questions – Salvaged Faith

Recognizing the Messiah

Posted on January 19, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 49:1-7, John 1:29-42

It only takes a spark…

As I’ve shared with you in the past, my extended family has often been to Hawaii together. My grandpa and grandma were fairly blessed in their life and made the decision long ago to spend their money bringing us together than leave money to be fought over.

So growing up, what made these trips awesome was not just the location, but the uninterrupted week or two with family – playing, swimming, hiking, laughing.

One of our favorite adventures to do each trip is to hike the Diamond Head crater.

According to the souvenir t-shirt, the hike is:

0.7 mile long trail which is unpaved and has an uneven rock and dirt surface that may be loose and slippery in places. It leads through a dark tunnel and involves climbing a steep, 99-step concrete stairway and narrow spiral staircase inside an unlit bunker. The hike took about an hour up and 45 minutes back down.

Now, in reality, that’s not a bad trip… but when you consider that we normally make the hike with kids under the age of six, the trek suddenly becomes much longer.
Little feet get tired quickly and usually by the time we get a third of the way up the crater, someone wants to be carried.

So, I decided to start singing.
A simple call and response song the kids could repeat and had energy to keep their feet moving.
“the littlest worm”

Others chimed in and pretty soon, our whole group was singing our way up the crater.
We sang all sorts of camp songs and before the kids knew it, we had made it all the way to the top of the crater – and no one had been carried!

All it took was someone singing that first note and lighting the spark.

In many ways, that is what John the Baptist did so many years ago.

As we read this morning in the gospel, John saw Jesus walking by and said something.

Well, he didn’t just say something – John the Baptist called out: Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Quite an introduction if you ask me!

The next day, John saw Jesus again and he shouted again, “Look! Here is the Lamb of God!”

And when his disciples heard it… they started to follow Jesus.

Not just that day. They stayed with him and then they too began to tell others the good news about Jesus.

It only takes a spark.

What does it mean to recognize the Messiah?
What does it mean to catch a glimpse of the light to all the nations?
And what does it look like to not just recognize this light, this Messiah, but to follow?
Does our encounter with this light of the world shape how we interact with others? How we share the good news?

In David Kinnaman’s 2007 book, unChristian, he presents research from the Barna Group on how young adults view Christians. Words like “antihomosexual”, “judgmental”, “hypocritical”, and “old-fashioned” top the list.
And not by slight margins. Over three-quarters of those interviewed would use those words.
We just can’t downplay, Kinnaman writes, “how firmly people reject – and feel rejected by – Christians.” (p19)

Those words might be surprising to you, but I’m married to someone has often said those exact things. Our friends are mostly outside of church circles, looking in, and they would say the same things.

And I think it is because somewhere along the way, we lost that first spark of John the Baptist and Andrew and Peter.

We find ourselves living in one of two extremes…

Sometimes the church claims to have the truth and light and acts with moral superiority over those who do not. Our light shines for others, but it is like the cold light of a neon sign – barking out truths, but not sharing the warmth of God’s love with them.

On the other hand, sometimes the church is turned inward on itself and afraid of what people will think if we talk about God. We are like those who have hidden their lamp under a bushel basket and the world can’t see the grace and mercy of our faith, because we are too timid to share it.

When you think about which of those two extremes gets more media coverage… which is more in the face of people who are outside the church and maybe it’s not so hard to see why those stereotypes of Christians among young people exist.

I think in many ways, this congregation is more like those in the second extreme.

I know that if people on the outside really got to know you and how you love and follow Jesus those adjectives wouldn’t be the first things that came to mind.

But are we actually out there, breaking down those barriers and stereotypes?
Does the fact that we follow Jesus make a difference in how we treat others?
Or, have we kept the good news locked up tight in our hearts?

Today is Human Relations Day and we remember that the church is called to: “recognize the right of all God’s children in realizing their potential as human beings in relationship with each other.”

On this day we remember that the light within us was meant to be a light to the nations and every person is a beloved child of God.

It is a reminder that the love of God that flows through us must be shared through actions as well as through words.

It is a reminder that a spark becomes a blazing fire only when we seek out others for the journey.

Look at those first followers of Christ, who selflessly loved other people and shared the light of God with them.
Daniel Clendenin at Journey with Jesus writes about how they chose to follow Jesus in words and deeds.
Like the Christ that they followed, they broke down social barriers.
They ignored religious taboos that judged people as clean or unclean, worthy or unworthy.
They subverted the power structures of their time that separated people by wealth, ethnicity, religion and gender.
And they didn’t allow their own interests to cloud the message about who Christ was, and is, and is to be.

First, look at John the Baptist.
He selflessly proclaimed Christ to the extent that his own followers left him.

While we sometimes think of John the Baptist as a solitary radical who lived in the wilderness and ate locusts, he had disciples.
These were people who believed his message and committed themselves to learning from him and supporting him.
Yet John did not allow his own interests get in the way of his message.

When he cried out that Jesus was the Lamb of God, his own followers stood up and literally began following Jesus down the road.

This spark that was let loose could not be controlled and like John the Baptist, we must be willing to let people follow another road and to go a different route if that is how they can best be in relationship with Christ.

I was a chaplain at a hospital one summer and met a woman newly diagnosed with leukemia.
She was terrified of death, of her “unfinished business” and wanted to know about God.
I had many conversations with her over the weeks and then months as she waited for a bone marrow transplant. We talked about Jesus and heaven and prayed through the psalms.

I felt like her pastor… but one morning I walked in and another was standing by her bed.
He was the pastor at her grandma’s Baptist church in her hometown.

I have to admit… I was a bit jealous and territorial at first. But as heartbreaking as it was, I knew it was better for her to build a relationship with this pastor. By doing so, she could follow Christ more closely and have a church community to walk with.

Like John the Baptist, I had to let her go.

Sharing the good news of God isn’t about numbers or competition in how many followers we have.
It’s about working together to bring about the Kingdom.
And so John let his followers go.
He knew the light of Christ was bigger than his one small spark of light.

Second, look at how Christ himself invited those first disciples into a relationship.

When they heard this was the Lamb of God, they ran down the road to catch up to him.
And Jesus turns around and simply asks them: What are you looking for?

He doesn’t spout off four essential things you need to know to be a Christian.

He doesn’t make them pass a litmus test on what they believe about him.

He doesn’t ask them to join in the “sinner’s prayer.”

He asks them what they are seeking.

What are we looking for?
What do we hope to find?
Their response was really simple… maybe because they didn’t really know what to expect:
I want to know where you are staying.

And Jesus says: Come and See.

This short exchange between two seekers and Jesus tells us a lot about how the light of Christ can shine in our lives.
They are curious. They don’t have all the answers.
And Jesus gently affirms that reality.
He invites them to dip their toes in. To check it out for themselves.
He welcomes them into his life, knowing that by being in relationship with him, their lives will be transformed.

We don’t have to have it all together to follow Christ.
We don’t have to have a blazing fire built up in our hearts.
It only takes a spark.
Just a spark of curiousity.
Just a spark of desire for the God who created us.

This spring, I attended a continuing education event with Rev. Lillian Daniel, who leads a congregation in Dubuque.

She talked about how there are a lot of people in this world who identify as nones, who have no faith community they might identify with.

Some of those folks she describes as “dones.” Maybe they were part of a church. Maybe they were harmed or pushed away by people inside the church. But for whatever reason – maybe even those adjectives and stereotypes mentioned before – they are done with the church.

But there are others who are “nones” but maybe could better be described as “not yets.” They don’t know what they are missing. They are curious. They might walk into a church building and have no idea what a hymnal is or when to stand or sit and what they should wear.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t curious.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have question.

That doesn’t mean a spark isn’t ready to ignite in their hearts.

If we follow Jesus, that spark will be enough to get us started.
Along the way, the more we see and experience and share our lives with God, the more the light of Christ will grow in us.

What I find amazing about this story is that after just one night in the presence of Jesus, Andrew decided he had to tell someone about his experience.
That little spark of light within him began to burn, began to glow and shine for others.
Andrew ran home and found his brother Simon.
And he didn’t just tell Simon about Jesus.
Andrew actually took Simon to meet him.
He helped Simon experience Jesus for himself.

Think about that difference.
That difference between telling someone about the love of God and helping them to experience it.

When we invite other people to ‘come’ – do they ‘see’ Jesus in our congregations?
Do we live our lives out there in the world in a way that others don’t just hear about Jesus, but actually experience the light of God through us?

Relationships are the primary way we share the good news of God with others.
And when we are truly in relationship with others, those negative stereotypes fall away.
We can be present, listening to their questions more than sharing our answers.
We can be honest about our own struggles, rather than worrying about appearing perfect. Because let’s be honest… we aren’t perfect and pretending to be so is where that whole “hypocritical” stereotype comes from.

During the season of Lent, coming up in about six weeks, we are going to explore together what it means to take that light out from hiding under the bushel basket.
What does it mean to unbind the gospel, to let the good news loose in our lives?
I’m really excited about the opportunity we are going to have to pray together and to learn new ways of sharing our faith with others.

Because you see, when we have a relationship with Jesus… when we follow him… it is not just something we have chosen to believe.
It is something we have experienced.
And it is a spark we can’t help but share with others.

I think in many ways, that tendency to want to hide our light under the bushel basket, to keep it locked up tight is precisely what Christian author Marianne Williamson was thinking of when she wrote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

That spark of light is within you… don’t hide it.
You are a beloved child of God.
So let the love of God shine out through you!
Through you, through us, through this church, God’s salvation can truly reach the ends of the earth.

Mystery: Restored!

Posted on November 25, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 42:1-6, 10-17

This morning, I want to tell you a story about little Henry.
Henry walked to school every morning with his grandpa. And along their way, Grandpa would stop at the neighborhood store for a newspaper and a cup of coffee.
At the register, there were bins full of candies and gum and chocolates and every single morning, Henry would ask Grandpa if he could have some.
Every single morning, the answer was no.
Well, after several weeks of watching this, the cashier started to have a soft spot in her heart for the little boy. So one morning, as Grandpa and Henry came up to the register, the cashier said, “Good morning, Henry! How about this morning you reach in and get some of that candy you want… on me!”
Oh, he was SO excited! He reached out his hand to get some candy and then quickly pulled it back.
Instead, he grabbed Grandpa’s hand and shoved it into the bin with all of the sweets.
Grandpa was a bit stunned, and pulled back a whole fist full of candy.

As they kept walking to school, Grandpa was a bit puzzled. “Henry,” he asked, “Every single morning you ask me for candy… this is exactly what you have always wanted… why didn’t you pick out the candy yourself?”
Henry looked back at Grandpa with a grin on his face. “It is, Grandpa… but your hands are so much bigger than mine! My little hand was too small to get everything I wanted!”

There is a sense of Henry’s wisdom in our story of Job.
You and I, we are so small.
Compared with the stars and the oceans and the mountains and the vast diversity of creation, we are tiny specks of dust.
We might want to reach out and grab knowledge and answers and truth and faith… but our little hands are too small to get everything we want.
God’s hands are much bigger.
God’s wisdom is far greater.
God’s power is beyond our comprehension.

Last week, our youth took us through some of the mystery of God’s power and might.
We were reminded through song of just how powerful God is and how through the grace and the love of God, we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not be afraid.
When oceans rise, we can rest in God’s embrace.
In our troubled seas, God is our peace and God’s love will lead us through.
When we can’t feel a thing and are falling short, God says that we are loved and that we are held.

These messages of power are so important to the story of Job that we have been following these last few weeks.
At the beginning of November, we began to explore this little morality play in which a perfect, upright man, Job, is tested by God.
The Accuser has this question… will Job continue to be perfect and upright and faithful if things start to go badly for him? Or is he simply a fair-weather friend?
God allows this little experiment to proceed and Job’s flocks and livelihood and children are taken away from him. Even his own bodily health is impacted and he is covered in sores and finds himself in pain all day and night.
But still he refuses to turn his back on God.

The second part of our story involved Job’s friends.
They are convinced that Job must have done something wrong in order to have all of this punishment brought upon him.
They, like Job, firmly believed that good things happen to good people and that bad people get what they deserve. They see God as being the arbiter of retributive justice – where punishment and blessing is given out based upon someone’s faithfulness and goodness.
But for every one of their speeches, Job has one of his own.
He has done nothing wrong. He is innocent. If only he could have his day in court and stand before God, he could make his case and God would have to relent.
Job still believes at this point that God gives people what they deserve… and if he is being punished it is undeserved… and therefore… God is wrong.
Job is actually putting God on trial.

And as Isabel and Olivia reminded us in their message last week… God might be annoyed and a little upset at Job’s whining… maybe even perturbed at Job’s accusations… but the message God speaks out of the chaos and directly to Job’s heart is this: I created this whole world. I made everything in it. I understand how it works and am the very power that sustains it all. And… I love you. I’ve got your back.

For three chapters, God goes on and on and on about “the incomprehensible magnificence and immeasurable power of divine majesty.”
Were you there when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Have death’s gates been revealed to you?
Where’s the road to the place where light dwells?
Can you guide the stars at their proper times?
Do you know when mountain goats give birth?
Did you give strength to the horse?
Is it due to your understanding that the hawk flies?
Can you control the great beasts of the earth like the behemoth and the leviathan?

Job is stunned into silence.
He thought he had God all figured out… that God’s justice was some kind of divine math in which your goodness earned you points and blessings.
It actually reminds me of the television show, The Good Place, a comedy that explores ethics and morality and what we owe each other. The foundation of the afterlife in this universe is that for every good thing you do with selfless intent, you rack up points that allow you to enter “the good place” a place of eternal satisfaction.
But when you cuss, or stiff a waitress, or murder someone, points are deducted and without enough points, you end up in “the bad place.”

Job is living his life in a certain way, following all of the rules, making sacrifices for not only his potential sins but also those of his children, because he thinks that is what faith is about. Trying to earn God’s favor and blessing.

What he didn’t realize is that he already had it.
We all do.
The God who set the stars in motion and who knows about the birth of every mountain goat and how to direct the flight of a hawk also knows you and me intimately.
God knows every hair on our head.
God knows the divine plans in store for each of us.
And God’s justice is not a math equation.
Rather, it is a complicated, holy, grace-filled effort to take every broken, hurting, sinful thing in this world and to redeem and transform it back towards its holy purpose.
Job had only heard about God before… but now Job has seen God.
And God is far bigger, greater, more awesome than he ever imagined and his tiny way of grasping and understanding the world has been torn apart.

I think, if anything, this morality tale we find in the book of Job was an effort by early Jewish theologians to take apart what they believed was a very limited way of seeing God in the world.
So many people think that God is an impersonal judge who tallies right and wrong and who sits on the divine bench handing out punishments and rewards. And with such a calculated understanding of the divine, we can make no sense of that ancient question of why bad things happen to good people or why there is suffering in the lives of innocent people.
But our scriptures of our faith have a vastly different message for us about who God is and how deeply God cares for us.
Our God got down in the dirt and formed the first humans and breathed into them the breath of life.
Our God took imperfect people like Abraham and Noah and Jacob and through them, in spite of them, because of them, set in motion the divine plans for all the people of the world to be blessed.
Our God heard the cries of the people when they were caught in slavery in the land of Egypt and raised up a leader to bring them home.

In the end, what we find in the Book of Job are not easy answers to the question of why there is suffering. In fact, Job gets no answer or explanation for why so much was taken from him.
Instead, Job discovers that we are allowed to cry out when we suffer.
We should protest against injustice.
And we should open our lives and our hearts up to discover the ways that God is far powerful and more holy than we could ever imagine.
Before, Job had only heard about God.
But in the midst of his suffering and his yearning for truth, he encountered the very presence of God.
God reached out to him and in the process, Job found himself having a real, deepened, humble relationship with the Lord.
In our lives, we will face difficulties.
We will encounter diagnosis and questions that we cannot comprehend.
We will find ourselves asking why such awful things are happening in the world.
In these last few weeks, I have heard this very community raising up cries of concern for the death of loved ones, illness, wildfires, mass shootings, war, hunger, and homelessness.
None of these situations are deserved.
Innocent lives are impacted or harmed or taken far too soon.
We want answers and solutions.
And I think what we discover in the Book of Job is that there is no quick fix for the problems of this world. We can’t explain away why these things happen in a few words.
What we find instead is the presence of a God who is with us in the midst of it.
A God who hears every cry.
A God who seeks, in the words of Sharon Lynn Putt, “not to condemn and punish but to reconcile, to redeem, and to restore all of us to each other and to God.”

In the verses that we skipped in our reading for today, God reaches out to Job and invites him to offer up prayers and offerings for those three friends who had such a limited understanding of what was happening in Job’s life.
You see, even in the midst of restoring Job’s possessions, God is also working to redeem those relationships between Job and his friends.
And God is working to help transform and expand their understanding of how this world hangs together, too.

Our task, as we live out the truths of the Book of Job, is to listen to the suffering of others. To listen to our own pain. To not hide it, but hold it up into the light where God can show us that we are loved when we can’t feel a thing. We are strong when we think we are weak. We are held when we think we are falling short. We belong to God even when we think we don’t belong.
In that moment, we, like Job, can relent. We can surrender. We can lay our whole lives at the feet of God… knowing, trusting, believing… that no matter what happens, we are held in the hands of God.
Like Henry, our little hands aren’t big enough to fully grasp and understand the ways of this world. But God’s are.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

illustration adapted from Discipleship Ministry preaching notes

Mystery: Deserted

Posted on November 11, 2018Leave a comment

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
If you never have an opportunity to make your case…
If you are never allowed to truly be heard and seen…
If you believe that if someone just listened to you, they would see what was wrong…

Job cries out for justice.
He cries out for a hearing, a trial, an opportunity to lay out his case before the Lord.
And the days and weeks pass and no one is listening.
No one is paying attention to his pleas.
No one truly sees his struggle.

His friends try.
In fact, for 29 chapters there is a back and forth between Job and his friends.
They take turns speaking, lifting up platitudes, calling Job to repentance… and after each speech, Job responds in turn… his frustration growing with every sentence.

You see, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, believe that God is a God of justice, like Job does.
A God of retributive justice.
You get what you deserve.
If you live a righteous life, then you are blessed with peace and prosperity.
If you do unrighteous things, if you sin, then you are punished.

And those friends are looking at Job’s sorry state – his loss of family and income and now bodily distress.
Seeing all of that pain and misery, they conclude that if he is suffering, it has to be because he has done something wrong.
They take turns, but each one of them makes the case, that Job must be reaping something he himself has sown.

Don’t we do that?
When we see someone who has an unfortunate life experience or seems to be down on their luck, isn’t our first response to wonder what mistakes they might have made or how they got themselves into that situation?
We make assumptions about the cause of another person’s anguish, instead of simply being present and listening to them.
These friends… they don’t listen.
They don’t question their own assumptions.
Instead, they leap to intervention.
They see just how much harm has come into Job’s life.
Each one feels like they now have a burden to uncover his sin, point it out, so that Job can repent of that sin.
And this is because while they believe God is just, they also believe God is merciful.
“Happy is the person whom God corrects; so don’t reject the Almighty’s instruction. He injuries but he binds up; he strikes, but his hands heal.” (Job 5:17-18)
If they can get Job to repent, they believe they will save his life.

But for every one of their speeches, Job has an answer.
He has done nothing wrong.
Can’t they see that?
Can’t God see that?
We get a glimpse of his responses in our scripture reading for today. In yet another of these cycles where his friends speak and he responds, Job declares he is innocent and he demands justice… but God won’t even show up in his life so that Job can question him and lay out the case for his innocence.

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

Those words from legal wisdom were echoed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he sat in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.
He, too, is responding to friends – colleagues – the white Jewish and Christian leaders of the day, who had criticized the methods and timing of the demonstrations taking place in the city.
Dr. King was seeking justice for those who were suffering from racial injustice and segregation in the city, and was willing to put his own life and liberty on the line for the freedom of others.
What he encountered instead, was that people who should have been on his side – namely the white moderates – were instead finding all sorts of reasons to delay justice.
Like Job’s friends, they were making all sorts of assumptions about what was the cause of injustice and what might remedy it.
This isn’t the right path of action.
You aren’t the right person for the task.
It isn’t the right time.

He answers every single one of their charges and then finally turns his attention to this question of waiting.
“There comes a time,” Dr. King writes, “when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of despair.”

There comes a time when you simply can’t wait any longer.
When the delay of justice becomes a denial of justice.
When it feels like no one is listening and you have been absolutely deserted.

That loneliness can be found in Dr. King’s letter.
We see it throughout Job’s pleas to God.
We can also hear it in the words of Christ on the cross, echoing the psalmist – “My God, My God, why have you left me?”

You see, along the path towards true justice are moments of doubt when we aren’t sure we can keep going.
The fight appears too daunting.
The resistance is overwhelming.
There is no energy left to carry on.
And the loneliness… maybe that is the worst part.
Feeling like you are in this all by yourself and that there is no one out there to help you and no one out there is even listening.
But you also can’t wait any longer.

That desperation is all over Job’s pleas that we read in our passage of scripture today.
He wants his day in court.
He still, firmly, unwaveringly believes that God is a God of justice and if he could only make his case that he would be justified.

In many ways, Job helps us to find our way forward in our own times of great agony.
When we don’t receive answers those deep questions about why something is happening, we could choose to turn our back on God altogether.
We could also resign ourselves and simply give in – This must be what God wants, I guess I should just accept it… in fact, remember this was Job’s initial response when everything was taken from him.

Or, we can resist the suffering we see in our life or in the life of others. We can actively fight against it while at the same time clinging to our faith….
Rev. Nathalie Nelson Parker sees this paradox through the lens of theologian Martin Buber: “’Job’s faith in Justice is not broken down. But he is no longer able to have a single faith in God and Justice.’ Although God and Justice are not mutually aligned in his current situation, ‘He cannot forego his claim that they will again be united, somewhere, sometime, although he has no idea in his mind how this will be achieved.’”

Or as Dr. King once said, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards Justice.

In the face of suffering, it is hard to cling to hope.
It is hard to see God’s presence.
Both Job and Dr. King remind us of the persistent struggle to be seen, to be heard, to be known… and what it means to keep fighting, even when you feel like you are fighting all along.

I think for many of us, the question, however, isn’t what it means to be the one who sits in lament and struggle, but what it means to be the friends and the bystanders… the ones who so often make assumptions about where God is and what is really happening.

Rather than making excuses for God…
Rather than making assumptions about what is wrong in the lives of other people…
Rather than pushing our own understanding of what is right and wrong…
Maybe what we should do is sit back and listen.
Listen to the cries of suffering and injustice.
Listen to what those who are oppressed or struggling would like us to do.
Listen for where God might be calling us to lay aside our own assumptions.
Simply listen.
May it be so. Amen.

Mystery: Disoriented

Posted on November 4, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 1:1, 2:1-10

Throughout this month of November, we are going to be exploring the mystery of God’s presence and power and how unbelievable difficult it is to wrap our minds around. Through the book of Job, we will let ourselves be taken through a range of human emotions: grief, anger, humility, and love.
But above all, we are going to be wrestling with questions and not answers.
God’s questions of us.
The questions Job gets from his friends.
Our questions of God.
The questions we share about the whys and hows of this world.

Along the way, I’m going to invite us to rest in the mystery of God’s presence and promise and power… instead of jumping immediately to the answers. In fact… we might leave here today with even more questions to wrestle with… and that’s not a bad thing.

Will you pray with me…

In my early twenties I was living in Nashville and attending seminary. I had a trip scheduled to head back home for fall break and I was looking forward to some time away in a familiar place.
While I was there, my grandfather took a turn for the worse. Deda had struggled for a long time with diabetes and after a number of surgeries and amputations, infection was destroying his body.
My dad and I were able to drive to the hospital and spend the entire day with him. We watched the Hawkeyes win and we held his hand and tried to just be there for him. Two days later, he was gone.
I sat with family and planned the service. I gave a eulogy at the funeral. We laid him to rest.

All of this happened while I was away on our holiday break and when I came back to Nashville, it was like stepping into a different world.
I was heading back to a place where no one knew my Deda. No one even really knew how sick he had been.
I hadn’t missed any classes. I didn’t have to check in with any professors.
Even my work-study job didn’t notice that a significant experience
And heading back to that place where no one else understood my grief or my loss was disorienting.
So disorienting in fact, that just a day after arriving back in town, I tried to leave church without talking to anyone. I just didn’t want to get into it and explain it over and over again.
This is going to sound strange, but I wanted comfort and condolences, but not if I was going to have to rehearse the story to get them. I wanted a hug… but no one knew that I needed one.
So I rushed out the door… I quickly backed out of the parking spot… and accidently ran into a large concrete parking barrier… doing a couple thousand dollars of damage to my fiancé’s car.

Every single one of us, at some point in our lives, have moments of disorientation.
The loss of a job.
The death of a loved one.
Sending a child off to college.
Stubbing your toe on a nightstand in the middle of the night.

Disorientation is when we lose our sense of direction and are no longer sure which way is up, down, or sideways.
We find ourselves unsure of the next step.
We can’t quite get a handle on how to function in a new or changing role.
And sometimes, in the process of being disoriented, we find ourselves turning away… running away… from the very things that have been our source of help and strength – our anchor in the storm.
Sometimes, we find ourselves stubbornly clinging to something we thought we knew or an old way of functioning… even when it no longer serves our needs in a new context.

We should expect a bit of disorientation from Job as we begin to explore his story this week.
There once was a man who lived in the land of Uz…
It sounds like the start of a fairy tale, doesn’t it?
And in some ways it is.
The book of Job is not meant to be a historical factual retelling of actual events, but a work of philosophy told as a drama… think of Antigone by Sophocles or Candide by Voltaire. Through the lens of the characters, the audience has an opportunity to wrestle themselves with questions of life.

We are introduced to Job, a perfect man, with a perfect life, and perfect wife and family. He was honest and he feared God. He even offered extra offerings on a regular basis on behalf of his children… just in case they had made a mistake and had been unfaithful to God.
But as the story unfolds, there is a sort of wager made in heaven.
The Lord is so proud of how faithful Job has been, but the Adversary – the Accuser – ha Satan – has some questions.
Is Job only able to be so faithful because he has never faced difficulty?
What would happen if he were truly tested?
The Lord agrees to let the Adversary bring destruction upon Job so they might see what would happen.
First, his herds are stolen and his servants killed.
Then, his children are killed when a wind comes and collapses the house they are in.
But instead of cursing God, instead of being angry, he laments and blesses God’s name.
Our scripture picks up after these events.
Alright, the Adversary, acknowledges… he was able to remain faithful – but those were just things. We took away from Job… but we didn’t actually harm HIM.
If he was truly tested… bodily tested… in the flesh… then Job would turn away from the Lord.

This is one of those places where I start to have more questions.
Job has done nothing wrong.
The suffering and the loss he is experiencing is completely undeserved.
And yet God allows it to happen.

Job is stricken with sores from head to toe – so severe that they are only soothed by taking a broken piece of pottery and scraping at them. I mean… gross…
And still, he refuses to turn away from his faith.
He refuses to be angry at God.
He clings to his beliefs – in good times and in bad, he says.

Job’s pain is so excruciating the scripture tells us that he couldn’t stand up or lie down. His friends couldn’t recognize him when they came to visit. He was utterly broken.
Can you imagine his pain?
Can you imagine his confusion – why are these things happening to me?
What did I or my children or my ancestors do to deserve this?
How can I possibly move forward or rebuild my life after what has happened?

Into this moment, his wife speaks.
Mrs. Job invites him to curse God and die.
Now, those might seem like harsh words… but remember she, too, has experienced unbearable loss.
Her children have died, too.
Her flocks and livelihood have been stripped away.
Her husband is suffering in unimaginable pain.
She is angry and heartbroken and confused and just as disoriented as Job.

And so she encourages him to let it out… let out all of that pain and grief and anger.
Shout at the heavens! she cries.
Let go of your stubbornness and integrity.
Demand that God tell you why you are being tested so.

We sometimes hear her words and cringe… We can’t question God like that!
Curse God? Doesn’t that lead to destruction?
And yet, the Lord has no harsh words for Mrs. Job.
As our story unfolds in the next few weeks, what we discover is that perhaps Job is stubbornly clinging to an old understanding of faith that is no longer adequate for the suffering of this world.
It will only be when he does open himself up to reach out and question God that he finally is able to re-orient himself to a new reality.

In the midst of the disorientation of our lives, it is hard to know where to turn.
Sometimes we are tempted to completely turn away from God.
Sometimes, we find ourselves stubbornly clinging to old ways and in the process close ourselves off from change and possibility.
In fact, I think that if Job simply sat there in the ashes and the dust and refused to engage God in questions, his relationship with God would have become stagnant, wrote, expected.

I think part of what we are invited to discover in these chapters is that things happen in our lives that are completely out of our control.
We don’t always know why.
We can’t always understand.
But every moment of disorientation contains within it the opportunity to re-orient ourselves upon our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer.
If we are lucky, the relationship we have with God when it is all said and done will be deeper and more faithful than when we began.
We will let go of our assumptions and we will allow our lives and our hearts to be expanded in the process – to become more compassionate, more humble, more faithful.

So stick with us for a few more weeks as we continue this journey through Job. Next week, we jump a ways ahead to chapter 23 – so take some time this week on your own time to read some of these chapters in between.
Sit with Job in his suffering.
Listen to the words of his friends and ask how you would feel if they were spoken to you.
And open up your heart for how God might be speaking to your pain, your sorrow, and your disorientation.
Let yourself feel it.
Let yourself experience it.
Let yourself sit in the mystery.

An Examen for Ministry #NaBloPoMo

Posted on November 3, 2015Leave a comment

Too often, we simply don’t stop to ask questions, to examine our lives.

We do things without thinking about the consequences or implications.

We do it because we always have.

We do it because everyone else is.

We do it because it seems like the best option in the moment.

And we do it in ministry, too.

An unexamined life is not worth living (Plato, quoting Socrates)

Well, maybe, unexamined ministry is not worth doing.

We should always be mindful of the implications of our words and actions.

We should take time to pause, reflect, and see if we really are acting according to our values and goals.

I really started thinking about this after having a dialogue with Rev. Bill Cotton on Monday of this week. We were out at Taproot Garden for “Organic Ministry.” One of the big themes of our classes is that we need to pay attention… to the soil, to the water, to the microorganisms, to the weeds, to everything! It’s all related. And what happens to one has implications to everything else.

One of our guides for “Organic Ministry,” Tim Diebel, shared with us the nautical terming “kedging.” When you run aground with your boat, it is a method for getting back to where you want to be. You throw or take your anchor to where you actually WANT to be, and then you winch yourself there. Taking time to examine your life (ministry) is like asking if we have gone off course and tossing the anchor into deeper waters.

The next morning, I sat down with a congregation member who is concerned about the potential addition of lazer tag to our nearby UMC camp. As she paused to reflect upon values and goals, she is troubled that in a culture of so much violence, so many deaths of children via firearms (7 every day), as we prepare for a day of praying for peace and the end of gun violence as a conference, we want to install a recreational option at camp where we give kids toy weapons to point at each other for fun. And her words hit me like a ton of bricks. We had taken our youth to play lazer tag at a local business and hadn’t even paused to wonder about the underlying messages, the glorification of violence… it was simply for fun. We just didn’t think about it.

So we are now talking about the values of our ministry and whether or not this type of activity is in line with the ends God has in mind for us.

Then, in Covenant Bible Study, we were exploring Paul’s writings to the Corinthians and I kept running into the idea that freedom means everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. The only way we can live into the freedom of Christ is to ask, in every situation, if what I’m doing is beneficial for myself AND for the community/world.

So here are four questions that I want to start incorporating into “an examen for ministry” in my church.

Could this be a bridge?

Is this ministry/event/class for insiders of the church only? What are the possibilities for transforming it into a “bridge event”? There are so many things we do as a church without every imagining they could be bridges for us to go to the community or the community to come to us. For example: we have a Veteran’s lunch coming up: we have always done this special lunch after church for our veterans to thank them for their service. What would happen if we sent invites to local American Legion or VFW groups and invited them to come for a free meal so we could stay thank-you?

Who could this impact?

Who could this ministry/event/class impact? How do we reach them? What would it look like if every ministry in the church asked this question? If they thought outside their current make-up to share what they have experienced with others? We get so comfortable with our groups we often don’t think to expand. Or maybe we do, but we neglect asking how to reach them. We need to be reminded that what we are doing isn’t reaching them… or they would be there. Do we change how we promote something? Do we change the event itself – day, time, format? For example: we have a monthly senior fellowship that hasn’t been able to get newly retired folks to attend. One of the realities is some of these newly retired are the children of active attenders! We are starting to imagine how the event might need to change so all feel welcome.

Does this fall within our vision frame?

We have been using a tool called a vision frame this past year. Does this support/enhance our vision and mission? Is it in line with the core values of our church? Is it part of our strategy? Will it help us to reach the measures we have set? Our mission at Immanuel UMC is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Our vision: In Christ, live lives of love, service, and prayer. Our core values: hospitality, caring community, stewardship, missional outreach, worship/music, and growing in discipleship. Our strategy and measures include the goals we set at charge conference. This one seems fairly obvious… but how often don’t we stop to ask the question. This frame allows us to truly zoom in on our calling from God in this time and place… and it means we won’t do some things so that we can do these things well. This next year, our two main areas of focus will be children and seniors and it means we will shift away resources and attention from other things for this season.

What kind of world does this create?

What kind of world/community does this event/ministry/class create or support? What are the implications for the neighborhood; for the generations that follow; for the world? And this question asks us to think long term about the consequences of any particular ministry. One of the tensions of ministry is that what might be needed in the short term isn’t always what is best for the long term. Asking this question allows us to weigh options as we seek God’s future. It invites us to think about the values of the world we are implicitly supporting by our actions or inactions. As United Methodists, we have social principles and resolutions because we believe that we can and should have an impact on the world. The conversation we have begun about lazer tag as staff is one example of how we are starting to wrestle with this question.

What questions would you add to this examen?

Who do you say I am?

Posted on June 26, 2015Leave a comment

I started reading Neil Cole’s Organic Church this morning.

I am highlighting like a fool, but one line caused me to stop and pick up my phone to blog:

Before one speaks about starting or growing churches, one simply must wrestle with this question: “Who is Jesus to you?”

Maybe what struck me so much about this is that less than a month ago, I heard that same phrase. A new pastor took up her post in our community and her first sermon answered this question.

She was inspired by a pastor, retiring from his church who ended his ministry with such a sermon. A parishioner came up after and said: “That was wonderful… Why did you wait so long to share with us who Jesus is?”

As a pastor, I talk about Jesus all the time.

I teach about his life and ministry.

I use big theological words like atonement and justification.

I share what Jesus asks us to do and be.

But, have I ever preached on “who Jesus is to me?”

To me, Jesus is God in the flesh. Immanuel, God-with-us.

One reason I was so excited to be serving at Immanuel UMC is because their very name captures who Jesus is to me.

I shared a few days ago about how much I love being an aunt and getting down on my hands and knees to play with the kids and that is what I feel Jesus has done for me. Jesus comes to us, wherever we are and meets us there. The love I have for them… My willingness to do just about anything for my niblings… is but a pale reflection of the lengths Jesus went to show his love for me. He suffered and died to save me from myself.

And that is because the relationship is always the most important thing with Jesus.

More important than rules or right answers, more important than our histories of successes or failures.

I didn’t earn God’s love… It was there.

I can’t do anything to lose it either.

God-in-the-flesh met me where I was… a young woman, full of plans for my life, naïve, hopeful, everything and nothing figured out…

But that’s not where it ends. It isn’t just a nice feeling of warmth and comfort and safety. Love means wanting the best for someone, and God’s love saves us.

From ourselves.
From sin.
From false realities.

Love is full of expectation and dreams.

And somehow God kept nudging me to where I needed to be.

Jesus opened my eyes to see the broken of this world: some by their own making, others by the sin of others or our corporate betrayals. And Jesus asked me to love them… like I had been loved.

So what does it mean to be like Jesus? To follow this Jesus?

Jesus asked me to do whatever I could to challenge the things and people and structures that tear us apart. To be willing to put my life or safety on the line to meet another person where they are.

Jesus asks me to be in relationship with others. Because relationships are the center of our faith.

Jesus is God-with-us… He is relationship.

And as the Body of Christ, we are called to follow together. A community of accountability and hope that holds on to God’s expectations and dreams for our world. People who love and challenge one another and who seek to always build new relationships… Especially with those who have none.

That is who Jesus is to me.

Spiritually Blind

Posted on October 23, 2014Leave a comment

I mentioned earlier this week a youth group conversation about Mary Magdalene and demon possession. There are so many different ways of understanding what demon possession might have been about and what Mary’s demons might have been.

I’ve had demons explained away and described lots of different ways.

Illness.

Mental disorders and illness.

Cultural misunderstandings and differences.

And I started our conversation by talking about some of those things and how they might have applied to Mary Magdalene.

Then, I asked the question if the seven demons were cast out all at once, or in seven different encounters. We talked about the Gerasenes demoniac who had a “legion” of demons, all cast out at once. And one young woman very astutely pointed out they they must have been some real spiritual force because they entered the pigs and thousands of them died right then and there.

We don’t often see demons and angels in our world today, but we also aren’t looking. Or maybe, like some of us in this world are color blind, maybe the problem is that we are spiritually blind. Maybe we simply aren’t built to see spiritual forces in the world today.

Full props to our Director of Youth and Christian Inspiration, Mr. Vaughn, who pointed out that in John’s account of the resurrection, John and Simon Peter ran to the tomb and saw nothing but linen scraps lying inside, but Mary Magdalene saw the angels.

As a woman who had been possessed by demons, she had the spiritual sight to see the angelic presence, where John and Simon Peter saw emptiness and darkness.

The world is full of things I can’t comprehend or understand. Who am I to say that those who see auras or who sense the spiritual forces of evil are mistaken? What if I simply cannot see what they can?

Finding Faith at the Lunch Table

Posted on May 21, 20141 Comment

If I think back to the first moment when faith sunk in deep into my life, it would be sitting around a lunch table at Simpson College.

I wasn’t actually a college student then, but a sophomore in high school participating in our Youth Annual Conference. It was hosted there at the college every year and it was an opportunity for youth leadership to be developed, new friendships to be made, and for us to explore faith in a totally different way.

I had been floating around the periphery of church for a while. I went to Sunday School a few times as a youngster. We went on Christmas Eve with my grandparents. I had been to funerals and weddings. And I had a number of friends who were Christian and often invited me along to church. But their experiences of faith were not my own. I wanted to know more about Jesus, but I never quite felt like I totally fit in with their traditions. Looking back, they were more conservative and evangelical than where I eventually ended up, so perhaps early on I was sensing that wasn’t where I belonged.

I remember vividly in the fall of my sophomore year, however, that my mom realized I had not yet been confirmed and we started going to church as a family. Both sides of our family had been United Methodist, so we went to the biggest church we could find nearby. And I was instantly hooked. I joined the youth choir and the youth bells. I started confirmation. I went to youth group. Because it was a large church, my social circle instantly expanded with students from other area high schools all becoming my new best friends. It was a really amazing time.

And that spring, we went to Youth Annual Conference. We were a small group, even though it was a large church – just my mom; the youth pastor, Todd; another student and myself. It was my first experience of holy conferencing and resolutions and voting on legistation. It was my first experience of a praise band. It was my first chance to really understand what it might mean to be United Methodist.

But it was a conversation around the lunch table that really got me hooked. Others had been debating about whether or not we should listen to pop music, but Todd had just been rapping in the lunch line the whole “Fresh Prince of Bel Aire” song. And when he finally joined in the conversation, he talked about how he had used a Judas Priest song in youth group one night. This was many years ago, but I remember he talked about redeeming rather than rejecting culture. He talked about asking better questions in the face of music and narratives and people we don’t on the surface agree with, finding out what makes them tick and what they are trying to say, so we can speak with them. And I knew, right then, that I could claim that kind of faith.

In his book, Falling Upward, Richard Rohr talks about the two halves of our lives. The time we spend creating the container for our lives (identity, security, relationships) and then the time we spend living in and discovering the life we have built for ourselves. He writes that a type of spiritual awakening or falling apart happens in between the two of them…. when we realize we can’t just keep going on and building that container for ever, we actually have to start exploring what it means to live in this life we have created.

In the life of faith, one way this can be described is the move from law to grace. In the first half of our lives, we need the rules of faith: don’t kill, love God, pray this way. Rules lay the foundations… but the law itself is not the end. Rohr quotes the Dalai Lama here: “Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.” Grace is helping the man get his oxen out of a hole on the sabbath. Grace is releasing the adulteress and telling her to go and sin no more. Grace is meeting people out of love rather than judgment.

Because I came to my faith a little bit later in life, my religious experience was never steeped in law and judgment language. That being said, I was one of those “good girls” who tried to always follow the rules. I got straight A’s. I never drank in high school, or smoked, or experimented in any way. I had enough formation in rule following in other aspects of my life.

In fact, I think in many ways, the church I discovered in places like that lunch table helped to break down and expand that initial container I had built for myself. My experiences of Jesus and religion were the catalyst for some big changes in my life. I moved from a desire to be a scientist/meterologist to a religion major. I found myself moving towards people who were all about breaking the rules…. in both healthy and not so healthy ways. But because my initial experiences of church were fairly traditional, I have maintained an ability to see and converse with all sorts of different faith languages. We don’t discard the containers we build in the first half, Rohr says, but they become the stuff we build from.

I am living in a very different sort of faith life than I ever imagined was possible sixteen years ago, when I sat down at that lunch table. I have been an advocate and fundraiser for global health. I have ministered in cities and small towns. I’m about to become the senior pastor of a mid-sized church in the city. But as I continue to live into my relationship with God, the desire to get to know and understand someone or something where it is and start from there is what continues to drive me.