Philippians – Salvaged Faith

Thanks!

Posted on June 18, 2023Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 12:1-6, Philippians 4:4-9

Holy God, speak into our midst this morning. Fill us with hope, grace, and peace. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts and minds honor You this morning. May they be worthy of your calling and accomplish your faithful work in our midst. Amen.

I thank God for you.

I do. I really do.

I thank God for you, the people of Immanuel United Methodist Church.

I thank God for how the love you all have for each other and the world is increasing.

Robert Dunham wrote that “common struggle often forges an uncommon unity and love for one another. Like the peace that holds the community fast in turmoil, love for one another and congregational unity are best received and celebrated as gifts.”

And as we gather today, I cannot help but reflect upon some of the common struggles that we have shared over these last nine years of ministry together.

Some of them were challenges that we set before ourselves: raising money through a concert for DMARC, a gigantic garage sale for Joppa, or purchasing five brand new books for every student at Hillis Elementary.

But we have also been held together through turmoil.

Some of them are simply the realities of human life:

the illnesses, the injuries, the loss of treasured members of our community.

We have prayed and grieved and supported one another – offering God’s strength and peace.

And then there were the realities that we didn’t see coming.

Truly adaptive challenges we faced as the world changed… and is changing… and we’ve had to figure out how to reach new people in new ways.

We have gone through a pandemic… learning how to move worship online and connect with one another in new ways.

We have navigated conflict and conversation about human sexuality and racism and how to welcome immigrants and what kind of church we want to be for the future.

A changing economy impacts not just our church finances, but also demands more of us as we reach out to care for the hungry and the homeless on our doorstep.

When I think about our scripture from Isaiah today, I remember that much of this text was written in a time of great difficulty.

The first half tells of the judgment of the people, who weren’t following God’s will.

And the second half is full of hope and promise… but written from exile, having lived through destruction and removal.

And yet, in all of it, Isaiah keeps an eye on what God has done.

On the grace and mercy of God.

Joy and praise and thanksgiving ring out…

not because everything is hunky dory… but because it is not.

And in our own situations… we didn’t always know what we were doing, or how to do it, but by the grace of God, we’ve found ways to love, serve, and pray together.

Not because we had the answers… or because the work was easy…

but because we knew that God was with us and would help us through.

It is the challenge of Paul and Timothy as they write to the people of Philippi. This is from the Message translation:

“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

Although you have every reason to be anxious… and you have needs and requests to share with God… there is also reason to give thanks.

Or… as Anne Lamott so honestly puts it in her book about the three essential prayers: Help, Thanks, and WOW! :

“…at some point, we cast our eyes to the beautiful skies, above all the crap we’re

wallowing in, and we whisper, ‘Thank you.’

Thank you, God.

And in so many of those kinds of situations, there were moments when we got a little grumpy with one another.

We are human after all, and we are still learning and growing and figuring these things out…

but we are doing it together…

And we’ve taken the time to share when things weren’t working out and have reached out when feelings were hurt and have tried to find a way forward.

Anne Lamott describes the prayer of thanks as a tool to move from “rashy and clenched to grateful.”

I just love that imagery… and I can actually sense it in my body.

There are those moments when we are frustrated or in conflict and we truly are clenched.

It is a posture of being on high alert, always ready to fight or flee or even freeze.

In a world that is so divisive, we see that all around us.

But I think that God has used us and shaped us through gratitude, love, and grace to be God’s people and demonstrate a different path.

We have tried to live out the advice from Paul and Timothy to be gentle with one another and to seek the peace of God.

We’ve stayed in conversation. We’ve taken the time to listen.

And we have found ways to give thanks and celebrate the people who have come into our lives…

All of which takes that posture of abrasive and clenched living and turns it into a posture of openness and grace.

The love we have for one another is a gift…

the bonds formed in the midst of common struggle are a blessing…

and they should be celebrated as such.

Thank you, God.

Anne Lamott writes that “Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides.”

And friends, as we have been grateful for the love of God… we have also let those prayers of thanksgiving turn into joyful service.

[the numbers represent images of ministry projected during the worship service]

[1] Thank you God for the deeper relationships we formed with our neighborhood elementary school, Hillis, as we brought books for so many children and we have more and more people taking just an hour a week to read with those who need some extra help.

[2] And thank you for helping us to continue efforts like Donuts for Dudes and Muffins for Moms where we can be present in our neighborhood and share God’s love with breakfast.

[3] Thank you God for the ways that young people and their mentors here at the church bonded through hard work, study, and recreation at things like confirmation.

[4] Thank you God for the impact you had on children in our church and community as we worked to help them learn more about your powerful and never-ending love.

[5] Thank you God, for calling us to have hard conversations about your calling for our church in this world.

[6] Thank you God, for bringing us together in fellowship and for new relationships formed over barbeque and basketball.

[7] Thank you for challenging us to stretch beyond our own teams and ministries to build new partnerships with others, like the Interfaith Green Team Coalition.

[8] Thank you God, for those who give so faithfully of their time and energy behind the scenes to make ministry here possible.

[9] Thank you God for the faithfulness of our predecessors like Mrs. Simser and the bibles we give our children and the faithfulness of third grade bible partners and teachers.

[10] Thank you God for a seven year partnership and relationship with Imani church…

[11] … and for our new relationship with Immanuel Gospel Fellowship.

[12] Thank you God for the opportunity to go into the world to serve you through Volunteers in Mission, in our neighborhood, but also as far away as Omaha and Memphis.

[13] and thank you for challenging us to do hard things to raise funds and give time for ministries like Joppa and DMARC.

[14] and for the deep connections that are created when we labor together for a common good.

[15] Thank you God for those who not only prepare meals for us every week, but who care for and minister to one another in good times and in bad.

[16] Thank you God for those who knit and crochet blankets, for folks who feed and care and support, so that we can extend the love of Immanuel to those who need it the most.

[17] Thank you God for our staff and their faithfulness and willingness to serve.

[18] Thank you for the youth and volunteers and chaperones who go out and represent us so well in the community.

[19] Thank you, God.

Thank you.

You know, I started out just trying to find a few highlights of the amazing work God has been doing here among us and the list just kept going on and on and on.

As Paul writes to the church at Philippi, there really is so much to brag about.

He praises their generosity, their support for his ministry.

He encourages them for the work that is still to come.

But really… that’s the outline of all of Paul’s letters.

And I can’t help but borrow Paul’s words… or rather, Eugene Peterson’s translation of Paul’s words.

“My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.” (Philippians 4:1, MSG)

Over these past nine years, you’ve made some tough decisions and have stretched in new ways.

I thank God for how you’ve been willing to answer God’s call.

And as you continue to implement some of these changes…

And live out a new kind of welcome…

There will be bumps in the road.

It won’t all be easy.

But in the midst of the muck and the hard stuff, keep your heart full of gratitude and your eyes on Jesus.

As people of faith, God is continually calling us to do hard things.

God is calling us to leave our comfort zones go and be in ministry with the least and the last and the lost.

God is calling us to welcome the little ones and the stranger and whomever else shows up.

God is calling us to give up our preferences for the sake of the mission.

And maybe the hardest of them all…

God is calling us to be honest and real about our own vulnerabilities, our own brokenness, struggle, and pain, so that this community can walk with us, can love us, can remind us over and over again about the love of God in Jesus Christ that can transform even our broken souls.

That’s what church is all about.

Growing in love for each other and in love for God.

Giving thanks in every circumstance.

Singing and shouting to the Lord for the excellent things God has done among us.

May you continue to do hard things.

May you continue to hear and be faithful to God’s call.

May you continue to be formed in love born of our common struggle to truly be disciples of Jesus Christ in this world.

And through it all… may you continue to give thanks… keeping that attitude of gratitude that keeps your eyes above the muck on the one who gives us strength. Amen.

The Fragility of our Connection

Posted on June 7, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Philippians 2:1-8

Arches National Park is perhaps one of the most iconic and picturesque of the spots we will visit.
Three hundred million years ago, give or take, this land lay beneath an ocean. With the ebb and flow of the waters, salt deposits built up hundreds of feet thick.
Eventually, pressure turned some spots turned into sandstone. But as water eroded away the salt but not the harder rock, sandstone was left hanging over these empty gaps, leaving nearly 2,000 arches (America’s Holy Ground, page 31).

But as we mentioned as we began today, these arches are not sturdy or solid. Landscape Arch has seen a number of collapses and Wall Rock Arch fell apart one night in a huge pile of boulders in 2008.
They were formed under pressure and eventually pressure from the elements and human interaction will cause these connections to crumble.

When we planned this series, I wanted to focus on the strength of our connections, but I must confess that yesterday as I was thinking about this sermon I spent most of my day weeping.
Because the connections between us in this nation have never felt more fragile.
Because the tension in the air is palpable.
Because every post or story feels like to fans the flames of division.
And while I try to do better, and be better, I’m guilty of it, too, as I think about conversations I’ve had this week.
I so desperately want to be able to find words to make things okay, to soothe the wounds of our relationships, to seek peace, and there isn’t anything I can say.
I can’t make it better today for my neighbors who are black, indigenous, or people of color.
I can’t make it better today for my neighbors who are law enforcement.
There is too much that is broken and has already crumbled.
We can’t look away and pretend we didn’t see.
There is too much work that has to be done to acknowledge the pain and to hold one another accountable before we can even begin to live in peace.

This Sunday is Peace with Justice Sunday in the United Methodist Church.
Our Social Principles remind us that, “As disciples of Christ, we are called to love our enemies, seek justice, and serve as reconcilers of conflict. “ ¶165.C
As I have heard chanted at various rallies… not just this past week after the killing of George Floyd, but anywhere faithful people show up to seek change:
“No Justice. No Peace.”
As we state for this day, “…political and social turmoil can be caused by a number of issues including economic disparity, environmental degradation, gender inequality, racism and xenophobia, and illness and disease. If we want peace, we must be committed to disrupting these conditions and systems that perpetuate injustice.” (https://www.umcjustice.org/what-we-care-about/peace-with-justice)

Next week, our confirmands will stand up and claim their baptismal vows.
Not only will they take responsibility for turning away from their own sin and failings…
They will claim the freedom and power God gives them to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
We wrestled together with what that means, and all of their questions really got me thinking about what it looks like for me to claim that freedom and power, too.

What does it look like for us to resist those systems of injustice?
How do we begin?
How do we create the conditions for peace?
How do we seek justice?
How do we strengthen our fragile human connections?

There isn’t anything I can say in one sermon that can undo or fix systemic racism.
But we can talk about what each of us can do right now in our own personal relationships.

I found myself turning to Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
The church was experiencing a quarrel between two of their members – Euodia and Syntyche. We don’t know the details, but it had the potential to tear the church apart.
And so Paul writes to them these words… this is the Message translation:

“If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ,
if his love has made any difference in your life,
if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you,
if you have a heart,
if you care –
then do me a favor:
Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.
Don’t push your way to the front;
don’t sweet-talk your way to the top.
Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.
Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage.
Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself…
he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave…” (Philippians 2:1-7)

When there is conflict and division in the world, the only way we can overcome it, Paul writes, is by putting ourselves to the side.
We have to start focusing on what is good for the other person.
We have to humble ourselves.
We have to stop and pause and focus on the love we have for Christ and other human beings FIRST.
That is the agreement that Paul is talking about… that we would agree in Christ. That we would agree to be like Christ. That we would agree to look upon one another with love.

I find it interesting in the message translation that Eugene Peterson uses the word “privilege” to describe how Christ emptied himself of his status as equal with God.
The Greek word Paul uses here, rooted in kenosis, describes what it means to divest yourself of what rightly belongs to you.
The only way that God in Christ Jesus could reconcile with us…
The only way that God in Christ Jesus could repair the broken connection with humanity…
The only way…
Was for Jesus to set aside his privilege and power and status and to become one of us.
And then, to set aside his life and to die for us.

Paul sees the division in that community, sees the conflict between these two women, and he asks them to be like Christ.
The only way we can have reconciliation and peace is if we let go of trying to be right.
We have to stop focusing on what is best for ourselves and start asking what is right for others.
I think it is important to note here that not all power and privilege is equal.
Jesus took on the status of a slave… and for slaves, for the oppressed, for those suffering injustice… there is no lower for them to go. There is no power to relinquish.
So part of adopting the mind of Christ is becoming aware of the systems in our society that have created differences in the way people are treated and the advantages they have.
We have to look at the ways inequalities are slowly but surely eroding the connections that we have built with one another.
How are our health systems, education systems, economic systems creating the conditions for life for our neighbors?
Where we benefit unequally from those systems, we are not called to dig in deeper, but to work to help others get ahead.

When Paul asks us to put on the mind of Christ, he is asking all of us to equate ourselves, to humble ourselves, to make ourselves lowly.
To walk in the shoes of those who have nothing left to lose.
To listen.
To learn.
When we live this way… putting others first, setting ourselves to the side… it has a transformative impact on the rest of the world.
As Paul goes on to write in the next verses, again this is the Message translation:

“Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night…” (2:14-16)

We are to carry this mind of Christ with us everywhere we go.
In the letters we write to legislators.
In the attitude we strike towards those who disagree with us.
At the ballot box.
In the places we chose to shop.
With our families.
In the ways we stand up for those who are crying out for justice.

Think of yourself as Christ thought about himself.
And think of others the way Christ thought of them.
If we can start there, we have taken one step towards peace and justice.
And every step strengthens our connection.
May it be so. Amen.

Imagine the Transformation

Posted on October 20, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 14:13-21 (focusing on verses 18-19), Philippians 1:3-11

Last Sunday in worship, I preached about our limitations.
About how little we have… or think we have… that can be offered up for ministry.
When we see so much need around us in the world, it is easy to believe that we can’t possibly begin to make a difference.

And the truth is, we can’t.
Not on our own.
Not by ourselves.
But the good news is… it isn’t about us and what we can do.
It’s about what God can do through us.

This morning as we heard, once again, the miraculous story of how five thousand men (plus women and children) were fed, I want to focus in on just two verses of this pericope.
First, Jesus invites the disciples to hand over what they have.
“Bring those fish and loves to me,” he says. “Let me see what I can do with it.”
And then he invites people to gather around and he does something that is all too familiar to us when we gather for communion…
He prays.
He blesses the bread.
He breaks it.

What does that remind you of?

Communion!

Jesus blesses the gifts, breaks them
And he gives it back to the disciples.
Only then do they give it to the congregation…
To the crowds…
To the multitudes.

Only AFTER Jesus has taken their gifts and blessed and transformed them do the disciples head back out in service.

Or maybe it is simply after we recognize that our gifts are from God that we are truly able to share them with others.
There are times in our lives when we underestimate and we under appreciate our gifts.
We devalue ourselves and others and the most common way we do it is with a tiny little word: “just.”

We “just” have five loaves and two fishes.
I “just” have five minutes to give.
She is “just” a stay at home mom.
They “just” come to coffee time.
I “just” sing at church.

Can you hear the limitation?
Can you hear how we are denying the possibility?

What if instead we claimed:
We HAVE five loaves and two fishes – Jesus, what can you do with them?
I HAVE five minutes that I can give, how can I make the most of them?
She IS a stay at home mom and is able to be present for her children and volunteer in a really special way.
They come to coffee time and build these amazing relationships where they share about their families and check in when no one else is there and laugh until their bellies hurt.
I sing at church and praise and make music to God!

If instead of dismissing our gifts, we offered them up and let God transform and use our minutes and presence and abilities – imagine what could happen.

Now, I want to highlight that last one because it was something that might have been said by a middle aged woman who lived alone with her cat, Pebbles.
But when Susan Boyle stepped on a stage in 2009, she allowed her gifts to be used for something far bigger than she could ever imagine.

When she walked out on that stage, everyone underestimated what she could do and what her gifts were. And, I’d venture a guess that she probably also underestimated herself.
In fact, as much as she might have believed in herself, the immense joy that crossed her face when the judges all said yes was simply amazing.
Stored up inside of her for all of those years were these powerful notes and no one took them seriously.
It wasn’t until she was given a chance to really and truly share her gifts with others and to receive encouragement and affirmation did she realize what a blessing she had received and what it could do to change the world.
In the aftermath of her performance, Susan Boyle caused millions of people to take a second look at their preconceptions and to reach out to affirm the gifts they see in others.

In many ways, I think that is part of what the Apostle Paul is doing in his letter to the people of Philippi.
He sees their gifts.
He notices their generosity.
And he thanks God for the ways that they are allowing themselves to be used by Jesus to make a difference in the lives of others.
One of my favorite lines from this comes in verse six, and here it is from the Message translation:

There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

Friends, God is doing a great work among you here at Immanuel, too.
I look out at this congregation and my heart is full of prayers of thanksgiving as well.
I think about the way a mission trip got started decades ago and how every single year communities are transformed by our Volunteers in Mission who are willing to hammer nails and lay floors and serve their neighbors. THANK YOU GOD.
I think about how a simple garage sale a couple of years ago raised over $7000 for our homeless neighbors. THANK YOU GOD.
I think about how a idea sparked at the worship vision conversation turned into a benefit concert for DMARC this summer. THANK YOU GOD.
I think about all of the adults who joined forces to work on our Vacation Bible School sets – offering up their carpentry or painting or crafting skills… sets that not only blessed our children, but those at other churches, too. THANK YOU GOD.
My mind wanders to the women who gather to knit and crochet on Wednesdays and in their own homes and all of the lives who have been comforted by prayer shawls. THANK YOU GOD.
I think about the parents who are so blessed because people give their time on Wednesday afternoons to come in and prepare meals for our evening programming. THANK YOU GOD.
I think about our neighbors who walk by this building and can look out on our beautiful flowers and plants because some generous souls have given their time and energy to plant and water and maintain our gardens. THANK YOU GOD.
I think about the homebound folks who know they are not alone because one of you has stopped by for five minutes to drop off a simple card or gift or just to say hi. THANK YOU GOD.

And I know and believe and have no doubt that the God who started all of these good works in you will keep at it and keep using and multiplying and blessing your gifts so that they will continue to spill out into this world.
What you do matters.
What you give matters.
And it matters because God is working through you to bless this world.

A Way Forward? 25-cent words

Posted on August 19, 2018Leave a comment

Texts: Philippians 4:8-9, Matthew 22:34-40

This past year as I taught confirmation, one of our lessons focused on how we are all theologians.
I wrote that word up on the board and one of our students exclaimed – WOW! That’s a 25-cent word!
There was an old idiom that you shouldn’t use a 50-cent word when a 5-cent word will do.
But just because a word is complicated doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it.
So we unpacked it. We defined it. And suddenly, that 25-cent word wasn’t so scary anymore.

Today, we need to talk about some 25-cent words.
These are words are important and form the background of both the conflict within our denomination and in how we might move beyond this tension.
So… will you pray with me?
Compassionate God, all creation delights in the presence of your Word.
May the authority of your Spirit bring understanding into our confused minds, and truth into our troubled hearts, that we may praise and serve Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (from the Worship@North website. https://northchurchindy.wordpress.com/ )

We are going to start in the same place as our confirmands. Our first 25-cent word is… theologian.
I am a theologian.
I have a Master of Divinity from Vanderbilt University and I spent three and a half years studying divine things like scripture and ancient texts and history and the thoughts of other theologians.

But you know what?
You are a theologian, too.
You see, a theologian is simply anyone who reflects upon God’s action in the world today and as United Methodists we believe that every single one of us is called to this task.
Every generation must wrestle with our faith in a changing world.
The church needs to see problems and challenges like sexual abuse or global migration so we can provide a faithful response.
But, we also need to be able to figure out how to communicate the truth of our faith to a world that increasingly can’t understand us.
Theology helps us to do both.
Whether or not you knew it before worship today, you are a theologian.
I want you to claim that! Say out loud and proud: I am a theologian!

And as a theologian, your job is to answer a simple question: What can I say that is faithful to scripture as it has been passed down through tradition, and that makes sense in light of human experience and reason? (paraphrase of Book of Discipline p. 81)
As Paul told the Philippians, we are to focus our thoughts on what is excellent and true, holy and just. We are to practice what we have learned and received and heard from our mentors and teachers of the faith.
That is theology!
And as United Methodist theologians, you have four sources in discovering God at work in the world.
Scripture. Tradition. Experience. Reason.

These four sources make up our next 25-cent word: quadrilateral.
“[John] Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.” (p. 82)
All four are important. All four are necessary. All four help us to see where God is working in the world.
We start with scripture.
We end with scripture.
Scripture is the absolute foundation of all of our theology… so as theologians, we had better be reading and pouring over scripture in our lives.
But… and… scripture is always being interpreted.

First, scripture is interpreted by other scripture.
You cannot take a single verse out of context but need to look at the fullness of the entire passage and story.
And, we come to see as we read the bible that there is an overarching story within the scripture itself… a story of creation and redemption, a story of mistakes and forgiveness, a story that ends in the restoration of all things.
In our gospel, religious leaders ask Jesus to interpret and prioritize scripture for them. His response is one that provides us guidance when we in turn interpret scripture today – how does this verse lead us to love God and love our neighbor? (Matthew 22:34-40)

Next, we have the witness of how people have interpreted that scripture through time. Tradition shows us the “consensus of faith” that has grown out of a particular community’s experience. (p. 85-86)
Not all contexts and communities are the same. The experience of Czech immigrants in the Midwest was very different than that of African slaves in the Deep South. Each community passed on the gospel and created practices of faith that show us how the scripture made sense in their lives. We also connect tradition with the theology of previous generations that have been passed down to us in creeds and writings.

Tradition shows us how communities have understood God, but we also each have or own unique experiences.
Who you are and what you have been through is always with you when you open up the Bible – your pain, joy, anger, gender, economic reality…
It is why you can read the same passage of scripture repeatedly over time and discover something new with each reading.
But Wesley also talked about how God continues to reveal through our experiences and the fruit that we are bearing in our lives. When he saw the call in the lives of women around him, he began to license them as preachers.

Our final source of theology is reason. As the Book of Proverbs reminds us, each person is called to “turn your ear toward wisdom, and stretch your mind toward understanding. Call out for insight, and cry aloud for understanding. ” (Proverbs 2:2-3)
We believe that God reveals truth in many places, not only in scripture, and that we should pursue such knowledge and truth with our whole selves. Science, philosophy, nature: these are all places that help us to gain understanding.
Where we find contradictions within scripture itself or between a passage and wisdom of the world, reason asks what greater truths a verse might be speaking or how to prioritize and discern which is truer.

Our Book of Discipline reminds us that

“United Methodists as a diverse people continue to strive for consensus in understanding the gospel… while exercising patience and forbearance with one another. Such patience stems neither from indifference toward truth nor from an indulgent tolerance of error but from an awareness that we know only in part and that none of us is able to search the mysteries of God except by the Spirit of God. We proceed with our theological task, trusting that the Spirit will grant us wisdom…” (Book of Discipline p. 89)

The simple truth which lies at the heart of our conflict today is that people of faith, United Methodists who care about the scriptures and who come from diverse backgrounds, cannot come to a place of consensus in how we approach matters of human sexuality and in particular how we understand homosexuality.
We might use the quadrilateral differently or prioritize some aspects more than others.
But I think part of the difficulty is that we don’t even have a common understanding of the question we are seeking to answer within the scriptures.
And that means a couple more 25-cent words:

First, homosexuality. This word was initially coined in the 1880s in German and made its way into English usage in the 1890s. The word itself simply refers to sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex. Some modern translations of scripture use this word, but it didn’t even exist at the time the King James Bible was translated.

Many who seek to answer the question of what we should do today start from this definition. Their concern is largely with the physical acts associated with any given sexual orientation. Many prohibitions in our Book of Discipline focus on this as well, using the phrase “self-avowed, practicing homosexual.” The question being raised by this group is largely about how we use our bodies and whether or not such use is good and holy.

Others focus on a more expansive understanding of the complexity of human sexuality, referring to a wider group of people through the term LGBTQ+.

Science and sociology have helped us to see in the last fifty years that our identity is complicated.
This graphic talks about four different aspects of our identity – all of which are placed on a spectrum. Our biological sex, how we identify our gender and how we express it, who we are attracted to… all of these factors play a role… which is why the terminology we use keeps expanding as well. There is a handout at the back that has this graphic as well as some common definitions within LGBTQ+ if you are interested. The question being raised by this group is also about how bodies, but tends to focus more on embodiment and identity as a whole person.

As a denomination, when we bring these questions to General Conference, we seem to have reached our limits of patience and forbearance with one another.
But as people of a local faith community, my prayer is that we can still remember with humility that now we see through a glass darkly and that we still might extend patience and forbearance towards one another as we explore a few scriptures together.

When we open the scriptures, there are six verses that our tradition has used to condemn homosexuality.
Genesis 19: Sodom & Gomorrah
Leviticus 18 & 20: Abomination
Romans 1: Exchanging Natural Relations for Unnatural
1 Corinthians 6 & 1 Timothy 1: “malakoi and arsenokoitai”
As United Methodist theologians, we start with scripture, and we end with scripture so we need to wrestle with these passages as background for our theology today.

Before they went to bed, the men of the city of Sodom—everyone from the youngest to the oldest—surrounded the house and called to Lot, “Where are the men who arrived tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may have sex with them.”

First – Genesis 19: 4-5, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Angels from God arrive in order to determine if there are any righteous people in the town. The men of the city knock on the door of the house they are staying and seek to force themselves upon the visitors.
However, this is a great place to start using scripture to interpret scripture. While later Christian tradition adopted sodomy as a term for sinful, non-procreative sex, within the scriptures itself, the sin of Sodom was not sexual in nature. In Ezekiel 16, the prophet names the sin of Sodom as being proud and not helping the poor and needy. This was a culture that relied upon hospitality – when guests arrived the duty of the community was to welcome them and provide for their needs. To violently force yourself upon these visitors, attacking them, raping them, was against every hospitality code of the time. This is a clear violation of the command to love your neighbor.

The question we wrestle with theologically is whether or not our experience of LGBT persons today is reflected in this text.

You must not have sexual intercourse with a man as you would with a woman; it is a detestable practice.

If a man has sexual intercourse with a man as he would with a woman, the two of them have done something detestable. They must be executed; their blood is on their own heads.

The next two scriptures come from the Holiness Code in the book of Leviticus (18:22, 20:13). In many translations, sex between two men is named as an abomination, or detestable. Both of these chapters are concerned with sexual practices that were forbidden to the people of God as they were entering the Promised Land. It is a rejection of practices both in the land of Egypt and practices that may have been common among others in the land of Canaan.
The Hebrew word that we have translated as abomination or detestible is probably not a fair translation of the word. “Toevah” is understood by many today to instead mean ritually unclean or culturally taboo. The Israelites are called to be holy and set-apart and to adopt cultural practices that are different from their neighbors. In the larger context of Leviticus, these include commands about food, clothing, bodily fluids, and how you treat the stranger among you.
Today, our tradition still considers many of the practices within these two chapters of Leviticus to be culturally taboo, but not all of them. And we have moved away from many of the other prohibitions within these texts that we consider to be culturally bound – like eating shellfish or the cutting of hair. And that’s because we hold a different understanding of what makes us unclean in the eyes of the Lord. Peter’s vision in Acts 10 shifts the conversation within the Christian faith and his encounter with the gentile Cornelius leads him to proclaim, “God has shown me that I should never call a person impure or unclean.” (Actus 10:28)

Theologically, we ask today what scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim as taboo sexual acts, framed by our understanding of what forms us as a Christian community that loves God and our neighbor.

That’s why God abandoned them to degrading lust. Their females traded natural sexual relations for unnatural sexual relations. Also, in the same way, the males traded natural sexual relations with females, and burned with lust for each other. Males performed shameful actions with males, and they were paid back with the penalty they deserved for their mistake in their own bodies.

Our next scripture comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans. His argument here in the first chapter is that Gentiles and Jews alike are without excuse and full of sin. The Jews have been given the law and claim to follow it but don’t. The Gentiles don’t have the law… instead they should have seen God revealed through nature itself. Augustine and Aquinas and others have carried this concept through our tradition and our use of reason: we can know God through the world around us.
Here in this chapter, Paul argues that the Gentiles should have known God. However, they rejected God and turned instead to idols. As he describes cultic practices of worship, he claims that their idolatry led God to abandon them to their desires. As a consequence, natural sexual relations were exchanged for unnatural ones and these people were filled with jealousy, murder, fighting, deception, gossip, and disobedience to their parents. (Romans 1:29-31)
Theologically, the questions we wrestle with today start with asking what is natural. If one understands homosexuality to be a choice then it would lead you to think that such acts are unnatural. However, for others who believe that persons who are LGBT were created that way, it might be unnatural for them to act against how God has made them.
This is another place where we might ask where our experience shows fruit in the lives of LGBT persons. Paul’s argument here is that same-sex acts are the result of idolatry and cultic worship and these people are filled with other bad behaviors. What are the fruits we see in the lives of people we know who are LBGT? What are the fruits of people who are not LGBT? Do they love God? Do they love their neighbor?

Don’t you know that people who are unjust won’t inherit God’s kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Those who are sexually immoral, those who worship false gods, adulterers, both participants in same-sex intercourse,^[a] thieves, the greedy, drunks, abusive people, and swindlers won’t inherit God’s kingdom.

We understand this: the Law isn’t established for a righteous person but for people who live without laws and without obeying any authority. They are the ungodly and the sinners. They are people who are not spiritual, and nothing is sacred to them. They kill their fathers and mothers, and murder others. They are people who are sexually unfaithful, and people who have intercourse with the same sex. They are kidnappers, liars, individuals who give false testimonies in court, and those who do anything else that is opposed to sound teaching.

The final pairing of scripture is from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. We group them together because they refer to the same two words – malakoi and arsenokoitai. These words have been translated in multiple ways through our history of bible translation.
Malakoi literally means soft and has been translated as effeminate, as the passive homosexual partner, or as a male prostitute.
Arsenokoitai is a word that appears only two times in all of Greek literature – right here in the Bible. It is a word that Paul appears to have made up from two other words: Men and Bed. How tradition understands this word has changed drastically over time. Some think it refers to the dominant homosexual partner. Others think it refers to pimps – men who sell sex. Others think it is connected with temple prostitution, or the practice of older men taking young men (soft men) as sexual partners within the culture of the time.
In the context of the litany of other acts included in this list however, perhaps the Message translation most accurately captures the spirit of this passage. “those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom.”
The truth is, we have all done these things. But the grace of God is present in our lives and has redeemed us and so our call now is to honor God, creation, and our neighbors… and that includes honoring our bodies.

What can we say theologically about sex, sexuality, and our identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?

As I faithfully wrestle with a theological response to the presence and promise of LGBT persons in the life of the church, I am fully aware that I might end up coming to a different conclusion than you. We are all theologians after all, all tasked with using scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to weigh what we believe to be faithful responses in the world today.
The very conflict within our denomination is the result of this very tension and next week we’ll explore how people of faith have found themselves aligned with various positions today.
But my prayer, above all else, is that we would continue to lift up as our number one priority the love of God and the love of one another – and that includes those who don’t agree with us.
Our call as people of faith after all is to provide a welcome so vast and so radical that all might come to know and experience the saving grace of God lives. May it be so. Amen.

Under Dogs, Top Dogs, and the Kingdom of God

Posted on March 11, 20181 Comment

In 1887, a new term was coined in the English speaking world – the “underdog.”
This was the opposite of the top dog –the dominant person in a situation or hierarchy, the winner, the victor in a fight or contest of wills.
The term likely comes from the world of dog fighting, but soon the phrase was applied to politics, games, matches, and life in general.

We have seen the term “underdog” change from describing the outcome of a contest to the expectations for the outcome….
The underdog is the one who is expected to lose.
The underdog is the one facing the uphill battle.
The underdog is the victim of injustice who starts off at a disadvantage.
The underdog doesn’t have the power, the money, the strength, or the system on their side.

And our scriptures are full of underdogs:
people who march into battle with nothing but slingshots to face a giant…
people who head into the seats of power as prophets…
people who fight with trumpets instead of swords…
who are not afraid of what might happen to their own lives if they speak the truth…

Our gospel reading this morning is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes and in many ways, Jesus is calling the people of God to become underdogs.
Instead of aligning ourselves with the rich and powerful – those who have everything in this world…
we are called to become poor, hungry, and despised by the world.
We are called to side with the “have-nots.”

There we find the kingdom of God.
There we will be blessed.

We’ve been exploring throughout this season of Lent some of the superheroes that fill our cultural imagination. We’ve heard about Batman’s fight against evil, the way Spiderman tries to do what is right. Last week, we talked about how Wonder Woman offers a vision of unity.

A common thread of these heroes is that they side with the underdogs of this world. They help to bring justice to the oppressed, are strength for those who are weak, and offer protection for the vulnerable.

Our superhero this week, however, took a long time to understand this reality.
In a world of haves and have-nots, Tony Stark lived at the top of the heap.
Wealthy beyond measure, leading a successful technology company, everything he could ever want at his fingertips, there was nothing in this world that could stop him.

Had Mr. Stark been present in the time of Jesus he would have been the subject of those warnings towards the rich and well-fed, who think that life is all fun and games.

But something changed for Mr. Stark. During a demonstration of his latest weapons in some remote country, his caravan was attacked, he was captured, and he sustained life-threatening injuries.

But he put his knowledge to work and modified the weapons around him to not only create a battery that would keep him alive, but also a suit that would help him escape.

In the process, he realized that all his wealth and power was coming at the expense of other people. The weapons that made his company so successful were not always being used for good and just ends.

When he finally makes it back home, he holds a press conference and vows to change the way his company works.

I find it interesting how he even sits down, humbling himself, being real and authentic and inviting people to also sit down so they can chat.

His experience has changed him and he wants to change his ways and put his gifts to use for good rather than simply wealth.

But, Tony Stark doesn’t always get it right.

As he continues to work and develop the technology to become Iron Man, Matt Rawle reminds us in “What Makes a Hero?” that “he doesn’t quite overcome his human faults. He doesn’t always get right from wrong. He is phenomenally wealthy, but sometimes he exploits those who aren’t as fortunate. He has developed amazingly powerful weapons and armor, but he doesn’t always use those to fight for the purest of social causes.” (p. 79)

And perhaps that is because until the moment that he was captured and fighting for his very life, Tony Stark has never been an underdog. Even in that moment, he had all of the knowledge and technology that he needed at his finger tips in order to successfully get out of the situation.

Any other ordinary person would have been lost in such a situation.

Even when everything appeared to have been taken from him, Tony Stark still belonged to the world of the “haves.”

Even in that moment he appeared to have been blessed.

In our society, the language of blessing often points to those who have, not the have-nots.

We are blessed by children.
We are blessed by health.
We are blessed by friends and family.
We are blessed by wealth and possessions.

And yet, by claiming these things as a blessing can unintentionally say that those who are without such things are not blessed.

One of my best friends in the entire world struggles with infertility. She and her husband have been trying for years to have a child, including expensive visits to doctors in other states for treatments.

When those around them speak of the blessing of children, it is hard to not inwardly cringe and because it feels like the implication is that they haven’t likewise been blessed by God.

Many among us struggle with health concerns that seem to pile on top of one another. The language of blessing often makes them feel forgotten by God’s outpouring of blessings.

But this is because we have bought into the language of the world and not the language of God. We think that blessings are gifts of status… that blessings are rewards for good behavior… that blessings come as a result of who we are or how loved we are.

But Jesus turns our understandings of blessings upside down.

It is the hungry and the poor and the grieving and the weak who are blessed in God’s kingdom.
It is those who are without who are the closest to God’s love and power.

They don’t take for granted what God offers. They know its true value. And they know what it means to share.

Matt Rawle invites us to reject the way that society uses the language of blessing and instead to talk about gratitude and thankfulness for the gifts in our lives.

I’m thankful for my health today.
Even though I, personally, don’t have children, I can still be thankful for the opportunity to teach children and I’m unbelievably thankful for my nieces and nephews.
I’m thankful for the gifts God has given me like the ability to sing and preach.

This language leaves room for others, whether they have or have not, to also express their gratitude for what is in their lives in that moment.

Gratitude is a lesson that is sometimes hard for the “haves” of this world to express.

Tony Stark takes everything for granted. It is expected that people will adore him and that he will have everything he need.

It is also the reason it takes him so long to truly appreciate and learn to love his assistant, Pepper Potts.

Until he faces death and realizes that he has something different to offer this world.

One of the things we saw in that video clip is that in this moment Tony Stark begins to reflect upon his life and his relationships, even turning his eyes back to his father, wondering what he would have thought of all they had done. He had never thought to ask the question or to appreciate the role his father played in his life before this moment.

When we learn to be grateful for the gifts that have been given to us, instead of just accepting them as blessings – as rewards for what we have already accomplished, then we also learn how to share them with others.

One of the ways that Jesus calls us is by inviting the people of God to use their gifts and their talents for the sake of others.

It is not that the rich are forever condemned… but that they will always be outside of the Kingdom of God unless they let go of their status and allow the line between the haves and the have-nots to disappear.

In God’s Kingdom, that line fades into the distance.
The poor are blessed because the wealthy share.
The mournful are comforted because others offer comfort – like folks from our church did this weekend by hosting a funeral and a luncheon for a complete stranger.

As Matt Rawle points out, this isn’t because God is like Robin Hood, stealing from the wealthy and giving to the poor, but because God invites every one of us to share our very selves with one another. We all have gifts to offer one another that go far beyond wealth or power.

Iron Man’s suit is a tool of the “haves” that fights for the “havenots” – but the difference between Christ and Tony Stark is that Jesus doesn’t put on a suit in order to fight for us.

Jesus empties himself.
Jesus becomes like those he is saving.
Jesus dives into our suffering and hunger and pain.

And there, in the midst of our lives, we are blessed by the presence of Jesus who teaches us what the Kingdom truly means.

Do What Is Good

Posted on February 18, 2018Leave a comment

I think in many ways it is a cruel irony that as we begin our Lenten series on heroes that our first pop culture example is the Dark Knight, Batman.
As a young boy, Bruce Wayne was a victim of gun violence.
In a dark alley, his parents were gunned down by a thief in front of his very eyes.
That traumatic moment forever changed the course of his life – setting him on a path to fight crime, battle evil, and protect his city.

Over the past few days, I have watched other young people, teenagers who survived the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, take up their own calling to demand change in a society in which too many lives are taken as a result of gun violence.
I read a story this morning about moms in Keosauqua here in southeast Iowa who rallied together on Thursday to raise the money to install a safety device called a sleeve in every classroom in their small school.
As one mom said, “we’re tired of it. It’s like, OK, nobody’s going to do anything about this: Our government, our state government, our national government. We’re the moms, and these are our kids. What can we do?” (https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/columnists/kyle-munson/2018/02/16/sick-school-shootings-these-iowa-moms-took-action-single-day-make-their-kids-classrooms-safe/344133002/?hootPostID=746aea71a5583aa9b0209e37f4bdbabb)

What can we do?
When evil seems to lurk around every corner…
When the places we thought were safe become sites of terror…
When a sense of hopelessness in the ability to truly witness change starts to seep in…

Sometimes our “what can we do?” is a cry of resignation.

Where are the good guys? Where are the heroes who are going to rise up and make everything better?

And sometimes, it is a reminder that we, too, have been called to act. Our discipleship is lived out in how we answer that question.

Each of the weeks of this Lenten series, we are going to be exploring together ways we often see the world through opposing lenses: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, insiders vs. outsiders. We divide up this world and place ourselves firmly in one camp or another.
And yet, as we think together about how Jesus comes to redeem and restore this world… how Jesus acts to save us from sin and bring us eternal live, we discover that often Jesus turns our ways of viewing the world upside down.

In fact, when a leader of the community tried to call Jesus “good” in an effort to flatter him, Jesus practically rejected the label. “Why do you call me good?” he asks in Luke chapter 18. “No one is good but God alone.”

In doing so, Jesus reminds that all that is good comes from God.
When our Creator spent six days building and forming and shaping all that we know and see, God looked out and called it good.
That isn’t because of something innate within us.
It is because we are from God.

And so, what is this evil that we promise to resist in our baptismal vows?
What is this force that opposes life and leads so many on paths of destruction?
Matt Rawle defines evil in his book, “What Makes a Hero?” as nothingness. “Evil represents a void…. Evil is a shadow that cannot stand on its own. A shadow by itself is nothing but the absence of light… made manifest when someone or something stands between us and the light of God shining through Christ.” (p. 26)

Evil is the result when we let anyone or anything stand between us and the love and power of God made manifest in this world.
Sometimes what blocks the goodness of God is our own selfishness and sin.
Sometimes it is anger and resentment.
Sometimes it is idolatry – when we take something that is on its own good or neutral in value – but elevate it to a status that blocks our ability to reason or follow God.
I think in many ways, our nation’s obsession with guns has reached the point of idolatry. Guns themselves are not good or bad, they just are… however, our unwillingness to even allow for research to be done as to the causes of such endemic gun violence means that we cannot take the actions we need to in order to curb the tide of this deadly force.

I think about how through training and technology, Bruce Wayne would put on his bat costume and watch over Gotham, but traditionally, Batman never took up a gun himself. Even as he fought night after night against the dark forces, he sought to never use deadly force in bringing justice to his city. He kept himself focused on his purpose and what he was fighting against.

As people of faith, our call is not simply call something good or evil, but to keep our eyes focused on our purpose and the source of what is truly good, God alone.
It is what Christ did as he lived out his ministry among us.
And in many ways, the blueprint for how we should live and follow his example is found in that familiar verse from the prophet Micah.

“He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.”
Goodness is therefore the result of a life of justice, mercy, and humility.

First, we are called to do justice.
As Jesus reaches out to teach a lawyer about how to receive eternal life, he tells the parable of the good Samaritan.
The lawyer must learn to recognize even the Samaritan as his brother.
He must do justice by acknowledging that God has created each and every person.
Oppression and violence and hatred must cease.
We must always look out for the outcast, the vulnerable among us.

Second, we must embrace God’s love and practice mercy.
Jesus lived this out through acts of healing and mercy – feeding the hungry, healing the sick.
In every action, he sought to bring life to people by reaching out and touching them.
It is not just reaching out in love, however, to people we know and care about… it is also reaching out to offer kindness and forgiveness even to those who would seek to harm us.
Just as Bruce Wayne refused to take up the weapons that destroyed his family, so Jesus refuses to play the games or fight in the ways of evil.
He forgives those who crucify him.
He doesn’t fight back.
He knows that with God there is another way.

Lastly, we are called to walk humbly with our God.
Jesus showed us what this meant through the cross.
The greatest love, he told us, was to lay down our lives for our friends.
And so as the Christ hymn of Philippians reminds us, even though Christ Jesus was in the form of God, he emptied himself, he was born among us, and he humbled himself even to the point of death in order to serve the will of God. (Philippians 2:5-8)

Today, we are called to a life of goodness. A life of justice, and mercy, and humility.
We are called to lay aside anything that would distract us from God’s life and power in this world.
When evil looms around us and lives are being taken every day by forces that oppose God’s will, I think we are invited this Lent to a time of reflection and repentence.
Where are we complicit?
Where do we need to seek justice?
Where do we need to practice mercy?
Where do we need to humbly bow before our God and lay aside our idols?
May God stir our hearts…

Discerning What Matters Most

Posted on March 19, 2017Leave a comment

This faith community began in the 1920s , as the neighborhood of Beaverdale was starting to rapidly grow. Reverend Orf, the pastor of Crocker Hill UMC, recognized the growing need for a church presence in this area and so area churches banded together for a committee, remodeled an old farmhouse, and on Easter Day, 1925 the first worship service was held at this location.

As the community grew, the congregation made plans to build a church and the part of our building that is now the music room and offices was built in 1941. A big part of the design at the time was to build a church structure that would be in keeping with the style of the homes being built all around us. Classrooms were added in 1947 – part of Immanuel’s long legacy of education. Our church also opened itself up to the community in this part of our history, housing some of the local elementary school classes in our Fellowship Hall as the schools got too large for the students of the day.

As the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren church were merging in 1968 to form a new denomination – the United Methodist Church, this congregation was continuing to grow and completed work on this sanctuary. In the 1960s, youth bell choirs were formed, with adult bells following a decade later – another part of the way music has been a rich part of our tradition.

In 1970s, we began a new ministry that reached out to shut ins with tape recordings of the worship services. Members from Immanuel were instrumental in helping to pave the way for Vietnamese refugees to be welcomed into our state.

And since that time, we have continued to grow in faith, we are known as a caring and mission focused community, and we have been willing to take leaps of faith to respond to the needs we recognized within the church and the community, like our expansion of Faith Hall which was completed in 2004.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the people of Philippi to encourage them in the faith and as a church. And he reminds them that the God who began a good work in them would not abandon them, but would continue to help them to love and bear fruit for the gospel until that day when their work was finally complete.

And the Philippians needed some encouragement. While they had been on fire for God at the start, they also had experienced intense persecution because of their faith. Many were wondering how they could continue to go in in the face of the opposition they were experiencing. What should their church look like now? How could they continue to serve when so many around them were dying and falling away?

Paul’s letter called them to press on with rejoicing even in the midst of their difficulties and to return to God in a spirit of discernment, so they could discover a more excellent way and so they could be strengthened for whatever would come next… until that day when God fills the entire world with the love of Jesus Christ.

There simply is no comparison between the struggles we experience today in the United States and the persecution experienced in places like Philippi and in other places that are hostile to the Christian faith today. We gather in this room this morning without fear of death. We can sing at the top of our lungs and share our faith and the only consequences for doing so might be some angry words or cold shoulders. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t face bumps in the road or our own kinds of trials. That doesn’t mean that parts of our journey aren’t difficult.

And so, we need encouragement in our faith sometimes, too. And like the Philippians, we constantly find ourselves asking the question, what should our church look like now? How do we continue to serve in the midst of declining membership or in the midst of a culture that cares less and less about what the church has to say? What are we to do when the good news of the gospel seems to be falling on deaf ears?

What is it that we are fighting for? What kind of church are we going to invest in becoming for the future?

I began our message this morning by remembering a few fragments of our past, because the practice of spiritual discernment about next steps always begins with looking to see what we can learn from where we have been. And as I look at the history of who this church has been, I see that we began as a community of people who were willing to take risks and go to new places where we thought we might reach new people.

This church began as a renovated old farmhouse – a house church – that welcomed people into a family. But we didn’t just stay there. As the needs of this community of faith continued to grow, we expanded and grew ourselves. And we took care to continue to resemble the community around us – even thinking about making our physical structure look like the homes in the neighborhood. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Although I’m free of all people, I make myself a slave to all people, to recruit more of them. I act like a Jew to the Jews, so I can recruit Jews… I act weak to the weak, so I can recruit the weak. I have become all things to all people, so I could save some by all possible means.” (1 Cor. 9: 19-22)

So as we think today about what we might be called to next, I think its important to remember that we as a church were willing to take risks to meet new people and willing to adapt to the community as it changed around us so that the community might feel at home in our midst.

One of the problems with looking backward to find the answer, however, is that we can get caught in analysis paralysis and stay there. We can try to recreate exactly what we did before or keep researching and studying and waiting for exactly the right moment and we miss the opportunities that are right before us.

In What Are We Fighting For, Bishop Bickerton reminds us that as a church, we simply can’t wait any longer. He talks about the act of hitting a baseball and how difficult it is to time your swing just right. While it is easier in slow pitch to be able to see what is coming at you, as the game goes faster and faster, we often wait far too long to swing. And Bishop Bickerton says that the church game is going faster and faster and changing more and more rapidly every day. There are so many moving parts to a church and we need more technical expertise to reach people today. We have to adapt and be nimble, and react more quickly to the ways our community and culture are changing, or we might find that we have waiting too long, we have missed the pitch, and our church is no longer relevant.

All around us, there are pitches coming our way. There are opportunities a plenty. In fact, there are so many great ways that we could be in ministry today that it is tempting to try to do everything and toss out a whole bunch of new programs and activities like scattershot and see what works. But that itself is exhausting. Instead of scattershot, we need help to discern a clear focus. And part of that discernment is asking who is the new community that God is calling us to take a risk and step out in faith to reach? How can we be faithful to our heritage as a church, while also paying attention to where the Holy Spirit is leading us next?

As an administrative council, we spent some time last fall in discernment looking at a number of the opportunities, realities of our surrounding community, and ways that we are particularly gifted to lead and serve. We noticed things like that our surrounding neighborhood is now only 80% white, that we have more elementary schools in our community, and that over 1/3 of the families with children around us are now single parent families. We also have more younger, couples moving into the homes of the neighborhood.

How is God calling us to step out in faith and reach them for Christ?

As we continue to discern, we start by connecting our passions and our gifts as a church with the ways we will choose to live in the midst of this place. We can take the things that we value like music and education and being a caring community and we can carry them with us as we go outside of these walls to reach new people.

But we also should be willing to test the things that we have always done and do them not just because they are what we like to do, but to ask always if they are faithful to God’s will for our community. Do our activities and our programs resemble God’s love? Are they filled with the knowledge of our Lord? Are we bearing the fruit of the gospel in what we do? Are we doing them simply because they are easy, or are we rising up to meet the demands of call of Jesus Christ?

Next week, Trevor will be preaching once again and he will help us think about a final part of our discernment… how do we know what really is the core of who we are as a church that will always be the same and will never change no matter how the world changes around us, and where are the places where we can be more nimble and flexible, so that we can continue to grow towards completion for the glory of God. What are the things we should be willing to fight for, no matter what?

Practice These Things…

Posted on November 13, 2016Leave a comment

Last week, we broke bread in spite of our differences.

We shared at the table of the Lord with people who would vote differently than us and with some who would not or could not vote at all.

And we touched [will touch] the waters of baptism and remember our baptism in Christ and that we are all children of God.

And we did so because our heritage… our inheritance as a church… our tradition as people of God… is to overcome any division among us.

Paul exemplified this in the way he gave thanks for the Gentiles in Ephesus… in spite of the vast sea of differences between them.

In today’s scripture reading, Paul is writing to a different community… to the people of Philippi in Greece.

This, too, was a diverse community, and one of the interesting features is that there were many descendants of Roman army veterans living there.

Later on this morning, we will share together in a potluck meal and celebrate and honor our veterans… all of those who have faithfully served our country, who sacrificed in countless ways for us. Every step of the way, they put the rights, the lives, the needs of other people above their own.

I believe that self-giving spirit… that spirit of love that would cause someone to lay down their life for another person… is part of what has made our country great. We don’t sit back when people are in need, but we show up. We have showed up to fight back tyrants and dictators, oppression and evil… and not always because it was on our doorstep, but because it was on the doorsteps of others.

All throughout the letter to the Philippians, you can see that kind of self-giving spirit we honor in our veterans. Practice these things… practice that holy, radical, sacrificial love… Paul writes.

And yet, the context of Philippi was very different. This was the site, if you appreciate history, where Brutus and Cassius were finally defeated by the armies of Marc Antony. And much of the land was taken away from the original inhabitants and given to the soldiers and their families as a reward.

This was a place of division, dislocation, and disparity and the gospel of Jesus Christ took root in the people who were the most vulnerable in this community.

For some, everything had been taken away from them: their citizenship, their land… everything that made them who they were.

Until they found their identity in Christ.

And as Paul writes this letter of encouragement to these displaced people, that identity, that love, that faith is what he reminds them of over and over again.

In chapter 3 he writes: “All these things were my assets, but I wrote them off as a loss for the sake of Christ. But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison with the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have lost everything for him, but what I lost I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found in him.”

These are not empty words of someone who had privilege… as Paul was. As a Roman citizen, he had rights that many of them had just recently lost and this might have felt like salt thrown onto open wounds…

Except, Paul really did let go of all of his power and privilege for the sake of the gospel.

This letter is being written from a jail cell – because Paul is awaiting trial for preaching the good news of Jesus Christ.

He is living out with his very life every word he writes on the page… including the call to “adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (2:5-8)

Practice these things…

In every part of this letter, Paul reminds the church at Philippi to put others ahead of themselves. To love fiercely, in spite of what might happen. To overcome conflict and difference, anger and fear.

And friends, that’s not easy.

When there are deep divisions in a community it is easy to hunker down with people who are like-minded, to grumble and argue, to weep and be overcome with discouragement or to hold our victories over one another.

But Paul tells us to be grateful.

Paul tells us to rejoice.

Paul tells us to let love reign in our hearts.

The key to unity we heard last week… the key to overcoming division… is gratitude for the people who are different than us.

It is echoed all throughout this letter, too.

“Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others.” (2:2-4)

And in our scripture this morning, from the Message translation:

Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. (4:4-5)

Friends, I need you to know that there is real pain and fear across this nation right now.

There have been acts of hate and violence and aggression in our communities and neighborhoods. And in this neighborhood, there are families who fear they will be separated and there are people who have been targeted because of their gender, or sexual orientation, religion or ethnicity, or even because of the clothes they are wearing. I cannot and will not utter the hateful and horrendous words that have been used to diminish the value of our neighbors.

There have also been acts of violence as a part of generally peaceful protests and marches.

So I need you to know that I am not calling for a unity that blissfully ignores conflict.

Paul is not calling for a unity that ignores the trials and tribulations of our brothers and sisters and siblings OR neglects truth-telling and accountability.

Paul is in prison because he refused to be silent… because he challenged the powers-that-be with the radical love and gospel of Jesus Christ.

No, the type of unity Paul speaks of is a unity of resistance against the forces of this world that seek death, division, oppression, and hatred.

Paul calls us to “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.” (2:15-16)

Stand firm in your faith, in spite of your enemies.

Be united in love and compassion.

Be united against injustice.

Be united against hateful rhetoric.

Be united in protection of the most vulnerable.

Put into practice all that we have learned from Paul – and won’t worry about it, don’t be paralyzed by fear, but lift up petitions and supplications and praises to God.

As Paul writes to the people of Phillipi:

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse… (4:8)

So let me close by telling you a story… a first-hand account from a Muslim woman:

Yesterday my husband and I attended a football game, it was Duhur time and we needed to pray.

Finding a place to pray at a football stadium is tough, but we managed to find an empty corner.

I was a bit nervous to pray because it wasn’t private at all, particularly in front of everyone, maybe i’m silly but i’m always paranoid i will get attacked while focused in prayer. My husband started praying and i get approached by stadium security.

I thought in my head, here comes this guy, he’s gonna escort me out and tell us we can’t do this here.

I was wrong…

he came up to me and said “i am going to stand here and guard you guys to make sure nobody gives you any problems, go ahead and pray.”

He allowed us to pray and stood in front guarding us to make sure we are safe. When i finished he came up to us shook our hands and told us to enjoy the game.

The key to unity… the key to overcoming division… is gratitude for the people who are different than us.

The key to unity is to listen with grateful ears the stories of another person… even if it is a story of hurt and fear and pain… it is holding open spaces for people when they are scared… standing by their side when they are in pain.

The key to unity is to seek out someone who is different from you and to tell your story – even if it causes conflict BECAUSE we are grateful they are part of our community and because we want to continue to be in relationship with them.

The key to unity is to practice what is good and true and holy… putting others before yourself and giving thanks to God that they are in your life…

May it be so.