Luke – Page 6 – Salvaged Faith

Expectations and Realities

Posted on December 10, 2013Leave a comment

Sermon based on Luke 1:39-55 and Matthew 11:2-6

About a year ago, I began working with Imagine No Malaria here in the Iowa Conference, and I have to tell you… since then, I can’t look at a pregnant woman the same way again.

In our scripture this morning, we actually have two pregnant women – Elizabeth and her cousin Mary… both unlikely mothers… both full of hopes and expectations about what that pregnancy will bring.

One of the first things I learned about malaria, however, is that it is a disease that overwhelmingly affects pregnant women and their new born babies. Women who are expecting produce more carbon dioxide than a typical person, which attracts mosquitos and makes them more likely to be bitten. Add that to the fact that they have a compromised immune system trying to protect and care for the new life growing inside of them and it’s a deadly combination.

Malaria is one of the leading causes of death in pregnant woman globally. In fact, 85% of the deaths from malaria are children under five and women who are expecting. A woman who has malaria while pregnant is likely to have a miscarriage or a child with low birth weight and other medical problems. And even if a baby is born healthy, children under five are not strong enough to fight the parasite that causes malaria if it attacks them. Eevery sixty seconds, we lose a life to malaria. Over half a million deaths every single year…

The joy… the hope… that comes with the promise of new life …

And the devastation of loss when a precious life is lost.

Expectations and reality…

They aren’t always the same thing, are they?

In our two gospel readings for today, as we encounter these pregnant women, we also experience the hopes of John the Baptist in relation to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Luke tells us that before they had even been born… while they were still in their mothers’ wombs… John was jumping for joy at the promise of what Jesus was bringing to the world. His expectation poured out through the words of his mother, “God has blessed you and the babe in your womb… why am I so blessed that the mother of my Lord visits me?”

But by the time the two are grown up and have gone their separate ways, John the Baptist starts to question the reality of the promise. In Matthew’s gospel, John finds himself in prison and sends word through his disciples… ‘ Are you the one to come? Or should we look for another?”

This is not the little baby leaping for joy. This is a man who is tired, who has worked long and hard for the Lord and right now is a little bit jaded. He doesn’t want to waste the time he has left on unfulfilled hopes. And right now… what he has seen and heard about Jesus hasn’t lived up to the expectations.

Expectations and reality…

In 2006, the United Methodist Church launched an extraordinary effort to help end death and suffering from malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Speaking of expectations… we expected Nothing but Nets to be a six month long project… but the reality is it has continued to this day. In fact, this past NBA season, Stephen Curry with the Golden State Warriors promised to donate nets for every three point shot he made… and then proceeded to set the NBA record for the most 3-pointers in a season!

But as United Methodists, we heard God asking us to do more. And in response, we expanded our work to include not only preventative efforts, but also a focus on treatment, education, and communications around malaria. There were such expectations built up around the beginning of this work and our dream to raise $75 million dollars to put our faith into action.

Bill Gates, Sr. was there as we kicked off our work at General Conference in 2008 and he claimed: “You are 12 million people armed with the conviction that all the world is your parish. That makes you the most powerful weapon there is against malaria.”

Five years later we are still engaged in this work. But here in Iowa, we are far away from where the real work is taking place. It is hard for us to see the reality on the ground in Africa. Like John the Baptist, we might be tired from our own ministry and struggles. We get a bit jaded sometimes. We wonder if maybe we shouldn’t have focused our time and energy and efforts somewhere else. Is this the program that is going to save lives and transform our church? Or are we still waiting?

Maybe the problem is that we just haven’t done a good enough job telling the story about what is really going on.

That’s what Jesus realizes as those disciples from John arrive. They just haven’t heard the stories yet. So Jesus responds by simply telling them what is really happening:

Healing abounds. Lives are being changed. Faith is poured out in action. I am bringing salvation in all of its forms – release from captivity, healing, new life. Go back and tell the good news. That the blind see, the deaf hear, and the wretched of the earth are learning God is on their side. The Kingdom of God is here! Go back and tell John the good news. Go and tell what you have seen and heard.

That is what my job is… to be a witness… to share with you the good news of what is happening through Imagine No Malaria. Because friends, God is doing amazing things out there. God is using the ordinary gifts of people like you and me to heal the sick and to transform lives. Our actions are a beacon of hope to those who struggle, our words a life-line to those who despair.

In just the past three years, we have distributed over 1.5 million bed nets. We are working to empower communities by training over 5,800 community health workers who are the hands and feet of Christ in this battle against malaria. And we have worked to improve the infrastructure for health in general by establishing health boards in 15 countries that will help provide treatment and accountability for the work we do.

I could probably share with you for hours about the lives that have been affected by this work… about Juliette in Zimbabwe who literally jumped on her bed for joy when the bed net was installed… or John, who carried his sick baby 15 miles to the rural health clinic and found life-saving medication for his little one. But frankly, we don’t have that much time today. So I’m going to tell you just one story about a woman named Muriel from Sierra Leone.

Muriel was already struggling to maintain her home and put food on the table for her family. I don’t know where her husband was… perhaps he died in the conflict a few years ago in Sierra Leone or from malaria… or maybe he had just taken off not to be heard from again. But Muriel was doing the best she could. Until her children all became sick with malaria at the same time. She had seen the symptoms… she knew what it was, but without the resources to afford a single dose of medication for herself or her children, she felt completely without hope. In desperation, she tried negotiating with a government health worker to purchase drugs on credit, but to no avail.

Can you imagine her situation? Can you imagine sitting there, trying to comfort your sick children and not being able to do anything to help them? She knew that without the medication they so desperately needed, it was simply a matter of time before they began to die in her arms. Her expectations were bleak.

It was then that one of our Community Health Volunteers, trained by the Saving Lives Sierra Leone/ Imagine No Malaria team at the UMC health center found Muriel.

Tiaima reached out to Muriel and took the family to the United Methodist Clinic. There, the staff welcomed them with open arms and before Muriel knew it, the children had been tested and were already receiving their first dose of medication. Tiaima sat down with Muriel at taught her about how to prevent malaria in the future, gave her a net and instructed her how to use it, and made sure that she knew the correct dosages and timing for the medications that needed to be taken at home.

All of this happened in a heartbeat, and as the family was being sent on their way, Muriel turned back and offered to come back with one of her goats in exchange for the care. A goat that might have been the only thing providing income for that little family… the promise of security in the future… The nurse assured her that the services for malaria were free. It was then that Muriel broke down in tears and asked again and again if it was true or if she were dreaming. She had been praying for someone to help her family.

Muriel’s family is now healthy because of the work of United Methodists in Sierra Leone.

But even more than that.

Surprised by the grace she found through our work, Muriel went back home to her community to tell the women there about how they can work to reduce malaria and she has signed up to become a Community Health Volunteer herself.

She has become a witness, inviting others to experience the reality of the joy of salvation she herself experienced.

No matter what our expectations, we have a God who can surpass them beyond our wildest dreams.

The very name, Imagine No Malaria, comes from Ephesians 3:20: “Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us.”

Expectations… and reality.

John leaped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb because of the promises of God.

Mary was so overcome and filled with hope and praise that she couldn’t help but sing out the words we know as the Magnificat… words of longing for healing, for justice, for salvation.

Later, John’s disciples would rush back to tell him the good news that the Kingdom of God was becoming a reality.

Muriel did not hesitate to shout with joy as she experienced the healing power of God in her family’s life.

Friends… the Kingdom of God is breaking in all around us. What do you hope for? What do you expect? And are you ready to be surprised when God does far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams?

In my work with Imagine No Malaria, I have been blown away by what I have experienced. We are not simply handing out medicine and nets. Through the grace of God, we are welcoming people as our brothers and sisters, treating them with love, and building relationships with them. In the process, we empower them to be agents of change in their communities and the world. That is salvation in action. That is the kingdom of God springing forth!

I have to tell you, I have HUGE expectations about what the United Methodists here in Iowa are going to do to help in the fight against malaria. We have set a goal to raise at least $2 million dollars here in our state to help provide the vital resources needed as we live out our faith. And I have been wonderfully surprised and blessed by the generosity of my brothers and sisters. God is doing far beyond what I could ask or imagine.

You can be a part of this Kingdom work.

Just $10 is all it takes to put up a bed net in a home and save a child’s life. Just $10 can provide a full course of medical treatment for a pregnant woman who is ill. Just $10 can make a difference…

But think about what $100 could do. Or $1000. A gift to Imagine No Malaria means that you are putting resources into the hands of doctors and nurses, community health volunteers, and educators who are going to bring healing and hope to a whole continent.

I don’t have children myself. I have never been pregnant like Muriel, or Mary, or Elizabeth… but I do know about the joy of children.

I am the proud aunt of four nephews and a neice and they bring light to my life every single day. And so when I thought about how just $10 could be the difference between life and death for a precious child half a world away, I knew I had to help. I knew I could be the answer to a prayer of a mom or a dad or an aunt or a grandpa in Africa.

So I am giving $1/day for each of my nephews and my neice to help save lives in Africa. 100 lives for each of them. A gift of $5000 over three years. I know you hear these appeals from the pet associations and from the hunger organizations… but with Imagine No Malaria, a $1/a/day really does save lives. And EVERY dollar you give goes directly to those who need it.

You can answer that call, too, and commit to helping us save lives… whether it is $10 or $10,000 you can make a difference.

Donate NOW!

We have talked a lot today about our expectations and about how God realizes them… but I want you to talk for just a minute as we close about God’s expectations for us.

God has given us a song to sing and a story to tell. He has given us strong faith to live out and has blessed us with many, many things. Like Mary, we could declare that we are the most fortunate people on earth.

But God also expects us to take those gifts and those blessings and to share them with the world… to participate in the coming Kingdom of god. To witness to the good news when we see it. To feed to poor. To heal the sick. To bring hope to the hopeless.

Will we go and tell what we have seen today? And will we actively join God’s kingdom work with our hands and our hearts and our whole selves?

Let’s pray:

God of justice and joy, hope and healing,

we give thanks for all the ways you work for wholeness and right relationship in our own lives and throughout the world.

When suffering arises, let our hearts find joy in you, and fill us with courage to bear witness to what we have seen and heard.

May our lives always testify to the good news of your love, and may we lift up those who are bowed down so that your joy may spread throughout the earth.

We pray in the name of Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind and proclaimed good news to the poor. Amen.

The praise of crickets

Posted on December 2, 20131 Comment

Today, I discovered this recording of crickets, overlayed with the same recording slowed down. Their song is a hymn… voices in harmony… like the sounds of a human chorus. It got me thinking about Luke 19: 37-40.

Even if we don’t notice, the whole creation is lifting up a song of praise.

Even if we can’t hear or comprehend, the world is singing out.

Next time this verse comes up in the lectionary, I might just play this entire piece as the backdrop for worship.

The Side of the Road

Posted on November 20, 2013Leave a comment

I had an experience last week that deeply shook me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Making Room

Posted on July 14, 2012Leave a comment

Funeral Meditation based on Luke 2:1-7

As Christmas approaches, we are reminded that a very pregnant young woman and her patient fiancé were once left out in the cold. They made their way to the town ofBethlehemhoping and praying that someone would have a place for them to stay… but there was no room.

As Luke tells us:

Joseph went to be enrolled together with Mary, who was promised to him in marriage and who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for Mary to have her baby. She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.

There was no place for them in the guestroom.

Notice… it doesn’t say that they were full. It doesn’t say that there wasn’t room. It says that there was no place for them.

Your mother and grandmother was someone who always had a place in her heart for others. She took great care to make sure that everything was just right for people and that they knew how loved they were.

Wilma was born in 1925 here in Marengo to John and Carrie Ehrman, she graduated from the Marengo High School. She worked in the office of Byron Goldthwaite and also as a Deputy Clergy for the county… but you know best that her true love and her true vocation was to be a homemaker. She greatly enjoyed cooking for her family and you enjoyed eating her fried chicken and other wonderful meals. She made many of her own clothes with her skills as a seamstress… and some for you too, although Jean, you would have preferred to wear the store bought clothes =) She kept an exceptionally clean house and cared about the details. And she did it all for you.

She made a place for each of you in her lives and made sure that you were taken care of and that you were loved. She made a place for you.

Luke reminds us as we approach Christmas that the Lord of Lords crept into this world on a quiet evening and that there was no place for him. There was no place for his unmarried mother. There was no place for the man who would be his earthly father. There was no place.

I hear in that statement that there was no welcome for them.

Who wants to take in a pregnant girl in the middle of the night?

Who wants to deal with these strangers who didn’t have enough sense to plan ahead?

Who wants to give up their spot?

In some Mexican and Latin American communities, the tradition of Las Posadas reminds folks of the absence of hospitality Mary and Joseph recieved. In the days before Christmas, processions go from house to house and request lodging. The host for each evening turns the people away… until the final night, Christmas Eve, when Mary and Joseph are finally allowed to enter and the people gather around the nativity to pray.

So many times in our actions, we too, can tell other people: There is no place for you here.

But I imagine your mother and your grandmother would have loved being the host for the last night of LasPosadas… That she would have opened up her home and said – yes, there is a place for you. I will make room.

The God that your mother and grandmother believed in, crept into this world to make sure that we all had a place. He came as a child to make us children of God. He came and was rejected so that we might never be rejected again. He died so that we might live.

Before he died, Christ reminded his disciples and reminded us:

Don’t be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. My Father’s house has room to spare. If that weren’t the case, would I have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you? When I go to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me so that where I am you will be too.

There is a place for you. That is what Christ tells us. That is what Christ shows us. That is what Christ gives us.

Wilma knew that her job was to make a place for you in this world. May you let her life and her memory live on by carrying in your hearts the desire to serve others… to love others… more than yourself.

Amen. And Amen.

Going Up?

Posted on May 20, 2012Leave a comment

Are you going up?

Are you… climbing the ladder… increasing in stature… measuring success in leaps and bounds?

Are you going up?

I’m not asking if you are climbing the corporate ladder… or increasing your standing in the community… or raking in the dollars and cents.

Are you going up?

Are you climbing Jacob’s ladder? Are you increasing in holiness? Are you more successful today than you were yesterday at obeying God’s will?

Are you going up?

In the United Methodist Church, we have been talking a lot lately about growth and fruitfulness and effectiveness. And we are focused on those things because… well, lately we seem to be in a downward slide. Fewer members. Less money in offerings. A decrease in the number of baptisms and confirmations. Fewer people entering the ministry.

Down… down… down.

In fact, at General Conference, I heard words like “death tsunami” and “urgency” and “crisis.”

Evidently, downward movement and momentum isn’t a good thing.

We are supposed to be going up…

As a local congregation, the powers that be tell us that we should have more people in worship today than we did five years ago. We should have more baptisms and confirmations than funerals. We should be increasing our stewardship of resources and financial giving. Our numbers should be climbing. In fact, our very own Bishop Julius Trimble set a goal for our conference to have 10,790 new disciples in four years. That is 13 new disciples per congregation… that is only 3-4 new disciples every year for four years… We should have more new people in more new places. If we look at our numbers, they should be going up, up, up.

Are we going up?

I find this to be a very interesting question to think about today, because it is Ascension Sunday. Today is the day we celebrate that although Jesus died… he rose from the dead! And not only did he rise up from the grave and walk among us… but about forty days later, Jesus rose up into heaven. He ascended to the father.

And as our scripture from Acts tells us, the disciples who witnessed this amazing miracle were so dumbfounded that they stood staring, mouths wide open in astonisment, faces to the sky. They stood like that, staring at the heavens… looking up… for such a long time that angels had to come and remind them: Hey! you’ve got a job to do.

We can get awfully obsessed about what is happening up there. (pointing to the sky).

We want to follow Jesus up there and go to heaven.

We want to know that the big guy up there thinks about everything we say and do… or… maybe (eek) maybe we don’t. Maybe we want to hide everything we say and do from up there.

In fact, I bet if you really thought about it, you could plot out the points on your life when you were attaining the heights and growing in wisdom and stature and getting closer to up there. We could probably plot out the times when we were going up…

There are some half sheets of paper in the pews there and I want to invite you to take one of them and grab a pen or pencil.

I want us to start by drawing a simple graph. Put an x-axis on the left hand side… this will stand for the highs and the lows of your life. Now draw a y-axis through there… this will stand for the years you have been here on this earth.

Alright… now I want to give you a minute… just a minute… to roughly sketch out and plot some of the most successful and least successful times of your life… the highs and the lows. Think about this first graph in worldly terms – jobs and education and family and success… but also those times that were difficult like deaths and struggles with work or school. Just hit the most important and significant things for you right now. And when you are finished, connect the dots…

Okay… now I want us to make a second chart… right there on the same graph is fine. If you want, switch writing utensils with a neighbor so you can plot out your graph in pen or pencil or something different. This time, plot out your spiritual highs and lows. When were you closest to God (ie: highest on the chart) and when were you farthest from God? When did you grow in grace? When did you backslide? And for some of us, that includes times when we didn’t even know about God – a long time where we were flatlined at zero… I’ll give you a couple of minutes for that…

Now, I want you to look at your graph and answer the question… are you going up?

Could someone else in this world look at that graph and tell if you were going up?

Have the things that you have said and done, the life that you have lived… is it worthy of what is up there?

Have you felt a struggle in YOUR life… always trying to get closer to up there, always trying to reach the point where you have “made it?” Do you worry about how many highs and lows you have in your spiritual relationship with God.

To repeat the question we have been using all morning – are you going up?

I believe that this is a trick question. Or rather, I believe it is the wrong question.

Because you see in the end, we are NOT judged by the upward curve of our slope. We are NOT judged by the number of good deeds we have done. and we are NOT judged by the number of bible verses we have memorized… We are not judged by how long we have been close to God.

The irony is… in order to go “up to heaven” we have to be willing to be low and humble… we are judged by whether or not we have accepted how utterly unacceptable we are… and by God’s grace that dwells within us…

Somewhere this week, I read that holiness is not actually a characteristic that describes us. We are not holy. We can not grow in our own holiness. The only thing that makes us holy is God.

As we sang right before this message… Only Jesus is worthy… only Jesus is good… and only Jesus has the power to save us, redeem us, transform us and welcome us home.

Sometimes we get so focused on trying to do the right things in order to get up there, on living the right kind of life, that we forget it’s not about us at all… it’s about Jesus and what he has done.

And the Ascension story reminds us that Jesus goes up…. not us.

In their preaching helps this week, the General Board of Discipleship reminded us that heaven is not really “up.” As we know from our modern scientific inquiry – and I quote from the GBOD: “If Jesus went “up there,” he would have frozen to death, suffocated, been dangerously irradiated, or ripped to shreds by black holes (if he got that far!).”

The universe beyond the clouds is not a friendly place.

But what we forget with the language of going up… of ascension… is that this is really the “language of enthronement.” In the ascension of Jesus, he rises not simply from the grave, but up to his full authority. He no longer walks and talks among us but he is now “seated at the right hand of the Father.” He is no longer simply the prophetic carpenter from Galilee, but he has risen to his fullest stature as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And that kind of a Jesus… that kind of a holy, awesome, powerful being… that majestic and awesome Lord up there… well, he can share holiness. He can bestow grace. He can transform lives. He can save.

The only reason we can go up…. is because he is already there.

And because Jesus has been raised from the dead… because Jesus has ascended to the Father… because he has demonstrated not just his power, but also his deep and abiding love for us…

I sometime worry that we focus so much on whether or not we are going up… whether we are climbing the ladder… whether we are increasing in stature… that we stand staring at the heavens with our mouths gaping open.

well, we don’t have to worry about whether or not we are going up anymore. We don’t have to graph out our successes and failures on a chart. We don’t have to plot the trajectory of holiness.

As the angels come and tell us – Hey – what are you still looking up for… you have a job to do!

And the Lord of Lords and King of Kings does have a job for us.

It isn’t something we have to do to earn his love or to become more holy… but it is something we do out of deep gratitude for what we have already been given.

The job is simple… Jesus tells us: Go, be my witnesses. Tell the world about what I have done. Love them because I love them.

Rev. Mindi from rev-0-lution.org tells about a sign she saw once in England. It read: “We believe in life before death.”

We can get so caught up in life after death, in what happens up there and whether or not we are going up there, that we forget about this life.

Jesus invites us to live before we die. He invites us to go and share and tell and bless and love. He invites us to not only live, but to share new life with the broken and hurting of this world. As Rev. Mindi wrote: “This is why we work for justice and peace in this world. This is why we stand against hate and stand for love.”

We do not work for the Kingdom of God in order to get up there, but because that Kingdom has already come down here and already dwells in our hearts. Because the King of Kings already lives in our hearts.

Because he has gone up, we can get down and dirty and engage people in the real mess of their lives.

Because he has gone up, we can stop worrying about whether or not we are saved and we can simply tell people about Jesus and invite them to get to know him and us better.

Because he has gone up, we can stop counting dollars and cents and we can start measuring how deep our conversations are, how real our expressions of love are, and how many people we have shared the story with.

Because he has gone up, because he is Lord of Lords, because “up there” there is really not “UP” at all… but is a completely new way of living and thinking and being… well, because of Jesus – we can truly live before we die.

Advent Blog Tour: Day 14

Posted on December 14, 20107 Comments

“Las Posadas” by Maria Laughlin

As Christmas approaches, we are reminded that a very pregnant young woman and her patient fiancé were once left out in the cold. They made their way to the town of Bethlehem hoping and praying that someone would have a place for them to stay… but there was no room.

As Luke tells us:

Joseph went to be enrolled together with Mary, who was promised to him in marriage and who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for Mary to have her baby. She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.

There was no place for them in the guestroom.

That translation from the Common English Bible got me thinking about what it means to be included.

Notice… it doesn’t say that they were full. It doesn’t say that there wasn’t room. It says that there was no place for them.

The first weekend of December, I made my way to Cherokee, Iowa and our yearly Christmas gathering. My mom is one of seven children and almost the whole family was there. Along with significant others and kids and grandkids. Four generations gathered under one roof.

On Sunday afternoon, thirty-seven of us all crowded into the living room around the Christmas tree to exchange gifts. And with each warm little body pressed into that space there really isn’t very much room.

But no matter how little room there is, no matter how many people there are, there is always a place for each one. There is a place on someone’s lap, or squeezed together on a couch, or at the foot of someone else. There is always a place for you. And it just wouldn’t be the same without you.

It warms my heart to see all of those people in that room. Even those who are not able to be there have a place… they are in our hearts. They are present in our spirits. There is always a place.

Luke reminds us that the Lord of Lords crept into this world on a quiet evening and that there was no place for him. There was no place for his unmarried mother. There was no place for the man who would be his earthly father. There was no place.

I hear in that statement that there was no welcome for them.

Who wants to take in a pregnant girl in the middle of the night?

Who wants to deal with these strangers who didn’t have enough sense to plan ahead?

Who wants to give up their spot?

I wonder, however, how many times we enact Las Posadas in our communities and our churches without realizing it?

How many times have we turned our backs to someone in need who came to our doorstep?

How many times have we been angry at folks who came late to an event?

How many times have we looked in judgment at an unwed mother?

How many times have we moved away from the homeless man who sat next to us in the pew?

How many times have we told people through our words or our actions: There is no place for you here.

Our God crept into this world to make sure that we all had a place. He came as a child to make us children of God. He came and was rejected so that we might never be rejected again. He died so that we might live.

Before he left, Christ reminded his disciples and reminded us:

Don’t be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. My Father’s house has room to spare. If that weren’t the case, would I have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you? When I go to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me so that where I am you will be too.

There is a place for you. That is what Christ tells us. That is what Christ shows us. That is what Christ gives us.

May our churches and our homes and our hearts be transformed by Christ so that might always be true.

Continue this journey with us towards Christmas at www.AdventBlogTour.Com –

The Prodigal Steward

Posted on September 19, 20101 Comment

This morning’s parable from the gospel of Luke is one of the toughest pieces of scripture in the whole Bible. Preachers all over the country groan when this passage comes up in our three year cycle of readings. It is hard to figure out just what on earth Jesus is talking about.

We have the story about a middle man, a manager, who gets called in by his boss because he hasn’t been doing his job very well. In the words of the scripture, the manager had been “squandering his master’s property”. Keep that word squandering in the back of your mind… He calls for an audit – the master wants to see the books for himself and then the squandering and dishonest manager will be out on the street without a job.

Now, in Jesus’ time there were basically two types of people – those who had money and property and those who did not. While we might joke, that the same is true for today – there was no concept of a middle class. Either you were a top dog, or you owned nothing.

We don’t know what kind of business this master ran – only that he had enough money and property that he didn’t do any of the hands-on management of his own affairs. No, all of that was left to the steward, the manager. The manager was responsible for contacting all of the people who farmed the land and getting the master’s share of their crops. He was responsible for any investments or lines of credit the master held for others.

But you see, this was a system without financial regulations. And so, the manager paid himself by charging the debtors a little bit extra. The master didn’t mind because he still got his fair share. The debtors were the ones who felt the burden of the extra taxes – the extra interest that was required… and with such high and exorbitant rates, many were stuck with obligations that they just could never dream of fulfilling.

In this system, the only way that a manager kept from being a “have not” was to store up for himself riches on earth. To take a bigger and bigger chunk of the pie. Our manager from this morning was such a man… and according to the parable, maybe this time he had taken just a little bit too much.

Photo by Max Romersa

A complaint has been leveled against the manager that he was squandering his master’s possessions. He was wasting them. He had gotten all big in the head in his position as manager and had gone out and was flashing around his money and bought a new big screen television and a fancy new car and was rubbing what he had taken into everyone’s faces.

The manager had been squandering in the same way that the prodigal son had been squandering. Wasteful. Useless. Spending. And the master caught wind of what had happened and brought in the manager. Let me see your records, the master says. Let me see what you have to show for yourself.

While the prodigal son had his moment of epiphany when he wakes up sleeping among the pigs in some far off land, our manager has his moment of epiphany as he heads back to his office to pick up the accounting ledger.

My life is ruined, he thinks. Without this job I have nothing. I’m too weak to do physical labor, I’m too proud to beg. Without the ability to find work, in that economy – the manager was as good as dead. All of that laying up of riches on earth couldn’t help him now… he had squandered it all. And in the process of doing so, he had made enemies too numerous to count.

So like the prodigal son, he gets an idea… I’m going to throw myself at the mercy of those I wronged.

The prodigal returned home, not as a son, but as a servant… and the manager returns to the debtors – not as someone who is there to collect what is owed, but as someone who is going to provide relief.

He finds the debtors one by one… What is it that you owe? 100 jugs of oil? Make it half. Pay back half and the debt is gone. What do you owe? 100 bushels of wheat? Make it 80 and your bill is paid.

He bows down, falls at their feet, and waits to see what will happen.

What we often miss here is the fact that the chunk of change the manager is forgiving is NOT the piece owed to the rich man. The portion of the debt he is forgiving is the interest he himself was charging.

He had a choice. He could have collected all that he could and kept a little nest egg back for himself – something to retire on – or he could side with the poor tenant farmers, and pray that they might in turn show mercy in return.

The story of what the manager did makes its way back to the rich man… and he praises his employee for his shrewd behavior.

But now, here comes the tough part.

Jesus finishes up the story and turns to the disciples and says in verses 8 and 9: The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light… So you, too, Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they make welcome you into the eternal homes.

What? Jesus – did you just tell us to be like the people of the world and not like children of the light? Did you just tell us to go out and use dishonest wealth to make friends?

In fact, Jesus did.

And here is why I think he does this.

First, Jesus doesn’t try to pretend that we are angels. He knows that we are sinners. He knows we are of this world. He knows that we are already dishonest and squandering managers. As much as we might try to pretend we are the debtors, we are a part of the wealthiest country in the entire world. No matter how much debt we have or how little we make, we are richer than 80% of the world’s population. Don’t get me wrong – poverty is real in the United States, and the safety net for the middle class is failing all over the place in this tough economy – but we are still richer than we can possibly imagine.

We buy products made in sweatshops. We waste water and food and resources. We store up for ourselves without thinking about who might get hurt in the process. We might have a relationship with Jesus – but we have little to no relationship with the people that Jesus loves.

William Herzog and Alyce McKenzie write that “it is not shrewd for someone with wealth and power to be indifferent to those who are poor or on society’s margins… in reality, such a state of living precipitates a crisis in one’s condition in light of the kingdom to come. It leads to figurative and literal poverty and death.”

When we act like that dishonest manager and squander away treasurers for ourselves on earth… when we use and abuse our fair share of the gifts God has given us… we are setting ourselves up for failure. Remember, Jesus says the first shall be last.

So maybe, this morning, we are the ones who find ourselves called in before the master. We are the ones whose books are being called into question. Jesus confronts us with a hard truth – what are you doing with what I have entrusted to you? Are you squandering it? Are you wasting it? Are you serving me or are you serving yourself?

And faced with that question, we have a choice. Are we going to keep watching our own back, or are we going to be shrewd? Are we going to use what we have been in creative and active ways? Are we going to finally realize that our salvation depends not on the money we have in the bank but the relationships we make?

John Wesley started his ministry with the poor. He reached out to coal miners and farmers and alcoholics and prisoners and debtors. And when he offered them the good news of Jesus Christ, their lives were transformed. But as these folks started helping one another out and taking care of each other – they discovered they had an interesting problem. They started to have money.

And so Wesley tried to figure out how best to advise them and he came up with this short, pithy phrase: Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.

You see, money isn’t the problem. It is what we do with it.

We, Americans are really good at the first part of that phrase. We earn all we can – we work long and hard and bring home the paychecks when we can. But we have no idea what the other two things mean. We earn all we can and spend all we can.

But those of us who are saver’s aren’t any better. If we earn all we can and save all we can, we are still squanderers. We are watching our own backs. We are wasting the gifts that God has given us by burying them in the ground and sitting on them.

No, to be shrewd, to be faithful, we are called to earn all we can, save all we can, and give all we can. Sacrifice for your brother and sister. Work for the justice of the poor. Help out your neighbor. Never refuse to give to a beggar. Speak out on behalf of the poor. Forgive the debts of others.

In the kingdom of God – our place at the table is not guaranteed by our pocketbooks. Our place is freely given by Jesus Christ to those who choose to follow him there. To those who choose to lay aside the values of this world and to love him instead. To those who look around and see that salvation is not about me – but about the kingdom of heaven, the community of believers, the family of God that is all around us right now.

We are called to be shrewd, decisive, faithful servants. We are called to stop squandering, let go of our obsession with having more – and finally realize that to have more, means to give more. To love more. To serve more.

Go out there and take your dishonest wealth and love people with it. Be the best shrewd manager you can be. Let go of your hold on your wealth. And don’t be surprised when you are blessed beyond measure in return.

Amen and Amen.