Kenwood United Methodist Church

All sermons are the property of The Reverend F. Elizabeth Givens and delivered on the date indicated.

Sermons are kept on the website for several weeks.  Scroll down through this entry to see past weeks.

A Multi-Lingual Church

Pentecost ~ Acts 2:1-21

Kenwood UMC ~ May 27, 2012

In a year or two it is going to be time for my girls to begin to choose which foreign languages to study, which is taking me back to that choice in my own life.   In our school system I could choose between Spanish, French, German and Latin.  I carefully weighed the options, and chose Latin, because it would give me a foundation for the other romance languages.  I took five years of it.  Today I can’t speak any of it.

But I did find it much easier to move through college courses in Italian and Greek, and I find it much easier to understand my Hispanic brothers and sisters because so many of the root words and structures of the Spanish language are the same as those of Latin.  So, while I don’t speak a foreign language fluently, my Latin background has helped me understand other languages.

It can be really frustrating—and even exclusive—when we don’t understand the language being spoken.  When the words and their meanings don’t make sense, we find it easier to sit outside the group, to shut ourselves off, to disengage.  But when we do understand the language, we feel invited and included in the conversation.

I don’t think it is an accident that on this day of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit finally came to the followers of Jesus, that one of the primary gifts which is given is the gift of language.  The scripture reports that God-fearing Jews from every nation were in Jerusalem for the festival of harvest fifty days after Passover.  While they were all there for the same purpose, they were unable to communicate with one another fully because they could not understand one another’s languages.  So, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the followers of Christ, who were one of those groups of Jews, and the followers suddenly began speaking in the native languages of all the nations gathered, it was bewildering and shocking.  Suddenly there were interpreters!  Suddenly they could understand one another.  Suddenly the barrier of language began to fall away and people began to feel connected and included.  Suddenly, the Jewish believers of Jesus had the tools to invite all kinds of other people to participate in his story.

I have to believe that it was not an accident that the first action of the new church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, was to communicate in a way that people could understand, and a way they could connect with their own culture.  The first action of the new church was to cross the language barrier, to connect with the world gathered around them.  And that suggests that one of the primary ongoing tasks of the church is to cross the language barriers we now face, and to begin to connect to the world gathered all around us.

Only we have different language barriers now.  Instead of merely having literally different spoken languages, we have language barriers around generations and cultures. This holiday of Memorial Day, for example, means something different to people of different generations. To those generations whose friends and family members served in the large wars of the last century—World Wars 1 and 2, Korean, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War—this weekend is a somber remembrance for those who gave their lives.  But it is difficult for younger generations, who have never faced these conflicts to fully appreciate the significance of Memorial Day.  They see it as the beginning of summer or the weekend the pool opens.  Now neither of these languages of understanding Memorial Day is incorrect.  However, they often have trouble speaking to one another—with one group not understanding the other’s reverence, and the other group not understanding the enthusiasm of summer’s beginning.

Do you see the language barrier?

We also live in a world where we access information in different languages, or different modes.  For instance, I do not get the newspaper or a weekly newsmagazine in my home.  I also do not watch a news channel on TV, either in the morning or at night.  And, yet, I am very engaged in what is going on in the world?  In what language do I get my news?  The social media platform Twitter, which connects me to interesting local, national, and international news, as well as music, books, movies, TV and other culture.  Thus, when someone says to me, as they do nearly every week, “Did you see the article in the paper about…?” I have to decipher which paper—the Times Dispatch, the Hanover Herald Progress, the Washington Post? And whether the article appeared that day or last week or last month—or even a year or more ago and you clipped it out and saved it.

Do you see the language barrier?

The festival of Pentecost reminds us that one of the things on which the church desperately needs to focus is breaking the language barrier with the culture that surrounds us. If we are going to take seriously the call that those first believers had—the call to share the Good News of Jesus to all corners of the world—then we have got to learn to speak the languages of our culture.  It is not enough to be who we have always been and sit back and mourn the fact that no one can understand us.  We have to pray, to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and to find ways to speak new languages.

That changes how we worship, the words we use, the songs we sing, the responses we invite.  It changes how we are in mission and service.  It changes who we love and how we love them.  And it changes both how we learn and how we can expect to teach our community about Jesus.

If we are a Pentecost Church, we cannot afford to ignore the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  We must listen for the new languages we are being invited to learn.  Because if we do not learn them, we cannot speak them.  And if we cannot speak them then we erect barriers that keep people out—people who are seeking a relationship with the One God revealed in Jesus.  But when we take seriously our task of becoming multi-lingual, of learning the languages of the culture around us, then we can be faithful to Christ’s call to invite others into the church, and to include them in the conversation and in the journey toward salvation.

May our hands be open and our hearts be ready to receive the Holy Spirit’s presence and power anew this day.  Amen.

Listening for a New Direction

Seventh Sunday After Easter, Year B ~ 1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20

Kenwood UMC ~ May 20, 2012

One of my hobbies is eating out.  Now, in my defense, another of my hobbies is cooking great meals, so I am not a complete slacker.  But I do enjoy trying new restaurants and different cuisines, as well as going back to old favorites.  One of the things that our family has started to do when we eat at a new restaurant is use a new criteria to evaluate it: Would Robert Irvine approve?

Robert Irvine is the host of Restaurant Impossible on the Food Network. Each episode he takes a failing restaurant, and in a take-no-prisoners kind of way, comes in to give it a facelift, a resurrection if you will.  This commercial for the show will give you an idea of what he does:

Play commercial

Now, I have to tell you, I like Robert’s style.  He is able to assess what is wrong with an organization, name it, and enact the changes that will need to happen in order to fix it.  What he is not in control of is whether the restaurant owners actually follow through into the future on his recommendations after he leaves.

Robert Irvine reminds me a little bit of God.  It isn’t a straight comparison, mind you.  I know there are a lot of flaws.  But hear me out.  God can see what is wrong with God’s people.  God can name it.  But God isn’t in control of whether God’s people follow through with the direction God gives them.  That is entirely up to us.

And as our scripture today illustrates, we are not always so good at listening for God’s direction and then following it.  Today we encounter another of those moments in the history of God’s people that I always imagine leaves God shaking God’s head in exasperation.  The story takes place after the Exodus from Egypt, at the end of the period when the judges ruled over the 12 tries of Israel in the Promised Land.  Samuel, who was one of the judges, is now retired, and his sons are serving as judges—and apparently not doing a particularly good job.  So the elders of Israel come to Samuel and tell him they want a king, so they can be like everyone else.

Once Samuel gets over his feeling that they are rejecting his sons—which they are, but for good reason—he still doesn’t feel like this king thing is a very good idea.  So he chats with God about it.  The leaders of Israel say they want to be like everyone else.  And God says to Samuel, well, they aren’t like everyone else.  They have one God and one king.  Me.  But clearly they have continued to forsake me over and over again.  If they want a king, fine, give them a king, but be sure and warn them about what this human king is going to do.

I can see God and Samuel channeling Robert Irvine now: You’ve got a failing kingdom here, and you are only going to make it worse by putting a king in charge.  The king is going to take your slaves, your sons, and your livestock.  You’re going to have nothing left. You are going to regret this—you can choose a different path.  But you have to choose it now.

But, the people of Israel are not as wise as the restaurant owners who are Robert Irvine’s clients, and they chose the king option.  And so Samuel appoints Saul as the first King over Israel, and darn it if God and Samuel were not right after all—kings did not turn out to be all that Israel dreamed they would.

What if we were in their shoes?  Would we be able to hear about the future which God was setting before us, and to choose that future, even though it would not be an easy choice?  Would we be able both to listen to God and to follow where God led?

I am aware that the pastoral change here at Kenwood is difficult for many of us—it is certainly difficult for me.  And yet, as I have entered into prayer and discernment about this position for several months, I am clear that as difficult as it is, it is also God’s direction not only for my life and ministry, but also for Kenwood.  God continues to call us forward, to call new leaders, to call forth new ministries, to invite us to be the church of tomorrow, not the church of the past.

That journey necessarily involves some pain.  I don’t see any scriptural evidence that we can escape it, and my experience and the tradition of the church certainly bear that up.  But, if we listen carefully, through all the noise around us, we will hear God leading us forward.  And if it is God’s direction, then if we choose not to follow, we risk our lives—perhaps not our physical lives, but certainly our spiritual lives.

God does not just call us on this journey as a community.  God also clearly and consistently calls us as individuals, throughout our lives, to new places.  As we reflect today on our lives, may we ask the hard questions.  Are we living in an old, dilapidated structure that needs serious updating? And if we are, are we listening to God calling us to some massive renovations and changes?  And, the most important question, if we are listening to God calling us in that direction, are we actually going to do something about it and follow God along the path that leads to resurrection?

May we be honest with ourselves, may we listen, and may we follow.  Amen.

The Way Forward Begins With Trust

6^th Sunday After Easter ~ Psalm 1, Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26

Kenwood UMC ~ May 13, 2012

Our scripture from Acts today finds the disciples in a difficult position.  Their leader has left them—Jesus has just ascended to heaven in the first part of chapter 1—and they have come back to Jerusalem to gather together and face the future.  It is an uncertain future—not unlike the future many of us face now or have faced at some point in our lives.  They are not sure of the way forward.

It’s a familiar issue for people this time of year who are seeing their most watched TV series end another season.  Friday night saw the end of season four of one of my favorites, Fringe, and now those of us who watch it have to wait until next fall to find out what’s next.  The cliffhanger is out there, and we are not sure of the way forward.

The immediate issue for the believers is figuring out what will happen in their next season—the season of the Christian story that takes places after Jesus has ascended.  They need to figure out an issue of leadership.  Judas, who is one of the twelve disciples, has committed suicide, and so now they number 11 leaders.  The believers were Jews, and they addressed this issue first by turning to their story, turning to what they knew in their history which could help them move forward.

And in Jewish history, 12 is a very significant number.  God’s chosen people, the Israelites, were divided into twelve tribes.  The origins of those twelve were the twelve sons fathered by Jacob, and the tribes were named for those sons.  When the Israelites came to occupy their homeland after the Exodus, the tribes each inhabited a different territory.  The tribes represent the diversity of the Jewish people.

And so, when Jesus was choosing his disciples, he chose 12, to represent the 12 tribes.  They were also diverse people in their own right.  And now, one of them was gone.  The believers gathered in Jerusalem that day knew that the 11 with which they were left was imperfect.  If they were to face the uncertain future, they needed a 12^th.   And so they selected one, using a careful process of discernment.

As I was reflecting on this passage, it occurred to me how often we find ourselves in the same place, whether we get there as individuals or as a part of a community.  We reach various points in our lives when we feel that change is coming—perhaps it has already started—and we are not sure of the way forward.  What do we do?

Our denomination reached that point during General Conference our top legislative body, which concluding meeting on Friday, May 4.  Without going into detail, many observers and commentators have characterized the denomination as paralyzed by inaction, and unable to make the changes which will be necessary to move forward into God’s future.  Now, for many of us, I will acknowledge that denominational paralysis is not terribly relevant, and that’s OK.  The concern I have are all the places where I see the same paralysis and in action in local church communities.

But not at Kenwood.  I am continually amazed by the ways that we—you—have responded to God’s movement in our community.  As this community has transitioned from a railroad outpost to a suburban outpost in recent decades, it would have been tempting to stay the same, to resist change.  But here we are, with new emerging ministries to Shalom Farms and Heart Havens, a team working on new ways to reach our children, a Second Hand Rose Ministry and a mission trip entering their third years, and up to date media available to us in our sanctuary.

And we have gotten to this place in the same way that the disciples did that day in Jerusalem.  Confronted with uncertainty about the future, we turned to our story.  We turned to our heritage of hospitality, and the value we place on being a community church.  We turned to our Wesleyan roots of serving the least of these in our community.

Like the disciples, we trusted our roots.  We trusted out story.  Our Psalter this morning, Psalm 1, calls out the image of God’s righteous people as being like trees planted by streams of water.  These are trees which have deep roots, roots that are able to tap into water and nutrients of the soil to produce rich fruit.

That is what God’s people do when we are faced with uncertainty.  We remember who we are, but we do that not in order to go back to the past, but to have resources to face the future.  We pray, we search the scriptures, we worship together—all so that we might discover and embrace the new pathways to which God is calling us.

Our model for this way forward comes in Christ, who came to help a people who were paralyzed by rules and rituals to remember who God was calling them to be.  If we can keep our eyes focused on Christ, and trust that he is leading us, we will move with clarity and grace into the future which he holds for us.

Fruit That Will Last

Fifth Sunday After Easter, Year B ~ John 15:9-17

Kenwood UMC ~ May 6, 2012

I’m delighted to have Dominic Barrett of Shalom Farms here at Kenwood today, and he is going to be sharing with us in a while.  It is because of Dominic’s work and the work of others like him that I have become interested in sustainability and access issues surrounding food in recent years.  Reading Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma a couple of years ago brought home to me the challenges we have in America when it comes to having access to fresh food which is free of additives and chemicals which can harm our bodies.  Since reading that book, I’ve started to become more conscious of buying food locally at farmer’s markets, or ordering local foods at RelayFoods.com, an online service where you can get local meat and produce as well as a lot more.

Now, some of my motivation behind all of this is wanting to eat healthy foods.  And some of my motivation is wanting to support and help local farmers and vendors.  But in the midst of those motivations, I have also learned a lot about farming techniques that allow us to take better care of the earth which God has given us.  These are techniques that are completely natural.

For example, at Polyface Farms in the Shenandoah Valley, Joe Salatin moves his chicken pens every day, and every 24 hours his chickens dine on fresh grass and also fertilize it with their droppings.[1]  Out at Shalom Farms in Goochland, after a garden has been harvested, they plant legume crops to return nitrogen to the soil naturally.

Now, I am guessing that Jesus had none of these examples in mind when he talked in this scripture passage from John about bearing fruit that will last—but I think there is a relationship here.  In this passage, Jesus is talking about the importance of abiding in him and loving one another as God has loved us.  And then in verse 16 he answers the why—why would this be important.  Because God has chosen us to bear fruit—and not just any fruit, but fruit that will last.

How can abiding in Jesus and loving one another help us bear fruit that will last?  And what is lasting fruit anyway?  Let me tackle the last question first.  Lasting fruit, it seems to me, is fruit that is able to continually produce good things.  Lasting fruit happens when gardens use crop rotation to naturally make the soil healthier so the garden can keep producing.  Or when chickens naturally fertilize the grass they will later eat.  When we bear lasting fruit, we bear fruit that doesn’t just end when we do, but continues to live on beyond our particular actions.

And that is the kind of fruit—the kind of life—that God invites us to participate in.  God wants us to make a lasting impact on a broken world.  And that is why, for instance, Shalom Farms wants to teach people in urban areas to grow their own food, rather than only growing it in Goochland County and bringing it to the city on a truck.  That’s why, when we go to the Hinton Rural Life Center on a mission trip, we invite homeowners to work with us—so that they can learn with us how to drive nails and hang drywall.

I like to think of bearing lasting fruit as thinking beyond ourselves.  It’s very easy for us to get caught up in what we want to do to make ourselves comfortable.  But this life isn’t just about us. And that gets us back to loving God and loving one another as the foundations for bearing fruit.  When we truly cultivate the disciplines of abiding in God and loving our neighbor, then our fruit will become lasting.  When we spend time in quiet with God regularly, come to worship weekly, hold one another accountable for practicing our faith, regularly serve the least of these in our midst, and approach the spiritual life as something we can always learn more about—when we cultivate these basic patterns of Christian living, then we will bear lasting fruit.

And that is something God has called each of us to do.  Not just me.  Not just Dominic up here.  Each of us.  We didn’t choose this life of faith.  It was chosen for us by the God who first loved us.  We just said yes to God’s open invitation.  May we each continue saying yes as God calls us deeper and deeper into this fruit-bearing life.

---

Reach Out

Fourth Sunday After Easter, Year B ~ Acts 8:26-40

Kenwood UMC ~ April 29, 2012

As some of you know, I don’t drink coffee, but I do enjoy a cup of tea every day.  Recently I’ve discovered that German rock sugar is really wonderful to sweeten my tea, and so I keep this canister of it on the counter in my kitchen.  I like the canister because it is large and glass and see through, and also has a good tight seal on the cap.  I can see what’s in it, and it is tightly sealed.

As I was musing about our worship this week, I was gazing at this canister, and I realized that at the crux of what God wanted me to share this week is that this canister is an unfortunate but familiar symbol for the church.  Many congregations, and Kenwood at some points in its life, live like they are inside this canister.  They can see out, and see the world around them.  And the world can see in and see what is happening in the congregation.  But far too often the top remains tightly sealed on the canister and the church stays inside and the world stays outside.

And if that had happened in our scripture lesson today, Phillip never would have spoken with the Ethiopian official.  But before we push the glass canister comparison further, let’s stop a moment and understand this story a bit better.  Phillip is one of the seven ministry leaders who are appointed in the 6^th chapter of Acts to extend the ministry of the twelve apostles in the midst of a growing community.  Phillip has been preaching in Samaria, and is told by the Spirit of the Lord to go to a southern wilderness road, where he meets the chariot of a court official from Ethiopia, which is just south of Egypt.  The Ethiopian official is from a completely different culture—he is not a Jew, nor is he a Greek.  But he has come across and is reading the prophet Isaiah, and seeks Phillip as a guide in that process.

Now, a couple of things struck me about Phillip and the Ethiopian as I read this text.  Phillip—as a person within the church, a person on the inside of the canister, begins this passage by listening.  He lets himself be led by God’s Spirit.  And even when God leads him to an unfamiliar place and a person on the outside, Phillip approaches that person from a posture of openness and curiosity.   He is ready to share his faith and engages the Ethiopian where the other man is in his life and his spiritual journey.

But, friends, he didn’t stay in the walls of the canister to do that.  He made sure the tightly sealed top was off so he could reach outside.  And what he met there was one who was seeking and searching and looking longingly in the windows, but completely unable to understand what was happening if the canister stayed closed up.

When the church lives inside a sealed canister, comfortable with learning about Jesus on our own, comfortable with taking care of one another, we fail to heed one of the fundamental commandments that Jesus gives us.  In his last words to the disciples after rising from the dead and before ascending to heaven, Jesus tells them to go and make disciples of all nations.  We can’t be faithful to that command if we just stay sealed up inside our canisters.  We have to reach out into the world.

So it’s not faithful to the mission of Jesus to stay sealed up tightly within ourselves.  It is also, frankly, not logical.   When the church stays as a closed system, when we fail to reach out and reach beyond, we begin an endless spiral toward death.  You see, if we don’t let in any new people or any new ideas, our inward focus will destroy us.  People will die, ideas will drift away, and we will be nothing but a shell of what God wants us to be.

Leaders in our denomination from around the globe are gathered in Tampa, FL right now wrestling with these issues at General Conference, which meets once every four years.  Will we continue to be a denomination that is slow to change, resistant to 21^st century ideas and culture, burdened by an enormous structure—or, will we take seriously God’s call to reach out beyond who we are and who we have been to see who we are becoming?  This is not only a question for the denomination, but it is a question for us at Kenwood.  It is important for us to periodically pause and take a look at who we are, who we have been, and who God is calling us to be.

But I would also take this comparison one step further.  You see, I believe it is important for each one of us as Christians not to live sealed up in our own glass canister of comfort.  Each one of us is being nudged, just like Phillip, to take some step in our spiritual growth.  Each one of us is being nudged to step beyond what is comfortable and familiar.  The question we must ask ourselves is whether we can truly have the posture of Phillip, who listened to and acted on the nudges, and when he went into a new place was prepared to share his story.

God calls each of us into new places.  God calls each of us to some new area of growth and transformation in our lives.  God calls us as a church to look out into our community and discover who is seeking, who is questioning, who is longingly looking for the love and grace that the church can offer.  And then God calls us together, the ones who are nudged to reach out and the ones who are seeking.  God calls us into conversations that will change us, that may even transform us.

How is God calling you, individually, to reach out beyond your spiritual comfort zones right now?  How is God calling us as a church to reach out beyond the familiar and the comfortable?  As each one of us answers that question for ourselves, my prayer is that God will give us the courage to reach out and follow where we are led.

Amen.

And Best of All, God Is With Us

Third Sunday of Easter, Year B ~ Luke 24:36b-48

Kenwood UMC ~ April 22, 2012

As some of you know, I absolutely love books and television shows about spies and mysteries.  Some of my favorite authors along those lines are Daniel Silva, Agatha Christie, Laurie King, Elizabeth George, Dan Brown and David Baldacci.  On the TV front, some of the series gone-by that I remember fondly are The X-Files, Alias, and Lost, and what hooks me now are The Killing, Fringe and Person of Interest.

I love a good mystery.  I love the art of unraveling what really happened.  Recently my kids have discovered stories with a hole, a kind of simple thinking exercise that makes you stretch your mind to find an answer.  One of my favorites from this week was: Antony and Cleopatra were found dead in a room with a closed door.  A broken bowl was on the floor.  They were not murdered or poisoned.  What happened?[1]

Here in our scripture today, we meet the disciples confronting a story with a hole–a mystery.  Jesus, who they saw with their own eyes die on a cross on Friday and be placed in a tomb that was sealed, Jesus who they know with every fiber of their being to be dead, is standing in front of them very alive.  Now, given my attraction to solving mystery, here are some of the questions I might have asked had I been in the room with them that Easter Sunday evening:

Can you please give us an hour by hour accounting of your whereabouts since last Friday?

Can you please explain why this didn’t happen to my mother or my brother when they died?

Can you explain scientifically or logically how it is that you are standing here, when I carried your body just three days ago?

But, the disciples asked none of those questions, according to the scriptures.  In fact, according to the scriptures they are so astonished that they ask no questions at all.

And their astonishment shouldn’t surprise us.  After all, they have no point of reference for what has happened.  In their mind, as we discussed on our Easter Sunday, the cross had been the end of the story.

But it wasn’t.  For in Christ, God has done something completely new.  God has come to be one of us, come to be incarnate among us, come to dwell with us.  We usually talk about the incarnation, God’s humanity, at Christmas when we talk about the birth of Christ.  But it is just as powerful a lesson here, at the resurrection of Christ.  Christ was bodily resurrected.  If Christ had indeed been merely a ghost, as the disciples wondered aloud whether he might be, then something new, something transformative would not have occurred.  This walking, talking, bodily-resurrected Jesus was proof that God was with us in a completely new way—not only in life, but also in life after death.

It is reported that John Wesley, who lived to the age of 88, on his deathbed said to those gathered around him repeatedly the statement which is the title of this sermon: “And best of all, God is with us.”[2]  God is with us.  Wesley didn’t understand it scientifically or logically any more than the disciples did that Easter Sunday night, or any more than we do today.  But like so much of faith, this conviction does not require or exclude scientific understanding.  It requires faith in God’s love for us, faith in God’s ability to do the things we hope for that are beyond all probability.

• Like provide a sense of peace and comfort to someone like John Wesley who is on his deathbed.
• Or plant a seed of reconciliation and peace into a relationship that has been battered by harsh words and unforgiving hearts.
• Or begin to rebuild a community battered by a tornado.
• Or nurture the idea in a child that he or she is smart and kind and generous, when they have never heard words like those before.

You see, Christ is still with us.  Every day we look around and see Him.  It is easy for those of us who love to solve mysteries and need hard evidence to get caught up in the questions—how is he with us?  Can we pinpoint His presence?  Can we touch his hands?  But it is the role of the faithful disciple to be able to push aside those questions, and trust that in time, we will see clearly.  But for now, for this moment, for this place and time our job is not to figure out how, our job is to go and proclaim to a broken world that Christ is here.

How will God lead us to do that in the coming months?  Those who are going on the mission trip to the Hinton Rural Life Center this summer will have a chance to proclaim that news with nails and hammers and paintbrushes and power washers.  Those who get involved in Kenwood’s new outreach ministry with Shalom Farms will have a chance to proclaim the news that Christ is among us as they pick vegetables or grow seedlings that will feed brothers and sisters in inner-city Richmond who do not have access to fresh, healthy food.  Those who send a card or make a visit to someone who is struggling with cancer or the loss of a relationship will be able to proclaim Christ’s presence through their thoughtfulness and time.

For you see, Jesus did not come to be with the disciples that night just to comfort them with his presence, just to prove it really happened.  He came to begin their commission, to say to them in verse 48 “you are my witnesses.”  We do not simply receive the truth of Christ’s presence as a gift for us as individuals or as a church family.  Christ invites us to do more than simply receive the gift.  Christ invites us to go into the world and be witnesses to that powerful truth, that best of all, God IS with us.

Amen.

---

The End Is Not The End

Easter Sunday ~ John 20:1-18

Kenwood UMC ~ April 8, 2012

This is an excellent time of year for me, not only because of the Good News of Easter, but also because it is the time of year when a new season of TV shows starts, sort of the off-season for new TV.  And it just so happens that two of my favorite shows started new seasons in the last two weeks, Game of Thrones on HBO and Mad Men on AMC.

Now, the two shows could not be more different.  Game of Thrones is set in a medieval land, and has wars and intrigue and castles and dragons.  Mad Men is set in the 1960’s advertising world and has competing agencies and creative campaigns and office politics.  But, for me, there is another huge difference between the two shows.  Game of Thrones is based on the books by George Martin—and I have already read book two, on which this season is based.  So although I enjoy the show, I know the story.  I can easily sense what is coming next.  There are few surprises.

Mad Men, on the other hand, is completely new.  I have no idea where the story line is going.  It isn’t quite as much fun to theorize about as the show Lost was, but it keeps me guessing and wondering each week.

I was thinking about my experience of watching these two shows, and thinking that it is not so different from the way we experience Easter each year. We have read the book before.  We know what is coming next.  We read the story in the same way we read Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, or Goodnight Moon.  We anticipate the empty tomb, the bewildered disciples, the stranger in the garden….we know the next part of the story.

In many ways, that makes it a good story for us.  We like predictable patterns; after all, that is how our brains are wired.  I was reading this week that modern brain research tells us that the primary job of the cortex of our brain is to constantly “make predictions about what is going to happen next.”[1]  We are created to constantly envision the future, and we really like it when the future has patterns we can predict based on past experience.  For instance, when we drink a beverage with ice in it, before it even hits our tongue, our brain is predicting that it will be cold and refreshing, because that is what we know from our experience.

And, in many ways, that is how we come to this Easter story.  Based on our past experience, we know what happens.  We even know some of the songs we will sing to tell the story.  We can predict that there will be flowers, perhaps even that we will gather at table for Holy Communion.  That ritual and routine are comforting.

And yet…..that is not at all how the story was first experienced.  If you had asked Mary and the disciples what they would have predicted that morning, they might have said to you that the stone would be covering the tomb.  They might had predicted a stench from the tomb that would require more spices for the body.   They might have predicted that they would gather with their friends to comfort one another and to pray.

This was, after all, the end.  All their experience with death—except that one moment with Lazarus—had taught them that this was the end.  Final.  Done.  The stone sealed the tomb, the story was over.

But, in the middle of the night, something happened that was completely unpredictable.  Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that “The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there.”[2]

The writer of the Gospel of John tells us that while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away.  While it was still dark.  Resurrection happens in the dark.  It does not happen when Mary gets to the tomb.  Resurrection happens when we still think it is the end, when we think the story is over.  Resurrection is anything but a predictable ending.  Like the disciples, we may think we have read the book before, we may think we can predict the ending—but that, friends, is precisely the good news of Easter—God gives us unpredictable, unexpected, more-than-hoped-for resurrection endings.

What we need to do this Easter is hear the story not like a well-loved children’s book or the latest novel that was just adapted to the big screen.  We need to hear the story like a brand new television series that leaves us guessing and wondering each week.  It is, after all, the most well-written drama of all time.

Like Mary and the disciples, we find ourselves trapped in the predictable.  We think we know the story.  There are places in our lives and in the world where darkness seems to cover the earth.  A family grieving after a child dies tragically.  A man trying to shake the demon of addiction.  An older adult losing touch with the present.  A country in the grasp of a terrorizing dictator.  A society where women are oppressed.  The darkness is out there.

But this is the good news that we are invited to share this Easter.  The end is not the end.  While it was still dark, God was at work that Easter morning. While it is still dark, God is at work in our lives.  Christ is alive!  It is not a statement about what happened in the long-ago past, but a proclamation of what is happening here and now.  God is rolling away stones, bringing light into the darkness, making real the hope to which we cling.

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

---

I Will Forgive

Lent 5B ~ Psalm 51, Jeremiah 31:31-34

Kenwood UMC ~ March 25, 2012

In the book of Exodus, chapter 31 verse 18, we learn that the first tablets on which are recorded the covenant of the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.  They were “written by the finger of God.”  However, almost immediately, Moses shatters them in a fit of anger because while he has been up on the mountain receiving them and having some good quality time with God, his people have pooled together all their gold and built a new god, a golden calf.  Moses goes and asks God’s forgiveness, and while God does not immediately relent, he eventually gives Moses a chance for a do-over, and has Moses prepare some new tablets, and God writes the commandments again.

And so continues the relentless dance between God and God’s people, a dance where God desires one thing, the people desire another, the leaders fall down on the job of leadership. And, God—we can imagine—gets frustrated, and has to work through it.  The Psalm we shared together today, Psalm 51, is from another one of those moments, years later, when King David has behaved very, very badly—the king who was the anointed leader of Israel has sinned greatly—and, like Moses, asks for God’s forgiveness.

And then we fast forward some more in the history of Israel, and we get to this scripture from Jeremiah, Jeremiah 31:31-34.  Now, before I read it, let me share some context.  Jeremiah was not a terribly well-loved prophet.  Most prophets are not happily embraced, but over his forty year history of calling Israel out for their sins, Jeremiah has ended up, in the words of one writer, “unmarried, friendless, imprisoned, made the butt of jokes, and the subject of indignities too numerous to count. Israel surely needed something new, because the old was simply not working in the eyes of this prophet.”[1]  And so he shared these words with those people in need of forgiveness, those people who kept turning away again and again and again.

Read scripture

I can remember before I began my ministry that open-heart surgery was a very big deal.  It was major surgery requiring days of hospitalization and months of healing.  Today, with advances in medicine, it is much more routine in some ways, and yet it is always a very big deal.  You see, the heart is one of those sacred organs, and we feel somehow fragile and vulnerable when people start messing around with the heart.

Perhaps, then, this picture that Jeremiah offers of the new covenant inscribed on the hearts of the people, takes on an equally important significance.  Before, God has written on stone tablets.  Now God chooses to break open the hearts of the people and carve a covenant into the very muscle which is the source of our lives.

God chooses to do this.  God chooses to forget the sins of the people—not to absolve them, not to cover them, but to completely erase them from memory.  What a gift it would we be if we could do that for one another—to completely erase from memory the wrongs we have done one another.

It’s almost unimaginable, isn’t it?  And yet this is how God forgives us.  When we sin, God does not make us adhere to a long regimen of penance.  God does not abolish us to a life of suffering.  God erases our wrongs from memory and remembers our sins no more.

We are now in the fifth week of Lent, and have been focusing on self-examination and repentance throughout the season.  Some of us have given up things for the season; some of us have taken things on to deepen our relationship with God.  And each Sunday in worship we have shared in a confession of our sin, and received an assurance of pardon.

And this is precisely the reason why we have those two parts of our worship tied together.  We need to confess our sins before God.  We have a deep, deep need to speak of the things we have done or left undone.  It is a cleansing of our spirits.  But we never confess our sins without receiving God’s forgiveness.  For you see, it is already written on our hearts.  God has initiated that forgiveness through a love that is freely given to us, no matter what.

When we talk about forgiveness, I often hear people speak of how difficult it is to forgive others.  And that’s true.  When we rely on our capacity to forgive.  But when we back up and start with the inscription on our hearts, with God’s deep love for us that comes in spite of our sin…..when we really get in touch with how much God loves and forgives us, I think it becomes easier to forgive one another.

God has already written the covenant on our hearts.  May we receive and accept the forgiveness which is already ours this day.  And may we open ourselves to God’s hand, that we can be reshaped more and more into God’s people each day.

Amen

---

When We Suffer

Lent 4 B ~ Psalm 107: 1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10

Kenwood UMC ~ March 18, 2012

Ada First United Methodist Church is an historic congregation with an over 100 year history in Ada, Ohio, also the home of Ohio Northern University.  It is also the home church of one of my colleagues in ministry on the Richmond District, Lauren Lobenhofer.  On Tuesday at lunch, Lauren received word from a childhood friend that there had been a fire at the church, and when she checked the church’s Facebook page, she saw a picture of the damage.

The image of flames coming out of the historic church building where Lauren had been baptized and confirmed and hoped to one day be married almost brought her to tears, as it would any of us.  And as that community came together, they did so acknowledging the suffering brought on by the disappearance of the location of so many memories.  Yes, they also focused on the truth that the church is not a building—but they are also doing the difficult work of acknowledging their suffering, and seeking to find God in the midst of it.  They know they will rebuild, they know hope will rise in the future, but right now they must stand, for at least a while, in their anguish.

That story beautifully describes the tension of Lent.  We want to eagerly get to the joy of Easter, the hope of resurrection.  But for now, we must stand in the midst of suffering and acknowledge its hard realities: the sense of loneliness, pain, loss, of despondency and despair….and so much more.

But what our scripture lessons this morning remind us is that these two must stand together, that suffering and hope are interwoven tightly.  Without one, there is not a need for the other.  Paul reminds the Ephesians that they were once dead in their trespasses and sins, but “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:4-5, NRSV).  And the Psalmist tells of those who were sick because of their sinful ways, but nevertheless cried out to the Lord, and God brought them deliverance and healing.

Now, both of these scriptures talk about suffering as the result of sin—personal sin and corporate sin—or lifestyle choices.  And we know that some suffering is a result of that.  Sometimes we make choices not to exercise or eat right, for instance, and we suffer the consequences.  Sometimes we choose to be greedy rather than generous and find ourselves isolated and alone.  Sometimes, our sin does cause suffering.

But there is another kind of suffering as well, the undeserved unmerited suffering, such as the suffering of Job—or some might say, the suffering of Jesus on the cross.  And as a congregation we have heard about our fair share of that this week.  We’ve struggled with one among us whose brain tumor has returned, and we’ve said a collective “It’s not fair.”  We’ve received news that the father of one of us has been diagnosed with advanced cancer, and we’ve joined in a chorus of “cancer is horrible.”  These are both examples of unmerited undeserved suffering.  Neither of those illnesses is caused by sin.

We’ve seen it on the global stage as well.  The example that has haunted me this week is of the 38 year old U.S. soldier who this week single-handedly massacred 16 civilians in Afghanistan.  None of those who were killed, or their family members, deserved their suffering.  And, we might also argue that the soldier did not deserve whatever happened that made him break in a deep, deep place inside of himself and commit this horrible act.

Clearly, not all suffering is the result of human sin—some is, but some is not.  Some is the result of natural law or simply the existence of natural evil in our world.  Suffering is a reality of life.  The question we must ask ourselves as travelers on this Lenten journey is, if suffering is real, what is God’s place in it?  And the answer is, God is on the cross.  The Jesus is not crucified in punishment for our human sins—Jesus’ crucifixion demonstrates God’s solidarity with us, that God is truly with us, not only in the moments of hope but also, and crucially, God is present with us in the moments of suffering.  And it doesn’t matter if the suffering is undeserved, or like Paul and the Psalmist relate, if the suffering is caused by our sin.  God is there, no matter what.  Even when we do not deserve God’s love, by our standards, God gives us love.  Amazing, unquantifiable love.

And that is why there is a refrain that echoes through Psalm 107, again and again: “O give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 107:1, NRSV).  This is what we proclaim in the midst of suffering—God’s steadfast love is with us.  God’s love never abandons or forsakes us.  God is there as the church burns, as the villagers mourn their dead, and as we struggle with cancer.  God’s grace is what has the power to set us free from our suffering, to let it no longer hold a death-grip around us like iron chains.  God’s steadfast love is what allows us, when we suffer, to still stand and proclaim, God is with me.  God’s amazing grace washes over me and saves me.  And I will tell of God/s deeds with songs of joy (Psalm 107:22 adapted).

In Search of Harmony

Lent 3 B ~ Psalm 19

Kenwood UMC ~ March 11, 2012

I love a beautiful harmony.  While there are a lot of solo music artists I like, I find myself especially drawn to groups that can produce gorgeous harmonies—The Beatles, U2, the Dixie Chicks, and Mumford and Sons, to name a few.  There is something about the blending of two very distinct sets of notes into one musical picture that speaks to me and moves me deeply.

Our scripture text for this morning is a harmony of sorts.  There are three distinct lines of thought—or songs—in Psalm 19.  There’s the first part, which begins in the first six verses by speaking of the wonders of God’s creation—the mysterious voice that comes forth from creation itself, the marvelous handiwork of the One who set the heavens in place.

And then there’s the second part that extols the virtues of another of God’s creations—the law, or Torah.  Just as the gift of creation was lifted up in the first six verses, the gift of the law is lifted up in the second section. The law, in this case, is not seen as a burden to be followed, but a place of valuable guidance and direction, a source of sustenance for the soul of the follower.

Finally, the third part lifts up the gift of forgiveness.  The psalmist acknowledges that we at times fail to appreciate God’s creation, and fail to live joyfully by God’s law, and so we have the gift of correction, forgiveness, the chance to offer once more our words as acceptable in God’s sight.

But how do these three things, three distinct notes, play in harmony together? Sometimes, not very well.  We struggle to receive all these gifts at once—we value the law, but we feel like it can restrict the glorious freedom granted in creation.  We delight in the handiwork of God, but resist the laws that instruct us how to care for it.  And we get so caught up in our own ideas and own desires that what we want is far from acceptable in God’s sight.  And the harmony God intended in creation, law, and forgiveness breaks down into discord.

I’m troubled by the discord I observe in our culture these days.  It’s everywhere.  I’m still a fan of the original reality TV show, Survivor.  And one of the reasons I like it so much is because of the honest picture it paints of human sin and salvation.  Watching this week’s episode, I was horrified at the blatant, ugly racism that came out in the ending Tribal Council. Grown men—in this case they were men—saying vile things to each other on national TV—and there I was watching it just like the next person.  I have to wonder whether I haven’t been conditioned, along with everyone else, to feel like this kind of discord is somehow OK.

I’ve been watching political rhetoric in our country around reproductive rights in recent weeks, and it will not surprise you to know that I have been very disturbed.  My first foray into Christian ethics was as a high school student, when I went to summer camp and took a class on bioethics—no light summer camps for me.  At the time in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy were new technologies, with complex ethical implications that were yet to be fleshed out.  Twenty-five years later, things are very different, but the emotions around these issues continue to be high.  I am saddened that as we have discussed reproductive rights issues, both in public and in private, in recent weeks, we are unable to do so in accordance with both a respect for God’s creation, and a respect for one another.  There are some laws God gives about how we treat one another, with dignity and respect.  And a number of folks—politicians, media commentators, and just ordinary people—have been violating those rules in recent weeks.  And they are folks who should know better.

This is a place where I think the church needs to ask for a little bit of forgiveness.  You see, we have failed to adhere to God’s laws about how to treat our neighbors.  In fact, we have added fuel to the fires of angry rhetoric when we take self-righteous stands on issues and assume we hold a monopoly on truth.  We have divided into camps—liberal and conservative, progressive and evangelical, Bible-believing and inclusive……and none of those are what God intended.

I think we find clues to what God intended in a wonderful sermon which John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, preached in 1872 called “The Catholic Spirit.”[i]  In it, he argues that what we must first strive for is unity in our essential core beliefs—salvation through Christ, the abundant grace of God—things such as this.  But in all other things where we have differences of opinion, and Wesley particularly cites different ways of worshipping, can we not be united in affection and love for one another while still differing in these non-essentials?

The idea behind this sermon is one of the reasons I have remained a United Methodist.  We are not a confessional church.  We do not ask members to declare how they interpret the Bible, what they believe about social issues, or what the correct way to pray is.  We invite people to profess their faith in Christ, to acknowledge the power of sin and covenant to resist it, and to be a part of a community on a journey.  In the midst of that community there will be differences of opinion.  But we will journey together respectfully, in conversation, and looking for the Christ in one another.

We have failed, as individuals and as a church, to speak up in a culture that is grounded in discord.  We know that God desires harmony—not uniformity. God wants us to listen to and love one another.  God knows we are not clones of one another, and will have different ideas and passions.  God guides us in ways to share those differences in the midst of a loving community.  We know these things.  The time has come to speak of them in a culture that seems to have forgotten.

May our words be acceptable, O God.  May we speak and act in ways that demonstrate our wonder in your creation and our delight in your guiding laws.  May we be the people who through our words and actions begin to restore beautiful harmony to our life together.

No Laughing Matter

Lent 2 B ~ Genesis 17:17, 15-16

Kenwood UMC ~ March 4, 2012

As many of you know, I’ve been participating in a leadership program this year in North Carolina, and a few weeks ago I participated in the third of four sessions. One of our facilitators, Russ, asked for prayers as we were leaving, since he and his wife were headed to Texas to be with their daughter and son in law, Ashley and Trent, who were expecting a baby soon—the baby, Russ, explained, was for now named Ricky Bobby.

Those of you who are chuckling are undoubtedly thinking of the Talladega Nights movie where race car driver Ricky Bobby is played by Will Ferrell.  And you are laughing, as you remember the character.  But names, really, are no laughing matter, are they?

In fact in this scripture from Genesis 17, we get three new names—a new name for Abram, a new name for Sarai, and a new name for God.  And Abraham, as these names are being given out, and along with that the news that he and his wife will have a child in their old age, falls on his face, it is reported in verse 17, and laughs.

But really, names are no laughing matter.  They define us.  Can you imagine being renamed?  Going through all your life as whoever you are and then along comes God and up and renames you?  It would take forever to stop responding to the other name.  It would be very difficult to re-brand ourselves, to answer to something new.  Just think how many times you still slip up and say you are going to Ukrops.

And yet…..and yet, this is what God does.  God is in the renaming business. In this story, we encounter two people with a long history with God.  We meet them in the Biblical story for the first time about 25 years before, when at the age of 75, God calls Abram to leave his home place, and tells Abram all the families of the earth will be blessed through him (Genesis 12).  Abram and Sarai have followed.  They have battled infertility, and the pain and anger of surrogacy.  Their journey has been long.  And finally, God reappears to them and renews the covenant, but this time, gives them new names.

Names are not just identifiers in the Old Testament, “they reflect the character and destiny of the person.”[i]  And so Abram receives the new name, Abraham, which means ancestor of a multitude.  And Sarai receives the new name Sarah, which means princess.  These new names signify to them that God is going to make real on the promise for them to be the ancestors of many people.  And God is referred to the first time as El Shaddai, which means God Almighty—a kind of name which suggests God is powerful enough to open Sarah’s womb, even in her old age.

At significant moments, at turning points, at moments of re-definition, God gives us a new name.  The name may be connected to a new role: doctor, teacher, spouse, parent.  Or it might be a nickname connected with a life event.  But that renaming signifies a shift, a change in identity.

God renames people, and I believe God also, at times, renames the church. I believe God is in a particularly critical re-naming period right now when it comes to Christianity.  It used to be that we knew what it meant to bear the name Christian—it meant certain practices like going to worship and Sunday School, having a Revised Standard Version of the Bible on our bedside table, rewarding children for memory verses, and giving a quarter each day of Lent for the hungry.

But if God is in the business of renaming, then perhaps we need to attend to the nuances God is giving the name Christian today.  Today, being a Christian means seeking God.  It means being authentic.  It means relating to people of many faith traditions while trying to stand in our own Christ-centered faith tradition.  It means serving the poor and the lost.  But it doesn’t always mean going to worship, or Sunday School, or having a Bible by our bed.

And it feels uncomfortable for many of us who have worn the name Christian for so long.  It feels abrasive, and even wrong. But the quandary we face is, with each day it becomes more and more apparent that this is not some fad, or even some stepping away from faith or watering down faith.  It is a re-definition of what it means to be faithful.  Just like God was redefining what it meant to be Abram and Sarai.

One of my good friends pastors a new church start in Harrisonburg called Rise.  And what you see about Rise doesn’t always look like the church you know.  First there’s the name—Rise.  No United Methodist Church attached.  No name of a saint or a place—just Rise.  And it’s a verb.  They have Bible Fight Club where people can come and debate scripture; they have just launched a midnight prayer meeting at a coffee shop on Tuesday evenings during Lent; and they worship in a theater at “exactly 10ish” on Sunday mornings.  They are drawing young adults from around Harrisonburg to their ministry, and in turn reaching out in love to the community and the world.  Their slogan is “Receive love.  Give love.  Repeat.”  They are re-defining what it means to be church—and because of that new identity they are giving to church, they are reaching new people for Jesus Christ.

We’ve been working on our own re-naming efforts here at Kenwood.  For over a decade, and perhaps longer, we’ve seen the trends that tell us that the traditional model of Sunday School, which worked for many years, is no longer appealing to many people in our community.  In particular, we have struggled with how to form faith for our children.  And especially recently as Kenwood’s leaders have had some hard conversations, we have begun to acknowledge that maybe it is time for a new name, a new identity, a new way of doing ministry.  Maybe “Sunday School,” what it is and what it means, just simply no longer works for everyone.  That doesn’t mean some people don’t still find it helpful. But many don’t.  And I’ve begun to wonder whether God isn’t trying to rename us—to give a new character and emphasis to this formational ministry.

It can’t have been easy for Abram and Sarai to start using their new names.  After all, for a hundred years, they had been going by their old names.  And yet.  God has done something new.  And they responded.  Although they laughed at the idea, they were also trusting and faithful.  They let God rename them, and they grew into the new meaning of those names.

Can we in our old age listen, like Abraham and Sarah?  Can we listen, church, as God renames us?  As we gather at the table to share bread and cup, an act that was once a strange new ritual, can we open our hearts to let God feed us and renew us and invite us into the future?

May we both hear and respond to God’s invitation this day.  Amen.

---

Begin Anew

Lent 1 B ~ Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1: 9-15

Kenwood UMC ~ February 26, 2012

Today’s scripture stories are all about beginnings.  We know about beginnings, right?  The beginning of a book that captures us, the beginning of a movie so riveting it ends up on the Oscar stage tonight.  Or, the beginning of life with birth, the beginning of new life at marriage.  We even know about the beginning of living with cancer, the beginning of struggling with depression, the beginning of trying to find a job.

The stories from our scripture today are about the preparation Jesus took in the wilderness as his ministry was about to begin, and the beginning of life after the flood in Genesis.  But these are not just beginnings out of nothing.  They are fresh starts—new beginnings, “do-overs.”  In both cases, God has tried to save humanity from their sinfulness before.  But in the promise of the rainbow and in the ministry of Jesus, God is making a commitment to do it again, to start fresh.

The good news for us this morning is that we have that opportunity to begin anew as well.  This season of Lent is a preparatory season.  It is a season when we are invited to come face to face with the dark places in our souls.  We examine those shadows, place them before God, talk with God about them, and God says, “OK, let’s begin a new.”

Forgiveness and mercy allow us t begin anew.  These are characteristics of God that we cling to, and we see them clearly in the flood story in Genesis.  Now, this story of Noah and the ark has a couple of popular interpretations.  In church nurseries—and in home nurseries—across America, this story is depicted in cute pictures of the ark and the animals going in two by two. It has become a children’s fable, in this popular rendering.  From an opposite perspective, you often hear people talk about how this story demonstrates God’s anger and wrath.  God got so angry, the story goes, that in an act of divine rage, God struck down everything on the earth.  This story, some say, shows that we should be scared of God.

Unfortunately neither of these popular stories convey the whole truth about the story of the flood.  To find the whole truth, we have to look back a little farther.  When we reach back into the creation stories, we remember that God created humanity and called them good, and gave them boundaries.  From the very beginning, humans began to rebel, to break the boundaries, to kill and to be greedy.  God has watched the human spirit, created in God’s image, become broken and tarnished and full of sin.

But is God’s reaction anger?  Is God angry about our sin?  No.  God is grieved.  God is sorrowful.  God is full of pain and regret and a desire to do better, to try again, to redeem and renew.  If we look at the beginning of the flood story in Genesis 6:6, we find these words: “The Lord was sorry that He had made humankind on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.”

If we are honest, we know this feeling of grief.  We know it as we look into our own hearts and our own lives.  We see the impact of sin: the broken relationships that litter the path of our lives; the signs in our bodies of how we have not treated them as God’s temple; the discomfort over the times we have kept silent instead of speaking a word of justice or mercy or peace.  We know what it is to look at our lives with regret and sorry.  Oh, that kind of self-examination may have hints of anger at ourselves—but we also know that anger is one of the stages of grief.

And so a sorrowful God does not just sit and wallow in sorrow.  And God does not lash out in anger.  And that makes this story even more powerful, because the Hebrews lived in a time when angry deities were often cited as the cause of various natural disasters.  Despite that natural inclination, by a people who might not understand meteorology or geology, an inclination to attribute floods and earthquakes and the like to an angry heavenly being—that is not the message of this story.

No the message of this story is that we get to start again.  It is a message that says when we have been corrupted by sin, God invites us to be washed clean, to start over.  Out of the flood comes rebirth, a new opportunity, renewal.  And God gives us a sign—the rainbow.  It is a symbol that makes us remember—and not only us, but God says when he sees it He will remember.  He will remember that he has known sorrow and regret before.  For surely, God’s sorrow at the sin of humanity has not ended.  We continue to be an imperfect creation.  But God has learned that this way, the way of the flood, while it has brought renewal, is not the only way.  And so the rainbow is God’s reminder not to walk that path again.

And in fact, God walked another path, an entirely different path to renewal.  It was a path the involved a stable, a temptation in the wilderness, tables overturned in the temple, a word of hope proclaimed from a mountaintop, and the ultimate sacrifice on the cross.  The life of Christ is about God’s sorrow and regret over sin, and God’s deep, deep desire to heal, reconcile and renew all creation.

As you begin this Lenten season, hear the Good News:  God’s covenant is also with each one of us.  If we engage in soul-searching and self-examination this season, if we enter into a time of preparation for Easter and earnestly seek to return to God, we will experience renewal.  We will find rebirth.  We will know resurrection joy.  But only after we do as Christ did and make the journey through the wilderness, experience temptation, and become honest with ourselves.  On the other side of Lent, there is a rainbow, a promise.  May we journey together toward that destination.  Amen.

[i]

---

The Veil

Transfiguration Sunday, Year B ~ Mark 9:2-9, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Kenwood UMC ~ February 19, 2012

On Friday, NPR ran a story about a new book that is a collection of stories about the love lives of American Muslim women.  The book is called Love InshAllah, or Love God Willing.  For many of us, the stories in the book would not be particularly sensational or noteworthy, as they are the kind of stories of relationships that Western culture has long shared in the open.  But for Muslim women, these stories are new revelations, a new window into their lives.  As the NPR story headline cited it, the book “lifts the veil on love lives.”[i]

In Muslim culture, relationship stories are veiled, just as women are veiled.  They are obscured, difficult to clearly see.  The apostle Paul uses this same language to talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our second scripture for the morning, from the Second letter to Corinthians, Chapter 4, verses 3-6.

The Gospel is veiled to those who are perishing, Paul says.  What exactly does this mean?  What does it mean to be veiled, and who are the perishing?

Well, we’ve already talked about being veiled as being obscured—so the Gospel, the Good News of God, is obscured for those who are perishing. They cannot see it clearly.  But, who are those who are perishing?  It would be easy to say it is them, over there, those who do not believe, those who do not know Christ.  But lest we too easily point fingers at those people over there, let us look back at the Gospel lesson.  Here, we find that Jesus’ followers, his closest friends, have not clearly seen who he was until this moment when he is transfigured on the mountaintop before them.  The ones who are closest to him—the ones who have heard him first hand—they are perishing then, because they have not seen him clearly.

It stands to reason then, that if Jesus was veiled for the disciples, we, too, may be among the perishing, among those to whom the good news of the Gospel is veiled, obscured.  And I do believe that it can be a struggle for us to see the Good News at work in the world.  So the question I’d like for us to look at this morning is, where do we see God, and how do we see God in the world?  I think that removing the veil from the Gospel, seeing Jesus for who he truly is, is not so much about removing the veil from things out in the world, but removing the veil from our own eyes, from our own perspective, so that we can truly see God’s presence among us.

What keeps us from seeing the glory of God—the Gospel—the truth of Jesus?  What is casting a veil over our eyes? You know, too often we are really good at seeing God in the big moments, the momentous occasions—the mountain top experiences (retreats, camp, mission trips – profound life experiences).  But those are all too brief, and then as we come down from the mountain we fail to heed the words we hear God say on the mountain top—“Listen.”  And perhaps not just listen but watch.  Pay attention to where he goes.  Follow him down the mountain.

That’s a hard task, to keep our eyes focused on Jesus.  We tend to see the moments, the glimpses, the sudden appearances.  But we lose sight of the everyday, the mundane, the step by step walk of Christ before us along the path.  And Paul says we lose sight of Christ because of this veil, which is caused by the “gods of this world.”  In other words, the things of this world that we place before God distract us from truly seeing.  Things like our desire for looking out for ourselves, our desire for getting more, our distraction by all the wants the surround us.

Now, it would be easy for me to say, just stop letting those things get in the way.  But as you think of the things that are idols in your life, you know it isn’t that easy.  Instead of me suggesting what we ought not to do, let me suggest what we should do—how we can increase our attentiveness to God and lift the veil.

We should commit to one another.  We should look at one another, the spouses and friends, children and neighbors sitting around us, and say, “Yes, I want to be a part of this journey.  I want to know God more deeply in my life.  And when I am not listening, when I am not paying attention, when I am not following, I invite you to let me know.”

That’s what we are here for, friends.  This morning as we share in the sacrament of baptism for Will, we will once more confess our faith in Christ and our commitment to one another and Will and his family.  We are here, worshipping together, to be a community of faith, supporting our journey towards seeing Christ more clearly.  Jesus didn’t just take one person up to the mountaintop.  He took three.  Because he knew they would need each other.  He knew that they would need each other to keep them focused, to help them see, to show one another how to follow.

We need each other on this journey to see God, to see the Good News clearly in our lives and in the world.  We need to talk about God with one another. We need to share our struggles and pray for one another.  We need to share our faith stories with those who are not here.  It is in our community of togetherness that we will truly find the support and accountability to lift the veil, to draw closer to the Holy One.

And we begin by reconnecting with God.  We begin by calling to mind a time when God has been revealed to us, giving thanks for that time, and asking God to open our eyes more clearly.

I want to invite you into a time of meditation, of reflecting on your own experience of the holy.  Call to mind a time when you were close to God and reconnect again.  During that time we will be experiencing time lapse photography of the Aurora Borealis over Norway.  May the images and the music guide you to focus on a time when God was fully revealed to you in your life.

I invite you to share that experience after worship.

You’ve Got to Give It Away

6^th Sunday After Epiphany, Year B ~ Exodus 18:13-26 (Off-lectionary)

Kenwood UMC ~ February 12, 2012

Our scripture for today takes place during the early days of the Israelite people’s time in the wilderness.  They have successfully made it through the Red Sea and received manna from heaven to nourish them.  They have not yet received the Ten Commandments from God, but are working on living together as a community.  And part of living together in community is arbitrating disputes.  This is where we find Moses, the leader of the Israelites today, arbitrating a long line of disputes that the people bring to him.  Moses’ father-in- law, Jethro, sees this and takes Moses to task, telling him that he needs to appoint some people of character to do this task, and then oversee their work.

This is a text that I return to time and time again in my own personal spiritual and leadership work. The primary issue with this text is how Moses functions in his natural role as a leader.  Now, I know that many of you may not see yourselves as leaders.  But we all have defined roles, ways that we relate to the world, ways we react and make choices that are almost second nature.  And one of the moments when life feels like it is spinning out of control is when we have to change those roles.

We got a great snapshot of people thrust into different roles in the fourth quarter of last week’s Super Bowl game between the Giants and the Patriots.  There were 57 seconds left on the clock, the Giants had the ball on the New England 6 yard line and were trailing by two points.  Quarterback Eli Manning took the snap, and handed the ball off to running back Amahad Bradshaw.  And that’s when, in the words of the New York Times article on the play, it became

“opposite day. The Patriots defenders, trained their whole lives to try to push and claw and fight to bring down the ball carrier, stood up and opened a double-wide hole for Bradshaw to reach the end zone.

Bradshaw trained his whole life to sprint into the end zone whenever he could, pulled up just short of the goal line and tried to fall down.

Even the players and coaches on the Giants’ sideline, who had spent their whole lives cheering when their team scored, did not know what to do when Bradshaw failed to slam on his brakes in time and fell, almost dejectedly, into the end zone for a touchdown.

The scene was surreal; the Giants had just taken a 21-17 lead in the Super Bowl, and no one was celebrating. Bradshaw did not even know whether to spike the ball.”[1]

So what happened in that play?  Commentators have analyzed it all week, but I think that roles got turned upside down.  A defensive coach told his players not to defend.  A quarterback was yelling at his running back “Don’t score, don’t score!”  And a running back was caught in the middle, unsure and confused, and eventually erred on the side of instinct and made the touchdown.

I think the really interesting thing here is how many people were going against their instinctive roles.  And that is really, really hard for us to do.  That’s why Moses sat there all day long, with the people coming to him for advice.  All day.  With a long line snaking out from his tent.  Dealing with issues after issue, argument after argument, dispute after dispute.  Why would he do it?  Because he had this instinctive, advice-giving role that he was really comfortable in—conflict resolver and mediator.

But sometimes, we get to moments in our lives where we have to grow and change. And in those moments, one of the most critical things we can do is to know when to give one role away for another.

And that can go against instinct.  Like a defensive coach who tells the defense to back off, a quarterback who calls, “don’t score,” and a running back who at least gives thought to stopping short of a clear run for the end zone.  But sometimes, like Moses, we have to change course, to shift our roles, to give up a task we’ve always done in order to meet the new challenges life brings.  And if we can’t make those shifts, then life will continue to spin out of control.

For instance, when our kids grow up and leave home, and we all of the sudden have to reorient our lives and become empty nesters.  Or when we move from elementary school to middle school and have to become better organized and learn how to manage multiple teachers, classes and lockers.  Or when our parents begin to age and we move into the role of caregiver.  Or when we lose a spouse and have to learn how to live life solo rather than in partnership.  Or when we’ve got to strategize about what it will take to win the biggest game of our lives.

All of those are moments, when, like Moses, we need to reexamine our priorities, our roles, our tasks and figure out once again what we should be doing.  Sometimes, we will need a Jethro to give us a hand and suggest a new way of doing things. Sometimes we will arrive at that from our own internal reflection.  But every life shift like that will require giving away something precious, something treasured: the innocence of childhood; the security of partnership; the security of knowing how to do our job well.

Here at Kenwood we are experiencing that kind of role transition.  Old patterns and practices that served this congregation well 20-30 years ago, or even 2-3 years ago, no longer work.  God is calling us into new ways of being church, new ways of ministry and mission, new ways of loving, learning and serving.  One example of that is our patterns of outreach—serving the least of these in our community.  We’ve had a new relationship develop with Freedom House over the last year or two, as people have developed new passion and energy around the issues of homelessness and hunger.  God is inviting us into new ways of ministry.

But here’s the good news.  Even as we are releasing the old to step into the new, God is there.  God is there, leading us onward.  In fact, God has already gone ahead to prepare the way.  May God give each one of us the strength and courage we need when we have to move forward, into the new roles and possibilities God has for each of us.

When Even Superglue Doesn’t Work

5^th Sunday After Epiphany, Year B ~ Mark 1: 29-39

Kenwood UMC ~ February 5, 2012

This is one of my most important possessions, a merit badge from my time in Girl Scouts.  I shared it with my daughter Kate’s troop last year when I led them in getting the same badge—the Ms. Fix-It badge.  I’ve always loved fixing things.  I came by it honestly–my dad taught me how to do a brake job on a car as one of the things I needed to know before I grew up.

Last summer we had a crisis at home when a small plastic piece broke off a microphone at our house, the piece that actually held the microphone on the stand.  No problem, I thought, I can fix this.  I went to get my superglue—the “Super Strong, Fast Bonding” kind—and glued the plastic part back on.  I waited overnight before I put the microphone back in the stand and put any weight on the repair, but it all looked good….until we got home the next afternoon and the microphone and plastic piece were lying on the ground.

I was frustrated and exasperated, but I also gave up, knowing this was something that was beyond my abilities to fix.

There are lots of things in life, in fact, that are not only beyond our abilities to fix, but not our responsibility to fix.  But we sure do spend a lot of time worrying about them—the illness of our best friend, the rocky marriage of our neighbors, the last minute science project that someone forgot to plan for…the list goes on and on.

In this scripture, Jesus “fixes” a lot of people. He heals Peter’s mother-in-law.  He heals many who are sick or possessed by demons—scripture says a whole city gathers around his door.   And Jesus was able to heal them.  But here’s the thing—we aren’t Jesus.  We don’t have the same power that he does.  We can pray for him to heal or fix broken people and places, we can offer people to him for healing, we can even open ourselves to be agents of his healing—but there are some things in this world that are beyond our ability to fix and lie firmly in Jesus’ control.

Now, we are really good at worrying about other people about wanting to make their lives better—I am right there confessing this with you.  But it isn’t up to us.  It isn’t our responsibility.  The main person who is our responsibility is us—how we act and behave in the world, how we relate to others, how we care for ourselves.  Those are the things we need to focus on—and all the rest we need to be able to surrender to Christ.

The question we come face to face with is, how do we do that?  How do we release to God the people and situations that worry us, the things we want so badly to fix or make better or restore?

The first way to tackle this, especially if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the needs of those around you is to write it down.  Make a list of the people you feel some care-taking responsibility for, and then note the different issues or responsibilities you have.

Then, go back and evaluate each one.  Is the issue of concern something it is appropriate for you to be worried about?  For instance, I take care of my family by going grocery shopping.  That is appropriate.  But I don’t have to go back to the store if someone forgot to tell me we were out of their favorite snack—that can wait until my next trip.

So, once you go through that evaluation, you need to take those folks who you should not be fixing, and you need to give them over to Jesus.  That process may be simple for some of us, for others of us it may take months or years.  But I invite you to head a page in your journal with words like: “Jesus can heal.  I cannot.”  And on that page list the names and situations that need Jesus’ healing.  Return to the list on a weekly basis, both to add to it, and to remind yourself of those people.  Imagine them in the long line of people crowded outside the house in our scripture today.  They are waiting patiently.  Jesus will get to them.  We don’t know when, and we don’t know how—but Jesus will get to them.

Healing also occurs through the sacrament of Holy Communion. We confess our sins before we gather at the table.  And one of our sins is worry about things and people beyond our control.  As we share in the Great Thanksgiving and remember Christ’s sacrifice, we remember that his gifts for us did not end with his death and resurrection, but are ongoing, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  When we break the bread, we remember that we as people are broken, but in Christ we are made whole.  His real presence is with us in this meal, feeding our empty, hungry souls.  And it is Christ alone who can fully feed us so we hunger no more.

There is much in our world that needs healing.  The good news is we don’t have to heal it.  We have to trust and believe in a God who will heal it, and make ourselves available to be God’s instruments as we are called upon.  May we have the strength and courage to believe in the healing power of Christ’s love, and the wisdom to surrender those we love to Christ’s care.

Sometimes We All Need A Time Out

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Off-Lectionary ~ Exodus 20:8-11, Mark 6:30-33

Kenwood UMC ~ January 29, 2012

Over the years I’ve read a lot of articles on parenting, and especially being working parents, and how to manage the stress that creates.  One of the things I have tried to practice, though not always successfully, is giving myself a time out.  You know the theory of time out, right?  When a child is misbehaving, you set them apart, in a deserted place, to have a time out.  The theory is that parents need to move into a self-imposed time out when they feel their nerves fraying—we need to go to a deserted place before we say or do something we do not intend.

That idea of time out, of going apart, is rooted, for me, in the Biblical concept of Sabbath.  And there is nothing better that I know of to stop the spinning, out of control life, than Sabbath.  I want to be clear that sometimes people think of keeping Sabbath as going to worship-that is not what I mean.  Sabbath, if we read the commandment in the Old Testament book of Exodus, is about taking a break from the incessant drive to be productive.  God wove Sabbath into the fabric of creation by spending six days producing and working, and then taking a day to rest.  That speaks to the fact that Sabbath—a regular time of rest—is critical to our spiritual well being.  We may think we don’t need it.  We may think we can keep going and going and going.  We can keep working long hours, driving carpool and fixing meals, caring for others, whatever we do to be productive.  It feeds us, we say.  We have to do it in order to support our families, we argue.

I would argue very strongly that while these things do feed us and are necessary to keep the household moving, without Sabbath we will lose our effectiveness and our joy in all these other things.  Jesus knew that.  After he first commissioned the disciples and sent them out to minister in his name, they come back to him to report on what they have seen and done.  And he calls them to go away to a deserted place, by themselves, and rest a while.  The scripture we read today reports that this is difficult to do, because they are being followed and people are making demands upon them….that sounds familiar doesn’t it?

A lot of the time when I try to have Sabbath, I find myself intruded upon just as the disciples do in this story.  Someone needs something.  Someone feels they cannot do without my presence.  Someone chases me down, as the crowds do in our Gospel lesson.  It’s like being the proverbial parent of a toddler who cannot even go to the bathroom by themselves.  But, what we have to be able to do is realize that without tending to what we need, we cannot tend to the needs of others.

We all heard of an excellent example of someone taking Sabbath this week in our national news.  Can anyone think of what I might be talking about?  Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who sustained massive wounds in a January 8 shooting in Tucson last year, resigned from Congress this week.  We have followed her miraculous recovery, she has been an inspiration for so many—and she continues to be an inspiration with the choice she made this week.  In her resignation letter she writes,

“The only way I ever served my district in Congress was by giving 100%.  This past year, that’s what I have given to my recovery.  Thank you for your patience.  From my first steps and first words after being shot to my current physical and speech therapy, I have given all of myself to being able to walk back onto the House floor this year to represent Arizona’s 8^th Congressional District.  However, today I know that now is not the time.  I have more work to do on my recovery before I can again serve in elected office.”[i]

Did you hear Gabby Giffords language about work, and how important her work is to her, and how she gives it 100%?  Many of us would say the same thing about the roles we fulfill in our lives.  But what she has recognized is that she needs a time out before she can fulfill her role to the best of her ability.  She needs some Sabbath.

Indeed, we all need Sabbath.  More specifically, we all need quiet time with God on a regular basis; I would argue that daily is optimal.  Some people do that over a cup of coffee, or in a hot bath or on their morning run.  But we all need to spend quiet time simply being in God’s presence.  It is that time which will quiet and center us, give us rest like we have never before experienced, and allow all the other anxious places in our lives to find some release.

Last Sunday evening as a part of our confirmation class, we talked about devotion as one of four practices on the way of salvation.  I led the students through 12 minutes of silent reflection on a scripture verse.  During this time they were invited to read the scripture passage and a short commentary on it, and journal some responses to questions and then sit silently with God.  For the most part, this was a new experience for them.  I’ve asked Peyton Gemmel to come this morning and share his thoughts about that exercise.

Questions Peyton will answer:

• When I told the class you were going to spend 12 min in quiet, what was your first reaction?
• Was the 12 minutes with God hard for you?
• What did you learn about the value of quiet time?
• Would it be hard or easy for you to do that on a daily basis?

I believe that in general, we are not very good at spending quiet time with God.  And so I want to invite you to think about ways you might incorporate that kind of discipline into your life.  Think about just 10 minutes a day when you might be quiet with God.  Think about the best time of day for you.  Figure out if you are going to need to light a candle, or find some music, or even download a meditative app for your phone.  If you are looking for resources, please let me know—I will be glad to share what I know about.  But I want to invite you, if you are serious about lowering the chaos level in your life, to make yourself a sanctuary for God for 10 minutes a day.  You’ll need to try it for a month or two to see if it makes a difference—but I believe it will.  Because that’s how we were created—to have a regular pattern of rest and communion with God as a part of our rhythm of life.  May you seek God in the quiet, and may you be rewarded by a deepening closeness with your Creator.

---

Figure Out Who You’re Going to Obey

Third Sunday After Epiphany, Year B ~ Mark 1:14-20

Kenwood UMC ~ January 22, 2012

Last week we began our series called Stop the Spinning by taking about setting personal boundaries.  We explored the distinction that Paul makes between the load that we are responsible to carry, and the burdens that we are to help one another carry.  What we didn’t explore fully was how to figure out what our loads are, and how to handle the demands that others sometimes place on us.  We get an entry into that conversation in our scripture this week, as we turn to a passage in scripture where Jesus calls the first disciples, Simon, Andrew, James and John.  One of the strongest words in this passage is “immediately” they left their nets and followed him.  Immediately they knew the call of the Master’s voice and whom to obey.

Now, I want to invite you to think just a moment about all the times in a given week when someone asks us to do something.  It could be a demanding request or a pleasant invitation.  But we are faced on a regular basis with making a choice about obeying someone who wants us to do something—and often the assumption is simply made that we will do it.  But sometimes, those requests come from people who are trying to get you to do something that should really be their responsibility.  And sometimes those requests come from people who you just have a really hard time saying “no” to.  But figuring out when to say yes and when to say no when someone asks something of you is a critical step towards drawing healthy boundaries and bringing our lives back under control.

That day by the lakeshore, John and James in particular must have had some pretty good boundaries to be able to know whom to obey. It mentions in the text that they left their father Zebedee in the boat and followed.  Now, it is not likely that Zebedee was just along for the ride that day.  It is more likely that this fishing boat was part of a family business, and the sons were helping their father with the family livelihood, much as they would have done if they raised cattle or sheep.  The obedience of his sons to Jesus’ call would have had a huge impact on their family.  So that call had to be pretty compelling for them to respond to it.

What makes a call compelling in a positive sense, not compelling in an “I feel obligated to respond” sense?  Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend tell the story of Barry in their book, Boundaries.

Barry had almost made it to his car after church when Ken caught up with him.  Here goes, Barry thought. Maybe I can still get out of this one.

“Barry!” Ken boomed.  “Glad I caught you!”

….Ken was a dedicated recruiter [for the Bible studies offered by the singles class]; however, he was often insensitive to the fact that not everyone wanted to attend his meetings.

“So, which study can I put you down for, Barry?  The one on prophecy, evangelism, or Mark?”

Barry thought desperately to himself.  I could say, “None of the above interest me.  Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” But he’s a [powerful leader] in the singles class.  He could jeopardize my relationship with others in the group.  I wonder which class will be shortest?

“How about the one on prophecy?” Barry guessed.  He was wrong.

“Great!  We’ll be studying end times for the next eighteen months!  See you Monday!”  Ken walked off triumphantly (Cloud and Townsend, 110-11).[i]

Now, it seems like Barry might have been obedient to a good thing.  Like the disciples on the lakeshore, he was being invited to a spiritual undertaking.  But the problem is what motivates him to obey here—and that is fear, his fear of reprisal from Ken if he says no.

Fear is never a good motivator for obedience.  When someone asks us something, we might say yes because we, like Barry, fear what will happen if we don’t.  We might also fear the guilt that we will have inside of us if we say no.  But here’s the thing—until we say no, we can’t really learn how to say yes.

Think about how it feels to say yes to a volunteer position that you don’t really feel qualified to do, or have a lot of gifts for.  You do it out of obligation, but there is little or no joy to what you are doing.  That’s not what God asks of us when God asks us to have the heart of a servant.  God asks for cheerful service that is in line with our gifts.  That is one reason why it is usually my practice to do a couple of things when I am selecting leaders:

1. I pray about the leadership position and invite names to float to the surface.  I then think about what gifts the person might have before I ask them.  Sometimes I talk about them with others to see if they see the same gifts, or if they know someone who might have those gifts.  But before I ask, I pray and think about gifts.
2. I try very hard not to ask someone to do something and expect an answer right then, particularly if it is an in depth commitment.  I ask them to pray about it and get back to me, and I often say, “and, by the way, I want you to know that “no” is a fine answer.”

You see, I’ve learned over the years that anyone who has trouble with boundaries has trouble saying no to their pastor.  And, in fact, most people have trouble saying no to their pastor, bad boundaries or not.  But I think it is important for us all to obey God’s call on our lives not out of obligation or guilt, but out of joy.

And I think that’s the bottom line we get to today.  I think that what the disciples heard in Jesus’ voice was an invitation to a way of life that was joyous and fulfilling.  So promising was it, that they were compelled to say yes immediately.

Now, most of the time when voices call and demand or ask something of us, they aren’t Jesus.  So they don’t have that quality of the Master’s call.  But we can apply the same kind of test to them.  Is what this person asking me to do something that will bring me joy?  Or, is it something I really don’t want to do or am only doing so I won’t feel guilty?

If it brings you joy—say yes.  And if it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t have anything to do with anything you are passionate about, and if thinking about saying yes gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach—then say no!  We can only learn how to say yes to the things we are supposed to be doing—the things God has truly called us to—if we can learn how to say no to the other things.

So I invite you to experiment with some “no’s” in the week ahead, and also to keep your heart open to the summons God may be offering you, to come and follow on a new path.  Will you come and follow, if the Master calls your name?

---

Setting Boundaries: Whose Burden Should I Carry?

Stop the Spinning, Week 1 ~ Galatians 6:1-5 (off lectionary)

Kenwood UMC ~ January 15, 2012

Our worship series for the next five weeks is called Stop the Spinning, and the image guiding us is the spinning toy top on the front of our bulletin cover.  Isn’t it easy for our lives to feel like that top?  Like we are spinning around, trying to take care of people, or trying to please people, or trying to succeed at what we are working on, or trying to absorb all the information people throw at us, and we are spinning around and around and around and making ourselves sick.

And I have come to believe that we do have a deep sickness as a culture.  It’s a sickness that emerges from being overcommitted and at the same time not well-cared for.  Many of us have forgotten how to say no to everyone but ourselves, and we have filled our lives with so much stuff that we find it very difficult to focus on what we should be doing.  For most of us, this is an issue at least in some aspect of our lives or at some part of the year—for instance, the holiday season, or planning the family summer vacation.  We’re going to spend time in the next five weeks learning about what the Bible and our faith teach us about how to get our lives under control.  We’ve also got a small group beginning today at 11:15 that is going to delve into these topics for nine weeks.

And we start this morning with boundaries—knowing what our boundaries are.  Now, that may seem like a simple thing.  Boundaries are like property lines.  They are lines that define our space, our responsibility, our commitments—they separate them from everyone else’s space and responsibility and commitments.  But, boundaries are permeable—like the walls of cells. People can move through our boundaries.  Emotions can invade them.  Commitments can push and pull at them.  And stopping the spinning in our lives begins with getting clear about what our personal boundaries are—or in the words of Paul this morning in Galatians, what burdens of one another should we bear, and what loads are ours alone to carry—more on that distinction in a moment.

First, a story.  We moved into the new home—not the one we live in now–and were glad to have a yard that we could work in and take care of—it was just enough but not too much for us.  Our driveway was on the right of the lot, and our neighbor’s driveway was on the left of their lot, and between them was a pie shaped piece of land, about 4 feet at it’s short end and 6 feet at the long end.  Our property boundary ran down the middle, between our driveways.  That wedge of land was a wasteland.  The grass was clumpy and brown with bare spots throughout, weedy and barren.  It was a contrast to both our lawn and our neighbor’s lawn—they weren’t HGTV worthy, but they looked OK.

We hadn’t moved in long, when our neighbor approached us about improving that piece of land—digging it out, bringing in dirt, planting flowers and plants, mulching.  Now, at that point I was really trying hard to be a good neighbor, and even though the thought of all the work it would take to build up this bed was not appealing to me, neither was the eyesore it was now.  “Oh, I know a lot about plants,” my new neighbor assured me—and one could see that she did, from her yard, which was filled (did I say FILLED?) with plants.  I finally agreed, but with one caveat—that whatever we did be low-maintenance, because we did not have a lot of time to weed and pinch and water and fertilize.

Well.  I of course didn’t know low maintenance from high maintenance, and, trying to please, I acquiesced to most of her plant choices.  We got the bed put in one weekend—and it looked great!  For about a month.  Then the grass-like weeds began to sprout and reproduce—she had talked me into the cheap fill dirt, which, it turned out, was filled with the remnants of these weeds.

The bed turned into a nightmare.  We could never even attempt to keep up with the weeding.  It was overgrown beyond belief.  And my neighbor—well, she turned reclusive and developed medical problems.  And there we were.

Now, I learned a lot about myself from this story.  In particular, I learned a lot about my boundaries.  And I let my neighbor walk all over them.  I had been scared to tell her no; scared she wouldn’t like me or wouldn’t think I was nice.  I had naively let her take control, instead of doing my own research about low-maintenance plants—which wouldn’t have been that hard.  And I avoided holding her accountable for her share of the maintenance of the wild kingdom once it got out of hand.

That’s just one small example of how not having good, clear, personal boundaries can get us into real trouble.  So the question is, how do we figure out what good boundaries are?  That brings us back to the difference between burdens and loads.  Let’s look again at what Paul says in this passage from Galatians.  He writes that we are to bear one another’s burdens, but also that all must carry their own loads.  Well, that’s a little confusing isn’t it?  Am I supposed to carry your burdens or my load?  Which is it?

Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, authors of the Boundaries book and workbook which are resources for our new small group, write about the distinction between a burden and a load in this passage.  A burden refers to “excess baggage,” or burdens that are the size of boulders, which have the potential to crush us.  Cloud and Townsend write, “We shouldn’t be expected to carry a boulder by ourselves.  It would break our backs.  We need help with the boulders–the times of tragedy and crisis in our lives.”[1]

In contrast, load means “the burden of daily toil” or the things that we are expected to carry every day.  Think of the backpacks that kids carry to school, with what they need for that day’s work, or that night’s homework.  We are expected to carry our own backpacks.  Cloud and Townsend say “We are expected to deal with our own feelings, attitudes and behaviors, as well as the responsibilities God has given to each one of us, even though it takes effort.”[2]

So let’s unpack that for a moment.  In Galatians, Paul is saying that first, we need to take care of ourselves and what is appropriately ours.  We need to bear our own load.  And second, we need to be willing to offer Christian love and support when people are in those times of carrying burdens—those big boulder times like job loss or divorce, illness or death.

The challenge comes when one of two things happens.  First, we get messed up when we don’t take responsibility for what is appropriately ours.  I knew that caring for a large flowerbed was not my forte.  I didn’t have the time, the expertise, or the desire.  But I failed to say that to my neighbor—I failed to bear responsibility for my own load.  And it caused problems.  The same way that failing to be responsible for bringing home the folders we need for tonight’s homework can cause problems.  On the opposite end of that spectrum, we can overfunction, taking on the responsibility that others should have—we do that a lot as parents, because we worry that if we don’t bend over backwards to accommodate our children they won’t love us.  More than likely what will happen is they somehow won’t love themselves.  Ultimately, we each need to be responsible for our own load—the stuff we should carry in our own backpacks.  And we need to know the boundaries of those loads.

The other kind of challenge occurs when people are carrying a huge boulder but they are acting as if they don’t need any help with it, like it is “their cross to bear.”  Paul scoffs at that kind of prideful behavior which cuts at the heart of understanding out relationship as brothers and sisters in Christ.  We need to know when we need one another, when we need the support of the community to move forward.  We need to be able and willing to accept help in shouldering those big boulders in life.  And to do that, our boundaries need to be permeable—we need to let people in.  And sometimes, pride and ego can get in the way of us doing that.

If you’re still skeptical about this idea that we all need boundaries, that we all need to be clear about the things that are our responsibility and the things that aren’t, the things we need help with and the things we don’t—well, stop and think for a minute about one of our foundational faith doctrines, the doctrine of the Trinity.  God is one God, with three distinct persons: the Father or Creator who creates; the Son or Christ who redeems; and the Spirit who sustains and nurtures.  One God, three persons, with three distinct sets of responsibilities.  It seems to me like God knows a lot about boundaries!

Jesus, in particular, was good at boundaries.  In his life, we see the model of one who did not enter his calling until he was good and ready, one who knew how to take time to rest, and one who is not afraid to say what he believes—and what he doesn’t.

I invite you to take some time this week to reflect on your boundaries.  Are you taking responsibility for your load, or are you giving that load away to others to whom it doesn’t really belong?  Are you letting others help you share the burdens in your life, the boulders that are too big to bear alone?  As you pray over these questions, may the Holy Spirit lead you to honest, faithful answers that will help you live a life more fully in the path of Christ.

---

May the Holy Spirit Work Within You

Baptism of the Lord Sunday ~  Acts 19:1-7, Mark 1:4-11

Kenwood UMC ~ January 8, 2012

This morning is Baptism of the Lord Sunday in the Christian year, a time each year when we not only pause to remember Jesus’ baptism, but also pause to remember our own baptisms, and reconnect with the meaning of baptism for us as Christians.

Last week while we were traveling in Atlanta, we visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.  I was very excited to take my girls there, and we had a wonderful morning reconnecting with the powerful message of Dr. King.  While there, we visited historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King, as well as his father Martin, Senior, commanded the pulpit.  As we sat in the sanctuary, we noticed the painting of a river behind the choir loft.  I explained to the kids that it was a painting of the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized, and that under the painting was their baptismal pool.  This lead to a longer explanation about baptism in that tradition being a little different from our tradition because they have pools in the sanctuary for people to be fully immersed.

“Hmm, that’s different!” was the response.

Indeed, different traditions embrace different baptismal practices.  But they all emerge from several Biblical stories, two of them the stories we have shared this morning.  Scripture is clear that Jesus was baptized by the prophet John in the Jordan River. His baptism is recorded in the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, with some minor variations in the story.  But what is clear in each version is that the prophet John has been baptizing people, bringing them to repentance from sin.  But a new element is added when Jesus comes up from the water—the presence of the Holy Spirit.

As we meet the apostle Paul in Ephesus in our second reading this morning, we see that the different baptisms—baptism with repentance and baptism with the Holy Spirit—are still an issue in the early church.  Paul does not argue that repentance is removed from baptism—rather he argues that when baptized in Christ’s baptism there is something additional—the power of the Holy Spirit.  And that Holy Spirit somehow changes those baptized by Paul—they spoke in tongues and prophesied.

Now, you may not always pay careful attention to our baptismal liturgy, but when we baptize people, after I say “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” there’s a second line that follows.  As I make the sign of the cross on the forehead of the baptized, I say these words “May the Holy Spirit work within you, that having been born through water and the spirit, you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ all your days.”

May the Holy Spirit work within you.  Baptism is the moment when we recognize that the Holy Spirit has been unleashed in the life of the believer.  Baptism is the outward sign of that inward change that we cannot see, taste or touch.  But that change is about more than being cleansed of sin—it is about living a new life, a life powered by the Holy Spirit at work in us, a life that is lived out in the context of the community of faith.

But what exactly does it look like for the Holy Spirit to be at work in us?  If we look back at what happened in Acts 19 when Paul baptized the believers in the Holy Spirit, they spoke in tongues and prophesized.  That may sound a bit foreign to us, but perhaps not if we reframe it a bit.  One commentator talks about understanding prophecy not as foretelling the future—which is what we tend to think of—but prophecy as speaking “in God’s name on behalf of God’s work in the world.”[1]  That sounds a bit less daunting, doesn’t it?  The Holy Spirit empowers us to share the story of God’s work in the world, right now, to speak out and not be silent.

But what does that really look like?  It looks like people in Arizona and across our nation who use today’s anniversary of the Tucson shootings to remind us of the importance of civil discourse, and of the ineffectiveness of violence as a way to solve problems.  It looks like people in Alabama who continue to stand against that state’s strict immigration policies, which strip people of dignity and human rights.  It looks like people speaking out for fair salaries for the teachers who educate not only our children, but all children in America regardless of race or class or disability.  It looks like partnering with Ashland Christian Emergency Services so that people in our community can have basic needs met—because everyone deserves that.

But the Holy Spirit doesn’t just empower us to share the story of God’s work in the world—it empowers us to share the story of God’s work in our own lives.  It empowers us to tell about how God has sustained us this very week—a story that Bill and Winnie McGill can tell after being with a group of bikers last weekend in the midst of an accident where several people were injured seriously.  The Holy Spirit empowers us to share the story of how we changed our traditions this Christmas season to focus more on Christ’s birth—and how we were transformed by doing it.

When we are connected to the Holy Spirit, we are able to see new opportunities that bring excitement.  We are able to see new growth in places that were once barren and desolate.  We are able to see healing where there once were open wounds.  We are able to see hope where once there was only hopelessness.

That is the power first given to us by the Holy Spirit and named in our baptisms.  It never goes away.  We lose touch with it, we try to escape it—but it is always there.  And so on this Sunday every year, we pause to reconnect.  We pause to listen to the Holy Spirit stir deep within us.  We acknowledge the places that are broken, hopeless, dry and barren.  And we admit that if we just take a deep breath and invite God in—we can reconnect, reclaim that power, that rootedness of our souls in God’s Spirit.  And when that renewed power is unleashed once more within us, we become Christ in the world in powerful ways.

Let us now turn to the font, to renew our baptismal vows, or, if we have not been baptized, to hear God’s invitation.  The Holy Spirit never leaves us—may we once more open ourselves to feel it stirring in our hearts and lives.

---

Lighting A Path: Surprise!

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B ~ Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:46b-55

Kenwood UMC ~ December 18, 2011—Lighting A Path

Our theme for Advent this season has been about lighting a path.  The idea has been to live into this season of Advent, this season of waiting and preparing, as if we are on a path toward the birth of the Christ Child, a path that has been dimly lit but grows brighter as the week’s progress.  And this morning, we are still on the path—it is still Advent, the season of waiting and preparing.  As much as we want to break into carols and move the nativity front and center, we are not there yet.  In fact, we are almost nine months away in our scripture this morning, overhearing Mary as she begins this part of her journey.

The title of this sermon is “Surprise” because I think we can learn a lot from Mary about how she receives this surprise and how she responds.  And I think her response can suggest to us how we should respond to the surprises God has in store for us as we continue to watch and wait for Jesus.

Anything associated with babies and children is going to hold its share of surprises.  From the surprise of learning that you are expecting, to all the surprises that can occur along the journey of pregnancy, to all the surprises that occur along the path of parenting—we know that this moment in Mary’s life was the first of many surprises.

And you know, perhaps we need to back up and begin even with the surprise that God chose Mary.  She wasn’t important.  She wasn’t from a particularly well-bred family; her parents were not leading religious scholars.  She was engaged to Joseph of the House of David—but really, she could have been anyone.

Until.  Until God came to her with the amazing news that she was pregnant, and she did not run away, did not deny, did not get angry, did not rage and scream.  She took a few moments to analyze the situation and ask the angel a couple of questions.  And then she said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  In those words, Mary acknowledges her faith that this is a God-moment.  God is in control of what is happening in her life.  A few verses later, she is even able to sing praise to God and give deep thanks for what has happened to her.

And in that moment she teaches us how we should respond to surprises along the journey: by acknowledging that ultimately, God is in control, and giving thanks for that fact.

Now, I am, in many ways not a big fan of surprises.  I like for my life to be structured and well planned, manageable, under control.  But as much as I prefer that, it is usually not the reality I live in for a multitude of reasons—but the biggest one is that I am not in control, God is.  And this week began with two very big surprises, both delivered to me within an hour time frame on Monday morning.

The first surprise was a hard one.  My close friend, Christy, texted me to let me know that a close family friend of theirs, Caleb, had died early that morning.  Caleb was 7.  He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in August.  When I presided at Christy’s wedding years ago, his mom was one of the attendants.  On the one hand, his death was not a surprise—we knew it was coming.  But not quite so soon, not quite now….and so on the other hand, in the moment, it was a huge surprise.

After we shared some time together on Monday, Christy and her husband traveled to the funeral in Georgia, where her husband gave Caleb’s eulogy.  As I prayed for them through that journey, I followed their journey through texts, emails, and Facebook.  And I was profoundly moved to see the response of Caleb’s family and friends to this difficult surprise.  Even through their veil of tears, they affirmed the promise of resurrection in powerful and poignant ways.  Their reaction to surprise, like Mary’s, was to place their faith in God’s care of them, and give thanks for resurrection promises.

Less than an hour after that news, I received another phone call from someone in this community.  I could tell from the tenor of the voice that something significant had happened.  This person has been divorced for over two decades, and received very little support from the former spouse over the years in terms of child support, despite a fair agreement at the time of the divorce.  I learned that she had received a call moments before from her child support advocate letting her know that all the back child support, as well as interest, had just been placed into her bank account.

This was not a hoped for surprise.  It came without warning.  Indeed, it came when the hope of it ever coming had been written off years ago.  And as we rejoiced together she said to me, one of the first things I am going to do is tithe this gift to the church.

And I paused.  Not over dollar signs, but over the clear message that this person saw this surprise not as justice from the legal system, but as a gift from God.  And she had the same response Mary did—to realize it was God’s gift, in God’s control, and to give thanks, not just in her heart, but by returning the tithe to God in gratitude.  I was convicted and converted in that moment.

I could go on and tell you about other surprises that have littered my path this week.  And you could tell me yours.  Some of them have been good; some of them have not been what we were hoping for.  But here’s the thing: We will have surprises on the pathway of life.  We will have those surprises for two reasons.  We are not in control—God is.  And when we think we are in control, we will be very, very surprised to find we are not.  And second, God is not boring—God is always breaking into the world and calling us to new things.

What we have to remember, what Mary helps us internalize in the midst of those surprises, is that God is with us. Profoundly, deeply with us.  We need to take steps to know God’s presence and feel God’s strength in the midst of the surprising turns our paths will take—for when we turn to God when those surprises happen, we will find our pathways well lit. In this final week of preparing for the birth of the Christ Child, may we cultivate within ourselves a deep trust in God that lets us respond to the surprises life brings with hope and faith.

Lighting A Path: Comforted Along the Journey

Advent 2, Year B ~ Isaiah 40:1-11

Kenwood UMC ~ December 4, 2011

Last week we talked about beginning this journey of Advent, the season of preparation for Christmas, and we talked about the journey beginning with longing, a longing for something to be different, a longing for something inside us to be reshaped.  And, indeed, if we truly believe that we are waiting not just on the annual celebration of Christ’s birth, but if we believe we are waiting on Christ to come again, we know that Christ’s coming will mean some reshaping of creation.  We know that injustices will be set right, that those in prison will be set free, that those who are bowed down and knotted up in struggle will be straightened out.

Or, in the words of Isaiah, as we prepare for the Lord’s coming, a highway will be made straight in the desert.  Rough places will be made smooth, uneven ground a plain.  When the Lord comes, everything that is knotted up and messed up will be made straight.

But in the meantime… In the meantime on this journey there are uneven places and bumps in the road.  What are we to do?  For that we turn back to the first verses of the scripture, where the prophet invites comfort for God’s people.  Comfort, O comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term.

Comfort.  This week I caught whatever the new virus is that’s going around Richmond.  I wanted comfort.  I went to the doctor and got medicine.  I pulled out of some commitments and rested.  But it was on Saturday morning when my mom and dad showed up to pick up the kids and my mom brought me some homemade soup that I felt the most comforted—someone cared.  Enough to bring me warm, nourishing goodness.  It was a good feeling, a feeling that made me think I would make it through.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gift we can offer one another this Advent season—comfort.  For the road is uneven and bumpy.  Not only the roads in our own lives, but the road this world finds itself in.  Even while we wait for Christ to come, God does not leave us alone.  God offers us comfort, and invites us to be a comforting presence for others.

I’ve seen that comfort this week in so many ways.  And it has helped me realize that we are not, after all, so different from the people of Israel waiting on a savior.  Like them, we too are in exile.  Theirs was an exile in Babylon, an exile forced by invading armies.  What about our exile?

The invading army of greed and selfishness has created for us an exile of sharp distinctions between those who have and those who do not, distinctions underscored by unjust access to food, unemployment, the lack of affordable housing, and global dependence on oil which drives energy prices ever higher.

The invading army of technology has created for us an exile into screen time, whether it is television, smartphone or tablet, an exile that removes us from a human community that we can touch, a community which is capable of both comforting and challenging us.

The invading army of assuming that if we are smart enough and take care of ourselves, then we can live forever, has created an exile for us of invincibility, where diseases like cancer and dementia, addictions to drugs and alcohol, and simple shocking tragedy transports us into feeling victimized, and like we should have been able to do something to stop all of this.

Comfort, O comfort my people.

What, indeed, will comfort us in our exile?

First and foremost, our comfort comes when we realize that it is God and God alone whom we can trust.  We cannot trust our own medical research, our own attempts to better steward the earth, our own attempts to bring healing from grief and loss.  We can only trust that God will work through those things to bring comfort, healing, reconciliation and hope.  We can’t do it ourselves.

And, that, my friends, for any of us who have spent hour after hour attempting to do it ourselves, is a most comforting thought. We can’t make the rough places plain.  Only God can do that.

What we can do is open ourselves to be vessels for God to work.  For if we begin by trusting that God is working, then we have enough courage to step into the rough, uneven, dark places and bring the comfort that God provides.  That comfort might come in the form of the food donations we brought for ACES this morning, or the time we spent cleaning gutters at Mission to Hanover yesterday or the giving bags we put together for the Freedom House. That comfort might come in the form of the prayer shawls crocheted prayerful stitch by prayerful stitch and delivered to those who suffer.  That comfort might come in the form of the ministry of presence—being able to sit with someone in their suffering.  And, that comfort might come with advocacy—taking a public stand about injustice as so many public figures did on World AIDS day this Thursday.  For me, this annual day of advocacy and remembrance is an annual source of comfort for the grief of losing two uncles to AIDS—grief I sometimes forget exists until I am reminded in weeks like this.

And then I am comforted.

And this Advent season, as we re-learn how to wait for Christ to come, we seek comfort.  We seek comfort in the places of our own personal exile.  We seek comfort, and we seek to offer comfort, because it is when we stand with one another on the journey that the rough places truly do become plains.

This week, as you continue to prepare your heart for the coming of Emmanuel, may you be open to comfort—both the comfort you will give, and the comfort you will receive as you continue on the path that leads to the Christ Child.

It All Begins With Longing

First Sunday of Advent, Year B ~ Isaiah 64:1-9

Kenwood UMC ~ November 27, 2011

Last week as our family gathered for Thanksgiving it marked the first Thanksgiving for my nephew, Silas.  My sister and brother-in-law adopted Silas in May, just days after he was born. They chose the name Silas, in part because in Aramaic, the native language of Jesus, it means “longed for.”  Indeed my nephew was longed for—for several months this specific child had been longed for, but for several years before, simply the reality of a child had been longed for.

Longing is one of our most instinctive human emotions.  When we long for something, a visceral part of us wants us.  Longing isn’t a distracted, abstract kind of desire for something. It is intensely personal.

And so as we begin this Advent season, as we begin to walk down the dimly lit path that will lead towards the birth of the Christ Child, we ask ourselves, for what are we longing?  What are we deeply and instinctively wanting to happen this Christmas?  Some of us may be wanting just to get through the season.  Others may be wanting family serving overseas to come home for the holiday.  Still others may be wanting to help someone in need.  Retailers will long for us to spend our money, as might economists because the economy could use and infusion of cash.

But let’s step away from our personal desires for Christmas for a moment.  For what should we be longing as Christians?  How is it that we move into this season of waiting and anticipating, of preparing out hearts for Christ?  If we are serious about this Advent season, we long for something to change, something to make meaning.  What exactly are we longing for as people of faith?

To answer that question we first have to understand what the people of Israel were longing for.  Our scripture for today paints a picture of that longing.  The Hebrew people admit that they have strayed—they confess their shortcomings, just as we confess our shortcomings each Sunday during worship in this season.  They express a longing for God to come down, to break through the heavenly world, and reveal himself in power and might to the world.  They compare themselves to pliable clay, waiting to be shaped by the Holy Potter.

Are we all that different?  Like the people of the Hebrew times, we come to this season admitting that we have strayed. Our small group that has been reading and discussion the book Christmas Is Not Your Birthday, has spent some time talking about the ways we have tried—and failed—to make this season perfect.  In our desire for the perfect holiday—celebrated with the perfect family—we have strayed away from the true meaning of Christmas.

As a culture, we have strayed away from the story of a child born in poverty to parents who struggled with shame.  Instead we work hard to maintain the appearance that everything is just fine, and we spend our money on things that will go into drawers only to be found when we move or die—rather than spending our money on feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger.

Ah, yes, we find ourselves in much the same predicament as the Hebrew people.  We have strayed.  We have failed to live obedient lives, either by deliberately disobeying God or by simply failing to take a stand, and instead remaining silent.

Like the people of Israel, we long for God to tear open the heavens and come down.  We long for God to reshape us and remold us and tear us away from the materialistic, idealistic tone of the season that is wrapped in tinsel and lovely music.  But how?  How will it happen?

I have a few suggestions for you this morning on steps we could take this season to acknowledge our longing for God—and even to open up space for God to meet us in that longing.

Perhaps we might begin by acknowledging that things about our holiday are not perfect.  We could just be honest with ourselves about places where we feel stress when it comes to making things appear perfect.  Be honest about the places of struggle, the places in our lives that are messy.  And then realize that God shows up—even in the midst of the struggle and the messy—and perhaps because of them.  Hiding them doesn’t help anyone.  Being honest about them might create room for God.  Kind of like when Mary and Joseph were so desperate for a room that they swallowed their pride and accepted a dirty stable—and God showed up.

We might also tap in to our longing for God and let God reshape us by choosing to set aside one empty tradition in favor of spending time with people we love.  Christmas is, after all, about the love God has for us.  What better way to be open to that love than by surrounding ourselves with family and friends we love, and doing something meaningful with them?  It might be going to dinner and a movie, or making cookies together, or just watching a football game.  But creating space for those we love will begin to open up the place in our hearts where God is waiting to be born.

And finally, I want to suggest that we can get in touch with our longing for God by spending time this season with the people God cares for most—the people who are struggling or suffering or in pain.  And let me be clear that I said spend time—not write a check.  We can tap into our longing for God by visiting that person who is sick who we’ve been avoiding.  Or by spending next Saturday morning doing home repair in our community for people in need.  Or by volunteering at the Salvation Army, Freedom House or another organization where people in need come seeking help.  Taking time to stand with those who are the least, the last and the lost can reshape our hearts in profound ways.

And that is, after all, what we desire most this season, isn’t it?  To be reshaped by God, just as the people of Israel longed for so long ago.  And that is a gift that can’t be wrapped up and placed under a tree with a festive ribbon.  It is a journey we must take, a journey that begins today, with one candle lit on the wreath, and one step forward on the path.  May we begin this season by being in touch with what we really long for, and then inviting God to reshape us in order to fulfill that longing.

Wellness Check

Christ the King Sunday, Year A ~ Matthew 25:31-46

Kenwood UMC ~ November 20, 2011

I was with a group of clergy colleagues this week, and we started talking about this Gospel lesson for the weekend—because those kinds of things tend to come up when clergy get together.  And my friend Scott told us a story about why Jesus chose sheep and goats to use as the animals in this particular story.

Scott was pastoring a church several years ago that was doing the Bethlehem Walk, which a couple of churches around here also do at Christmas.  It’s a live re-creation of walking through Bethlehem, with building, animals, and all the other atmospherics.  The congregation had borrowed some sheep and goats from a local farmer for part of the animals.  After the first night, as they were wrapping up, the famer came up to Scott and said, “Hey preacher—you know that story of the sheep and the goats in the Bible that Jesus told?  You ever wonder why he put the sheep on the right and the goats on the left and not the other way around.” Scott reckoned that he hadn’t and the farmer said, “Well, I’ll show you!”

He went and got the two sheep they had and without any tethers or restraints and herded them into the pen.  They followed him into the pen quietly and obediently, no protesting.  Then he went and got the two goats.  He tethered them and leashed them, and they started fighting him.  The pushed and pulled and thrashed and he wrestled them into the pen.  He finally got the pen shut, and turned around to say something to Scott, and both those goats jumped the pen and ran off into the woods.

“That there’s why the sheep go on the right,” the farmer said.

Often we want to boil this story down to the sheep being on the right and the goats on the left because of what they do—the choices they make to serve Christ by feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, clothing the naked, and all those others things that are mentioned.  And those choices are important.  But what seems to be more important, based on the farmer’s lesson about the sheep and the goats, is obedience, or faithfulness to the way of life that Jesus calls us to.  Are we following as he asks, or are we thrashing about and resisting and running away?

To answer that question, we need to do a wellness check.  Most of us know the importance of medical check ups.  We get physicals, we get blood pressure checks and bone density screenings and we go to the dentist to get our teeth cleaned. Like many of you, I have the tests recommended for me, at my age and stage of life, to make sure I am healthy and don’t need any lifestyle adjustments.   Sometimes, I’ve had to make those adjustments.  They are hard to make, but ultimately lead to greater abundance and joy in my life.

This scripture is a wellness check for our spiritual lives.  It reminds us that practicing the Christian life, living as though Jesus is our king, is about obedience to his way, not thrashing about and resisting.  The salvation we receive from Jesus is a free gift for us, with no strings attached.  But there is a risk, the same risk we talked about in worship last week.  We must risk our own control, being able to make our own decisions and jump the pen and go where we want—we must risk those things for obedience to Christ.

And that obedience requires an active posture of giving.  In fact, it asks that the posture of giving is so second nature, so ingrained, that we do not even realize we are doing it.

Let’s look again at this scripture, specifically at the sheep—the obedient ones.  One of the things I notice is their surprise at being called faithful.  The king invites them to inherit the Kingdom prepared for them from the foundations of the world, and instead of excitedly running to get something they know they have worked hard for and deserve—they look at each other in confusion.  What have we done to deserve this, they say to each other, and to the King.  And the King has to spell it out for them—you did it here, and here, and here and here.

What would it be like for living our faith to be so second nature, so much a part of who we are, that we are not even aware of our acts of faithfulness, that they just flow out of us?  John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, talked about that being a state of sanctification—and he talked about our lives as a journey to that state, guided by God’s grace.

This morning I want to invite you to stop and do a wellness check.  I would like to invite you into a time of prayer to think about where you are in your life, in your discipleship.  Specifically, we will be asking you to think about your financial commitment to God through Kenwood for 2012.  Are you moving towards a commitment to the tithe, or giving 10 percent of your income?  Are you giving an appropriate part of your financial gifts to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger through the ministries of Kenwood?

But I would invite you to think more broadly as well.  Give yourself a spiritual wellness check: how is your prayer life?  The time you commit to service?  How do you engage in reading the scripture?  How is your commitment to worship?  When was the last time you shared your faith with someone outside the community?

May we open ourselves to God as I lead us in a time of prayer and silence.  May we open ourselves and let God speak to us.  May we open ourselves as brothers and sisters in Christ to see where God is leading us to live healthier, more abundant spiritual lives.

If You’re Wealthy and You Know It….Take A Risk

Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost, Year A

~ Matthew 25:14-30

Kenwood UMC ~ November 13, 2011

It was about Wednesday of Vacation Bible School week this summer, and we were having a friendly competition.  It was boys versus girls, and we were competing to see which gender could raise the most money toward the purchase of a power washer for the Hinton Rural Life Center, where we are developing a summer mission partnership.  For two years now, teams from Kenwood have gone to Hinton to do home repair in Appalachia.  The interest meeting for next year’s team participants is tonight, as a matter of fact, at 4 pm.

This year, our team ran through a couple of power washers—as in ran them into the ground.  I should stress that this was not because of poor use by our team members, but the power washers were a little on the worn side when we got them.  So our mission project for Vacation Bible School was to raise money for a new power washer.

On Wednesday evening one of our sets of siblings ran up to the donation bucket and put in a large contribution and said, “thanks, mom,” to the mom who was grinning and shaking her head.  The story came out that she had caught her kids, so enthused about the project that they were emptying the entire contents of their piggy banks on their beds and planning to bring them to church.  She talked them down a little bit and then matched their gift.

You probably think it is a pastor’s dream to see people emptying their piggy banks—and it is.  But not because of the money.  Because of the attitude of risk taking for the kingdom— instead of hoarding for oneself.  We learn that in the story of the talents in our scripture today.

Now, at first glance this parable seems to be about stewardship.  If we invest our resources wisely, they will have an abundant return.  And many preachers and commentators have read the parable this way—I’ve even read it that way before myself.  But my reading today, and the reading of other commentators, is that this parable is less about wise investing and more about how Jesus calls us to live:  as people willing to take risks with what they have–not as people who are fearful of taking risks and hide behind their fear.[1]

Let’s recap the parable just a moment and point out a few things.  There is always a tendency in parables that have a master figure to equate that master figure with God or Jesus.  But in this case, the master unjustly punishes the third slave—the third slave didn’t steal, he returned exactly what was given.  Is this how we think God behaves?  I don’t think so—it doesn’t strike me as particularly merciful.

In this case, the master may just be a master.  And a pretty generous one—a talent is equal to fifteen years of wages.  And he even entrusts that much money to the third slave, the one he probably knows is not going to do much with it—at least if he’s a master who has paid any attention at all to how his slaves function in the workplace!

I think the characters that merit our attention in this story are not the two slaves who invest their talents for a good return.  I think the character we need to pay attention to is the third slave.  This slave takes his talent and buries it in the ground—which was actually perfectly normal behavior for wealthy people in ancient Palestine.  They didn’t have banks or safe deposit boxes, so burying money in the ground was a way to keep it safe.  And I think this slave merits our attention because he is punished.  Jesus is sending out a message of judgment here, one that will be echoed next week as we consider the next story in Matthew’s gospel.  But why is he punished?  That is the question.  I believe he was punished because he was afraid.  He was so afraid of taking a risk with the investment that had been given to him that he hid it in the ground—he kept it safe–rather than use it for good in the world.

We are living in a climate of fear in many ways today.  There are lots of things that contribute to that climate:  a sour economy; the inability of our politicians to speak civilly to each other and really work to solve problems; an overwhelming amount of information and news that we are invited to process on a daily basis; and even stories like that out of Penn State this week that make us feel distrustful and fearful because people in power have massive moral failures—like not reporting criminal activity to the police.  It all makes us feel threatened, and want to retreat inside our lives, and control and define reality ourselves.

But here’s the thing.  That’s not what Jesus invites us to.  Jesus invites us to take a risk and make a difference in the world.  Jesus invites us to demand civility from our politicians, justice in our economy, and punishment for those who prey on the innocent.  Jesus invites us to make our voice heard, to take a stand, to step out in faith.  Jesus invites us to do things like protest economic policies we don’t believe in, or spend a day doing home repair in the mobile home community we drive by every day–you could take that risk on December 3 when we will be winterizing two homes in nearby mobile home communities.

I also wonder not just how we as individuals take risks, but how we as a church might take risks.  It is very easy for us to be fearful of the world around us, a world with different patterns and behaviors than we are used to.  It is easy for us to think only of ourselves—for instance, what time is it most convenient for us to do things like come to worship and small groups.  But Jesus challenges us to think beyond ourselves.  Jesus challenges us to think about those who do not know him, those who are seeking him, and think about how we can most effectively reach out to them by the choices we make and the ministry we offer.  Jesus challenges us as a church not to have a posture of fear, but a posture of risk-taking faith.

And having that kind of a posture as a church will take all of us working together. You will be asked in the next week to pray about your personal financial commitment to Kenwood for 2012.  What portion of your treasure will you return to God?  It’s risky to give something of ours away, isn’t it?  But we do it because we trust that God is going to use it for amazing things through the life of this church.

And Jesus invites us to do that because we are wealthy, my friends.  And yes, part of what I mean is that we are literally wealthy. We have roofs over our heads and clothes on our backs.  We have food to fill our bellies, TV to watch for entertainment, phones to call friends and family.  We have so much that we should be able to resist fear, and risk and trust God so that when God does return, we will enter into his joy.  So my question for you today is—I know we are wealthy.  What is God calling us to risk in order to share that wealth?  What is God calling us to risk of our time, of our commitment, of our passion, of our comfort with the way things are?  What is God calling us to risk for the sake of the Kingdom?

---

Bless the Lord, My Soul

Psalm 34:1-10, 22 ~ All Saints A

Kenwood UMC ~ November 6, 2011

Today is All Saints Sunday in the Christian year, one of my favorite days in the church calendar because it always makes me stop and give thanks for the people who have shaped me. Now, each year I have a push and pull with many of you who have a more Catholic or Orthodox understanding of saints, thinking that there is a process for sainthood, and that saints are somehow extra-special Christians.

In the Protestant tradition, that United Methodism is a part of, saints are plain old ordinary Christians, people who are examples in the faith for us, some of whom have died and now live with God in the eternal communion of the saints.  And so each day on this year we give thanks for the lives of those members of Kenwood who have died over the last year, which we will do in a few moments.  But what saints are not is–perfect.  And nothing brings that home better than our scripture this morning from Psalm 34, a scripture attributed to King David.

But wait, you are thinking—David was a pretty extraordinary guy!  He was the king to end all kings of Israel—at least until Jesus came along. True.  But David is also a very complex person in scripture, and there are many portraits of him that are not particularly flattering—this Psalm is said to be from one of those times.

This Psalm is attributed to David before he was king, while he was still young.  King Saul, the reigning King of Israel has gotten mad at David, and so David has fled the kingdom in fear of his life.  He has fled to the courts of a foreign king.  Unfortunately, while David is trying to hide there anonymously, one of the king’s servants recognizes him as the great warrior of the Israelite people.  And so David pretends to be insane in order to secure his safety—he scratches the walls, lets spit run down his beard—and the king wants nothing to do with him so his life is spared.

This is not exactly David’s finest moment.  It is not the moment of a courageous, just king, or the moment of a mighty warrior.  It is the moment of a crafty, “I’ll do anything to save myself,” arrogant young man.  And yet…if we look at the words of this Psalm, we do not find David giving himself the credit.  Instead we find him giving God the credit, blessing God for rescuing him from this precarious situation.

And that’s precisely the characteristic of saints that I want to lift up today.  Saints are those people who know, in all times and all places, that they are utterly dependent upon God.  Even when saints mess up, or need forgiveness, or need to repent—they know that God’s love can rescue them, God’s love can forgive them, God’s love can restore them to right relationship.  And so they are able to radically and completely put their trust in God, and give God the glory for their salvation.  They don’t need to take any of the credit for themselves.

What immediately jumps into my mind is what may jump into some of yours—the person who, last Friday, found Robbie Wood Jr. after 6 days of being lost out in the elements.  The community was waiting to know with baited breath, who would take credit, who would the hero be, who was the saintly person who found him.  But this saint refused to say—commenting only that to do so would take the glory away from God in this case.

I’ll admit my imperfection and tell you that I greeted that news with uncertainty.  Was this person for real, I thought?  Bless the Lord, my soul—that God may forgive my skepticism. Because what I have come to believe over the last week is that this person profoundly understood that to take credit would remove the mysterious, miraculous element from Robbie’s rescue.  It would also call into question the hundreds upon hundreds of people—paid and volunteer—who had spent days looking for Robbie.  The one who found him was no more special than the community who searched, and the community that brought supplies for the searchers, and the community that simply stood vigil, and the community that prayed together—he or she was even no more special than the parts of the community who, realistically, were starting to lose hope.

So, just maybe, what we all need to work on when it comes to our saintliness, is not being more perfect, but being more faithful.  Maybe what we need to work on, in all times and all places, is stepping away from taking personal credit—when things go well and when they go poorly.  Maybe what we need to come to realize and exalt is the habit of giving thanks and credit to God for all we achieve, and giving thanks and credit to God for redeeming us from our failures.  Because, in the end, this is what the saints know—it isn’t all about them.  It’s all about God.

Bless the Lord, my soul.

Crossing Over

20^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A ~ Joshua 3:7-17

Kenwood UMC ~ October 30, 2011

Life is full of unknowns–at least, if we are being faithful.  God is always leading us into new places and new spaces, asking us to step out in faith.  And that can be pretty scary.

I had one of those moments this summer of being led into the unknown.  For ten years I have met with a Spiritual Director monthly.  In our monthly appointments, we reflect on my prayer life, scriptures that are guiding me, and my relationship with God.  And for 10 years, my Spiritual Director, has been trying to get me to go on a silent retreat.  Finally I sensed earlier this year that it was time.  I don’t know whether she finally wore me down, or God finally got me ready.  But going on a five day silent retreat was a significant part of the study leave I took this summer.

I remember clearly what I was thinking, and the frame of mind I was in as I drove to the small town in southwestern Pennsylvania where the retreat center was located.  I was driving on interstates I had never driven on before, into a part of Pennsylvania I had never been to, a town no one I knew had heard of.  I had corresponded with these folks over email, but really knew very few details about what I was getting into.  It was a leap into the unknown, a huge step in faith, one that I wasn’t really sure I should be taking, but one that was, by that Monday afternoon in mid-August, completely out of my control.

And just as certainly as I felt a fear of the unknown, and a sense of being out of control, I felt that God was in control, and God was calling me to step forward into something new and potentially game-changing in my life.  And so I was able to finish my journey into the unknown—not because of my own resolve, but because of my trust in God.

Can you imagine the uncertainty and fear in the hearts and minds of the Israelite people that day?  Their worries would have far eclipsed anything on my heart and mind as I made my August journey.  They would have been flooded with the memories of the miracles God had worked to free them from slavery in Egypt.  Since then, their days had been defined for 40 years by wandering, struggling to find food and shelter, wondering if this journey to which God had called them was real.  A new generation has been born and an old one died.  Their leader Moses has died.  A new leader, Joshua, has been named.  They have come to the borders of the Land of Canaan, the land God had promised them—and it is overrun by large groups of foreigners.  This is not going to be an easy takeover.  Really?  Is this worth it? Is this really what my parents left Egypt for?

And amidst all that questioning and discontent, God is providing a direction.  God is providing a way forward, and leaders to open the path.  There is a river in front of them, the Jordan River, a river at flood stage, a river too deep to cross.  And God is providing not just direction—across the river–but a miracle, parting the waters of the river Jordan at the moment the priests’ feet touch it.  Just as God began this journey by parting the Red Sea, God is providing a miracle that will allow them to cross over into the next stage.

We all have crossing over moments, moments when our journey brings us to a crossroads, moments when we must decide whether we will step out in faith, or shrink back in fear.  I think that we are at one of these moments as a church, along with many churches in America today.  God has blessed us.  We have had vision and purpose and ministered faithfully in this community.  But the ways people connect with God are changing—no longer can we make an announcement or hang up a sign or pass around a clipboard and expect people—even our own people—to sign up.  We have to recruit, be in relationship and connect.  We—the church—used to be the only game in town, especially in smaller communities.  But now everyone has lots of options.  We have to be the most attractive choice for someone—because we are no longer the only choice for Sunday mornings.  We compete with soccer, Starbucks, and television on demand.  And we don’t completely understand this new reality, and it makes us uncomfortable.  We want to hide in the security of the past, to stay in the comfort of what has been.

But friends, God is calling us to cross over.  God is calling Kenwood to cross over, to leave behind old ways and old patterns, and bridge into something new.  Along with other churches in America, we need to be willing to step through the waters onto new land.  That new land will involve different ways of sharing our faith, new approaches to financing ministry, looking at the work habits of adults to determine the best times and formats for ministry—and much more.[1]

The first thing we have to do at these moments is remember who we have been, remember our history.  In this scripture, God reminds the Israelites of Moses, of how he led the people to freedom from Egypt.  The parting of the waters of the Jordan reminds them of the parting of the Red Sea waters that made their escape possible.

We need to observe the same discipline at those crossing over moments.  As I was driving to my retreat this summer, I was remembering my years of spiritual direction and how they had nurtured me.  As Kenwood moves into God’s future, we must remember how God has been with us in the past, how God has molded and shaped this community through the ministries of our past.  Those memories of the past are important parts of our story—but we must also be courageous enough to let them be just that—parts of our story.  Not roadblocks to our future.

If we look back at this Biblical narrative from Joshua, we also clearly see that God is present in the midst of the crossing over.  In this story, the people of Israel believed God was present with them in the Ark of the Covenant, the container for the Ten Commandments.  And that ark, carrying the presence of God, went first into the waters.

God never asks us to go anywhere where God is not already present.  I think that was what kept me driving to Pennsylvania this summer—I knew God was already there.  I knew I was going to meet him.  I knew that anything I was anxious about, anything I was scared about, anything I was unsure about—God already knew and was already prepared for.

And not only does God go ahead of us, God gives us people to lead the way.  If you notice, in this story, God instructs Joshua to send the priests in first.  God knows that we need people to pave the way, people to step out first.  Some of you may be those people here at Kenwood, the pioneers that will lead us into our next stage of the journey, our next new beginning.  You may be the ones dreaming of a new ministry, seeking to understand God more deeply, seeing an unmet need in our community.  You are the leaders who will aid our crossing over.  You are the leaders who have guided a shift from the language of Sunday School to the language of small groups, the leaders who have dreamed of a new community outreach facility and committed your money to that dream, the leaders who have introduced new music, multimedia and a new worship time into our worship, the leaders who have guided us into more hands-on service in the community.

Can you feel the winds of the spirit blowing in the church today?  Can you feel the push and pull, the Spirit pushing us on, our hearts pulling back in uncertainty?  This day I challenge us to stand with the people of Israel, stand at the shores of the Jordan.  Stand and look ahead at what God is doing, dip just one toe in the water and start the journey onward.  We have been called for such a time as this—the question we must ask ourselves is—do we dare to get our feet wet?

---

Jesus’ Resurrection:  Is There Hope?

18^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A (off-lectionary)

~ Matthew 28:1-7

Kenwood UMC ~ October 23, 2011

As we wrap up this series, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still be a Christian, we end on hope.  Over the last seven weeks we have talked about the things Jesus invites us to focus our lives around, the breadth and depth of the grace and love Jesus has for us.  We’ve established that being church is not about passing judgment or making rules, but about being a community of love.  And we spent last week thinking about suffering, and Christ’s role with us in suffering.

And as we end, we probably cannot help but think to ourselves, well, this is all well and good.  But what if I mess up? Or what if the economy never really measurably improves?  Or there is never peace in the Middle East?  Or I am never able to effectively cope with my mental illness? The answer is always hope. Out of the deepest, darkest moments, comes hope.  That is what being people of resurrection means, and if Christians are nothing else in this world, we are people of resurrection.  Death does not have the final word over us.

The answer of hope is not an answer that comes for the first time in Jesus Christ.  Hope has always been the answer that God has given to God’s people.  Those on the ark saw a rainbow after the flood—hope.  The Israelite people had the Red Sea parted before them when they were fleeing Egypt, and they were given manna when they were starving in the wilderness—hope.  When Jerusalem was destroyed and the people sent into exile, the prophets spoke of restoration—hope.

Hope is not a new theme in God’s story.  But in the resurrection story, hope is perfected.  Its presence in the life of faith is solidified.  Before, hope was thought to be drowned by floods, stopped by a sea, thwarted by starvation, destroyed by occupying armies.  But at the empty tomb we learn that not only could these things not destroy hope, but even DEATH cannot take hope away.  Hope is always a light in the darkness.

A colleague tells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, [who] had a difficult childhood, due to ill health. One night the nurse found him up, out of bed, his nose pressed against the window. “Come here, child,” she said to him. “You’ll catch your death of cold.” But he wouldn’t budge. Instead, he sat, mesmerized, watching a lamplighter slowly working his way through the black night, lighting each street light along his route. Pointing to him, Robert said, “See, look there; there’s a man poking holes in the darkness!”[1]

Hope pokes holes in the darkness.  And those who believe in hope, those who become people of hope, poke holes in the darkness.  That is why I spent my day Thursday down at Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center, in Richmond’s Churchill neighborhood, participating in the Kingdom City event for area clergy.  Over a hundred clergy from different denominations came together to hear from leaders in the City of Richmond and the counties of Hanover, Henrico and Chesterfield, who make up the metro Richmond area.  We heard about the challenges of difficult finances and the increased demands on the social service system.  And we were challenged to be voices of hope in the city, to work together to be partners for hop in the metro Richmond area.  Examples were lifted up of ways that churches were acting as agents of hope, including Ashland Christian Emergency Services—ACES, to whom we give regular donations of food.  But there is more to do.  Much, much, more.

On that first Easter morning so long ago, hope poked a hole in the darkness of death.  Jesus’ resurrection released us eternally from the power of death.  That is one of our core, essential beliefs as a Christian, and it that means two things: First, we can have hope personally.  In the last eight years I have seen countless numbers of you display that kind of Christian hope as you have been in the midst of difficult circumstances: major surgery; financial difficulties; job loss; the death of loved ones; children born prematurely.  There are many stories I could tell, but the one on my heart right now is Laurie McMann’s story.  I still remember vividly where I was when Laurie called me in September of 2010.  I was with Judy Lanzillotti and Josie Nicholls headed to the car after a day-long learning event in Williamsburg.  I answered my phone and the moment I heard Laurie’s voice I knew that something was terribly wrong.  She told me the basics of being threatened with foreclosure—this coming after job loss and the illness of her husband’s parents.  But Laurie and Nick held on to hope.  They reached out to others for support, they persisted at filling out and faxing form after form, and a couple of weeks ago they finally received the papers indicating that their home was safe.  But through all of that, it was hope that sustained them—not hope that they would hold onto their house, but hope that God was holding on to them, hope that light would come out of the darkness, hope that no matter what, they would be OK.

When we are in times of darkness, it is God’s resurrection hope that we can cling to.  God’s resurrection hope also means that we are called to be agents of hope in the world.  We are called to meet people in their places of darkness—places of poverty, loss, grief, injustice and pain. And we are called to work with them to poke holes in the darkness, to let the light of God’s hope change hearts and lives through our presence and service.

I believe that resurrection hope has the power to redeem and reconcile—not just individual hearts and lives, but the whole world.  I invite you today to name in your heart the places of darkness where you find yourself personally, or the places of darkness you see in the world, and to join me in committing yourself to be a person of hope.  Let us pray:

Gracious God, at the foundation of our faith in you is the gift of hope.  We are so grateful for the promise of new life, of resurrection emerging out of dead, dry, lifeless places.  We see those lifeless, dark places around us now, God. They are in our hearts.  They are in our community.  They are in our city, and in our world.  Help us to name those places before you God.  We invite your light, the light of hope, to shine in them, starting as a pinpoint of light, and growing over time to sunbeam size.  May we be people who believe deeply enough that we join you in poking holes in the darkness.  Amen.

[1] from the sermon Poking Holes in the Darkness, by Kenneth L. Carter. Circuit Rider Magazine, Jan/Feb 2003, p.27.

Jesus’ Death: What About Suffering?

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A (Off Lectionary)

~ Matthew 27:27-31

Kenwood UMC ~ October 16, 2011

Why me?!  It’s a question that all of us have asked at some point.  I most recently asked it at 2:19 last Thursday night when three of our four smoke alarm batteries died and started chirping loudly in the middle of the night.  Clearly this required bleary eyed-parents calming children and changing batteries. It also required a trip to the shed in the backyard to retrieve the tallest stepladder, the only one we can use to reach the detector that is on the one-and a half story high ceiling in the stairway.  Did I mention it was 2:19 in the morning?  Why me, or why us, I thought as I wearily crawled back into bed.  Why don’t these things happen at 2:20 in the afternoon?

Now, clearly this is not an example of extreme suffering, and I don’t want to hold it up as such.  But I do want to use this experience to illustrate how quickly we turn to that question when we are confronted with suffering—“why me, God?  why is this happening to me?”

As a pastor, this is probably the most common theological question I get fromfolks.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  And I can start to give some answers.  The first answer is that human sin is real.  People make bad choices and do bad things that hurt others.

As I was starting to write this sermon back in August, a man had just killed dozens of children at a youth camp in Norway.  The suffering of those families, of the Norwegian country, was brought about by human sin, by one man’s decision to step away from the path of life where loving God and loving neighbor is what matters most.  When we as humans make choices that are sinful, suffering—of ourselves or others—is often the result.

Suffering is also caused by natural law.  One of the things Martin Thielen points to in this chapter is the natural law of gravity.  What goes up must come down.  Sometimes what must come down is the can of soup we drop on our toes or our bodies when we trip and fall.  And when that happens, it hurts. We suffer pain.  But without the law of gravity we would suffer a lot more pain.

There are also laws about weather and geology patterns that cause suffering.  The people of Louisa County can tell us about suffering caused by the geological pattern of the earthquake that happened there in August.  The ability of the earth’s plates to shift is necessary for life on earth to exist—but it also causes suffering.

Some suffering is unexplainable.  We cannot explain, yet, the suffering of cancer.  We cannot explain completely autism spectrum disorders. There is much in our world we cannot explain.  And so another part of the answer to what causes suffering is, we do not know.  Some people say God uses it to strengthen us.  Others say it is caused by forces of evil.  But somehow, those explanations seem incomplete.  Ultimately, the real answer to why we suffer is a mystery, one of the things we hope we can be at peace with when we go to dwell eternally with God.

But if we shift the question a bit, then I think we can find some comfort and peace.  If the question we ask is not “why is this happening to me,” but “God, where are you in the midst of this suffering,” I think we can begin to get some clarity about how God functions in suffering.

In the study resources for this book, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be A Christian, Martin Thielen reminds us of the story of Eli Wiesel.  “Wiesel, a Jew, is a survivor of the holocaust. During his teenage years he and his family were imprisoned at Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp. Other than himself, everyone in Elie Wiesel’s family perished in that horrible camp.

In one of his books, Wiesel tells a powerful story from his experience at Auschwitz. The story involves a hanging that he and all the prisoners were forced to witness. Three men were hung by the Nazis, one of them just a teenage boy. They had been accused of blowing up a power station. To warn the other inmates of the high cost of resistance, all the inmates were forced to walk by and see the execution at close range. It was a grisly scene—a scene of death, evil, and suffering. By the time Wiesel marched by, the two adults were dead. But the youth was still alive, hanging on the gallows, struggling between life and death. Behind him Wiesel heard a man ask: “Where is God now? Where is he?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? Where is God? Where is God in my illness? Where is God as I face the reality of death? Where is God as I face a deteriorating marriage, financial problems, doubt, and depression? Where is God in the midst of war, terrorism, earthquakes, fear, and hatred?

The execution continued. The lad lingered on. Once again Elie heard the man ask, “Where is God?” Elie Wiesel said, “I heard a voice within me answer him: Where is God? He is there, hanging on the gallows.”[1]

As a Jew, Wiesel may not have confessed the faith of Christ, but he knew the example of Christ, and how in that example, as well as in many places in the story of the Hebrew people, we discover that this is how God handles suffering—by standing with us in the midst of it.

As we look back at our scripture today, we recall one small piece of the passion story.  It is the scene in the governor’s headquarters where the Roman soldiers strip Jesus, place a crown of thorns on his head, and the scarlet robe of a king around him and spit on him and strike him with a reed, before leading him away to crucify him.

It is interesting to me what the scripture says Jesus does in the midst of this moment of suffering.  Nothing.  He doesn’t resist.  He doesn’t cry.  He doesn’t attempt to run away or fight back.  He just experiences it.

And that, brothers and sisters, is the meaning of the cross.  Jesus willingly submits to the suffering of the crucifixion—the emotional humiliation, the physical pain—to offer us this radical message.  God loves us enough to stand with us in our suffering.

God loves us enough to stand with us in the midst of job loss.  The burning down of our house.  The chemo treatments.  The death of our child.  The horror of war.  The injustice of discrimination.

God loves us enough to stand with us as we storm and rage against him and ask why and try to flee from his presence.

When we stop and think about it, it’s pretty incredible, really.  God didn’t have to be spit upon, or whipped or nailed to a cross.  He did it to show us he is right here with us.  He loves us that much.  God invites us to stand at the foot of the cross, and raise our eyes to it and remember—when we are going through a time of suffering, we may not be able to explain it or understand it.  But we do know that God is with us in the midst of it—we are never alone. Thanks be to God.

Jesus’ Example: What Brings Fulfillment?

16^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A (Off Lectionary)

~ John 13:1-5, 14-17

Kenwood UMC ~ October 9, 2011

Three weeks ago in worship, when we were in the second week of this series, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian, we talked about Jesus’ priority, what matters most.  We talked about those two big rocks, loving God and loving neighbor, which should anchor our faith.  But even if we’ve tried to realign our lives around loving God and loving neighbor, it can leave us a little empty.  And so we find ourselves asking, what will bring me fulfillment in life—or, what will bring me fulfillment in loving God and loving neighbor?  Are these just empty tasks?

Jesus says no, they are not empty tasks, but they are to be done with a certain posture, a certain inclination—and it is that posture or inclination which will fulfill us.  And when we don’t have that posture or inclination—well, we won’t feel fulfilled.

This week everyone in our neighborhood got a flyer and an email from our Homeowner’s Association reminding us of the neighborhood regulations regarding…..trash cans. Trash cans, the flyer said, are not to be visible from the street.  They need to be concealed somehow behind a screen of some sort, and if they are not, this regulation will be enforced beginning in November.  I’m not actually sure HOW it will be enforced, but it was clear from the tone of the communication that it would be painful.

Now, one could argue that this is a way that the neighbors in my subdivision show love to one another—by hiding our trash.  That metaphor could go a long way…..hiding our literal as well as our spiritual and emotional trash.  At any rate—is this really what Jesus was getting at when he said we should love our neighbor?  Is this the posture he wants us to take?

No.  The posture he wants us to take toward our neighbor is the one outlined in our scripture lesson today, a posture of servanthood.  And Jesus demonstrated that posture in John’s Gospel in the act of foot washing, which occurs the night we know of as the night of The Last Supper. This was one of his last lessons to his followers—one of the most important things he wanted to tell them.  That they should serve one another, and that service would mean bowing down before one another and performing tasks that sometimes seemed beneath them.   But, Jesus insisted, it is in true service that fulfillment is found.

I’ve participated in foot washings on several occasions.  It is incredibly difficult for us, not only to wash someone’s feet, but to allow our feet to be washed.  There is a kind of servanthood and humility needed on both ends of the basin.  And because it is so difficult, we’ve pushed footwashing aside, telling ourselves we don’t need it, that it doesn’t have a place in our culture because we no longer walk around on dirt roads…..but it remains a radical form of servant ministry as we see here in this video that tells the story of the Bless My Soles ministry at Centenary UMC in downtown Richmond.

http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=1735229&ct=5093309&undefined

It’s a powerful story, isn’t it?  And it reminds us that there are still those among us who need to be served by the act of footwashing all of us.  But footwashing isn’t the only way to serve.  It does remind us of the posture and inclination of servant ministry, though—doing something which seems somehow beneath us, or something someone else would usually do.  Doing a task that is freely given to lift up another, to make their life better.  Putting others before ourselves, in ways that are radical and purposeful, this is the posture of servant ministry. This is what bring fulfillment.

I heard a story last week in our small group of a woman who did just that, who put herself before others in a way that was self-sacrificing, radical and purposeful.  Her name is Roberta.  Roberta was matched by the Christmas Mother in 2009 to the office where one of our small group participants works.  That first Christmas, they did the “regular” Christmas Mother stuff, and had an amazing visit with Roberta, who wrote them a beautiful note of gratitude a couple of weeks later.  She was grateful for the warmth she had from her new clothes, and the joy they had brought to her life.

The office was so moved by Roberta’s story that they decided to give her another gift at Easter.  She was equally grateful, and talked about how their caring gave her strength in the midst of physical struggles, as she reached the point of a year of medical treatments.

Christmas last year found them reaching out to Roberta again, this time not only with a meal—which she also shared with her neighbors—and gifts, but money for new eyeglasses, because hers had broken.  Again, Roberta spoke of her deep gratitude for the people she calls her Guardian Angels, and how they have helped her over the hump of deep financial difficulty.

Another Easter and some other occasions have come and gone, and in September, the office received this letter from Roberta:

September 11, 2011

To the Angels at Markel:

Love and unselfishmess have a way of being infectious and it certainly has infected my soul.  It was back in 2009 when I was really struggling to keep my head above water.  It was for “Christmas Mother” that year when you Angels rescued me and continued with your many kind and great blessings there after.  You have been one of the greatest blessings in my lifetime.  I can now say that my head is above water and it’s because of you.

If you are planning to do “Christmas Mother” for me again this year, it is my unselfish wish to pass this blessing on to another family or another senior citizen that may be sinking as deep as I was back in 2009.  You are not finished with me because I plan to keep in touch with you as long as I am able to because you mean so much to me and I am so thankful to call you my angels.

I can not thank you enough as to how much I appreciate your generosity.  I have all these lovely baskets that have accumulated from your wonderful gifts.  They are nice and usable.  Would you like for me to return them?

With love, happiness and many, many thanks to each and everyone of you.

Sincerely,

Roberta

Of course we’ll still help her, says our small group member.  But we’ll help someone else, too.

As Roberta said, servanthood is infectious.  And she is not a person who is able to wash feet or do home repair or tutor a student or serve physically—but her gratitude at being served has led to a feeling of fulfillment that demands she give what she can, setting herself aside to serve others.

As Christians we find fulfillment in serving others.  That is what Jesus is telling us in this scripture from John’s Gospel.  But he does not tell us this message from a place of privilege and power, telling us to do what he is unwilling to do.  No he invites us to imitate him.  He issues the invitation from the dirt floor after a long day of walking as his hands are pouring water over dirty, smelly, imperfect feet, and then gently wiping them dry.  What brings fulfillment is not merely to love God, to worship God, to praise God—but to serve God by serving one another, to pour ourselves out for one another as Jesus poured himself out for us.  How is God inviting you to fulfillment through servanthood right now?

Let us pray:  God all the messages around us teach us to look out for ourselves, to make sure we are taken care of, to put our needs and wants first.  Your message is radically different.  You propose that we find fulfillment and meaning through serving others.  We struggle with this message, Lord.  Help it take deep root in our hearts, as it has taken root in the lives of those whose stories we have heard today.  Help us hear anew your call to servant ministry, so that we may empty ourselves of selfish ambition and find true fulfillment in serving you and serving others in your name.  Amen.

 Jesus’ Works:  Where Is God?

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A (Off Lectionary)

~ John 1:1-5, 14

Kenwood UMC ~ October 2, 2011

World Communion Sunday

When my kids were toddlers, we had some board books in our house by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, called Where is God? and What Does God Look Like?  These colorful books were a wonderful way to answer those childlike questions that leave us stumped as parents.

Only sometimes we find ourselves still stumped, asking, ourselves that very question, where is God?  If God exists, how can I know God in the world today?  We find ourselves wondering if we’re really living in a world God engineered, sort of like the movie of a few years ago, The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey played a man whose entire life was a movie, engineered by a director on a gigantic sound stage.

Somehow, that idea of God pulling the strings does sit well with us, and that’s good, because it isn’t Biblical.  What is Biblical is this idea we meet in our scripture lesson today from the very beginning of John’s Gospel.  This scripture is a form of poetry, with its beautiful language talking about the birth of Christ.  It pains a clear picture for us of a basic Christian doctrine, one of the things we do believe if we are Christians—the doctrine of the incarnation.  God became one of us.  God came here, to this world he created.  God became flesh, our flesh.  And today, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that is how God continues to work most powerfully in the world—through human flesh.

It is difficult to fully grasp what a radical concept this was for the first hearers. There is a word in verse 14 of this text, “the word became flesh and lived among us.” The Greek for that word is translated “tented” or “tabernacled”. [1] In the Old Testament, the ark of the covenant—or the laws of God—were kept in the tent or tabernacle in the midst of the people. The tabernacle was where God lived, and God was confined to that place.  The people of the Old Testament kept that tent in the center of the community and it travelled with them because they believed God was contained in it.  We no longer believe that.  When the Word became flesh, when God became flesh, God tabernacled or made a tent in humanity, in the midst of our lives and our stuff, not walled off in a seperate space.

Now God, if God wanted, could certainly be walled off, a puppeteer God, or God could appear to us in the water or wind or sky—God is, after all, all-powerful.  But God’s choice is not to usually work in those ways.  God’s choice is to work through you and me.

And that is why when we look for how God is working in the world, then we need to look no further than one another.  We need not wait for some divine revelation, some vision.  We do not need to assume that God will email all of us with instructions, or issue an emergency broadcast on the radio stations or book appearances on CNN and Fox News.  We need only to look at our brothers and sisters around us to see that God is at work in the world, living in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I was in Target a while ago when one of the kids we worked with at Elmont Elementary came up to me, dragging his mom by the hand, and said, “Mommy, this is one of my reading friends.  When are you coming back to read with us?”

That’s God at work in the world, through an adult who takes time to read with a child.

This summer, our team who went on the mission trip to the Hinton Rural Life Center in Appalachia started the week at our homeowner’s site with the oldest daughter, about 12 years old, too terrified of us to come out of the house.  By the end of the week, Hailey was working alongside the team, hammering nails, eating lunch, and not wanting us to leave—ever.

That’s God at work in the world, building bridges between people of different circumstance, and helping make lives better.

One of our youth team members who went on that trip later in the summer went on a tour bus trip.  Unfortunately this young person was the only non-adult on the bus—and not only that, but the only non-older adult.  The parents were not too sure how the week was going to go, but the young person adopted the older adults.  In fact, one of the older gentlemen was a bit slow, and was always getting lost.  One day he got lost in the middle of a sudden rainstorm when the bus really needed to pull out, and our young person was the one who volunteered to take the umbrella, go find him, and lead him slowly and patiently across the parking lot to the bus.

That’s God at work in the world—one person helping another just because they can.

As we turn to the table this morning, we meet the symbols of Christ’s incarnation—Christ coming to be one of us.  The bread and the wine remind us of God becoming flesh and giving himself for us.  And they remind us that we are nourished by God to be Jesus’ hands at work in the world today.  On this World Communion Sunday, as we share in this sacrament with brothers and sisters around the globe, we remember that Christ’s work is not limited to our community, but is global in it’s reach.  In thousands of ways, every day, God is at work in the world through you and me.  We don’t need to wait for God to work—we need to participate in God’s work in the world.  I invite you to pay attention this week to where God is beckoning you to be Christ’s instrument in the world.

Our hymn, of response, Life-Giving Bread, reminds us that our life comes because Christ has lived among us.  We will be singing the refrain, found at number 2261, and the choir will sing the verses in between.

---

Jesus’ Grace: Am I Accepted?

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A ~

John 8:1-11 (Off-Lectionary)

Kenwood UMC ~ September 25, 2011

Our topic for this morning is grace—coming to understand and know God’s unconditional love for each one of us. Poet Denise Levertov paints this unforgettable picture of grace in her poem “The Avowal.”  I invite you to close your eyes imagine yourself floating on your back in a quiet pond or a still ocean as you hear Denise’ words.

As swimmers dare

To lie face to the sky

And water bears them,

As hawks rest upon the air

And air sustains them,

So would I learn to attain

Freefall, and float

Into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace

Knowing no effort earns

That all surrounding grace.[1]

What a beautiful picture of grace.  Floating effortlessly in God’s embrace, surrounded, held and supported by God’s love. It’s what we all long for, isn’t it?  And the good news is, it’s what God wants to give each one of us—no matter what.

God’s powerful grace, or God’s unconditional love for all of us, no matter what, is something that I feel very strongly about.  It is one of the cornerstones of my theology.  And, like most parts of my theology that are that important to me, there’s a personal connection.  You see, I struggled a bit with being accepted as a teenager like many of us.  Not at home, not at church, but at school to some degree.  I don’t have any real horror stories to tell, but there was a pervading sense of, “you don’t fit it” or “you’re not one of the cool kids.”  Until.  Until one year I went away to camp for the first time, after my freshman year of high school.  I went to a camp where I knew absolutely no one.  And I went in with all those fears about being accepted that st of us have when we walk into some place new.  And almost immediately I felt accepted, comfortable, like I fit in—like I was that swimmer that Denise Levertov described in the poem, content in myself, resting in the water effortlessly.

We all long for that, don’t we?  And we all must remember that everyone—everyone who comes into these doors longs for that.  And everyone who is afraid to come into these doors.  Because there are plenty of people out there—maybe you’ve even been one of them, who are afraid of Christianity because they feel like Christians will be judging them for the wrongs they’ve done, the sins they’ve committed.  They feel like they won’t be accepted.

In our gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus tells us that those people are wrong about Christianity, that God’s love is not about passing judgment but about drawing the circle wider.  Now, this story from scripture is actually a bit out of place in John’s gospel—it doesn’t have many of the characteristics of Johannine writing, and many scholars question whether it was an original story, or one inserted later.  But it does seem consistent with the picture of Jesus we get in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, a Jesus who embraced the outcast, who shared God’s love with those the religious establishment scorned.

In this case the person scorned was a woman who had committed adultery, which was against Jewish law.  It’s interesting, and speaks to women’s status in the community, that the scribes and the Pharisees (those religious authorities who have shown up in our scripture now for three weeks running) brought only the woman to Jesus—and not the partner with whom she committed her sin.  Regardless, they come to Jesus and challenge him:  the law of Moses says we should stone this woman—or throw stones at her until she dies.  What do you say?

And Jesus looks them square in the eye and says, “Whoever is wthout sin can cast the first stone.”  And you can see them, can’t you, glancing at each other and looking down and one by one thinking about the sins they have done—the things they have done to others, and the things they have failed to do—and dropping their stones in the dust and walking away.  Until she is all alone.  And Jesus says to her, go and sin no more.

Grace is abundant. And it is offered to everyone.  It is not cheap—it does invite a response—go and sin no more.  But it comes freely to us from the God who loves us.  It doesn’t matter what our past is, the demons that still haunt us, the questions we are bringing.  God’s love and acceptance for us are complete and total.

Tony Campolo, who is a pastor and activist, often tells the story of Agnes, a story I have heard before and Martin Thielen retells in his book, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian.  Campolo shares that he traveled to Honolulu for a speaking engagement, and arrived at his hotel and crashed in his room, tired from traveling and the time change from his East Coast home.  “He woke at 9:00 his time, but in Honolulu it was 3:00 a.m.  Wide awake and hungry, Tony walked to a small diner near the hotel and ordered coffee and a donut. At 3:30 a.m., a group of provocatively dressed prostitutes walked in the door.  Their loud and crude talk made Tony uncomfortable, so he prepared to leave.

But then he heard one of the women say, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.  I’m going to be thirty-nine.”

Her friend responded, “So what do you want from me, a birthday party?  You want me to get a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”

“Come on,” said the woman. “Why do you have to be so mean?  I was just telling you, that’s all.  I don’t want anything from you.  I mean, why should you give me a birthday party?  I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life.  Why should I have one now?’

When Tony heard those words, he made a decision.  He stayed in the diner until the women left, then he said to the owner, “Do they come in here every night?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “You can set your clock by it.”  Tony said, “What’s the name of the woman who sat next to me?”

“That’s Agnes, “ he replied.

Tony said, “What do you think about us throwing a birthday party for her—right here—tomorrow night?”

A smile crossed the owner’s face, and he said, “That’s great!  I like it!  I’ll even make the cake!”

At 2:00 the next morning, Tony went back to the diner.  He put up crepe-paper decorations and a big sign ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AGNES!’  The workers at the diner obviously got the word out, because by about 3:15 every prostitute in Honolulu crowded into the place.  At 3:30 sharp, the door swung open and in came Agnes and her friends.

Tony had the entire group scream, ‘Happy Birthday, Agnes!’  Agnes, absolutely stunned, felt so overwhelmed her friend had to hold her up.  Everyone in the diner began to sing, ‘Happy Birthday to You.’

When they brought out the cake covered with thirty-nine candles, Agnes began to cry.  Too overcome with emotion to blow out the candles, she let the owner blow them out for her.  Before she cut the cake, Agnes hesitated.  She asked if she could take her cake right down the street, show it to her mother, and then come right back.  The owner of the diner said that would be fine, so she did.

When the door closed behind Agnes, silence filled the room.  Tony broke the silence saying, ‘What do you say we pray?’  It probably seemed strange for a roomful of prostitutes to bow their heads in prayer, but that’s what happened.  Tony prayed for Agnes and for the others in the diner, affirming that they were beloved daughters of God with great value, worth and promise.

When Tony finished the prayer, the owner of the diner said to him, “You never told me you were a preacher.  What kind of church do you belong to?”

In a moment of divine inspiration, Tony said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”[2]

That’s the church of Jesus. The church where all people are radically loved and accepted by God’s grace.  That’s our church, the church that is our home, a church of Amazing Grace.

Jesus’ Priority: What Matters Most

14^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A (Off Lectionary) ~

Mark 12:28-34

Kenwood UMC ~ September 18, 2011

You may have heard this story before—in fact I am pretty sure that some of you have heard this story before because I’ve told it here before.  I am not sure exactly when, but it has been 6 or 7 years.  I told it one Sunday in the winter when the heat broke and we had to worship in the fellowship hall.  But, it is such an important story and illustration that it bears repeating.

I’ve got a glad container here, so you can see into it.  And I am going to fill it with some rocks.  Now, I want to ask you a question.  Is the container full? Now, here I have another jar filled with all kinds of little rocks. But here’s the problem.  If I try to fit in a big rock, it won’t fit. The jar is already full with all of these little things.

If we think of these jars as our lives, and the ways we practice our faith, what this says to us, and what we know to be true, is that we are really, really good at filling up our jars, with all kinds of commitments and interests, aren’t we?  But the problem is, sometimes we forget to put the big rocks in first.  In our lives that’s God, family, friends, and all those big rock kinds of priorities.  But the question we ask today is a faith question.  If we are talking about what is the least we have to believe to be a Christian, if we are talking about Jesus’ priorities for us as faithful believers, and what matters most—what are the big rocks for Jesus?  What does Jesus think matters most?  What does Jesus want us to give priority to?

Jesus answers that question in our scripture lesson for today.   If you were here last week you remember that we encountered Jesus in Matthew’s gospel during a time of debate with the scribes and Pharisees, the religious authorities of his time.  This week, we encounter him at exactly the same moment in Mark’s gospel, with the same stories of debate just before today’s passage.  But, whereas in Matthew’s gospel after these stories Jesus begins to criticize the scribes and Pharisees, in Mark’s gospel what happens next is this encounter with one of the scribes who comes to Jesus to ask him a big rock’s question:  what matters most?  Or, which of the commandments is the most important?

And Jesus’ reply is clear and concise. The scribe asks him for one commandment, but he gives two: love God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself.  That is what matters most, Jesus says.  And if we are thinking about what we need to believe, what we need to be about as people of faith, that’s it—loving God and loving others.  Relationships with God and others should define us.  They are the big rocks.  They are what will move us toward perfection in love, wrote John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement.[1]

Love God, love others.  That means we have to make our love of God and our love of others a priority in our lives, the big rocks. Now some of you might think I have an easy time of this, but really it is something I struggle with quite a lot, particularly the love God part.  I don’t exactly struggle with loving God—but I struggle mightily with spending time with the God I love, with making that relationship a priority, a big rock in my life. That is one of the major reasons I felt the need for a study or renewal leave this summer.  I am really good at keeping busy and accomplishing things by doing stuff.  I am pretty lousy—or have been—at just being.  And most of the relationship with God stuff is about just being.  I knew from experience that a slight change in routine or a new goal wasn’t going to do the trick for me—I needed a jolt—an earthquake in my spiritual center, if you will.

And so as a part of my study leave I went on a five-day directed silent retreat, and that was the earthquake I needed.  I spent my days in prayer, journaling, reflecting on scripture passages selected by my spiritual director.  I had some powerful experiences of God’s presence, some wonderful revelations from God about my relationship with God, and felt closer to God than I have in years. In fact, I was so close to God that by the end of the week I was mourning leaving, and determined not to fall into old patterns and old practices.

So, since I have returned I have continued to make time with God a priority. Some days it is just 10-15 minutes.  At least two days a week it’s about 30-45 minutes.  And once every six weeks it will be a full day.  Because I’ve learned that spending time with God, making my relationship with God a priority in my life, changes me.  That time of being with God grounds me and gives me clarity, making all of the other stuff I “do” much better.

One of the things I refrained from on my silent retreat was the Twitter community I enjoy so much.  Twitter is a social media community where you can share things of interest in 140 characters or less.  I follow—or read—groups of people from the religious community, national news, and also local Richmonders.  And this week on Twitter, a local Richmonder who understands Jesus’ second priority, love of neighbor, got a lot of buzz.  Patience Salgado, otherwise known as Kindness Girl, was profiled this week in Oprah Magazine, which picked up her story as an example of how kindness can change the world.  Patience is a young mom in Richmond who started a blog called “Kindness Girl” in 2007 to share about the random acts of kindness she practices on a regular basis.  Things like giving out a dozen Starbucks gift cards on the anniversary of a coffee-loving friend’s death each year—giving them to complete strangers.  And the ding-dong ditch—leaving a sweet treat on someone’s porch and ringing the bell and running.  Or leaving a post-it note in a library book when you return it that says “You are loveable”, so the next person to check out the book receives the note.

Well, the Richmond Twitter community was proud of Kindness Girl’s story in Oprah and this week also happened to be her birthday, so a friend got together and organized a little surprise through Twitter.  On her birthday, Thursday, people all over town were doing random acts of kindness for others and tweeting about it with a Happy Birthday note to Kindness Girl.  Tolls were paid for the next car in line, favorite waitstaff got an extra tip, cars got “you are loveable” notes on their windshields, teachers got extra goodies from parents….and much more.[2]

Loving your neighbor.  Patience Salgado is one who is leading the way in Richmond.  For her, loving her neighbor—and not just the neighbors she knows—is a huge priority in her life, a big rock.

Loving God, loving neighbor. The question we ask ourselves this morning is, where are those priorities in my life?  What size rocks are they?  Do they anchor my priorities, as Jesus says they should, or do they get squeezed in where I have room?  And if relationships with God and neighbor don’t have priority in my life, what can I do to change that?

When the Church Loses Its Way

13^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A (Off-Lectionary) ~

Matthew 23:1-12

Kenwood UMC ~ September 11, 2011

Gimme that old time religion…..we can really get nostalgic about church, can’t we? Take me back to the old times.  And, some “old time religion” is really wonderful.  It brings back memories of revivals, enthusiastic hymn sings, getting dressed in your Sunday best, and a time when church was at the center of community life.  Those are the good memories.  But, that old time religion has also led to suffering and shame: the Crusades. The Inquisition.  The church’s resistance to the full equality of people because of gender or race.  The shame of a child who didn’t memorize this week’s memory verse.

As we begin our series called “What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be A Christian,” we’re going to start by taking a look at the old time religion of the church and they ways it has unfortunately become a roadblock to being a part of a faith community for many people.  Before we think about what we do believe, we need to start this week by thinking about what Christians do not believe.

As we gather in worship today on this tenth anniversary of 9-11, I have heard a lot of nostalgia this week.  Not nostalgia wanting to go back to the good old days of terrorist attacks, of course, but nostalgia about the religious sentiments that gripped our nation just after 9-11.  People are remembering those “good old days” of the fall of 2001 when church attendance soared, and people “returned to God” in the face of unexplainable suffering and tragedy.

And certainly, the church had a role in those days, an important role in our national life.  But, as the immediacy of the tragedy faded, so did the immediate spiritual needs of people, and they drifted away.  They drifted away for a lot of reasons, but partially because their needs had been met at that moment, but there were other things about the church that were not keeping them engaged.  And the hard truth is, while we tend to think longingly of the old days, the church is not perfect—it never has been.  And some times, instead of inviting people into a life of faith, we can push them away.  That’s a point Jesus drives home in today’s gospel lesson.

In the 23^rd chapter of Matthew, we encounter Jesus well into his ministry and fresh from some tense exchanges with the scribes and Pharisees.  They’ve been challenging his interpretation of whether to pay taxes, and what marriage will be like in the resurrection.  Now, you have to understand that the scribes and the Pharisees were not some offbeat band of religious folks—they were the respected religious authorities in the Hebrew community.  Sure, people knew some of them were corrupt.  But by and large, they were a respected group, the establishment in power.

But Jesus takes the establishment to task in this scripture, saying they have done three things:

1. They have talked the talk but not walked the walk.  In other words, they have preached a lot about how people should behave and what they should do, but they have utterly failed to behave in the ways they have preached.
2. They have placed a burden on others—telling them what they should do and how they should do it to live faithful lives—but they have failed to act themselves to help people live more faithful lives—to help them deal with their burdens.
3. They have practiced their faith for the wrong reasons—not to become closer to God, but to make a good impression on others.

Brothers and sisters, I fear that if Jesus were to look at the church today, he could say some of the same things.  The church—and please hear that I am not saying Kenwood church, but the church universal of which we are one part–the church has often talked a lot about how people should live and act, and then people in the church have failed in deep, deep ways to act that way.  They have been judgmental.  Sexual misconduct has been brushed under the rug.  People have been told they’ll be accepted only to be rejected.

We have much of which we need to repent.  Our old time religion—our traditions and expectations and habits—have caused people to turn away.  We find ourselves as the church in a state of confusion, depicted this morning on the front of our bulletins.  Why are people not turning to the church?  Why did they turn that way after 9-11 and then turn away?  Why are people not committed?  Unfortunately, much of the answer has less to do with people outside the church and more to do with the negative messages that the church has offered.  Messages like these:

If God really loved you, then your cancer would be cured.  You must not have prayed hard enough.

The earthquakes and hurricanes?  Well those are God’s judgment on sinful behavior.

All that science you learned in school—it doesn’t matter.  The Bible has it right about creation.

It is these messages that push people away and make them think, “Well, if that is what Christians believe, then I don’t want to be a Christian.”  And that’s why we’re spending time this fall to focus on what Christians do believe—what are the essentials of the faith?  What can we not live without?

But before we get to that, let’s finish today by being clear about some things Christians do not believe:

Christians do not believe that God causes cancer, car accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, or any other bad stuff.  None of that is God’s will.  That’s a piece of old-time religion that we can discard and throw away.

Christians do not believe that if you are really faithful, you won’t ask questions.  People of faith struggle.  People of faith doubt.  Time after time we read of people in the Bible who struggled mightily, wrestled with what God wanted for their lives, and asked deep questions.  Doubt has a very important place in the live of faith.

Christians do not believe that their faith in Jesus gives them a license to be obnoxious and judgmental.  That’s exactly the problem with the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus calls out today.  They were judging people for how they were living. It doesn’t matter whether someone is Republican or Democrat, from here or moved here, black or white—or red or purple. Judging is a task left up to God.  And obnoxiousness?  Well, that’s a task best left up to no one!

Now, obviously this is not an exhaustive list of things that Christians don’t believe—but I think it hits on some of the big issues that have driven people away from the church.  People have turned away from the church because the church has made them feel ashamed of the circumstances of their lives.  People have turned away from the church because they asked a question and were told that Christians don’t ask questions of God.  People have turned away from the church because they were told if they just prayed harder or lived right, bad things wouldn’t happen.  These message that people have heard—they aren’t Christian messages.

I think the time has come for us, as the church, to denounce those old ways and put in place new practices, practices that allow people to question, consider, figure things out, all the while being a vibrant part of the Christian community.  The time has come for us to figure out what we do indeed really need to believe in order to be a Christian.  And we’ll explore those things over the next six weeks together.  Most of the things that are core beliefs for us will revolve around Jesus—who he was, what he believes, how he calls us to live.  I am looking forward to sharing this journey with you.  And, I hope you will begin it by thinking of someone you know for whom church has been a roadblock, reaching out to them, and inviting them to join us in this journey.

Let us pray:

Creating God, you are always calling us to places of new life.  We ask you to help us listen now. Help us to cast aside old practices and old ways of thinking that have hurt and wounded others.  Help us listen to the voices outside, the voices that are seeking you, even our own voices.  Help us to be your accepting, loving presence in a broken world.  Amen. [i]

Too Big for a Building

12^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A ~ Acts 17:22-28

Kenwood UMC ~ September 4, 2011

(Outdoor Worship)

So, here we are at the end of another summer.  And wow has it ended with a bang, at least in terms of weather—earthquakes and hurricanes, and all the uncertainty they bring— uncertainty that reminds us who is really in control—God.  In the last 6 weeks since we have been together, I have traveled up and down the East coast, from the shores of the Atlantic in North Carolina, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, to a mountain mining community in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the beautiful North Carolina Piedmont.  And those travels have reinforced for me something that we acknowledge as we gather outside today.  God is too big for a building.

I have brought back with me a symbol of my travels and a visual representation of how big God is.  You see it before you in these four jars, which contain soil from each of the four places I visited on my study leave: two beaches, one mountain town, and one central North Carolina town.  I think it is just fascinating to look at these four containers and see the differences in the soil.  The obvious difference is in the sand and what we might more commonly call dirt.  Pale verses dark, fine versus chunkier.  But we can look even closer and see the darker sand of the Atlantic ocean beach, which is also drier and coarser, and compare it to the finer, whiter damp sand of the gulf.  And we have black soil from the mountains, rich with nutrients and ready to grow something, and dry red clay soil from the Piedmont.

This is just a snapshot of the amazing diversity of God’s creation.  I am sure that many of us have experienced different parts of God’s creation as we have traveled this summer, or perhaps even just stayed at home and watched hurricane force winds bend trees, and enjoyed the starry night sky without any power to provide interfering lights!

Let me invite you to take a minute and share with someone sitting next to you something you saw this summer on your travels, or in your home, that reminded you of God’s creative spirit—something that struck you as beautiful or different in some way.

I think that it is very easy, when we worship in the same places and in the same patterns, to come to take God’s diversity for granted.  It is easy just not to think about the incredible difference and spectacular grandeur of God’s world.  That is the beauty of getting out of our usual routines, leaving our familiar spaces and places, and not being afraid to look for God in new ways and new places.

The apostle Paul drives that point home to us in our scripture lesson from the book of Acts this morning. The book of Acts tells the story of how the early church emerged after the death and resurrection of Christ.   In this part of the story, we encounter the apostle Paul, author of many of the New Testament letters like Romans and 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians. Paul traveled a lot around the ancient world to share the story of Christ.  We can imagine that as he traveled, like us, he saw God revealed in many different ways.

Today we find him in the Greek city of Athens, speaking to people who do not believe in the God of Israel or the God of Jesus.  In fact, he is speaking to Stoics and Epicureans, who believe in many Gods.  Paul has observed that their city is full of idols-statues and monuments to different gods and goddesses.  But among those, Paul has seen a statue to an unknown God.  Paul is very disturbed by all these idols and has been making a bit of a ruckus about it, so the leaders of the community bring him before their governing council, the Aeropagus, to explain himself.

And the point Paul makes is precisely this: God is too big to be fully represented in an idol, or even in a group of idols.  “God does not live in shrines made by human hands,” Paul says, and we are God’s offspring, not the other way around.  We cannot create God in the image we want, or confine God to the places that are comfortable.

It is so very tempting and easy to confine God to the places that are comfortable.  It is tempting to stand in the soil we know and love, and just keep getting more familiar with it.  That is one of the things I have learned from six weeks away from my comfortable, regular routine, and from some new experiences that were decidedly uncomfortable to me.  When we push ourselves, when we seek God in new ways and new places, when we examine our relationship with our creator, we are drawn closer to God, and are able to more clearly know God’s love for us.  Sometimes those times of seeking and examination come by our choice, and sometimes they are forced upon us by illness, personal crisis, natural disaster or other things beyond our control.

I know that each one of us finds ourselves in a different place this morning.  Some of us feel natural gathering for worship outdoors, some of us a bit uncomfortable.  Some of us are comfortable in our relationships with God, some of us long for something more—and some of us may not have any idea what we want or need from God.

I invite you to imagine yourself listening to Paul in Athens, knowing nothing about this God to whom he is introducing you.  I invite you to think about the places in your life where you put God and ask him to stay there—for example, our sanctuary at Kenwood.  Prayers at bedtime or meals.  The devotional book you always read in the morning.  The one story from scripture that you always return to.

I invite you this morning to hear Paul’s challenge—God cannot be contained or confined.  God is completely and utterly free, and we need to seek God in new places, outside of our regular routines.  As we enter this new season, a new school year, a new moment in our lives, we need to find new soil, to notice the ways that God is present in all of creation, to notice the immense diversity of the God who is not far from any of us.

The Enormous Expanse of Grace

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A ~ Off Lectionary  John 14:6, John 12:32

Kenwood UMC ~ July 17, 2011

It has been a wonderful VBS celebration this morning, hasn’t it?!  You know at VBS each year we celebrate that we can take time to have fun and share God’s love with children—and with adults as well.  In reality, though, that’s what worship each week is all about—we hope that it is a fun, enjoyable experience, and an experience that helps us share God’s love with one another, and understand how God is working in our lives just a little better.

This week I am concluding a three-part sermon series based on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.  Over the last two weeks we have talked about how we understand heaven and hell.  If you missed those sermons, they are available on our website, and I also encourage you to read Bell’s book.  This week, we want to shift just a little bit and think about who exactly it is that
gets to heaven and hell.

And that gets us into some sticky territory. To summarize what I have been saying the last couple of weeks, heaven is complete communion with God and God’s creation—and while it is our promised inheritance after this life, we have glimpses of it in the here and now.  Hell, in contrast, is separation from God and God’s will, and we certainly have a large dose of that in the here and now.  I said last week that I am not sure that a God who is love, and who ultimately believes in reconciling the world to Himself could consign someone to eternal torment.

And so this morning we arrive at one of the stickiest questions of our faith—who is saved?  Who does, after all, get to dwell in heaven eternally?  Where are the boundaries drawn and who draws them?

I want to say at the outset that I am not going to address these issues comprehensively in the ten minutes I have with you today.  I would commend Bell’s book to you, as well as Will Willimon’s Who Will Be Saved, and a chapter in Adam Hamilton’s Book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.  But I want to at least try to begin to wrestle with these questions.

And I want to begin with Jesus, and two seemingly contrasting statements he makes in John’s gospel.  I picked these two because they are familiar, but they certainly do not stand alone as Jesus’ only statements about salvation.    These two statements both come from near the end of Jesus ministry, around the time he was going to Jerusalem for his final Passover.  They
are both made not in public, but to his disciples.  In John 14:6, Jesus says, “ ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  And then, in John 12:32, he says,  “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ “

How are we to make sense of these two sayings of Jesus, one which seems to claim that Jesus and Jesus alone is the only way to salvation, and another which seems to claim an inclusive kind of salvation, in which Jesus draws all people to himself?  These two worldviews—one which excludes people who do not know the Jesus of Christianity from eternal salvation, and one which includes all people—all people—in God’s salvation, stand at two extremes.  Is there a way to hold both together?

I have come to believe that there is.  And the way I have come to believe that is by working on my understanding of who God is and who Jesus is.  And I have come to these three conclusions:

1.  God is all powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere. There is nowhere in God’s creation where God is not.  Therefore, even if the name is Jesus has not been known there—the presence of God has been made known.  And so, salvation is possible.

2.  God is love.  Ultimate, complete love.  And because God is love, God’s actions in the world are loving in nature.  Now, sometimes love can be tough—love can say, you need to drop the addiction, kick the bad habit, turn and follow.  But ultimately, love reaches out, offers mercy and forgiveness, even at the last possible moment.  And so, for those people who have not lived a good life, salvation is possible—even at the last moment.

3.  God is bigger than my impossibly small mind can grasp.  And therefore, so is Jesus.  When we confine Jesus to a man who lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago, we do him a terrible
disservice.  When we assume that people cannot know Christ unless they read about that Jesus, we do ourselves a terrible disservice.  Christ—the pre-existent Son—has been with God since creation, and is in the world today.  We see him as we serve the lost, as we show compassion, as we live in ways that are kind and generous, ways that the man from Nazareth modeled for us.  And so, it is possible to know Christ—and Christ’s salvation—without knowing fully the Jesus of the Bible.

Now, does that mean that I am a universalist, that I believe all will be saved, regardless of their choices?  No.  Some—I hope just a few—but some will exercise the free will God has given them, and will reject for all eternity the way of love.  I think that when people make those choices, it grieves God deeply.  God does not want it to happen.  God will try everything to make sure it does not happen.  But the choice is ultimately ours.

Nor am I exclusivist.  I do not believe that because I choose Jesus as the way the truth and the life that my choice is the only choice.  Therefore I believe that it is possible that people who do not choose my choice will be saved—whether they do not have the opportunity to choose Christianity, or whether they do have the opportunity and reject it.  I believe that God sees the way people live, the choices they make, the values they uphold, and that salvation is based on that….not the country they are raised in or the religion they practice.

In a Newsweek article on Billy Graham, written in 2006, the author lifts up Graham’s humility toward people of other religions.  Graham is certainly someone we would characterize as sure of his faith in Jesus as the way to salvation.  “When asked whether heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people, though, Graham says:
‘Those are decisions only the Lord will make.  It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won’t…..I don’t want to speculate about all that.  I believe the love of God is absolute.  He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have.’”[1]

God’s grace is enormous.  It is wider than the widest sea, broader than our minds can grasp, fuller than our fullest hearts.  And in the end, I believe, the story of Jesus tells us what Rob Bell says it does:  Love wins.

---

Hell—Or, What Happens to Bad People?

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A ~ Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Kenwood UMC ~ July 10, 2011

 Last Sunday after church when we got home my kids surrounded me accusingly: “Mommy, you said a bad word in church—lots of times!”  And they were right, and that is often how
the word hell is used in our culture—as a bad word to describe bad things.  But today we want to pause for just a moment and think about what it means theologically, what it means for us as people of faith.  Those of us who gathered for small group last Sunday after worship to talk about Love Wins shared that almost all of us had been told by someone at some point in our lives that we were “going to hell.”  Since a certain kind of folk in our world are determined to let people know they are going to hell, it’s good for us to know what exactly that means.

Our culture depicts hell in lots of ways.  This Friday, I and many others eagerly anticipate the release of the final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.  Part of that film will be a depiction of a gigantic battle between good and evil at Hogwarts, the school which has been Harry’s home as he has grown up.  The forces of evil, led by Lord Voldemort, will turn it into a battleground, a wasteland, a wizard version of hell and desolation.  Hell, then, in that moment, is a place of desolation, despair, and the triumph of evil.

As I was working on this sermon late in the week, one of you sent me an article from Huffington Post, letting me know that country singer Brad Paisley has a song about hell on his newest album released in May.[1]  The song is called “A Man Don’t Have to Die,” and part of the lyrics go like this:

Hell is losing your job six months short of 30 years,

with no parachute, no shiny new gold watch and not so much as a “thank you” as you walk out the door.

It’s payments you can’t make on a house you can’t sell,

as your kids watch their parents split apart.

You don’t have to die to go to hell.

So, according to this song, hell is what happens when you are down on luck and horrible things happen to you.  It is job loss, foreclosure, divorce, imprisonment, and all of those experiences.

Now, I’m not going to really argue with either of those images of hell—because I think they each have some elements of truth to them.  But what I’d like for us to talk about and think about today is how Jesus talks about hell, how hell is represented in the Bible.  And the scripture we read this morning is one of those moments when Jesus talks about hell.  According to my concordance, there are 13 times the word hell is used in the New Testament, and 11 of those instances are when Jesus speaks them.  Jesus talked about people being thrown into hell for what they have done and about being liable to the hell of fire.  In other instances, such as our scripture for today, he uses language like “at the end of the age…The Son of Man….will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and….will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Wow.  What exactly is this furnace of fire, this place of weeping and gnashing of teeth?  And who goes there, and for how long?  Let’s tackle the what, and then the who and how long.

When Jesus uses the word hell in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, it is a translation of the word Gehenna, the name for a place in Jerusalem.  Ge means “valley”
and henna means “Hinnom.”  The Valley of Hinnom was a real valley on the southwest side of Jerusalem.  As Rob Bell points out in his chapter on Hell in Love Wins, Gehenna was the city dump.[2]

On the last day of our mission trip at the Hinton Rural Life Center, every work team has to stop by the Clay County dump to leave worksite trash. You back your truck in and push the debris out over a ledge.  Several of us got out to help our staff person in this task—I was one of them.  It was a hot, hot day, about 3 in the afternoon.  It was actually the first day that week when I had gotten into the van to drive us home and thought to myself, wow, we really smell.  But after getting out to put the work debris in the dump, we smelled pretty good.  That place was nasty.  It stank, there were flies everywhere, unidentifiable goop on the floor….it was pretty gross.

But for Jesus’ day it would have been pretty clean.  At the city dump in Jerusalem, people would have tossed their rubbish, and fires would have been kept burning constantly to burn up the trash.  Wild animals from the nearby hills would have foraged and fought for scraps of food—making a gnashing sound with their teeth. Gehenna was a place of fire and heat and gnashing of teeth.  It was not a place you wanted to go.  It was the closest that Jesus could get to a hell that his followers would understand.[3]

And I think that’s why he uses images to help us think about hell and understand hell—whether it is the devastation of Hogwarts, the lyrics of country music, the images of war, stories of the Holocaust—we have to have pictures in our minds and hearts of what this horrible, terrible place is.

And that is because our hearts can barely grasp what hell really is—separation from God, the conscious choice to turn away from life in God’s love, and reject all of that mercy and all of that grace, in favor of something we can control or define ourselves.  That’s hell.  And we create it—we create it very, very well.  God, after all, gave us free will, the ability to make choices.  And sometimes we make choices that drive us away from God and into the arms of….well, of evil.  Of hell.  We do that individually, and we also do it as societies and cultures,
when we make decisions that cause very, very bad things to happen, systemic things that cause death and disease and war and heartache.

And so, to go back to the title of this sermon, what happens to “bad” people is that they have made choices that separate them from God and find themselves in this hell, this place of pain and abandonment and anguish.  But for how long?  Eternally?

This is where we get into our understanding of salvation.  If we believe in a God who is loving and merciful and working, ultimately, to reconcile all things to himself, then we finally conclude that eternal damnation is at best a remote possibility.  Quite simply, God loves us too much.  And while that makes us feel very, very loved, it also makes us squirm a bit.  It makes us think thoughts of, “it’s not fair for those who haven’t worked as hard as I have to get the same reward.”  But scripture reminds us that God isn’t about being fair—God is about being just and merciful.[4]

Bishop Will Willimon, Bishop of the Birmingham Area of the United Methodist Church, writes in his book, Who Will Be Saved, that “even though it is possible that many will be eternally damned, it’s hard to square that with the Bible’s depiction of a God who searches “until” he finds.”[5]  That’s the same God who will wipe away every tear from every eye, the God who will go to the cross to defeat the power of death.

Some people focus their thoughts about God and eternity in this dichotomy of heaven and hell, either or.  And that works for them.  I tend to read scripture and think that this heaven and hell dichotomy is about the choices that we make now, the kind of life we live now, and that ultimately, eternally, God is about hope and redemption.  And if God is about hope and redemption, that’s what the church needs to be about—not condemning people to hell or exalting them to heaven, but being a place and a space where people can find hope and healing that brings them out of hell and into new life in Christ.

Heaven: Then or Now?

Third Sunday After Pentecost, Year A ~ Matthew 11:25-30

Kenwood UMC ~ July 3, 2011

Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  That line from scripture is often used at funerals to talk about the rest that Jesus gives from the burdens of this world–it came to my mind, in fact, this week when I learned of the death of a friend’s husband who had suffered a long time with cancer.  But when Jesus first said it, he wasn’t talking to people who were about to die–he was talking to people whom he was trying to convince to enter into a new way of life, life in him.  And he talks not only about giving rest, but about carrying a yoke, a yoke of obedience to his way of life.  And yet, we seem to have forgotten this part about the uncomfortable yoke, and turned this piece of scripture into a comforting scripture about heavenly rest.

We seem to get things confused about heaven a lot–both in our culture and in our faith.  And we are famous for taking snippets of scripture out of context and misinterpreting them as we assign our own meanings to them.  That has typically happened a lot around what the Bible and the church teach about heaven, hell and the fate of everyone who has ever lived. This spring, evangelical pastor Robb Bell published a book called Love Wins on these topics, and it caused a firestorm in the evangelical community, and in the popular press.  I hope some of you have read the book, or read some press about it, so that you are familiar with it.  I’ve read and enjoyed several of Bell’s other books, and so as I heard people begin to talk about it I grew more and more intrigued, purchased and read Love Wins.  I found very little in the book to disagree with theologically, very little that was not consistent with our own United
Methodist tradition.  But I heard of many, many people in our culture and community who were disturbed by the book–and so I thought it deserved some time and reflection.

So, today we tackle heaven.  When most of us think of heaven, we think of a place we will go someday, a place where we will live in eternal life.  We think of something in the future, a
reward.  We paint pictures of streets of gold, and flowing streams, and gates guarded by St. Peter with long lines of people waiting to get in. Many of these images are quite comforting to us.

Only they may not be entirely accurate.  When we go back and look at what Jesus taught about heaven, he taught about God’s kingdom breaking in NOW–not in some future
time and place.  He talked about, in Rob Bell’s words, “dragging the future into the present.”  Heaven is not just something later, some reward.  It is the place where God’s will
is all that is done, where love is all that exists. And while heaven is certainly the promise of eternal life, Jesus very much wants that place to move closer, to break into our lives and out reality today.

I would even venture to say that is why those of us who just gave a week to repair a home in Appalachia did it–to help drag God’s future into our present.  On Monday night one of our kids looked around the Hinton Rural Life Center and said, they sure do use the word poverty a lot on signs here.  What is poverty, anyway?  A couple of us adults shot each other looks
across the table and then tried to stumble around the answer to that question.  We talked about poverty being a way to describe how someone lived who did not have much money or many resources, but we also talked about poverty as a system, a reality of choices and possibilities in our world that make it difficult for people who are poor to get out of the cycle of being poor.  And we talked about the work we did–one brushstroke at a time, one nail at a time, one board at a time, being all about ending that system of poverty–about dragging God’s future, when there would be no more poverty–into the today.

That’s a very different take on heaven for many of us who are seduced by popular ideals of living right to get a reward. Heaven is not our reward for living right.  Heaven is not something we wait for in a future place.  It begins here and now, with God’s kingdom coming, as we ask for it to in The Lord’s Prayer.  We don’t—and this is critical—live right so
we can get to heaven.  We live right so in response to God’s love for us through Christ Jesus.  And, every moment we live under Christ’s yoke is a moment when heaven draws closer.  If
we just look at heaven as a place to which we will one day “evacuate,” in Bell’s words, then why in the world would we be motivated to live like Jesus, boldly taking risks to love one another in the world?

And that kind of bold risk taking to bring heaven closer is clearly a part of our Wesleyan heritage as United Methodists.  John Wesley was convinced that our place as Christians was not only in the church and in private prayer, but also out in the world, bringing justice and mercy to those in need–dragging God’s future into the here and now.  Wesley did not preach or teach that our Christian faith was about waiting for an evacuation to heaven– a better place. He taught that our faith was about creating a better place–here and now.

John Wesley also stressed the importance of frequent participation in Holy Communion.  In part, that was to remind us that this meal is a foretaste of another meal. In The Great Thanksgiving which begins our Holy Communion, we look forward to a great banquet feast in God’s kingdom. Yet every time we share in Holy Communion together we sample a taste of that feast, dragging God’s future into our present.

Is there a heaven?  Yes!  Is it the imaginary paradise we have always heard about?  Probably not.  It is a place of justice, deep peace, great joy and endlessly perfect love.  It is a place where we will live into what we love most in this life.  It is the already dawning moment when we clearly realize God’s presence in this broken world.  It is the place where we
do experience rest in Christ. It is not something we have to wait for–it is something we can begin to participate in, something we can begin to partner with God to create, right here and right now, and something that will have its full fruition in the fullness of God’s time.

Spirit Signs

Pentecost, Year A ~ Acts 2:1-21

Kenwood UMC ~ June 12, 2011

Our family just added to our May birthday extravaganza this year.  My husband and I have birthdays two days apart in May, and this year our first nephew was born two days later.  We
understand that this means that our birthdays now pale in significance—and, really that’s OK with us.  But it is important to acknowledge, at least in some small way, this anniversary of when life began.

That is what we are doing this morning in worship—celebrating the anniversary of when the life of the church began—the birthday of the church.  So if you feel the need to go have some birthday cake today—or even better, birthday cake ice cream—well, it’s entirely appropriate.

The story we have heard from Acts chapter 2 happens fifty days after the resurrection—just ten days after Jesus has ascended to heaven and told the believers to go and wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit.  There are many Jewish faithful in Jerusalem for the religious festival of the Feast of Weeks, which commemorates the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai in the Old Testament.

This means two things: there are lots of witnesses to this dramatic first outpouring of the Spirit, and it is connected to God’s previous revelation in the Law given at Sinai, which was
also to form and shape the people.

The Holy Spirit is what forms and shapes us, giving us life as the church.  It is the living, active presence of God in our midst, reshaping us, drawing us deeper into relationship, surprising us with new life.  It is given to all individuals, and it is given to the entire community.  This morning, we want to take some time to think about the signs of the Holy Spirit.  How did we know it was present at Pentecost?  How do we know it is present today?  And where do we see the signs of the Spirit in our community?

We begin with how the Holy Spirit was recognized at Pentecost. And to think about that, let’s reread the first few verses of Acts 2. We need to remember that the believers were expecting something—Jesus had told them that God would be sending an Advocate, the Holy Spirit.  But they didn’t quite know what to expect, or how they would know when God sent it.  As I read this, I’d like to invite you to listen for three ways that the Holy Spirit’s presence was made known:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in
other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

So what did you hear about how the believers knew that the Holy Sprit was there?

So, we have three ways that the Holy Spirit was made known: wind, tongues of fire, and speaking in different languages.  Wind and fire the early believers had certainly heard of before—they were common symbols for God in the Hebrew scriptures.  But speaking in different languages may have perplexed them a bit—until the remembered the story of the
Tower of Babel, when God was frustrated with God’s people’s attempt to build a tower to reach Him, and responded by giving them different languages so they could not understand one another and communicate.  When the Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost, that language barrier is reversed—they are able to speak and understand different languages.

And as we think about how the signs of the Holy Spirit are present in the church today, I’d like to start there with the Spirit’s gift of giving believers the ability to speak different
languages and understand different languages.  That was so very important for building the Christian community.  With the Spirit’s ability, people of vastly different backgrounds and experiences were able to speak and listen with one another and begin to build a new community.

And that gift of letting people of different languages understand each other is still one way the Holy Spirit is at work in the church today.  Now, here at Kenwood we may not speak foreign languages like Spanish or Korean.  But we do have several different languages in the congregation—languages of different generations.  Depending on when you were born, for example, you have different cultural events that define you—World Wards 1 and 2 for the oldest generation.  Vietnam and the 60’s for the Boomers.  The Columbia explosion
and the Persian Gulf War for the Gen Xers, and for Generation Y the events of September 11.  Those four generations are all present here at Kenwood, and they all have very different perspectives on the world because of the times that have shaped them.  They speak different languages.

And that means that when it comes to things like what those generations value in worship, how they like to learn, and even how they think we should dress when we come to church—well, we speak different languages.  We do not agree.  And it is only the power of the Holy Spirit allowing us to listen to and appreciate one another’s different languages that lets us be a Christian community together.  We need the Holy Spirit to help us listen to the different languages of our stories, the different things we value, the different ways we experience our relationships with God.

So the Holy Spirit is present with us today, just like it was at the first Pentecost, helping us to understand one another.  Another way they knew the Holy Spirit was present was through the wind, the wind which blew through the place where they were gathered.  How do we talk about and experience the wind of the Holy Spirit in our community today?  Well, let’s think about what wind does.  It moves things.  Sometimes gently, sometimes quickly with great gusts.  Wind takes things and changes them.  And that is precisely what the Holy Spirit does for us today.  It helps us to change and adapt to new ways of being God’s people.  The Holy Spirit keeps us from being stuck in meaningless patterns.  It prevents us from staying mired in the way we’ve always done things.  It brings new ways of doing and being into our midst.

Now sometimes the Holy Spirit’s winds of change are like a gentle breeze that we find it easy to move with.  At other times though, the winds of change can feel violent and painful for us.  We feel like old ways are slipping away and we do not always understand what God is doing.  The new ways feel uncomfortable and distant.  Kenwood, and indeed the Christian church as a whole, is experiencing that right now.  One of the ways we have seen that struggle recently is in the ways we have been working the last several years to change the way children, youth and adults participate in Christian education.  Many of the traditional models for Christian education that some of us grew up with—Sunday School, Bible Studies, and things like that—do not speak the language of younger generations.  And so we have to change our methods of Christian education to speak those languages.  And it can be very difficult and very painful.  Change usually is.  But I believe that we must change if we are to continue to grow as a people of grace.  I believe that is the way the Holy Spirit has always lead us, and leads us now—even when it is painful.

But the third element of the Holy Spirit that was present at Pentecost helps us when we feel like the winds are blowing too hard.  That is the visual element, the tongues of fire.

As surprising as those flames were at the first Pentecost, they have become comforting to us over the years.  The candles that we light on the altar are now a symbol of God’s presence, a source of comfort and the familiar for us.  They remind us that although we speak different languages and practice our faith differently than people did on the Day of Pentecost, or even on the day that candles were first lit for worship in this sanctuary, God remains with us.  The Holy Spirit’s presence never wavers.  It may blow us around a bit, it may challenge us to listen to one another, but as Jesus promised, it is always with us, helping us in our journey to be more faithful.

And that brings us to the journey—our journey—of being more faithful.  As I conclude today, I want to invite you to think about some of the ways you see the Holy Spirit present in our midst.  Where have you seen God working, helping people minister and serve faithfully, helping us listen to one another, helping us to change in order to be God’s people in this time and place?

As you think about these things, you will see that in your bulletin is a printed response called Celebrating the Holy Spirit.  As I lead us though this response, with you responding as the people, you will see visual images of the Holy Spirit being brought forward to the altar.  I invite you to reflect on these images and the words we are saying in light of God’s Word for us today.  And then you will be invited to name the gifts we have found among us.  When that time comes I will invite you to answer my questions out loud—where do you, today, see the Holy Spirit at work in the life of this church.