Paul – Page 7 – Salvaged Faith

Face-to-Face

Posted on December 9, 2015Leave a comment

There is a struggle and a tension I have with facebook.

If I am going to be honest, it is one of my primary sources of news.

It’s a place I get information and get informed and pass along the world to others.

And so sometimes, I use it as a vehicle for naming realities and lifting up my concerns about what is happening in the world.

But I’m no longer sure if I can/should use it in that way, and here is why…

We tend to only listen for what we want to hear and our facebook newsfeeds can be an echo chamber of similar beliefs.

We tend to throw out quick comments to provoke or inspire or joke, but we never actually have a conversation.

We tend to entrench ourselves only further into our own realities.

We tend to not actually do anything after we click “post”.

This morning, I listened to a sermon by Magrey deVega (which I found on Facebook) about whether or not there is room to restore ourselves from fear. He names the conflict, persecution, and very understandable fear of the Thessalonian community and then lifts up that Paul’s deep desire and longing for these people who were overcome by fear was to “see you face to face.” He couldn’t bear being apart from them in the midst of their struggle. He wanted to look them in the eyes and reassure them, comfort them, encourage them to hold fast, to keep going, to trust in God’s promises.

We can post things on facebook all day long about the things that trouble us, but we are just adding fuel to the fires of division, or preaching to the choir, or feeling like we are doing something when in fact we are not.

When we do so, we are in essence, standing on the street corner with a megaphone, trying to convince someone long enough to stay and listen.

I don’t think I can change a person’s mind through a facebook post.

I’m pretty sure I can’t change public policy through a facebook post.

I *might* be able to educate via a facebook post, but the reality is that there is counter-information out there for just about every single topic we might imagine and so if you don’t start from the same position as I do, it’s not helpful.

And half the time, the stuff we share uses headlines that are intended to incite or skew and another half of the time, no one actually reads the article and starts posting their own opinion anyways without taking the time for a reasoned conversation.

If we ever want to have a truly transformative conversation where we let the Holy Spirit move and lead us in forward together in spite of our differences, it is going to have to be a face to face conversation among equals.

If we want to overcome our fears, we are going to have to sit down face to face with the person we disagree with.

If we want to express a viewpoint and have a reasonable dialogue, it is going to go so much better face to face.

I thought for about half a second about just not going on facebook, but the truth is, I have a deep community of accountability, support and encouragement there. It is the best place to crowd source information about ministry that I have found. It is a place for networking and encouragement. It is a place where I go to let go of steam and complain when the copy machine isn’t working. I find pastoral care opportunities I would never hear of otherwise all over my newsfeed. I find solidarity and hope and wisdom and blessing all over the place on facebook.

Here’s what I’m going to try.

I can’t stop caring about the issues I care about.

So, instead of posting or sharing some random article or thought, I’m going to share an invitation to have a face-to-face conversation about the topic with any who might be interested.

Or, I’m going to post about what I’m actually committed to doing in regards to that issue… along with an invitation to physically join me or personally talk with me about the action.

But, I’m not going to just share something to stir the pot or even to educate/advocate, because it simply isn’t effective and it stresses me out.

It’s not the new year, yet, but that is my resolution.

Trust, not Unquestioning Belief

Posted on March 1, 2015Leave a comment

In 2012, I took my youth group on a mission trip to Minneapolis. We worked in a number of different sites and one of them was the Emergency Foodshelf Network. This organization helps distribute food items to 70 area food shelves by channeling donations for organizations and large corporations.

Most of these are bulk items. Like 50# bags of rice that needed to be bundled into smaller portions. Or bushels upon bushels of fresh produce that we sorted so each box had a little bit of everything.

One day, our job was to affix generic labels onto 18,000 cans of corn that were donated without labels. Yes. 18,000.

As we walked in that morning, there they sat, all shiny and shrink-wrapped on pallets, just waiting for our little paper labels that read “Corn.” Our job was to cut the labels to size, add two pieces of tape, and bundle them onto trays of 30 for distribution.

But there was this nagging question in the back of our minds all day long as we cut and taped and stacked and moved these aluminum cans.

How did we know it was really corn?

The only way to tell was to open the can. But that of course ruined the product.

You could shake the cans… and we did… and it sounded like corn… but it could have sounded like peas or beets for all we knew.

We had to trust that it was really corn in those cans. We had to go about our work, tape those labels on and trust.

And to be honest, because we knew that people would be receiving these cans, we felt responsible for their contents. Others would trust then when they got a can that said corn, a can that we had labeled, they would actually be opening a can of corn.

Trust.

Our two scripture readings for today seem to give us a portrait in contrasts… between Abraham, the one who trusted and Peter, the one who didn’t.

Abraham, was well past retirement age, yet chose to follow and trust the God would use him to birth a nation. He is lifted up as the example. The one who did it right. The one who was trustworthy and true.

And Peter. Oh Peter. In this season of Lent we see how so many times he gets it wrong. He questions Jesus. He denies him. He is even called Satan in our reading for today. Perhaps what we might imagine is the opposite of one who trusts.

Last week, we talked about three different types of atonement theories. Three different ways God is working in the world to bring us back into relationship, to restore us to shalom.

We had the forensic theory – the idea of a trial or a courtroom.

We had the moral example theory – where Jesus shows us how to live.

And we had the Christus Victor theory – where Christ is victorious and rescues us from sin and death.

Today, our scriptures lead us to those forensic theories. They take us to the courtroom.

It is the courtroom Paul has in mind as he writes to the Romans in this section of this letter.

It is courtroom language that Paul is using as he describes Abraham’s relationship with God.

Imagine that Abraham is sitting in the witness stand of a great courtroom. And the question put to him is this:

Why do you deserve the promises of God?

It’s a different version of the question we often think of at the end of our days: why should you get into heaven?

Why do you deserve shalom?

And throughout chapter 4, Paul lays out an argument. Like a lawyer, Paul claims it was not Abraham’s works that made him worthy of the promises. It wasn’t that he followed the laws of God, the Torah. It wasn’t that he did all the right religious things like be circumcised.

No, what puts Abraham in the right… what proves that he deserves the promises of God is that he “trusts him who justifies the ungodly (4.4).” He trusted the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (4:17).“ He believed, even though the odds were stacked against them.

And he was right. He trusted that God would give him and Sarah a child and his claim was upheld. So using the courtroom language of the time, he was in the right. He was righteous. He deserves the promise because he trusted in the promise.

That seems too simple, doesn’t it?

Abraham’s faith was nothing more than a trust in the specific promises God made.

So what about Peter? What if we put him in the same courtroom? Where does he stack up?

If we focused strictly on this passage from Mark, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t trust. He doesn’t understand.

Or maybe a better way of putting it is that he was operating on unquestioning belief. Faith without any understanding. Peter was making assumptions about God. Assumptions like: the journey was going to be easy. An assumption that Jesus was going to march into Jerusalem and magically everything would be better.

And when faced with new evidence, new teaching, Peter chose to shut his mind. He clung to that unquestioning belief. He, in fact, challenged Jesus! The word used here actually is the same word used for silencing demons – Peter thought Jesus was out of his mind!

Jesus has to correct Peter. He has to tell him once again what God really promises.

That snapshot of Peter’s faith, however, doesn’t give us the full story.

In fact, if Peter and Abraham were really on trial, if their whole lives were spread before a court that was trying to determine if they deserved the promises of shalom, their stories wouldn’t be all that different.

If we go back to Genesis and really read Abraham’s story, his is one of fits and starts, too.

He and Sarah laugh out loud at God’s plan for their lives.

They try to do it their own way. They always have a plan B in the works. (maybe talk about how Abraham tells the king Sarah is his sister not his wife… if his wife, Abraham will be killed… as his sister, the king will bargain with him…)

Yes, they go. They stick with it. They make it to the end of the long and complicated journey of faith. But it isn’t an easy road. When we pick their lives a part with a fine toothed comb, we find there are all sorts of things that are far from trustworthy and true. There are plenty of moments when they set their eyes on human and not divine things.

Peter, likewise, makes lots of mistakes. He radically misunderstands what it means for Jesus to be the messiah. Just like Abraham and Sarah, he has his moments of weakness where he looks out for his own interests above God’s plans. He lies to protect himself.

But at the end of the day, Peter came to believe and trust in the specific promises God made. Peter came to believe in the giver of life. He came to trust that if God could raise Jesus from the dead, then God could raise him too. And Peter shared that faith with others. He led others to trust in those promises, too.

What makes us worthy of shalom? What makes us children of Abraham?

We come to deserve the promise when we trust in the promise.

And that promise is that life can and will come from death. It is a promise that sin has nothing to do with our salvation, because Jesus has already wiped it away.

In the courtroom at the end of our lives, our mistakes are no longer on the table. They no longer count as evidence against us.

What matters is if we trust with our whole being that the God who created this world out of nothing and brings life from what was dead can justify the sinner, too.

If we trust in that promise, its ours!

And it isn’t unquestioning belief. It isn’t faith without evidence or justification. We trust in that promise because we have carry the story with us of how God works. And maybe we have even witnessed it with our own eyes.

So here’s a question…. What if I was pulled in front of a courtroom one day to testify about why I labeled those cans “corn”?

Our supervisor promised that those cans held corn and I believed her. I trusted her. Why?

To be honest… if we had showed up one day at a random building with an unknown organization and we were asked to label cans of corn, I’m not sure I would have trusted. If we had done so, simply on unquestioning belief, without any relationship or evidence or understanding of who they were or what they were about, that trust would have been pretty unjustified.

But that isn’t what happened.

We learned about the organization and its history. We spent some time working with them. We saw their attention to detail and how much they cared for their clients. So on that final day, when we labeled those cans of corn… we believed in what they told us. We trusted them.

Here in this church, we aren’t asking you for unquestioning belief, either.

We hope to build a relationship with you.

We want to learn together and wrestle with the promises of God that have been handed down for generations.

And just like Abraham and Peter and Paul passed down what they knew to be true… what they witnessed God doing in their lives… we are going to share our stories too.

Stories of how God has transformed us.

Stories of how God has brought life out of death.

Stories of how we have experienced grace and forgiveness and love.

And no matter how many fits and starts and mistakes any of us make along the way, my prayer is that someday, each of us will trust in the promises of shalom. That we will trust in God and in this community of Christ in such a way that whenever difficulty and struggle come our way, we can hold fast and support each other, knowing, trusting, believing that in Christ, all will be well.

Love before Knowledge

Posted on February 8, 2015Leave a comment

There are two things I have come to hope for on Communion Sundays:

Welch’s grape juice in the cup, and Hawaiian Sweet Bread on the table.

And that’s for a couple of reasons:

First, they both taste better than most other options available.

Second, the Hawaiian Sweet Bread is the perfect combination of soft and easy to tear and yet not crumble into pieces all over the place – which is a good thing when you are the one breaking bread every time.

And third, the Welch’s are Methodist.

In fact, the birth of Welch’s grape juice came out of our desire to stop using fermented wine during the temperance movement. Thomas Welch was a dentist and a communion steward at his local Methodist Church. He heard about how Louis Pasteur had begun to pasteurize milk, so he decided to try and apply the process to grape juice in 1869.

His son, Charles, marketed the pasteurized grape juice to these temperance-minded churches. In fact, he quit his job as a dentist to do so and created the Welch’s Grape Juice brand in 1893. (from Welchs.com/about-us/our-story/our-history and http://www.gbod.org/resources/changing-wine-into-grape-juice-thomas-and-charles-welch-and-the-transition-)

While the roots of our “unfermented juice of the grape” go back to the late 19^th century, we have continued to emphasize using grape juice, even long after prohibition was repealed.

Our 1964 Book of Worship included this phrase which we have continued to use until today: that while the “historic and ecumenical practice has been the use of wine, the use of the unfermented grape juice by The United Methodist Church and its predecessors is an expression of pastoral concern for recovering alcoholics, enables the participation of children and youth, and supports the church’s witness of abstinence.” (BOW p 28)

I share the brief history lesson, because I think it relates to our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this morning.

As this community struggled with what it meant to be unified, they realized that a lot of different types of folks were part of their church.

Some of them were life-long Jews who had followed the way of Jesus. They had only ever worshipped one God. Yet some of the new believers in the faith were pagans. They had spent their entire lives worshipping at the temples of various Roman deities like Apollo and Poseidon.

So how were these people all supposed to share one roof? They had different histories of practice and different understandings of what it meant to worship.

One particular place where their practices conflicted was around the practice of eating meat. In the ancient world, almost all of the meat consumed was done so at a temple. That lamb or beef or whatever was the result of an offering given to the local god.

And here is where the conflict came.

Those who had been followers of Christ of a while, many from the Jewish background, KNEW that there was only one God. Intellectually, there was no worship of these various gods because they simply didn’t exist. So who cared if they partook of a little steak at the local temple?

Well, for those who had recently converted away from that temple worship, it was a big deal. The new converts were working hard to keep on the way, to follow Jesus, and all that alluring smell of roasted meat was making it awfully difficult. And when they peeked in the doors of Apollo’s temple and saw the elders of their new church eating – well, they got pretty confused. Was Apollo real or not? And if Apollo wasn’t real, why were those Christians worshipping him?

So Paul lifted up a practical solution for the faithful long-time Christians: just stop eating meat. It is the loving thing to do. And even though you know it isn’t idol worship, you have the ability to choose to act a different way in order to help your brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the same way, we lift up grape juice when we break bread together, so that all might be welcomed at this table. It doesn’t mean wine is bad. It doesn’t mean that some of us don’t drink. But choosing to consume grape juice together means that everyone has a place here.

There is a line in Paul’s letter that I think is key for us to remember this morning: You sin against Christ if you sin against your brothers and sisters and hurt their weak consciences this way.

Now, here Paul doesn’t mean they are weak as in bad… he simply means they are new to the faith. They still have a lot to learn. They are growing into what it means to be a Christian. And so they need to have as few barriers to their faith as possible.

Do you remember, with the children, when we talked about evil spirits? When we talked about those things in our lives that keep other people from knowing Jesus?

Knowledge is sometimes like that. We can flaunt it and it can puff us up and keep us from really and truly showing love to another person.

Love is what is important. Not rules or knowledge or what we eat or drink. Love binds us together. If we remember that we sin against Christ if we sin against our brothers and sisters and hurt them, then love leads us to ask the difficult question of how our actions keep others from Jesus. Is there something about what we are doing that is harming the body of Christ?

I am tempted to keep this a surface level conversation about grape juice on the communion table, but the truth is, there are all sorts of really tough and difficult things that threaten to break apart our churches. There are all sorts of things we do and say as Christians that hurt our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters and neighbors.

And perhaps the one that is on many of our minds in recent weeks has been same-sex marriage. Perhaps you have read in the newspaper, or seen on television, how a retired pastor in our conference, Rev. Larry Sonner, officiated the wedding of a same-sex couple and then turned himself in to the Bishop. In our Book of Discipline, our tradition and teaching does not support same-sex marriage, even though our state laws do, and so a process was begun seeking a just resolution.

What is amazing is that we have a process of just resolution at all. According to our Discipline, “a just resolution is on that focuses on repairing any harm to people and communities, achieving real accountability by making things right in so far as possible and bringing healing to all the parties.” (¶363.1).

It is a powerful witness to the love and grace and mercy of God in a world that is so focused on punishment and retribution. In his article on the Des Moines Register, columnist Daniel Finney wrote:

“It’s especially admirable considering how poor our public dialogues are relating to just about any issue today. Here you’ve got a veteran pastor questioning the laws of a church he has dedicated his life to serving and not a voice was raised, not a fist was shaken. Instead, there was thoughtful discussion, prayer and resolution.

Regardless of how one feels about the specific issue, there’s a powerful lesson for peaceful negotiation in this story.”

This is how we act in a church when love and not knowledge is our guide. And this is the witness we have to offer to the world… a witness of finding a way forward in spite of our differences. A witness of acknowledging the harm we do by our actions and inactions. A witness of seeking the good for our brothers and sisters.

So today, I want to share with you portions of a pastoral letter that our Bishop, Bishop Julius Trimble sent to all churches last week:

Grace and peace to you as we journey in Christian discipleship in 2015.

One of the early prayers and initial responses to the formal complaint was that we would be “perfected in Christ love” and engage, rather than ignore, the difficulties the current conflict between what is prohibited in our Book of Discipline and what is legal and celebrated in Iowa.

The reactions to same-gender marriages and relationships and the serious subject of covenant accountability to church polity remind me of a Nigerian proverb: “Children of the same mother do not always agree!”

Questions and conflict regarding our future as a Church require much prayer, graceful conversations and decisions that may spell a different future for the Church…

When I was consecrated Bishop, I promised to work to uphold the unity of the Church. I believe that unity has, as its foundation, our love of God and neighbor. I also believe we can have unity of heart and not necessarily all be of one mind. While this Just Resolution is a response to a specific complaint, it recognizes the division of our church on the issue of human sexuality. This Just Resolution is an attempt to honor our disciplinary process, maintain accountability, and seek a deeper, more prayerful, listening to each other and, most of all, to God.

As your Bishop I invite you to join with me in a time of intentional listening to God and each other, remembering that as the Body of Christ, the Spirit can speak through each of us.

Be Encouraged, Bishop Julius Calvin Trimble

We don’t have time in worship to spend time listening or really go over the content of the just resolution, but I want to extend to you that invitation for a time of intentional listening to God and to one another. And I want to let you know that I am always available for conversation about this and any other topic that affects our life as a congregation and your lives as individuals.

We won’t all agree. We come at the conversation from various perspectives. We read the scripture through the lenses of our own experience. But above all, we are a people of love, service, and prayer. And together we can put love at the forefront of our conversations and we, too, can seek a prayerful way forward.

And that way forward starts at the table. The table of love and grace and mercy. A table, set with grape juice. Amen and Amen.

What God Has Sown

Posted on November 16, 2014Leave a comment

In this past month, I have found new appreciation for the Apostle Paul.

You see, on top of being an apostle and a scholar, a writer and mentor; in addition to the work he did as a tanner to pay his own way through ministry; he was also a fundraiser.

I think that tiny detail skipped my attention for so many years, because I didn’t know what it meant to be a fundraiser. I wasn’t aware of the strategies and the prayer and the faith that goes into soliciting money from perfect strangers.

But I do now!

I have spent my entire life hearing that phrase, “God loves a cheerful giver” out of context… and you probably have, too.

While Paul has many other topics to cover in this letter to the people of Corinth, chapters 8 and 9 represent a sort of “stewardship letter” much like many of you received in the mail last week.

Corinth was a rich and powerful city in Greece. The ports had made them wealthy beyond measure. So it is natural that they had resources to spend and to invest and to, yes, even donate to the church.

Paul was encouraged by the apostles in Jerusalem to remember the poor and needy in the city (Galatians 2), and he wanted to honor those who had sent him out in ministry by sending back gifts that could support their work. Much like our apportionments today, the funds he was raising would be used for ministry in the other places the apostles had influence. And Paul knew Corinth would be the place where gifts could be abundant.

In his letter to them, Paul first of all talks about these poor people in Macedonia who have absolutely nothing but the love and grace of God, but somehow managed to pull together an incredible offering to send with Paul. He writes that though they were impoverished and struggling, they heard his plea for money to help the needy in Jerusalem.

From chapter 8: 3-4: “they gave what they could afford and even more than they could afford, and they did it voluntarily. They urgently begged us for the privilege of sharing in this service for the saints.”

And Paul says, all the while, I was telling them about YOUR generosity, you people of Corinth. I was telling them about how much YOU had promised to do. They wanted to be a part of that… part of this incredible opportunity we have to care for the needs of others. They gave out of their poverty, and now it’s your turn.

Paul asks the Corinthians to carefully consider their obligations and to take note of where their resources are needed and then to give cheerfully and jubilantly out of their abundance to the Lord. He wants them to give only what they know they can. Paul didn’t want them to make a commitment they couldn’t fulfill. He wanted them to give freely, and not out of obligation. He wanted them to think long and hard about what they could give and then to do so generously.

I was in Paul’s shoes many times over my work with Imagine No Malaria. And I know what a fine line it was to walk between challenging people to give more than they thought they should and yet not more than they actually could.

On one occasion, a well-intentioned person filled out one of our pledge cards and sent it in with an extraordinary commitment to give over three years $5000. I added the donation to our totals and celebrated reaching a milestone! But then they called me a few weeks later when reality set in and told me, “I want to support this project so very much, I see how much good it is doing and I am so excited about being a part of it, but I simply can’t afford to do so at the level I told you I could.”

And you know what. That’s okay. I told that person we were so thankful for what they could share. We were overjoyed that they felt called to give and worked to make the adjustments they needed.

In chapter 8 of his letter, Paul writes that he wants the Corinthians to give what they can afford. If they can make some adjustments to their life and want to make a sacrifice here and there – great. If they have great resources at their disposal, then by all means, they shouldn’t look upon this call and drop in a few dollars. They need to give what they can actually afford to give. The goal is not to make them suffer or create financial difficulties. The goal is to prayerfully ask what God has blessed them with that they can bless others with.

Not one of us should feel guilty about what we can afford to give. We shouldn’t feel pressured to end our support of other good things in order to give here. Every one of us should hear the call, look at the needs, and then joyfully respond from our resources… whatever they might be.

In the early eighteenth century, a scholar and pastor Matthew Henry wrote: “Money bestowed in charity, may to the carnal mind seem thrown away, but when given from proper principles, it is seed sown, from which a valuable increase may be expected.”

Paul asks the Corinthians to think of their gift as an investment. To sow whatever seeds they can so that the Kingdom of God might bear fruit in the world… and so they might personally experience the joy and grace and abundance that come to us when we freely give.

Our commitment to give financially to this church might not make a lot of sense to the larger world. But we do so because we have seen the good it can do.

In the United Methodist Church, we understand that our gifts not only provide this wonderful space for ministry in this neighborhood, but also help to support Women at the Well and help to build churches other parts of the world. Our gifts help our children to learn more about Jesus, but they also help educate communities about diseases like Ebola and Malaria so that every child has the chance to grow up and live an abundant life. Our gifts raise up leaders among our youth here in Des Moines, but they also are providing scholarships for new pastors in Eastern Europe and the Philippines.

Every dollar given to the church is an investment in the gospel. It is a seed planted. And in time, God will reveal how Faith Hall and our children and the women in Mitchellville and communities like the Bo District in Sierra Leone… how all of these investments and seeds will bear fruit for the Kingdom of God.

That is why we are here, after all.

We are here, in this place, for the Kingdom of God.

We are here to worship and to praise God… the source every breath and snowflake and every good thing.

In our passage from Deuteronomy this morning, Moses encourages the people to remember the long road they have been on… the road that was sustained every step of the way by the grace of God.

God was the one who rescued them from Egypt.

It was the Lord who led them through the desert.

It was God who fed them and gave them drink out of rocks and manna.

And he wants them to remember when they get to the promised land… when their lives settle down and they find good work and have food on the table every night… he wants them to never forget who it was that God them there.

Everything we are and everything we have is a gift. It is grace. It is a blessing.

We are here today because God spoke and light and life came into being.

We are here today because God wanted a relationship with us.

We are here today because God moved in the lives of people like Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the Israelites, James and John and Paul and the Corinthians.

We are here because of the faithful people who were led by God to turn a farmhouse into a church in 1925. We are here because the Holy Spirit moved and breathed life into this congregation.

Today, we are the beneficiaries of God’s grace and love and power that moved through countless generations before us. All the resources and abilities we have are gifts from our Lord and Savior.

And like the Israelites, we should never forget that simple fact.

It is not our own strength that has produced our abundance. No, it is the strength of God that has brought us here.

And God has sown his power and blessing in our lives SO THAT we might bear fruit for the Kingdom.

You see… God made an investment, too. God planted gifts and resources into our lives. God has nurtured this church and helped us to grow so that we might in turn be a blessing. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace.”

Grace for living.

Grace for giving.

Grace for working.

Grace for singing God’s praise.

God has made sure that you have what you need in order to serve him.

The Macedonians gave out of their poverty.

The Corinthians gave out of their wealth.

But each gave because they believed they were sowing seeds for the Kingdom of God. And each gave out of joy and thanksgiving for the abundance of what God has planted in their lives.

So today, as we make our commitments to the Lord, may we always remember where our abundance comes from.

May we commit without hesitation.

May we commit without guilt.

May we commit what we have and trust that as God has blessed us, so God will bless others. Amen.

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.

The Spirit of Debate

Posted on August 22, 2012Leave a comment

I love to have a good argument!

One of my favorite memories from college was debating with my good friend, Brian Johnson. We argued about anything and everything… politics, religion, who could marry, why you shouldn’t marry, our favorite philosophers, the best movie, you get the picture. There was something about a debate with Mr. Johnson that made your heart beat faster and sharpened your intellect. You were thinking deeply. You were listening for flaws and places to make counterpoints. You were learning what rhetorical strategies worked and which didn’t.

Most of mine, didn’t work.

I lost a lot of debates with my good friend – probably because he was on course to become a professor of philosophy – but through it all, we remained good friends. Even when we got flustered after a good fight, we could turn around and the next moment go eat dinner together.

Debating and politicking can be exciting… to a point. But sometimes a vigorous debate turns into a personal attack. Sometimes fighting just for the sake of fighting reveals hidden anxieties and anger. And sometimes, when parties impose their ideas on others, reality clashes with ideals and people are hurt in the process.

It is a reality we see all the time in Washington, D.C. as political parties refuse to compromise their platforms to deal with the lived reality of the people they are called to serve. But it is also a reality in our churches. A good natured debate, a serious conversation about what we should do sometimes turns ugly and hurts our Body of Christ far more than we could imagine.

In Acts 15, we find one of the first recorded official church council meetings. In the history books and in the headings of our bibles, we know this as the Council of Jerusalem. It was the first time the church leaders gathered together to make an important decision about what should be done… and about who could be included.

Conflict is normal and expected in the life of a church. In fact, as Rev. Dr. Jill Sanders reminds me often, conflict is simply two different ideas occupying the same space. How we handle that conflict, and what kind of debate we have, is what can make or break relationships and groups.

As the Holy Spirit moved through this early church argument, we can learn about how we, too, in the 21st century can handle the conflict that arises.

First – when the question or problem arises, you address it directly.

The issue in this instance was a debate about whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised before they could be saved. That is, did they have to become Jewish before they could accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Paul and Barnabas were out working among the people and gentiles were converting to the Jesus left and right. All along, all they had ever taught was that Jesus was the way and the truth and the life. No prerequisites. No admission exams. Christ and Christ alone was the source of salvation.

But a group of folks comes along teaching something different. Paul and Barnabas could have had a number of options here.

They could have ignored this new teaching and continued to do what they were doing… with both ideas growing up alongside of one another in the community. But that only delays the debate until a time when people are more entrenched in one position or another.

They could have driven the newcomers out of town violently… which was what sometimes happened to them when their teachings were not well received by a community.

But Barnabas and Paul had the wherewith all to directly address the problem. They confronted the teachers and argued against them. They spoke their piece. They defended their position. And most assuredly, the other side made their arguments as well. A healthy conflict allows room for disagreement and conversation. It allows for people to stand in one place or another. They talked and argued until they were finished.

What our scriptures don’t tell us is how this conflict was resolved. There is no tale of winners and losers in the debate. What we next hear is that Paul and Barnabas are being sent from Antioch – the community they were serving – to go up to Jerusalem to get an official ruling on the issue.

Which leads me to point two: some arguments and debates are bigger than us as individuals. A sign of maturity and health in any conflict is calling in other voices when the debate has reached a stalemate.

In the world of business, this might be a mediator. In a marriage, this might involve seeing a counselor. In a church, its when you place a call to your district superintendent. Sometimes we need neutral third parties to help us to see the bigger picture and to resolve our differences.

But sometimes, we also need to have a larger conversation because the impact of our decisions involve more than simply us.

The church in Antioch realized that the debate they were having would merely be repeated time and time again across the world… it was not a question only for them, but for the whole Body of Christ. The power of a group speaking together – of a group deciding to live one way or another – would define that body one way or another. They could either be a church who welcomed Gentiles as they were or a church who demanded circumcision, but they couldn’t be both. They made a mature decision and sent the question to a higher authority.

That is not to say that all arguments require calling in the big guns. If a church can’t agree about what color of carpet to install, the bishop doesn’t need to be informed. The carpet isn’t a life or death matter of identity.

But when we have fundamental disagreements about who to welcome, or how to interact with a particular social issue like immigration, then we might find we are having conversations that are bigger than us.

That doesn’t mean they are conversation we shouldn’t participate in or have a voice in… it simply means that we also need to include others.

So the Council of Jerusalem meets and the apostles and the elders all gather together to hear about what they problem is and to make an official decision.

The third thing that we can learn is what the nature of these discussions should be. As Acts 15 describes this debate, it plays out much like a courtroom scene. Parties stand and argue their case. People listen and wait their turn. The gathering is respectful and honest with one another.

One of the more powerful realities of this testimony of scripture is that names are not tossed back and forth. No party is painted to be the bad guy. There is no negative campaigning or slander. Each group simply speaks the truth about who they are, what they have experienced, and what they believe.

Those who believed in circumcision stood and made their case from the perspective of tradition and then others began to speak as well.

Peter stood and talked about his vision of the gospel for the Gentiles and the conversion of Cornelius. He lifted up the revelation of God he had received and his calling to carry that message back to the church.

Barnabas and Paul stood and spoke about their ministry among the gentiles and the signs and wonders they saw.

And in each case, the people were allowed to tell their whole story. They weren’t questioned or cross-examined. They simply shared their experience and others listened. They listened completely – not with the intent of finding flaws in the argument or ways to defeat them… they simply listened.

When one party was done speaking, they waited in silence until the next voice was ready to speak. It was a respectful, holy debate.

And when all had spoken, James felt moved to respond on behalf of the assembly. He lifted up the scriptures and the precedent for ministry to Gentiles even in the Old Testament. He made a statement, and it was affirmed by the whole body. Gentiles would be welcomed, as they were… no additional burden would be placed upon them.

A letter was written and sent out to all the churches – a letter that would clarify the church teaching, a letter to provide stability and unity among the people of God. This letter assured the people that the Holy Spirit had led them to a decision… no burden would be placed upon them but these essentials: to refuse food offered to idols and refrain from sexual immorality.

John Wesley was often fond of saying: In essentials, unity; in unessentials, liberty; in all things – charity (that is to say, love).

In the course of their debate, the early church argued about the essentials – about how we are saved and who we should be as the people of God. And sometimes their positions on those essentials would change – as would later happen with the prohibition against eating food that had been sacrificed to idols. But there were also many questions they didn’t address and left unanswered. There were questions that were not important and were practiced differently depending on what city or village you were in at the time.

But perhaps most important is that these conversations happened with grace and love and respect.

With my friend, Brian Johnson, our friendship was always prioritized above all else. The questions we were asking of one another did not ultimately matter. Brian might disagree with me of course =) , but I guess I mean that even if there was a right answer, our friendship was more important than the debate we were having. Sure, the questions were important and someday we might be in positions and places where the decisions we made and the answers we arrived at really would matter. But what was truly important was the fact that we could argue and disagree and still love one another.

The same is not always the case with the church. The same is certainly not the case in our nation. We yell and demonize and refuse to listen to one another. We line up for chicken sandwiches or stay home and choose to boycott. We get so caught up in the little things, the unessentials that don’t matter, that we have no energy left to talk about what is really important.

May we let go of our fears and our pride. May we open our hearts and minds to truly listen to one another. And may we have a different sort of argument… an argument filled with the spirit of love.

Amen and Amen.

The Spirit of the Damascus Road

Posted on July 30, 2012Leave a comment

If one is going to preach through the book of Acts, you can’t leave out the story of the transformation and conversation of Saul/Paul. It is a chapter I have heard many times, from many different angles, and recently heard powerfully preached by Bishop Palmer at our Iowa annual conference.

Sometimes, having an overwhelming number of angles going into a sermon is more of a burden than a gift. There are so many things that you want to say that you aren’t quite sure where to start. I opened up my bible on Monday, prayed for some focus, and picked out some hymns to send to my organist. But my prep time was shorter than usual because that evening I got on a plane and flew to Akron, Ohio for our North Central Jurisdictional Conference.

The conference itself was fine. Time with friends and colleagues, conversations about the life of our church and where God was leading us, and worship were the main highlights. The food was surprisingly good. But in the back of my mind, I still was thinking about this sermon I had to write.

Just down the street from our hotel was a little cafe called The Damascus Road Cafe. That’s funny, I thought. That’s exactly what I’m preaching about! I secretly hoped that maybe I’d find some clever little story about this restaurant that would give me a parable for my sermon. Little did I know that I’d throw out my entire sermon to tell the tale of this cafe and the people who ran it.

Every morning, my roommate and I stopped by for breakfast. The prices were fantastic and the food was delicious. The muffins were huge and moist and dense. The fruit was fresh. The staff was friendly. What’s not to like? Every day, those of us attending the conference walked right by this little cafe from our hotel half a block away. We bought sandwiches and coffee, soup and cookies. The place was full of nice United Methodist folks with our huge name badges and conference bags.

And then on the last full day of conference, I started to hear the stories. The story about how this little cafe had been struggling. A story about the mom and dad and their five children who ran the shop. A story about how the week before they looked at the bills piling up and began to pray for help. The story about how they were only a week or two away from closing their doors. The story about how the United Methodists showed up and they made more money in three days than they had in the three years before. I’m not sure of the truth of all of those stories… but what I do know is that this family and business needed help and we showed up just in time.

On the last day, conference had ended and we had a few hours to wait until our flight. So my roommate and I grabbed some coffee and cookies from the Damascus Road Cafe. We sat in the sun and talked through the week and couldn’t wait to get back home. And then about 3pm, just before our rides were supposed to arrive, we walked back over to the cafe to grab a few sandwiches to go. The two of us stood there at the counter while they began to close up shop and we started to talk.

They shared with us their gratitude that we had been in town that week. They asked questions about my friend who was using a cane (Jessica was the one hit by the truck in Tampa two months before). And then the guy behind the counter told the story of his own injury and healing. He had a job that required a lot of walking and time on his feet and bone spurs had developed in his heel. They were so debilitating that he was put on light duty and his job was on the line. One day, he was doing laundry and his wife was in another room watching Pat Robertson and the 700 club. He heard in the distance Robertson talking about a man who was being healed… a man who had bone spurs… pain in exactly the spot where HE had pain… and he ran into the main room. “Honey, he’s talking about me!!!” As he said the words, he felt warmth travel through his leg. He felt the pain leave his body. His bone spurs were healed, right then and there.

Now, those of you who know me also know that I don’t usually pay too much attention to Pat Robertson. I’ve never watched the 700 Club. And I’m sometimes skeptical of these kinds of healing stories. But I was moved by his sharing, and even more moved when he and his family asked if they could lay hands on my friend, Jessica, and pray for healing for her foot. They knelt down beside us and placed their hands on her ankle and foot. We joined together in prayer, right there in the middle of the cafe.

The Damascus Road symbolizes for me a place of transformation. A place where the past doesn’t continue to be the future. A place where the pain and anger of previous times are replaced by light and grace and love. That was why Saul couldn’t continue to carry his name around and had to change it. It is why he left behind persecution and embraced the testimony of Christ. And at the Damascus Road Cafe, we saw a little bit of hope sneak into a dark situation. We felt healing and grace. We saw community formed and relationships built.

That is the story I told on Sunday morning. Not a tale of a guy on a road, but of people gathered in a cafe for prayer, fellowship, food, and grace.

Defeat Evil with Goodness

Posted on March 25, 2012Leave a comment

This past week, I listened to an interview between Terry Gross and Jason Segal – one of the producers and the star of the most recent Muppets movie.

Mr. Segal described what it was like to become a part of the Muppets franchise and how much he learned about Muppet culture. One of the things he discovered was that Muppets don’t ever make jokes at other people’s expense. They don’t ever make fun of other people. They are intrinsically good and kind and well intentioned.

And they do not ever try to get revenge or hurt someone else. Even when faced with their worst enemies – with someone who is trying to kill them or hurt them – they will respond with kindness.

In the very first Muppet movie – Kermit the Frog – was being pursued by Doc Hopper who wanted to loveable Muppet to be the spokesperson for his line of frog leg’s restaurants. Eventually, the story led to a western style showdown.

Even faced with his worst enemy, Kermit reached out in love. He shared compassion. He tried his best to warm the heart of our cold-hearted villain… asking “What’s the matter with you Hopper? Don’t you know what its like to have a dream? Who are you going to share your dream with?” and he was willing to die rather than fight or give in. Thankfully, Dr. Bunsen’s “insta-grow” invention kicked in just in time and Animal saved the day by scaring the villains away.

We might read our scripture this morning from Romans and we might watch that clip and scoff – a real person couldn’t be expected to do that. We have been taught to fight back, to defend ourselves, to seek revenge AND to win…

I know that when my back is against a wall, my first instinct is to do everything that I can to get away from the situation – violence included. Just ask either of my brothers after they have tried to tickle me.

Forgiveness and compassion and kindness towards our enemies is such a difficult thing to fathom. Some of us have been in life and death situations where we have had to defend and protect ourselves. A few of you have served our country and many of us have loved ones who have put their lives on the line in order to protect others. In the real world – you can’t just offer a flower and ask someone to be your friend… You can’t just say, I’m sorry… You can’t be nice and hope that someone who is ready to attack you will go away.

Which is why it is important to remember that the words found in Romans 12:16-21 are not rooted in fantasy. They are not simply wise words to remember and try to live by. They are words written by someone who has experienced the grace of God. They are words written by someone who has experienced the forgiving power of transformation. They are words written by someone who is a living witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This book of Romans was written by an early enemy of the Christian faith. Long before he was the Apostle Paul – the fine, upstanding, young Jewish leader Saul – was one of the leading agents in suppressing the movement. He sought out the Christian followers to be executed for heresy. He not only breathed threats against the disciples of Jesus… he was on his way toDamascusto carry out those threats.

And yet, one of the greatest early enemies of Christianity was touched by Jesus on that road and his life was forever changed. And the disciples of Jesus Christ let him into their lives… witnessed his transformation and offered forgiveness and healing and love.

Paul, himself, witnessed what love could do to hatred. He experienced what forgiveness could do to revenge. He lived a life that exemplified compassion and grace towards his enemies. Whether he was in prison, or on trial, or experiencing the ongoing persecution of Christians himself, he remembered and lived out the faith that Jesus Christ had passed on to him.

In Romans 12: 14-15, Paul encourages us to not only bless our enemies but to weep with them and to rejoice with them. He is asking us to identify with them and to genuinely seek their good. When he and Silas were imprisoned unjustly in Philippi, they ministered to their jailer, and Paul remembered what it was like to be an unbeliever, remembered what it was like to be a persecutor. When we identify with our enemies, when we walk in their shoes, when we see them as human beings, we find it easier not only to love them… but also to forgive them and to share the good news with them.

In many ways, that is the amazing thing about our relationship with Jesus Christ. Because of our sin, because of the ways we had turned our backs to God over and over and over again… all of humanity had become enemies of God. Our love failed. We rejoiced in the darkness rather than the light.

And yet, rather than deliver us what we deserved, our God in heaven decided to become one of us. Jesus Christ humbled himself and laid aside his glory and became one of us – an infant placed in the hands of a humble family, a child learning in the temple, a young man teaching and preaching beside the sea. He became one of us, identified with us, took our life into his own in order that we might not receive justice… but that we might receive grace.

Next week we begin a long and dark week of persecution and trials in the life of Jesus… beginning with his triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem. But as we have read in the scriptures and as we will experience in worship, Jesus not once cursed his enemies. Not once did he wish them harm. Not once did he become like them. He shows us how to love, how to forgive, and in the process to not be a passive bystander.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this is his encounter with the moneychangers in the temple. While John’s gospel includes this event at the beginning of his ministry, in each of the other gospels it takes place during that final week in Jerusalem. Knowing the persecution he would face, knowing the anger he would stir up, Jesus was not afraid to speak truth to power. He was not afraid to protest at an injustice and make a scene without hurting people, work for change without diminishing another human beings dignity. It is okay to be angry – but it is not okay for than anger to rule your heart. The real question is, how can our outrage, our frustration, our pain be used to work for love and justice and change in this world?

Theologian John Mabry writes:

Rosa Parks is an imitator of Christ, not because she suffered for taking her stand (or keeping her seat, in her case), but because she had the courage to believe in her own dignity and fought for it in spite of the conflict that resulted. Nelson Mandela is an imitator of Christ, not because he suffered in prison, but because he held out for peace and justice, and led a nation to resurrection. In each case it is not the suffering that is redemptive, but the courage to pursue justice in the face of pain and evil.

And that is what Christ did. He sought to share the good news of God with the world. He proclaimed the reign of God in the face of the reign ofRome. He sought to reconcile his enemies and restore the love of God in the temple and inJerusalemand in the world. And he was killed for it.

In the face of injustice and evil and oppression, we are called to overcome with goodness. We are called to overcome with love. We are called to overcome with compassion. We are called to not let those forces to control our own hearts.

Share the story of the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation during WW2.

Maybe you have heard this before, but it is a parable worth repeating and remembering:

A Cherokee elder was teaching his children about life.

A fight is going on inside me,” he said to them. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandchildren thought about it and after a minute one of them asked, “Which wolf will win?”

The elder simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Let us feed the wolf of love in our lives. Let us be imitators of Christ Jesus – standing up for what is right, blessing and not cursing our enemies, showering them with love and compassion and forgiveness… so that we do not ourselves become that very thing which we despise.

Amen and Amen.