justice – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

I am NOT a prophet

Posted on June 19, 2016Leave a comment

In 1908, a mining disaster in Monogah, West Virginia claimed the lives of 361 men.

250 of those men were fathers and nearly one thousand children in the area were suddenly fatherless.

And along comes Grace Golden Clayton, a Methodist, who had recently lost her own father.

She felt a call to do something, to say something… and so the first observance of “Father’s Day” was held at her church, the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South on July 5, 1908.

Ordinary people are sometimes called to speak extraordinary things.

There were, in the time of Amos, professional prophets who lived in bands and studied with one another in guilds. They would often lift up apprentices, like Elijah did with Elisha, and sometimes the trade was passed from one generation to the next. Often, they found their place near power… much like the prophets of Baal in the court of Ahab and Jezebel.

Amos was not one of these professionals. As we hear loud and clear in our scripture this morning: “I am not a prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son: I am a shepherd and a trimmer of sycamore trees.” Amos 7: 14

And yet he is called by God to go toe-to-toe with the royal priest Amaziah. He is called to speak uncomfortable truths to those with power. There is no community at his back, just him and God’s word.

And it is not an easy word. Everything is hunky-dory for the elite and powerful of Israel. Life is good.

And that is precisely the problem.

In the words God speaks to Amos: I won’t hold back punishment, because they have sold the innocent for silver, and those in need for a pair of sandals. They crush the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and pus the afflicted out of the way.” (Amos 2: 6-7).

All of their wealth and comfort has come at the expense of the poor and afflicted.

They are fat and happy as cows, lounging around on couches, singing idle songs, drinking wine and buying expensive oils for their bodies… and they couldn’t care less about the suffering of others. (Amos 6:1-7)

Plague after plague was sent upon Israel… God’s way of gently pushing the people back onto the right path… Over and over God was calling the people to return and they refused. They were too comfortable right where they were.

We live in a world of reality television, Netflix binging, and crowded airwaves. We live in a time of consumer pleasure where everything can be bought for a price. We live in an era of slacktivism… where we think that signing our name to an online petition or sharing an article on social media means that we are changing the world. In spite of our own personal struggles, compared with the world… compared with history… we are fat and happy as cows, too.

The world of Amos was not all that different from ours.

One of the powerful images given to Amos in his vision in our scripture this morning is that of a plumb line. As we demonstrated with the children this morning, the plumb line shows where adjustments need to be made. The plumb line shows where things are out of whack. The plumb line shows whether or not our foundations will be strong and lasting.

God was building a nation out of the people of Israel – a nation that would show the world how to live.

God wanted Israel to be a people who cared for the poor and oppressed.

God wanted Israel to let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And just because Israel is set-apart and called to be God’s people doesn’t mean they are immune from judgement.

God desires true community and justice for ALL peoples, not just Israel, and holds all nations accountable to that same standard… but perhaps there is no greater disappointment than when the one whom you love the best, the one you’ve chosen lets you down.

The walls of Israel are out of alignment. The structure will no longer hold. And so it needs to be torn down so that it can be rebuilt.

Sometimes, when we think about the Old Testament, we think of it as the collection of laws and judgment and so we write it off, because we have the New Testament… which is full of love and grace.

But that is to misunderstand both judgment and grace.

Both are acts of love.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Judgement helps you to have an accurate picture of where you are and where you should be and grace is the transformative power that moves you from here to there.

Tearing down the walls so that they can be rebuilt… better, stronger, more faithfully, is an act of love.

An act of love both towards the wayward elite who are full of sin and pride…. AND an act of love towards all of those whom they have trampled on in their climb to the top.

The world of Amos was not that different from ours. And a plumb line is being held up in our midst, too.

I’m going to be completely honest that I stand in this pulpit today with a little bit of fear and trembling in my heart.

Much like how Grace Golden Clayton, who was very shy must have felt when she approached her pastor about starting a Father’s Day Commemoration.

Much like Amos must have felt when God sent him to the royal court of Jeroboam in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

I am not a prophet.

I’m a pastor… which ironically comes from the Latin… meaning shepherd.

So I resonate with Amos.

When Amaziah threatens him and sends him away for speaking a word against the king, Amos answers:

“I am not a prophet… I’m a shepherd… but the Lord took me from shepherding the flock and the Lord said to me, God, prophesy to my people Israel.”

Friends, I am not a prophet. I don’t want to be a prophet.

I have felt a call all of my life to be someone who stands firmly in the middle to help bring ALL of the sheep into the fold. Black sheep, white sheep, grey sheep, brown sheep… they are all precious children of God and I have felt a call to care for them… to care for you.

At various points in my life, I have been the type of leader who finds a way for every voice to be heard, who finds a middle way in the midst of difference, and who seeks to keep everyone engaged and involved.

Yet, as a shepherd, as a pastor, I also am keenly aware that there are sheep who have left the flock… who have wandered away… or who have been scared away by the other sheep.

Last week as we gathered for worship, I didn’t yet know about the tragedy that had taken place in the night in Orlando. Even as we worshipped that morning, more names, more lives were added to the death toll.

And all week, my heart has been broken by this massacre… by the taking of so many young, vibrant, lives.

But I think one of the things that has truly broken my heart is that I wonder if they knew that God loved them.

You’ve heard me talk about how we are called to love all people many many many times from this pulpit. And so maybe you know that when I say that, I mean the lives of gay and lesbian, trans and queer, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, intersex… the whole alphabet of our lives, too. But if you didn’t, I’m saying it. God loves you, too.

But I have watched as friends I love have left the church because they were not accepted for who they were. I have watched colleagues have to hide who they are in fear… and I’ve watched them come out and claim their identity… even if it means that they might lose their credentials.

Yesterday, one of my friends posted on facebook that a fourteen year old trans* child in her last congregation took their life.

Several researchers have found that faith is associated with a lower chance of risky behavior and suicide among youth. Religious teenagers are less likely to kill themselves than their peers… unless they are gay.

If they are LGBT+ and religious, they are actually more likely to take their own life.

And its because too often, they feel rejected, at the core of who they are, by their faith families.

As we have learned as the week went on that the perpetrator of this act of hate and terror was likely also someone who wrestled with his own sexuality and took out his pain and hatred on the lives of innocent people, I can’t help but think about that statistic.

This past week, I’ve been forced to hold up a plumb line to how we, as people of faith, truly welcome LGBT+ folks.

Do our sons and daughters, grandchildren and neighbors know that God loves them? Are they welcome here, in this place, in this sanctuary?

Monday, I came here in the sanctuary to pray and to cry and to grieve for the loss sustained last weekend… to grieve for them and their families… the moms and the dads whose children were taken from them…. For the ones whose own parents didn’t know that they gay… who didn’t know that there in the dance club was the only safe place they could be themselves.

And I was struck by how this tragedy also lived at the intersection of color and sexuality and how violence disproportionally impacts people of color. And I was struck by how the lives lost on that morning are only a fraction of the lives taken because of homophobia and hatred. And I heard the call to reach out to my friends and colleagues, my family, my neighbors and to simply say these words: I love you. I see you. I care about you. You are beautiful and beloved by God. You are worthy. You are not alone. If you need me, I’ll be here.

Too often, acts of violence and tragedy come and go with the news cycle in our nation. We say a prayer and then turn our attention back to something more entertaining.

And in that we are absolutely no different than the people of Israel in the time of Amos. We turn our backs on the downtrodden and the marginalized. We say all the right words and then go right back to doing what we have always done and nothing ever changes.

Stephen Colbert, in his opening monologue on Monday night talked about how we accept that script and become paralyzed by despair, but then he said these words, which I leave us with today:

Well I don’t know what to do, but I do know that despair is a victory for hate. Hate wants us to be too weak to change anything. Now these people in Orlando were apparently targeted because of who they love. And there have been outpourings of love throughout the country and around the world. Love in response to hate. Love does not despair. Love makes us strong. Love gives us the courage to act. Love gives us hope that change is possible. Love allows us to change the script. So love your country, love your family, love the families of the victims and the people of Orlando, but let’s remember that love is a verb, and to love means to do something.

We hold up the plumb line today and I can’t help but wonder if changing the script means to tear down the walls built on hate, injustice and oppression… tearing them down and starting over as a people who share the love of God with every single person… who create a wide space in this church, in this building for all of God’s people.

Amen and Amen.

The Wheat and the Tares on the Micro-Level (NaBloPoMo)

Posted on November 7, 2015Leave a comment

In September, Bishop Ken Carter visited the Iowa Annual Conference and helped us to have a holy and grace filled conversation about leadership, change, mission, and the elephant in the room: human sexuality and the lives of LGBT persons.

One of the pieces I really appreciated is that he was careful to note that the macro level questions we have as a denomination shift when we turn to the micro or local church level. Especially when we consider ethos and practices. Using Acts 15 (The Jerusalem Council) he shared how the experiences of individuals who received the Holy Spirit (namely Gentiles), caused the church to think more about whether practices like circumcision were what defined the followers of Jesus. How should leaders interpret law in light of a shifting missionary field? What is essential and what can be laid aside? What can be let go of for the sake of the gospel… for the sake of making new disciples? There is a big picture missionary focus to these questions, but there is also a very pastoral and personal shift that occurs in the local church.

It is the local church pastor who determines readiness for membership. It is in the lives and experience of individuals that we start to ask: is the Spirit moving?

A great example is how John Wesley believed that the scriptures were against the preaching of women, but he believed some were “under an extraordinary impulse of the Spirit” and near the end of his life ordained Sarah Mallet and Sarah Crosby as Methodist preachers. Because of that personal experience of the Holy Spirit, ethos and custom were set aside. It wasn’t a shift for everyone… it was a micro-level change.

As Bishop Carter continued the conversation, he talked about how our current division needs a healthy dose of patience. He used Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares to describe how we long for a church full of people like us and are tempted to purify the field and kick out everyone who doesn’t agree with us. As he shares in point 6 of this blog post:

I would encourage Christians who cannot accept gays and lesbians, in orientation or practice, to place the judgment of them (and all of us) in God’s hands. As the Apostle Paul asks, “Who is in a position to condemn?” (Romans 8) And I would encourage gays and lesbians to be patient with their brothers and sisters in the church who have not walked their journey. This is not a justification for continued injustice. And yet it is also true that sexuality itself is a mysterious, complicated and emotionally-charged subject, and rational conversation and dialogue will emerge only if those who disagree come to the table hearing the admonition of James: “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1).

But, I wonder is if this is another place where there is a difference between the macro and micro levels.

And I ask this question knowing that Bishop Carter has stated that patience “is not a justification for continued injustice.”

On the macro level, denominationally speaking, patience and understanding and agreeing to wait it out and disagree in love makes some amount of sense. I find my heart there on many days – wanting us to find some way forward together, knowing it will take time.

But then I turn to the micro level, to the local church level, and patience feels very different.

It feels different because I hear stories of young men and women being kicked out of their churches or homes because they are incompatible with Christian teaching. I hear stories of shame and abuse. I hear stories about bullying. And telling these individuals to wait and be patient isn’t an answer.

20-40% of homeless teens on the street in our country are LGBTQ.

LGB youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide as their straight peers.

Do they have a place in my church, your church, or not?

For some of these youth (and adults), our wrestling with ethos and practice is a life or death issue.

Some local congregations have decided that they can’t be patient any longer. They need to firmly and unequivocally state who they are. Either way.

EVERY local church needs to wrestle with this question, just as the micro level conversation had to happen about women preachers or circumcision. In our midst are people this impasse affects, people we might not even recognize yet, and maintaining the status quo and not rocking the boat while we wait for wheat and tares to grow is no longer an acceptable answer in the local church. Our decisions, to stand in one place or another or to not stand anywhere at all impact the life and calling and discipleship of individuals who sit next to us.

They need to know if they are welcome or not… so they can embrace their discipleship in that place, or shake the dust off their feet and hopefully find another home.

Two Texts: Privilege and the Beloved Community

Posted on August 30, 20152 Comments

In my life, I have been pulled over by a police officer perhaps half a dozen times. One was for a broken taillight and the rest were for speeding.

Every single time, my heart rate rose and my palms got sweaty. I was nervous. I felt guilty. I knew I was in trouble.

But never, ever, did I fear for my life during a traffic stop.

Never have I ever felt unsafe in the presence of an authority figure.

And never, after one of those stops, have I received a ticket.

Contrast my story with that of a woman named Sandra Bland, who was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change on July 10 this summer.

Maybe her palms got sweaty. Maybe her heart rate started to rise. Maybe she was nervous or had feelings of guilt. Maybe she knew she was in trouble.

Maybe she feared for her life.

Maybe she felt unsafe in the presence of an authority figure.

Maybe her fight or flight instinct kicked in.

As the conversation between her and the officer escalated, Sandra Bland was arrested.

Will you pray with me.

Gracious God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts and minds be holy and pleasing to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.

Three days after Sandra Bland was pulled over for failing to signal when she changed lanes, she was found dead in her jail cell.

It was my first day back in the office after my renewal leave, and I decided that morning that I wanted to do this series in worship.

Because we live in world where I, a white woman, am pulled over for speeding and I am sent on my way without a ticket, and where another person, an African-American woman, is pulled over and ends up dead.

Maybe she took her own life. Maybe she was murdered.

I honestly have no idea. And I’m not sure that it matters, because either way, the result is the loss of her life.

And to be honest, I can’t know the heart of the arresting officer to know if he treated her differently based on the color of her skin.

The problem is, I have heard her story too many times.

In November of last year, Bishop Julius Calvin Trimble, our bishop, shared his story as part of lecture at Cornell College:

In 1974, when I was a second year college student, I, along with my younger brother James, went to visit our older brother in California. He lived near Palo Alto, California and was working for Hewlett Packard as a computer engineer. While traveling to his apartment in his Volkswagen Beetle we were stopped by police who questioned my brother and asked for license and registration. Even though he produced his license, registration and work identification we were still told to exit the car with hands up. Additional squad cars arrived and with guns drawn on them, three young African American men were handcuffed and taken to jail. We remained handcuffed for about 45 minutes and were then released after being told that my brother’s car was not stolen but we looked out of place and suspicious driving in that community. My older brother, John, now a college professor, was, at the time of the incident, a graduate of Northwestern University and Stanford University. 1974 was a long time ago, but thousands of African Americans have similar stories. A recent CNN special highlighted one college student in New York who had been stooped and frisked over 100 times. (http://iowabeencouraged.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2015-01-06T11:01:00-06:00&max-results=1&start=6&by-date=false)

What I do know is that this is not the regular experience of my white brothers and sisters.

What I do know is that this is not about conflict between African Americans and police officers. That might be one facet or symptom of what is going on, but that’s not what this is about.

We, all of us, have stopped seeing the image of God in the eyes of another person.

We have become comfortable in our own stories and situations, in our own class or race or gender, and we have stopped reaching beyond them to be in real relationship with other people.

We have started to believe that their lives don’t matter to us.

Perhaps Jesus saw this happening around him when he told a story to a man who would have been his disciple:

There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’ (Luke 10:30-35, MSG)

The priest decided that the life of this man didn’t matter.

He responsibilities to attend to and couldn’t defile himself.

The Levite decided that the life of this man didn’t matter.

He had an image to maintain.

They had other things to worry about.

They were special.

They were different.

And that man didn’t matter.

The Samaritans were mixed race people who were often thought of as lesser than their Jewish cousins. He would have been bound by the same rules as the priest and Levite when it came to touching a bleeding, dying man.

Yet the Samaritan stopped.

The Samaritan believed that this life… that every life… holds the image of God and is of sacred worth.

The Samaritan went out of their way to show love and care and mercy towards this person.

Privilege can be defined as a right, immunity or benefit enjoyed by someone beyond the advantages of most.

It can be defined as the position someone holds that exempts them from burdens or problems.

Privilege is always social. It describes our relationship to other people and how we are either the beneficiaries of that position, or we are the group that privileged status is being compared to.

Religious Privilege is being a Priest or a Levite instead of a Samaritan and feeling like you are immune from having to stop and check on the welfare of another human being.

Male Privilege is making 17% more money working the same job than your female counterparts.

Class Privilege is being able to choose to eat healthy food if you want, because you live in a neighborhood with grocery stores or you own transportation to get you there and back.

Ability Privilege means that as a healthy person, you don’t have to think about your daily pain level when planning activities and events.

Racial Privilege is getting a cut, opening the first aid kit, and the flesh-colored band-aid matches your skin tone.

And what we discover in this world is that we are never simply one of these things.

Some of us experience multiple advantages and privileges based upon who we are.

Some of us experience a mixture of them all.

Some of us find ourselves at the intersection of multiple social disadvantages and burdens.

Our world today is not the Beloved Community envisioned by Dr. King or the Kingdom of God lifted up by Jesus and described by Paul.

It is not a place where Jewish and Palestinian kids can go to school in peace.

It is not a world where transgender women and straight women experience the same judicial system.

This is not a country where black boys and white girls will grow up with the same opportunities.

And the biggest problem is that we who experience the advantages often don’t even realize the privileges we hold.

We are so caught up in our own experiences that we don’t see that of others.

Just this last week, I got an email from our Commission on Persons with Disabilities in our annual conference. In the process of planning annual conference worship, I tried hard to include people who spoke various languages, genders, ages, ethnicities… and the email was a gentle reminder that no one who led worship had a physical disability.

Privilege is looking up at the stage at annual conference or up in the front during worship and knowing that the person who is there looks or talks like you.

I know how important that is, because I remember when I looked up at the stage and saw a woman preaching and I thought… I could do this.

Yet, because of my social location, providing that same opportunity to someone who was differently abled didn’t even cross my mind.

But it does now.

In our video this morning, Bishop Warner Brown, the President of our Council of Bishops tells us that:

Hope occurs in the places where we meet people. It involves where people live, where they work, where they face the challenges of life.

Hope occurs in the places where we meet people who don’t look or talk or move like us.

Hope occurs when we let love and not fear rule our actions.

Hope occurs when we cross over the road to where we see someone who is at a disadvantage – whether they have been injured or oppressed or are struggling or are behind – and we stop to see the image of God in them.

Hope occurs when we shed our own privilege and step out of our comfort zones to meet someone where they are.

Hope occurs when we listen more than we speak about our life experiences.

As we hear in 1 John, chapter 4:

This is love… not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son to sacrifice his life for us.

And if God loves us in this way… so we should love one another in this way.

Love without fear.

Love without privilege.

Love without question.

Love.

Keep P.U.S.H.ing!

Posted on July 19, 2015Leave a comment

My aunt Barb has been diagnosed and treating uterine and ovarian cancer for about two years now. She has been through a few rounds of surgery, chemo, and radiation. Some of it has been successful! Some of the cancer has returned. It has been an up and down journey, but she has had quite a few healthy months in the midst of it all.

Through everything, family and friends have been a huge support and together they have participated in Relay for Life the past two years.

As Team Triple B, their slogan is “Keep PUSHing”

For them, PUSHing means that you Pray Until Something Happens.

Pray Until Something Happens.

In these past six weeks, we have talked a lot about prayer. We started out by talking about prayer as group activity… something we do together. Pastor Todd talked about prayer as an intimate relationship with our parental God. Trevor invited us to think about prayer as something that is always hard and always necessary – a sweet devotion. Our guest preachers, Pastors Ted and Mara, have led us in a variety of disciplines and continued to stretch our thinking on how we practice prayer.

While I was away on leave, I spent every single morning in prayer. I wish I could say that I always spent every morning in prayer, but as Trevor so eloquently stated in his message, prayer is hard work.

Yet, on my renewal leave, my only real task was to pray. To pray for you. To pray for our ministries. To pray for God to guide me and us. And I read a lot about prayer as well.

One of the things that kept striking me is that we need to pray like we mean it.

We need to pray about those things in this world that we really want to change.

We need to pray until something happens!

In our gospel reading, Jesus was walking into Jerusalem and he passed by a fig tree. Even though it was out of season, he looked for fruit and didn’t find any. So he said, “No one will ever again eat your fruit!” The tree withered, dried up, and died within 24 hours.

Jesus prayed… and something happened!

Now, I’m going to be honest… this is a rather strange story that leaves us with all sorts of questions:

Why would Jesus punish the tree when it couldn’t help that it was the wrong season?

The scripture says he was really hungry… so maybe he was just really grouchy, like I often get when I haven’t eaten in a while…

Because, I mean, what kind of Jesus is this that arbitrarily causes things to die?

United Methodists don’t typically buy into the kind of prosperity gospel that says if you pray for what you want, you will get it.

We are fully aware that all kinds of faithful people pray for things like healing and miracles and help and the answers aren’t always what we want.

Maybe that is why even though it is a story mentioned in both Matthew and Mark, most of the cycles of scripture readings pastors use completely ignore this passage. We’d rather Jesus didn’t have this encounter with the fig tree.

Yet, the core of the message here… aside from the weird stuff with the fig tree… is repeated over and over again by Jesus.

Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7-8 and Luke 11:9)

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains… nothing will be impossible (Mt 17:20)

If we ask for anything in agreement with God’s will, God listens to us… we know that we have received what we asked from God. (1 John 14-15)

If we pray… stuff will happen! Not little stuff… BIG. GIGANTIC. POWERFUL. MOUNTAIN SIZED stuff!

That’s what scripture tells us.

That’s what Jesus keeps reminding us.

Prayer is powerful.

There is a important thing to remember in this power of prayer, however.

This power only works when our prayers are aligned with God’s will.

If I started praying for a bigger house today… I probably wouldn’t get it. Because that is not about God… its about me.

As 1 John puts it: If we ask for anything in agreement with God’s will, God listens to us… we know that we have received what we asked from God. (1 John 14-15)

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for what he wanted… but he ended that prayer: not my will, but yours be done.

What I love about my aunt’s prayer during this time is that while she has all sorts of hopes and wants and desires for her treatment, their goal is for God’s will to be done.

They are going to Pray Until Something Happens.

That might be good news and healing. It might be deeper relationships. It might not be the ending they want, but they are open to discovering God’s blessings and God’s answers along the way.

And through it all… they are going to pray.

I have found that we don’t hesitate to lift up prayers asking for healing. We are even pretty good at lifting up prayers of gratitude.

But there are things in this world that we are called to do and change and work towards… and we forget to pray about it!

We get so caught up in what we are doing that we forget to ask God to be a part of it. We keep thinking it is all about us.

And when we do so, we forget to tap into the mountain-moving power of prayer that is right there at our fingertips.

And that is what we need to do.

Last fall, we sat down and spent some time asking God what we were supposed to do here at Immanuel. And out of those conversations as leadership, we set some goals around places we have passion and we felt God was moving. Now… we need to pray about it.

We need to Pray Until Something Happens.

One of those goals was that we wanted to increase our visibility in the community… We want get to know our neighbors better… And our goal, our hope, is that those new relationships will mean there are 10% more people here in worship at the end of this year.

But you know what… we haven’t really prayed about it. We haven’t asked God to help us with this work. We’ve been trying to do it on our own.

Another goal we set last year was create space for people to serve here at Immanuel. We want to make sure that everyone is connected to some kind of ministry beyond Sunday morning. And one of the pieces of this goal is to encourage new people to embrace God’s gifts in their life and we wanted to find a place for 10 new people to serve on our ministry teams.

But we haven’t been praying about it. We haven’t asked God to help us.

And as the Iowa Annual Conference, we have this amazing new goal. As United Methodists, we want to make a significant impact on poverty in our communities and we think we can do something really big by addressing the opportunity gap in education. And so, we are being asked to get involved with an effort to distribute half a million books and to give a million hours of time over the next year. And it is a big and awesome and mountain sized goal and we are just getting started…

So you know what… we had better start praying for it.

In fact, we need to start praying for all of these things.

We are going to need God on our side if these things are going to happen.

If the world is going to change… if the kingdom is going to come… if God’s will is to be done, we need to ask for God to be involved.

We need to start praying until something happens.

As we leave worship today, you’ll find that there are some tables at the back with three different stations.

Each station relates to one of those goals I lifted up in the message this morning.

And at each station is a prayer card I want to invite you to take with you.

I want us to commit to praying for mountains to move.

I want us to commit to praying every day that God’s will be done in our midst.

You don’t have to pray for every single one of them… but pick at least one.

Commit yourself to prayer by name.

If we have at least 50 people here in the church praying for every one of these goals do you think God will hear us. Do you think God will sense we are not only people who care about these things, but we are ready for change. We believe. We have faith that God can make a difference here.

Ghandi once wrote:

If when we plunge our hand into a bowl of water,

Or stir up the fire with the bellows

Or tabulate interminable columns of figures on our book-keeping table,

Or, burnt by the sun, we are plunged in the mud of the rice-field,

Or standing by the smelter’s furnace

We do not fulfill the same religious life as if in prayer in a monastery,

The world will never be saved.

We may not share the same faith as Ghandi, but we all believe in the power of prayer. And Ghandi’s words remind us that prayer is not just for the super-religious, and prayer is not only for renewal leave… prayer is something we are supposed to be doing every second of every day of our lives.

We should be praying when we work.

We should be praying as we play.

We can be praying as we brush our teeth and drive to work.

We can pray at the dinner table.

We need to be praying everywhere, all the time, about everything.

And what I want you to do is take one of these prayer cards this morning and pray your heart out.

Put it on your bathroom mirror and pray it every morning.

Stick it in your car and pray before you get to work.

Take more than one if you want to, and put them wherever they might be a reminder to you.

Bring your prayers to breakfast and take turns each saying your prayer together.

Pray… even if your faith is as small as a mustard seed.

Pray that mountains might move.

Pray that kids might learn to read.

Pray that we might meet and grow with new people.

Pray that every person might find a place to connect and serve.

Pray.

Pray Until Something Happens.

In the Night

Posted on January 18, 2015Leave a comment

When I was in college, our chaplain encouraged us to go to this event called, “Exploration.”

It was a conference for young people who felt like they were hearing a call to ministry – a place to explore what that meant for their lives.

I don’t remember a single thing about the conference, except for one worship service.

Bishop Minerva Carcaño was preaching and before her message she read aloud for us the call of this young man we hear about today.

But even though Bishop Carcaño is from Texas, she doesn’t have a Texas drawl. She is Latina. So what sticks in my mind is her calling out, over and over again through the scripture and her message:

“Samuel! Samuel!” (heard phonetically as Sam-well!)

Hearing her say that name in such a different dialect helped me to hear the entire passage in a new way. It snuck into every corner of my mind.

The entire drive home, I thought about all of the people throughout my life who had been calling me to ministry: my pastor, a youth leader, teachers and fellow students. I realized that like Samuel, I thought I was simply hearing the voice of my pastor or my teacher. I had never stopped to consider before that weekend that perhaps it wasn’t just a human voice after all…. Perhaps God was speaking to me!

So I love this call story. It helped me to hear my own calling into ministry in a difficult time of my life.

Today, as we continue our exploration of The Light in the Darkness, I notice as I read again this passage how God calls to us in the night, in our darkness, in our times of difficulty and asks us to serve, to lead, to go.

Samuel has been serving in the temple with Eli and that night is charged with the duty of keeping the lamps burning through the night in the part of the temple where the ark of the covenant was kept.

As we learned with the peace light from Bethlehem came through, it is not easy to keep a lamp burning over night. You worry the oil will go out or the wick will burn through.

So Samuel is sleeping there on his mat in the temple so that he can get up periodically and check on the lamp.

And there in the night… in the dark… God speaks to him.

We don’t know how old Samuel might be in this part of the story, a boy is all the scriptures say, but he has spent his entire life in the temple. His mother Hannah was barren and prayed with all her might for a child.

“Lord of heavenly forces, just look at your servant’s pain and remember me! Don’t forget your servant! Give her a boy! Then I’ll give him to the Lord for his entire life. No razor will ever touch his head.” (1:11)

Her prayer was answered. So Hannah and her husband brought the child before God and left him in the care of Eli, the priest.

Out of her struggle and despair, God blessed them with not only Samuel, but five other children.

So Samuel grew up in the temple, under Eli’s care.

But I think too often we focus on how Samuel heard his call and forget to pay attention to what he was called TO.

In that time, Eli had two sons: Hophni and Phinehas, and they were the worst pastor’s kids you have ever met.

When people came to the temple to offer sacrifices, some of the meat was always given to the priests for their service. But the boys wouldn’t wait until the sacrifice was nearly over and then take their share, as was custom… but they would grab a chunk of the choicest meat right off the fire. Today, it would be like if the pastor’s child stopped the offering plates as they were being passed, took out the largest bills they could find so they could go spend it as they pleased, and then allowed everything to proceed. And they did it with threat of violence.

Not only that, but they also sexually harassed the women who served at the temple.

And Eli didn’t stop them.

Oh, he said once or twice, “you probably shouldn’t do that,” but he never actually stopped them from doing so.

And God promised that this injustice would end. God promised to establish a new, trustworthy priest and that the sign of this prophecy would be the death of Hophni and Phineas on the same day.

So God waited until Samuel, who had dedicated his life to God’s service, was nearly ready. And God called him in the night with the vision that the injustice and outrage of Eli’s household would end.

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine growing up in a place with a vision of what was good and right and true, and yet every day having those in power and in leadership stomp all over those ideals?

That was life for Samuel. He knew the struggle of his mother. He knew he was meant to serve the Lord. And every day, he watched as Hophni and Phineas drove people away from the temple, and took advantage of them. He watched as Eli did nothing to stop it.

Yet somehow, he didn’t allow the example of his mentor and peers to turn him away from his path.

Can you imagine what it would be like to find yourself called to do something?

To proclaim a different future?

To speak light out of the darkness?

I have been inspired by the stories of young people around the world who are doing just that.

Julia Bluhm is a 16 year old dancer who saw young women around struggling with their image based on photoshopped and unrealistic images of what it meant to be a woman. So she stood up to Seventeen magazine and asked them to commit to unaltered photographs and a diverse range of girls in their magazine. In 2012, the magazine committed to never change the size of a girl’s face or body and to show real girls n the magazine.

Malala Yousafzai was just 11 when she started promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. She was targeted for assassination and survived and continues to work to ensure all children have access to education and rights for children and young people. When asked by Jon Stewart about what gives her courage to keep going, she talks about how she decided early on to speak the truth, even in the face of someone who wants to hurt her:

If he [the Talib] comes, what would you do Malala? …If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there will be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others…with cruelty…you must fight others but through peace, through dialogue and through education…then I’ll tell him [the Talib] how important education is and that I even want education for your children as well… that’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.

Can you imagine proclaiming a different future? Speaking light out of darkness?

Today is Human Relations Day and we celebrate this Sunday in connection with Martin Luther King Jr. Day

To quote Dr. King: Every [one] must decide whether [they] will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

So with Samuel, we choose to seek the light of service and sacrifice, rather than to simply stand by and do nothing when we witness wrongs.

The United Methodist Church is committed to standing with those who are on the margins and who are struggling.

Rev. I Maliik Safir, whose church works with those gripped by addiction in Little Rock, sums up the work of Human Relations Day by recalling Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan: “to meet the poor, the disadvantaged and the underserved at the places where others have robbed them and help them to recover from the wounds of social inequality.”

But I think this Sunday needs to be about more than putting a few dollars in the special offering envelope to support these important ministries. You should do that, by the way… take out that envelope and give whatever you can to help us continue to serve in these places.

But God demands more of us than simply our financial resources.

I think this is also a day when we are called to look at the world around us and ask what is happening in our midst and how are we called to proclaim a different future.

In the dark of the night, where do you hear God calling you?

Has something kept you up at night, calling you to do something?

Have you felt the tug of your heartstrings around something you are reading in the news… issues affecting Des Moines and Iowa?

Is it around issues of incarceration? Racial disparity? Poverty? Mental health?

Are you called to advocate for others?

Speak truth to power?

Is there something at work or school that just doesn’t feel right? Can you do something about it?

Sit beside someone who is struggling?

If you are… take it to the Lord. Cry out that you are ready to hear. You are listening. Ask what God wants you to do.

And feel free to come and talk with me or Pastor Todd if there is a place you think we, as the church, should be responding. Because together, we can work to let the light of Christ shine in the darkest parts of this world.

As Dr. King said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Let us be people who are not afraid of the darkness.

Who go to the darkness.

Who listen in the darkness.

And who work to let the light shine.

More than we can ASK or IMAGINE

Posted on August 28, 2013Leave a comment

On the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, a lot of people are talking about dreams today.

Dreams for racial equality. Dreams for unity. Dreams for access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Dreams for our children. Dreams for reconciliation. Dreams for a future with hope and freedom, love and peace.

As I read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech again today, I was struck by how focused on the American experience it was. Never before in my reading had I noticed how every word is intertwined with a sense of national identity and a prophetic reality check on our history and at the time, present conditions. Or rather, I had always taken that piece of the address for granted. The American experience encompassed my worldview. This country is my country. It is the place of my hopes and dreams. This is the place where they are realized.

Only, in the last year, my eyes have grown wider.

I’m dreaming different dreams.

I’m looking beyond borders to the needs of my brothers and sisters half a world away.

And so I read those words in a new way today.

Today, I’m thinking about the injustices of a world in which WHERE here we live determines IF we live.

In my work with Imagine No Malaria, I’m constantly trying to figure out how to get my friends and colleagues and brothers and sisters in Iowa and the United States to think about the lives of folks who do not live in this place.

I am trying to help them understand the “fierce urgency of Now” – the need for action, the need to take the momentum in our global fight and step on the accelerator so we can truly overcome this global disease that is taking so many lives.

Our fight is not necessarily against racial injustice, but we are battling a disease of poverty. We are working desperately to overcome systemic problems of access to care and education and resources. We are working with those whose very fight with the disease keeps them trapped in the poverty that puts them most at risk.

In our work with Imagine No Malaria, we have placed our feet firmly in the promises of Ephesians 3:20… that God will do far more than we can ask or imagine by his power at work within us.

So we are raising our voices and dreaming prophetic dreams, too.

We imagine a world in which WHERE you live doesn’t determine IF you live.

We imagine a world where mothers tuck their …children in at night under bed nets and no longer worry for their safety.

We imagine a world where 655,000 deaths a year are prevented because we have taken action against malaria.

We imagine a world where illness and death do not keep families from fulfilling their dreams for education and work and stability.

We imagine a world where United Methodists from every nation stand together, united, to overcome disease by putting God’s abundant resources into the places where they are needed most.

Our work does not end with our imagination any more than the dream of Dr. King ended with the words said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

God works through us… in us… God accomplishes great things because we stand up and speak out and choose to turn our words into actions.

Just as his speech was a call to action and solidarity, a call to “never be satisfied” until the dream is fulfilled, I am spurred on to keep going, to keep preaching and speaking and working until we watch those deaths from malaria diminish to zero.

The work of the United Methodist Church in Imagine No Malaria is not the same challenge as overcoming oppression and injustice. It will not lead us into clashes of power and the resistance we find will not be water hoses and dogs and hatred… but we still have to work together. We still have to be willing to step out of the comforts of our position in order to give sacrificially to make the dream a reality.

We still have a kingdom dream, a dream of brothers and sisters of all hues living full and abundant lives, working together, praying together, struggling together.

We dream not of a nation, but a world, united by God’s love and sustained by God’s redeeming power.

The Institution of Marriage

Posted on July 20, 2013Leave a comment

**uploading some older sermons as I sort through files. This one in particular was a joy to write and I was blessed by the opportunity to share this day with my dear friends.**

Friends, we are gathered here today to celebrate an institution.

Now, that may seem like a boring and cold thing to say… but I assure you, nothing about today will be boring or cold =)

Institutions form societies. They mold us as individuals. They enhance our ability to be fully developed human beings. Institutions carry within them the values we hold most dear… the values that we want to pass on to the generations that follow us.

The institution of the family brought this man and this woman… in fact, all of us men and women… into the world. Each of you who have played the role of a parent or grandparent or a sister or brother to these two, have helped to make Ben and Kayla who they are today.

The religious institutions in their lives formed in them a deep sense of justice and love. Their wrestling with faith enabled them to ask questions about what it means to be faithful, about who their neighbor was, and about what it means to be a child of God.

Without the educational institution – well… Ben and Kayla never would have met. Some of us gathered here today witnessed the beginning of their journey together at Simpson College. They discovered their common values, they laughed and love together, and each step since that first one has brought all of us here.

Today, we witness them enter into the institution of marriage.

On the back of your programs, there is an excerpt from an important court decision in the state of Massachusetts.

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support.

Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.

It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a “civil right.” Without the right to choose to marry one is excluded from the full range of human experience.

In beautiful and poetic words, the court reminds us that this institution of marriage is a public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family… it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity. These values – these ideals – are what bring us together today.

Any of us who know you – Ben and Kayla – know that your love has been a mighty and blazing flame for many years now. We know that your love needs no ornament or stamp of approval from any religious or governmental body in order to be real. We know of your commitment to one another, of your mutual respect, of your willingness to allow your partner to be who they are and yet love them anyways. We know that your love cannot be bought – that it is genuine and true – honest and holy. In fact, had we not gathered here today… and perhaps some of you thought we never would =) … Kayla and Ben would still be two individuals bound together by commitment and nurtured by love and mutual support.

But we do gather and we do celebrate, because a deeply personal commitment is not all that is important to them. Ben and Kayla believe that making these promises in public benefits the community. They believe that marriage brings stability to society. They believe that the honest, simple, and holy thing we call love is meant to be shared. By stopping at this place in their journey together and gathering before you, they mark the importance of the relationship that they share. They measure how far they have come and leave a reminder to all that follow of what marriage means to them. Here in Iowa, we don’t necessarily gather cairn stones to mark these moments… but we do like to put up billboards along the side of the road.

So, looking back years from now, we might remember that this billboard, from this moment, says: With God as my helper, I choose to live my life with this imperfect, flawed and terribly wonderful soul. I choose to take on the obligations and the joys of a shared existence. I believe that the ability to make this choice and to be faithful to it, is one of the highest and most esteemed values of our society.

The promises Ben and Kayla make today – and their living out of those promises – are themselves a witness of the importance of this institution and the joy they seek by entering it.

They believe that the benefits and obligations of this beautiful institution should be available to all that choose them…

Being married today in Iowa – they not only are publicly celebrating their love and the ideals of mutuality and fidelity and connection… they also celebrate the ideals of equality and justice.

So let us join them in their journey together and mark this moment with celebration…

Let us celebrate that we have the ability to bind ourselves together with the partner we choose.

Let us celebrate that many waters cannot quench the love two people have for one another.

Let us celebrate this beautiful institution of marriage and all of the good that it stands for. Amen and Amen.

Turning the Other Cheek and the American Justice System

Posted on July 11, 2012Leave a comment

Yesterday, the Tuesday morning small group at my church had an interesting conversation. Is it possible or practical to follow the commands of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in this world? Can we do it? And what barriers do we face if we try?

We were focusing on the verses about turning the other cheek, giving someone the coat off our back, and going the extra mile. All of which are non-violent means of resistance. All of which take incredible strength to practice. All of which encourage you to treat an enemy, an oppressor, a perpetrator with kindness, gentleness, grace and love.

We all extolled these virtues and talked about how we try to practice them in our daily lives… until one gentleman raised a serious question he was currently grappling with. My friend was hit by a truck while riding his motorcycle and he lost the lower half of his right leg. And between doctors and family and lawyers, everyone is trying to figure out how to get him what he deserves in the process. His question to us: If we truly want to live like Jesus calls us to, then shouldn’t we drop all charges and refuse to sue and not focus on what we “deserve?”

How do you even begin to answer that question? Jesus didn’t live in a time of health insurance companies. There are real financial burdens involved with the medical care that he has and will continue to need. My first inclination was to respond that within the system we live in, we need to ask how can I act in the most Christ-like and compassionate manner… but I found myself hesitant to say that we should subvert the process entirely. I realized that we tend to ask fairness and justice questions rather than thinking about mercy questions.

In fact, later in the conversation when asked what we would do if we were robbed, our first responses were to call the police. We instinctively favor what is “right.”

Our society has built into it all sorts of structures that prevent us from living out the Jesus ethic. Yes, they provide stability and a process to follow when we are wronged, but they also immediately seperate us from one another. They incorporate a third party that will act and decide so that we don’t have to deal with the mess of real relationships. That is not to say that life in our system is not messy… because it is. And yet, by using the system, we take ourselves out of the equation. By preventing abuses of revenge and retribution, we also have prevented forgiveness and mercy to have a say.

Perhaps one way to navigate the problem is to try to act as Christ-like as possible in the midst of the structure. Let the insurance company/doctors get the money they need to cover your care, but don’t ask for damages above and beyond. Act with compassion towards the perpetrator. Reach out in love. Overwhelm them with forgiveness. Be a witness to everyone that you refuse to get anything out of it for yourself.

Another option is to simply forgo the system all together. Don’t call the police when you are robbed. Refuse to file the insurance claim when the guy rear-ends your car. In doing so, we can extend grace and compassion… but this in itself can also be lazy discipleship. By not doing anything, we may never get the opportunity to build a relationship with the person who has wronged you. Simply looking the other way is not the same thing as facing someone and turning the other cheek. The ethic Jesus prescribes is active and personal and engaging.

And his ethic is transformative. In each of those verses about how we should respond to oppression, we actually taunt the person who has harmed us to go farther. We don’t just give our coats, but take off our shirts. We don’t simply accept a slap in the face, we force them to hit us with the back of their hand. We don’t simply walk one mile, we continue walking and put their own abuse into a category that becomes problematic for them. We force them to see us not as a faceless victim who can be used, but as a person.

There is something about that response that is not very kind at all. We hold them accountable for their actions by forcing them to take their current line of abuse to an extreme. We make them realize that we are human beings, and in turn, they see themselves in a different light

Perhaps this is where restorative justice can actually play a role if we work within our current systems. Through the building of relationships, through mandating that someone do community service in response to a crime of theft, or work to nurture life in the wake of a murder, we give them the opportunity to be transformed… to become more fully human themselves, while also helping them to see the humanity in other people. And, it gives us an opportunity to be transformed and healed as we navigate our way through anger and frustration to a place of forgiveness and hope.