parents are getting older, too. (sorry, mom.)

Between Brandon and me, we’ve had lots of conversations and what-ifs about our parents lately.

Help me to slow down, God.

Help me to take a deep breath.

Help me to not take so much for granted.

In Your last nights, You asked your friends to stay by your side.

The ones who had traveled with you.

The ones who knew you so well.

All you wanted was time. company. love. relationship.

Why is it so hard for us to make time for those things in our daily lives?

We know we want them. We know how important they truly are to us.

But the phone call isn’t made.

We fill our schedules instead of our hearts.

How on earth has it been this long since I talked with my dad?

We hurry and work and sweat and stress… and for what?

What if we lived as if we were dying?

That’s a silly cliche, I know.

And to be honest, God, if we moved beyond the trite statement and really took your words seriously…

well, I fear that if I truly died to my self and lived for you that everything would be different… and that’s scary.

You ask us to die… and you ask us to love… but what if we love so much that we don’t want to die?

What if we love people and don’t want them to go?

What if we don’t want things to change…. or if we want them to change in ways that might require less time for the work of ministry so that we can spend more time with family and the very companions you have brought into our beautiful messed up lives?

Help me to understand how to love… and live… and what it might really mean to die.

I Am dust and ashes

Posted on February 13, 2013Leave a comment

Landon Whitsitt had a thoughtful post about how we engage with Lenten disciplines today: Giving up chocolate and beer for Lent is not what Jesus had in mind. In it, he reminds us about the basics of spiritual practices surrounding Lent: prayer, fasting, almsgiving. He reminds us that it is not about us at all.

I have realized that most of the times I have given something up for Lent or taken something on, it was for my own benefit. It was so I could do something for God – sacrifice something I cared about so God would be more pleased with me. The practices were hoops I jumped through. Sometimes they were rigorous disciplines, sometimes they were difficult, and they have helped me to focus on God… but it all revolved around me. What I could do, what I would gain, how I was living out my faith.

If Lent is truly about dependence on God, if it is about our time in the wilderness, our discovery of who we are and whose we are… then Lent is about letting go of “me.”

In the anthology, Speaking of Silence: Christans and Buddhists in Dialogue, there is an interesting discussion about what it means to be “me.” What is the self? What is its relationship to the divine? To briefly summarize the conversation, Lodrö Dorje begins:

The Buddhist path is therefore primarily concerned with the question of how to see through ego, how to tame it, and how to let it go. (pg. 157)

Father George Timko responds with an analogy:

When you put it [a sugar cube] into a cup of tea or coffee, the sugar dissolves, and yet it is still there. It is there in a completely different way, in a different dimension: it is no longer there as a cube. So, as Gregory of Nyssa would say, “We have to be dissoved and to be in Christ.” You are no logner there as an “I,” as an individualized center or self. There is no “you.” You are dead, as Saint Paul experienced…

We just simply don’t want to completely let go of that self, so we say, my true self is there. There is no such thing as a true self or a false self. There is only the self or the no-self. And as Saint John Chrysostom said, “He alone truly knows himself, who knows himself as nothing.” (pg. 158-9)

As the conversation continues Joseph Goldstein adds:

I could play the Zen role here a little bit, and ask whether it really is a question of dissolving anything, or whether it is just that in a moment we see that the self never was. I think we could speak from both perspectives. Really there is nothing to dissolve, because the self was never there in the first place. (pg. 164)

to which David Steindl-Rast responds:

But how so many Christians have been stuck in this imaginary projection! How they have clung tenaciously, thinking that the Christina way is based on promoting the ego from the level on which it is now, to some super-level in heaven!

Goldstein:

Well, it is an appealing idea, Brother David!

It is an appealing idea. We want to please God and be faithful and follow the rules and reap the rewards. We want to hear the call and respond. And it is SO difficult to not focus on that individual achievement and to instead let go.

As the Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert, they were forced to lay aside their past, to stop forging gods with their own hands, and to embrace a life of dependence upon the one who is the creator of all. They were shaped not as they desired, but as God desired.

As Jesus wandered for forty days in the wilderness, he let go of what he could be, denied the temptation to achieve all the amazing things he could have, in order to accept the call to die to self and live in God.

And as I enter this time of Lent, I am challenged to stop focusing on myself and what will benefit me spiritually and what I can do to please the Lord and instead place my life into those hands.

Lent is a time to die to oneself… or maybe to realize that your “self” never was.

I am nothing.

I am a dissolved sugar cube in a cup of coffee.

I am dead and in the tomb.

It is Christ who lives in me. It is the Spirit who has given me breath. It is God who has enabled me to love.

Ashes to Ashes… Dust to Dust.

Shine Like Stars

Posted on December 9, 2012Leave a comment

Imagine No Malaria Guest Sermon – Advent 2

When we lit our advent candles just a few minutes ago, we were reminded that not everything in our scriptures is full of sunshine and roses. Luke’s vision of the coming Messiah includes terrible signs and distress among the peoples.

As the Message translation of these verses puts it:

It will seem like all hell has broken loose – sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.

We don’t have to look far to see those kinds of signs all around us.

Wars and rumors of war fill our news broadcasts.

Natural disasters have wreaked their havoc on our crops with drought and on our friends on the east coast with wind and rain and destruction.

Mayan calendars appear to have end dates and the fiscal cliff looms precariously in the very near distance.

Even in our scripture from Philippians, we were reminded that this world is filled by a corrupt and perverse generation… a squalid and polluted society.

While it would be easy to point fingers, the truth is that greed, lust, anger, violence fill our favorite television shows and we don’t bat an eye when yet another child falls prey to child slavery or is forced into an army or work in a sweatshop.

This week, Bishop Hoshibata of the Desert Southwest Conference reminded me that what is truly perverse is that in this world of God’s goodness and abundance there is one corner over here where we have mountains of waste because of our riches and another corner over there where people have nothing.

What is perverse is that we spend until it hurts on things we don’t need in order to celebrate the birth of the child who is everything that we need.

What is perverse is that we live in a time and a place where we grumble and argue over the specifics of health care when there are children who are dying from a preventable, treatable, and beatable disease.

Malaria claimed a reported 655,000 lives in 2010.

And 85% of those who die are children under the age of 5.

When we do the brutal math, that means that every 60 seconds, a child dies from malaria.

A child like this little, blessed child – Domingos.

Domingos weigned only 15.5 lbs when his family brought him to the hospital. He had been sick for several days before the family brought him in for treatment… although we do not know why they waited. Sometimes there is a long distance to go to the hospital… sometimes they need to scrape together the funds to pay for treatment… sometimes they are just hoping and praying that a child will get better on their own.

When Domingos was admitted, he was suffering from acute anemia and he couldn’t breathe.

Malaria is caused by a parasite that is transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito. And when this parasite enters your blood stream it wreaks havoc on your body. One of the ways that it spreads is by attacking your red blood cells, causing them to swell until they burst. That lack of blood cells was the cause of his anemia, which in turn meant that oxygen was not being carried through his blood to his organs.

The doctors did what they could, but because Domingos was so small and his veins were so tiny, they were unable to give him the blood transfusion he desperately needed. If there had a been a pediatric surgeon at that hospital, perhaps a vein could have been found.

Five minutes after this picture was taken…. 8 month old Domingos died.

The photographer asked what else might have saved his life and the doctor responded – “Oxygen.” This hospital in Angola did not even have an oxygen tank.

With realities like these pressing in on us… with the weight of human sin and the fears of disaster… what are we to do? Sit back and weep? Crawl into a hole and hide?

In our candlelighting scripture, Jesus speaks directly to our burdened hearts:

When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near!

Your redemption is drawing near!

Do you hear those words, people of God?

Your redemption is drawing near!

The day when weeping and crying and hunger and sickness will be no more… that day is drawing near!

The day of the Lord is drawing near!

And seeing that day on the horizon, the apostle Paul left us with words to live by:

Do everything without grumbling and arguing so that you may be blameless and pure, innocent children of God surrounded by people who are crooked and corrupt. Among these people you shine like stars in the world because you hold on to the word of life.

Stand up! Raise your heads! Shine like stars in this world! Be beacons of hope and light and life in this world full of darkness and disaster and death.

As people of faith, we know that there is nothing to fear because the Lord is on our side.

And we are called to tell the world the good news that not only has Christ come… but he will come again.

We are called to shine like stars in the dark night sky.

I’m here this morning, because I believe one of the places where we as a church can be a shining star for Jesus Christ is in this battle against malaria.

We, as the UMC, have only begun to let our light shine. But bright already it has shone.

As United Methodists, our tradition of work in Africa spans over 160 years!
Together, at General Conference in 2008 we affirmed Global Health as an area of focus
Through a generous grant from the United Nations Foundation and out of the passionate response to Nothing but Nets the UMC created Imagine No Malaria as a comprehensive response to the devastating scourge of Malaria
Imagine No Malaria builds on the success of “Nothing But Nets” and takes it beyond, preparing us to engage public health in Africa not only with nets, but with a comprehensive and effective strategy that will attack all the killer diseases of poverty.

While we did amazing work before, Nothing But Nets was just that… nothing but nets. But now we are fighting this disease with nets, treatment, education, communication and advocacy – our scope (and impact) are delivering life-saving results!

We are working together, our little stars shining bright, to say a resounding NO to hunger and poverty, illness and death. We are speaking words of hope and life into places where there was despair and struggle. We are answering God’s call to make a world of difference in the name of Jesus Christ.

So I want to share with you a few bright stars I see shining out there in the darkness.

This little girl is Dodo. She is five years old and has a twin brother Caliste. By the grace of God, Dodo and her brother have made it to the age of five and their family is now protected from malaria because of the work of the United Methodist Church. Dodo’s face lights up with joy as her dad hangs up an insecticide-treated mosquito net in their home…. And her little brother can be seen playing under the net.

And there are men and women, the people of the United Methodist Church in Africa, who are coming together to make communities like hers a healthier and more vibrant place. We have already established 15 Health Boards throughout Africa and these community health care workers are attending a training so that they may return to their villages and bring education, sustainability, and accountability to our prevention and treatment efforts.

Each one of those people are a shining star who help their communities to stand up and raise their heads so they can work together to combat this disease.

But it doesn’t matter what age you are… each one of us can be a star for Jesus Christ. These are school children in Nigeria who are teaching their families and their village about the effectiveness of mosquito nets. This little boy near the bottom is playing the role of a mosquito who has been killed by the insecticide-treated net.

All across Africa, there doctors who are shining stars who combat this disease day in and day out.

I learned this week that in some of the places where our United Methodist Church has been actively engaging in Imagine No Malaria the longest there is profoundly good news. In some hospitals today, the doctors and nurses can now honestly say, “we cannot remember the last time we had a death from malaria.”

And that is because we… the United Methodist Church… has made this a priority in our churches. Just this past week, I was in Washington, D.C. with over 100 United Methodists to learn and make our voices hear throughout the capital about our investment in this work of global health.

We were liberal and conservative, black and white, young and old. This is something that we all get to do together, a call of God that not only unites us, but allows us to join with Jesus Christ in truly transforming this world.

Paul tells us that we are to chart a different course than the world that surrounds us. We are to stand in the midst of the darkness and proclaim that there is another way. We are to fill ourselves with the word of God so that we may act and shine and witnesses to God’s glorious future.

In our work with Imagine No Malaria, there are three specific ways that I want to challenge you to be a shining light. Each one of us, no matter how old or young, can help shine by advocating, raising funds, and engaging your community.

When we advocate: raise awareness, build support for this work. Advocacy is really just finding a way to tell the story. Be a witness and tell someone when you go home today about the good news that we are making a difference in this world!

But you can also help to raise the funds we need to make a difference. Nets and medicine and training costs money… but even $10 makes such a huge difference. In your advent offering this year, give what you can to save lives and be a light of hope for a family in Africa.

And if you feel called to do more… find me after worship and I have some pledge cards for you and your family to pray over and think about what more you might be able to do.

The last thing that each one of us can do is to engage our community. All around you are people who are hungry to make a difference… people who want to help, but don’t know how. In this great work, we get to not only shine, but one by one, we will add the voices and work and lives of others who can join us. Don’t forget to invite your neighbors and your classmates and your co-workers to join us in this effort.

We get to be shining stars. We get to answer the gospel and let the light of Christ shine through us as we heal the sick and feed the hungry and empower the poor and build relationships with those who are struggling.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear that invitation from God, I can’t help but stay YES!

Yes to saving lives.

Yes to a world of healing and hope.

Yes to moms like Marie here, who will no longer have to worry when she tucks her kids into bed at night.

Yes, God. Yes. We want to shine like stars in the sky. We want to shine for Jesus.

Following Jesus isn't easy…

Posted on October 25, 2012Leave a comment

This morning in my devotion time I read from Matthew 21… the cleansing of the temple. I have been using the daily reading book from The Message and there are always good questions that pull you into the stories and make me think.

This morning, I realized that following Jesus can give a person whiplash. I imagined myself in the midst of the temple, trying to resolve my own guilt and sin, working ou my own salvation, scraping together coins to pay for the doves or goat or whatever I needed for atonement… redemption. I remember this sickening feeling that others were profiting from my mistakes.

And in walks Jesus. I’ve heard about him… seen him once… and before I realize whats happening, the table where my doves were sitting in a cage has been overturned and the birds fly free… the guy who was charging me an arm and a leg for my ticket to redemption is on his heels looking for an exit. I feel so free in that moment… like the birds.

My sin ever present, I need healing as much as the disabled and ill who crowd around him. I press in closer and realize how fortunate I was to have been “in” the system already… I was struggling… but I was not a beggar. I had opportunities many of these never had to be here and connect with God and worship in this temple… and so I fall back and let others move ahead of me.

I want to be close and I want to give others a chance… I want salvation and in a way I feel like simply in the presence of Christ it is already mine. I feel joyful and free and giddy…

And then the priests come running out. I notice the commotion… birds flying free, goats crapping in a corner, kids running through the building, the wall of people around Jesus.

I… well, ‘m going to say it. I feel a bit ashamed. I’m not entirely sure why, but perhaps it is because these are figures of authority in my life. These have been he agents of God in my life. These are the people who always told me what salvation was. And I feel like I have betrayed them, like we are all doing something wrong.

There is a confrontation between them and Jesus and he turns his face against them and leaves as quickly as he came. And the shame and anxiety and yet residual joy and hope I felt co-mingle and I run after him. I wan to hear what he is saying. I am a flutter of so many emotions and yet I know the truest ones I felt were at his side.

Sometimes as we follow Christ we get a glimpse of possibility… only to have that hope squelched by the world, or parents, or our church… sometimes the people we have loved so dearly and who have loved us so dearly disappoint when it comes to sharing our new hopes. I’ve heard some of those stories recently and as my work… following Jesus… leads me deeper INTO the structure and the “insiders” my prayer is that I never forget that whiplash… never fail to hear Christ’s voice… never overlook those who are thoughtful and hungry and full of ideas and hopes and dreams right next to me for the sake of what I think I’m supposed to be doing.