Really, 11 wins doesn't get a team into the playoffs in a league where 37.5% of the teams make the playoffs? That's ridiculous. If I were a Patriots fan, I'd be pretty sore about this. Since I hate the Patsies, and think this is the football gods exacting revenge for running up the score every week in 2007, I say to you: you shoulda won 12 games. 11-5 and sitting at home while 8-8 San Diego is the 3 seed. Really?
Really, there's 3 first-year head coaches in the playoffs? Sparano with the 'Fins, Harbaugh with the Ravens, and Smith with the Falcons? And this is no Mike Tomlin situation, getting handed a playoff-calibur team from the get-go. These 3 teams combined to win 10 games last year. 2 of these 3 started rookie QBs all season. These 3 teams combined for 33 wins this year. That's a combined 230% improvement! Really?
Really, 11-5 Atlanta and 12-4 Indy have to play on the road against 9-7 Arizona and 8-8 San Diego? If they're going to let 8-8 teams in over 11-5 teams, maybe they should give out seeds based on record rather than division winners. Here's the current seeding:
AFC
1. Titans (13-3)
2. Steelers (12-4)
3. Dolphins (11-5)
4. Chargers (8-8)
5. Colts (12-4)
6. Ravens (11-5)
NFC
1. Giants (12-4)
2. Panthers (12-4)
3. Vikings (10-6)
4. Cardinals (9-7)
5. Falcons (11-5)
6. Eagles (9-6-1)
Re-seeded, it'd look like this:
AFC
1. Titans (13-3)
2. Steelers (12-4)
3. Colts (12-4)
4. Ravens (11-5)
5. Dolphins (11-5)
6. Chargers (8-8)
NFC
1. Giants (12-4)
2. Panthers (12-4)
3. Falcons (11-5)
4. Vikings (10-6)
5. Eagles (9-6-1)
6. Cards (9-7)
On both sides, the first round matchups would be the same teams, except location would be flipped. Thus, the teams with better records would have actually earned a home playoff game with that record rather than being penalized for playing in a tough division. Right now, all 4 road teams in the first round are favored according to footballlocks.com. With a re-seeding due to record, these teams would all be playing the home game they earned. Also, since the worst seed to win plays the #1 seed, a re-seeding would probably help the #1 seeds.
Despite all this ridiculousness, it should be a very interesting 2008 NFL playoffs. If I get a chance before leaving for Raleigh tomorrow, I'll post my picks.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas!
As I sit in my office this Christmas Eve morning, I just want to burst out in song. I am about to lead my first Christmas Eve Service, and I approach this evening with a sense of wonder and excitement "like a kid at Christmas." I love my job. I love that I get to do this. Maybe I'm just too naive to know that I'm supposed to be "just waiting for this wretched busy season to end," as some pastors I know have said. But maybe, just maybe, Christmas is awesome -- I mean, really full of awe.
I've spent very little time recently actually blogging about our life, and that's partially because Lisa and I lead a mostly quiet, boring life. Last night, we talked about how we're glad that we're no longer the crazy, too-busy, stressed out beyond belief members of our family. Sure, we're busy, but we aren't too stressed. So we approach this holiday season with a sense of relaxation and anticipation, ready to fully soak in every moment of the next few weeks. We are glad to share this time with our congregation, with the people of West Newton, with both our families, and with friends we don't see very often.
However, our thoughts have drifted in recent days to those we won't see this Christmas. We think of Wayne and Fern Albertson in quiet Ada, OH. We think of all the pastors we know who are facing transitions at the first of the year. We think of all those who sent us Christmas cards, cards that are posted on the doorway to our dining room so every day we can think of those who love us. We think of our friends in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Mississippi, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Texas who we won't see this Christmas. We think of family in Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, Arizona, and Switzerland that we won't see this Christmas. We think of those who will spend this Christmas alone, or without a roof over their head, or without a Christmas dinner to overeat. We pray that God might be with all of these people, and let them know that somewhere, in some sleepy little town on the banks of the Youghiogheny River, there are people who are praying for them.
Tonight, the Christmas Eve Service! Our church is all set up and ready to go. Lisa's parents, aunt and uncle, and grandmother will be here, and are staying for dessert afterwards. Tomorrow, we spend our first Christmas as a married couple alone in the comfort of our home. Then we will travel about 30 minutes to see my parents, sister, and her fiance for the afternoon and evening. Friday we'll be with family on my mother's side. Saturday Lisa will be bridesmaids' dress shopping with her sister, Karen, who is getting married in July. I will spend time with my friend Dan. Sunday and Monday, we will celebrate Christmas at our house with most of Lisa's family. On Tuesday, Lisa and I will leave after work for Raleigh, NC, to see her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew who will not be in PA for Christmas. We'll spend New Year's with them and return home on Jan. 3 so I can preach on Jan. 4. While in Raleigh, on New Year's Eve we're going to the NC State basketball game to see Ben McCauley, the senior starting center. Ben is a member of our church, and I've only met him once, but we thought since we're in Raleigh anyway, we might as well go and support him and his team. Being the sports fans that we are, we're pretty excited about it.
Well, that about does it. I better continue preparing for tonight. Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas! Joy to the World!
I've spent very little time recently actually blogging about our life, and that's partially because Lisa and I lead a mostly quiet, boring life. Last night, we talked about how we're glad that we're no longer the crazy, too-busy, stressed out beyond belief members of our family. Sure, we're busy, but we aren't too stressed. So we approach this holiday season with a sense of relaxation and anticipation, ready to fully soak in every moment of the next few weeks. We are glad to share this time with our congregation, with the people of West Newton, with both our families, and with friends we don't see very often.
However, our thoughts have drifted in recent days to those we won't see this Christmas. We think of Wayne and Fern Albertson in quiet Ada, OH. We think of all the pastors we know who are facing transitions at the first of the year. We think of all those who sent us Christmas cards, cards that are posted on the doorway to our dining room so every day we can think of those who love us. We think of our friends in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Mississippi, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Texas who we won't see this Christmas. We think of family in Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, Arizona, and Switzerland that we won't see this Christmas. We think of those who will spend this Christmas alone, or without a roof over their head, or without a Christmas dinner to overeat. We pray that God might be with all of these people, and let them know that somewhere, in some sleepy little town on the banks of the Youghiogheny River, there are people who are praying for them.
Tonight, the Christmas Eve Service! Our church is all set up and ready to go. Lisa's parents, aunt and uncle, and grandmother will be here, and are staying for dessert afterwards. Tomorrow, we spend our first Christmas as a married couple alone in the comfort of our home. Then we will travel about 30 minutes to see my parents, sister, and her fiance for the afternoon and evening. Friday we'll be with family on my mother's side. Saturday Lisa will be bridesmaids' dress shopping with her sister, Karen, who is getting married in July. I will spend time with my friend Dan. Sunday and Monday, we will celebrate Christmas at our house with most of Lisa's family. On Tuesday, Lisa and I will leave after work for Raleigh, NC, to see her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew who will not be in PA for Christmas. We'll spend New Year's with them and return home on Jan. 3 so I can preach on Jan. 4. While in Raleigh, on New Year's Eve we're going to the NC State basketball game to see Ben McCauley, the senior starting center. Ben is a member of our church, and I've only met him once, but we thought since we're in Raleigh anyway, we might as well go and support him and his team. Being the sports fans that we are, we're pretty excited about it.
Well, that about does it. I better continue preparing for tonight. Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas! Joy to the World!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Place For Smiles
This is my favorite Christmas commercial of all time. Lisa and I love watching it online every year. Whether or not you're from Pittsburgh, you'll surely enjoy this!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
BELIEVE in Texting
The United Methodist Church in Western PA has started a new service this Christmas season. They have an advertising campaign involving huge billboards that say "BELIEVE" in giant letters. The full message of the billboard says "text BELIEVE to 44636." When you text it, the following message appears:
"Hope is reason 2 believe.It lives in each of us.Share this xmas w/ people of PGH United Methodist Church.Reply ZIP for church or later visit UnitedMethodist.org"
When you reply with your zip code, you receive a text with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of a couple of the closest UM churches to that zip code. It's not the most accurate enterprise -- when I used the zip code my church is located in, it didn't come up with West Newton UMC. It gave me Herminie UMC in Herminie, and Greenock UMC in McKeesport. There are at least 3 or 4 churches closer to 15089 than Herminie.
I'm disappointed in the accuracy of the system, but it's a pretty neat idea. Who knows if it'll bring more people to church this Christmas -- I hope so. But whether or not it reaches anyone, at least we're giving it a shot. As Ricky Bobby would say, "Oh no, he didn't live, but it's just cool we're trying stuff like that."
"Hope is reason 2 believe.It lives in each of us.Share this xmas w/ people of PGH United Methodist Church.Reply ZIP for church or later visit UnitedMethodist.org"
When you reply with your zip code, you receive a text with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of a couple of the closest UM churches to that zip code. It's not the most accurate enterprise -- when I used the zip code my church is located in, it didn't come up with West Newton UMC. It gave me Herminie UMC in Herminie, and Greenock UMC in McKeesport. There are at least 3 or 4 churches closer to 15089 than Herminie.
I'm disappointed in the accuracy of the system, but it's a pretty neat idea. Who knows if it'll bring more people to church this Christmas -- I hope so. But whether or not it reaches anyone, at least we're giving it a shot. As Ricky Bobby would say, "Oh no, he didn't live, but it's just cool we're trying stuff like that."
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
When the Cat's Away...
...the mice will play. That's how the saying goes, anyway. And when the wife's away, the husband will eat unhealthily. That's my saying.
Since we married, Lisa has been very good about insisting we eat healthy. You know, a bowl of rabbit food with every meal, vegetables without butter on them, eating fruit instead of candy for snacks, etc. But tonight, she's out Christmas shopping for yours truly. Which means I got an early Christmas gift -- dinner on my own.
At first, I was going to be moderately responsible. She doesn't like Chinese food, and it's been forever since I've had good Chinese (there's NO good Chinese food in the South!). It was the perfect chance to get what I like without subjecting her to eating something she doesn't like. But the closest Chinese restaurant is more than 15 minutes away, and I didn't feel like driving in the snow to go get it.
So, on to Dinner Plan B. I went to the store, grabbed the necessary ingredients, and made the following sandwich:
1/4 lb. patty ground beef
1/4 lb. patty hot sausage
2 eggs over easy - placed in between the patties
2 slices American cheese
All on a sesame seed hoagie roll.
Pasta shells in an alfredo sauce on the side.
Now that, my friends, is a meal.
Since we married, Lisa has been very good about insisting we eat healthy. You know, a bowl of rabbit food with every meal, vegetables without butter on them, eating fruit instead of candy for snacks, etc. But tonight, she's out Christmas shopping for yours truly. Which means I got an early Christmas gift -- dinner on my own.
At first, I was going to be moderately responsible. She doesn't like Chinese food, and it's been forever since I've had good Chinese (there's NO good Chinese food in the South!). It was the perfect chance to get what I like without subjecting her to eating something she doesn't like. But the closest Chinese restaurant is more than 15 minutes away, and I didn't feel like driving in the snow to go get it.
So, on to Dinner Plan B. I went to the store, grabbed the necessary ingredients, and made the following sandwich:
1/4 lb. patty ground beef
1/4 lb. patty hot sausage
2 eggs over easy - placed in between the patties
2 slices American cheese
All on a sesame seed hoagie roll.
Pasta shells in an alfredo sauce on the side.
Now that, my friends, is a meal.
Monday, December 15, 2008
The Three R's of Christmas
Sermon for Sunday, December 14, Third Sunday in Advent. Scripture: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11.
Here we are, just eleven days from Christmas. Are you starting to get excited? Are you beginning to feel the joy of this season? Are you into the Christmas spirit yet? I am. One might even say I’m feeling so joyous that I’m feeling jubilant. Oh, the holiday season is such a great time of jubilee.
The prophet Isaiah speaks in this morning’s text of jubilee. He speaks of “the year of the Lord’s favor” in verse 2. This is another way of talking about what the Israelites commonly knew of as the year of jubilee. And if you’ve been reading your Leviticus lately, and judging by all the mixed fibers I see you wearing, you haven’t, then you already know all about the year of jubilee. The year of jubilee occurs once every 50 years, and it encompasses three things. First, any property – land, specifically – is returned to its original owner in the year of jubilee. When you “bought” a field, for instance, in that day, you would essentially be leasing it. You’d pay a price based on how many years were left until the year of jubilee, when you’d have to return it to the original owner.
The second thing that occurs in the year of jubilee is that slaves and servants are freed. Of course, there were stipulations, but generally slaves were free for a year, because in the year of jubilee you were not to reap or sow. You were only to live off what grew naturally without cultivation. So there is no need for slaves when you’re not working in the field, and thus the year of jubilee dictates that you free slaves and servants.
And the third and final major celebration of the year of jubilee is that slaves and servants would return to their clan of origin. So we have three things going on, things which I call the three “R’s” of jubilee. First, we have RESTORATION: Everything is returned to the original owner. Second, we have RELEASE FROM OPPRESSION: Slaves and servants are freed. And third, we have RECONCILIATION: Slaves and servants return to be reconciled with their clan.
“That’s great, pastor,” you might be saying, “but what does the year of jubilee have to do with us? We don’t practice this anymore.” And I guess you’re right. We don’t have a designated period of time where we restore, reconcile, and release captives from oppression. We don’t have a designated season in which we deliberately act more graciously by giving gifts, by helping others get back on their feet, or by setting aside differences to come together in peace and reconciliation in the spirit of that season.
Or do we? Is not the Christmas season our modern-day version of the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of jubilee? Isn’t this the time of year where we are more joyful, more jubilant, more kind? Isn’t this the time of year when our general mood as Christians is a celebratory mood? Around Christmas, we do tend to be a little nicer. Tis the season to be jolly. It’s the season where charity and love prevail.
Every year around this time, there are news reports of giant wads of cash, huge checks, or even diamond engagement rings being dropped into salvation army buckets outside of stores. This season inspires people to give a little more, some motivated by getting another tax write-off, but most motivated by the cheeriness and joy of the season and the desire to give joy to others at this time. There is the Toys for Tots drive, Operation Christmas Child, and other such projects to distribute gifts to impoverished children. Charities make their big push this time of year, knowing they’ll find people to be a little bit more willing to give in the Christmas season, the season to be jolly. In a sense, it is a way of providing liberty to captives, to release people from oppression. It’s a way in which we finally spread our wealth after 11 months of being greedy, when we help others attain a freedom from their troubles, even if just for a moment. It is a form of RELEASE FROM OPPRESSION in the time of jubilee.
This season is a time when families gather together to celebrate. Many of you will either visit family or have family visiting you. And often, the gathering of families reminds us of all the imperfections or tensions or even broken relationships we have in the midst of our family. Maybe Aunt Sara refuses to spend time with the family unless it’s Christmas. Or perhaps Frank’s parents haven’t spoken to him since the Christmas 3 years ago when he announced to everyone that he was gay, and this Christmas they’re finally reconciling with him. Or maybe two sisters don’t have a very close relationship, but at least they see each other once a year, at their mother’s house, every Christmas. This holiday season is filled with times of RECONCILIATION.
And finally, we act as land-owners, agreeing to give away things we bought. We give rather than take. Like returning land to its original owner, gift giving has a way of selflessness about it. It has a way of reminding us how blessed we are, and that we are to share that abundance with loved ones as well as strangers. Christmas then becomes a time of RESTORATION.
For about a month every year, the season of Christmas transforms our world through acts of restoration, reconciliation, and release from oppression. And it’s no coincidence that this transformation occurs as a result of the original reason for the season – the transformation of the world through the birth of Jesus Christ. God entered into our world with the birth of Christ. Through the ministry of Jesus Christ, God began to transform our world through restoration, reconciliation, and release from oppression. The United Methodist Church has recently adopted a mission statement that is, “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” We are called to participate in God’s transformation of the world. Simply put, we are called to are to participate in the very transformation that we celebrate in Advent and on Christmas. When we come to church on Christmas Eve, we will celebrate the transformation of the world through the coming of the Christ child. But will we be merely spectators of this transformation, or will we be actors in this transformation? Are we helping to transform the world in this season by taking part in restoration? Are we helping to transform the world in this season by taking part in reconciliation? Are we helping to transform the world in this season by taking part in releasing from oppression?
And are we allowing ourselves to be recipients of God’s transforming work this season of jubilee? Are we allowing the proclamation of the prophet Isaiah and the proclamation of John the Baptist to take hold of us and mold us into the people that God wants us to be? Are we letting the joy of the birth of Christ move us to do things and say things we might otherwise be afraid to do or say? Are we letting God’s entrance into humanity transform us by restoring our souls, by reconciling our relationship with God, and by releasing us from being captive to sin? Are we letting the Christ child transform our lives?
I have two brothers-in-law that are huge Philadelphia Phillies fans. Needless to say, they were both thrilled when the Phillies won the World Series this year. They’d been fans since childhood, spending countless years investing time, energy, and money into their favorite baseball team. Sometimes it felt useless to them, like when the Phillies finished with a losing record 12 out of 13 years. But when the Phillies finally won the championship this October, they celebrated. They jumped around their living rooms. They bought championship t-shirts or commemorative magazines to celebrate the occasion. It was a time of jubilee for them. And it was nice to see them happy. It made me think that some day, my hopeless love for the Pittsburgh Pirates will transform into a time of celebration, a time of jubilee.
But you know, I’m not a Phillies fan. Never have been. Because of my brothers-in-law, I pulled for them during the playoffs. But when they won, I didn’t buy merchandise. I didn’t jump around my living room or scream at the top of my lungs. I didn’t really feel like celebrating because I hadn’t been along for the ride. I hadn’t invested my time and energy into the journey, so I didn’t really enjoy the parade at the end. And if I had acted like them, they’d probably look at me as a fraud. I’m not a fan, so why should I celebrate as if I am?
When it comes time for Christmas, how can we celebrate if we’re not part of the journey? How can we celebrate the transformation of the world if we don’t take part in the transformation? Sure, we can show up to the parade, maybe we can jump around our living room, but no matter how much we try, we won’t feel the same sense of excitement as those who have actually been part of the transformation from the beginning. We won’t be able to celebrate God’s transformation to the fullest unless we allow ourselves to become a part of it. How can we celebrate the transformation of the world through the coming of the Christ child unless we help transform the world, and unless we allow ourselves to be transformed into the people God wants us to be?
It’s not too late! There’s still a week and a half to get on board with God’s transforming work through the three R’s!
Invest in RESTORATION this season – remember how blessed you are and what others have given you in your life. Give to others, and allow God to restore your broken soul.
Invest in RECONCILIATION this season – mend broken relationships, smooth out rough and tense relationships – reach out in love to those who have hurt you, and reach out in love to those you have hurt. Allow God to reach out to you and reconcile your relationship with him.
Invest in RELEASING FROM OPPRESSION this season. Help those who are impoverished. Refuse to allow others to be taken advantage of. Speak out against injustice where you see it, and stand with justice when you meet it. Allow Christ to release you from the oppressive powers of sin.
Make Christmas more meaningful this year. Invest in God’s transforming work in the world, so that you can participate in that which you celebrate. Allow God’s investment in you to take hold as well, so that you may be transformed just as you help transform the world. I hope and pray that we all may find ways to restore, reconcile, and release from oppression in this season and always. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Here we are, just eleven days from Christmas. Are you starting to get excited? Are you beginning to feel the joy of this season? Are you into the Christmas spirit yet? I am. One might even say I’m feeling so joyous that I’m feeling jubilant. Oh, the holiday season is such a great time of jubilee.
The prophet Isaiah speaks in this morning’s text of jubilee. He speaks of “the year of the Lord’s favor” in verse 2. This is another way of talking about what the Israelites commonly knew of as the year of jubilee. And if you’ve been reading your Leviticus lately, and judging by all the mixed fibers I see you wearing, you haven’t, then you already know all about the year of jubilee. The year of jubilee occurs once every 50 years, and it encompasses three things. First, any property – land, specifically – is returned to its original owner in the year of jubilee. When you “bought” a field, for instance, in that day, you would essentially be leasing it. You’d pay a price based on how many years were left until the year of jubilee, when you’d have to return it to the original owner.
The second thing that occurs in the year of jubilee is that slaves and servants are freed. Of course, there were stipulations, but generally slaves were free for a year, because in the year of jubilee you were not to reap or sow. You were only to live off what grew naturally without cultivation. So there is no need for slaves when you’re not working in the field, and thus the year of jubilee dictates that you free slaves and servants.
And the third and final major celebration of the year of jubilee is that slaves and servants would return to their clan of origin. So we have three things going on, things which I call the three “R’s” of jubilee. First, we have RESTORATION: Everything is returned to the original owner. Second, we have RELEASE FROM OPPRESSION: Slaves and servants are freed. And third, we have RECONCILIATION: Slaves and servants return to be reconciled with their clan.
“That’s great, pastor,” you might be saying, “but what does the year of jubilee have to do with us? We don’t practice this anymore.” And I guess you’re right. We don’t have a designated period of time where we restore, reconcile, and release captives from oppression. We don’t have a designated season in which we deliberately act more graciously by giving gifts, by helping others get back on their feet, or by setting aside differences to come together in peace and reconciliation in the spirit of that season.
Or do we? Is not the Christmas season our modern-day version of the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of jubilee? Isn’t this the time of year where we are more joyful, more jubilant, more kind? Isn’t this the time of year when our general mood as Christians is a celebratory mood? Around Christmas, we do tend to be a little nicer. Tis the season to be jolly. It’s the season where charity and love prevail.
Every year around this time, there are news reports of giant wads of cash, huge checks, or even diamond engagement rings being dropped into salvation army buckets outside of stores. This season inspires people to give a little more, some motivated by getting another tax write-off, but most motivated by the cheeriness and joy of the season and the desire to give joy to others at this time. There is the Toys for Tots drive, Operation Christmas Child, and other such projects to distribute gifts to impoverished children. Charities make their big push this time of year, knowing they’ll find people to be a little bit more willing to give in the Christmas season, the season to be jolly. In a sense, it is a way of providing liberty to captives, to release people from oppression. It’s a way in which we finally spread our wealth after 11 months of being greedy, when we help others attain a freedom from their troubles, even if just for a moment. It is a form of RELEASE FROM OPPRESSION in the time of jubilee.
This season is a time when families gather together to celebrate. Many of you will either visit family or have family visiting you. And often, the gathering of families reminds us of all the imperfections or tensions or even broken relationships we have in the midst of our family. Maybe Aunt Sara refuses to spend time with the family unless it’s Christmas. Or perhaps Frank’s parents haven’t spoken to him since the Christmas 3 years ago when he announced to everyone that he was gay, and this Christmas they’re finally reconciling with him. Or maybe two sisters don’t have a very close relationship, but at least they see each other once a year, at their mother’s house, every Christmas. This holiday season is filled with times of RECONCILIATION.
And finally, we act as land-owners, agreeing to give away things we bought. We give rather than take. Like returning land to its original owner, gift giving has a way of selflessness about it. It has a way of reminding us how blessed we are, and that we are to share that abundance with loved ones as well as strangers. Christmas then becomes a time of RESTORATION.
For about a month every year, the season of Christmas transforms our world through acts of restoration, reconciliation, and release from oppression. And it’s no coincidence that this transformation occurs as a result of the original reason for the season – the transformation of the world through the birth of Jesus Christ. God entered into our world with the birth of Christ. Through the ministry of Jesus Christ, God began to transform our world through restoration, reconciliation, and release from oppression. The United Methodist Church has recently adopted a mission statement that is, “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” We are called to participate in God’s transformation of the world. Simply put, we are called to are to participate in the very transformation that we celebrate in Advent and on Christmas. When we come to church on Christmas Eve, we will celebrate the transformation of the world through the coming of the Christ child. But will we be merely spectators of this transformation, or will we be actors in this transformation? Are we helping to transform the world in this season by taking part in restoration? Are we helping to transform the world in this season by taking part in reconciliation? Are we helping to transform the world in this season by taking part in releasing from oppression?
And are we allowing ourselves to be recipients of God’s transforming work this season of jubilee? Are we allowing the proclamation of the prophet Isaiah and the proclamation of John the Baptist to take hold of us and mold us into the people that God wants us to be? Are we letting the joy of the birth of Christ move us to do things and say things we might otherwise be afraid to do or say? Are we letting God’s entrance into humanity transform us by restoring our souls, by reconciling our relationship with God, and by releasing us from being captive to sin? Are we letting the Christ child transform our lives?
I have two brothers-in-law that are huge Philadelphia Phillies fans. Needless to say, they were both thrilled when the Phillies won the World Series this year. They’d been fans since childhood, spending countless years investing time, energy, and money into their favorite baseball team. Sometimes it felt useless to them, like when the Phillies finished with a losing record 12 out of 13 years. But when the Phillies finally won the championship this October, they celebrated. They jumped around their living rooms. They bought championship t-shirts or commemorative magazines to celebrate the occasion. It was a time of jubilee for them. And it was nice to see them happy. It made me think that some day, my hopeless love for the Pittsburgh Pirates will transform into a time of celebration, a time of jubilee.
But you know, I’m not a Phillies fan. Never have been. Because of my brothers-in-law, I pulled for them during the playoffs. But when they won, I didn’t buy merchandise. I didn’t jump around my living room or scream at the top of my lungs. I didn’t really feel like celebrating because I hadn’t been along for the ride. I hadn’t invested my time and energy into the journey, so I didn’t really enjoy the parade at the end. And if I had acted like them, they’d probably look at me as a fraud. I’m not a fan, so why should I celebrate as if I am?
When it comes time for Christmas, how can we celebrate if we’re not part of the journey? How can we celebrate the transformation of the world if we don’t take part in the transformation? Sure, we can show up to the parade, maybe we can jump around our living room, but no matter how much we try, we won’t feel the same sense of excitement as those who have actually been part of the transformation from the beginning. We won’t be able to celebrate God’s transformation to the fullest unless we allow ourselves to become a part of it. How can we celebrate the transformation of the world through the coming of the Christ child unless we help transform the world, and unless we allow ourselves to be transformed into the people God wants us to be?
It’s not too late! There’s still a week and a half to get on board with God’s transforming work through the three R’s!
Invest in RESTORATION this season – remember how blessed you are and what others have given you in your life. Give to others, and allow God to restore your broken soul.
Invest in RECONCILIATION this season – mend broken relationships, smooth out rough and tense relationships – reach out in love to those who have hurt you, and reach out in love to those you have hurt. Allow God to reach out to you and reconcile your relationship with him.
Invest in RELEASING FROM OPPRESSION this season. Help those who are impoverished. Refuse to allow others to be taken advantage of. Speak out against injustice where you see it, and stand with justice when you meet it. Allow Christ to release you from the oppressive powers of sin.
Make Christmas more meaningful this year. Invest in God’s transforming work in the world, so that you can participate in that which you celebrate. Allow God’s investment in you to take hold as well, so that you may be transformed just as you help transform the world. I hope and pray that we all may find ways to restore, reconcile, and release from oppression in this season and always. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Conferencing
I stumbled upon a thoughtful article on ESPN.com this morning. The author writes about the perception of the Big Ten as an outdated conference in college football -- a conference that will never compete with the gunslinging Big 12 or speedy SEC unless it modernizes its game. This bowl season is a chance for the Big Ten to show the world it can still play football, with Penn State facing USC, Ohio State facing Texas, and even Michigan State facing Georgia. All are underdogs, but all have a realistic shot of winning.
As a long time aficionado of the Big Ten, it was a long three years living in Atlanta, where the perception was that the SEC was the only conference worth paying attention to. I often touted the Big Ten as a mass producer of linemen and linebackers for the NFL, but Ohio State's back-to-back championship game losses to SEC teams really hurt the Big Ten's reputation.
I'm willing to admit that the Big Ten and Pac-10 are not as competitive top-to-bottom as the SEC and Big 12 this year. But it's frustrating that the entire BCS system is configured to reward teams for the success of the other teams in their conference. For instance, why was USC not even considered for the national championship game? Because the Pac-10 has a reputation of being weak. Nevermind that USC voluntarily played the #5 team in the country in Ohio State, and steamrolled them like it was nobody's business. And Ohio State is a good team.
Hopefully, the Big Ten will get some big bowl wins this year and show people they can still hang with the big dogs. See, this is why I hate Ohio State: they ruin everything, including the Big Ten's reputation. Here's to the Big Ten and its physical, defensive, plodding style of play, and here's to a hopefully successful bowl season for those big, corn-fed, Midwestern teams.
As a long time aficionado of the Big Ten, it was a long three years living in Atlanta, where the perception was that the SEC was the only conference worth paying attention to. I often touted the Big Ten as a mass producer of linemen and linebackers for the NFL, but Ohio State's back-to-back championship game losses to SEC teams really hurt the Big Ten's reputation.
I'm willing to admit that the Big Ten and Pac-10 are not as competitive top-to-bottom as the SEC and Big 12 this year. But it's frustrating that the entire BCS system is configured to reward teams for the success of the other teams in their conference. For instance, why was USC not even considered for the national championship game? Because the Pac-10 has a reputation of being weak. Nevermind that USC voluntarily played the #5 team in the country in Ohio State, and steamrolled them like it was nobody's business. And Ohio State is a good team.
Hopefully, the Big Ten will get some big bowl wins this year and show people they can still hang with the big dogs. See, this is why I hate Ohio State: they ruin everything, including the Big Ten's reputation. Here's to the Big Ten and its physical, defensive, plodding style of play, and here's to a hopefully successful bowl season for those big, corn-fed, Midwestern teams.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Farewell to the Mad Dog
Greg Maddux retired yesterday. Although I often despised him when he played for the Braves, I always respected him as a baseball player. As he got older and lost some pitch speed, he was still able to pitch masterfully enough to win 353 games. He studied hitters like no other pitcher of his day, and he relied not just on talent but on perseverance, impeccable control, and intelligence.
Here is a wonderful article written earlier this year about Maddux. The guy is simply amazing; I'll miss watching him pitch. Five years from now, he'll enter the Hall of Fame, and you'll probably find me in Cooperstown for the occasion. We'll miss you, Mad Dog.
Here is a wonderful article written earlier this year about Maddux. The guy is simply amazing; I'll miss watching him pitch. Five years from now, he'll enter the Hall of Fame, and you'll probably find me in Cooperstown for the occasion. We'll miss you, Mad Dog.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Hear the Good News
Second Sunday in Advent, Dec. 7, 2008; Mark 1:1-8.
Last week, we put ourselves into the shoes of the doorkeeper, the servant waiting for the return of the master. We thought about what it’s like to wait for an arrival, to wait for Christ to arrive in our lives. We thought about what we’d be doing when our master, Jesus Christ, would return home.
This week, we jump back to the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s Gospel, Mark’s good news, was almost surely the earliest of the four gospels. Thus, Mark was the first to write down the story of the good news of Jesus Christ. So if we read the first words of the Gospel of Mark, as we did this morning, then we are reading the first published words about Jesus Christ. And it begins with a proclamation, an announcement, that the waiting is almost over.
Mark knows the Jews are waiting for a Messiah to come. Old Testament texts such as Isaiah and Malachi promise that when the Messiah comes, the way will be prepared. Mark quotes these ancient texts, saying to the Jews, “I know you are waiting. I know you expect the way to be prepared. Well, the waiting is almost over, so let us prepare the way of the Lord. Let’s get ready for the Messiah to come.”
So along comes John the Baptizer, more commonly known as John the Baptist. Well, he appeared in the wilderness – showing up out of nowhere. His whereabouts before the wilderness are not known to Mark’s readers – all they know is some guy named John is preaching out in the middle of nowhere. In a place where no one lives. He’s in West Texas, or Siberia, or the deepest corner of the Australian Outback, you might say. And he’s preaching – to no one, presumably, because he’s in the wilderness. As if that isn’t strange enough, John the Baptizer is wearing horribly outdated clothes – camel’s hair and a leather belt – and he’s eating stuff found on the banks of the Jordan – locusts and honey. One might say he’s wearing M.C. Hammer parachute pants while eating pop rocks and drinking Tab cola.
So, if an out-of-style preacher proclaims the good news in a forest, and no one’s there to hear it, does anyone get saved? That’s the question posed to us in this morning’s text. If John the Baptist is hanging out alone in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, does anyone repent and enter into baptismal waters?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is that not only do a handful of people travel out into the wilderness to hear this crazy secluded preacher, but all of the Judean countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him, and it seems all were baptized in forgiveness of their sins. I often wonder how anyone got word of John the Baptizer’s preaching, but somehow they all did. And he got everyone from the urban and rural populations.
Yet, we see that John the Baptizer is not the main event. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” he says. Thanks to the author, the words from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” are fresh in our memory as we read John’s proclamation. With an audience of Jews, urban and rural, John the Baptizer preaches the good news – The Messiah you’re all waiting for is coming. The Lord is near, so prepare the way of the Lord. Christ is coming!
We have to remember that the Jewish community was completely in the dark about this. Unlike us, they did not know that Jesus Christ was on his way, that the Messiah was about to enter their lives. Unlike us, they do not have months and months of proclamation that Christmas is “right around the corner.”
There’s a weekly column I like to read on ESPN.com called “Tuesday Morning Quarterback. The author, Gregg Easterbrook, monitors the “Christmas Creep” with the help of his readers. He has a weekly part of his column called the “Christmas Creep Watch,” where he offers examples of how Christmas is slowly creeping its way earlier and earlier into the calendar year. This year, as early as September 8, he was already writing about Christmas displays going up in stores in August! Is Christmas really “just around the corner” when it’s 1/3 of a year away?
You see, with our society’s Christmas Creep, the church’s Christmas preparation becomes old news by the time we get to it. First Sunday in Advent, Christmas is coming? Puh-leeze. We’ve been bombarded with Christmas displays, Christmas commercials, Christmas catalog mailings, and Christmas party invitations for months now! So when we come to church and hear that Christmas is coming, we’re hardly excited. We’ve heard it all before, and now we’re just waiting for it to be over because all it means is more things on our to-do list anyway. For months now, the stores have prepared the way of the shopper. The way of the shopper is prepared.
From all this, we know all too well that Christmas is coming. But sometimes what gets lost in this season is the proclamation that Christ is coming. As Christians, we do usually have a sense that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” as we might say. We may understand in a way that because Christmas is coming, Christ’s arrival is coming. But what’s unfortunate is that Christ has already come in Christmases past. Christ will come in Christmases future. And Christ is here in this Christmas season. So we have a hard time getting that excited about it when it has become a yearly event, both sacred and secular. While our culture loves to prepare the way of the shopper, we have a hard time preparing the way of the Lord.
The Jews who went to John the Baptizer in the wilderness were excited. They heard from the wilderness preacher that the Messiah is coming! Hear the good news! The promise will be fulfilled! The one you’ve been waiting for is about to show up! You’ve been waiting all your life for this moment, and now it’s almost here!
Jesus Christ is coming! Jesus Christ is on his way! He is about to enter our lives, cleanse us through baptism by the Holy Spirit, and change us forever! The arrival of the Messiah is a life-changing event! What better time to celebrate our own baptism by the Holy Spirit than Christmas? What better time to celebrate the life-changing message of Jesus Christ than Christmas? This season in the church year is a time when we are to celebrate that moment when the Messiah did appear – the moment when God entered into our humanity, broke into our lives through the miracle of the incarnation! It is a time that we remember how Christ has changed our lives by entering in as our Savior! It is a time to remember what it feels like to wait for the Messiah, just as the Jews did in the Gospel of Mark. It is a time to remember what it felt like when our waiting came to an end, when we finally felt the presence of the Holy Spirit cleansing us and making us new creations in Christ. It is a time to look back on the history of the Jewish people and the history of the Christian people. It is a time to look back on our own history. But it is also a time to look forward for Christ’s second coming. It’s also a time to look forward to Christ’s unexpected arrivals into our lives as we go about our daily business. And it’s a time to look forward to the arrival of Christ, once again, this Christmas. It is time to prepare the way of the Lord!
How might we prepare for Christ’s arrival this Christmas? How might we prepare the way of the Lord, the one who is coming that is much greater than any earthly thing? How might we allow ourselves to be cleansed by the Holy Spirit once again? How might we get excited about Christ’s arrival like the expectant Jews, treating Christ’s coming as the moment we’ve been waiting for all our lives?
And how might we, like John the Baptizer, use the arrival of Christ as an opportunity to proclaim the good news? How might we shout from the mountaintops that Jesus Christ is coming, that one greater than us is on the way? How might we get others excited about the arrival of Jesus Christ? How might we, like John the Baptizer, speak and act prophetically so that others may yearn to be cleansed by the baptismal waters for the first time? How can we move through the world as proclaimers of the good news of Jesus Christ?
Each year, more and more people are coming to understand the season of Lent as a time of increased meditation as we approach Holy Week and the culmination of the season at Easter. But few of us view Advent as a time of increased meditation and reflection. But Advent does call us to meditate. It calls us to prepare for the coming of the Christ child. It calls us to meditate on what that means for us. So maybe we can prepare the way of the Lord this Advent by meditating on the birth narratives more often. Why don’t we use this season as a time to get back into the habit of prayer? Why can’t we gather our families around and light Advent wreaths in our homes, teaching our children how to prepare the way of the Lord? This month, Lisa and I will be writing Christmas cards to send to family and friends. When we do this, we’ll be taking time out of our lives to sit down and think about those we love. We’ll take time out and meditate on relationships that we have with others, most of them living far away from here. And we’ll think a little more about how blessed we are to have these people in our lives. We are preparing the way of Christmas.
What if we treated Christ the same way? What if we prepared the way of Christ the way we prepare the way of Christmas? What if we set aside time this season to sit down and think of our relationship with Jesus Christ? What if we allowed ourselves to reflect on the ways that Christ has blessed us in our lives? What if we prepared the way of the Lord this Christmas?
Let us all use the arrival of Christmas as an opportunity to celebrate the arrival of Christ. And let us also use the arrival of Christmas as an opportunity to share the good news with those who haven’t heard it yet. Let us open our ears to the good news once again, and allow it to overtake us so much so that others see and hear the good news in us. I hope and pray that you may find time this season to meditate on what the coming of the Christ child means to you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Last week, we put ourselves into the shoes of the doorkeeper, the servant waiting for the return of the master. We thought about what it’s like to wait for an arrival, to wait for Christ to arrive in our lives. We thought about what we’d be doing when our master, Jesus Christ, would return home.
This week, we jump back to the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s Gospel, Mark’s good news, was almost surely the earliest of the four gospels. Thus, Mark was the first to write down the story of the good news of Jesus Christ. So if we read the first words of the Gospel of Mark, as we did this morning, then we are reading the first published words about Jesus Christ. And it begins with a proclamation, an announcement, that the waiting is almost over.
Mark knows the Jews are waiting for a Messiah to come. Old Testament texts such as Isaiah and Malachi promise that when the Messiah comes, the way will be prepared. Mark quotes these ancient texts, saying to the Jews, “I know you are waiting. I know you expect the way to be prepared. Well, the waiting is almost over, so let us prepare the way of the Lord. Let’s get ready for the Messiah to come.”
So along comes John the Baptizer, more commonly known as John the Baptist. Well, he appeared in the wilderness – showing up out of nowhere. His whereabouts before the wilderness are not known to Mark’s readers – all they know is some guy named John is preaching out in the middle of nowhere. In a place where no one lives. He’s in West Texas, or Siberia, or the deepest corner of the Australian Outback, you might say. And he’s preaching – to no one, presumably, because he’s in the wilderness. As if that isn’t strange enough, John the Baptizer is wearing horribly outdated clothes – camel’s hair and a leather belt – and he’s eating stuff found on the banks of the Jordan – locusts and honey. One might say he’s wearing M.C. Hammer parachute pants while eating pop rocks and drinking Tab cola.
So, if an out-of-style preacher proclaims the good news in a forest, and no one’s there to hear it, does anyone get saved? That’s the question posed to us in this morning’s text. If John the Baptist is hanging out alone in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, does anyone repent and enter into baptismal waters?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is that not only do a handful of people travel out into the wilderness to hear this crazy secluded preacher, but all of the Judean countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him, and it seems all were baptized in forgiveness of their sins. I often wonder how anyone got word of John the Baptizer’s preaching, but somehow they all did. And he got everyone from the urban and rural populations.
Yet, we see that John the Baptizer is not the main event. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” he says. Thanks to the author, the words from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” are fresh in our memory as we read John’s proclamation. With an audience of Jews, urban and rural, John the Baptizer preaches the good news – The Messiah you’re all waiting for is coming. The Lord is near, so prepare the way of the Lord. Christ is coming!
We have to remember that the Jewish community was completely in the dark about this. Unlike us, they did not know that Jesus Christ was on his way, that the Messiah was about to enter their lives. Unlike us, they do not have months and months of proclamation that Christmas is “right around the corner.”
There’s a weekly column I like to read on ESPN.com called “Tuesday Morning Quarterback. The author, Gregg Easterbrook, monitors the “Christmas Creep” with the help of his readers. He has a weekly part of his column called the “Christmas Creep Watch,” where he offers examples of how Christmas is slowly creeping its way earlier and earlier into the calendar year. This year, as early as September 8, he was already writing about Christmas displays going up in stores in August! Is Christmas really “just around the corner” when it’s 1/3 of a year away?
You see, with our society’s Christmas Creep, the church’s Christmas preparation becomes old news by the time we get to it. First Sunday in Advent, Christmas is coming? Puh-leeze. We’ve been bombarded with Christmas displays, Christmas commercials, Christmas catalog mailings, and Christmas party invitations for months now! So when we come to church and hear that Christmas is coming, we’re hardly excited. We’ve heard it all before, and now we’re just waiting for it to be over because all it means is more things on our to-do list anyway. For months now, the stores have prepared the way of the shopper. The way of the shopper is prepared.
From all this, we know all too well that Christmas is coming. But sometimes what gets lost in this season is the proclamation that Christ is coming. As Christians, we do usually have a sense that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” as we might say. We may understand in a way that because Christmas is coming, Christ’s arrival is coming. But what’s unfortunate is that Christ has already come in Christmases past. Christ will come in Christmases future. And Christ is here in this Christmas season. So we have a hard time getting that excited about it when it has become a yearly event, both sacred and secular. While our culture loves to prepare the way of the shopper, we have a hard time preparing the way of the Lord.
The Jews who went to John the Baptizer in the wilderness were excited. They heard from the wilderness preacher that the Messiah is coming! Hear the good news! The promise will be fulfilled! The one you’ve been waiting for is about to show up! You’ve been waiting all your life for this moment, and now it’s almost here!
Jesus Christ is coming! Jesus Christ is on his way! He is about to enter our lives, cleanse us through baptism by the Holy Spirit, and change us forever! The arrival of the Messiah is a life-changing event! What better time to celebrate our own baptism by the Holy Spirit than Christmas? What better time to celebrate the life-changing message of Jesus Christ than Christmas? This season in the church year is a time when we are to celebrate that moment when the Messiah did appear – the moment when God entered into our humanity, broke into our lives through the miracle of the incarnation! It is a time that we remember how Christ has changed our lives by entering in as our Savior! It is a time to remember what it feels like to wait for the Messiah, just as the Jews did in the Gospel of Mark. It is a time to remember what it felt like when our waiting came to an end, when we finally felt the presence of the Holy Spirit cleansing us and making us new creations in Christ. It is a time to look back on the history of the Jewish people and the history of the Christian people. It is a time to look back on our own history. But it is also a time to look forward for Christ’s second coming. It’s also a time to look forward to Christ’s unexpected arrivals into our lives as we go about our daily business. And it’s a time to look forward to the arrival of Christ, once again, this Christmas. It is time to prepare the way of the Lord!
How might we prepare for Christ’s arrival this Christmas? How might we prepare the way of the Lord, the one who is coming that is much greater than any earthly thing? How might we allow ourselves to be cleansed by the Holy Spirit once again? How might we get excited about Christ’s arrival like the expectant Jews, treating Christ’s coming as the moment we’ve been waiting for all our lives?
And how might we, like John the Baptizer, use the arrival of Christ as an opportunity to proclaim the good news? How might we shout from the mountaintops that Jesus Christ is coming, that one greater than us is on the way? How might we get others excited about the arrival of Jesus Christ? How might we, like John the Baptizer, speak and act prophetically so that others may yearn to be cleansed by the baptismal waters for the first time? How can we move through the world as proclaimers of the good news of Jesus Christ?
Each year, more and more people are coming to understand the season of Lent as a time of increased meditation as we approach Holy Week and the culmination of the season at Easter. But few of us view Advent as a time of increased meditation and reflection. But Advent does call us to meditate. It calls us to prepare for the coming of the Christ child. It calls us to meditate on what that means for us. So maybe we can prepare the way of the Lord this Advent by meditating on the birth narratives more often. Why don’t we use this season as a time to get back into the habit of prayer? Why can’t we gather our families around and light Advent wreaths in our homes, teaching our children how to prepare the way of the Lord? This month, Lisa and I will be writing Christmas cards to send to family and friends. When we do this, we’ll be taking time out of our lives to sit down and think about those we love. We’ll take time out and meditate on relationships that we have with others, most of them living far away from here. And we’ll think a little more about how blessed we are to have these people in our lives. We are preparing the way of Christmas.
What if we treated Christ the same way? What if we prepared the way of Christ the way we prepare the way of Christmas? What if we set aside time this season to sit down and think of our relationship with Jesus Christ? What if we allowed ourselves to reflect on the ways that Christ has blessed us in our lives? What if we prepared the way of the Lord this Christmas?
Let us all use the arrival of Christmas as an opportunity to celebrate the arrival of Christ. And let us also use the arrival of Christmas as an opportunity to share the good news with those who haven’t heard it yet. Let us open our ears to the good news once again, and allow it to overtake us so much so that others see and hear the good news in us. I hope and pray that you may find time this season to meditate on what the coming of the Christ child means to you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Advent Conspiracy
This is an interesting cause I discovered on a friend's blog. There's also a Facebook page about it. The video is put together well; if we had AV equipment here I just might run it in worship.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Welcome Home?
Sermon for Sunday, Nov. 30 -- the First Sunday in Advent. Scripture is Mark 13:24-37.
I remember coming home from college for the holidays. In particular, I remember that first Thanksgiving. My parents had dropped their baby boy off at Ohio Northern University on Labor Day weekend, and had only seen me once since then, for parents weekend. So this was my first trip back home since going away to college.
I hadn’t even made it to the door, and my mother was already out of the house hugging me. She had heard the car door slam and couldn’t wait to greet me. When I got in the door, my father was coming down the stairs. He was excited to see me as well. Dinner was ready, and they were so excited to hear my stories about how school was going, what friends I had made, how the trip home was. They also wanted to share their stories with me: They had gotten a new dishwasher. We were going to Grandma and Pap Pap’s on Thanksgiving Day. Our dog, Shadow, missed me so much that she wouldn’t come upstairs at night anymore, instead laying by the front door all night, every night – waiting for me to come home.
Do I even have to tell you how loved I felt that day? I knew my parents loved me, but sometimes I felt it more than usual. This was one of those times. But as the years passed, this happened less and less often when I came home from college, and then came home from seminary in Atlanta. I’d come home for Christmas break, and there’d be no one at the house. My dad would be at work and my mom would be shopping for gifts. Or, they’d be at the house, but my dad would be upstairs writing his Christmas Eve sermon and my mom would be in the basement wrapping gifts. Instead of them rushing to greet me, I had to find them to say hello. Sometimes, I’d be home for awhile before they even noticed.
Other times, I’d come home for a weekend for no particular reason, and I’d meet the same result. It seemed that as time went on, I was greeted less and less when I walked in the door, and it was less and less of an event that I had returned home. My visits were no longer as exciting as they used to be for my parents. And I didn’t get that same greeting of love that I used to get. I know they still loved me as much as they always did, it’s just that they now forgot to hit the pause button on their lives when I arrived. I no longer felt special. I no longer felt loved in the same way.
But you know, we all do that. It’s not my parents fault. Sometimes they just got so caught up in their lives and their to-do lists and their holiday preparation that they forgot to make my arrival something important in their lives. I wonder if this is why Jesus tells us the parable of keeping awake. And I wonder if this is the reason that this text is the assigned lectionary text for the First Sunday of Advent.
Of course, at this point in Mark Jesus is talking about his second coming, about his return. It is the last public teaching he gives before the passion account begins, before the story of his crucifixion begins. And I would assume the people who are hearing it don’t fully grasp what he’s talking about with this “coming again in glory” business, because he hasn’t died yet.
Well, Jesus likens his leaving and subsequent return to that of a master. A master leaves his estate for a long journey, one in which he himself doesn’t even know when he’ll return. He pulls together all his servants, says, “I’m leaving and I don’t know when I’ll be back. In fact, it might be awhile. But while I’m gone, keep doing your work. But while you’re working, keep watch on the horizon. Keep looking for me to come back. And always be ready for me when I come back.
The beauty of this being our lesson for the first Sunday in Advent is that it teaches us how to wait in the season of Advent. It teaches us that Jesus will return home – Jesus will re-enter our lives, as he does every year around this time. We’ll celebrate that arrival – that incarnation – on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but Christ comes into our lives throughout this season. When he does, he will be like the master, coming at an unannounced, unknown time even to him, and entering into our lives while we are busy working.
When the master does show up in our lives during this season, what kinds of work will we be doing? Will he come to our house, only to find that we’re out shopping for gifts? Will he find us too busy wrapping presents upstairs to even notice his arrival? Will we be so preoccupied with our baking that we won’t have time to sit down and hear his stories? Will we be busy working overtime so we can afford all those needless gifts? Will we demand he take his salty, snowy shoes off and push him out of the way as we frantically clean for all of our soon-to-arrive guests? Will we have our favorite Christmas movies turned up so loud that we can’t even hear him arrive? Will we be stuck up on the roof turning our household into an exact replica of the Griswolds’ home? Will we be having too much fun getting drunk on egg nog at our company Christmas party to be willing to say hello when he arrives? Will we be too busy or too embarrassed to show Christ how much we love him this year?
Or will it be different this year? Will Christ come to our house and be greeted at the door with a warm embrace? Will we have time to eat a home-cooked dinner with him and listen to his stories? Will we greet him with wagging tails, like a dog that has missed its master? Will we bound down the stairs like a kid at Christmas, desperately wanting to receive the most precious gift of all?
When Lisa and I first moved here, we didn’t sleep very well the first few weeks. The trains kept waking us up. We noticed every single one that came through town, day and night. It always burst into our lives as an unannounced interruption of whatever we were doing. But after awhile, we started getting used to it. Now, trains hardly ever wake us up. And we don’t often notice the sound of them during the day, either. The sound of the whistle doesn’t interrupt our life. After only a few short months, the trains no longer disrupt our lives. They have become so ordinary, so typical, that we’ve learned to tune it out.
Lillian Daniel, Senior Minister of First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn Illinois, says Christ has become like a train to us that we have learned to tune out. She says, “Like people who have lived by the train tracks for years, we no longer hear the sound of the train. After years in church, we get used to the noise in Advent, to the coming of Christ, so much so that we no longer notice it. Or if we do, it has ceased to jolt us awake and has become instead a low, dull rumble.”
Have we turned Advent into a low, dull rumble? Do we go through the motions, having the same Christmas events we’ve always had for no reason other than it’s tradition? Do we light the Advent wreath because it’s always been a part of Advent? Have we allowed the hope, the joy, the love, the peace of Christmas to become so commonplace that it doesn’t excite us any longer? I’m willing to bet those of you who have lived here all your lives never had trains jolting you awake as Lisa and I did. You’ve never lived in an environment without trains rumbling through. Now consider how that translates to our Advent and Christmas traditions. Consider someone who is experiencing Christ in Christmas for the first time, or maybe the first time in several years. They will surely take notice of Christ’s arrival in the midst of all this preparation, the midst of all our activities and events. And that’s something we might be able to learn from them – maybe we need to approach Advent and Christmas with fresh eyes. Maybe we need to get excited about the arrival of the Christ child again. Maybe we’ve become too preoccupied with lighting the Advent wreath for Christ, or preparing for his arrival. Maybe we get so caught up in preparing to love the master that when he finally arrives, we forget to actually love him. When we light our Advent wreath, do we actually take notice of Christ’s presence? Or does he pass right by without us seeing him, because we’re too focused on making sure we do everything right?
Perhaps we’re guilty of loving Christ so much that we’ve turned his arrival into routine. We no longer stop and take note of his arrival during this time of year. Christ has become the low, dull rumble of a train, which we have become so adept at tuning out. We have made Christmas about community events, company Christmas parties, gifts for co-workers, family, and friends, shopping, baking, cleaning, decorating, and traveling. And we’re able to do this because we know that Christ will come on Christmas. We’ll go to church and hear the birth story again – unless we tune out its low, dull rumble as well – but nothing in worship will jolt us awake.
Keep alert! Keep awake! For you do not know when the master of the house will come. Don’t let yourself fall asleep spiritually to the lullabies of shopping, wrapping, decorating, baking, and cleaning. Don’t be caught spiritually asleep when Christ our Lord comes into your life. Keep alert! Keep awake! And let yourself fall in love with Christ all over again this Christmas. Let him jolt you awake in the dead of your holiday slumber, and stay awake all night listening to his stories. Keep alert! Keep awake! And be ready to welcome home the master of the house, the Christ child, into your life with open arms this year. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I remember coming home from college for the holidays. In particular, I remember that first Thanksgiving. My parents had dropped their baby boy off at Ohio Northern University on Labor Day weekend, and had only seen me once since then, for parents weekend. So this was my first trip back home since going away to college.
I hadn’t even made it to the door, and my mother was already out of the house hugging me. She had heard the car door slam and couldn’t wait to greet me. When I got in the door, my father was coming down the stairs. He was excited to see me as well. Dinner was ready, and they were so excited to hear my stories about how school was going, what friends I had made, how the trip home was. They also wanted to share their stories with me: They had gotten a new dishwasher. We were going to Grandma and Pap Pap’s on Thanksgiving Day. Our dog, Shadow, missed me so much that she wouldn’t come upstairs at night anymore, instead laying by the front door all night, every night – waiting for me to come home.
Do I even have to tell you how loved I felt that day? I knew my parents loved me, but sometimes I felt it more than usual. This was one of those times. But as the years passed, this happened less and less often when I came home from college, and then came home from seminary in Atlanta. I’d come home for Christmas break, and there’d be no one at the house. My dad would be at work and my mom would be shopping for gifts. Or, they’d be at the house, but my dad would be upstairs writing his Christmas Eve sermon and my mom would be in the basement wrapping gifts. Instead of them rushing to greet me, I had to find them to say hello. Sometimes, I’d be home for awhile before they even noticed.
Other times, I’d come home for a weekend for no particular reason, and I’d meet the same result. It seemed that as time went on, I was greeted less and less when I walked in the door, and it was less and less of an event that I had returned home. My visits were no longer as exciting as they used to be for my parents. And I didn’t get that same greeting of love that I used to get. I know they still loved me as much as they always did, it’s just that they now forgot to hit the pause button on their lives when I arrived. I no longer felt special. I no longer felt loved in the same way.
But you know, we all do that. It’s not my parents fault. Sometimes they just got so caught up in their lives and their to-do lists and their holiday preparation that they forgot to make my arrival something important in their lives. I wonder if this is why Jesus tells us the parable of keeping awake. And I wonder if this is the reason that this text is the assigned lectionary text for the First Sunday of Advent.
Of course, at this point in Mark Jesus is talking about his second coming, about his return. It is the last public teaching he gives before the passion account begins, before the story of his crucifixion begins. And I would assume the people who are hearing it don’t fully grasp what he’s talking about with this “coming again in glory” business, because he hasn’t died yet.
Well, Jesus likens his leaving and subsequent return to that of a master. A master leaves his estate for a long journey, one in which he himself doesn’t even know when he’ll return. He pulls together all his servants, says, “I’m leaving and I don’t know when I’ll be back. In fact, it might be awhile. But while I’m gone, keep doing your work. But while you’re working, keep watch on the horizon. Keep looking for me to come back. And always be ready for me when I come back.
The beauty of this being our lesson for the first Sunday in Advent is that it teaches us how to wait in the season of Advent. It teaches us that Jesus will return home – Jesus will re-enter our lives, as he does every year around this time. We’ll celebrate that arrival – that incarnation – on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but Christ comes into our lives throughout this season. When he does, he will be like the master, coming at an unannounced, unknown time even to him, and entering into our lives while we are busy working.
When the master does show up in our lives during this season, what kinds of work will we be doing? Will he come to our house, only to find that we’re out shopping for gifts? Will he find us too busy wrapping presents upstairs to even notice his arrival? Will we be so preoccupied with our baking that we won’t have time to sit down and hear his stories? Will we be busy working overtime so we can afford all those needless gifts? Will we demand he take his salty, snowy shoes off and push him out of the way as we frantically clean for all of our soon-to-arrive guests? Will we have our favorite Christmas movies turned up so loud that we can’t even hear him arrive? Will we be stuck up on the roof turning our household into an exact replica of the Griswolds’ home? Will we be having too much fun getting drunk on egg nog at our company Christmas party to be willing to say hello when he arrives? Will we be too busy or too embarrassed to show Christ how much we love him this year?
Or will it be different this year? Will Christ come to our house and be greeted at the door with a warm embrace? Will we have time to eat a home-cooked dinner with him and listen to his stories? Will we greet him with wagging tails, like a dog that has missed its master? Will we bound down the stairs like a kid at Christmas, desperately wanting to receive the most precious gift of all?
When Lisa and I first moved here, we didn’t sleep very well the first few weeks. The trains kept waking us up. We noticed every single one that came through town, day and night. It always burst into our lives as an unannounced interruption of whatever we were doing. But after awhile, we started getting used to it. Now, trains hardly ever wake us up. And we don’t often notice the sound of them during the day, either. The sound of the whistle doesn’t interrupt our life. After only a few short months, the trains no longer disrupt our lives. They have become so ordinary, so typical, that we’ve learned to tune it out.
Lillian Daniel, Senior Minister of First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn Illinois, says Christ has become like a train to us that we have learned to tune out. She says, “Like people who have lived by the train tracks for years, we no longer hear the sound of the train. After years in church, we get used to the noise in Advent, to the coming of Christ, so much so that we no longer notice it. Or if we do, it has ceased to jolt us awake and has become instead a low, dull rumble.”
Have we turned Advent into a low, dull rumble? Do we go through the motions, having the same Christmas events we’ve always had for no reason other than it’s tradition? Do we light the Advent wreath because it’s always been a part of Advent? Have we allowed the hope, the joy, the love, the peace of Christmas to become so commonplace that it doesn’t excite us any longer? I’m willing to bet those of you who have lived here all your lives never had trains jolting you awake as Lisa and I did. You’ve never lived in an environment without trains rumbling through. Now consider how that translates to our Advent and Christmas traditions. Consider someone who is experiencing Christ in Christmas for the first time, or maybe the first time in several years. They will surely take notice of Christ’s arrival in the midst of all this preparation, the midst of all our activities and events. And that’s something we might be able to learn from them – maybe we need to approach Advent and Christmas with fresh eyes. Maybe we need to get excited about the arrival of the Christ child again. Maybe we’ve become too preoccupied with lighting the Advent wreath for Christ, or preparing for his arrival. Maybe we get so caught up in preparing to love the master that when he finally arrives, we forget to actually love him. When we light our Advent wreath, do we actually take notice of Christ’s presence? Or does he pass right by without us seeing him, because we’re too focused on making sure we do everything right?
Perhaps we’re guilty of loving Christ so much that we’ve turned his arrival into routine. We no longer stop and take note of his arrival during this time of year. Christ has become the low, dull rumble of a train, which we have become so adept at tuning out. We have made Christmas about community events, company Christmas parties, gifts for co-workers, family, and friends, shopping, baking, cleaning, decorating, and traveling. And we’re able to do this because we know that Christ will come on Christmas. We’ll go to church and hear the birth story again – unless we tune out its low, dull rumble as well – but nothing in worship will jolt us awake.
Keep alert! Keep awake! For you do not know when the master of the house will come. Don’t let yourself fall asleep spiritually to the lullabies of shopping, wrapping, decorating, baking, and cleaning. Don’t be caught spiritually asleep when Christ our Lord comes into your life. Keep alert! Keep awake! And let yourself fall in love with Christ all over again this Christmas. Let him jolt you awake in the dead of your holiday slumber, and stay awake all night listening to his stories. Keep alert! Keep awake! And be ready to welcome home the master of the house, the Christ child, into your life with open arms this year. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
It's a Wonderful Wife
Another sign I married well. In regards to this, I just had the following conversation with my wife on GMail:
Lisa: we don't get to hit brady quinn
me: I heard.
Lisa: that makes me sad
I performed a marriage reaffirmation ceremony last night for a couple celebrating their 50th anniversary. As long as Lisa and I continue to have conversations like this, I think we'll make it to 50 as well.
Lisa: we don't get to hit brady quinn
me: I heard.
Lisa: that makes me sad
I performed a marriage reaffirmation ceremony last night for a couple celebrating their 50th anniversary. As long as Lisa and I continue to have conversations like this, I think we'll make it to 50 as well.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Global Initiative
Yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club signed two pitchers from India, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Kumar Patel. You can read all about it here. These are guys who got noticed because they were finalists in some throwing contest, and have been playing baseball for about 6 months. They're actually cricket players. Earlier this year we signed a pitcher from South Africa, but at least he'd been playing baseball for awhile. I'm getting the feeling Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington has a huge world map on his office wall, and he just throws darts at it to decide where he'll sign guys from next. What's up today, boss? Uzbekistan!
Whatever. What have we got to lose? We might as well give globalization a whirl and see what happens. The Pirates may be the second-worst franchise in pro sports, but the front office definitely deserves an "A" for effort these days. I'm actually warming up to Huntington's creative thinking. Now, if we could just get more Latin American players like the other 29 teams...
Whatever. What have we got to lose? We might as well give globalization a whirl and see what happens. The Pirates may be the second-worst franchise in pro sports, but the front office definitely deserves an "A" for effort these days. I'm actually warming up to Huntington's creative thinking. Now, if we could just get more Latin American players like the other 29 teams...
Monday, November 24, 2008
Power Play
Today is Christ the King Sunday. It is a day in which we celebrate Christ’s reign as ruler of every earthly and heavenly king. It is a day in which we are reminded what kind of power God has in the world and in our lives, and how that power compares to our own experience with power.
All of us experience power from both sides. We have power over certain things, perhaps certain people. We also are under the power of other things, other people. Sometimes we think we have more power than we really do. Other times we have more power than we realize. Power, authority, control…whatever you want to call it, we are constantly engaged in struggles and relationships of power. And most of the time, we yearn for increased power. It’s in our nature as humans to feel like we have control of things.
We want our political party or our candidates to have power in government.
We want the power to choose our own healthcare provider.
We want the power to do our job the way we think it should be done and not the way our supervisor wants us to do it.
We want the power of holding the remote control in OUR hand.
We want our hands on the steering wheel of life, controlling everything that we can. The more we control, the safer we are, the more prepared we are, the less surprised we are.
But I’m always amazed by those things around us that humans have yet to master. Through scientific progress, we’ve been able to control many things that were previously untamed, uncontrollable. But there are still things that leave us absolutely helpless.
The natural world is one thing we’ve begun to have power over in a negative way. But it seems as though mother nature often fights back, and sometimes there’s not much we can do about it. Now, when Lisa and I went to Hawaii in June, we were fascinated by lava flows. What fascinated me most was that we have pretty much no control over lava flows.
Hurricanes and tornadoes we often see coming. We can predict them and hopefully get out of the way. Floods we can hold back, to an extent, with sandbags. Earthquakes, we can build structures that won’t fall down in the midst of them – or as Lisa reminds me, we can build structures that fall down in a safer way. Forest fires, we can create firebreaks for and we can battle with water. But lava flow we are completely powerless against.
You see, lava basically burns everything in its path. It is fairly unpredictable. You often don’t see it coming until it’s too late, and there’s really nothing you can do to protect yourself. And we can’t divert lava, we can’t put it out, we can’t do anything but let it go where it wants. It’s absolutely amazing to me – here is something we just have no solution for. A lava flow is something we have absolutely no control over. It will go where it wants, when it wants, and destroy what it wants, and all we can do is watch and hope to get people out of the way in time. The power of lava flow is so great that it will always have power over us.
God’s power is so great that God will always have power over us. Paul talks of God’s power in his letter to the Ephesians. He tells of God’s power at work in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ truly died, and was truly raised from the dead by God almighty. It was through God’s power that Christ ascended, or went up, into heaven, and took his seat at the right hand of God. The right hand of God – the place of honor. This is where Christ sits, this is Christ who is the king and who has all power and authority over heaven and earth. This is who we follow as Christians – the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Ruler of all Nations, Jesus Christ the King.
And we think we’re in control. We think we’re powerful. We think nothing can control us – we have control over our own destiny. But when was the last time you raised someone from the dead? When was the last time you raised Jesus Christ from the dead? Anyone here who can put that on their resume? I know I can’t.
So I think it’s safe to say that we are less powerful than God. Sure, this is a pretty basic statement – of course God is more powerful than any of us! But how often do we really act like it? How often do we truly live our lives with this in mind? Sadly, we tend to claim that God is all-powerful on Sunday, then spend the rest of the week acting as if we are in complete control. We sing praise to God who reigns above, then go home and sing praise to ourselves as we live like no one can stop us.
We have just endured a presidential election. In it, both candidates were often viewed as potential saviors to our nation. Both candidates were worshiped by many. There were people all throughout this land who anointed one of these men as their “king.” In light of this, what better time than now is there to declare that Christ is King? To me, the temptation to view our president as the most powerful man in the free world is a temptation to declare someone other than Christ to be our King. We are tempted to give all glory, laud, and honor to thee redeemer President! But you know, we don’t sing that here. We can be excited about a new administration, but we can’t lose sight that our Savior doesn’t need us to rally around him. Thankfully, our Savior doesn’t ever need to campaign, as one pastor in our conference has reminded me. Thank God that all glory, laud, and honor is bestowed on Christ the Redeemer King, and not to any human authority.
In 2006, Broetje Orchards of Prescott, WA saw 70% of their apple crop wiped out in a freak hailstorm. The insurance company gave them a choice: they could agree to no further harvesting and take the insurance money, or they could harvest the 30% left and keep the orchard open beyond that year – but that would mean no insurance money.
Ralph and Cheryl Broetje, the owners, decided to go on faith and keep it open. Had they closed down their orchard, they would have put several hundred year-round workers out of work, as well as hundreds more seasonal employees. Broetje Orchards shutting down would severely affect the area, as so many families depended on the orchard for a living. Well, the Broetjes refused the insurance money and kept it open because the faith they had in Christ’s power in their life was greater than any faith in a traditional business model that would suggest shutting down as the best option. In doing so, they allowed the power of Jesus Christ to work through them rather than trying to gain as much power as they could.
But it seems as though the Broetje’s have always run their orchard in this way. Cheryl Broetje says, “The power model is: How can I keep a little more power for me? But once you can get past that, it becomes: What can I be for others? How can I lift them up? What do they need, and how can I serve them?”
Thank God that we have people who are willing to let go and let God. Thank God that we have the Broetje Orchards, that remind us that traditional power models are about gaining more power, whereas God calls us to minimize our own power. God’s power model is to work through us, so that others can feel God’s power in their lives. Thank God that we have a Scriptural power model where we are not in complete control, because what would really happen if we were in control?
Some of you may have seen the popular movie, “Bruce Almighty” from a few years back. It tells the story of a man who became so frustrated with all the setbacks in his life that he claimed he could do better than God. So God gave him the chance to try it out. He let Bruce test drive the omnipotence car – he let Bruce have complete control over the world, as if he was God.
The next scene is Bruce waking up and enjoying his newfound power. He turns his old car into a Ferrari, parts the sea of traffic in front of him, and heads off to work where he messes around with co-workers. He walks around on water, gets revenge on people who wronged him, and he uses his powers to get his job back. Then he realizes that with his great Godly power comes the great responsibility of answering prayer. He really doesn’t want to spend all his time answering the endless amounts of prayer that keep rolling in, so he just replies “Yes” to all prayers. Well, at first it’s great because everyone gets what they want. Then, things start deteriorating. The climax of the deterioration happens when the Buffalo Sabres win the Stanley Cup and riots ensue. The story is a lesson about what would happen if humans actually had the power that God had. What would happen is we would become incredibly selfish, because the possession of power often makes us selfish. We’re not able to handle all the power that God can handle. Selfishness, revenge, destruction – this is what results when we humans get too much power.
Every once in awhile God has to remind us how limited our power is. Most people at this point know who Keifer Sutherland is. Sutherland is the actor who plays Jack Bauer on the hit TV show “24.” Over the summer, Sutherland went to an Apple store and tried to get himself an iPhone before their first release date. I guess he figured that his celebrity status gave him the power to obtain something no one else had. He could use his power to get an iPhone before the release. However, the Apple employees quickly made Sutherland aware that he wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was. After pulling the “Don’t you know who I am?” speech on the employees, they responded by saying, “Yes, we know who you are, and we don’t care. We don’t have any in stock, and we can’t get you one before the release.” As the Rolling Stones would say, “You can’t always get what you want”: even if you’re the most famous star on television. I’m willing to bet that it was a humbling experience for Sutherland when he realized that his celebrity status gave him some power, but that power was still limited in scope.
When we are reminded that we are not as powerful as we think we are, it leads us to humility. Powerlessness is humbling, because we are forced to rely on the powers above us for everything. Powerlessness frees us for joyful obedience of God. It allows us to enter into a spirit of servanthood toward the one who made us, and servanthood toward our neighbors. Our powerlessness gives God a chance to show how much he loves us, by using that power in selfless ways. While Bruce Almighty uses power to benefit himself, God uses power to benefit humanity. God uses power in love.
In a world full of power plays, a world in which he who has the power survives, it is often a scary thing to humble ourselves in service to God Almighty. We remind ourselves this morning that God’s power is at work in the world and in our lives, and we sing praises to that power. We are reminded that God’s power has anointed Christ as King! But do we really live as if Christ is our King? Do we really allow Christ to rule over our lives? Do we really know what it is like to be powerless in the presence of our Lord Almighty? Are we ready to accept Christ’s reign? Thank God Almighty that we are ruled by Jesus Christ our Savior and King. Amen.
All of us experience power from both sides. We have power over certain things, perhaps certain people. We also are under the power of other things, other people. Sometimes we think we have more power than we really do. Other times we have more power than we realize. Power, authority, control…whatever you want to call it, we are constantly engaged in struggles and relationships of power. And most of the time, we yearn for increased power. It’s in our nature as humans to feel like we have control of things.
We want our political party or our candidates to have power in government.
We want the power to choose our own healthcare provider.
We want the power to do our job the way we think it should be done and not the way our supervisor wants us to do it.
We want the power of holding the remote control in OUR hand.
We want our hands on the steering wheel of life, controlling everything that we can. The more we control, the safer we are, the more prepared we are, the less surprised we are.
But I’m always amazed by those things around us that humans have yet to master. Through scientific progress, we’ve been able to control many things that were previously untamed, uncontrollable. But there are still things that leave us absolutely helpless.
The natural world is one thing we’ve begun to have power over in a negative way. But it seems as though mother nature often fights back, and sometimes there’s not much we can do about it. Now, when Lisa and I went to Hawaii in June, we were fascinated by lava flows. What fascinated me most was that we have pretty much no control over lava flows.
Hurricanes and tornadoes we often see coming. We can predict them and hopefully get out of the way. Floods we can hold back, to an extent, with sandbags. Earthquakes, we can build structures that won’t fall down in the midst of them – or as Lisa reminds me, we can build structures that fall down in a safer way. Forest fires, we can create firebreaks for and we can battle with water. But lava flow we are completely powerless against.
You see, lava basically burns everything in its path. It is fairly unpredictable. You often don’t see it coming until it’s too late, and there’s really nothing you can do to protect yourself. And we can’t divert lava, we can’t put it out, we can’t do anything but let it go where it wants. It’s absolutely amazing to me – here is something we just have no solution for. A lava flow is something we have absolutely no control over. It will go where it wants, when it wants, and destroy what it wants, and all we can do is watch and hope to get people out of the way in time. The power of lava flow is so great that it will always have power over us.
God’s power is so great that God will always have power over us. Paul talks of God’s power in his letter to the Ephesians. He tells of God’s power at work in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ truly died, and was truly raised from the dead by God almighty. It was through God’s power that Christ ascended, or went up, into heaven, and took his seat at the right hand of God. The right hand of God – the place of honor. This is where Christ sits, this is Christ who is the king and who has all power and authority over heaven and earth. This is who we follow as Christians – the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Ruler of all Nations, Jesus Christ the King.
And we think we’re in control. We think we’re powerful. We think nothing can control us – we have control over our own destiny. But when was the last time you raised someone from the dead? When was the last time you raised Jesus Christ from the dead? Anyone here who can put that on their resume? I know I can’t.
So I think it’s safe to say that we are less powerful than God. Sure, this is a pretty basic statement – of course God is more powerful than any of us! But how often do we really act like it? How often do we truly live our lives with this in mind? Sadly, we tend to claim that God is all-powerful on Sunday, then spend the rest of the week acting as if we are in complete control. We sing praise to God who reigns above, then go home and sing praise to ourselves as we live like no one can stop us.
We have just endured a presidential election. In it, both candidates were often viewed as potential saviors to our nation. Both candidates were worshiped by many. There were people all throughout this land who anointed one of these men as their “king.” In light of this, what better time than now is there to declare that Christ is King? To me, the temptation to view our president as the most powerful man in the free world is a temptation to declare someone other than Christ to be our King. We are tempted to give all glory, laud, and honor to thee redeemer President! But you know, we don’t sing that here. We can be excited about a new administration, but we can’t lose sight that our Savior doesn’t need us to rally around him. Thankfully, our Savior doesn’t ever need to campaign, as one pastor in our conference has reminded me. Thank God that all glory, laud, and honor is bestowed on Christ the Redeemer King, and not to any human authority.
In 2006, Broetje Orchards of Prescott, WA saw 70% of their apple crop wiped out in a freak hailstorm. The insurance company gave them a choice: they could agree to no further harvesting and take the insurance money, or they could harvest the 30% left and keep the orchard open beyond that year – but that would mean no insurance money.
Ralph and Cheryl Broetje, the owners, decided to go on faith and keep it open. Had they closed down their orchard, they would have put several hundred year-round workers out of work, as well as hundreds more seasonal employees. Broetje Orchards shutting down would severely affect the area, as so many families depended on the orchard for a living. Well, the Broetjes refused the insurance money and kept it open because the faith they had in Christ’s power in their life was greater than any faith in a traditional business model that would suggest shutting down as the best option. In doing so, they allowed the power of Jesus Christ to work through them rather than trying to gain as much power as they could.
But it seems as though the Broetje’s have always run their orchard in this way. Cheryl Broetje says, “The power model is: How can I keep a little more power for me? But once you can get past that, it becomes: What can I be for others? How can I lift them up? What do they need, and how can I serve them?”
Thank God that we have people who are willing to let go and let God. Thank God that we have the Broetje Orchards, that remind us that traditional power models are about gaining more power, whereas God calls us to minimize our own power. God’s power model is to work through us, so that others can feel God’s power in their lives. Thank God that we have a Scriptural power model where we are not in complete control, because what would really happen if we were in control?
Some of you may have seen the popular movie, “Bruce Almighty” from a few years back. It tells the story of a man who became so frustrated with all the setbacks in his life that he claimed he could do better than God. So God gave him the chance to try it out. He let Bruce test drive the omnipotence car – he let Bruce have complete control over the world, as if he was God.
The next scene is Bruce waking up and enjoying his newfound power. He turns his old car into a Ferrari, parts the sea of traffic in front of him, and heads off to work where he messes around with co-workers. He walks around on water, gets revenge on people who wronged him, and he uses his powers to get his job back. Then he realizes that with his great Godly power comes the great responsibility of answering prayer. He really doesn’t want to spend all his time answering the endless amounts of prayer that keep rolling in, so he just replies “Yes” to all prayers. Well, at first it’s great because everyone gets what they want. Then, things start deteriorating. The climax of the deterioration happens when the Buffalo Sabres win the Stanley Cup and riots ensue. The story is a lesson about what would happen if humans actually had the power that God had. What would happen is we would become incredibly selfish, because the possession of power often makes us selfish. We’re not able to handle all the power that God can handle. Selfishness, revenge, destruction – this is what results when we humans get too much power.
Every once in awhile God has to remind us how limited our power is. Most people at this point know who Keifer Sutherland is. Sutherland is the actor who plays Jack Bauer on the hit TV show “24.” Over the summer, Sutherland went to an Apple store and tried to get himself an iPhone before their first release date. I guess he figured that his celebrity status gave him the power to obtain something no one else had. He could use his power to get an iPhone before the release. However, the Apple employees quickly made Sutherland aware that he wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was. After pulling the “Don’t you know who I am?” speech on the employees, they responded by saying, “Yes, we know who you are, and we don’t care. We don’t have any in stock, and we can’t get you one before the release.” As the Rolling Stones would say, “You can’t always get what you want”: even if you’re the most famous star on television. I’m willing to bet that it was a humbling experience for Sutherland when he realized that his celebrity status gave him some power, but that power was still limited in scope.
When we are reminded that we are not as powerful as we think we are, it leads us to humility. Powerlessness is humbling, because we are forced to rely on the powers above us for everything. Powerlessness frees us for joyful obedience of God. It allows us to enter into a spirit of servanthood toward the one who made us, and servanthood toward our neighbors. Our powerlessness gives God a chance to show how much he loves us, by using that power in selfless ways. While Bruce Almighty uses power to benefit himself, God uses power to benefit humanity. God uses power in love.
In a world full of power plays, a world in which he who has the power survives, it is often a scary thing to humble ourselves in service to God Almighty. We remind ourselves this morning that God’s power is at work in the world and in our lives, and we sing praises to that power. We are reminded that God’s power has anointed Christ as King! But do we really live as if Christ is our King? Do we really allow Christ to rule over our lives? Do we really know what it is like to be powerless in the presence of our Lord Almighty? Are we ready to accept Christ’s reign? Thank God Almighty that we are ruled by Jesus Christ our Savior and King. Amen.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
NFL Helmet Rankings
With the help of my esteemed sports enthusiast colleague Dan, I have compiled a list of the 32 current NFL helmets. We judged them by their uniqueness, incorporation of team color scheme, how they match with the rest of the uniform, stripe usage, and overall look. We included only current helmets, which eliminated the possibility of the white Bills helmets and all of the former Patriots helmets, which were all better than the current ones. We also found an interesting site, which gives a history of all NFL helmets: http://www.nationalchamps.net/Helmet_Project/. Without further ado, here is the list:
32. Seattle Seahawks. Logo way too big, monochromatic helmet-logo scheme looks awful. No redeeming qualities.
31. Baltimore Ravens. Their logo really hurts them, as they had the chance to have a scary, gothic raven and instead went with a cartoony raven head with a B on its neck.
30. Jacksonville Jaguars. They missed a perfect opportunity to pull off the white helmet and instead went with the boring black helmet. The logo is one of the worst in the NFL.
29. Cleveland Browns. Normally I'd like the classic look of a logo-free helmet, but not in this case. This is an awful color orange, they don't have a logo on the helmet because they don't have a logo period, and if you're the Browns, why is your helmet orange?
28. Tennessee Titans. As ESPN's Greg Easterbrook says, the logo looks like a flaming thumbtack. The tapered double stripe is not becoming on them, and all of this brought together looks like a 1st grader designed the helmet.
27. Carolina Panthers. Silver helmets are hard to pull off, especially when you have an awful logo.
26. New England Patriots. I encourage you to check out their old helmets of the three point hat over the number. When can they bring those back, because the current logo on the silver helmet is really ugly.
25. Denver Broncos. Another awful logo, the color scheme is the only thing that makes this helmet so high.
24. Atlanta Falcons. Yes, the logo conveniently makes an F, but I've seen this exact same logo in high school and college. Where's the creativity?
23. San Fransisco 49ers. They made a mistake by changing the middle stripes. It used to be a white center stripe bordered by red stripes, but now they have a red-black combination. Big mistake, because it dropped you way down on this list.
22. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The pewter color is good, but what's up with the logo? You can't hang a flag on a sword!
21. Buffalo Bills. Classic logo, classic look, both team colors prominently used. However, I've never understood the stripe in the middle of the bill -- is he getting speared? Does he have a different colored random appendage growing from his head?
20. Miami Dolphins. White helmets are generally a good idea, and the helmet-wearing dolphin logo is creative. One question: why is the dolphin in the logo wearing a different helmet than the actual team?
19. Houston Texans. Simple, cartoony logo is okay, but nothing special. Houston had a chance to have horns on their helmets like the Vikes or Rams, but they passed it up. Not good.
18. Detroit Lions. So-so logo, nothing really special. The helmet itself gives a feeling of indifference, which fits them well, I guess.
17. Kansas City Chiefs. Another blah helmet. Nothing good or bad to say here. It's a helmet, it's red, they wear it.
16. Oakland Raiders. Few teams wear the silver helmet well. The Raiders are one such team because of the simplicity of their uniforms and helmets. It all works well together.
15. Arizona Cardinals. The white helmet looks great in contrast to the cardinal red jerseys. The simple red logo is sweet.
14. Chicago Bears. The "C" is classic, but far short of creative. This helmet is only this high because of its sheer recognition factor. Almost anyone in the country can turn on the TV, see the Bears, Packers, or Cowboys helmet, and instantly know who's playing.
13. Pittsburgh Steelers. The logo is the steel logo, adding an element of uniqueness. This is also the only NFL helmet with the logo only on one side.
12. New York Jets. Another great white helmet. It was a good choice to go back to these classic helmets.
11. Dallas Cowboys. The star is classic, the silver helmet looks nice. An All-American helmet if I've ever see one. See notes under Chicago Bears.
10. Washington Redskins. The yellow facemask contrasts well with the red helmet. The feathers coming off the back of the otherwise circular logo looks good too.
9. New York Giants. I just can't get over how awesome the single red center stripe looks on this otherwise plain helmet. Call it a splash of excitement and a whole lot of plain, brute force. Kinda like the Giants style of play, no?
8. Green Bay Packers. The yellow helmets are great, and the "G" is classic if not exciting. See notes under Chicago Bears.
7. Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals did a great job incorporating the Bengal tiger stripes in their unis, especially the helmet. This is a great, unique, fun helmet.
6. Minnesota Vikings. The horns look great. Extra points for incorporating the yellow of their color scheme in a shadow effect around the base of the horn.
5. Philadelphia Eagles. Great job on the wings. They've been wearing some variation of the wings since 1955. It doesn't get much better than the white wings on the green helmet.
4. Indianapolis Colts. I originally saw nothing exciting about these helmets, but Dan persuaded me they are indeed exceptional. Aside from changing from white to blue facemasks in 1995, the helmet has been exactly the same since 1957. Kudos to the B'more/Indy Colts for picking the horseshoe as the logo and sticking with it and these great white helmets for so long without even tweaking it.
3. New Orleans Saints. No one could ever pull off the gold helmet like the Saints. The black fleur de lis on the gold helmet SCREAMS New Orleans. Truly a royal helmet.
2. San Diego Chargers. The lightning bolt is not incredibly unique for a team called the Chargers, but you have to admit it looks pretty cool, especially since they switched back to the white helmet in 2007. Did I mention I like white helmets?
1. St. Louis Rams. Well, the Rams at least have one thing going for them, right? The classic ram horns are nothing short of amazing, classy, and fearsome. Say what you want about their play, but these helmets are the best in the NFL. We had a hard time choosing the best between the top 5 or 6 on this list, but the Rams get the edge because they wore horns starting in 1950. Longevity and only minor tweaking of the idea gives them a slight edge over the rest.
There you have it. Feel free to disagree -- everyone's entitled to their own wrong opinion.
32. Seattle Seahawks. Logo way too big, monochromatic helmet-logo scheme looks awful. No redeeming qualities.
31. Baltimore Ravens. Their logo really hurts them, as they had the chance to have a scary, gothic raven and instead went with a cartoony raven head with a B on its neck.
30. Jacksonville Jaguars. They missed a perfect opportunity to pull off the white helmet and instead went with the boring black helmet. The logo is one of the worst in the NFL.
29. Cleveland Browns. Normally I'd like the classic look of a logo-free helmet, but not in this case. This is an awful color orange, they don't have a logo on the helmet because they don't have a logo period, and if you're the Browns, why is your helmet orange?
28. Tennessee Titans. As ESPN's Greg Easterbrook says, the logo looks like a flaming thumbtack. The tapered double stripe is not becoming on them, and all of this brought together looks like a 1st grader designed the helmet.
27. Carolina Panthers. Silver helmets are hard to pull off, especially when you have an awful logo.
26. New England Patriots. I encourage you to check out their old helmets of the three point hat over the number. When can they bring those back, because the current logo on the silver helmet is really ugly.
25. Denver Broncos. Another awful logo, the color scheme is the only thing that makes this helmet so high.
24. Atlanta Falcons. Yes, the logo conveniently makes an F, but I've seen this exact same logo in high school and college. Where's the creativity?
23. San Fransisco 49ers. They made a mistake by changing the middle stripes. It used to be a white center stripe bordered by red stripes, but now they have a red-black combination. Big mistake, because it dropped you way down on this list.
22. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The pewter color is good, but what's up with the logo? You can't hang a flag on a sword!
21. Buffalo Bills. Classic logo, classic look, both team colors prominently used. However, I've never understood the stripe in the middle of the bill -- is he getting speared? Does he have a different colored random appendage growing from his head?
20. Miami Dolphins. White helmets are generally a good idea, and the helmet-wearing dolphin logo is creative. One question: why is the dolphin in the logo wearing a different helmet than the actual team?
19. Houston Texans. Simple, cartoony logo is okay, but nothing special. Houston had a chance to have horns on their helmets like the Vikes or Rams, but they passed it up. Not good.
18. Detroit Lions. So-so logo, nothing really special. The helmet itself gives a feeling of indifference, which fits them well, I guess.
17. Kansas City Chiefs. Another blah helmet. Nothing good or bad to say here. It's a helmet, it's red, they wear it.
16. Oakland Raiders. Few teams wear the silver helmet well. The Raiders are one such team because of the simplicity of their uniforms and helmets. It all works well together.
15. Arizona Cardinals. The white helmet looks great in contrast to the cardinal red jerseys. The simple red logo is sweet.
14. Chicago Bears. The "C" is classic, but far short of creative. This helmet is only this high because of its sheer recognition factor. Almost anyone in the country can turn on the TV, see the Bears, Packers, or Cowboys helmet, and instantly know who's playing.
13. Pittsburgh Steelers. The logo is the steel logo, adding an element of uniqueness. This is also the only NFL helmet with the logo only on one side.
12. New York Jets. Another great white helmet. It was a good choice to go back to these classic helmets.
11. Dallas Cowboys. The star is classic, the silver helmet looks nice. An All-American helmet if I've ever see one. See notes under Chicago Bears.
10. Washington Redskins. The yellow facemask contrasts well with the red helmet. The feathers coming off the back of the otherwise circular logo looks good too.
9. New York Giants. I just can't get over how awesome the single red center stripe looks on this otherwise plain helmet. Call it a splash of excitement and a whole lot of plain, brute force. Kinda like the Giants style of play, no?
8. Green Bay Packers. The yellow helmets are great, and the "G" is classic if not exciting. See notes under Chicago Bears.
7. Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals did a great job incorporating the Bengal tiger stripes in their unis, especially the helmet. This is a great, unique, fun helmet.
6. Minnesota Vikings. The horns look great. Extra points for incorporating the yellow of their color scheme in a shadow effect around the base of the horn.
5. Philadelphia Eagles. Great job on the wings. They've been wearing some variation of the wings since 1955. It doesn't get much better than the white wings on the green helmet.
4. Indianapolis Colts. I originally saw nothing exciting about these helmets, but Dan persuaded me they are indeed exceptional. Aside from changing from white to blue facemasks in 1995, the helmet has been exactly the same since 1957. Kudos to the B'more/Indy Colts for picking the horseshoe as the logo and sticking with it and these great white helmets for so long without even tweaking it.
3. New Orleans Saints. No one could ever pull off the gold helmet like the Saints. The black fleur de lis on the gold helmet SCREAMS New Orleans. Truly a royal helmet.
2. San Diego Chargers. The lightning bolt is not incredibly unique for a team called the Chargers, but you have to admit it looks pretty cool, especially since they switched back to the white helmet in 2007. Did I mention I like white helmets?
1. St. Louis Rams. Well, the Rams at least have one thing going for them, right? The classic ram horns are nothing short of amazing, classy, and fearsome. Say what you want about their play, but these helmets are the best in the NFL. We had a hard time choosing the best between the top 5 or 6 on this list, but the Rams get the edge because they wore horns starting in 1950. Longevity and only minor tweaking of the idea gives them a slight edge over the rest.
There you have it. Feel free to disagree -- everyone's entitled to their own wrong opinion.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Unfortunate Slip of the Tongue
Last week I found myself in discussion with an associate minister in our annual conference. She is having problems in her current appointment, as the senior minister treats her as an assistant minister rather than an associate minister. This happens all too often -- when my mother served as an associate, she sometimes encountered this. I get the feeling it happens to both male and female associates, but that it's more common with female associates. Nothing like a power trip and sexism, eh?
Well, as I empathized with her, I said something about how awfully "senior ministers often treat those working under them." Using the phrase "under them" was entirely an accident - this is the attitude that associates fight against. They are associates, thus they do not work under, but in association with colleagues in ministry that have the unfortunate title of senior minister.
Well, immediately I regretted my slip of the tongue and corrected myself. It was a reminder that even when trying to fight against the attitude of associates being assistants, I am still a product of a system that promotes this attitude. Sometimes we are faced with such realities: that we all possess attitudes that are wrong, even attitudes we disagree with, and sometimes a fight against a wrong attitude includes a struggle within our own souls.
Well, as I empathized with her, I said something about how awfully "senior ministers often treat those working under them." Using the phrase "under them" was entirely an accident - this is the attitude that associates fight against. They are associates, thus they do not work under, but in association with colleagues in ministry that have the unfortunate title of senior minister.
Well, immediately I regretted my slip of the tongue and corrected myself. It was a reminder that even when trying to fight against the attitude of associates being assistants, I am still a product of a system that promotes this attitude. Sometimes we are faced with such realities: that we all possess attitudes that are wrong, even attitudes we disagree with, and sometimes a fight against a wrong attitude includes a struggle within our own souls.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Risky Business
As I’ve noted in previous sermons, a talent is worth about 15 years worth of wages. So one servant was given 75 years of wages, another was given 30 years of wages, and a third was given 15 years of wages. The first two engaged in risky trading, trying to parlay it into even more money. The third played it safe, burying it in a field like any intelligent money manager would do in Jesus’ day. The audience of Jesus’ parable would have expected the first two servants to be in trouble when the master came back. “You risked all I had to try to double it? What if you had lost it? You should’ve taken better care of what I gave you, burying it in the field like everyone else does with valuable things!”
Instead, expectations of the audience are flipped upside down, as Jesus is known to do. The ones who invested in risky trading were commended. And the one who buried the treasure in the field was not commended but chastised. Last week we talked about how what appears foolish often turns out to be wise. And this parable is another testament to that. The audience would have thought that the risky traders were foolish, and the burier of money was wise. But as it turns out, the servants who risked everything were the wise ones, according to the master.
You see, the servant who buried his one talent was very concerned with job security. If he lost or spent any of the master’s money, the master would surely be upset. “If I lose any, he’ll never trust me with anything again!” He was determined not to fail – determined not to lose his job.
However, the servants who risked it all were motivated by love of the master. They wanted to increase his funds. They risked everything, with the clear possibility of failure on the line. Had they lost some or all of the money the master gave them, they would have been done. They’d be fired as servants, perhaps even killed – who knows what would happen if they lost the money? They’d be jobless, and with a reputation of being poor money managers to boot. Who would ever trust them again?
We can’t overlook the possibility of failure in this story. Two servants did not concern themselves with failure, and one guarded himself firmly against failure. Two engaged in risky business, and one made sure nothing went wrong. And the ones who risked it all were the ones who the master commended. The one who took the safe, predictable, culturally expected way out got in big, big trouble. Simply put, it is a parable underscoring the phrase, “No risk, no reward.”
Fred Craddock tells a story about a nine-pound sparrow that he met walking down the street one day. “Why are you walking?” he asked the sparrow. “Why don’t you fly?” “Fly?” said the sparrow. “I’ve never flown! I could get hurt?” And Craddock asked the sparrow what her name was. The sparrow’s name was “Church.”
I knew a church like this sparrow. It was a small, suburban church, not much bigger than this one. It was decreasing in worship attendance and in membership. They thought hiring a part-time youth minister would help. But when that youth minister came, he tried to take the youth on a mission trip with Appalachian Service Project. Appalachian Service Project, or ASP, is a Christian organization that leads one week work camps for youth groups, helping repair homes in rural Appalachia – areas where people have no money to repair their dilapidated homes.
Well, perhaps the youth minister was thinking too big, because all the church saw was the risk involved. Our kids will go where? That’s far away – what if you get into a car accident on the drive? What if they get hurt while working and end up in a hospital 400 miles away from home? What if this is some crazy cult organization that will brainwash our kids? What if it’s a place that will just take our money and not let the youth actually do anything? What if the youth don’t like it? What if they want to come home? What if, what if, what if…
All they could think about was the potential for failure. No one was able to think about this mission trip as an opportunity. They thought of it only in terms of how it could go wrong. They were like the servant who buried the treasure in the field for fear of failure. And they never did let their youth minister take their youth to ASP. And a couple of years later they found themselves wondering why nothing had changed around their church. To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
A number of years ago, I was on a youth retreat as a counselor for my father’s church. My primary purpose for the weekend was to lead the youth group in indoor rock climbing. Has anyone done any rock climbing before? When the time came for climbing, we instructed everyone in all the safety procedures. Belaying is what it’s called – where one person holds the rope as the other person climbs. Well, on this retreat, we had several counselors. We had one counselor determined to try climbing, and another who would not get on the wall if we gave her a million dollars. The one who tried was the un-athletic, 69-year-old organist of the church. The one who didn’t try was an athletic woman in her 30’s. She was afraid of falling. So she didn’t try.
Well, when the organist got up there, she climbed, slowly but surely, about 2/3 of the way up the 30 foot wall. And then she started struggling. At one point, she lost her grip and fell. But you know what? The person belaying her, the person on the ground holding the rope, did what he was supposed to, tightening up the rope and catching her. She seemed quite surprised as she hung suspended in the air. For the first time, she felt what is was like to be caught by an invisible entity when she fell. For the first time, she knew that she could succeed without fear of failure. And she swung herself back onto the wall, just below where she fell off, and climbed all the way to the top. She did so because she was not afraid to try something she might not succeed at. She wasn’t afraid to be clinging to a wall 25 feet above the ground. She was empowered to engage in risky business. To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
A lot of times, we worry about climbing the wall because we might fall. We might fail. But then if we do take that risk, and we do fall, we realize that nothing happens. Nothing happens because even though we’re climbing on our own, those times when we lose grip and fall, God catches us. God is our belayer, letting us take the risks, but catching us when things don’t always work out. Last week we talked about how sometimes wise actions appear foolish to the untrained eye. The wise bridesmaids looked foolish by taking extra oil when they probably wouldn’t need it, but really they were wise in acknowledging their own limitations. This week’s parable also shows that to be truly wise, and to truly obey our master, sometimes we have to do things that look a little foolish, like over-preparing our oil reserves or engaging in risky trading with our master’s fortunes. Sometimes we are called to do that which is absurd in our world, but makes perfect sense in God’s world.
What risky business is God our master and belayer calling you to? What risky business are you afraid to engage in because something might go wrong? What risky business are you ignoring because of fear of failure?
Are you faced with having to stand up for what is right, even in the face of ridicule?
Are you afraid to invite a friend to church, because he or she might say no?
Are you afraid to help the poor face-to-face, because you don’t know what will happen?
Are you afraid to go on a mission trip, because you don’t want to leave your safe, familiar surroundings?
Are you thinking of joining a Bible study, but don’t want to because you’re insecure about how much you don’t know?
Are you feeling called to pursue a new job, or being asked to move because of your job? Are you ignoring that call because your current job is a secure source of income?
Are you afraid to go for a promotion because of how you’ll be viewed if you don’t get it? Are you afraid to go for a promotion because of how you’ll be viewed if you do get it?
Are you worried about being friends with people who are “uncool” or “nerdy”, because people might start making fun of you?
Are you finding yourself holding onto money a little tighter now in this economic crisis? Are you burying more and more money in the ground? Or are you willing to engage in the risky business of giving generously to God, to the church, to anything that might benefit others?
Are you feeling led to share your faith with a friend, with a stranger, but are afraid they might not care?
Every day, our lives are full of opportunities. And too often, we pass up those opportunities because we worry about the risk. But you know, when it comes down to it, we’re playing with house money, so to speak. These opportunities we have are given by God. God wants us to accept the opportunities he gives and use them to spread the love of Christ throughout the world. And we are not to worry about the risk, says Jesus. Let the master worry about the risk. We must continue to be motivated by pleasing the master rather than protecting our own job security. We must not allow fear of failure to keep us from doing God’s work in the world. We must engage in risky business. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Instead, expectations of the audience are flipped upside down, as Jesus is known to do. The ones who invested in risky trading were commended. And the one who buried the treasure in the field was not commended but chastised. Last week we talked about how what appears foolish often turns out to be wise. And this parable is another testament to that. The audience would have thought that the risky traders were foolish, and the burier of money was wise. But as it turns out, the servants who risked everything were the wise ones, according to the master.
You see, the servant who buried his one talent was very concerned with job security. If he lost or spent any of the master’s money, the master would surely be upset. “If I lose any, he’ll never trust me with anything again!” He was determined not to fail – determined not to lose his job.
However, the servants who risked it all were motivated by love of the master. They wanted to increase his funds. They risked everything, with the clear possibility of failure on the line. Had they lost some or all of the money the master gave them, they would have been done. They’d be fired as servants, perhaps even killed – who knows what would happen if they lost the money? They’d be jobless, and with a reputation of being poor money managers to boot. Who would ever trust them again?
We can’t overlook the possibility of failure in this story. Two servants did not concern themselves with failure, and one guarded himself firmly against failure. Two engaged in risky business, and one made sure nothing went wrong. And the ones who risked it all were the ones who the master commended. The one who took the safe, predictable, culturally expected way out got in big, big trouble. Simply put, it is a parable underscoring the phrase, “No risk, no reward.”
Fred Craddock tells a story about a nine-pound sparrow that he met walking down the street one day. “Why are you walking?” he asked the sparrow. “Why don’t you fly?” “Fly?” said the sparrow. “I’ve never flown! I could get hurt?” And Craddock asked the sparrow what her name was. The sparrow’s name was “Church.”
I knew a church like this sparrow. It was a small, suburban church, not much bigger than this one. It was decreasing in worship attendance and in membership. They thought hiring a part-time youth minister would help. But when that youth minister came, he tried to take the youth on a mission trip with Appalachian Service Project. Appalachian Service Project, or ASP, is a Christian organization that leads one week work camps for youth groups, helping repair homes in rural Appalachia – areas where people have no money to repair their dilapidated homes.
Well, perhaps the youth minister was thinking too big, because all the church saw was the risk involved. Our kids will go where? That’s far away – what if you get into a car accident on the drive? What if they get hurt while working and end up in a hospital 400 miles away from home? What if this is some crazy cult organization that will brainwash our kids? What if it’s a place that will just take our money and not let the youth actually do anything? What if the youth don’t like it? What if they want to come home? What if, what if, what if…
All they could think about was the potential for failure. No one was able to think about this mission trip as an opportunity. They thought of it only in terms of how it could go wrong. They were like the servant who buried the treasure in the field for fear of failure. And they never did let their youth minister take their youth to ASP. And a couple of years later they found themselves wondering why nothing had changed around their church. To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
A number of years ago, I was on a youth retreat as a counselor for my father’s church. My primary purpose for the weekend was to lead the youth group in indoor rock climbing. Has anyone done any rock climbing before? When the time came for climbing, we instructed everyone in all the safety procedures. Belaying is what it’s called – where one person holds the rope as the other person climbs. Well, on this retreat, we had several counselors. We had one counselor determined to try climbing, and another who would not get on the wall if we gave her a million dollars. The one who tried was the un-athletic, 69-year-old organist of the church. The one who didn’t try was an athletic woman in her 30’s. She was afraid of falling. So she didn’t try.
Well, when the organist got up there, she climbed, slowly but surely, about 2/3 of the way up the 30 foot wall. And then she started struggling. At one point, she lost her grip and fell. But you know what? The person belaying her, the person on the ground holding the rope, did what he was supposed to, tightening up the rope and catching her. She seemed quite surprised as she hung suspended in the air. For the first time, she felt what is was like to be caught by an invisible entity when she fell. For the first time, she knew that she could succeed without fear of failure. And she swung herself back onto the wall, just below where she fell off, and climbed all the way to the top. She did so because she was not afraid to try something she might not succeed at. She wasn’t afraid to be clinging to a wall 25 feet above the ground. She was empowered to engage in risky business. To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
A lot of times, we worry about climbing the wall because we might fall. We might fail. But then if we do take that risk, and we do fall, we realize that nothing happens. Nothing happens because even though we’re climbing on our own, those times when we lose grip and fall, God catches us. God is our belayer, letting us take the risks, but catching us when things don’t always work out. Last week we talked about how sometimes wise actions appear foolish to the untrained eye. The wise bridesmaids looked foolish by taking extra oil when they probably wouldn’t need it, but really they were wise in acknowledging their own limitations. This week’s parable also shows that to be truly wise, and to truly obey our master, sometimes we have to do things that look a little foolish, like over-preparing our oil reserves or engaging in risky trading with our master’s fortunes. Sometimes we are called to do that which is absurd in our world, but makes perfect sense in God’s world.
What risky business is God our master and belayer calling you to? What risky business are you afraid to engage in because something might go wrong? What risky business are you ignoring because of fear of failure?
Are you faced with having to stand up for what is right, even in the face of ridicule?
Are you afraid to invite a friend to church, because he or she might say no?
Are you afraid to help the poor face-to-face, because you don’t know what will happen?
Are you afraid to go on a mission trip, because you don’t want to leave your safe, familiar surroundings?
Are you thinking of joining a Bible study, but don’t want to because you’re insecure about how much you don’t know?
Are you feeling called to pursue a new job, or being asked to move because of your job? Are you ignoring that call because your current job is a secure source of income?
Are you afraid to go for a promotion because of how you’ll be viewed if you don’t get it? Are you afraid to go for a promotion because of how you’ll be viewed if you do get it?
Are you worried about being friends with people who are “uncool” or “nerdy”, because people might start making fun of you?
Are you finding yourself holding onto money a little tighter now in this economic crisis? Are you burying more and more money in the ground? Or are you willing to engage in the risky business of giving generously to God, to the church, to anything that might benefit others?
Are you feeling led to share your faith with a friend, with a stranger, but are afraid they might not care?
Every day, our lives are full of opportunities. And too often, we pass up those opportunities because we worry about the risk. But you know, when it comes down to it, we’re playing with house money, so to speak. These opportunities we have are given by God. God wants us to accept the opportunities he gives and use them to spread the love of Christ throughout the world. And we are not to worry about the risk, says Jesus. Let the master worry about the risk. We must continue to be motivated by pleasing the master rather than protecting our own job security. We must not allow fear of failure to keep us from doing God’s work in the world. We must engage in risky business. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Minutes from the Mall!
They're adding a Chipotle on Rte. 51 by Century III Mall. I love Chipotle. You have no idea how happy Lisa and I were when we saw the "Coming Soon: Chipotle" sign today. It absolutely made our day. Merry Christmas to us.
Yes, it's 20 minutes away, but where we live, that's as close as a Chipotle's going to get. Plus, it's on our way to Pittsburgh, so that can be our pre-sporting event meal stop. Mmm...Chipotle.
Yes, it's 20 minutes away, but where we live, that's as close as a Chipotle's going to get. Plus, it's on our way to Pittsburgh, so that can be our pre-sporting event meal stop. Mmm...Chipotle.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Timing is Everything
I was outside, on the lawn of the church with this small congregation. I was a first-time visitor, having just completed a week of volunteering at Wesley Woods with a high school camp. This church was on the way home, so a few of us stopped at the small United Methodist Church for Sunday worship. And they were staging a heritage day service.
For those of you that don’t know, a heritage day service usually includes the pastor dressing up like a circuit rider. Circuit riders were Methodist preachers in 18th century America who rode on horseback from town to town, visiting the churches in his “circuit” on Sundays throughout the year. Well, on this heritage Sunday I was at, the church’s pastor dressed up like a circuit rider and rode in on a horse. And they staged it just like old times. The congregation was gathered on the lawn, singing hymns a cappella until the preacher came. “So when will the preacher be here?” I asked the woman next to me. “I don’t know. Sometime after 10:00, they say. He’ll get here when he gets here.”
This was really the full experience. We were all kinda in the dark about when the preacher would be here. We had a general idea, but I guess horses are harder to predict time-wise than our fancy cars. So here we were, pretending like we’re in 18th century America, waiting for the preacher to get there so we could have this dang worship service. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. We didn’t know when he’d come. We knew he’d get there…we just didn’t know when. And people used to do this every week. It drove me crazy after 10 minutes of waiting.
I was inside, in a classroom above the chapel. It was already 10 minutes into our contextual education class in seminary, and neither of our professors had shown up. One had already told us he wouldn’t be there this week, but the other one was supposed to lead the class. His name was Raphael Warnock, the pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Dr. Warnock usually was late, but not this late. So the minutes kept ticking away into our class period, and we started the talk that all students have when these things happen. “Where’s the professor? We’ll have to invoke the 15 minute rule soon.” For those of you that don’t know, the 15 minute rule is an unwritten but widely known rule that if your professor doesn’t show up in the first 15 minutes of class, then the students are allowed to leave without getting in trouble. I was there once when we used it in college. It’s a risky thing. Well here we are, seminary students – the most ethical and honest people you can find, right? No, we’re invoking the 15 minute rule on Dr. Warnock. Who cares that he preaches from the same pulpit Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. both preached from? Who cares if he’s an internationally known preacher? He’s 15 minutes late, we don’t know when he’ll be here – if he comes at all. We knew he’d come, we just didn’t know when.
I was sitting in my living room, waiting. I had things to do, but I couldn’t leave because the Comcast guy was supposed to come and hook up our new service between 9 and 1. Oh, the cable guys. Everyone else makes appointments, but they give you a 4 hour range that you have to wait for them to show. You’re a prisoner in your own house, waiting for the cable guy, not knowing when he’ll show up. I knew the Comcast guy was coming to my house, I just didn’t know when.
In this parable of the ten bridesmaids, they knew the groom was coming, they just didn’t know when. They knew he’d come and invite them into the wedding, they just didn’t know when. So they waited with their lamps until he came. And when he came, some were gone because they had run out of oil.
How did this happen? As I read this parable, this first century oil crisis, I try to imagine the argument that broke out before they left with their lamps. Half the women are taking backup oil, just to be safe. We don’t know how long we’ll be waiting, they say as they grab their reserves. The other half of the women aren’t. It’s usually not that long, We’ll have enough. A backup flask of oil is heavy and bulky and we don’t want to carry it with us. We don’t want to look like over-prepared fools, weighed down with more than we need.
Any experienced hiker will tell you to be prepared, but that it’s foolish to be over-prepared. You don’t have the room in your pack to be over-prepared. You have to be lean and mean, or you’ll be the fool who brought a jacket and a sweatshirt, the fool who brought 3 kinds of sunscreen, the fool who brought backup hiking boots just in case they need them. And you’ll be the tired, slow fool that now has to carry all of it.
So who’s foolish and who’s wise? Is it foolish to be over-prepared, or foolish to be under-prepared? You see, the distinction between foolish and wise comes down to bringing extra oil or not. And at first, you can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, bringing extra oil “just in case” may turn out to look wise. But if the bridegroom comes quickly, you might look foolish. And to forego the backup oil can look wise if the bridegroom comes quickly, but if he doesn’t you’ll end up appearing foolish. It’s all about the timing of the bridegroom’s arrival. Basically, no matter when the groom comes, someone’s going to look foolish. So who actually is foolish?
You see, the mistake of the foolish bridesmaids was not falling asleep. Even the wise, over-prepared bridesmaids slept. The foolish bridesmaids were the ones who ran out of oil. Why did they end up foolish? It’s because they didn’t have enough oil of their own, and they had to run around town trying to buy oil at midnight, when obviously no merchants would be open. See what happens when you depend on foreign oil? You end up missing the wedding feast – you end up looking foolish.
So these bridesmaids looked foolish running around in search of more oil, but it wasn’t just their lack of oil that made them foolish. It was the motivation behind their lack of oil. It was foolish of them to think they knew when the bridegroom was coming. It was foolish to try to predict something so unpredictable and out of their control. The wise bridesmaids were the ones smart enough to know what they didn’t know. They were the ones that admitted, “We know he’s coming, we just don’t know when.” Meanwhile the foolish ones acted in their preparation as if they could predict that he wouldn’t be delayed that long. In an act of arrogance, they acted as if they knew what would happen, as if they knew when that bridegroom would show up. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t be certain. It wasn’t a guarantee that he’d show up quickly.
In telling the parable, Jesus says that the bridegroom was delayed. Whether it was a flat tire, or having to change shirts because he got a stain on it, or what, he arrived later than expected. And the foolish women were revealed – the ones who weren’t ready for the unexpected. The ones who were too arrogant to admit that they didn’t know for sure what would happen. The ones who pretended like they knew when he was coming, when in reality they didn’t. When they set out without extra oil, it was an act of arrogance – an act of presuming to know what they did not actually know. And this is what made them foolish.
Just as I was on that church lawn, in that classroom, and in my living room, all the bridesmaids knew the groom was coming, they just didn’t know when. Half of them admitted that, but the other half were too foolish to admit they didn’t know everything.
You see, the foolish women were the ones who just didn’t take the event seriously enough. Here is a wedding feast, one of the grandest occasions there is, and they’re not treating it like it’s any big deal. So while you can make an argument for either group of bridesmaids being the foolish ones, we see that the truly foolish are those who do not take the event of the bridegroom’s coming seriously.
And what of the wise bridesmaids? As I said, they probably looked pretty foolish at the outset lugging around all this extra oil. What are you doing? Why are you wasting your time and money on spare oil? It’s similar to those who ask, why are you wasting your time at church when you can sleep in, or watch football preview shows? Why are you wasting your money by giving 10% of it away to the church, when you could use that 10% to buy more of the things you want? There is often criticism of being over-prepared, but some things are worth taking with the utmost seriousness. The bridegroom’s arrival is to be taken very seriously, and the wise bridesmaids know that. They know that he’s coming, they just don’t know when. And they are not going to miss this banquet for anything. They are going to make sure they are ready when the invitation comes. The foolish cannot say the same.
Jesus uses the example of preparing extra oil for the lamps as a symbol for preparation, but it was the attitude of those bridesmaids that made them foolish. You see, it’s not a story about what we prepare or store up, or what we bring to the event. This isn’t a call to “be prepared,” to make sure you’re covering yourself with good, holy thoughts and deeds. It’s not a warning to make sure that you’re not caught with your hand in the cookie jar when Christ comes again. It’s not just about the preparation itself, the works we do or the things we say.
This parable is about an attitude of expectancy. It’s a parable about admitting our own limitations. It’s a parable about humility, about not being so arrogant as to think we have the bridegroom’s schedule figured out. It’s a parable about taking Christ’s second coming seriously. What requires more preparation than feasting at Christ’s heavenly banquet?
Christ is our bridegroom, and we cannot predict when Christ will come again. We have no way of knowing. We are not in control of the bridegroom’s schedule, so we can’t pretend like we’ve solved a mystery that is not meant to be solved. And we can’t act like it’s no big deal. All we know is that Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead,” as our Apostles’ Creed says. We do not know when that time will come. We don’t know when Christ will come, we just know he’ll be here sometime. We can’t predict it, we can’t know for sure, and we mustn’t pretend like we have it figured out. We must be willing to admit that we don’t know everything – that God only knows when the church’s bridegroom, Christ, will come again.
We must await with eager anticipation, our lamps trimmed and burning. We must have enough oil of faith stored up that we can wait as long as it takes. We must be prepared for the long haul, even if Christ comes before this service is over. We must be prepared for everything, because when it comes down to it, we don’t really know anything. May Christ come again when the time is right, and may we be prepared when that day comes, without being so arrogant as to think we know when that day will come, or that Christ will have mercy on those who do not take it seriously. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For those of you that don’t know, a heritage day service usually includes the pastor dressing up like a circuit rider. Circuit riders were Methodist preachers in 18th century America who rode on horseback from town to town, visiting the churches in his “circuit” on Sundays throughout the year. Well, on this heritage Sunday I was at, the church’s pastor dressed up like a circuit rider and rode in on a horse. And they staged it just like old times. The congregation was gathered on the lawn, singing hymns a cappella until the preacher came. “So when will the preacher be here?” I asked the woman next to me. “I don’t know. Sometime after 10:00, they say. He’ll get here when he gets here.”
This was really the full experience. We were all kinda in the dark about when the preacher would be here. We had a general idea, but I guess horses are harder to predict time-wise than our fancy cars. So here we were, pretending like we’re in 18th century America, waiting for the preacher to get there so we could have this dang worship service. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. We didn’t know when he’d come. We knew he’d get there…we just didn’t know when. And people used to do this every week. It drove me crazy after 10 minutes of waiting.
I was inside, in a classroom above the chapel. It was already 10 minutes into our contextual education class in seminary, and neither of our professors had shown up. One had already told us he wouldn’t be there this week, but the other one was supposed to lead the class. His name was Raphael Warnock, the pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Dr. Warnock usually was late, but not this late. So the minutes kept ticking away into our class period, and we started the talk that all students have when these things happen. “Where’s the professor? We’ll have to invoke the 15 minute rule soon.” For those of you that don’t know, the 15 minute rule is an unwritten but widely known rule that if your professor doesn’t show up in the first 15 minutes of class, then the students are allowed to leave without getting in trouble. I was there once when we used it in college. It’s a risky thing. Well here we are, seminary students – the most ethical and honest people you can find, right? No, we’re invoking the 15 minute rule on Dr. Warnock. Who cares that he preaches from the same pulpit Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. both preached from? Who cares if he’s an internationally known preacher? He’s 15 minutes late, we don’t know when he’ll be here – if he comes at all. We knew he’d come, we just didn’t know when.
I was sitting in my living room, waiting. I had things to do, but I couldn’t leave because the Comcast guy was supposed to come and hook up our new service between 9 and 1. Oh, the cable guys. Everyone else makes appointments, but they give you a 4 hour range that you have to wait for them to show. You’re a prisoner in your own house, waiting for the cable guy, not knowing when he’ll show up. I knew the Comcast guy was coming to my house, I just didn’t know when.
In this parable of the ten bridesmaids, they knew the groom was coming, they just didn’t know when. They knew he’d come and invite them into the wedding, they just didn’t know when. So they waited with their lamps until he came. And when he came, some were gone because they had run out of oil.
How did this happen? As I read this parable, this first century oil crisis, I try to imagine the argument that broke out before they left with their lamps. Half the women are taking backup oil, just to be safe. We don’t know how long we’ll be waiting, they say as they grab their reserves. The other half of the women aren’t. It’s usually not that long, We’ll have enough. A backup flask of oil is heavy and bulky and we don’t want to carry it with us. We don’t want to look like over-prepared fools, weighed down with more than we need.
Any experienced hiker will tell you to be prepared, but that it’s foolish to be over-prepared. You don’t have the room in your pack to be over-prepared. You have to be lean and mean, or you’ll be the fool who brought a jacket and a sweatshirt, the fool who brought 3 kinds of sunscreen, the fool who brought backup hiking boots just in case they need them. And you’ll be the tired, slow fool that now has to carry all of it.
So who’s foolish and who’s wise? Is it foolish to be over-prepared, or foolish to be under-prepared? You see, the distinction between foolish and wise comes down to bringing extra oil or not. And at first, you can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, bringing extra oil “just in case” may turn out to look wise. But if the bridegroom comes quickly, you might look foolish. And to forego the backup oil can look wise if the bridegroom comes quickly, but if he doesn’t you’ll end up appearing foolish. It’s all about the timing of the bridegroom’s arrival. Basically, no matter when the groom comes, someone’s going to look foolish. So who actually is foolish?
You see, the mistake of the foolish bridesmaids was not falling asleep. Even the wise, over-prepared bridesmaids slept. The foolish bridesmaids were the ones who ran out of oil. Why did they end up foolish? It’s because they didn’t have enough oil of their own, and they had to run around town trying to buy oil at midnight, when obviously no merchants would be open. See what happens when you depend on foreign oil? You end up missing the wedding feast – you end up looking foolish.
So these bridesmaids looked foolish running around in search of more oil, but it wasn’t just their lack of oil that made them foolish. It was the motivation behind their lack of oil. It was foolish of them to think they knew when the bridegroom was coming. It was foolish to try to predict something so unpredictable and out of their control. The wise bridesmaids were the ones smart enough to know what they didn’t know. They were the ones that admitted, “We know he’s coming, we just don’t know when.” Meanwhile the foolish ones acted in their preparation as if they could predict that he wouldn’t be delayed that long. In an act of arrogance, they acted as if they knew what would happen, as if they knew when that bridegroom would show up. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t be certain. It wasn’t a guarantee that he’d show up quickly.
In telling the parable, Jesus says that the bridegroom was delayed. Whether it was a flat tire, or having to change shirts because he got a stain on it, or what, he arrived later than expected. And the foolish women were revealed – the ones who weren’t ready for the unexpected. The ones who were too arrogant to admit that they didn’t know for sure what would happen. The ones who pretended like they knew when he was coming, when in reality they didn’t. When they set out without extra oil, it was an act of arrogance – an act of presuming to know what they did not actually know. And this is what made them foolish.
Just as I was on that church lawn, in that classroom, and in my living room, all the bridesmaids knew the groom was coming, they just didn’t know when. Half of them admitted that, but the other half were too foolish to admit they didn’t know everything.
You see, the foolish women were the ones who just didn’t take the event seriously enough. Here is a wedding feast, one of the grandest occasions there is, and they’re not treating it like it’s any big deal. So while you can make an argument for either group of bridesmaids being the foolish ones, we see that the truly foolish are those who do not take the event of the bridegroom’s coming seriously.
And what of the wise bridesmaids? As I said, they probably looked pretty foolish at the outset lugging around all this extra oil. What are you doing? Why are you wasting your time and money on spare oil? It’s similar to those who ask, why are you wasting your time at church when you can sleep in, or watch football preview shows? Why are you wasting your money by giving 10% of it away to the church, when you could use that 10% to buy more of the things you want? There is often criticism of being over-prepared, but some things are worth taking with the utmost seriousness. The bridegroom’s arrival is to be taken very seriously, and the wise bridesmaids know that. They know that he’s coming, they just don’t know when. And they are not going to miss this banquet for anything. They are going to make sure they are ready when the invitation comes. The foolish cannot say the same.
Jesus uses the example of preparing extra oil for the lamps as a symbol for preparation, but it was the attitude of those bridesmaids that made them foolish. You see, it’s not a story about what we prepare or store up, or what we bring to the event. This isn’t a call to “be prepared,” to make sure you’re covering yourself with good, holy thoughts and deeds. It’s not a warning to make sure that you’re not caught with your hand in the cookie jar when Christ comes again. It’s not just about the preparation itself, the works we do or the things we say.
This parable is about an attitude of expectancy. It’s a parable about admitting our own limitations. It’s a parable about humility, about not being so arrogant as to think we have the bridegroom’s schedule figured out. It’s a parable about taking Christ’s second coming seriously. What requires more preparation than feasting at Christ’s heavenly banquet?
Christ is our bridegroom, and we cannot predict when Christ will come again. We have no way of knowing. We are not in control of the bridegroom’s schedule, so we can’t pretend like we’ve solved a mystery that is not meant to be solved. And we can’t act like it’s no big deal. All we know is that Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead,” as our Apostles’ Creed says. We do not know when that time will come. We don’t know when Christ will come, we just know he’ll be here sometime. We can’t predict it, we can’t know for sure, and we mustn’t pretend like we have it figured out. We must be willing to admit that we don’t know everything – that God only knows when the church’s bridegroom, Christ, will come again.
We must await with eager anticipation, our lamps trimmed and burning. We must have enough oil of faith stored up that we can wait as long as it takes. We must be prepared for the long haul, even if Christ comes before this service is over. We must be prepared for everything, because when it comes down to it, we don’t really know anything. May Christ come again when the time is right, and may we be prepared when that day comes, without being so arrogant as to think we know when that day will come, or that Christ will have mercy on those who do not take it seriously. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Steal Away To Jesus
Over the weekend, this happened. Not knowing many details, such as whether the man was acting in threatening or dangerous ways, it is difficult to fully comment on it. However, it made me wonder how, as a pastor, I would react in such a situation.
If it was obvious this man was a danger to those around him, then the congregation's efforts to contain him seemed like the correct response. However, my hope is that getting the police involved was for safety reasons rather than because this man stole some body of Christ wafers. There's nothing inherently "un-Christian" or sacreligous about wanting to be fed by the sacrament of Holy Communion, even if it is misunderstood as a "snack time" rather than an outward and visible sign of the grace of God freely given to us.
If the man was in fact just hungry, and not endangering those around him with threatening behavior, then I would not have held him down or let others do so. I would have made sure there was still enough of the elements for everyone else, tried to calm him down enough to finish the service, then taken him into my office for counsel and to help him find food. I'd make it clear to him that whatever communion is, it is not "free snack time." Then I'd make sure his immediate needs were met.
Now, this is not meant as a condemnation of what this congregation did. The fact that this was a Catholic church cannot be overlooked. Their theology of the sacrament of Holy Communion differs from my own Wesleyan theology. They consider the elements to be the body and blood of Christ in a way different than I, so to them this man was acting irreverently towards Jesus Christ our Lord. In their mind, he was committing a monumental transgression, and they responded according to their theology, whether they realized it or not.
Still, the image of this man stealing the wafers, desperately hungering for that which is the body of Christ, is a powerful one. What if we approached the table with such passion and desire to partake of Holy Communion, even if we misunderstood and tried to "take" communion rather than receive it? What if we desired Christ so fervently that we were willing to risk being held down, risk being arrested?
If it was obvious this man was a danger to those around him, then the congregation's efforts to contain him seemed like the correct response. However, my hope is that getting the police involved was for safety reasons rather than because this man stole some body of Christ wafers. There's nothing inherently "un-Christian" or sacreligous about wanting to be fed by the sacrament of Holy Communion, even if it is misunderstood as a "snack time" rather than an outward and visible sign of the grace of God freely given to us.
If the man was in fact just hungry, and not endangering those around him with threatening behavior, then I would not have held him down or let others do so. I would have made sure there was still enough of the elements for everyone else, tried to calm him down enough to finish the service, then taken him into my office for counsel and to help him find food. I'd make it clear to him that whatever communion is, it is not "free snack time." Then I'd make sure his immediate needs were met.
Now, this is not meant as a condemnation of what this congregation did. The fact that this was a Catholic church cannot be overlooked. Their theology of the sacrament of Holy Communion differs from my own Wesleyan theology. They consider the elements to be the body and blood of Christ in a way different than I, so to them this man was acting irreverently towards Jesus Christ our Lord. In their mind, he was committing a monumental transgression, and they responded according to their theology, whether they realized it or not.
Still, the image of this man stealing the wafers, desperately hungering for that which is the body of Christ, is a powerful one. What if we approached the table with such passion and desire to partake of Holy Communion, even if we misunderstood and tried to "take" communion rather than receive it? What if we desired Christ so fervently that we were willing to risk being held down, risk being arrested?
Friday, November 7, 2008
Whispers from the Sunset
Yesterday was one of those days. My week had been cruising along, I had very little on my plate and a lot of time to do it, getting ahead on some things. Then, as often happens in this vocation, in the blink of an eye my week went out and got all Carrie Underwood crazy on me.
So there I was, after a morning of post-charge conference organization, preparing for worship, and writing a sermon; after an afternoon of home visitation and hospital visitation. I was driving back to town from the hospital, hoping to squeeze in a couple hours of funeral prep for Saturday before visiting with the grieving family at the viewing and then meeting with a member of our church wanting to get married but have the previous pastor come back to do the ceremony. It was quite a day, and this half hour drive was the calmest point of the day -- even with being held up on the back roads which were getting paved in the middle of "rush hour."
The drive from Greensburg to West Newton is a beautiful drive. The rolling hills offer magnificent views of the countryside in every direction. As I was driving home, I saw several different stages of the sunset. Every few minutes I'd get to a new vantage point, and it was starkly different than the last -- the colors, the angle of the rays, and the illuminated scenery kept surprising me around every bend. It was spectacular.
In this gorgeous sunset, I felt God speaking to me. It was as if the sunset was placed there, just for me, to remind me of the awesome glory and power of our Creator. God was showing me how wonderful life could be, even on a day when inside, I was throwing a pity party for myself because of having to "be there" for all these people. Why can't these needs for pastoral care be spaced out?
"Here's a gift for you, my son," God was saying. "It's to remind you that your work today is my work. It is to remind you that I am so wonderful and awesome and powerful that even when you're feeling sorry for yourself, even when you're tired and would rather relax than provide care for my children, I will lift you up and empower you.
"But most of all," God seemed to say, "this sunset is a reminder that it's not about you or your needs. It's about people who are having a far more hectic day than you, and need their own sunset to calm them just as this one is calming you. Go, be that sunset for others tonight, and remember that my awesome power is at work in you in these moments."
Sometimes, we just need a beautiful sunset to stop us in our tracks and remind us that it's alright, that God's got our back. Sometimes we need sunsets to whisper that God loves us and will never leave us. To God be all glory, now and forever. Amen.
So there I was, after a morning of post-charge conference organization, preparing for worship, and writing a sermon; after an afternoon of home visitation and hospital visitation. I was driving back to town from the hospital, hoping to squeeze in a couple hours of funeral prep for Saturday before visiting with the grieving family at the viewing and then meeting with a member of our church wanting to get married but have the previous pastor come back to do the ceremony. It was quite a day, and this half hour drive was the calmest point of the day -- even with being held up on the back roads which were getting paved in the middle of "rush hour."
The drive from Greensburg to West Newton is a beautiful drive. The rolling hills offer magnificent views of the countryside in every direction. As I was driving home, I saw several different stages of the sunset. Every few minutes I'd get to a new vantage point, and it was starkly different than the last -- the colors, the angle of the rays, and the illuminated scenery kept surprising me around every bend. It was spectacular.
In this gorgeous sunset, I felt God speaking to me. It was as if the sunset was placed there, just for me, to remind me of the awesome glory and power of our Creator. God was showing me how wonderful life could be, even on a day when inside, I was throwing a pity party for myself because of having to "be there" for all these people. Why can't these needs for pastoral care be spaced out?
"Here's a gift for you, my son," God was saying. "It's to remind you that your work today is my work. It is to remind you that I am so wonderful and awesome and powerful that even when you're feeling sorry for yourself, even when you're tired and would rather relax than provide care for my children, I will lift you up and empower you.
"But most of all," God seemed to say, "this sunset is a reminder that it's not about you or your needs. It's about people who are having a far more hectic day than you, and need their own sunset to calm them just as this one is calming you. Go, be that sunset for others tonight, and remember that my awesome power is at work in you in these moments."
Sometimes, we just need a beautiful sunset to stop us in our tracks and remind us that it's alright, that God's got our back. Sometimes we need sunsets to whisper that God loves us and will never leave us. To God be all glory, now and forever. Amen.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Adventures in Announcing
I'm watching World Series Game 5: Part Deux right now. I'm rooting for the Phillies, mainly because I don't want to have to listen to Joe Buck any more than I have to. He's such a terrible announcer. At least he's paired with Tim McCarver for these games, so he has someone to compete with over the world's worst announcer award. Sports announcers are so annoying sometimes. Here are some ways they (and their friends, sports columnists) butcher the English language:
1. Referring to injuries by the body part injured. Example: "Willie Parker is out with a knee." No, Willie is not out with a knee. There are 52 other guys with not one, but 2 knees, and they're not sitting out. Parker is out with a knee injury. Is it really that time consuming to add the word "injury" at the end of your sentence?
2. Keys to the game. They usually include obvious statements, like, "To win, the Chiefs must avoid penalties," or "Keys to the game for the Phillies: Get a solid pitching performance." I think generally, the keys to winning every game in every sport are the same: limit mistakes, get solid performances, and make big plays without letting your opponent make big plays. All other "keys to the game" derive from these.
3. Making up new meanings for words. In World Series Game 5: Part One, Joe Buck decided that sliding on wet infield dirt could be playfully described as hydroplaning. It was mildly witty when he used it the first time. But then he became obsessed with this word and spent 3 innings explaining any act of sliding as "hydroplaning," as if the words were interchangeable. Hey Joe, they're not. Hydroplaning is done while driving...in cars. When Jimmy Rollins slides into second, he's not hydroplaning into second...he's sliding into second.
4. Misunderstanding the meanings of words. The two most misunderstood words in sports announcing are "literally" and "infamous." Literally is now apparently a way of emphasizing and embellishing rather than describing what actually happened in reality. During the Olympics, I heard an announcer say that a diver "literally fell apart" on a poor dive. However, when she emerged from the pool, she was still in one piece. Infamous is also used in the wrong way. Most announcers (nay, most people) think infamous is just a more unusual way of saying famous. One example may be, "Andruw Jones is infamous for all his spectacular diving defensive plays in centerfield." In reality, Andruw Jones is famous for his defensive highlights. Andruw Jones is infamous for signing a huge contract with the LA Dodgers, then playing only 75 games while hitting .158. One Fifty Eight!
5. Pulling a 7-3. Paul Farmer, a medical missionary in Haiti, popularized this phrase in the book written about his work, Mountains Beyond Mountains. Farmer says a 7-3 is when someone uses 7 words when 3 will do. In Tuesday's paper, Ron Cook wrote this line about Sunday's Steelers game: "I'm not sure Holmes' absence wasn't the No. 1 reason the Steelers lost." When I have to read your sentence 3 times to fully understand your point, you no longer deserve to be a sports columnist. Why couldn't you just say this instead: "Holmes absence was the prime reason the Steelers lost." If you're not sure is wasn't, then are you sure that it was? I really can't tell. Please help me with this.
6. Talking over one another. I'm not sure this isn't the main reason why I am possibly not looking forward to the Steelers game that isn't being played on a day other than Monday, Nov. 3. I hate the MNF crew, because they are as incomprehensible as all the Sunday afternoon pregame shows. You know the premise: 3 or more guys shouting at the same time, all trying to make their point louder than the other, so that all you hear is "LOUD NOISES!" "I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!" I'll probably mute my TV again this coming Monday.
I often say I could coach the Pittsburgh Pirates. But when it comes down to it, I'd probably do a worse job than anyone who has except Lloyd McClendon. However, when I hear announcers and read columnists, I'm usually convinced I could do their job.
1. Referring to injuries by the body part injured. Example: "Willie Parker is out with a knee." No, Willie is not out with a knee. There are 52 other guys with not one, but 2 knees, and they're not sitting out. Parker is out with a knee injury. Is it really that time consuming to add the word "injury" at the end of your sentence?
2. Keys to the game. They usually include obvious statements, like, "To win, the Chiefs must avoid penalties," or "Keys to the game for the Phillies: Get a solid pitching performance." I think generally, the keys to winning every game in every sport are the same: limit mistakes, get solid performances, and make big plays without letting your opponent make big plays. All other "keys to the game" derive from these.
3. Making up new meanings for words. In World Series Game 5: Part One, Joe Buck decided that sliding on wet infield dirt could be playfully described as hydroplaning. It was mildly witty when he used it the first time. But then he became obsessed with this word and spent 3 innings explaining any act of sliding as "hydroplaning," as if the words were interchangeable. Hey Joe, they're not. Hydroplaning is done while driving...in cars. When Jimmy Rollins slides into second, he's not hydroplaning into second...he's sliding into second.
4. Misunderstanding the meanings of words. The two most misunderstood words in sports announcing are "literally" and "infamous." Literally is now apparently a way of emphasizing and embellishing rather than describing what actually happened in reality. During the Olympics, I heard an announcer say that a diver "literally fell apart" on a poor dive. However, when she emerged from the pool, she was still in one piece. Infamous is also used in the wrong way. Most announcers (nay, most people) think infamous is just a more unusual way of saying famous. One example may be, "Andruw Jones is infamous for all his spectacular diving defensive plays in centerfield." In reality, Andruw Jones is famous for his defensive highlights. Andruw Jones is infamous for signing a huge contract with the LA Dodgers, then playing only 75 games while hitting .158. One Fifty Eight!
5. Pulling a 7-3. Paul Farmer, a medical missionary in Haiti, popularized this phrase in the book written about his work, Mountains Beyond Mountains. Farmer says a 7-3 is when someone uses 7 words when 3 will do. In Tuesday's paper, Ron Cook wrote this line about Sunday's Steelers game: "I'm not sure Holmes' absence wasn't the No. 1 reason the Steelers lost." When I have to read your sentence 3 times to fully understand your point, you no longer deserve to be a sports columnist. Why couldn't you just say this instead: "Holmes absence was the prime reason the Steelers lost." If you're not sure is wasn't, then are you sure that it was? I really can't tell. Please help me with this.
6. Talking over one another. I'm not sure this isn't the main reason why I am possibly not looking forward to the Steelers game that isn't being played on a day other than Monday, Nov. 3. I hate the MNF crew, because they are as incomprehensible as all the Sunday afternoon pregame shows. You know the premise: 3 or more guys shouting at the same time, all trying to make their point louder than the other, so that all you hear is "LOUD NOISES!" "I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!" I'll probably mute my TV again this coming Monday.
I often say I could coach the Pittsburgh Pirates. But when it comes down to it, I'd probably do a worse job than anyone who has except Lloyd McClendon. However, when I hear announcers and read columnists, I'm usually convinced I could do their job.
Monday, October 27, 2008
A New Kind of Love
In Jesus’ day, there were two political camps within the church. You may have heard of them: the Pharisees vs. the Sadducees. Both had strong followings; both knew they were right and the other group was wrong. It was red state vs. blue state, first century style. And as the rebellion heats up, they want to cut down the leader of this new ideology being spread. The Sadducees and Pharisees agree on at least one thing: Jesus must be taken care of. We need to turn his supporters on each other. We need to trap him and get him to say something that will divide his followers. Both try, and fail. And then, as the sun is fading on “Stump Jesus Day” at the temple, the Pharisees take one last shot at Jesus.
A hot-shot lawyer speaks up. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? You see, this lawyer knew that he had Jesus trapped. He was forced to choose from 613 laws: some were deemed moral laws, and others were deemed ritual laws. If he chose one type of law over another, he’d lose half of his support. But he had to choose: ritual law, or moral law?
Well, as he does time and time again in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus does not take the bait. He outplays, outwits, and outlasts these religious leaders. He says that there are not one, but two commandments that are equally the greatest. First, we must love God – ritual law. Second, we must love neighbor – moral law. The love commandments, as they are often called, are Jesus’ way of preaching a bipartisan message, one that satisfies everyone. But he does bend the rules, doesn’t he? After all, one of these things must be more important than the other.
But Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, does not cheat. In fact, what is often called the love commandments is actually but one commandment for Jesus. He yokes these two commandments together when he says the second one is like it. Here the words he uses mean that the second one is the same as the first, is equal to the first. Loving neighbor does not merely follow loving God, or turn out as the second best commandment. No, loving God and loving neighbor are one in the same commandment.
Why are these two commandments yoked together by Jesus? Why are they equal? How are they equal? Are they separate but equal? Does one take precedence over another based on the situation?
In bringing these two commandments together in this teaching moment, Jesus shows us that loving God and loving neighbor are intricately related to each other. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, knows that neither of these commandments are possible without the presence of the other. One cannot love God unless one loves their neighbor. And one cannot love their neighbor unless they love God. Loving God and loving neighbor are woven together so tight that it often is hard to distinguish one from the other. And it is impossible to have one without the other.
Retired United Methodist Bishop and a former professor of mine, Woodie White, once said, “Without personal holiness, there can be no social holiness. And without social holiness, there can be no personal holiness.” A profound statement by a very wise man – one of the wisest people I know. You see, Bishop White realizes that you can’t love God unless you love your neighbor. And you can’t love your neighbor unless you love God.
In order to love other people, we have to love God. Spending time in a relationship with God prepares us for loving others. It provides both purpose and foundation from which we can love our neighbors. It’s as if we are empty vessels. We love God by coming to worship on Sunday morning, by spending time in devotion and in prayer, by absorbing God’s love through all that is beautiful and true in the world, by experiencing a connection with the one who creates. We spend time loving God because it reminds us that God first loved us. Let me say that again: We spend time loving God because it reminds us that God first loved us. And when we remember this truth, we the empty vessels become filled with God’s love. We become so full that we can’t help but let love overflow with us. We can’t help but flow from our place of personal holiness – flow out into a world desperately in need of acts of love. My friends, this is why we must love God before we love other people – because we need God’s love of us to be the foundation and purpose for loving others. We need God to fill us up so that we can spread that love among our neighbors.
“Pastor,” you may ask, “how is this true? Aren’t there kind, loving people out there who have no relationship with God?” Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean that loving other people is wholly separate from loving God. In fact, when you love someone else, you love God. The very first chapter of Scripture teaches us that we humans are made in God’s image. And if we and our neighbors are made in God’s image – and we and our neighbors are – then to love our neighbor is to love God. By loving God’s creation, God’s beloved children – that is, our neighbors – we love God. We cannot help but love God when we love others. Loving others is intricately tied up with loving God. Without personal holiness, there is no social holiness.
Similarly, we cannot love God unless we love our neighbors. There’s a story of two monks traveling along a dirt road. As they came upon a large, muddy puddle stretching across the entire road, they met a woman there also traveling the road. She had stopped because she was trying to figure out a way to get across the puddle without getting her dress dirty. The two monks, as part of their religious order, were not permitted to touch women at all. It was a good rule, a rule that kept them from being tempted to be led astray from their vow of celibacy. Well, when they heard the woman’s dilemma, one of the monks picked the woman up, carried her across the puddle, dirtying his own robe, and set her down. She thanked him, and the two monks went on their way ahead of the woman.
After several hours of silence, the monk who had watched his companion break one of their sacred rules finally spoke. He said, “Brother, you know that we are not allowed to touch women. Why then did you carry that woman across the puddle back there?” He replied, “Brother, I saw a need and I met it. Back at the puddle I broke our rule of faith, but when I walked through the puddle, for the first time I truly knew what it meant to love as God loves.”
What people with puddles to cross have you encountered recently? What did you do in response? Did you hold fast to the notion that our love of God is not related to loving puddle people? Or did you let love rule the situation, finding that in loving another, you encountered God? You see, loving our neighbors, loving puddle people, is one of many ways that God provides for us to connect with God. Loving our neighbors allows us to connect with the God who breathes life into all people through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. Just as God created everyone in God’s image, so too God breathes life into all beings. When we make real, loving connections with our brothers and sisters of the world, we experience the breath of the Holy Spirit afresh and anew.
I’ve had several people tell me that they think they don’t have to join a church to be a Christian. And you know, to an extent, that’s true. But saying that you can be a Christian without joining a community of faith is like saying I can eat 3 meals a day without using anything but my microwave. Technically, I could eat TV dinners all the time – just nuke them in my microwave. Who needs an oven? But do I really want to give up my stove or oven in favor of a microwave-only lifestyle? By giving that up, I’m giving up things I really love to eat. I’m giving up scrambled eggs and pancakes on the stove. I’m giving up cookies and cakes from the oven. I’m giving up casseroles, stir fry, pasta, and chicken – not to mention giving up all the wonderful things I could cook on the grill! The point is, I could live on only one mode of cooking rather than the full arsenal of culinary tools. But it wouldn’t give me variety, and it would limit the types of things I eat. It wouldn’t be that enjoyable. And I suppose one could live on only one mode of connecting with God – personal prayer or devotions in the comfort of one’s own home. But being a Christian without spending time loving one’s neighbors is like making all your meals with only a microwave – limited in scope and variety, and not very enjoyable. Over time, the microwaved meals feel pretty unfulfilling, pretty empty inside. Without social holiness, there can be no personal holiness.
Personal and social holiness act in a cyclical manner. Love of God and love of neighbor act in a cyclical manner. When we draw into a deeper love with God, we become transformed into people who can’t help but spread love among our neighbors. And when we act out in love, we draw closer to the God who dwells in every living thing. As we draw closer in love to God, we then become equipped to love neighbor even more. And on it goes, these two commandments mutually supporting each other in an intricate relationship.
On this interplay hangs all the law and prophets, Jesus says. The lawyer wants to know which commandment, which rule, is most important to follow. And Jesus tells him that the value of love far exceeds and far surpasses any law that we try to follow. You see, sometimes we get so caught up in our rules and regulations that we forget the greatest commandment: Love God, and love one another. We know this, but it comes up so often in Scripture because we’re in constant need of reminding. Love God, love one another. This is more important than any other thing. Love God, love one another. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A hot-shot lawyer speaks up. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? You see, this lawyer knew that he had Jesus trapped. He was forced to choose from 613 laws: some were deemed moral laws, and others were deemed ritual laws. If he chose one type of law over another, he’d lose half of his support. But he had to choose: ritual law, or moral law?
Well, as he does time and time again in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus does not take the bait. He outplays, outwits, and outlasts these religious leaders. He says that there are not one, but two commandments that are equally the greatest. First, we must love God – ritual law. Second, we must love neighbor – moral law. The love commandments, as they are often called, are Jesus’ way of preaching a bipartisan message, one that satisfies everyone. But he does bend the rules, doesn’t he? After all, one of these things must be more important than the other.
But Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, does not cheat. In fact, what is often called the love commandments is actually but one commandment for Jesus. He yokes these two commandments together when he says the second one is like it. Here the words he uses mean that the second one is the same as the first, is equal to the first. Loving neighbor does not merely follow loving God, or turn out as the second best commandment. No, loving God and loving neighbor are one in the same commandment.
Why are these two commandments yoked together by Jesus? Why are they equal? How are they equal? Are they separate but equal? Does one take precedence over another based on the situation?
In bringing these two commandments together in this teaching moment, Jesus shows us that loving God and loving neighbor are intricately related to each other. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, knows that neither of these commandments are possible without the presence of the other. One cannot love God unless one loves their neighbor. And one cannot love their neighbor unless they love God. Loving God and loving neighbor are woven together so tight that it often is hard to distinguish one from the other. And it is impossible to have one without the other.
Retired United Methodist Bishop and a former professor of mine, Woodie White, once said, “Without personal holiness, there can be no social holiness. And without social holiness, there can be no personal holiness.” A profound statement by a very wise man – one of the wisest people I know. You see, Bishop White realizes that you can’t love God unless you love your neighbor. And you can’t love your neighbor unless you love God.
In order to love other people, we have to love God. Spending time in a relationship with God prepares us for loving others. It provides both purpose and foundation from which we can love our neighbors. It’s as if we are empty vessels. We love God by coming to worship on Sunday morning, by spending time in devotion and in prayer, by absorbing God’s love through all that is beautiful and true in the world, by experiencing a connection with the one who creates. We spend time loving God because it reminds us that God first loved us. Let me say that again: We spend time loving God because it reminds us that God first loved us. And when we remember this truth, we the empty vessels become filled with God’s love. We become so full that we can’t help but let love overflow with us. We can’t help but flow from our place of personal holiness – flow out into a world desperately in need of acts of love. My friends, this is why we must love God before we love other people – because we need God’s love of us to be the foundation and purpose for loving others. We need God to fill us up so that we can spread that love among our neighbors.
“Pastor,” you may ask, “how is this true? Aren’t there kind, loving people out there who have no relationship with God?” Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean that loving other people is wholly separate from loving God. In fact, when you love someone else, you love God. The very first chapter of Scripture teaches us that we humans are made in God’s image. And if we and our neighbors are made in God’s image – and we and our neighbors are – then to love our neighbor is to love God. By loving God’s creation, God’s beloved children – that is, our neighbors – we love God. We cannot help but love God when we love others. Loving others is intricately tied up with loving God. Without personal holiness, there is no social holiness.
Similarly, we cannot love God unless we love our neighbors. There’s a story of two monks traveling along a dirt road. As they came upon a large, muddy puddle stretching across the entire road, they met a woman there also traveling the road. She had stopped because she was trying to figure out a way to get across the puddle without getting her dress dirty. The two monks, as part of their religious order, were not permitted to touch women at all. It was a good rule, a rule that kept them from being tempted to be led astray from their vow of celibacy. Well, when they heard the woman’s dilemma, one of the monks picked the woman up, carried her across the puddle, dirtying his own robe, and set her down. She thanked him, and the two monks went on their way ahead of the woman.
After several hours of silence, the monk who had watched his companion break one of their sacred rules finally spoke. He said, “Brother, you know that we are not allowed to touch women. Why then did you carry that woman across the puddle back there?” He replied, “Brother, I saw a need and I met it. Back at the puddle I broke our rule of faith, but when I walked through the puddle, for the first time I truly knew what it meant to love as God loves.”
What people with puddles to cross have you encountered recently? What did you do in response? Did you hold fast to the notion that our love of God is not related to loving puddle people? Or did you let love rule the situation, finding that in loving another, you encountered God? You see, loving our neighbors, loving puddle people, is one of many ways that God provides for us to connect with God. Loving our neighbors allows us to connect with the God who breathes life into all people through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. Just as God created everyone in God’s image, so too God breathes life into all beings. When we make real, loving connections with our brothers and sisters of the world, we experience the breath of the Holy Spirit afresh and anew.
I’ve had several people tell me that they think they don’t have to join a church to be a Christian. And you know, to an extent, that’s true. But saying that you can be a Christian without joining a community of faith is like saying I can eat 3 meals a day without using anything but my microwave. Technically, I could eat TV dinners all the time – just nuke them in my microwave. Who needs an oven? But do I really want to give up my stove or oven in favor of a microwave-only lifestyle? By giving that up, I’m giving up things I really love to eat. I’m giving up scrambled eggs and pancakes on the stove. I’m giving up cookies and cakes from the oven. I’m giving up casseroles, stir fry, pasta, and chicken – not to mention giving up all the wonderful things I could cook on the grill! The point is, I could live on only one mode of cooking rather than the full arsenal of culinary tools. But it wouldn’t give me variety, and it would limit the types of things I eat. It wouldn’t be that enjoyable. And I suppose one could live on only one mode of connecting with God – personal prayer or devotions in the comfort of one’s own home. But being a Christian without spending time loving one’s neighbors is like making all your meals with only a microwave – limited in scope and variety, and not very enjoyable. Over time, the microwaved meals feel pretty unfulfilling, pretty empty inside. Without social holiness, there can be no personal holiness.
Personal and social holiness act in a cyclical manner. Love of God and love of neighbor act in a cyclical manner. When we draw into a deeper love with God, we become transformed into people who can’t help but spread love among our neighbors. And when we act out in love, we draw closer to the God who dwells in every living thing. As we draw closer in love to God, we then become equipped to love neighbor even more. And on it goes, these two commandments mutually supporting each other in an intricate relationship.
On this interplay hangs all the law and prophets, Jesus says. The lawyer wants to know which commandment, which rule, is most important to follow. And Jesus tells him that the value of love far exceeds and far surpasses any law that we try to follow. You see, sometimes we get so caught up in our rules and regulations that we forget the greatest commandment: Love God, and love one another. We know this, but it comes up so often in Scripture because we’re in constant need of reminding. Love God, love one another. This is more important than any other thing. Love God, love one another. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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