September 24, 2019
Why would God care what I had for breakfast?
Because God cares that I take care of my body.
Because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. (I learned that on Sesame Street approximately 35 year ago!)
I had a pumpkin spice shakeology and pumpkin purée shake for breakfast today. Ever since I started exercising in late June, I’ve been drinking protein shakes on days I work out. For 9 weeks I worked out 6 days/week. On 2 weeks I traveled, to Indy and to OK, and worked out less - not at all on the week in Indy and for 3 days in OK I only did stretches in my hotel room. Then the better part of a 3rd week I was sick - with what turned out to be allergies. But I felt so bad I thought it was a cold the first 4 days, and slept most of 2 of those 4 days. I lost 4 days of work-outs to that, too. Last week I only worked out 5 days, because on the 5th day I took a fitness class in person and it was an hour long, twice as long as my usual work-outs, so I took the next day off. This week will only be 4 days, because of the fitness class again and an early meeting Thursday morning. Next week - Lancaster for 2 days and then Puerto Rico!!!!!! Yay!!!! I had marked my 40th birthday (on Oct 3) as the goal/end mark of all this. Except, I will still have protein shake mix left. And I don’t want to lose the muscle tone I’ve developed. That’s really been the point of it this time - not weight loss (although I’ve lost 10 pounds), but getting stronger. Now, I want to maintain my strength. I’m still working on figuring out how...
Monday, September 30, 2019
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Waiting... and Counting...
15th Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2019
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 56; Luke 16:1-13
I don’t know about your week, but my week was one of
those where by Friday, I started counting. By Friday morning, I was up to 5
doctor visits between me and the kids, 4 church meetings, 2 pastoral visits, 2
community visits, 1 community member helped by the Samaritan Fund, and, most
excitedly, TWO new ministries in the works here at Lisbon. On Tuesday I ate
lunch with SEVEN pastors who serve churches here in the area of western Howard
County and southern Carroll County. We are working on forming a coalition among
us so that we can share our resources and ideas and together better serve our community. For our next gathering, we
even listed 8 more pastors to invite to join us! Then, on Wednesday I met with
Ms. A., the principal at Lisbon Elementary to discuss how the church and
the school can partner together, since we’re next door neighbors. We talked
about a couple obvious ways, like sponsoring a needy family over the holidays
to provide a special meal and gifts for them. But then as the conversation continued,
Ms. A. realized that what would really be a huge help would be for us to
offer childcare during one-time special school events when they really don’t
want parents to bring younger siblings, like when the kindergarteners and 5th
graders make candy houses in December and during 5th grade
graduation in June. We looked into it Thursday morning, and all we have
to do is hold a training for our church members who are interested in helping,
run background checks on anyone working directly with the children, and have
the parents sign a waiver. So, we’re moving forward with it! It’s been a very
full week, although a good week, which is why by Friday morning, I found myself
counting the different things I’d done during the week.
Counting is a theme in our Scriptures this week as well
and we’re going to start with the dishonest counting we just read in Luke.
Jesus told his disciples the parable of the dishonest manager, or sometimes
called the shrewd manager. The truth is he was both dishonest and shrewd; it’s really strange. He was
about to get fired because of his dishonesty, and so he became shrewd so that
when he lost his job, he’d still have some place to go and friends who would
take him in. The manager met with each person who owed his master money and had
them alter their bills so that they didn’t owe as much. In other words, he
forgave their debts. The master heard about it and commended his manager! “Why? Because he knew how to look after
himself.” Jesus in effect says here that “Streetwise people are smarter in this
regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for
angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for
what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to
concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live,
and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”[1]
Here’s the parallel with us: what we have doesn’t really belong to us, either.
We are stewards, or managers, of our wealth and our property. They belong to
God, and are entrusted to us while we are on this earth. Our stewardship in this
life must be faithful, as in we must use those things rightly and according to
God’s will. Otherwise, why would we be trusted with true riches, which is eternal
life? “If you’re honest in small things, you’ll be honest in big things. If
you’re a crook in small things, you’ll be a crook in big things. If you’re not
honest in small jobs, who will put you in charge of the store?”[2]
The answer is no one. And wealth is not neutral. Either you use what you have
for God’s purposes or you don’t. We can either serve God, or we can serve money. “The way we live now has consequences for how
we experience God’s future. The way
we live, the values we hold, the relationships we form today are vitally
related to God’s future.”[3]
How you count matters. Make sure you do it honestly and faithfully, always
remembering that “all things come of thee, O Lord,” and we are just the
temporary caretakers.
Now, in Jeremiah, the people have been counting honestly,
but not counting money. They’ve been counting the seasons: the springtime
harvest, the dog days of summer, and now it’s fall, but the people are still
hurting. They’ve had a long wait and things have only gotten worse instead of
better. They’re counting until healing comes, and are still counting. It’s
interesting, the verse in Jeremiah is in the form of a question, “Is there no
balm in Gilead?” and the song we just sang answers that question in the
affirmative, “There is a balm in
Gilead to make the wounded whole.” In Jeremiah’s time, there was literally a balm from Gilead; it was
resin from the Styrax tree, for which Gilead was famous. It was used
medicinally and was exported widely. Yet there are times when it feels like
there isn’t a balm, when you’re waiting for things to get better and they don’t. That’s what’s going on here in
Jeremiah. The people are waiting for salvation… and still waiting. And Jeremiah
is hurting with the people. He’s not happy to be proven right about his
prophecy; this prophet loves his people and would have loved to be wrong,
because then it would mean the people would not be suffering. Instead they
suffered through springtime, they suffered through summer, and now it’s fall
and they’re still looking for a
healing balm and restored health. And the prophet weeps with the people. Is
there any balm that might help? They’re still waiting, and counting. “How long,
O Lord?”
Finally,
our psalm today is not the assigned psalm, but one that fits in with counting,
especially when you’re waiting to be healed. It is a psalm of lament. “Have
mercy on me, O God,” that kyrie eleison
from last week, Lord, have mercy. Why? Because people are hounding me, pursuing
me, and oppressing me all day long. All
day, they hurt my cause and plan evil against me. And you know what? It says
people or enemies or flesh, but sometimes what’s hounding us may be a disease,
or genetics, or our past. It may be a mental illness or a mental block of
something. I’ve met a couple women whose mothers died while middle-aged, one at
46 and the other at 63, and for both of those women, it was a huge deal when
they reached that age and lived past it. I have three chronic conditions
myself, one that started in my teens, one in my 20s, and one in my 30s, such
that I find myself wondering what’s going to happen in my 40s, and I turn 40 in
about ten days. But here’s the other thing about this psalm: if you count,
there are more lines focusing on trust in God than on cries for help. And the
turning point in this psalm is the verse I focused on with the children. “You
have kept count of my restless nights. You have collected all my tears in your
bottle. Are they not recorded in your book?”
 |
| Tear drops in a bottle, from www.lovedoesthat.etsy.com |
This isn’t about us counting; this is about God counting. We’re used to the verse
where Jesus says he knows the number of hairs on our head.[4]
This is Jesus saying he knows the number of tears you’ve cried, and hasn’t just
counted them and let them fall where they may, but collected them, and recorded
them. Wow.
Contemporary
Christian group Point of Grace released a song in 1996 called “Keep the Candle
Burning.” The first verse says, “You think you're alone there in your silent
storm/ But I've seen the tears you've cried falling down and trying to drown/
The flame of hope inside.” The reason those tears aren’t actually drowning out
the flame of hope and extinguishing it is because God’s catching them. And not
just wiping them on his pants or a tissue, but putting them in his bottle and
recording each one in his book. That’s how that candle keeps burning. That’s
why a psalm of lament talks more about trust in God than about anything else.
The tears are not lost. Nor do you cry in vain. The thing about psalms of
lament is that they often move us from a past way of being through a profound
disorientation where you don’t know which way is up, and land us on the other
side not the same as before but with a new orientation, a new testimony, a
deeper understanding of God and faith. We are transformed in a way only made possible
by God, who causes new life where none seems possible, who keeps that candle of
hope burning, who counts our tears and waits with us as we count the time until
we are transformed.
“Is
there no balm in Gilead?” Yes, there is a balm in Gilead. His name is Jesus. “How
long, O Lord?” Uh, well, time works differently with the Lord. Psalm 90:4 says,
“A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a
watch in the night.” Yet that same psalm also says, “Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” One commentary I read said that “number
our days” does not refer to the whole span of one’s life, but to a specific
preset period of time. Moreover, we need to accurately, honestly count the
number of days of that time period so that we might understand that there is
indeed an end to it.[5]
Whatever days you are counting, whatever season you’re in that you’re waiting
and waiting and waiting for it to end, keep counting. Count faithfully, as in
accurately and with faith and hope. There is an end to it. When? I don’t know. I
don’t know how long. What I do know is that the Lord is collecting your tears
and recording them. They are not in vain. Your struggles are not in vain. “In
God I trust and am not afraid,” no matter what may be hounding me or knocking
at the door. No matter what season I’m in, whether it’s a fruitful one or a
season of drought. I will be faithful with what has been entrusted to me.
[1]
Luke 16:8-9, MSG
[2]
Luke 16:10-12, MSG
[3]
Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, p. 48
[4]
Matthew 10:30
[5] The Book of Psalms, The New
International Commentary on the Old Testament, p. 695
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
A Hot Wind Is Blowing
14th Sunday after Pentecost
September 15, 2019
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; 1Timothy 1:12-17; Luke
15:1-10
There are two themes tying together our Scripture
readings this morning. The first one is sin. In Jeremiah, God’s people are
about to be on the receiving end of divine judgment because of their sin. Jesus
is charged with welcoming sinners and eating with them. (How dare he! He’s
supposed to be eating with the good people, with us.) And then Timothy says,
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am chief.”[1]
We know what Paul wrote to the Romans, that “all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God.”[2]
None of us is perfect, no matter how we appear to the outside world or how much
we cultivate our social media profiles. We all sin. We all are in need of a
Savior. We are all in need of gathering in, like we just sang, at some point in
our lives or another. We all need seeking out, just as the shepherd went after
the one lost sheep and the woman went after her one lost coin. We all need to
know that we matter and are loved, even when we’ve gone astray, even when we’re
lost, even when we’ve sinned and completely made a mess of things. We need to
know that someone will look for us, someone will welcome us, someone will still
make room for us to sit with them at their table. We need to know we’re not
beyond redemption, not beyond hope. And God does that, but not before first God
sends a wind.
In Jeremiah, God sends a hot wind, kinda like the one we had
on Thursday. I could feel it standing at the afternoon bus stop – 90 degrees,
full sun, and a hot wind was blowing. Through Jeremiah, God says, “A scorching
wind from the barren heights in the desert blows toward my people, but not to
winnow [as in to separate the wheat from the chaff] or cleanse [a refreshing
wind; no] a wind too strong for that comes from me.”[3]
A wind that is too strong to winnow or to cleanse or to refresh leaves, what? A
wind that scatters? A wind that pushes?
I remember one Sunday afternoon in Nicaragua,
I was at the home of an American missionary family, when the sky in one
direction turned brown. We all went inside, which in those houses means the
bedrooms. All the other rooms are open air; the bedrooms are the only ones with
all four walls and a ceiling. And this huge dust storm blew through. The air
turned windy and much cooler. Within 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, everything was covered with a half inch
of dust that then took hours to clean up off the floors and everything that had
been exposed to it. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even a hurricane,
because there was no rain, just dust.
 |
| This is just a stock photo showing a dust storm. I did not take a picture of the one I experienced in Nicaragua. |
In
the Mediterranean they have a wind called the sirocco. (This is your vocabulary
word for the day.) It is a hot, devastating wind that can reach hurricane
speeds and brings dry and dusty conditions, much like what I experienced in
Nicaragua. The sirocco starts in the Sahara desert in the middle of Africa and
blows north into Northern Africa and across the Mediterranean Sea into Southern
Europe.
These
are the hot, scorching winds from the desert that God sends to God’s people.
It’s not refreshing. It’s not cooling. It’s not blowing away the pollen. It’s
blowing in dirt and sand. When I went
home for the first time after nine months in Nicaragua, it felt like it took me
the whole two weeks to scrub all the dirt and dust off me and out of the
creases in my elbows and out of my ears and every other crevice. When I
returned to Nicaragua you know what the top comment I received was? “Heather,
your feet are so clean!” They hadn’t been exposed to this dust and dirt of the
ages for two weeks!
There
is a Greek phrase that some churches use during their communion liturgy, it’s
“kyrie eleison.” Sound familiar to anyone? It means “Lord, have mercy.” The 1980s
rock band, Mr. Mister, released a song by that title in 1985. The first verse begin, “The wind blows hard
against this mountain side/ Across the sea into my soul/ It reaches into where
I cannot hide/ Setting my feet upon the road…” This is a strong wind. It blows
hard; it’s not refreshing or soothing. It goes across the sea and gets into
your crevices, deep into your soul, where you cannot hide. Kyrie eleison, Lord,
have mercy, indeed. This is a wind that seeks you out, that will not let you go
until it has found you and puts you on the road you must travel. “Kyrie
eleison, down the road that I must travel/ Kyrie eleison, through the darkness
of the night.” In those parables that Jesus tells about the lost sheep and the
lost coin, we’re not the shepherd or the coin collector. We are what has been
lost and is in need of finding. And God sends this hot wind, that is not going
to feel good, to come find you and bring you back.
Because,
don’t forget, the Hebrew word for wind is the same word for breath and the same
word for God’s Spirit. This is the Holy Spirit moving. Not in ways that are
comforting, but in ways that are discomforting. This is the Spirit moving over
the waters at the beginning of creation, yet this is not a time of creating, or
even a time of separating the crop from the weed, or a time of refreshing and
renewal. You may not want to be found.
You may like the dark cave you found, or stumbled upon, on your own. But God’s
Spirit seeks you out. And there’s comfort in being found and the reminder you
are loved. And you also have to clean up afterward, ‘cuz you’re filthy from
whatever hole you fell into like the sheep or the dust you accumulated hiding
under the furniture like the coin. You have to take stock of where you are now,
because you are not the same as you were before.
And
here’s the second theme word found in all three of these Scriptures: grace.
Even in Jeremiah pronouncing this divine judgment, God says, “I will not make a
full end.” And you are still my people. You are still my child. I will not
destroy completely. There is still hope. Timothy phrases it as “I received
mercy,” the answer to that prayer of kyrie eleison. “I was shown mercy and… the
grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly.” Grace overflowed. Amazing
grace. Jesus came to save sinners, which includes you and me. We want to think
we’re exempt. We want to think we have our lives all together. Look at your
neighbor. They don’t have everything in their lives all together, either.
You
might think the shepherd’s got 99 sheep, surely one more doesn’t matter. It
might even seem foolish to leave 99 to go looking for the one. 1 Corinthians
1:18 says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” To those of
us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
I
got involved in international missions through my mom. When I was in 6th
grade she, as a nurse, joined a medical/dental team out of Maryland that made
yearly trips to Honduras and Guatemala. They had team shirts every year, with
whatever design on the front. On the back, the shirts always said, “Dios te
ama,” Spanish for “God loves you,” and a starfish. Do you know the story of the
starfish?
One
day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something
up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “What
are you doing?” The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The
surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and
hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”After listening politely,
the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf.
Then, smiling at the man, he said…” I made a difference for that one.”
We can’t do everything. We can’t help all people. But
God’s not asking us to. God’s asking us to love the people given to us to love.
God’s asking you to love your neighbor as yourself. When you find yourself
blown with a hot wind onto another road that you did not choose, it’s not a
problem to solve, because there is no going back to where you were. The only
way to go is forward. Adjust to your new surroundings. Learn about this new
road. Pray kyrie eleison, Lord, have mercy. And when things are different, when
you’re in the wilderness, the key questions to ask are: “How will we now be
with God? How will we now be with one another? Who are we now? What does God
want us to do now? Who is our neighbor now?”[4]
There may not be easy answers. The answers may be not what you want to hear.
But this is the time when the questions are more important than the answers. Winds
have blown through this church, many kinds of winds including a hot,
devastating wind. The wind blew the couple joining our church today here to us, just as
it blew each of us here. The good news is that this wind, even in this form, is
still God’s Spirit at work, moving, moving us, blowing through our church and
our community, not leaving us the same yet not leaving us alone or forsaken or
abandoned, either. This is God’s Spirit in the form of a 2x4, saying, “Get
moving!” Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
The Importance of Being Formed
13th Sunday after Pentecost
September 8, 2019
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-18; Luke 14:25-33
In January of 2009 the big news story was what was called
“the miracle on the Hudson.” Does the phrase ring a bell? If not, how about
Captain Sullenberger? He became a household name that day. Captain Sullenberger
was one of two pilots flying a plane that had just taken off from La Guardia
airport when the plane struck a flock of Canadian geese and lost power in both
engines. Captain Sullenberger and his co-pilot safely landed the plan in the
Hudson River and everyone on board survived. Everyone deemed it a miracle and
the good Captain was called a hero. Hollywood even made a movie about it
starring Tom Hanks and directed by Clint Eastwood. But do you remember Captain
Sullenberger’s reaction to all the accolades? He said he was just following his
training. It wasn’t anything special. He was just doing what he had been
trained to do as a pilot. His attitude was a lot like what Jesus describes in
Luke 17:10, when Jesus tells his disciples, “When you’ve done all you should,
then say, “We are merely servants, and we have simply done our duty.” That was
Captain Sullenberger’s response to the whole thing. I simply did my duty; I did
the work I was trained to do.
The image we have from Jeremiah this morning is that of a
potter working at the wheel forming a clay pot. But it wasn’t coming out right,
it wasn’t taking the shape the potter wanted it to have. So, the potter kept
working, re-forming the clay and reshaping it until it turned out right. After
this description we learn that the potter is the Lord, and we are the clay. And
the Lord works in us and through us to shape us as God’s people. Yet we also
have free agency, and so we have to choose to be shaped and formed as God’s
people. Most of the things we do every day are out of habit. The numbers vary
depending on the study, but somewhere from 40% to 95% of human behavior is done
out of habit. That makes your habits and routines very important. It makes it
important that you have formed good habits. And not just physical habits like
eating vegetables and brushing teeth, but mental habits and spiritual habits as
well. You have to be intentional about forming those habits to take care of
your body. You have to be intentional about your spiritual formation as
well.
This is the basis for the Christian ethics that I learned
in seminary, which is different from what you will hear from other clergy who
trained in other seminaries. We were told that this understanding of virtue
ethics is part of what makes Duke Divinity School unique. You see, a lot of
ethics is a dilemma, right? You’re faced with a decision, like do you steal the
expensive medicine you can’t afford for your wife or do you let her die? Well,
what I learned from Stanley Hauerwaus and Sam Wells, who are the two big names
in this field, is that what matters is how you’re been spiritually formed. So, Christian
ethics are ethics that define us as Christians. It is how we act, think, and
respond because of who we are in Christ Jesus. We are people who have been
shaped by Holy Scripture and so our ethics are grounded in the life and
teachings of Jesus Christ. There is no decisional ethics and crisis moment of
deciding what to do. The choice was already made when we decided to follow
Jesus. We already chose the way of love, peace, and gentleness; therefore, we
will act, think, and respond in ways that are loving, peaceful, and gentle. In
other words, we will respond how we’ve been trained.
Christian
ethics are first concerned with the life that is made possible in Christ for
Christians. We look first to the transformation brought about in Christ and not
to society for the source of our ethics. Our ethics are formed by our habits of
communal worship, prayer, and reading the Bible. If ethics is about choice,
then the only choice that matters is God’s choice and God chose to be for us in
the person and work of Jesus Christ. So, Christian ethics are about people, not
decisions. Most people live their lives by habit, not by choice. If we are
formed in Christ Jesus and steeped in his Word, then we live lives that bear
fruit worthy of our calling in Christ Jesus. While good people can make a bad
choice, it is more important to shape our character appropriately so that when
a situation arises, we respond in a manner that is second nature. In other
words, we are trained on how to act and think in a Christ-like manner. Does
that all make sense?
I shared some about this a couple weeks ago after my trip
out to Oklahoma City. It was a worship planning retreat, and we went through
Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and Lent. For Holy Week, we went to the Oklahoma
City bombing memorial. We toured the museum and then were allowed out on the
grounds. We shared communion, for Maundy Thursday, under the Survivor Tree. We
wrote short prayers on strips of cloth and held them as we sat vigil for Good
Friday – we were allowed to sit on the chairs that are part of the memorial,
one chair for each person who died. Then we tied our strips onto a chain link
fence where others had left mementos and tokens. Across the street was a statue
the Catholic Church had erected, called “Jesus wept.” It was very powerful. And
part of the power wasn’t just in the memorial but in the response for healing
and moving forward. And moving forward was about building character, especially
in our children and youth.
We
as adults already know the importance of building character muscles like
respect and kindness and caring and responsibility. This is what we teach our
kids. But sometimes as adults we don’t always act that way. We shirk
responsibility and say, that’s someone else’s problem. We talk about little
white lies that won’t harm anyone. As adults, we’ve gotten used to what we can
get away with, with minimal accountability, and some of the good character
traits we had as kids have gone by the wayside. But most of what we do is out
of habit. Which means we might have had better character as kids, when parents
and teachers were holding us accountable, than we have now. This is part of why
God’s not done with us yet, and why John Wesley believed you could lose your salvation.
That’s how the clay pot that starts off so promising starts taking a weird
shape, and the potter has to remold it back to the right shape.
Spiritual
formation affects how we live and our everyday choices. Or, really, I should
say, our everyday habits. The good news is that you always learn a new habit.
Old dogs can learn new tricks. So take a look at your everyday habits. Do they
include time set aside for prayer? Do you read your bible every day? Do you
work to cultivate patience and gentleness and peace? Those are some of the
fruits of the Spirit that grow when you allow yourself to be formed and shaped
by Jesus. Do you share what you have? Do you take care of the sick? Do you take
care of yourself? What influences you the most? Your number one answer ought to
be Jesus, so that was a trick question. What influences you second most?
Consider the merits of it. I hope it’s a good role model and a positive
influence, and if it’s not, then consider picking a better number two.
It’s
not me you have to answer to. It’s God. That psalm we read this morning is one
of my top favorite psalms. “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You
know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.” This
isn’t meant to be a creepy stalker psalm; this is the Lord, who made you and
formed you, who created your inmost being and knit you together. The Lord knows
you, because he made you and he is always with you and will never forsake you. Just
like clay pots, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You know, a few weeks
ago my son asked me how he was made. I wasn’t getting into the birds and the
bees with a 4 ½ year old, so I told him he was fearfully and wonderfully made.
And he looked at me, didn’t say a word, and went off to play. Actually, knowing
him as well as I do, he might still be thinking about it and I may not have
heard the end of it. But it’s true, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. The
question then is what are you doing with what God created you to be? Are you
becoming who God created you to become? And if not, the start of a new season
and new school year for our children is certainly a good time for a new start. That’s
the good news. Our spiritual formation and training is never completely over. The
potter is more than willing to continue the work in you that was begun at your
creation, if you’ll let him.
In
an interview, Captain Sullenberger said: “One way of looking at this might be
that for 42 years, I've been making small, regular deposits in this bank of
experience, education, and training. And on January 15, the balance was
sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.”[1]
Are you making small, regular deposits in your bank of spiritual experience,
education, and training? They don’t have to be big, but regularity is important
in order for the habit to form, in order for the work to be done so that when
you’re called on, you’re ready. One of my seminary professors once said that
what we do in seminary is in case of an emergency. It’s training, just like
coming to worship regularly, reading your bible regularly, praying regularly,
so that when something happens and you’re called on to use your training, there
is no crisis moment or decision to be made. You’re already ready and you know
what to do.
Thursday, September 5, 2019
"Okay!": A Reflection
We use "ok" to mean so many different things in so many different settings.
"Ok" means yes.
"Ok" means average.
"Ok" means we understand.
It's a typical answer to the question "How are you?", although for me it means I'm not doing great. If I'm truly ok and all right, then I say "good." If I'm not good, I say "ok" or "hanging in." I don't know that many people pick up on that nuance between "good" and "ok," and I'm all right with that. To me, it means I'm still giving an honest answer while not giving an answer that's going to elicit more conversation. With most people and at most times, I don't really want to get into how I'm doing. It tends to be a courtesy question and so I give a courtesy answer. Except I don't want to lie. So I have to give an honest courtesy answer which will be accepted at face value and each of us can move on. 'Cuz most people don't really want to know how you're really doing. They're just asking to be polite or as a greeting.
But I never mind when someone gives me an honest answer. And then I'll ask "What's going on?" And they'll either say they don't want to talk about it, which is perfectly acceptable, and I'll drop it and we'll move on. Or, they'll share more about what's really going on with them, which is perfectly acceptable, too.
But somehow when I give a more honest answer and the person follows up, when I don't want to go into it, they'll rarely let me drop it and move on.
That's why I say "ok." It may mean literally "I'm ok," or it may mean "I'm not good and I don't want to talk about it."
"Ok" means yes.
"Ok" means average.
"Ok" means we understand.
It's a typical answer to the question "How are you?", although for me it means I'm not doing great. If I'm truly ok and all right, then I say "good." If I'm not good, I say "ok" or "hanging in." I don't know that many people pick up on that nuance between "good" and "ok," and I'm all right with that. To me, it means I'm still giving an honest answer while not giving an answer that's going to elicit more conversation. With most people and at most times, I don't really want to get into how I'm doing. It tends to be a courtesy question and so I give a courtesy answer. Except I don't want to lie. So I have to give an honest courtesy answer which will be accepted at face value and each of us can move on. 'Cuz most people don't really want to know how you're really doing. They're just asking to be polite or as a greeting.
But I never mind when someone gives me an honest answer. And then I'll ask "What's going on?" And they'll either say they don't want to talk about it, which is perfectly acceptable, and I'll drop it and we'll move on. Or, they'll share more about what's really going on with them, which is perfectly acceptable, too.
But somehow when I give a more honest answer and the person follows up, when I don't want to go into it, they'll rarely let me drop it and move on.
That's why I say "ok." It may mean literally "I'm ok," or it may mean "I'm not good and I don't want to talk about it."
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
What's in a Prayer?
7th Sunday after Pentecost
July 28, 2019
Luke 11:1-13
One of the first sermons I can remember, if not the very
first, comes from around middle school, or maybe late elementary school. I’m a
little fuzzy on some of the details, except I know it was at the church we went
to when my family lived in Germantown, MD. And this wasn’t a sermon by the
pastor of the church; it was by one of the leaders of the church who’d been
asked to fill in while the pastor was out. Glenn had only recently begun
deepening his faith and walking closer with Jesus. I remember the concern other
adults had about how Glenn’s faith was growing, while his wife’s wasn’t. And I
don’t know the end of the story. What I know is that Glenn gave a message about
the Lord’s Prayer. He was a runner, and while he ran, he said the Lord’s
Prayer, and repeated it. The beginning of his message was about how one day he
set out running and started saying the Lord’s Prayer, and he heard God tell him
to slow down. God didn’t mean to slow down his running, God was telling him to
pray slower, to take time and savor each phrase, each word of that prayer. Pray
slower. Pay more attention to what you are praying. And then Glenn went through
each section of the Lord’s Prayer for the rest of his message, taking it slower
than we usually say it.
“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place.” Isn’t
that an interesting detail? We’re always praying in a certain place, in a pew,
from our bedside, in a car. Jesus had certain places where he liked to go pray.
Are there places or times you intentionally go to to pray? Glenn prayed while
running. I have one friend who has a prayer corner, with an easy chair, a lamp,
a notepad and pen, a bible, and an arrangement of crosses on the wall facing
the chair. Other folks have prayer closets. Do you have dedicated space for
prayer, or an activity when you dedicate that time to pray? If not, consider
starting one. Mine is the breakfast table. Usually. The kids have mostly
learned not to interrupt me when they see my prayer book out. The disciples
didn’t interrupt Jesus, either, but waited until he was done before asking, “Lord,
teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” This is Jesus’ cousin
John, better known to us as John the Baptist, who also had disciples and a
following before Jesus showed up on the scene. Then some of John’s disciples
defected and started following Jesus![1]
Anyway, Jesus’ disciples know that John has taught his followers how to pray,
and they ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Jesus’ answer is what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Or, at
least most of it. Okay, maybe just some of it. It’s been elaborated a little
bit over the years. The answer Jesus gives them is the basis for our Lord’s
Prayer. It’s short, sweet, and to the point. “‘Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for
we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.”
It’s quite the contrast to the standard Jewish prayers of the day, which were
quite long and complex. But Jesus is here saying, it doesn’t have to be long,
it doesn’t have to be clever, you don’t need a rhyme scheme or be a great
public speaker in order for your prayer to be efficacious and heard by God.
What you need, as we learn from the stories Jesus tells after this prayer, is
perseverance. Sometimes, persistence in prayer is where we must begin.[2]
Later in Luke, Jesus tells the story of the unjust judge and the widow. The
intro to this parable is that Jesus told it to his disciples “to show them that
they should always pray and not give up.” It’s the same thing with the person
knocking on their friend’s door at midnight. Pray constantly. Persist in praying. Keep praying!
Why? Why is prayer so important? Because prayer is the essence
of our relationship with God.[3]
Without prayer, you do not have a relationship with God. Without prayer, you cannot have a relationship with God. “Prayer
is the way we create and sustain our relationship with God.”[4]
It is the chief means of grace. A “means of grace” is a way you experience and
know God’s unconditional love. It could be as simple as a hug or a phone call
from a friend. It could be seeing God at work in creation. According to John
Wesley, there are five “instituted” means of grace, meaning that they are
“spiritual practices that were instituted in the New Testament and are binding
for all time and in all places.”[5]
He identified them as prayer, searching the Scriptures, the Lord’s Supper,
fasting, and Christian conferencing. These are all ways that we can receive
God’s love. The truth is that anything can be a means of grace “for those who
are always open to and seeking God.”[6]
Since prayer is communication with God, being open to God’s presence and love, connecting
us to who God is and what God is doing, then all the means of grace are a form
of prayer. Each means of grace is “a pathway for Christians to know and do
God’s will.”[7]
Praying without ceasing is also one of Wesley’s “Marks of
a Methodist.” As the Methodist movement got underway in the 18th
century, in 1747, Wesley published a little book called “The Character of a
Methodist.” The five distinguishing marks are that a Methodist loves God,
rejoices in God, gives thanks, prays without ceasing, and loves others. Under
his description of praying constantly, just like Jesus said we should, is that
this does not mean we are always in church, or always on our knees, or always
crying aloud to God, or always calling upon God in words. Instead, Wesley wrote
that true prayer is that “[our] hearts are ever lifted up to God, at all times
and in all places. In this [we are] never hindered, much less interrupted, by
any person or thing. In retirement or company, in leisure, business, or
conversation, [our] hearts are ever with the Lord. Whether [we] lie down or
rise up, God is in all [our] thoughts.”[8]
That’s what it means to pray continually. That’s why we have to be persistent
about it and not give up, or let ourselves be interrupted or hindered. Lift
your heart up to God, just as we say in our communion liturgy. When our hearts
are directed upward, then “whatever God wants to send our way will roll
directly into our minds and hearts,”[9]
because we’re already attuned to God, we’re already in a posture of listening;
we’re already paying attention to God. The most interesting thing I heard
Pastor Bob say at Jennings last week was the idea that God has a whole lot more
to say to us than we have to say to God. It’s not that what we say to God isn’t
important; it is, communication has to go two-ways. But what if, for all the
things we have to tell God about, our thoughts, our hurts and fears, our joys,
our concerns; what if, God has even more to tell us? It’s interesting to think
that “the key element to prayer isn’t what we say to God but rather what God
says to us.”[10] It’s
also reassuring and lets the pressure up about finding the right words or when
we don’t know what to pray. All you have to do is lift your heart up to God,
and God will do the rest. Romans 8:26 says, “The Spirit comes to help our
weakness. When we don’t know what we should pray, God’s very Spirit intercedes
with groans too deep for words.”
So, worry less. Pray more. Continue to ask, Lord, teach
me to pray. Talking to God should be like a “family conversation where you
express yourself unselfconsciously with the confidence that you will be heard
and understood.”[11]
Remember, Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek
and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For
everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks,
the door will be opened.”[12] God hears our prayers, whether they’re prayers of praise or
confession or thanksgiving or supplication or intercession or lament, whether
they are spoken or sung, whether they have words or are silent, God hears our
prayers. God never promises to answer them exactly how we want. God is not a
vending machine and prayer doesn’t change God. Prayer changes you. When your heart is lifted up, when
you are resting in God’s presence, when you are always open to and seeking God
and asking how God is at work in the world around you, when you’re not focused
on yourself but on God, your demeanor is different. Your energy is different. The
way you interact with others is different.
Let us lift up our hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.
[1]
See John 1:35-42
[2] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3, p.
288
[3] 5 Means of Grace by Elaine Heath, p. 5
[4] 5 Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper,
p. 38
[5] 5 Means of Grace by Elaine Heath, p. ix
[6]
Ibid., p. viii
[7]
Ibid., p. 11
[8]
The Character of a Methodist in The Works
of John Wesley, Vol. VIII, p. 343
[9] 5 Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper,
p. 41
[10]
Ibid.
[11] Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary,
Year C, After Pentecost, p. 103
[12]
Luke 11:9-10
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
What’s Fruit Got to Do with It?
6th Sunday after Pentecost
July 21, 2019
Amos 8:1-12
One of my favorite things about summer is the fresh fruit
and vegetables. Whether you grow it in your own garden or pick it up at the
local farm stand, or even what I get at Food Lion, it is all delicious! It’s no
wonder Larriland’s pick-you-own is always busy whenever you drive by! Summer
fruit is typically high in water content, it’s sweet, and it’s refreshing.
What’s not to love? Most English translation of our Amos passage use the phrase
“summer fruit.” God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit and then asks an
obvious question, “Amos, what do you see?” Amos says, “A basket of summer
fruit.” If he were a teenager he would have added a “duh” on the end. And God
adds what appears to be a non-sequitur, “The end has come upon my people
Israel.” Okay… it’s hard to see the connection there God, but sure, we trust
you. However, this is actually a word play in the original Hebrew. “Summer
fruit” isn’t the literal translation from Hebrew. It’s actually “ripened
fruit.” In Hebrew, the word for “ripened fruit” is a homonym for the word “end,”
as in the two words sound the same but have different meanings, like the number
eight and I ate a banana. That’s how God then creates the wordplay to make the
connection between a basket of ripened fruit and the end for the people of
Israel. Here, we read from the NIV translation, which is one of the few English
translations that tries to recreate the wordplay in English. God asks Amos,
“What do you see?” Amos says, “A basket of ripe fruit.” God replies, “The time
is ripe for my people Israel.” There is a sense of humor in the Bible. It
doesn’t always translate either to modern times or to our language, but it’s
there. What happens to ripe fruit that’s not eaten? It withers, rots, and dies.
So, Amos gets to prophesy God’s judgment to God’ s people. Time’s up. The end
is here. The time is ripe. God will spare you no longer.
Amos isn’t someone you often preach on, he’s considered
one of the minor prophets in the Bible, so let’s start with a little background
about him. Of all the prophetic books in the Bible, both major and minor, his
was written first, in the 8th century BC. Amos was originally a shepherd, taking care
of sheep like some of y’all, and he was from Judah, which was in the south. If
you remember some of your history of Israel, Saul was the very first king, then
David, who wrote the psalms, then David’s son, Solomon. And while Solomon was a
great king in many ways, like he was famous for his wisdom and he built God’s
temple in Jerusalem, he also led God’s people astray in other ways, with his 700
wives and 300 concubines, many of whom worshiped other gods, and so he strayed
from the one, true God. The consequence was that after Solomon died, the
country was split in two, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. So, Amos
is from the south, and he’s sent to the north, to prophesy in Israel. One
commentary I read said that “No other biblical book emphasizes the
destructiveness of God as much as Amos.”[1]
And there does seem to be a lot of that in Amos. Another vision in Amos is that
of a plumb line, so that Israel can see how far they’ve strayed from God. There
are a total of five visions in Amos: locusts, fire, the plumb line, the ripe
fruit, and, finally, the destruction of the altar. These visions all have to do
with coming judgment, with God’s judgment on Israel because they’ve strayed
from God and they keep messing up and they don’t realize or care that they’ve
strayed. They’re not singing, like we do in the hymn “Come, Thou Found of Every
Blessing,” that “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I
love; here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”[2]
No, the time is definitely ripe for God to do something different.
The
good news I found in my seminary Old Testament notes about Amos was a comment
that Amos is a prophet of repentance, not a prophet of doom. There is a theme of
life throughout his book which already implies the possibility of repentance.[3]
There is still hope for God’s people. They are never without hope. God never leaves us without hope. In Amos
5:14, God says, “Seek good, and not evil, so that you may live, and the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.” Amos is a call to repentance, to
“hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts,” and in the gate.[4]
There is hope, but things can’t keep going how they always have been, same ol’,
same ol’. The time is ripe for change. It’s the end of business as usual.
Why is it the end? Because actions have consequences. Look
at what’s going on in Israel at this time. People are trampling on the needy.
That’s like kicking a dog while he’s down. People are trying to do away with
the poor of the land, whereas Jesus says, “you will always have the poor with
you,”[5]
and he was very concerned with the poor and how we treated them and whether or
not we helped them. There were “merchants who could not wait for the religious
holiday to end so they could get back to fleecing the poor with their high
prices for grain.”[6] I
know Thanksgiving isn’t a religious holiday, but that sounds an awful lot like Black
Friday shopping creeping into Thanksgiving Day. Some retailers can’t stand
having to close on a holiday; some consumers can’t, either. Hello, online
shopping! Not only that, these merchants are using weighted, dishonest scales,
they’re inflating the prices, and they’re shortchanging their customers. What
this means is that “They do not trust God to provide for their well-being and
instead take every opportunity to secure more for themselves, even at the
expense of others.”[7] Do
you trust God, or do you feel like you’ve got to matters into your own hands to
make sure you’re looked out for? And, when you take matters into your own
hands, does it hurt others? Her in Amos, God’s had enough. You were supposed to
take care of the widow and the orphan and the immigrant and the poor and the
needy, that instruction is all throughout Scripture, both Old and New
Testaments. We are called to take care of those less fortunate than ourselves,
not abuse them. There was even an article in the newspaper last week with the
title, “Fines, jail, debt: Court policies can punish poor.”[8]
It’s about low-income people who are imprisoned for not being able to pay a
fine, and then they are charged a fee for being in jail, and so their debt has
just kept increasing while they’ve had no way of being able to pay it. And you
can say they shouldn’t have incurred the fine in the first place, yet even so,
you have to give them a chance to pay it back, not lock them up and keep
charging them more fees, which, again, is like kicking a dog while they’re
down.
You
see, in Amos and elsewhere, there is no separation between ethics and worship.[9] Worship and faith go hand-in-hand with
ethical practice. How you live shows what you actually believe. It’s like that now-dated
saying of looking at your checkbook to see where your priorities are. God says
there are consequences for disregarding the poor and afflicted. When you engage
in unjust practices, it affects your relationship with God. “When we cast our
cares on buildings, programs, and social status, we squander and ignore the
word of God revealed in the biblical text and freshly revealed to us through
Christian discipleship. When we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, when we
deny shelter to the refugee, when we judge the oppressed for their oppression,
when we disregard the one because we are content with the ninety-nine, we have
violated God with our evil. When we are complicit with evil regimes that rend
children from their parents, delight in the destruction of others, and use
people as a means to build wealth and power, we have violated God with our
evil.”[10]
As we sang in our middle hymn, which quotes from the prophet Micah, “We are
called to act with justice, we are called to love tenderly, we are called to
serve one another, to walk humbly with God.”[11]
That rally that happened in North Carolina last week, that was not just or
loving or humble. That was racism and hatred and evil, which we promise in our
baptismal vows to resist. There was
nothing just or loving or humble about it. As God’s people, we are called to
renounce evil and to work for good, we are called to love God and love our
neighbor, whoever our neighbor may be.
And so, if you have found yourself complicit with unjust
systems, then the time is ripe to do something different. And you’re in good
company, because God decided the time was ripe to do a new thing, too. Even
“though God established covenant relationship with Israel, their repeated
unjust behavior prompted God to end the relationship, compelled to do something
new.”[12]
And the question is asked, “What are we doing with the word God has given us
today?”[13]
Are we seeking good and not evil, so that we might live? Are we living into
what God requires of us, “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God”?[14]
I don’t know where you are with the personal side of this, if you’re praying,
if you’re giving, if you’re speaking up and asking God what else you can do.
Here’s
where we are on the communal side of it. At Administrative Board this past week
we updated our mission and vision statements, the descriptions of what we’re
about, our goals, why we do what we do, and what our vision is for the future.
We didn’t get it in this week’s bulletin but it’ll be in next week’s and in the
next newsletter. It had been 20 years since it was updated, it was getting a
little overripe, so coming from the Great Expectations Team we formed when I
started two years ago, and edited by the Administrative Board, here’s what we
wrote:
Our
mission is to make disciples by gathering for worship, growing in faith and in
grace, and serving in love. From our roots in Christ, we nurture our community
by welcoming everyone and reaching
out to all who are in need.
Specifically for 2019-2020, we will focus on ministry to and with children.
Our
vision is to become a thriving congregation, rooted in Christ and nourishing
our community. This includes becoming financially stable, having a high
participation from our congregation, being hands-on, and being noticeably active
in our community.
Our
values that we identified, that already exist here, I’m just naming them, are
Hospitality, Outreach, Community, and Children.
Is
that who we are at Lisbon? Does that resonate with you? Do you agree with what
your leaders have said about us and who we are called to be? If so, what can we
do to continue living into that calling?
If not, what can we do to get there?
The
time is ripe. The fruit is ripe. It’s delicious, but it will go bad soon if
left out. Y’all know that. I’m preaching in a farming community. So what
specifically is the time ripe for you to do? What can you do about the hatred
and vitriol you witness? What can you do about the divisions in our society? What
can we do to help make our community
more just and loving and walking humbly with God? We start with ourselves. We
don’t spread hatred. We call it out when we see it. We work to bridge the
divide. We keep ourselves humble and close to God. We do the loving thing. At
any crossroads, there shouldn’t even be a question of what to do, because the
answer is you show love. We said we welcome everyone, no exceptions. And we
said we want to help all who are in need, with no conditions. Let us start this
morning with prayer.
[2]
UMH 400
[3]
Class notes, Old Testament 12, Dr. Stephen Chapman, Duke Divinity School,
January 22, 2008
[4]
Amos 5:15
[5]
Matthew 26:11
[6] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3,
p. 246
[7] Preaching God’s Transforming Justice,
Year C, p. 324
[8] By
Travis Loller, AP, printed in The
Baltimore Sun, July 13, 2019
[9]
Class notes, Old Testament 12, Dr. Stephen Chapman, Duke Divinity School,
January 22, 2008
[11]
“We Are Called” by David Haas, in The
Faith We Sing, #2172
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Micah 6:8
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