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In Life and In Death They Were Not Divided

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:29:00 +0000

In Life and In Death They Were Not Divided

2 Samuel 1:1, 7-27

It seems like just yesterday we watched Samuel anoint Saul as the first King of Israel and today we read of his demise. What we’ve known from the beginning has come true – Saul was destined for defeat. Frederick Buechner says that Saul had three things going against him from the very beginning: the prophet Samuel – who knew all along that Saul’s kingship would fail; David – the king in waiting who seemed to embody everything that Saul didn’t when it came to honoring God; and the third and worst thing against Saul was himself. In the end we see that, indeed, Saul brought about his own demise. Our scriptures actually offer a couple of different stories as to how Saul died – our text from today says that Saul – wounded from battle and certain of his impending defeat – asked a young Amalekite servant to kill him which the Amalekite agreed to do. Another biblical account states that Saul committed suicide by falling on his own sword. If we had time to read Saul’s entire story in detail we would see how devastating a toll the kingship took on him – how he became paranoid, fearful, isolated; how multiple defeats in battle, his own inability to stand up to Goliath, continually falling short of God’s expectations and his fear that David would kill him ultimately drove him to madness.

It is a heartbreaking tale, really, and even though we knew from the beginning that Saul would meet an untimely and unfortunate end, it is still painful to see it happen. How often have we watched our own leaders – in our government, in our corporations, maybe even in our churches and families – fall like Saul. Leaders who for whatever reason made poor choices and then lied to cover up their mistakes, or leaders for whom the pressure of their responsibilities became a burden too great for them to bear – resulting in mental or physical illness, broken families, corrupt corporations, and most heartbreaking of all – the ultimate decision to take their own life. Power, responsibility, authority; greed, corruption, selfishness – clearly Saul’s story demonstrates for us that these have had the potential to be the downfall of humanity for time without end.

David’s Lament

What is most interesting about our story today, is David’s response to the news that Saul was dead and that Israel had been defeated in battle. You see, Saul and David’s relationship was treacherous to say the least. We all know that the Prophet Samuel went behind Saul’s back and anointed David as the king in waiting while Saul was still alive. News of this obviously spread to Saul and he spent a significant amount of time looking for ways to bring about David’s demise. Saul became paranoid that David might seek to end Saul’s life in an effort to expedite his rise to the throne. What was worse is that everyone who should’ve supported Saul – Saul’s son Jonathan, Saul’s daughter Michal; people throughout the community – turned their loyalties over to David and acknowledged that he would be the next king, the better king. So, on some level, we would expect that David might at least breathe a sigh of relief to hear that Saul has died thus opening the door for David to become the rightful king of Israel. Indeed it seems that this is exactly what the young Amalekite servant thought would happen when he brought the news to David.

Scholar Bob Deffinbaugh notes “The Amalekite comes bearing tragic news of Israel’s defeat, expecting David to look upon the deaths of Saul and Jonathan as a great windfall, an unexpected blessing, which rids him of his enemy (Saul) and his competition (Jonathan), and clears the way for him to become king of Israel. Never in the world would he have expected David to respond as he does. Deeply moved by the news of the death of king Saul and his son, Jonathan, David does not respond with a sigh of relief, grateful that Saul, his enemy, is dead, and pleased to assume his place on the throne in Saul’s place. David grieves greatly, and upon learning that this young man has put Saul to death, he has him executed.”

It seems that – at least for the moment – David doesn’t prioritize power, or greed, or authority. No, he responds out of his grief – heartbroken that the King of Israel has been killed at the hand of this Amalekite messenger, crushed by grief at the knowledge that Jonathan – the one person on earth that was closer to David than any other – has fallen in battle. For David – assuming the throne, reorganizing Israel, or embracing his new power can all wait. Now is the time to mourn. And that is precisely what David does.

The second half of our text today is a lament – a grief poem or song – that David creates in honor of the slain king Saul, his fallen beloved friend Jonathan and a defeated Israel. David doesn’t curse Saul’s name, or recount all of the ways that Saul tried to kill him or detail all the times Saul failed Israel – no David honors Saul’s position as King and hails his death in battle for Israel as an honorable one.

There’s a significant lesson for us to learn from this text today. When all is said and done – responding to our enemies and those we don’t agree with kindness and respect is far superior to responding with animosity and criticism. David had every reason to belittle Saul and condemn his failures as King of Israel. David had every reason to smear Saul’s name by highlighting Saul’s attempts on David’s life, his faithlessness, his madness and paranoia. Indeed that is exactly what the people expected from David – they expected him to gloat, to rise in triumph and take the throne of Israel with haste. David had every reason to slander Saul’s family and to point out Saul and Jonathan’s disconnectedness in life. But David surprised everyone who was watching. David rose above their expectations and responded to this news with honor, dignity and heartfelt emotion.

Ours is a culture where you won’t see this played out very often – at least not in the major news outlets, in our politics, in our culture of dog eat dog corporations, or unfortunately even in our churches and families. The way in which we speak of and to one another drips with hate, animosity, condemnation and insults. We don’t look for common ground, we don’t search for the good in those around us, we don’t respect people for the fact that they’ve taken on difficult roles that we ourselves would never have the strength to do. Just this past week I heard a member of congress from Georgia say on a national new program that he wanted to pour a beer over the Chief Justice’s head for the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act. Now regardless of what you think or believe about this bit of politics – how is it possible that saying such things is an appropriate, mature, or responsible response? Who have we become when those we’ve elected to lead us act like 5 year olds?

I’ll repeat it again: When all is said and done – responding to our enemies and those we don’t agree with kindness and respect is far superior to responding with animosity and criticism. Indeed Jesus called us not only to be kind and respectful to our enemies but to love them, to go the second mile with them, to turn the other cheek for them. When David had every right and reason to drag Saul’s name through the mud, to disparage his kingship for the disaster it was, to highlight all the ways that he would be a better King than Saul could have ever dreamed of – he didn’t. No, instead, he chose to respond in kindness and respect. Is it any wonder that David is called a man after God’s own heart?

This week we will celebrate Independence Day. We will remember and celebrate the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans and we will honor those who have made those freedoms possible for all of us over the past 236 years. You won’t find me saying or doing much for Independence Day in our worship today – you can blame it on my Baptist roots and my inherent belief in the separation of church and state – but I do think that our scripture today has something significant to teach us as we enter into this week of celebration and honor for our country. What a gift it would be to one another, what an honor it would be to the legacy of all of those who have held elected office, or to those who have donned a military uniform, or to all of those who have served and volunteered to protect the freedoms and values that allow us to gather and worship today as we choose if we used this week to speak to one another and about one another with kindness and respect. What would it be like if – for one week - we didn’t speak harshly about our elected officials? What would it feel like to look for the good in those who think or believe or worship differently than us. What would it be like to reach out to our enemies with a helping hand instead of a harsh word? In doing so I am convinced that we can honor both God and country simultaneously this week. Do you think we can do it? If David could speak kindly and honorably about his mortal enemy Saul, I think we can too. May the grace and peace of God be with us as we try.

Resources:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/study-80-percent-army-suicides-start-iraq-war/story?id=15872301#.T-4q4BceO8A

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=6/28/2009&tab=2

http://bible.org/seriespage/what-amalekite-dying-tell-david-2-samuel-11-27

The Lord Does Not See As Mortals See

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:28:00 +0000

The Lord Does Not See As Mortals See

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Father’s Day

I preached my very first sermon, not including those I gave in preaching classes in college and divinity school, on Father’s Day in 2009. I was nervous, to be sure, and I preached on the parable of the Prodigal Son. I adapted part of that sermon to use at the Lenten luncheon earlier this year – so maybe you heard some of it then. Well, anyway, here we are – three years later – and what a difference those few short years make!

Our story today is a far cry from the tale of the Prodigal Son. And if you were here last week when we kicked off our summer sermon series on the life of David and Israel’s journey with a king then you will realize what a difference just a week makes when it comes to the lectionary. Last week we watched as the Israelites demanded that God give them a king – and despite God’s better judgment Samuel anointed Saul as king over the Israelites. Today we discover that Saul has already blown it, God is disappointed and heartsick over the decision to make Saul king and God instructs Samuel to anoint a new king. Is your head spinning yet?

It is helpful to have a little back story as to what has gone wrong with Saul’s monarchy. Not too long after Saul became king, Samuel informed Saul that God wanted him to lead the Israelites into battle with the Amalekites – a tribe of people that had been Israel’s ancient enemy. Per Samuel, God instructed Saul to attack Amalek and leave no survivors – not one woman, not one child, not on man, not one slave, not one cow, sheep, goat, chicken, mouse or cockroach. Samuel was under the impression that God wanted utter and total annihilation. If this makes you uncomfortable, if this rails against all your sensibilities of who you know God to be, if this clashes in the face of all that you believe that Jesus showed us about God – then good for you. It makes me unbelievably uncomfortable too. This merciless, vengeful, violent God is unfathomable to me. I have no real way to make peace with the actions that Samuel instructed Saul to carry out. What I do know is that we have a tendency, as humans, to look for ways to justify our own desires. We want to believe that our choices and our decisions are the right ones, the just ones, and sometimes we find ourselves bending over backwards to get God on our side – when really our actions are an abomination to God’s loving, merciful and holy name. Our own history as a nation is filled with such instances – the way we treated Native Americans in the name of westward expansion; slavery; denying women the right to vote; Jim Crow laws in the south; multiple wars that seemingly bring excessive destruction and very little resolution; and the continued inequality for so many in our country who are perceived to be “different” because of gender, race, religion or sexuality. So perhaps what we see in these stories is Israel looking for a way to justify their own aggression. Who knows? I can’t find a way to make sense of it or to make it sit any better with my soul. But what our text does tell us is that Saul didn’t follow Samuel’s orders.

At first we might be tempted to breathe a sigh of relief – thank goodness Saul was filled with compassion and didn’t carry out Samuel’s orders to wipe out the whole Amalek community – but upon closer examination we see that Saul’s motivation to spare a few Amalekites wasn’t motivated by compassion at all. No, Saul slaughtered every living person – regardless of age or gender – with one exception: the Amalek King. Instead Saul took the Amalek King as a prisoner of war to keep as a trophy of his conquests. And Saul also kept the highest quality of the Amalek livestock to bring home to offer to God as a sacrifice so the Israelites wouldn’t have to offer up their own choice animals for sacrifice. You see, Saul was selfish and arrogant – neither motivated by obedience to God despite the despicable task set before him, nor compassionate towards the innocent lives he had been instructed to take.

Saul kingship was turning out to be the disaster that God had predicted it would be. And our text today tells us that God was sorry that Saul had been made king. Other translations actually say that God repented for making Saul king. Last week we saw God changing God’s mind, this week we read of God repenting – as if God is admitting a mistake, or acknowledging that making Saul king was risk that didn’t pan out. It is an unusual way for us to think about God – maybe it makes us as uncomfortable as the thought of God ordering the destruction of thousands of innocents. What is says to me that is God is fluid, adapting and modifying responses in the moment and in this case – well, this monarchy thing had taken a drastic turn for the worst, right off the bat and God needed to do something to turn things around STAT!

So God takes a deep breath and tells Samuel – ok, we’ve got a mess on our hands and we need to make some changes – so I want you to go to Bethlehem and there I will help you pick out a new king. And, Samuel, panicked at this thought responds, “But God, Saul is still alive. If I go and anoint a new king and Saul hears about it then surely he will kill me.” But God gives Samuel a plausible cover story and send Samuel off on his way.

And here is where the story becomes more familiar to us and where God starts to look again like the God we see in Jesus. God sends Samuel to Jesse’s home and instructs Jesse to bring his sons and attend the sacrifice that Samuel is about to offer. Jesse arrives with his boys in tow and Samuel begins to appraise them – first Eliab – the eldest, handsome and tall – and Samuel things surely this must be the man God has ordained to take Saul’s place, but God says no. And so Samuel assesses the next son, and the next and the next and the next – and God says no, no, no, no. Just as Samuel is about to get frustrated, God reminds him, “Samuel, remember, you are looking for kingly qualities based on the outward appearance of these men. But being tall, or handsome or strong, or wealthy, or powerful, or well-educated or well connected – these don’t make the measure of a man. No,” God says, “While you are looking at their outsides, I am looking at their hearts.” And so Samuel turns to Jesse and says, “Are you sure this is it? You have no other sons?” And Jesse sheepishly admits, “Well, there is one other – David – but he’s just a boy and he’s short and he’s out in the field watching the sheep while we are all here doing mans’ work, surely he can’t be the one whom God calls as king, can he?” But Samuel sends for David anyway. When David enters the room I envision everyone holding their breath as Samuel assessed him. For surely David was handsome and full of life but he was also a man after God’s own heart. Before anyone could think twice Samuel anointed David in the presence of his family and the Spirit of God descended on David like a mighty, rushing wind. Israel’s history was altered yet again.

As I mentioned earlier – this story is just about as far removed from The Prodigal Son parable – a traditional Father’s Day tale - as we can get. With the exception of God – none of the main characters are repenting here and running into the arms of God for forgiveness and reconciliation and God doesn’t appear to be lavishly loving and welcoming. No, this story leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths. Saul is still alive and technically king – and yet his ouster is all but decided; Samuel is put in the precarious position of anointing another king before the other is dead; God ordered the destruction of a whole tribe of innocent people and has readily acknowledged that this whole monarchy thing is off to a disastrous start, and even David’s own father questions God’s judgment when his youngest and least qualified son is handpicked to be the second monarch of Israel. Where is the father’s day message in all of this?

The redeeming moment of this complicated, convoluted story is when God reminds Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart…”

The Lord looks on the heart. Our heavenly Father – our eternal parent – the one who knit us together in our mother’s womb knows our hearts.

By all other measurements we don’t meet expectations. Like Saul – we lack compassion, we are arrogant and motivated by ego and pride; like Samuel we lack confidence in the path God has guided us toward; Like Jesse we judge those around us by their appearance, their strength, their education, their skill set – easily dismissing those who are different, weak, and on the margins; Like David we lack wisdom and experience, we don’t stand as tall as we should, we think we deserve to be left in the fields while the others stand before God.

But God sees through all of that. God sees our potential in the midst of our mistakes, God sees what is beautiful about us despite our scars and deformities, God sees our strength and our abundance in the very places that make us weak and pitiful.

Oh that we might be Fathers/Mothers/Parents to our own children – modeled after God. Oh that we might be Fathers/Mothers/Parents who keep an open mind and are willing to have a change of heart when our children ask us to see the world differently. Oh that we might be Fathers/Mothers/Parents who are able to repent and acknowledge when we’ve made mistakes, when our choices have led us down wrong paths, when we have steered our children in the wrong direction, when we have failed to be as loving as we should, as accepting as we should, as welcoming as we should, as supportive as we should. Oh that we might be Fathers/Mothers/Parents who are willing to take risks – on ourselves, on our children, on our faith – trusting that God is already working in every moment for good. Oh that we might be Fathers/Mothers/Parents who are able to look past what we want our children to be and see them for who they truly are. Oh that we might be Fathers/Mothers/Parents who can see the hearts of our children, who can see the image of God imprinted on their souls, and love them without abandon.

Perhaps your own Father did not live up to the model set for us by God. Perhaps you were not loved for who you were. Perhaps your father was not able to repent when he failed you or your family. Perhaps your father’s expectations of you were far beyond the scope of who you were created to be. My hope for you today is that you might take shelter in the comfort of God’s love. That you might allow God to see into your heart, to see you for who you are and for who you were created to be, and that you might grab ahold of the abundant life that God intends for you.

Perhaps you, as a father, have not yet lived up the standards that God has called us to. Perhaps you have not been able to love your children for who they are. Perhaps you have not been able to repent for letting down your children or your family. Perhaps you are holding your children to expectations far beyond who they were created to be. Perhaps you have a child that you are estranged from and you’ve been waiting for your son or daughter to reach out to you. My hope for you today is that you might allow God to soften your heart. To fill you with abundant, extravagant and unrelenting love and to give you the strength you need to repent, to ask for forgiveness, to start over and to become the father you were intended to be.

And maybe you are sitting out there and you are father-less. Perhaps here is no way for you to reconcile with you father if your relationship was broken, or maybe you continue to grieve the loss of your father who did live up to all the expectations you may have had for him. I hope and pray that you might find comfort and peace knowing that God continues to be your eternal parent even when you own father is gone. And finally, perhaps you aren’t a father at all – maybe you are a mother, or a grandmother, or an aunt or an uncle or a brother – and you carry the responsibility of being a father figure for someone in your life. I pray that God might fill you with the strength you need to model for those in your life the abundant love of God.

Our story for today was complicated and confusing, distasteful and heartbreaking, full of both tragedy and triumph – not unlike our own journey as believers, our own journey as parents, our own journey as humans. May we find the will to seek after God’s face, may we find the strength we need to see into the hearts of those around us, and may we find peace in knowing that God sees our own hearts and love us still. Thanks be to God.

Resources:

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=6/14/2009&tab=2

http://hwallace.unitingchurch.org.au/WebOTcomments/OrdinaryB/Pentecost3.html

http://www.sermonsuite.com/free.php?i=788016571&key=ioltthgXgk86Dkgq

You Get What You Get and You Don’t Throw a Fit

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 23:27:00 +0000

1 Samuel 8:4-20; 11:14-15

You Get What You Get and You Don’t Throw a Fit

When Anderson was 3 years old he had a day-care teacher, Miss Angela, who kept a fully stocked “treasure box” in the classroom. On a particularly good day or at the end of the week the children in the class were allowed to reach into the treasure box and pull out a surprise. Often the toys were small trinkets, or happy meal toys, or stickers, or temporary tattoos or lip balm or something that any 3 year old would love. But Miss Angela had a motto that went along with the treasure box. She would tell the kids, “When you reach into the treasure box you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”

For a while this became a mantra in our house – and on some level it helped head off a tantrum, especially when Anderson was well rested and happy. But – to be honest – none of us do this very well, do we? It’s our human nature to want what we want and to throw a fit if we don’t get it isn’t it?

Our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures today is the first of many stories we are going to look at this summer that demonstrates for us how the Israelites always seemed to think the grass was greener someplace else.

Let me set the stage for you:

After the Israelites had been freed from slavery in Egypt, after they’d wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and after they entered the Promised Land they eventually became numerous enough to organize and govern themselves as autonomous groups of people. The Israelites formed 12 tribes, large extended family groups if you will, based on their connection to twelve sons of Jacob – a forefather of the Jewish faith. For the most part these tribes functioned independently of one another, coming together on occasion when their people were threatened by another nation. They generally governed themselves but were guided by a Judge – a combination prophet, priest and politician - who had been hand-picked by God to lead the people.

At the start today’s story we find that Samuel is the presiding Judge – but he is aging and the people are losing faith in his ability to lead them. What’s worse is that Samuel’s sons – expected to be the God-anointed successors to their father’s role as judge – were miserable excuses for human beings – unethical, unfair, and unfaithful. From the Israelite’s perspective the future – if allowed to stay on this course - looked bleak to say the least.

So the Israelites went to Samuel and basically said, “Listen, Sam – no offense, we know you’ve done your best, but your way of doing things is tired and old fashioned and out-dated – and your sons, well, don’t even get us started on the fiasco that is your sons. You see, we’ve been talking about it for a while now. We even prayed about it and well, we think it’s time for a regime change. We’re not keeping up with the Jones’s if you will. What we need, Sam, is a King – not some religious leader who moonlights as a decision maker – no we need a real King. You know, like all the other nations have. They have it so much better than we do – and all because of their kings. We need someone to govern us, to lead us into battle, not someone who’s just going to tell us to look to the Lord. Can you do that for us, Samuel, please?”

So Samuel being the faithful man of God that he is, takes the Israelites request to God. But you see, Samuel is heartbroken with the Israelites rejection and reframes the issue through his own ego when he prays. “God,” he says, “I’ve got terrible news. The people, your people, God…they don’t like me. I’ve failed them and you somehow. Now they are blaming me for the sins of my sons, they’ve rejected your plan for appointing judges and God…ugh, I’m not quite sure how to say this…oh Lord, they’re asking for a King. A KING of all things can you believe it? They want a king so that they can be more like the pagans. Oh Lord, how did I make such a mess of this?”

And God, with infinite wisdom, reassures Samuel. “Oh Samuel,” The lord says, “It will all be alright. It isn’t you they are rejecting, it’s mean. They think I’ve failed them. Even though I’ve proven my faithfulness to them time and time again they continue to reject me. They are unhappy with the plan that I put into place and maybe they are right. Listen to what they have to say, Samuel. The thing is, Sam, having a King really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Nothing I’ve ever done has made these people happy for long and I know that this will just be one more example of history repeating itself. You know as well as I do, Sam, that a King isn’t going to lead them into battle. No a king is going to recruit their sons and daughter into the army, and is going to hire out their children as servants in the palace. They will become slaves to the kingdom – producing weapons and food – thinking they are ensuring their freedom and security when really all they are doing is selling their souls to the system. You know this, Sam, and I know this…but they don’t know this. And I know they aren’t going to be happy unless I honor what they’ve asked of me. So you go back to them Sam, and tell them that I will give them my blessing as they seek out a king. But warn them about all they stand to lose. Remind them that everything might be swept away when these changes are made.”

So Samuel did as God told him to do. Sam told the people that God had answered their prayer. Shortly thereafter Saul was appointed as king – and everyone rejoiced and praised the Lord for being faithful to the prayers of God’s people.

As I studied and prepared for this message two questions popped up in nearly every resource I consulted. One, why did the Israelites want to abandon the system that God had put into place – why wouldn’t they just be faithful for once? And, two, why did God give in so easily to the Israelites’ request for a king if God knew that it would likely be a disaster?

As for the Israelites throwing a fit over what God had given them – well, I guess we could say that some folks whine and grumble just to be difficult, but the Israelite’s likely had a pretty good reason to be concerned. They were worried about their future and their children’s future. Samuel had been a good leader and had done his best, but his sons were an entirely different story. One scholar notes that a monarchy may have meant a more reliable system of government, allowing for more fairness and possibility than would have been possible under the rule of Samuel’s wayward sons. Regardless of the fact that God had been present and working for good in Israel’s midst since the beginning of time, Israel was never really able to trust God with all their hearts. They always wanted more than what God had given them. They perpetually believed that the grass was absolutely greener someplace else.

I bet we can relate to that, can’t we? In the moment it is hard to see God’s presence. We look around us, we see how much better or different things are for someone else and we beg God to take us in a different direction. Over and over the Israelite’s story models for us how faithful God is to the world and to the people God created and how unfaithful and wayward we are towards the God that is always present, always moving, always working for Good in our lives.

Now as to why God gave in so easily to the Israelite’s plan for a monarchy – well, that’s a trickier question. I mean, we can see from our texts today that God somehow knows that establishing a kingdom will be a disaster for the Israelites. Indeed after God tells Samuel to let the Israelites know they will be given a king, God reminds Sam to make sure he reads them the fine print if you will, the disclaimer that ensure that the Israelites know that this king thing is likely not going to be all its cracked up to be. It’s like watching a drug commercial on TV and thinking, “Oh, that’s exactly the medication I need to fix what ails me, “ and then seeing the list of side-effects at the end of the commercial and realizing that there is a greater chance of dying from the medication than there is if you continuing to suffer with whatever illness you have!

But I think there’s something else going on here. If we take a step back from this text and look at the big picture, what we’ll find is a pretty telling picture of the character of God.

First – God clearly listened to the people and to Samuel’s prayers. God heard them. God understood them. God was thinking about them. Chewing on them. God was exploring solutions and weighing the pros and cons. If you’ve ever felt like you are praying to nothing, if you’ve ever wondered if God hears the cries of the people, this text is a pretty clear example that God does indeed hear, and God responds.

Next – God undoubtedly honors the freedom we have as individuals to choose our own path. In this text we see that God can change God’s mind. We see that our prayers have the ability to change God’s heart in any situation. God isn’t some giant puppeteer sitting up in the cosmos moving us around like puppets against our will. No, God has blessed up with the ability to think critically, the wisdom to choose between multiple options for our lives and God has – in some sense – committed to remain flexible as a result. That’s a tricky way to think about God, isn’t it? We’ve been taught that God is Unchanging, All Knowing, All Powerful – so to see a text like this where God clearly changes, where God gives up some power – well that’s a little hard to comprehend.

I would say that God’s character is certainly unchanging, and that God is infinitely more powerful than we could ever comprehend, and God knows all the possibilities that could ever happen to us in our lives – but that doesn’t mean that God is rigid or inflexible. No, God is relational. God is committed to working with us and through us for good, even if our life choices take us down paths that leave God wishing we’d chosen something different.

It is easy to look at this text and wonder why God even allowed it to happen. If God knew that a monarchy would be such a disaster – then why didn’t God just put down the divine foot and say – un uh, no way, not going to happen. Why didn’t God tell Samuel to return to the people and inform them that they were going to be God’s way or the highway? Well, my inclination is that God loved the Israelites and loves us too much to do that. God values our relationship. God honors our trust in the way God works in our lives. God respects our choices – even our destructive choices. And somehow God is always moving, always working in the midst of the messes we make in our lives for Good.

God knew that establishing a Monarchy for Israel would be problematic and disastrous. God knew that this path would likely lead to war and destruction and eventual enslavement to other nations. It certainly isn’t what God wanted for the beloved people. But God also knew that it wasn’t a lost cause. God knew that God could work in and through the situation to create something redemptive. Because the Israelites requested a monarchy they would eventually find themselves under the rule of King David. And even though David was a mess of a man in and of himself, he is also called a Man after God’s own heart – and through his ancestry a Savior is born – being of the house and lineage of David. Is it because of this very change of plans, it is because God listened to the people and honored their request for a King that God was able to pave the way for the birth of Christ. In essence this pivotal moment in Israelite history opened the door for God to take on flesh and dwell among us.

Does that mean that things were not as bad as God had predicted? Absolutely not! It was just as bad as God had thought it would be and worse. The Israelite Monarchy was one disaster after another. But God was always present. God was always working for good. And God continues to do so with us.

Take heart today, friends, knowing that God hears our prayers. That God looks for ways to honor our requests and God wants what’s best for us, even if we make choices to the contrary. Allow this text to be an encouragement to you. Know that God is bigger than any mess that we’ve made in your own lives. It may take a long long time, we may not be able to see God or feel God like we would like, but God is there and God is working. Know that God is present with you. God is listening to you. And God is looking for any possible way to create order and goodness out of the chaos and heart-break that surrounds you. Thanks be to God.

RESOURCES

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/tribes.html

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=6/10/2012&tab=2

http://thehardestquestion.org/yearb/ordinary10ot/

http://oldtestamentlectionary.unitingchurch.org.au/2009/June/Pent31Sam8_09.html

http://www.sermonsuite.com/free.php?i=788031486&key=4tupvxmGjuvgnuR6

We Are Children of God

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:26:00 +0000

We Are Children of God

Romans 8:12-17

Happy first Sunday of Ordinary Time! Today officially begins the segment of the church calendar when the High Holy days are few and far between – we’ve worshipped and shopped our way through Advent and Christmas, we’ve spent weeks soul searching and repenting during Lent, we’ve sounded the fanfare and donned out our Sunday best in honor of Easter and we’ve even made a little room in our hearts for the coming of the Holy Spirit. We survived it all – Thanks Be to God!

And now we welcome Ordinary time. It’s time to sit back and relax a little bit, to dig a litter deeper into the Scriptures, to spend time with those Bible Stories that we were supposed to learn as kids, but probably don’t even remember, to ask those questions that have been bugging us since Advent or Lent, to learn how to do and be church in new and creative ways so that when Advent rolls around again this winter our souls are refreshed and ready to receive the birth of the Christ child once again.

But Ordinary Time kicks off with its own subtle celebration - Trinity Sunday – a reminder of who we are to spend our time worshipping, exploring and loving over these next several months. I’ll be honest, Trinity Sunday is one of those days where pastors stand around, scratch their heads, wonder what in the world to do and say. While all of our other high holy days celebrate particular events in scripture, or unique teachings of Jesus, or specific feasts established in the Jewish tradition, Trinity Sunday celebrates an extraordinary “teaching” of the Christian tradition. Trinity Sunday is one of the only days in our entire Christian year that is set apart to honor a Doctrine. You see, the concept of the Trinity isn’t really explained in Scripture – at least not specifically. Instead, the Trinity is a belief that has been established by Christian theologians over the course of church history. In fact in the early days of Christianity – those first few hundred years after Jesus had been crucified, risen, and then ascended into heaven – council after council of religious scholars gathered together to try to make sense of how God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were connected to one another. They argued and wrestled and belabored over how can we say that we are monotheists – that we believe in ONE God – when we see and experience this God in at least three distinct ways – as God the Creator, as Jesus our Savior and as The Holy Spirit our comforter.

I would venture to say that this very doctrine – so central to what it means to be a Christian – has the potential to be divisive on so many levels. In fact it is the doctrine of the Trinity – our assertion that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are divine, are of God, are indeed God in and of themselves on some level – that sets us apart from our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters. They would agree that Jesus is indeed an inspired prophet, one of the wisest teachers to ever live. The Koran details Jesus’ birth story and sets him apart as a holy man of God – did you know that? And indeed any Jewish Scholar would applaud and acknowledge Jesus skill as a Rabbi noting that his midrash – his interpretation of Jewish law and tradition - is worthy of respect and consideration. But what sets us apart, what separates us at the core of our beings, is our willingness to say that Jesus is God, and God is God, and the Holy Spirit is God and that somehow these aren’t three different Gods, but truly only One God.

It’s confusing isn’t it? Basic math teaches us that 1 + 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 1 and yet that is what we claim. That somehow God our Holy Parent, Jesus God’s only begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit our advocate and friend are all one and the same. I could stand here all day and try to explain it to you and I would fail miserably. And I’m certain that no amount of theological training or biblical study would help me make it any clearer. The egg illustration that I did with the kids earlier is a helpful example, I think. There’s shell, and yolk, and the white part – the albumin – and somehow these are all three separate parts, but they are all “egg”. 1 Shell + 1 yolk + 1 albumin = 1 egg.

Frederick Buechner helps us think about the Trinity by encouraging us to look in a mirror. When we look at ourselves in a mirror, Buechner says, we’ll observe our interior life known only to us and those we choose to communicate it too – this represents God the Father. We’ll see our visible face which on some level reflects that inner life that we share or do not share with others – this represents God the Son. And then we’ll be aware of that invisible power which we have that enables us to communicate about our interior life in such a way that others do not merely know about it, but know it in a sense that it becomes a part of who they are too – this represents God the Holy Spirit.

Another way that has been helpful for me to understand the Trinity is to think about all the different roles that I wear in my life. I’m Jessica, sure, but I am also Mommy and Pastor and Mrs. Schirm. There’s only one me but how I interact with people - how I’m seen, how I’m understood, how I’m addressed - depends on all of these different aspects of myself. We are individuals – There’s only one Matt or Ron or Carol or Jen or Zach – but we’re mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, coaches, teammates, farmers, accountants, church members. We understand ourselves in a variety of ways at any given moment. Who we are and what we do is dynamic – that is to say full of energy – and relational – dependent on how we interact with those around us. And the same goes for God. We experience God dynamically and relationally – as Father, Son and Holy Ghost; As Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer – in our every day lives and in our Scriptures.

David Henson in a blog for patheos.com says, “In essence, the Trinity is a metaphor about relationships. It is a metaphor that directs us toward each other rather than away, a metaphor that keeps us from retreating into solitude whenever relationships grow difficult. Essentially, the Trinity says what our sacred text says [in] its opening creation story: that it is not good for humans — or God for that matter — to be alone; that meaning is created in community and through relationships; that we do better as creatures when we join hands rather than raise fists.”

God our creator, Jesus our redeemer and the Holy Spirit our sustainer are in relationship with one another – and this holy relationship is defined by Love. God in three persons – Blessed Trinity – is Love. And we have been invited to be in relationship with God, to be transformed by God’s love, and to allow God’s love to energize and direct all of our relationships with one another.

Thomas Scirghi, in his article entitled The trinity: a model for belonging in contemporary society notes:

“The trinity provides a model for belonging to a community, specifically the communities of the church as well as for society as a whole. "Belonging" emphasize(s) the activity of relating to others… Belonging to one another, whether within a family, church or corporation, implies a relationship. [Relationship] leads to community through mutual surrender and reciprocity. Each person is open to the other, accepting the other unconditionally, giving the best one has to offer and receiving from the other in kind. The Trinity is one such community; within the Trinity we find three different "persons". Each one is distinct from the other, yet cannot be defined without the others. Each divine person is affirmed by affirming the others, and through surrendering to the others.”

Throughout Scripture we see God inviting us into relationship. In many of the Bible passages that we read during Lent and Easter we heard Jesus calling us friends. Our scripture from Romans today gives us a shining example of how – through the gift of the Holy Spirit which we celebrated last week during Pentecost – we have become children of God and as such we are free to call God Abba – Daddy - just like Jesus did. We are invited to be a part of the mystery that is God’s Love.

I’m not quite sure how to explain it any better than that, friends. But in the midst of the murky theology what I do know is that our understanding of God as Trinity reminds us that we are not meant to be alone. Our God – eternally in relationship as three in one – invites us into relationship with God and compels us to seek relationships with others. Relationships built on love, acceptance, understanding and mutuality. May we have the creativity of God to seek out these relationships on a daily basis, may we have the sacrificial spirit of Jesus to offer ourselves in love to one another, and may we have the wisdom of the Spirit to be about God’s work in the world this day and always.

RESOURCES:

http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/article/entry/2824/its-jesus-stupid-getting-the-trinity-right

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2012/05/trinity-truth-myth-or-metaphor/

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2065/is_3_54/ai_92136477/

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=86

Bewildered, Amazed, Astonished, Perplexed

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 23:24:00 +0000

Bewildered, Amazed, Astonished, Perplexed

Acts 2:1-21

If you were here the Sunday when you graciously called me to be your pastor then you heard a bit of this story, but I wanted to share it again because it is one of the most tangible experiences I’ve had with the Holy Spirit.

Last year Matt earnestly began the process of looking for a baseball coaching job. After having lived in Kentucky for four years with no baseball opportunities in sight, we knew that Matt’s job search would likely mean moving away. Matt sent resume after resume to every potential opening he could find. In May or June we caught wind that an assistant coaching job was open at Wartburg College. Immediately we were intrigued. Matt was familiar with the school as several of his best friends had gone to college there and Matt had played against their baseball team when he was at Coe. Also, Matt’s best friend Jeff thought that it might be possible to combine a position in the alumni office with the baseball position to make it a full time opportunity. With baited breath, we started get excited. I struggled with the thought of moving away – what would I do without the support of my family and our church and my friends? But – the thought of living in Iowa, close to Matt’s family and Matt’s friends made the possibility of moving more palatable. I prayed that if we HAD to move that it would be here, where we would have support of Matt’s family and an established community of friends.

So then Matt was offered the job! And on the very same day that the job was confirmed we met with a realtor to discuss selling our house. She was in our home for all of 15 minutes. She informed us that there were multiple homes just like ours on the market in our area listed for $10-15 thousand less than what we owed. She wouldn’t be able to sell our house. We were crestfallen to say the least.

A few hours later I received a surprise call from Jonna Jensen, Associate Conference Minister for Eastern Iowa UCC. A UCC minister friend of our family had informed her that I would likely be moving to the area and suggested that she call me to discuss possible pastorate opportunities. During that conversation Jonna told me about Pleasant Hill. She described the peaceful and rural setting with a delightful, old, farmhouse parsonage. Jonna said she had a feeling that we might be a perfect fit for each other. It seemed too good to be true!

But then things hit the brakes. Matt had already moved to Iowa and Anderson and I were left behind – waiting, hoping, praying that a door would open for me. Jonna had informed me that your search committee was no where near ready to meet with a candidate. She noted that the search and call process could take months or even years and I felt anxious and worried and confused.

It isn’t in my nature to sit around and wait for the “What ifs” to pan out, so I continued to apply for other jobs while I waited and prayed for your search committee to be ready. In August I traveled to Cedar Falls for an interview with a Hospice. After the interview I thought, “You know, while I’m here I might as well go and check out that church Jonna mentioned…just in case.”

As I turned onto Union Ave my heart began to pound uncontrollably. It was the middle of the day, I knew no one would be around, but I was nervous none the less. What if it wasn’t what I had envisioned? What if it didn’t feel right? As I pulled up to the church I was overcome with emotion – hopefulness, humility, reverence. I stepped out of the car and looked around, trying to take in everything all at once. I walked up the steps of the church, placed my hands on the door and prayed that God would call us here. I walked over to the parsonage and did the same, praying that someday we would call this house our home. And then I sat down on the steps and I wept. I’m not sure why I was crying, or what I was crying about. All I know is that I felt drawn, pulled, tugged toward this holy and sacred place in a way that I’ve never felt before. I snapped a handful of pictures on my iphone, and posted them with shaking hands to facebook with the caption, “Praying God calls our family here…” Looking back the whole experience feels surreal.

I finally compelled myself to drive away – but I think I knew in my gut that we’d be here someday. The months passed, I applied for job after job, I even interviewed for several and was offered one. But by that time I had entered into conversations with your search committee and I just couldn’t shake that feeling that I had when I sat on those steps and found myself overcome with the presence of God. I turned down that other job – with, I’ll be honest, an insane amount of fear and trembling – trusting that it was the Holy Spirit that I felt and that God would somehow work this out.

And thankfully, God did. The week after I turned down that other job, Jenice called and invited me to preach a trial sermon in view of a call. And well, you know the rest. Here we are. Matt is fulfilling his calling as a baseball coach. I am fulfilling my calling as your Pastor. We are close to Matt’s family. We are close to Matt’s childhood friends. We have a wonderful home that allows us to keep our home in Kentucky for the time being. The transition has been almost too easy, almost too smooth, almost too perfect. The cynic in me keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

There are very few moments in my life where I can look back and see the Holy Spirit at work, but our being here, well, I can’t deny it. One of my Mother-in-Law’s even said, you know…maybe Matt got the job at Wartburg precisely because I was supposed to be at Pleasant Hill. All I know is there hasn’t been a day since we’ve been here that I haven’t stopped for a moment, looked around with awe-filled wonder, and reminded myself that I prayed for this and for some miraculous reason the Spirit moved and made it happen.

I know it is indulgent of me to take so much time to tell this story. And it’s dangerous too. Because, really, who am I to speak on behalf of the Holy Spirit? I look around the world and I see too many places devoid of the Holy Spirit. To name the Holy Spirit’s presence in my own life feels arrogant and theologically irresponsible. Where is the Holy Spirit when children are starving and dying? Where is the Spirit when communities are being destroyed by war? Where is the Spirit when people are being murdered, shunned and condemned because of who they love or the color of their skin or the God they pray too. How dare I say that the Holy Spirit gives a rip about where my family works or lives when there is so much heartache and god-forsakenness all around us?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know the answers to those questions. And I don’t know how to reconcile the presence of the Holy Spirit and the inconsistencies in the world around us. But I do know that in the last 10 months I’ve felt the Spirit move in my life through this congregation in inexplicable ways.

Our scripture for today reminds us that when the Holy Spirit came all those many years ago it was a confusing and overwhelming experience too.

Look at the words that Acts uses to describe the scene of Pentecost.

“At the sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered…”

Amazed and Astonished they asked, “Are not all of those who are speaking Galileans?”

All were Amazed and Perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean…”

The crowd was so chaotic, the circumstances so confusing that those observing the event thought the believers were drunk! I’m guessing you’ve never been so overcome with the Holy Spirit that someone thought you were drunk. In fact, it’s likely that we don’t even know what it feels like to have God’s Spirit moving among us. Frederick Buechner writes,

“The word spirit has come to mean something pale and shapeless, like an unmade bed. School spirit, the American spirit, Christmas spirit, the spirit of ’76, the Holy Spirit – each of those points to something you know is supposed to get you to your feet cheering, but which you somehow can’t rise to…”

I mean, really, when was the last time God’s Holy Spirit Amazed you? Bewildered you? Astonished you? Perplexed you? It’s as if we’ve had the very life sucked right out of our faith. We don’t expect the Holy Spirit to move in amazing and miraculous ways anymore – so we don’t look for her, we fail to see the spirit when she’s right under our noses, and God forbid we tell anyone when we think we might have caught a glimpse of God’s Spirit at work for fear that they might think we are crazy.

In the original Greek and Hebrew the word used for Spirit meant breath. Breath is what makes us alive. It was the breath of God that hovered over the chaotic waters of creation bringing about order and life. In the second creation story in Genesis 2 God breathed the breath of life into the human’s lungs. We breathe in and out every moment, unconsciously living, we just can’t help ourselves. And if you’ve ever not been able to breathe, well, let me assure you there is nothing scarier. In our congregation we’ve just witnessed a miracle of breath with Mariah Dettmer’s stunning recovery. Her mother found her struggling to breathe, they took her to the local hospital local where doctors and nurses performed CPR using their own breath to fill her lungs, she was transferred to Rochester where she was put on a ventilator that breathed for her so her own lungs could rest and recover. And then by the miracle of modern medicine, through God’s gift of wisdom and discernment to her physicians and strengthened by our prayers for her recovery, Mariah slowly began to breathe again on her own. I am certain that each breath she takes now – to cry, to laugh, to scream, to babble –is holy and sacred in the eyes of those who love her.

Our own breath is a beautiful example of how the Holy Spirit moves and works in our lives today. Sure our reading from Acts shows us that the Holy Spirit can be outrageous and mighty – with flaming tongues of fire bringing about order and understanding in the midst of the chaotic cacophony of multiple languages and cultures – but that isn’t the only way the Spirit moves. The Holy Spirit moves within us and through us as easily and as unconsciously as our own breath. Perhaps we just don’t pay attention until we’re forced to - until things around us fall apart and we’re left struggling to catch our breath and searching, frantically, for God’s presence.

I can imagine that in the wake of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension those early believers were left gasping for air and searching for God’s presence in the midst of their grief and confusion. God sent the Spirit to be their comforter, their companion, their advocate, their helper. What I love most about this story from Acts is that those first Christians stepped right up and claimed the power of the Holy Spirit for all it was worth. They didn’t run, they didn’t cower in fear, they didn’t try to monopolize the Spirit’s power for only a select few – no they recognized that the Holy Spirit had come for everyone, for their sons and daughters, for the old and the young, for the men and the women, for those that were cast to the margins of society – the slaves and servants, outcasts and radicals – the Spirit came to fill them with life, to fill them with the very presence of God, to create order out of the chaos of their world.

The Holy Spirit continues to be about the business of inspiring life. Where are those places in our lives, in our communities, in our churches, in our families, in our nation, in our world that are gasping for God’s presence - chaotic and broken, struggling to breathe? Where are those places that are full of anger and destruction instead of love and grace? Who are the people who are cast aside, who are ridiculed, who are bullied, who are ostracized, who are demonized, who are moments away from having the life sucked right out of them? These are the people and places and things that are in desperate need of the Holy Spirit. And, friends, hear me well, WE are the bearers of the Holy Spirit. We are the life givers, the inspirers, the ones who are called to help each other breathe so that we might heal and rest.

If we continue reading in the book of Acts we’ll see that immediately following the coming of the Holy Spirit those early Christians devoted themselves daily to teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. They took all they had – all their money, all their possessions, all their worldly goods and lumped them together into one giant pool of resources. The Scriptures tell us that they gave to anyone who had a need until there wasn’t a needy person among them. Every day their numbers grew as God added to those who were being saved.

It is my prayer that we will take a deep breath today and be filled anew with the Holy Spirit. That we will recommit ourselves to learning and teaching, to fellowshipping with one another, to breaking bread together, to praying together, and to using our gifts and our talents and resources to meet the needs of those in our community. May we be about the business of reconciliation – of helping the young and the old, the men and the women, the outcasts and misfits to find their voices, to breathe in the breath of God and to have full and abundant lives.

If you’ve ever spent time meditating, you’ll know that one of the keys to mindfulness is focusing on your breath. The meditating person sits quietly and pays attention to their breath as it enters and exits the body. Folks who meditate regularly often develop a quieter mind, a more peaceful outlook, lower blood pressure, lower stress levels and an overall healthier life. For a woman in labor, despite all of the miracles of modern medicine when it comes to pain management, one of the most effective means to relax the body and prepare it to give birth is by controlling one’s breath. Breath is life. God’s Spirit is the breath of life. It is astonishing, amazing, bewildering, perplexing even to think that the Holy Spirit is a close as our next breath, but she is, dear friends, she is. Breathe deeply. Keep Breathing. Be filled with Life. Be filled with the Spirit of God.

RESOURCES

http://www.stewardshipoflife.org/2012/05/love-spoken-here/

http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=481

http://day1.org/938-whe_pentecost_ends_too_soon

http://day1.org/733-the_day_heaven_burst_open

Buechner, Frederick, Wishful Thinking, A Seeker’s ABC, HarperSan Francisco, 1993.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com

Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven

Acts 1:1-11

May 20, 2012

The world is coming to an end. We hear that everywhere we turn don’t we? The Mayan’s supposedly predicted that 2012 would be the final year for good old earth. My favorite band, the Barenaked Ladies, even named their upcoming concert series “The Last Summer on Earth Tour” just in case the Mayan’s got it right. Street corner preachers and wannabe prophets stand with their cardboard signs exclaiming, “Repent for the end is near…” You can turn on just about any religious television channel or radio station and hear someone predicting how an elected official is really the anti-Christ or how the collapse of the European economy means we are all one step away from being branded with the mark of the beast.

The world is coming to an end. Jesus’ return is immanent and we’d all better be darn sure we’re ready, right? Growing up, I heard this message often and carried around a not so healthy dose of fear as a result. I have a vivid childhood memory, I suppose I was 9 or 10 years old, of laying outside, on top of a set of monkey bars, staring at the stunningly beautiful blue sky wondering if at any moment the heavens would be ripped open and Jesus would descend from on high bringing terror and chaos and destruction in his wake.

For two thousand years we’ve spent a heck of a lot of time looking up towards the heavens waiting for something to happen.

Today is Ascension Day – the day when we honor and commemorate Jesus’ return to the right hand of God. In the grand scheme of things it is likely that you’ve never paid much attention to Ascension Day. I know I haven’t. Christmas, Easter – maybe Pentecost which we’ll celebrate next week – sure we’re familiar with those high holy days, but Ascension Day – not so much.

As Luke and Acts describe for us, forty days after his miraculous resurrection Jesus ascended from earth and returned to Heaven. Now if you think Jesus’ resurrection was hard to make sense of from a logical and scientific perspective, friends, I’m not even going to try to explain to you how it is possible that Jesus ascended into heaven. What’s important for us to understand, though, is that Jesus’ return to God’s side was pivotal for the spread and growth of Christianity. In essence Ascension Day reminds us that Jesus’ work on earth was done and the work of his apostles was just beginning.

You see, after Jesus’ death and resurrection it was as if the disciples didn’t really know what to do with themselves. The Gospels tell us that they went back to their ordinary lives, back to their jobs and hobbies, back to their fishing boats and fields – sure they continued to gather together and the resurrected Jesus continued to meet with them regularly but they weren’t out teaching or preaching or healing, they weren’t out witnessing or baptizing or making new disciples. No – it was as if they were waiting for something else – as if seeing the resurrected Christ in their midst wasn’t enough.

On the day he Ascended Jesus stood before his disciples told them that it was time for him to go, he opened their minds to understand everything he had taught them, and he promised them that Holy Spirit would come and would be their guide. He told them that they were to be his witnesses to all the ends of the earth. And then he disappeared into the heavens.

And what did the disciples do with the tremendous responsibility that Jesus had just conferred upon him?

They stood there with their mouths hanging open gawking after the Lord. It took two heavenly beings to get their attention, “Why do you stand looking up towards heaven?”

I wonder if it might be appropriate for us to ask ourselves that same question today. How much time do we spend staring up toward the heavens waiting for Jesus to return or a sign from God rather than looking for ways that we might bring the love and presence of God to those around us.

In his sermon entitled The Ascension of Our Lord, Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton says that Jesus’ ascension is, “the completion of his resurrection. Christ came from God to take on our flesh, our life, our troubles, our sin and yes, our death. In the mystery of the Three Days, sin was removed and death was defeated. For forty days Jesus walked and talked among the believers, making sure they knew that this new life was real and not imagined. And then he went back to God… And he left us here. We were all, in one sense, left behind. We were left but we were not abandoned. The Ascension marks the end of the earthly ministry of Jesus and prepares the way for the birth of the church with the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. Up until this moment the Gospel has been about what God in Christ has done for us; from this day forth the Gospel is about what God in Christ is doing through us in the world.”

From this day forth the Gospel is about what God in Christ is doing through us in the world…

I’m afraid, unfortunately, that God can’t do much in us and through us when we’re staring at the sky with our mouths hanging open. When we are preoccupied with what has been or with what might be instead of with what is. When we are more interested in being spectators than witnesses

John C. Holbert Homiletics Professor at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, TX. notes, “It is far safer, far less demanding, to be a speculator than a witness. Speculators write books of calculations, hold seminars that attract thousands, rake in untold piles of loot, while [predicting] a certain time for Jesus' return. Witnesses, on the other hand, just witness to the truth of the gospel: the truth of justice for the whole world, the love of enemies, and the care for the marginalized and outcast. As Acts 1 makes so clear, the world needs far fewer speculators and far more witnesses.”

After Jesus’ ascension the disciples went back to Jerusalem where they waited and prayed just as Jesus had instructed them. Once the Holy Spirit arrived the gospel spread like wildfire, lives were changed and the church was born. But the work that Jesus has called those first apostles too is not yet finished. There are people in our homes, in our school, in our communities, and all across the globe who have not yet felt the love of God. Perhaps all they have seen or heard about Jesus has come from the spectators. The folks who talk endlessly of judgment, destruction and condemnation, from people who try to put a timeframe on God’s compassion and who live with an eye towards heaven or hell rather than working to bring about Heaven on Earth right now.

Remember that the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were written by the same author. To end Luke with the Ascension story and to begin Acts with it is the author’s way of saying, HEY! This is really important. This is when everything transitions. What happens next is up to you, lovers of God. The future of God’s work in the world is at stake. Be bold. The Holy Spirit is coming, you won’t be alone. Trust that God can take what you know, what you’ve learned, what you’ve experienced, God can even take your confusion and your failure, and do something extraordinary with it.

We are close to reaching the point in our year where things relax a bit – school is nearly out, we’ve got our camping trips and vacations planned, the weather makes it enjoyable to sit outside and chat with a neighbor. And in the Christian year we’re getting ready to slow down a bit too. After we celebrate Pentecost next week and then Trinity Sunday the following week – we enter into ordinary time. There are no major church celebrations until All Saints Day in the fall. We’ll spend the summer studying the life of King David, we’ll prepare for the youth group mission trip, we’ll hopefully spend some time in fellowship with one another. But just because the high holy days are coming to a close for the moment doesn’t mean that we’ve got permission to stand around looking up toward heaven with our mouths hanging open. No, friends, there’s still work to be done, love to be shared, lives to be changed. We are still called to be the church to those around us. Look for ways to be witnesses for Christ in your every day lives. I promise you God can do something amazing with your simple acts of kindness, graciousness and love. God can use you to change the world.

Resources:

http://www.gbod.org/site/c.nhLRJ2PMKsG/b.3879973/k.9C35/Lectionary_Planning_Helps_for_Sundays.htm?override=yes&date=20120517

http://www.festalpulpit.com/5.html

http://www.faithelement.com/sessions/2012/5/15/waiting.html

http://lectionarylab.blogspot.com/2012/05/ascension-of-our-lord.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/emergentvillage/2012/05/on-my-mind-these-days/

http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Speculators-or-Witnesses-John-Holbert-05-14-2012?offset=1&max=1

God is Love: I Don’t Love God

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:02:00 +0000

May 13, 2012

1 John 5:1-6

William Makepeace Thackeray, a 19^th Century English writer, is known for saying that, “Mother is the name for God on the lips and in the hearts of little children.” I stumbled on that quote not long after I became a mother myself – during a time when my image of God was going through a revolutionary change.

This quote came back to my mind over the last few months as we’ve adjusted to our new life here in Iowa. For the most part the transition has gone well for us and especially for Anderson. He’s made friends and settled into pre-school. He loves riding the bus and he’s personalized his bedroom. But every now and then I’ll catch a glimpse that he’s still struggling with it a little bit. He’ll have a tantrum over nothing, he’ll press his luck with boundaries that used to be no big deal, he asks me all the time if I love him – as if he’s concerned that my love for him might change like everything else in his life has changed. And during some particularly difficult tantrums he’s started to say, “I don’t love you, Mommy. And I don’t love God.”

At first I was really caught off guard by these comments. It is a right of passage for mothers, I suppose, to have your child say that they don’t love you – but I didn’t expect out of the mouth of my 5 year old baby. And I understand that in his five year old mind saying he doesn’t love me is the equivalent of saying he was mad at me for being firm with him and he didn’t like the boundaries that were set for him. Or it is his way of saying he needs more attention, more love.

But to hear him say he doesn’t love God. Well, that one threw me for a loop…

Until I remembered that quote from William Makepeace Thackeray. You see, although I’ve been a minister for years now, this is really the first time that Anderson’s seen me functioning day in and day out as a minister. In my previous ministry settings my roles were such that Anderson didn’t really see what I was doing because he was in childcare all day. Now he sees me working on my sermons, sometimes he goes with me when I make pastoral care visits to our parishioners, he watches me stand in this pulpit every Sunday morning and speak of God’s Love. I think he’s made the connection of what it means that his mommy is a minister. I represent God in his life now, not only as his mother, but also as his minister.

So when he says I don’t love you, Mommy, and I don’t love God.

I think maybe those phrases mean the same thing in his mind.

Now I should be quick to add, Anderson is the child that will tell us he loves us first. He’s the one that reminds our family to pray at meal time, he is continually curious about who God is, what God does and how God wants us to act towards others. Those moments when he is angry, or sad, or tired and declares his lack of love for me and the almighty are few and far between. But I think we can all relate – there’s been times when we’ve withheld our love from our mothers and when we’ve withheld our love from God. We, in our own selfish way – think that we need something more - more love, more attention. Life is hard and confusing and sometimes we cope by pushing away the very things we need the most.

We love because God first loved us.

The reality is that – for most of us – we wouldn’t even begin to know what love was if it wasn’t for our mothers and motherly people in our lives demonstrating God’s selfless love to us. As we’ve walked through 1 John over these last few weeks we’ve heard over and over that we are we are commanded to love. We’ve been reminded that we are only able to love because God first loved us. We must receive love first in order to have any framework from which we can love others. Perhaps you’ve heard of Reactive Attachment Disorder. Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder have not had their basic emotional needs met to the point where they cannot be comforted, have no bond to their designated caregiver, and has little to no social interaction. They aren’t touched enough, held enough, shown enough affection. They haven’t been loved and therefore don’t know how to love in return. Sometimes this disorder manifests in children who have been raised in an orphanage. Despite the best effort on behalf of the caregivers to meet the physical needs of multiple children, their emotional needs go unattended. Their physical well-being suffers drastically because their emotional well-being is compromised. In very extreme cases it is possible for children to die because their emotional needs weren’t met.

From a spiritual perspective, though, our God has not abandoned our emotional needs. Our God loves us, sacrificially, unconditionally, wholly. Our God calls us beloved. Our God calls us friend. And when we love others we share this love that God has given us. We empower others to love and be loved. Chances are our mothers, or the mother figures in our lives – a grandmother, an aunt, a teacher, a step-mother, a family friend – modeled God’s unconditional, sacrificial love for us in a way that we could see, feel and understand. I wonder how many of us came to faith in Christ because of the godly love we received from our mothers, and grandmothers and other motherly people in our lives. We love because they first loved us.

The heartbreak of motherhood…The heartbreak of God

But, having said all that, I am well aware that Mother’s Day may be a bittersweet day for some. Perhaps for a few of you, Mother’s Day is the absolute worst day of the year. As I prepared for worship this morning I was reminded, painfully, that there are women in our congregation who are not mothers; women who despite their best efforts and their spouses best efforts cannot become mothers; women who long to become mothers but do not have the resources to adopt or foster parent; women who have lost pregnancies, infants, toddlers, elementary age children, teen-age children, adult children. Perhaps some of you bear the unspeakable burdens of those tragedies today and cannot find a reason to celebrate. Also in our congregation there are men and women whose mothers have died; whose mothers left or abandoned them; whose mothers abused or neglected them; whose Mothers who did not, in any way, model the Love of God. Perhaps some of you bear the unspeakable burden of that grief today.

I want to ensure that we honor those broken and wounded places today too. While we look to God as a model for how we are to love one another, how we are to mother one another, I would encourage us to also look toward God for solace in the midst of our grief.

God knows full well the heartbreak of motherhood. God radically identified with human suffering as he took on flesh and was brutally put to death as an innocent man. Mary stood at the food of the cross and watched her son breathe his last breaths. There is no darkness that we might walk into that God does not already know; no crevice of heartbreak that God cannot find; no anger, injustice, jealousy or betrayal that God cannot identify with. If today is not a day of celebration for you, I pray that you might take shelter in the companionship of God. Seek refuge in God’s understanding compassion. The heartbreak of motherhood is the heartbreak of God, friends. As a hen shelters her chicks under her wing, allow God to draw you close, surround you with love and comfort you in your grief, loss, anger and uncertainty. And may all of us use our words and extend our greetings with loving caution and godly compassion today as we honor the women in our lives.

Raising Christian Mothers…

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite bloggers and spiritual thinkers is Karen Maezen Miller, a Buddhist priest. She writes and blogs about the intersection of her faith and motherhood and a question she often receives is, “How are you raising your daughter to be Buddhist?” And her response is always, “I’m not trying to raise a Buddhist child, I am trying to raise a Buddhist mother.” The painful truth of motherhood is that it’s a crapshoot, really. We have no guarantees that anything we do or say to shape our children will stick. We have no promises that they will become what we hope they will become. But we CAN make sure that we are shaping ourselves to become what we wish for our children to become. We can do everything we can to be the best mothers we can be – the best fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, friends, supports – that we can be. We can stop worrying so much about our successes and failures at raising Christian children and instead focus on raising ourselves to be Christian mothers, Christian people.

Just yesterday I read an article written in response to the “mommy wars” that pervade our culture – you know those incessant debates over where and how a child should be born, fed, nursed, school, disciplined. In this article the mother listed 20 things that she hoped for her child that had nothing to do with whether or not he was breast fed or bottle fed, home schooled or public schooled. She listed things like: “I hope to raise a child who says “Thank you” to the bus driver when he gets off the bus and “please” to the waiter taking his order at the restaurant, and holds the elevator doors when someone’s rushing to get it.” “I hope to raise a child who loses graciously and wins without bragging. I hope he learns that disappointments are fleeting and so are triumphs, and if he comes home at night to people who love him, neither one matter.” “I hope to raise a child who is open-minded and curious about the world without being reckless.” “I hope to raise a child who begins and ends all relationships straightforwardly and honorable.”

As I read through her list I found myself agreeing with nearly every word she wrote, my eyes tearing up at times with hope that my son would live up to these same ideals. And then Karen Maezen Miller’s quote came back to me. My child will learn these things, he will develop these characteristics, he will find faith, he will show love if he sees me and his father modeling them for him day in and day out. Anderson will love because Matt and I first loved him. We love because God first loved us.

1 John 5 says, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.” God has commanded us to love. And although it may be scary, confusing, overwhelming, exhausting – loving is not burdensome. We have in our hand the tool to conquer the world.

Love. May we use it wisely and without abandon. May all of the generations that follow us be changed for the better because of our abundant, self-less, extravagant Love.

Thanks Be to God for all of those who have taught us how to love - especially our mothers and the mother-like figures in our lives. May we honor their legacy, their sacrifice, their suffering and their godliness – today and always. Let us pray.

Resources

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001547.htm

http://www.boston.com/community/moms/blogs/24_hour_workday/2012/05/motherhood-mom-enough-advice.html

http://www.karenmaezenmiller.com/blog

God is Love: No Fear

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:00:00 +0000

May 6, 2012

1 John 4:7-21

My grandfather was a fearful man. As the patriarch of our family we loved him dearly, and I miss him tremendously now that he is gone, but none of us were immune to his fear and anxiety. For as long as I knew him he was in poor health and continually worried about his own nearing death – the day he was diagnosed with cancer he was trying to figure out how to get a hospital bed into the house certain that the end was very near. He would worry himself sick anytime his children and grandchildren were traveling – certain that the worst would happen while we were on the roads. He was an exclusive and reclusive man – afraid of things and people that didn’t look like him, talk like him or think like him. His television was continually set on court TV or cable news so he could be up to date on the latest crises in our nation or in the world. I remember distinctly that he recorded every single minute of the Oliver North trial in the late 80’s, footage of the first Iraq invasion, and the OJ Simpson trial just to name a few. My grandfather saw the world around him as dangerous, corrupt and worthy of his worry and fear.

But my grandfather was also a sensitive man, the first to cry at a wedding or at a funeral, quick with a hug and an “I love you”. In his mind fear and love went hand in hand. He loved his family and his country and he was desperately afraid that something horrible was lurking just around the corner to destroy the very things that meant the most to him.

The older I get the more I realize that most of us live this way. We believe that we can guard and protect the things and people that we love with our fear and worry, with our prejudices and boundaries certain that if we aren’t anxious enough, obsessive enough, or guarded enough we’ll lose them.

But, friends, we know better than this. Our scripture lessons throughout Lent, and our epistle lesson today from 1 John 4 emphatically remind us that all of this clutching and grasping is not of God. God’s perfect love casts out fear. If we live in fear of punishment, in fear of losing what we love, in fear of losing our own lives, in fear of what we do not know or do not understand we somehow missed the point of the Gospel.

I’ll give you a few examples of how this plays out in contemporary religious life…

Recently a Baptist pastor in Fayetteville, North Carolina stood in the pulpit and preached a hellfire and brimstone sermon in which he instructed parents in his congregation to physically abuse their children if they suspected that their children were gay or lesbian. He described certain behaviors to look out for and instructed fathers to “punch” their sons if they didn’t act “male” enough. Girls were not exempt from punishment either. The Pastor said that girls could play sports and do some “boy” like things – but should make every effort to look like a girl, act like a girl, dress like a girl and smell like a girl. This pastor’s message was overflowing with fear - fear of hell, fear of children who might be gay or lesbian, fear of having a family that might differ from the norm. It made my heart ache and my head nearly explode to hear a minister, a man who with his very vocation attempts to seek the heart of God, speak words filled with hatred and condemnation and against children. Children. I can not find Jesus anywhere in this message.

I am certain that if we took a poll of our congregation we would find someone on every single aspect of the political and theological spectrum with it comes to the issues and concerns of Gay and Lesbian folks. Someone in our congregation likely represents the far right of the spectrum, someone else the far left and many of you probably fall somewhere in between. My point today is not to tell any of you how you should think or believe or to tell you how I think or believe. Those are conversations for another time and place, away from this pulpit and I am happy to have them with you any time you would like. Instead, my point is to encourage us to ensure that whatever we believe, wherever we fall on the spectrum, that we are grounded and rooted in God’s love. May we have the faith and confidence to communicate with one another through the lens of God’s perfect love.

Another example from closer to home. Soon a congregation in our area will be having an information session on Sharia Law – the moral and religious law in Islam. Brochures for this seminar came in the mail addressed to my attention and as I looked through the materials I became more and more concerned – the overarching message of the pamphlets was fear based and incendiary. There was bullet point after bullet point outlining the dangers and destructive nature of Islam – noting as fearfully as possible that our own government might be headed toward Sharia law. This information was nothing short of fear mongering propaganda.

As I looked through the speakers and leaders for the seminar there was not one Muslim person on the list. How can we have a meaningful conversation about a topic of concern when the very people who represent the heart of the issue are not present? Fear creates a world of war and terror, an us vs. them mentality; love creates a world where our enemies become our siblings, and where we see the presence of God in everyone – not just those who think like us, look like us, speak like us, worship like us or even govern like us – but in everyone.

Friends, I want us to be educated, knowledgeable and informed. I’m not saying that everything in the world is good, or safe or of God. We should think clearly and carefully and lovingly about our politics, our government, and our faith. We should make informed and thoughtful decisions. But I also don’t want us to be overwhelmed and carried away by fear and worry and anxiety to the point that we are no longer able to think clearly, carefully or lovingly.

As children of God we are called to love our neighbors and this includes the strangers among us. As children of God we are called to reach out to those who are different, this who are outcast, those on the margins of society. As children of God we are supposed to sit at the table with folks who are different from us and listen to their stories. As children of God we to reach out to our fellow sinners and when everyone else is ready to throw stones and rain down punches we are to make a way for peace and safety. As children of God we are to be like Christ, the son of the living God, the God who IS love.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.

Period.

We love because he first loved us. We need no other reason.

Those who say, “I love God” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars. For those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

Who is our brother? Everyone.

Who is our sister? Everyone.

Christ demonstrated his own love for us in this way, While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

We demonstrate our love for God in this way – even when we don’t understand, even when our culture teaches us to be afraid, even when we don’t quite know how, we love our brothers and sisters. We love everyone, as much as we can, as best as we can, trusting that God’s perfect love will overcome our fear and our failures.

Now you may be thinking, oh Pastor, you’re so young. You still see the world through rose colored glasses. It is just not that simple (or maybe you aren’t thinking that, but I was thinking that as I was working on this sermon…so I thought I’d put it out there.) And that would be true. I only have three decades and a handful of years under my belt. Many of you have seen so much more of the world and have earned wisdom that I can only hope to have some day. But I watched the world trade towers fall on September 11^th, In my 32 years I’ve seen our country go to the war in the Middle East more times than I care to count. I’ve had friends give their lives in service for our freedom, I’ve watched our stock markets crumble. I know. I know that the world around us is dangerous and scary. I know it is hard to distinguish who is our enemy from who is our friend. I know there are religions and governments that are confusing and foreign and we’ve been taught to fear them. I know that our culture is headed in new and different directions, we’re defining things like marriage and family differently and it is hard to know what is of God and what isn’t. But the message remains the same. Perfect love casts out fear. We love God when we love our neighbors. If we focus on those two things within our selves, within our families, within our church, within our community...things will be different.

Somehow we’ve confused what it means to be a Christian with having the right morals, or the right government, or the right behaviors, or the right discipline. "We have imagined that Christianity itself is a religion of virtue. But no, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminds us, 'Christianity is not a religion of virtue; it is a religion of grace.' And there's a difference. A religion of virtue says, 'If you are good, then God will love you.' A religion of grace says, 'God loves you.' God loves you despite your foibles and failures, not because you're so good but because you are a sinner in need of mercy. God loves you; live then as one who is beloved, who has been forgiven."

Live as if you are beloved. Live as if you have been forgiven. Live as if you have no fear. Love others as if they are God’s beloved. Love others as if they have been forgiven. Love others without fear.

God is Love: May we have No Fear. Thanks be to God. Let us Pray:

Resources

http://mirtam.memphisseminary.edu/2012/05/just-love-year-b-easter-5.html

http://www.inwardoutward.org/2007/06/20/virtue-or-grace

http://day1.org/3817-a_message_so_good_as_to_border_on_folly

http://www.advocate.com/society/religion/2012/05/01/north-carolina-pastor-advocates-punching-gay-acting-children

http://unfinishedlivesblog.com/2012/05/02/the-outrage-of-pulpit-homophobia-a-special-comment-by-a-baptist

May Newsletter: My Violet Died

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

(Each month I write something for St. John's newsletter. May's newsletter piece combines this previous post with details from my current setting...)

My Violet Died

Seize life! Eat bread with gusto, Drink wine with a robust heart. Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure! Dress festively every morning. Don't skimp on colors and scarves. Relish life with the spouse you love each and every day of your precarious life. Each day is God's gift. It's all you get in exchange for the hard work of staying alive. Make the most of each one! Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily! This is your last and only chance at it, For there's neither work to do nor thoughts to think in the company of the dead, where you're most certainly headed. Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 (The Message)

It was the nature of my job as a Hospice chaplain to have conversations with my patients about the sources of their spiritual strength as they dealt with their terminal illness - with the immanence of the end of life as they knew it. Some folks found that their faith community was supportive and they felt more connected to God as a result of their illness. Other folks noted that once their life became clouded with suffering, God seemed distant and they felt like they were praying to a wall. My ministry was focused on listening to their stories, hearing about their accomplishments and failures, loves gained and lost, how they relied on their faith in moments of strength or abandoned it in moments of weakness.

Occasionally we would talk about the afterlife. Is there an afterlife? A heaven, a hell? Can we eat there? Will we know people there? Will we still be connected to the folks left here? Will our pets be there? What will God be like? Is there a God? But mostly we talked about this life. Because the real tragedy was that this life was about to be over – and despite their heartaches and heartbreaks, their surpluses and overdrafts, their moments of pride and shame – this life was worth something, it had meant something, and even if this life had been overwhelmingly shadowed by pain, there still had been moments where this life was exceedingly good – and they didn’t want to let that go. This life – tragedy or triumph – was all they truly knew how to do.

In January, before I made the trip out here to preach my trial sermon I had a conversation like this with a patient. We talked about her love for plants and the joy that gardening had brought her over the years. I listened as she explained how sad she was since she could no longer dig in the dirt. I mentioned that I had a violet sitting on my desk – a plant that my grandmother had given me – that had just bloomed for the first time in a long time. She became incredibly happy and said, “Oh you know that means that you’ve got a baby on the way!” We shared a good laugh knowing what a true miracle that would be with my husband four states away! And on top of that – well, we just don’t get pregnant as easy as some folks. It took a long time to conceive Anderson and we’d been trying for a year before Matt moved to Iowa – so I didn’t hold out much hope that the violet was a good omen. But it sure was delightful to see that patient smiling and laughing.

A few weeks later I traveled to Iowa where you called me to be your pastor! And then two weeks after that – much to our delight and utter surprise – I discovered that we were expecting a baby! My heart was full to bursting. After 6 long, difficult months of our family being in transition, and after more than a year of trying for a baby, God’s abundant blessings seemed to be coming out of nowhere!

Maybe it was the stress of the move - the emotional and physical toil of leaving two jobs, and a home and family and moving across country – I don’t know, but somehow, that pregnancy wasn’t meant to be. I miscarried. Once we got to Iowa and unpacked everything I realized that my violet had died too. Like the surprise pregnancy, my violet - the unexpected predictor of good news - hadn’t survived the move either.

It was a reminder to me of the preciousness and precariousness of life. We live as if we are immortal when really every breath we take is a miracle. Like the passage from Ecclesiastes acknowledges, it is a shame that we take for granted this one and only chance at mortal life. When will we actually realize that each and every day is God's gift – that it's all we get in exchange for the hard work of staying alive?

It is hard work to stay alive. It is even harder work recognizing that this life is God’s gift – worth celebrating in the most jubilant of ways. Eating, drinking, and loving exuberantly. This is our last and only chance at it. We can’t cram a lifetime’s worth of fullness into the days after a terminal diagnosis, or the death of a loved one or a miscarriage. The time for a full life is now. The time to love selflessly is now. The time to speak kindly is now. The time to give generously is now. The time to forgive undeservedly is now. The time to take risks is now.

This past month has been a difficult one for our congregation. Lots of folks have learned, painfully, how quickly the joys of life can be snatched away. May we surround each other with God’s extravagant love. May we live our lives to the fullest in honor of those who can’t. And may all our days be filled with Life, full and abundant Life…even in the midst of death.

Blessings,

Pastor Jessica

God is Love: Truth and Action

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

1 John 3:16-24 & Psalm 23

I’m sure you heard this story, it made the rounds on nearly every news circuit just after the holidays.

A Texas atheist who earlier this year fought to ban religious symbols on government property in his town is reportedly "flabbergasted" that Christians have offered to help him pay his bills.

The Tyler Morning Telegraph is reporting that Christians in Henderson County have raised around $400 to help Patrick Greene, an atheist who is at risk of going blind in one eye due to a detached retina.

Greene, a former Air Force officer and taxi driver who was forced to retire due to his eye condition, wrote a letter to members of the Henderson County Commissioner's Court in February threatening a lawsuit if they did not move a Nativity scene from court property, the Malakoff News reported…

Greene eventually did file suit, but when doctors told him about his eye condition, he decided that he could no longer pursue the lawsuit and dropped the case. At that point, he had been forced to retire from his job driving a taxi and was facing mounting medical bills.

So when local Christians wrote him a check for $400 to help him pay his living expenses, Greene was more than surprised.

"They said they wanted to do what real Christians are supposed to do – love you – and they wanted to help, "Greene told the Tyler Morning Telegraph. He told reporters he plans to write about their gesture in a new book, tentatively titled "The Real Christians of Henderson County."

It sounds kinda like a made for TV movie doesn’t it? But – no this really happened. In fact, I read one article stating that Greene has since professed faith in Christ as a result of the kindness extended to him in Jesus’ name. It’s a sensational story because it combines just about every political hot button issue you could want – atheism vs. Christianity, separation of church and state…so we can see why the news outlets jumped on it like a dog on a bone. It is easy to be cynical about the details of the tale, I was at first. We could get caught up in evaluating the motivation for the gift; or trying to decide if this fella “really” converted. But when taken at face value it is a kind story, a counter-cultural story, a Christ-like story and one that exemplifies, in my opinion at least, what 1 John 3:16-24 is all about.

Christians around the world honor today as The Good Shepherd Sunday. We’ve heard the passage in John’s Gospel where Jesus self-identifies as the Good Shepherd and we’ve used the familiar phrases of the 23^rd Psalm already in our worship. This idea of Jesus as the Good Shepherd pervades our religious imagery. Just last week at the Northeast Association Iowa Conference a pastor lovingly referred to her congregation as her flock. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. We follow his lead, trusting that he loves us and has our best interest at heart knowing that when we inevitably go our own wayward way as sheep are apt to do, he will leave the 99 to come searching for us.

Psalm 23 paints a beautiful picture of what the Good Shepherd is all about. One scholar notes that: “the power of this psalm resides… in the honesty of its words. It does not paint a picture of a world devoid of pain and suffering. After all, at the very center of the psalm is an acknowledgement of the dark valleys of our lives and the enemies--both physical and spiritual--we face. God’s care for us does not mean that we live in a daily paradise, devoid of all troubles. Instead, Psalm 23 confesses that even in the midst of such tribulations, God remains with us.”

Today our lectionary texts invite us to read Psalm 23 and 1 John 3:16-24 together. In the Psalm we see the characteristics Jesus has as the Good Shepherd, in 1 John 3 we see what we characteristics we are to have as Christians.. We are to be like Christ. We are to emulate the Good Shepherd. We are to do for one another what Christ does for us – even to the point of laying down our lives. Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

If you are anything like me – this commandment likely scares the dickens out of you. I’m pretty much a failure when it comes to loving people the way I should, the way Christ does. It’s an overwhelming calling – this loving each other business. It’s hard to even know where to begin - to think that we might have what it takes to actually be the presence of Christ for another. But friends, I think we do have what it takes, and Psalm 23 gives us a useful guide for figuring out what we and others might need to feel loved.

We love each other when we distinguish between wants and needs.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…

Our culture is pretty mixed up when it comes to distinguishing between wants and needs. Most Americans have no idea what it means to have a true “need”. Most of us want for nothing when it comes to food, shelter, clothing, clean water, even education. In fact our true needs have been met for so long that we confuse our superficial wants – better job, bigger house, newer car – with our needs. When we hear this phrase, “I shall not want…” we might be to assume that it means that the Lord will meet all of the psalmist basic human needs, like a shepherd ensures that the sheep are fed and watered – but I am willing to bet it goes farther than that. Remember that the writer of Psalm 23 is thought to be King David –a man who had everything his heart desired, who had an entire population at his beck and call – so to hear I shall not want from his perspective…well, I can’t help but think it means something more. I’m guessing that what David longs for is contentment. A sense of peace within himself that can’t be measured by things or conquests but instead it comes from knowing, confidently, that he is in the Lord’s care. I long for this kind of contentment, don’t you? How can we find, how can we share it with others? Loving others with our actions definitely means helping folks meet their basic human needs. Who can you help feed, shelter and clothe right here in northeast Iowa? But maybe we can take it a step further. How can we help folks find contentment that isn’t measure in things, or accomplishments? How can we find it for ourselves? Let’s think on these things this week.

We love each other when we make a way for peace and rest.

He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.

We live our lives at a break-neck pace – up before dawn to maximize the hours in the day, rushing to get everything done, anxiously working multiple jobs and extended hours to make enough money to pay all the bills only to fall exhausted into bed, later than we should, just to do it all again in the morning. A recent article confirmed that a third of adult workers get less than 6 hours of sleep a night. If you work more than one job, or a night shift job, if you work more than 40 hours a week, if you are divorced or separated, or if you are a single parent, or if you are a miner, or a utility worker or work in the transportation industry then you are at the greatest risk for supreme levels of exhaustion. Gee – that covers a whole lot of us in this sanctuary doesn’t it? How many of us long for some peace and some rest? How many of us would give just about anything to quiet the incessant noise in our minds, to relax the frantic pulse thrumming through our veins and find the peace and rest the psalmist writes about in Psalm 23? I know there are many days that I desperately wish I could. One of the ways we love one another is to find ways to make our lives calmer and quieter. Do we need to shut of the TV programs and talk radio that increases our anxiety and stress? Do we need to say no to one more meeting, one more committee, one more obligation so we have more time to sit together at the supper table, or have more time to read stories to our children or grandchildren before bed or have more time to join a reading group, attend a bible study, quilt, crochet, build something, listen to music, go fishing or dancing – anything that quiets the noise in our brain and creates a measure of peace in the frenzied world around us? Look for ways to love someone this week, to love yourself this week, to be the presence of Christ this week by creating more peace and rest in the world.

We love one another when we encourage revival and offer guidance.

He revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.

When I was growing up it was common practice for churches to have revivals. Every year, a guest preacher filled the pulpit, there’d be wonderful music, and special programs for the kids. Revivals were a week long chance for folks to feed their souls, to reconnect with their faith; to renew their passion for the Lord. Now, revivals have gone out of fashion – and what with all of the games, practices, meetings, can’t miss TV programming and such that fill up all of our lives, it does seem a little outrageous to expect that people have a whole week’s worth of evenings to devote to worship. But now I wonder if we walk around with half-dead souls seeking anything that might fill us with life and joy because we don’t make time for spiritual revival. I’m one of those people who feels guilty for doing things for myself. For taking time away from the things I “should” be doing to do things that are “fun” or “renewing”. Thank God that I’ve been surrounded by people in my life who have encouraged me to take care of myself - to feed my soul, not just spiritually but socially with activities like going to concerts and reading totally mindless vampire novels. We can show God’s love by encouraging each other to be our best selves – spiritually, professionally, physically, emotionally and socially. How can you help someone be their best self this week? Could offer to watch their kids so they can go to a movie or take a nap? Can you surprise your spouse or your parent with tickets to their favorite show, or a picnic or flowers or something irrationally spontaneous that you know would make them smile? Could sit down with one of your employees and offer them honest feedback and sincere encouragement? Look for ways to help revive someone’s soul this week. Trust me - it will be an act of love.

We love each other when we embody companionship and comfort.

Though I want through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; for your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

One of the most sacred experiences I’ve had a minister, heck as a human, have been those times when I’ve sat by the bedside of someone who is ill or dying and held their hand while they slept. There was no reason to talk, no need for prayers, nothing to do but sit and be present. For most of us this is a daunting task. Ours is a culture of noise and distraction. We don’t sit still with one another. We don’t know how to simply be. We’re all about doing, fixing, solving, mending, re-hashing, talking about something, anything, everything – dear God just don’t let us have to sit in silence and simply be present with one another. And yet this very thing, my friends, is an astonishing act of love. And, lest you are looking for a loop hole, we need not think that we should only do this when someone is ill or dying. No, our quiet companionship is often needed most when someone is angry, or depressed, confused, or agitated. Being willing to present with someone – physically and mentally – when every single fiber of our being is telling us to run as far away as possible – well, if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. There is someone in this room that desperately needs you to be their companion this week - to hold their hand, to help them breathe, to find a reason to smile again. Whom can you comfort this week? Whose silence might you share? Walk through the valley with someone this week, friends. See if you’re life isn’t changed as a result.

We love one another by extending our friendship and our blessing.

You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over…

Much like revivals, a good night’s sleep and the ability to sit in silence with one another – the act of giving our blessing had pretty much gone by the wayside. We do what we want, when we want and it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about it. And while certainly this can be taken to the extreme on some level it’s a good thing to be fully and freely ourselves without needing someone’s permission. But the blessing that I’m talking about here is something more than giving permission, it’s – for lack of a better word – like a transfer of power. It’s saying, “I want nothing else than for you to become exactly the person God intended for you to become.” Last weekend at the association meeting we watched a video put together by a church in Boston that described how their church re-embraced the concept of blessing. On any given Sunday you might find their congregation facing the Middle East offering prayers of blessings for peace and reconciliation in that war torn land. Or you might find them gathered around the altar blessing the backpacks their children will carry into the new school year. Or laying hands on the hammers that will be used on the summer mission trip to build new homes for someone in need. This idea of blessing someone or something communicates a desire for that person or thing to become its absolute best. Extending our blessing means looking upon our enemies, seeing past our anger and fear and desiring for them to be exactly who God created them to be. This blessing is exemplified by the Christians in Texas who looked upon a man who had been nothing but a rabble-rouser and showed him with compassion, blessing him with the resources he needed. I challenge each of us to reach out to someone who needs God’s blessing this week. Befriend them. Commit yourself to helping them be fully who they were created to be.

And finally, we love one another when we offer mercy and hospitality.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever…

The psalmist ends Psalm 23 by reminding us, that the Good Shepherd’s kindness and hospitality are never-ending. There is always room for each of us in the Lord’s house. This, my friends, is how I’ve seen our congregation demonstrate God’s love the best. The kindness and hospitality that our family has received in the few short weeks that we’ve been here has been humbling and overwhelming. Just when I think I’ve seen the very best of you, someone else reaches out to us and your goodness is on display for all the world to see again. Not only have your taken care of our family, but you’ve taken care of each other, and you’ve taken care of one another’s extended families. In this way your love knows few bounds. I am proud of the presence of Christ we embody in this community. I would encourage us to think, collectively, about who else might need us to share the presence of Christ with them. Is there someone or some sub sect of our community that is isolated and excluded? Might they find welcome here with us? Might we go and bear Christ’s light in their midst? If we are to model our lives after the Good Shepherd, if we are to love one another in truth and action as Christ did, are we seeking those wayward sheep? Are we willing to risk extending God’s extravagant, loving welcome to those who have no spiritual home? I encourage us to think prayerfully about where else God might use our church to bring light and love to our community.

May we have boldness, church, to love as unashamedly, uninhibitedly, and extravagantly as Christ has loved us. May we be shepherds for those who need shepherding. May we allow ourselves to be shepherded in love by others. And may we feel the presence of Christ abiding among us as we share his love with the world. Thanks Be to God.

(Originally preached at St. John's UCC Nashua Iowa, April 29, 2012)

RESOURCES:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/23/christians-pay-medical-bills-for-atheist-protestor_n_1375684.html

http://odysseynetworks.org/news/onscripture-the-bible-john-3-16-24

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/27/151516196/how-work-is-messing-up-your-sleep?sc=fb&cc=fp

To This We Are Witnesses

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:44:00 +0000

Acts 3:12-19

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road over this past week. If any of you have made a career out of being a long haul trucker I give you my praise – I just don’t know you do it! The trip from the parsonage to my parents’ home takes exactly 11 hours and when one is traveling with a five year old and two dogs that can feel like an eternity. It isn’t a hard trip, really, and traffic wasn’t bad either day that I was on the road – but boy does all that driving take its toll. While I was in Kentucky we spent a lot of time on the roads too – traveling to Cincinnati for a trip to the zoo and then down to Lexington so that Anderson could see his old school friends and to check on our house. Lots and lots of coming and going.

On the day we went to Lexington we passed a horrific crash on the interstate. We were going southbound and traffic was moving nicely. But the northbound side of I-75 was a different story. I counted at least 4 fire trucks, multiple ambulances, and police cars as far as the eye could see. By the time we passed the scene there was just one smashed up car left, waiting to be towed away. It was a sad and scary sight one of those crash scenes where you know it’s likely someone was seriously hurt or worse. The traffic backed up behind that crash lasted for over 15 miles. People were out of their cars, talking with one another, trying to figure out what happened. You could tell they’d been sitting there for hours. Even some cars headed south had pulled over their drivers leaning across the median talking with those who were stranded. We watched the news that night to see if there was any information on what happened, but there was nothing. Just like that crash, life can change in the blink of an eye. I wonder who witnessed it. What caused it? Did someone live to tell about it?

For the last few weeks – as we’ve made our way through Lent and Easter – we’ve focused our attention on the Gospels of John and Mark. We’ve compared and contrasted the ways that they presented Jesus’ life, ministry, execution and resurrection. Today we turn our attention to the book of Acts and get a glimpse of how Jesus’ followers, those who lived to tell about it, managed to get on with life once Jesus was gone.

The book of Acts is really a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. Scholars agree that Acts and Luke were written by the same author and many theologians refer to them together as Luke-Acts, part one and part two of the same story if you will. These books are meant to be read together, and as such paint a complete picture of Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and legacy carried on by his followers after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Luke-Acts audience was likely an urban, educated, economically stable community of Gentile Christians who lived at the end of the first century, two or three generations after Jesus’ death. Acts bears witness on the birth and development of the early Christian Church as grew beyond its Jewish roots and spread into the Gentile community.

Our focal passage for today, Acts 3:12-19, offers an interesting glimpse into the tension and conflict that burdened Jesus’ earliest followers as they attempted to make sense of, and perhaps make amends for their role in, Jesus’ death. Immediately preceding our passage is the story of how Peter and John preformed a miraculous healing. A man, lame since birth, sat begging at the gates of the temple. When John and Peter passed by he asked them for money. Fairly poor men themselves, they informed the beggar that they couldn’t give money, but they could give him something far, far better – and they healed him in the name of Jesus. The man jumped to his feet and began to walk. He ran around the temple praising God. As he was a well known beggar in the community, the people gathered to worship at the temple immediately recognized him and were filled with wonder at his astounding healing.

And then Peter, in true Peter fashion, lets the onlookers have it. He chastises them for thinking that Peter and John healed this man of their own power – pointing them back to Jesus. He condemns them for their role in Jesus’ condemnation and crucifixion and reprimands them for asking for Barabbas’ release instead of Jesus’.

“You killed the author of life…” Peter says…”To this we are witnesses…”

A bold, shame inducing accusation…and a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black don’t you think?

Aren’t we all well aware of Peter’s own denial of Christ after Jesus’ arrest and during his crucifixion? I can’t help but wonder how often Peter made this “holier than thou” speech to himself in the days and weeks that followed Jesus’ death. “I can’t believe I disowned the Holy and Righteous One…I killed the author of life…everyone witnessed it…”

Our witness is a significant and fragile thing.

If you’ve ever been summoned as a witness in a court of law then you certainly know that what you say and how you say it is of critical importance. It’s not just your testimony or experience that is called into question, but also your character, your acquaintances, and your motives. It is a trying task to say the least.

In the gospel lesson that we heard earlier from Luke we find the resurrected Jesus instructing his followers to be witnesses of scripture, of Jesus’ death and resurrection and of the forgiveness of sins. And in Acts we see Peter, however clumsily, trying to live as Jesus’ witness. Jesus knew what he was doing when he challenged those early disciples to bear his witness. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus gives this command just after revealing himself to Thomas, and in Acts we see Peter trying to do what Jesus’ asked of him. You see, the folks that Jesus called as witnesses were the same folks that Jesus called as disciples…doubters, deniers, gluttons, cheats, and prostitutes.

And that my friends gives me hope…because, it is still a daunting task to be a witness for Christ. If they could do it, then we can do it too.

I’m not sure what comes to your mind when you think about being a witness for Christ, but for me I’m reminded of evangelism classes that I took in church growing up. We practiced giving our testimonies, bearing witness of how we’d been saved from sin, and learning how to pray the sinner’s prayer with someone. Then we were sent out into the neighborhoods or to our schools to “win souls for Christ”. I think back on those days with a shudder. It became a game, a contest almost, to see who could “convert” the greatest number of folks. When I say today that we are called to be witnesses for Christ – this is NOT what I am talking about. I’m afraid that the type of witnessing I participated in during my youth was destructive and dangerous. I used the Bible, and my experience with Christ, to condemn and ultimately hurt others. A lectionary resource blog, called rev-o-lution.org suggests that, “Christ uses Scripture to open our hearts and minds to the fullness of God’s message and to witness God’s love to the world.” We are the best witness to the Bible and to Jesus when we proclaim God’s love – not condemnation.

But regardless, it’s a scary thought, right? That WE are called to be Christ’s witnesses, just like those first century believers. And I’m pretty sure I know what’s going through your minds – I wouldn’t know what to say. I’m too shy. I prefer to keep my faith private. What if someone asks me a question that I can’t answer? I’m not even sure I believe in all this stuff myself, how in the world can I bear witness for Christ? Or maybe you’re thinking, “I HATE it when someone else tries to shove their belief down my throat – so as far as witnessing is concerned, you can count me out.

And I agree, all of these concerns are valid. But I also agree with David Lose, Marbury E. Anderson Biblical Preaching Chair at Luther Seminary, who suggests that we all actually witness all the time, we just don’t realize it. Lose says, “I'm not talking about "life-style evangelism," No, what I mean is that we bear witness to things that are important to us all the time. We bear witness to the great movies or television programs we've seen and want others to enjoy. We bear witness to the accomplishments (or failures) of our sports teams. We bear witness to the important events in our family or work lives. We bear witness -- that is, tell someone about -- the things that matter to us all the time.”

Lose continues, “It's not really all that different when it comes to the faith. Witnessing does not mean shoving our faith down someone's throat or threatening them with eternal hellfire if they don't believe like we do. It's simply telling others where we sensed God at work -- at home or work, at church or school, through a stranger or a friend, a doctor or teacher or neighbor, even through ourselves. Bearing witness is nothing more than saying where you think God is at work in your life and the world. We bear witness all the time; we're just not used to thinking about doing it in terms of our faith.”

And that’s true, right? We bear witness every single day to the things that are important to us. I could spend the whole rest of this church service witnessing to you about my experience reading the Hunger Games Trilogy while I was out of town last week. I could share with you how masterfully the author Suzanne Collins simultaneously captured the essence of what is beautiful and what is dispicable about human nature. I could talk at length about how different parts of the books made my heart soar, or my pulse race, or my eyes fill up with tears. I could ponder with you about the hollowness I felt when I finished the third book, Mockingjay, and we could talk about what that means from a literary and a cultural perspective. I’m guessing that if you haven’t already read the books, you might leave that conversation at least a little bit curious about them – maybe you’d even decide to read them for yourself. But even if you didn’t, that would be ok too. The joy is in having the conversation.

See, it isn’t really that hard. Every single one of us can do this – we can have a meaningful conversation about something that’s important to us. The “witnessing” I was trained to do as a teen-ager was forced and coercive. It was about using the right words and phrases, praying the right prayer, citing the right scriptures. But all that is for the birds. None of us practice having regular conversations with folks…no we just speak simply, honestly, and casually about what’s going on in our lives. The only thing that’s perfect about witnessing is that you are talking about something you love with someone that cares enough to listen.

The tricky thing is having the boldness to have these kinds of meaningful conversations about our faith; about where we’ve seen God at work in our lives. We’ve been taught that it isn’t ok to talk about God, haven’t we? I mean it’s one of the two big no-no’s when it comes to public discourse – God and politics – although sometimes it seems that all I hear about is God’s role in politics, but I digress…

We don’t talk about our faith because we don’t want to offend anyone; we don’t want to come across as too “religious”; we don’t have enough confidence in what we truly believe to speak boldly about how God has made an impact in our lives; we don’t believe that anyone would really care to hear about how our faith has been grown and stretched and challenged; we don’t trust each other enough to ask the important questions of our faith or to honestly admit our doubts.

But – let me tell you a little secret. None of that is true…

People desperately want to talk about faith. People want to know about the things that mean something to you. They want to tell you about what means something to them People need to know that they aren’t the only ones with questions. People are looking to see God, to hear God, to be touched by God because of you, because of all of us. They are waiting for their lives to be changed and you just might be what they need to make that happen.

As a hospice chaplain it was my job to talk with people about God and about faith as it related specifically to their nearing death. It never failed to amaze me how willing and how eager people were to talk about their fears, or their hopes, their faith or their doubts. Many a patient desperately said to me, “I wish my family would talk to me about my faith and about dying.” The joy that I have in being your pastor is that now it is my job to talk with you about God and faith as it relates to all the parts of your lives – the good parts and the bad parts, the joyful experience and the sorrowful ones.

My challenge to you today is to look for ways to speak boldly about your faith. Not necessarily in an attempt to convert anyone, although that may happen and we would certainly all celebrate, but rather to be intentional about bearing witness to the ways in which God has been present in your life. We need to bear witness for one another. We desperately need to hear that God is still working and moving in the world around us.

Any yet…you may be sitting there thinking, “Now Pastor, what you’re saying is all fine and well and good, but I’m not a talker and there’s no way I’m ever going to bear witness to anything…” My response to you is this – we limit ourselves when we think that we only bear witness to Christ’s work in our lives with our words. In Acts 3 we see that Peter and John encountered a lame man lying in front of the temple gates and they responded to him as they knew Jesus would – they used their God given powers to heal him. I know that for most of us – no matter how Spirit filled we may be – will never be able to heal someone who’s been lame since birth, but we can use our gifts, our talents, our resources, our vocations, our educations to be the very presence of Christ to those around us.

There are multiple ways in which we can demonstrate the love of God for the world without words. Plant some trees, eat less, volunteer for a charity that you care about, mentor someone who is learning your vocation, consume less, spend your money in places and on things that better the lives of others, take care of yourself mentally, physically and emotionally – be an example for others to do the same, do everything in your power to ensure that the people you love know how very much you love them – I promise you that God can use even these small things to change the world.

More often than not we act in ignorance just as Peter did when he denied Christ, just as the crowds did during Passover when they asked for Barabbas’ freedom instead of Jesus’. We use our words to hurt and harm, we speak ill of one another, we curse and condemn those things that scare us, we run from the things we don’t understand rather than trying to figure it out, we complain about our trials far more off than we rejoice over our blessings, we deny Christ with our words and our deeds more often than we can count. We live as if Love was defeated by the cross and the tomb when we know full well that Love Won and that Love continues to Win. The good news is, my friends, that there is still time to start anew, to repent and to turn towards God so that our sins may be wiped out. There is still a few more minutes, a few more hours, a few more days a few more years to live and be the presence of Christ in the world around us, to speak and share the Good News. God is Love. May each of us have the boldness we need to bear witness to this through word and deed today and always.

(preached April 22, 2012 - St. John's UCC)

RESOURCES:

http://www.vts.edu/ftpimages/95/download/download_group10628_id314976.pdf

http://rev-o-lution.org/2012/04/15/worship-resources-for-april-22-2012-third-sunday-of-easter-and-earth-day/

http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=579

http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/?p=2084

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2012/04/08/3-easter-b-april-22-2012/

http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/article/entry/2568/sermon-options-april-22-2012

Roll Away Your Stone

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 14:40:00 +0000

John 20:1-18

If you joined us this morning for our sunrise service then you heard the story of Jesus’ resurrection from the Gospel of Mark. In Mark’s Gospel the women arrived at the tomb to discover it empty, they encountered a man dressed in white who informed them that Jesus had been raised, that he had gone ahead to Galilee to wait for them, and then angel told the women to go and tell the disciples what had happened. But the women were too paralyzed with fear and amazement to follow directions. Terrified, they fled the scene and said nothing to anyone.

John’s version of Jesus’ resurrection couldn’t be more different. And it leaves us to wonder – if the Gospels aren’t even consistent with how they tell the most important story in Christianity – how in the world are we to ever make sense of it? Frederick Buechner, my favorite religious writer of the twentieth century, says that the inconsistencies are precisely what make the story so believable.

Buechner writes: The Gospels are far from clear as to just what happened. It began in the dark. The stone had been rolled aside. Matthew alone speaks of an earthquake. In the tomb there were two white-clad figures or possibly just one. Mary Magdalen[e] seems to have gotten there before anybody else. There was a man she thought was the gardener. Perhaps Mary the mother of James was with her and another woman named Joanna. One account says Peter came too with one of the other disciples. Elsewhere the suggestion is that there were only the women and that the disciples, who were somewhere else, didn’t believe the women’s story when they heard it. There was the sound of people running, of voices…confusion was everywhere. There is no agreement even as to the role of Jesus himself. Did he appear at the tomb or only later? Where? To whom did he appear? What did he say? What did he do?

It is not a major production at all. It’s not really even much of a story when you come right down to it, and that is of course the power of it. It doesn’t have the ring of great drama. It has the ring of truth. If the Gospel writers had wanted to tell it in a way to convince the world that Jesus had indeed rose from the dead, they would have presumably have done it with all the skill and fanfare they could muster. Here there is no skill, no fanfare. They seem to be telling it simply the way it was. The narrative is as fragmented, shadowy, incomplete as life itself. When it comes to just what happened, there can be no certainty. That something unimaginable happened, there can be no doubt.

So, clearly if the gospels couldn’t make sense of it, then we certainly can’t explain the resurrection in a way that makes any sense to anyone at all. And from a logical and physical perspective it is a ludicrous, preposterous idea to say the least anyway. But there’s no denying that something unimaginable, something miraculous happened that first Easter Sunday morning that changed the world. Indeed whatever it was that rolled that stone away from the tomb continues to change the world every single time someone takes a leap of faith and trusts Jesus.

Do you remember when you first believed in Jesus? I first professed faith in Christ on Easter Sunday morning in 1989. You see in the Baptist tradition in which I grew up making a profession of faith is the most essential, most meaningful, most pivotal moment in a Christian’s life. Baptists aren’t baptized as infants, there’s no first communion and no confirmation – instead all of these holy events center upon one first making a public profession of faith which I did at the age of nine.

In most evangelical traditions making a public profession of faith involves several steps – first you acknowledge that you are a sinner, in need of the saving grace of God; next you profess faith in Jesus as the Son of God and accept him as savior and then you make this decision public by walking down the aisle during the hymn of invitation at the end of the service – thereby acknowledging your faith in Christ for all to see.

Now our tradition does it a little differently, so it is likely that you didn’t make a public profession of faith the way that I did as a kid – but I’m willing to bet that there was a time in your life when your faith went from going through the motions at church to something personal and life-changing. Maybe it was when you were confirmed, or when you were married or when you divorced, or when your child was born or when a loved one died, or you hit rock bottom, or you sobered up, or you came to your senses for any number of reasons.

I’m guessing that for Mary Magdalene this very first Easter Sunday was the critical moment of faith for her. Of course if we read the gospels carefully we’ll see that Mary is the most faithful of all of Jesus’ followers – I’m sure that she “got it” – what Jesus’ purpose, ministry and life was all about – well before any of the others did. And there’s no denying that she’s the one standing at the foot of the cross with Jesus’ mother when nearly all the other disciples had fled for the hills. But watching her Lord, her friend, die mercilessly on a cross probably gave her pause and caused her to question everything that she’d believed to be true about Jesus. But here she is coming to the graveyard in the darkness to be near Jesus just one more time only to find him missing yet again. She’d lost Jesus once and now she’s lost him again. And yet after the other disciples have come and gone in the midst of the chaos of the first Easter Sunday morning Mary stays. She stays at the tomb facing her grief, knee deep in her crisis of faith.

And then she hears him call her name. That voice she would know anywhere. Could it be…

In an instant, in the mere seconds it takes for him to breathe out the two syllables of her name faith like she has never known floods her heart, her soul, her mind.

TEACHER she cries and reaches out for him…

Following his instructions she ran from the garden announcing for the world to hear, “I have seen the Lord!”

Yes, the stone was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb that first Easter Sunday morning, but it was also rolled away from Mary’s heart as well. Those places within her that were filled with death, grief, sorrow, abandonment, hopelessness, and sinfulness were wiped clean, set free. They had died with Christ and were replaced with life, joy, laughter, belonging, hope and purity.

This past Friday many of you came into this sanctuary and spent some time kneeling at the foot of the cross – praying, singing, weeping, repenting. You wrote down your sins and your sorrows, you took up a nail and a hammer and you crucified those dark places in your life with Christ. As I came back and forth between the parsonage and the church I could hear the ringing of the hammer as you offered yourselves to the Lord. I’m guessing that for many of you the things that you nailed to the cross are sorrows and sins that you’ve carried around with you for a long time. You’ve hidden them inside the tomb within your soul, you’ve rolled the stone over the opening and you’ve walked many a year in the sadness, darkness and grief of Easter Saturday – just as Mary and the disciples grieved and mourned the death of Jesus on that first Easter Saturday. I willing to bet that some of those things that you nailed to the cross keep you awake at night, distract you, haunt you, worry you, weaken your faith and keep you from looking full into the face of God.

This morning I would encourage us, dear friends, to roll away the stones that are trapping these things inside us. If the tomb of Christ, in all of its stony power - would not, indeed could not, hold the Love of God at bay – then why, oh why, are we still carrying around death when there is Life and Love to be had in abundance?

Do we dare have the faith to believe that we too can be raised to new life with Christ on this Easter Sunday morning? Do we believe that Love can win because of Easter Sunday morning? Do we dare hope that there is something beyond death and the grave because of Easter Sunday morning? Do we trust that we can face tomorrow – whatever it might bring – because of Easter Sunday morning? Do we have the confidence that we need to love and pray for and break bread with our enemies because of Easter Sunday morning? My answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES!

We can call ourselves Christians, friends, because of Easter Sunday morning. And it doesn’t matter how Jesus came back to life, or whether this was a literal or a spiritual or metaphysical or psychological experience – what matters is that the grave - despite its best efforts – could not contain the Love of God – God is about Life, Abundant, Grace-Filled Life and we can be too.

Listen today, and hear Jesus calling out your name – just as he called out Mary’s. Have faith, like Mary, to turn and look at the Risen Christ full in the face and to allow him to be your teacher. And then go and life your life in such a way that anyone who see you will know that you have seen the Lord.

There is no need to stay in the darkness of the tomb, Church. Roll away your stone. Live into the light of Christ. Take that first step of faith, trusting that the Grace of God has forgiven your sins, set you free and made you whole!

Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed! Thanks Be to God!

(preached Easter Sunday 2012 - St. John's UCC)

RESOURCES:

http://www.goodpreacher.com/shareit/readreviews.php?cat=28

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3163

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=640

http://www.lyricsmania.com/roll_away_your_stone_lyrics_mumford_and_sons.html

Buechner, Frederick., Wishing in the Dark – A Doubter’s Dictionary, HarperSanFrancisco 1993.

Immediately

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:38:00 +0000

A wonderful thing happened in the Schirm household this week – maybe you’ve heard – I’ve certainly not hidden my joy! WE.GOT.SATELLITE.INTERNET!! Which means we can now connect my computer, Matt’s computer, Anderson’s computer, my iphone, Matt’s iphone, Anderson’s ipod, our Wii which streams our Netflix, and my kindle simultaneously. Is this Heaven? No it’s Iowa with internet! Don’t know an answer to a trivia question – we can find the answer immediately. Can’t remember how long to bake chicken thighs – I can get on the internet from the kitchen to find that out in a snap! Can’t remember when the baseball team plays next – BAM – I can pull up Wartburg’s website before you can bat an eyelash! I mean seriously, doesn’t your household use that much media on a daily basis?

But that wasn’t always the case with the internet, as you well know. I have nightmarish memories of sitting in front of our family computer as a teenager, hoping and praying that our dial up internet would connect so that I could chat online with my boyfriend who was away at college. My boyfriend and I would set a time to chat and I would wait and wait and wait for the dial-up to connect. Usually the stupid thing wouldn’t work and I would end up in tears because I missed my window of opportunity to talk with him. Teen-age drama, technology drama…is there anything worse? We want what we want and we want it now, don’t we. Everything is an emergency. Immediately isn’t fast enough. I’m sure you can relate. How well we might fit in with Mark’s listeners.

Remember way back in the beginning of Lent we talked about the theme of urgency in Mark’s gospel. We saw the word “Immediately” multiple times in the story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation. Mark wanted us to understand that there was an intensity, a suddenness, an explosiveness, an immediacy in Jesus’ ministry that could not be ignored. Mark and Mark’s readers believed that the end of the world was at hand, Rome was in control, life as they knew it was on the brink and something had to change and FAST! You’ll notice that the word “immediately” shows up multiple times in our Gospel Lesson today as well. This sense of urgency follows Jesus all the way to the cross. And the crowd has picked up on it too. Our text says:

Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

There’s this sense that something big, something really incredibly big is about to happen. Something life-changing, something awe-inspiring, something revolutionary. All their hopes and dreams rested on this man. They knew that Jesus would be the catalyst to set everything in motion…

Only what they thought would happen, and what really happened couldn’t have been more different…

You see the crowd around Jesus was expecting a military conquest, a governmental overthrow, a regime change to the nth degree. The imagery of the crowds laying down their cloaks and branches, waving palms, shouting Hosanna in the Highest would not have been lost on Mark’s readers. Hosanna – a difficult word to translate – roughly means “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!” “O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” Save us, Save us they begged of Jesus – save us from oppression, save us from persecution, save us from racial and religious profiling.

Brian P. Stoffregen, who writes for Crossmarks Christian Resources, notes that this scene reminds him of the celebrations that occurred after a military conquest recorded in the books of 1 & 2 Maccabees. You may not be familiar with 1 & 2 Maccabees - they are books that are not usually found in our bibles, but they are part of the larger Christian canon called the Apocrypha and are often found in Catholic bibles and in study bibles. Listen to these two scenes and see if you can hear the similarities.

1 Maccabees 13 -- Capture of the Pagan Fort in Jerusalem

On the twenty-third day of the second month in the year 171 [141 BCE] of the Syrian Kingdom, Simon led his soldiers into the fortress. They carried palm branches and praised God with all kinds of songs and musical instruments. God had completely crushed their powerful enemy!

2 Maccabees 10:1-8 -- The Rededication of the Temple

The Lord led Judas Maccabeus and our troops into battle, and they recaptured the temple and the city of Jerusalem. Then they destroyed the places where the foreigners had worshiped, including the altars they had built in the public market. Judas and his followers made the temple an acceptable place of worship once again… We celebrated a joyful festival for eight days, and it was just like the Festival of Shelters. But now they walked around carrying sticks decorated with twisted ivy and holding up branches, including some from palm trees. They sang hymns and thanked the Lord for making our holy temple clean again.

You see, Stoffregen notes, “The use of palm branches in Maccabees was related to military victories. Is that what the people were expecting from Jesus? When they shout "Hosanna" = "Save us"; do they consider that "salvation" to be like that of the Maccabees -- driving out the occupying forces from Jerusalem? If so, then Jesus failed miserably to live up to their expectations.”

If we read our Gospel Lesson closely enough we’ll realize that Mark wants us to see this tension between the kind of Savior the people were hoping for and the kind of Savior Jesus really proved himself to be. Remember that another theme in Mark’s gospel is that most of the folks around Jesus “don’t get it”. They misunderstand his message and his intentions over and over and the crowd in our Gospel Lesson is a perfect example of that.

Carl Gregg, on his blog entitled Pluralism, Progressivism, Pragmatism: A Protestant Pastor in a Postmodern World suggests that it is interesting that Mark uses more than half of these eleven verses detailing the odd way the disciples found Jesus’ donkey.

Gregg notes, “Anyone familiar with the book of Zechariah would immediately recognize why Mark spent so many precious verses on the simple act of getting the donkey. Zechariah 9:9 says,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Gregg concludes that, “many commentators have speculated that Mark emphasizes the details of retrieving the donkey to give his readers time to have “ears to hear” the allusion to Zechariah’s prophecy: the one who comes riding on a donkey will nonviolently bring peace.”

Indeed if we look at this same story in Matthew’s gospel we’ll find that Jesus rides into town on a donkey with her foal in tow. Military champions ride into town on noble steeds, warhorses as intimidating as their riders. But Jesus comes to town on a nursing donkey with her baby trotting along beside them. Is there anything less mighty than that? And remember that across town, likely on this same day, Pontius Pilate, a government official is also coming to Jerusalem with strict orders to keep the peace during the Passover Celebration. Pilate probably IS on a noble steed, worthy of his position, and surrounded by a military guard receiving full pomp and circumstance. But you can bet that the crowds around him weren’t calling him Savior and shouting Hosanna. To do so would have been an ultimate act of treason punishable by death on a cross. No one but the emperor was to be called Savior and Lord. And yet here in Mark we see Jesus on his meek pack-mule heralded as Savior of the World, indeed the King of the Jews for the whole town to see.

If you spend much time studying what’s been written about the crowds that gathered around Jesus on Palm Sunday you’ll find lots of scholars who critique the crowds’ motives, intentions and expectations. After all we know that these same folks turn their backs on Jesus, literally hand him over for crucifixion, in just a few short days. But I wonder if we would have been any different if we had been in their shoes? I wonder if we are any different now? One commentator noted that if this passion story occurred in our day and time we would likely be sure to “sue Jesus first and expose him in the tabloids as a fraud for good measure” before executing him.

The reality is that Jesus did come as a savior, he did come as a victor, he did come to free us from oppression and injustice – but just not in the ways the crowds expected, or in the ways that we expect him to even now. What do we need Jesus to save us from today? If Jesus were in our midst, and we were the ones shouting “Hosanna!! Save us, O Lord, we beseech you?” From what would we be hoping for salvation?

The Rev. Dr. Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, NY, shares this story:

I recently met with a group of seventh-graders to answer some questions…that they wanted to pose to their pastors. Four of the twelve cards asked: "Is Jesus the only way to salvation?" Being an annoying pastor, I told them that before I would answer that question, they had to answer one for me. "Since salvation implies that you are being saved from something, what do you think Jesus is saving you from?" The first answer that came back was "hell." Jesus saves people from hell. Now, I don't think this is a bad answer…, but … I must admit that my initial reaction when someone answers that "hell" is what God saves us from is suspicion. I am suspicious…because, for a good portion of American Christians, this is the (obvious and only) "right answer." … It's kind of similar to what happens when I go to see my doctor, and he asks, "So, have you been exercising?" and I know what he wants me to say.

But when Dr. Johnston pushed the teenagers a little further, asking them what they REALLY wished Jesus could save them from, well… the conversation took an interesting turn.

One of the youth raised her hand and said, "Death." Another offered that God could really help him out by saving him from an upcoming math test. Then one of the seventh graders said, "Pressure." And another youth said, "My parents' expectations." Then another, shy individual, almost in a whisper said, "Fear. I want God to save me from my fears." All of these answers struck me as more sincere than "hell." Although, I think you could argue that their comments gave a pretty clear picture of what "hell" looks like to a 7th grader.

I wonder what we would say if we were truly honest about what we wished Jesus could save us from? Maybe we need God to save us from anger, or cancer, or depression. From debt or family conflict or a dead end job? Maybe we wish we could be saved from boredom, from violence, from doubt or from humiliation. Perhaps we need be saved from bitterness, arrogance, loneliness or fear. Maybe we need Jesus to swoop in as our Savior when we are staring at the ceiling at three a.m. wondering why we even exist. If only Jesus could take all those broken places within us and make them whole…

This coming Passion Week reminds us that that while Jesus didn’t come to overthrow governments, to ensure physical safety, or even to free us from oppression as his followers expected, he did come with an urgent mission. Jesus came to bring wholeness, to bring peace and to bring freedom from sin and death. For truly it is through wholeness, peace and freedom that we are saved, that the world is saved. When we are whole, at peace and able to live into the fullness that God created for us – only then can we bring about wholeness, peace and freedom in our families, in our communities, in our country, in our world.

This week we will walk with Christ to the cross. There’s an impulse to rush ahead to Easter Sunday morning. To hurriedly skip right over the darkness of holy week and immediately begin celebrating the resurrection of Christ. But I encourage us to slow down a bit, to linger over these next few days with Jesus. I invite you to join us for our Maundy Thursday service as we reflect on Christ’s Last Supper and the commandments Jesus left for his followers. On Friday, while there won’t be an official Good Friday Service, the church will be open from 9-6 for prayer and contemplation. There will be a wooden cross here at the alter along with slips of paper, nails and a hammer. I invite you to stop in for a few minutes, to write down a sin or something from which you need to be saved – your anger, your fear, your worry - and to nail it to the cross as a reminder of the freedom that we have in Christ. And then, of course, I invite you to join us on Sunday morning as we celebrate the glorious resurrection of our Lord and celebrate God’s triumph over death.

What an honor it is to walk with you on this sacred journey.

(originally preached Palm Sunday – April 1, 2012 - St. John's UCC)

RESOURCES:

http://thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/hosanna-save-us-from-self-interest-palm-sunday-b/

http://thehardestquestion.org/yearb/palmsundaygospel/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/03/jesus-subversive-donkey-ride-a-progressive-christian-lectionary-commentary-for-palm-sunday/

http://www.holytextures.com/2012/02/mark-11-1-11-year-b-lent-6-palm-sunday-sermon.html

http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/palmsun.htm

http://day1.org/1240-save_us

My Mother-in-Law's China

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:05:00 +0000

For as long as I can remember I've loved this china called Blue Garland. It was popular in the 1970's and grocery stores ran a promotion where if you spent X amount of money in the store you got rebates to order pieces of the china.

More times than I can count I have asked my mom to buy it for me. We've seen it antique stores and consignment shops but have never bought it because it wasn't a compete set or not in good shape etc.

I didn't even register for wedding china because I never saw anything I loved as much as the Blue Garland.

So in January when I was in Iowa for my trial sermon my mom spent the day with my mother in law and randomly told her about my love for this china. Mom said she almost bought it for me this last Christmas, but decided against it.

My mother in law stopped dead in her tracks and said, "Blue Garland?"

Then she took my mom down to her basement where she had THE ENTIRE SET boxed up.

It had been HER wedding china! She'd only used it once and had forgotten all about it after she divorced.

So...when we finally moved to Iowa she surprised me and gave it all to me!

My Mother-in-law said her mom saved up her grocery rebates for months to get it all for her as a wedding gift.

I cried today unpacking it all. I'm so grateful to finally have these dishes and am even more grateful that they've been in the family for so long!

And What Should I Say

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:55:00 +0000

In the summer of 2000 I traveled to

Ghana

, Africa with a group of college students on a mission trip. We partnered with a local youth leadership organization in a small town called Nalerigu to educate the population, particularly children and youth, about AIDS prevention. At that stage in my life I was studying biology and chemistry with the intention of becoming a missionary nurse-midwife. During my free time, I shadowed nurses in the pediatric ward and the labor and delivery ward of the missionary run village hospital. While at the hospital, I encountered a woman whose story came to mind as I prepared for today’s sermon.

Falecia resided in a village six hours away from the hospital. She had just given birth to her first born son and a relative had brought her to the hospital hoping to ensure the baby’s safe delivery. Not long after his birth, the baby became jaundiced. Newborn jaundice is normal and for many babies it is quickly resolved with exposure to sunlight or artificial light. But despite the doctors’ best efforts, the baby’s jaundice continued to get worse. After all the newborn tests and scans were complete, the doctors concluded that the baby’s bile duct was not functioning properly. Unfortunately the physicians could not fix the problem with the technology currently available to them at the rural hospital. The baby would die.The doctors encouraged Falecia to take her infant son home to be with her family so that he could spend his last days surrounded by love. I remember sitting with Falecia, both of us in tears, listening with awe as she explained, “God has given me my son, and God is now asking for him back. What should I say? I must be willing to let him go.” I marveled at her acceptance of the situation and her calm resolve to honor God even as her child lay dying. I certainly would not have been so long-suffering with God.

Audrey West, Associate Professor of New Testament at Lutheran School of Theology, reminds us that, “Following Jesus is a matter of life and death. Or, to put it another way, life and death matter to those who follow Jesus.” Falecia learned this the hard way, the heart-breaking way. Maybe you’ve learned this the hard way, the heart-breaking way too. Jesus’ followers certainly did. Over and over and over this Lent we’ve been reminded that we must lose our lives to save them; that true discipleship means carrying a cross. Yes, we’ve been assured that Jesus’ death brings us freedom, but true faith compels us to die unto ourselves for the sake of others. I’m just not quite sure it’s sinking in yet, at least not for me anyway.

Today’s Gospel Lesson invites us to hear Jesus predict his own death yet again. Unlike the synoptic Gospels where we see Jesus agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane, anticipating his death – literally sweating out drops of blood in fear and distress, begging God to find another way – in John’s Gospel we see Jesus approach his nearing crucifixion matter-of-factly, calmly, reasonably. Jesus compares his own life to that of a seed and reminds us that in order for anything meaningful to grow from the earth the seed must first die, must be transformed from its original, dormant, ordinary state to its marvelous, life-giving, fruit-bearing state.

Is the Jesus we see in John’s gospel concerned at all about what is to come – sure, and he tells us that his soul is troubled. But he goes on to say, “And what should I say – Father save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour…”

And what should I say, he says. In our everyday language I can almost hear him saying, “But what are ya gonna do?” or “It is what it is”. And yet I caution us from thinking that somehow Jesus has given up, or has resigned himself to the inevitable. Remember that John’s Gospel was written much later than the other Gospels. There has been time for the Christian community to think, and to try to make sense of Jesus’ death. While Matthew, Mark and Luke show a measure of Jesus’ vulnerability, John’s Jesus is confident and resolute. He exemplified how to think and act and be faithful in the midst of persecution and danger.

There’s a difference, I think, between acceptance of reality and “giving up”. As a hospice chaplain I spent time with folks walking the very road that Jesus does. Folks all too aware of the nearness of their own death. Some people fought it – begging God with blood and sweat and tears for a miracle, for healing, for a pass, for another way. Some people denied it – pretending that death would never come even as they took their last breaths. But the folks who were able to accept their approaching death and find meaning and holiness in it, well, those were the folks who truly lived – fully and abundantly – until they took their final breaths. These were the folks who somehow managed to see death as a gift; the folks who used their final days to make amends for the things they had done wrong. They went out of their way to make sure their friends and family knew how fiercely they were loved. They stopped to smell the roses. They read good books. They listened to good music. They planned their own funerals. They counted their blessings. They left their legacy. They told their stories. They gave away their money and their keep-sakes, and they gave thanks for each day, each moment, each breath until time ran out.

And the reality is…we are all dying. From the second we took our very first breath we began the process of dying. Todd Weir, a pastor and administrator of a homeless shelter and transitional home in New York, recently blogged about the continual process of dying. Todd notes:

“… parts of us are dying all the time. You probably just lost half a million or so cells just [listening to] this sentence. We all lose about 100,000 cells per second. Fortunately, just a many cells are being reproduced in a healthy body. Healthy bodies have this constant cycle of dying cells and rebirth of new ones. Some scientists say that we are regenerated every seven years… Apparently, cells that don’t die off in the normal cycle are a real problem. These cells are related to diseases like cancer and become problematic because they get in the way and block healthy development of the body.”

Todd goes on to say, “I believe this is true in the spiritual and emotional life as well. “Those who love their life will lose it, but those who love their lives for my sake will save it.” Our failure to let go and let some things die is a spiritual disease, for new life can’t come without some death. The failure to forgive leads to death of relationship while anger and bitterness ravage the spirit like a cancer. Holding on to regrets strangles hope before it can lift us to new life. Trying to control events and other people leads to frustration, excessive stress, and exhaustion. Forgiveness and letting go of control are spiritual exercises in the art of dying so that new life may abound…”

In order to truly call ourselves Christ followers our lives must be about something greater than ourselves, something that reveals God’s glory. We can’t remain seeds - dormant, stale, unremarkable.

But – really – what does it even look like to lay down our lives? To follow Christ? To carry a cross? I mean Jesus was…well, you know…Jesus - the leader of a radical, life changing, world altering revolution; indeed the very presence of God on earth. And we’re just…well, you know…us. Reflecting on how Jesus’ death and resurrection changed the world. Lia Scholl in her article entitled “The Result of Revolution” notes that:

“Movements are strengthened by the death of their leaders. Jesus would have known this—And we’ve seen it in our lifetimes, with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States and Óscar Romero in El Salvador…Often times, the death of the leader becomes the catalyst to change. What kind of revolution did Jesus bring? He brought a revolution of relationship over religion. A rebellion against riches and the exploitation of individuals. A mutiny against judgment and religious superiority.”

So while carrying our cross probably won’t mean going to our deaths in a literal sense like Jesus did, it DOES means that our lives should centered upon those things for which Jesus died. As Christians – if we are committed to losing our lives for Christ’s sake - we should be the first to speak up when we see injustice and intolerance; we should be the first to offer grace, love and forgiveness in the face of sin, hatred and error; we should be the first to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give drink to thirsty and visit the prisoner; we should be on the frontlines working for peace, justice, freedom, and wholeness. I am convinced that each and every one of us can do and be all these things right here in rural Iowa. We can be the presence of Christ in our homes, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our families, in our towns – thereby drawing all of those around us nearer to the Love of God. The revolution that Christ began 2000 years ago continues even now. In denying ourselves, by putting our selfishness, reputations and pride on the back burner and by committing ourselves to mercy, justice and love we will bring Glory to God.

So you see, the cross of Christ is not the end – no, friends, it is only the beginning. Because just as it is with the seed, death brings about life. Rev. Debra Metzgar Shew suggests that in the midst of the grief, despair and exhaustion that surrounded Jesus’ journey to the cross, in the midst of the hatred and religious discontent the “most palpable experience of community and love” emerged. “Death precedes life, says Jesus. Not the other way around. We believe that fending off death will save us, but Jesus says that such an attempt will always destroy us.”

The reality is that trying to flee from death, trying to live our lives by our own means is what really leads to our destruction. This past Wednesday we spent time as a congregation exploring Psalm 51 – this is the text that we used for our prayer of confession today. The story behind this psalm is that King David – often call a man after God’s own heart – had messed up royally, pun intended. He had an affair with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his army generals and tried to hide it. It is likely that Bathsheba had no say in the matter as women were considered property in that day and age, and to cover up for his wrong doing David sends Bathsheba’s husband to the front lines of battle to expedite his death. It is only after his spiritual advisor, Nathan, confronts him that David fesses up to the disaster he has created in his own life, in Bathsheba’s life and in his kingdom and cries out to God for mercy and forgiveness.

How common it is for us to live life only for ourselves - following our own desires, storing up our own wealth, taking care of our own needs. How much greater could David’s kingdom have been, how much closer to God’s own heart might be have come, had he been willing to lose his life for God’s sake?

I take comfort in the fact that it was nearly impossible for David – a man after God’s own heart, to learn how to lose his own life; I find hope in the fact that the disciples – despite walking shoulder to shoulder with Jesus during his ministry – put their own lives above his as they fled and betrayed him on the night he was arrested. I cling to those who have failed before me because it means that I am not the first to fall short and I know I won’t be the last. It is hard, scary, impossible work to deny ourselves and follow Christ. What I do know is that God’s love is gracious, merciful and abundant, Jesus’ example is steadfast, perfect and humble, and the Holy Spirit’s guidance is continual, patient and encouraging. It is never too late to commit our lives to something greater than ourselves. We are never too far gone to take up our crosses. May we have the strength and the faith we need to die to ourselves – to surrender our selfishness and self-seeking – in order to truly live in Christ. And may many others be drawn into God’s presence because of the light of Christ’s love that shines in us. Let us pray.

(originally preached at St. John's UCC - Pleasant Hill, Nashua, IA on 3/25/12

RESOURCES:

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/25/2012&tab=4

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Eavesdropping-Discipleship-Alyce-McKenzie-03-20-2012.html

http://thehardestquestion.org/yearb/lent5gospel-2/

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/29/2009&tab=4

http://bloomingcactus.typepad.com/bloomingcactus/2006/03/john_122033_lea.html

http://day1.org/3636-a_blip_in_the_plan

http://day1.org/521-sacred_ground

Those Who Do What is True

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:55:00 +0000

This past Friday was March 16^th, or 3/16. If you are on facebook or any other social media, like I am, then your news feeds were likely full of status updates or tweets that said something like:

In honor of 3/16...for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so whoever believes in him shall have everlasting life. Share if you are not ashamed of your faith…

How appropriate that John 3:16 – undoubtedly the most infamous, most beloved, most memorized verse in the entire Bible – is part of our Gospel Lesson today.

This past Wednesday during our evening Lenten service we spent some time considering these verses from a variety of biblical translations and paraphrases. During the course of our meaningful discussion we concluded that when read in context, this notable bible verse isn’t quite as clear cut as we once thought. Several themes arose out of our discussion on Wednesday. Some of our church members noted the tension in these verses concerning whether or not our salvation comes from faith or deeds – belief or works; another area of concern is the contrast between the light and darkness; and a third, and I believe the most important issue, is how do we or better yet, how does God determine who’s in and who’s out? Who are the insiders and who are the outsiders when it comes to our faith?

Today we are going to explore these themes together and it is a good idea to begin with the topic of insiders vs. outsiders as it sets the framework for how we understand the other themes in our Gospel Lesson.

Insiders or Outsiders

If you go into my office over in the parsonage you’ll find a pair of boys shoes on top of one of my bookshelves. These shoes don’t belong to Anderson, no, they belonged to a little boy who visited my former church a few times. Although I did a little bit of everything at our church in Kentucky, my primary area of responsibility was with the children’s ministry. The church and the local Baptist association had an ongoing ministry in an impoverished neighborhood in downtown Lexington that included offering tutoring sessions for the kids, preparing meals for the shut ins, and leading monthly worship services. A church member who was very invested in this ministry started bringing three young boys from that community to church on Sunday mornings.

At first everything went fine. The boys seemed to adjust to the church schedule well and everyone was excited to have them worship with us. But after a few weeks the boys began to act out in Sunday School and began to behave in ways that were unsafe for themselves and others. Our church was on a very busy road and it wasn’t uncommon for them to run out of the church building unattended and head straight for the most traveled road in Lexington. They became physically and verbally abusive to each other, to the other kids and to their teachers. On one Sunday, when they attempted to run away from church for the zillionth, when one of the boys literally ran out of his shoes, Matt and another parent decided to take the boys home. In the car on the way home the boys repeatedly tried to open the doors and jump out of the car while speeding down the highway. It was a sad, scary and heart breaking situation.

Ultimately we had to make the decision to ask the boys not to come back to church unless one of their parents could accompany them and be responsible for their behavior. It was a decision we made for their safety and for the liability of the church – but I’ll be honest, it felt like a colossal failure on my behalf as the children’s minister and I couldn’t help but wonder what these boys would think about God when they grew up knowing that they had been “turned away” from the church. What made it worse is that our church slogan proudly boasted on the church sign and on our webpage, “Everyone is welcome here, no exceptions…” and yet these poor children proved to be the exception. I keep those shoes as a reminder of those boys. They serve as a reminder of one of the most humbling experiences in my ministry so far – and they remind me of the dangers of trying to decide who’s in and who’s out.

John’s community existed at a time when being “in” or “out” was a matter of life or death. As we discussed last week when we explored Jesus’ angry outburst in the temple, John’s audience was living in a time of extreme religious and political unrest. The temple was no longer standing, the Jewish leadership that was responsible for the temple had all but been demolished, and the government controlled every facet of life – religious or otherwise. And in the middle of all of this is a small faction of Christian believers trying to reconcile what they know to be true about God with the reality of the world around them. I can feel that tension in our Gospel Lesson for today, can you?

Rev. Margaret Aymer in her article entitled “Bouncers and the "In" Crowd” suggests that groups that are trying to protect themselves focus heavily on the question of who’s in and who’s out, particularly in times of conflict and controversy. Aymer’s notes that establishing insider/outsider criteria is as old as human society. So it should be no surprise that the tendency to try and determine who is and [who] is not Christian can be found in [John’s Gospel]. [In] John 3:16…eternal life is open to anyone who believes. Indeed, as the author underscores, “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world.” (3:17) But then, in John 3:18…The community establishes criteria of who is the “whosoever.” And who is it that really belongs? [Yes] those who believe in the only Son of God belong [but belonging] also requires actions.

It is important for us to understand that this passage is as much a reflection of John’s listeners trying to figure out how to be a Christian community in the midst of an oppressive, dangerous, divided society 2000 years ago as it is a mandate of who is or who isn’t “saved” in God’s eyes now.

Faith or Deeds/Light or Dark

But even knowing what we know about John’s community of listeners, we are still encouraged to ask, “So what does it mean to be a person who does what is true? What does it mean to come to the light? What leads to salvation? Faith or deeds?” And this is where I step back, take a deep breath and say with great caution, hesitation and humility – that I think the answer to this question is both. I affirm, whole-heartedly, that we are saved by grace through faith – and that this is a gift of God. But I am also convinced that what we do is of the utmost importance. Belief without deeds or deeds without belief are both somehow lacking. In order for us to become the people that God has intended for us to be our beliefs and our actions must go hand in hand.

I bet you can think of a few examples of how this plays out in our everyday life both positively and negatively. I’m sure you’ve heard of Westboro Baptist Church – the congregation that routinely makes national news for protesting the funerals or social events of people or groups that they believe to be against God as they understand God to be. Their actions and their words drip with hatred and judgment. And although they profess to believe in the same Christ that we do – their actions are consistently offensive to believers and unbelievers alike, their words are destructive and judgmental for all who have ears to hear, and their attitude is just about as unloving and un-Christ-like as it gets.

Or maybe you heard about that pastor in Florida who thought it would be a good idea to have a Koran burning party last year – thus inciting even more unrest in the middle east, endangering civilians and our troops in combat zones as well as endangering Muslim citizens of the US all while making Christianity look like a religion of hate and destruction.

Have you heard this expression attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say…” These Christian religious leaders are perfect examples of how having the right “Beliefs” but hate-filled “Deeds” undermines God’s love for the world in astronomical ways.

But maybe you also heard of the story last year – during the Arab Spring revolts that happened in Eqypt when Christians gathered around their Muslim brothers and sisters to protect them during their prayer time. The images from that experience - of Christians holding hands and encircling their Muslim friends and neighbors as they prayed on their hands and knees before God - are breath-taking. No words, no statements of belief, are needed to understand the hearts and minds of those faithful Christian believers – honoring the presence of God in and the religious freedom of their fellow country-men and women.

And then a short while later another story came to light where Egyptian Muslims flocked to Christmas Eve Mass at the Coptic Christian Churches in Egypt to act as human shields for their Christian brothers and sisters in an effort to protect them from Islamic militant attacks while they worshiped. Although these Muslims wouldn’t be able to affirm the same statements of belief that we might, we saw them willing to deny themselves and lay their lives down for their friends…is there any deed more Christlike than that?

I give you these examples not in an attempt to play God or to tell you who is saved and who isn’t saved, who’s in or who’s out because at the end of the day my hope above all hopes is that every single one of them and every single one of us will have a place in the presence of God for all eternity. But instead I share these stories to illustrate how complicated it is for anyone to say definitively, with certainty, who’s in and who’s out – who walks in light and truth and who walks in darkness and falsehood. The only thing I can say definitively is that God is a God of love. Indeed that God IS Love.

In our Hebrew lesson for today we heard the story of the Israelites who were being plagued by poisonous snakes. God instructed Moses to lift up a bronze snake on a pole so that all those who looked upon it and believed would be saved. The comparison is easy to make – like the bronze snake Jesus would be lifted up on a cross so that those suffering in sin and death that looked upon him and believed would be saved. And John 3:16 tells us why this is so important – For God so loved the world that he sent his only son that whoever believes would have eternal life.

Sarah Henrich Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary notes:

The single most important thing to notice about this verse is that God loved the world. God deeply loved the world that God created, and God longs for this creation to live. It is not only God's own people whom God will save, as in the Numbers story. It is the [entire world] that God has loved, precisely by having given the only son…

Yes, John tells us there are real consequences in our daily life and our everlasting relationship with God. But he tells us [this] in order to help us see the contrasts [of light and dark, good and evil], to look clearly at our lives, to appreciate the gracious gift of God as a gift of love, and to live in fearless confidence of that love. Have we ever been so truly and consistently desired by another as we are by God? No indeed. God loved the world in this way that he gave the Son so that we might live forever with God.

I agree with Professor Heinrich that the single most important thing about our Gospel Lesson today is that God loved the world. What we do with that love – what we believe about that love – how we live out that love, well we could explore and debate and expound on that forever. And for the entirety of human existence we’ve tried to make sense of who is and who isn’t included in God’s love – that is especially evident in John’s gospel. But the reality is at the end of the day, all we can do is strive to be people who live in the light; people who embody God’s sacrificial love for everyone we meet; people who do what is true.

Paul Tillich, one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20^th century says that:

The Greek word for truth means: making manifest the hidden. Truth is hidden and must be discovered. No one possesses it naturally…Truth in Christianity is something which happens, something which is bound to a special place, to a special time, to a special personality. Truth is something new, something which is done by God in history, and, because of this, something which is done in the individual life.

The truth of which Jesus speaks is not a doctrine but a reality, namely, He Himself: "I am the truth." If Jesus says, "I am the truth," he indicates that in Him the true, the genuine, the ultimate reality is present; or, in other words, that [in Jesus] God is present, unveiled, undistorted. Jesus is not the truth because His teachings are true. But His teachings are true because they express the truth which He Himself is. And this leads to the last word [that]…John has to say about truth: that the truth that liberates is the power of love, for God is love. Therefore, distrust every claim for truth where you do not see truth united with love.

When all is said and done if our words and our deeds are rooted in the unconditional, sacrificial love that God has for the entire world then I believe we will be people of truth and light. I’m also convinced that if we spend our energies loving others as God has loved them – instead of judging and excluding them – then the light will overcome the darkness and truth will overshadow falsehood. Thanks be to God for the Love that brought Christ into being –so that we and the whole world – might live - abundantly, eternally - in truth and light. Thanks Be to God.

(originally preached at St. John's UCC - Pleasant Hill, Nashua IA on 3/18/12)

Resources:

http://www.odysseynetworks.org/news/onscripture-john-3-14-21

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/amazing-photo-of-christians-protecting-muslims-at

http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=567

http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2012/03/lectionary-blogging-john-3-14-21.html

http://www.goodpreacher.com/shareit/readreviews.php?cat=47

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Walking-in-the-Light-Alyce-McKenzie-03-12-2012?offset=1&max=1

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/22/2009&tab=4

http://www.nph.com/nphweb/html/pmol/webmar22.htm

http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=378&C=79

http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=375&C=21

He Knew All People

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:17:00 +0000

John 2: 13-25

My, my, my! Aren’t our Lectionary texts interesting for Lent this year? Two weeks ago we considered Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Last week we spent some time with Peter’s rebuke of Jesus and our own feelings of disappointment with God. And today our Gospel lesson invites us to consider Jesus’ anger and his cleansing of the temple. Is the heaviness of Lent wearing you out yet? Hold tight, friends, just a few more weeks. Easter’s coming!

But for now let’s turn our attention to John’s portrayal of Jesus in the temple. If you are familiar with this story, chances are you know it the way that Matthew, Mark and Luke tell it. In those three Gospels, called the synoptic gospels because many of their stories parallel each other and their timelines for Jesus’ ministry are similar, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple occurs near the end of his public ministry. In fact, in those Gospels, Jesus’ angry outburst is pretty much the “last straw” that leads to his arrest, unjust conviction and execution. In Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus is railing against the financial abuse occurring in the temple – calling the merchants in the temple a Den of Thieves. Jesus’ anger and outrage is a result of corruption, stealing, thieving, dishonesty and sacrilege.

But in John, we find Jesus’ cleansing of the temple at a different point in his ministry – in the very beginning in fact, right after he turns water into wine at the wedding in Cana. And although we might assume that Jesus cleanses the temple in John’s version of the story for the same reason he does in Matthew, Mark and Luke scholar Alyce M. McKenzie, Professor of Preaching and Worship at Perkins School of Theology encourages us to think about John’s account a little differently:

Concerning the merchants in the temple square she says:

“…the animals and the money changers had a right to be there. The animals were there because of the Torah's requirement of sacrifice. The moneychangers were there to change pilgrims' money into the coinage the Temple could receive to purchase sacrifices and also for the payment of the half-shekel tax levied on all Jews. In John's gospel, Jesus is not cleansing the Temple from commercial abuse by the money changers. He is making a statement that their efforts are no longer necessary…”

In John’s Gospel it isn’t so much that Jesus is angry with the abuse of the temple system, he’s angry with the temple system period. In essence, “It's not that what the moneychangers were doing was wrong, but what they were doing would no longer be necessary in the new order Jesus had come to bring.” It was time for things to change and Jesus was the reason.

So, all this is fine and well and good, but maybe you are wondering why this even makes any difference at all, and maybe you are wondering if it even matters when Jesus clears the temple during the course of his ministry, or if there’s any benefit to knowing why, exactly he’s angry in the first place.

Well, I would say it does make a difference why and when Jesus cleared the temple and there is some benefit to knowing why John’s version of this story is different than the other Gospels. The majority of biblical scholars agree that John was the last of the 4 gospels to be written and they date it to somewhere around 90 A.D. The other Gospels are thought to have been written much earlier, closer to Jesus’ lifetime, with Mark being the earliest. And, due to their similarities, it is highly likely that Matthew, Mark and Luke used the same sources to compile their stories. John – however – was written much later, after a few generations of Jesus followers had passed these stories down to one another and – more importantly - after the brick and mortar Jewish Temple in Jerusalem had been permanently destroyed.

It is hard for us to understand how incredibly important the Temple was in Jewish life in Jesus’ day. Rick Morley rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Basking Ridge, New Jersey helps us think about it this way: For we Protestants Christians…

…a “church” is merely the place where people come to gather and hear God’s Word. In such a mindset, God is no more “present” in the church building than anywhere else. What makes the building holy and sacred is that is set apart for the people to come and worship.

There may be deep emotional and spiritual ties associated with the building, but God is everywhere, not just there.

But, that’s not the theology of the Temple. In the center of the Temple—in the Holy of Holies—the Ark of the Covenant was set. And there, in the heart of the Temple complex, in the heart of the city which served as the spiritual and political heart of Israel…God dwelt among God’s people.

Rick goes on to say,

“I believe that this can’t be overstated, because in the second chapter of John, Jesus identifies himself as The Temple. And, if we don’t understand the theological significance of the Temple as THE place where the actual Presence of God Almighty dwells among His people, then we miss the theological significance of what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying that he’s the place where the Presence of God dwells among His people. Part of the significance of this is that when John’s audience was reading this it was only a few decades after Rome’s destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The people in Jerusalem and all of first century Palestine were still trying to figure out how to get along with a Temple. When they read John’s Gospel however, they were comforted in that there was another Temple. And it was Jesus.”

For John and for John’s readers, Jesus’ outburst in the temple wasn’t the “end” of the story – no it was just the beginning. In order for Jesus to be who God fully intended him to be – folks had to begin to look into the heart of Jesus for God’s presence. Even the most sacred things on earth like the temple and like the sacrificial rituals which necessitated the merchants at the temple couldn’t stand in the way. If Jesus was angry about anything that day in the temple he was angry that everyone was looking the other way – searching for God every place else, anyplace else, blatantly ignoring what was right in front of them.

Dr. Dan Clendenin – who writes for the webzine entitled Journey with Jesus helps us think about it this way:

“I read the cleansing of the temple as a stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumption, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours.”

How often do we look for God in all the wrong places, when what we are really seeking is right in front of us? Somehow we think that our salvation is caught up in what we do – or don’t do, or how much we do or don’t do, that it’s about what we get or what we give away, who we vote for, what we listen to, or how we spend our money or save our money, what we eat or drink or don’t eat or drink – and while those things are important, just as following the Jewish rituals were important in Jesus’ day – we make honoring God So.Much.Harder than it needs to be. I can imagine that our continued tendency to play “Let’s make a Deal” with our faith still makes Jesus angry.

I’ll admit to you that talking about Jesus’ anger is really hard for me to do. At the core of my being I believe that God is Love and I believe that Jesus came to earth to embody God’s Love in human form. Maybe this difficulty comes from the fact that I grew up in a Christian tradition that was based on fear, punishment, judgment and anger. During my youth God’s “Love” wasn’t characterized in a very loving way at all - instead I was taught that God’s love was conditional and fragile and narrow. It took me a very long time to truly believe that God loves me - indeed loves all of us - fully, wholly and absolutely.

And maybe spending time with God’s anger is hard for me because it hits too close to home. In most circumstances anger – I like it call it frustration, but it is really anger - is my default emotion. And although I’ve spent years working on it, exploring it and trying to understand it – I’m still easily and often frustrated, especially when I’ve failed at something or when I am afraid of failing or messing up or disappointing people. I would even go so far as to say that anger is the default emotion in our society. We can’t turn on the TV or the radio without someone yelling at us about something, or without learning about horrible, awful things going on in the world that ratchet up our own anger and fear. It is as if I’ve got enough of my own frustration and I’m surrounded with enough anger in the world that I don’t want or need God’s anger too – thank you very much.

But just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist nor does it mean that we shouldn’t talk about it. Because the truth is that anger is a significant part of what it means to be human and obviously – as we’ve learned from our text today – and important part of what it means to be divine. There are things that deserve our anger and how we express it and what we do with it is of utmost importance.

Debra Dean Murphy her article entitled “Anger in Church” says:

We live in angry times. In our politics, anger can lead to cynicism and despair or it can energize grassroots movements for change…More often, perhaps, our anger at the “broken system” we all lament leaves us somewhere in the middle: indifferent, disengaged, checked out.

In our family lives and our working environments, we are paying more attention to anger and its destructive ways. “Anger management” is not the butt of jokes it once was; it’s a set of skills that has saved many a job, many a marriage. We may not always win the battle against the buried fury or the passive-aggression that can wreak havoc on our personal and professional relationships, but at least the subject itself is no longer taboo.

In the church, however, anger is almost never talked about. The seething rage I may feel in a board meeting or Bible study is more likely to come spilling out afterward in a private conversation in the church parking lot (and thus my personal ire and the group’s larger discord will almost surely go unresolved). The “niceness” that Christians have taken to be our highest calling has us regularly avoiding conflicts both large and small, and leaves us bereft of the skills to distinguish between petty acrimony and righteous anger, between misplaced indignation and anger as both gift and necessity…

It’s the location of this text in the season of Lent that gives the followers of Jesus something to ponder in our own struggles to discern good anger from bad, to remember that God’s anger is the flip side of God’s love, and that in Jesus – the new temple, the meeting place of God and humanity – we are given both permission and sufficient grace to deal with the anger that will inevitably arise in us and in our churches.

For Jesus, the circumstances in the temple were worthy of his anger – just as the wedding in Cana was worthy of his celebration. The task for us is to learn what is and what isn’t worthy of our anger and to learn how to deal with our anger in ways that honor God by bringing about reconciliation and love.

When John’s audience read about Jesus flipping tables in the temple square, when they internalized Jesus’ prophecy of his own death and resurrection - what they received was a word of hope. Jesus’ angry outburst likely mirrored their own anger, confusion and fear about how life could go on without a Temple. But this anger was soon soothed, their fears calmed with the realization that Jesus was now the holy of holies, in him the last of all sacrifices had been offered, and through God’s radical identification with humanity on the cross there was forgiveness and redemption freely available to all.

Unlike the synoptic Gospels where Jesus’ anger is the culmination of everything that’s happened, John’s version Jesus’ anger is the catalyst by which everything changes. Jesus changed life as his followers knew it, religion as his followers practiced it and eternity as all humanity understood it. Jesus’ story ends with reconciliation in the midst of brokenness, hope in the midst of tragedy, and life in the midst of death.

When I read our gospel lesson earlier, you likely noticed that I tacked on a few extra verses from what is printed in the bulletin. What I appreciated about these last few verses in chapter 2 of John’s gospel is the reminder that Jesus knew the hearts and minds of all of those around him. Obviously we can interpret that negatively to mean that Jesus knew (and judged) all the horrible, awful stuff inside those around him – but we can also interpret that to mean that Jesus knew (and looked upon with love) all those places in his followers that were broken, tragic, and dead – perhaps worthy of their anger, fear, frustration or despair. It is precisely in those wounded places that God works miracles – there was hope when the Temple was destroyed because Jesus had become the new Temple, the embodiment of God’s presence in our lives. A few weeks ago at our Ash Wednesday service we were reminded that God doesn’t want our perfect selves, God just wants our whole selves – our angry selves, our tired selves, our wounded selves, our confused selves, our lost selves, our hopeless selves.

This Lenten season, may we have what we need to discern good anger from bad, and may we give our selves permission and find sufficient grace to bring our full selves to the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.

Resources:

http://www.stewardshipoflife.org/2012/03/marketplace-or-holy-space/

http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2012/03/anger-in-church/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anger-in-church

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Spring-Cleaning-Alyce-McKenzie-03-06-2012.html

http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1468?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=where-god-dwells-a-reflection-on-john-213-22 http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20060313JJ.shtml

http://day1.org/525-far_more_than_bingo

And Peter Took Him Aside

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Mark 8:31-38

I’ll be honest. When I saw today’s Gospel lesson in the lectionary I got nervous. Of all the texts to have to preach about for my second sermon as your pastor it had to be THIS one? Really? It took a lot of thinking and praying and reading this week before I could actually bring myself to put anything down on paper.

Now you may be sitting there thinking, I don’t get it, Jess, what’s the big deal about this passage? It’s something we’ve heard all our lives, we pretty much know it by heart and we know what it means – so what’s so hard about that?

Well…that is precisely what makes it so hard. These few verses from Mark 8 ARE extremely familiar to us, and we DO THINK we know what they mean and somehow after all these years, decades, centuries even of wrestling with these texts as a Christian community we’ve somehow managed to desensitize ourselves from them, we’ve lost the shock value that is inherent in these verses. In just eight short verses Jesus predicts his own death at the hands of the religious leaders of the day, Jesus calls Peter – the disciple upon whom the church is to be founded – Satan, and Jesus tells everyone within earshot that the only way to truly save our own lives is to follow Christ to the cross – to willingly sacrifice themselves in the most shameful way imaginable for the sake of God’s kingdom.

That’s a whole lot of theology crammed into a few short sentences. But, never the less, this is our task at hand for the day so we might as well dig in. Before we tackle what Jesus actually says I think it is helpful to understand a little bit more about the Gospel of Mark.

Difficulties with Passage

Biblical Scholars who have devoted their lives to studying the Gospel of Mark have identified several major themes that occur over and over throughout the book – these themes include Jesus the Rule-breaker – which often depicts Jesus in conflict with the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day; the secrecy theme, often called the Messianic Secret, where Jesus reveals himself to be the Messiah through words or deeds but then admonishes his disciples, or the folks he’s healed, to keep his identity a secret; a third theme is the Disciples Misunderstanding – despite “all the evidence presented to them and Jesus' clear statements about his messiahship, they never grasp that Jesus is indeed the Christ…”; and the final theme is that Faith is Revealed Through Miracles – there are over 20 miracles in Mark’s Gospel – most of them healing miracles – that demonstrate that faith results in new life, literally and spiritually.

I offer you this background because our Gospel Lesson for today includes three of these four major themes in just eight short verses. In this passage we see Jesus as the rule breaker – predicting that he’ll be rejected by the religious leaders and sentenced to death; we see Peter completely misunderstand Jesus’ intentions to the point of rebuking the Lord, and we see Jesus officially and openly self-identify as the Son of Man – thus ending the need for secrecy about his identity. It’s as if Mark 8:31-38 is where everything comes to a head, it’s the climax of the story if you will. In other words – it is really, REALLY important.

Human Values/Divine Values

So, you may be thinking, “This is all of this fine and well and good. And I appreciate learning about what is happening in this passage from a literary perspective – but what the heck does this have to do with us?” Well, there’s a lot going on here that has to do with us. Let’s start by taking a good look at what happens between Peter and Jesus.

Our text says: ³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Clearly the major event in this portion of our Gospel Lesson involves Peter taking Jesus aside to rebuke him. I think a couple things might be going on inside Peter’s mind. The first centers upon that secrecy theme I spoke of a few minutes ago. Up until this point Jesus has encouraged everyone to keep his identity and his purpose a secret and yet right here we see that Jesus is talking about his identity very openly. I am sure that Peter is confused by this and concerned that whatever it was that Jesus was trying to protect by asking everyone else to stay quiet about his identity is now in jeopardy. And really, you can’t blame Peter for this. He was just trying to follow directions. I’m quite sure that he had Jesus’ best interest at heart…or at least he THOUGHT he did. But, obviously, Jesus didn’t see it that way. Jesus condemns Peter’s rebuke and calls him Satan stating that Peter is only concerned with human things while Jesus is concerned with divine things.

Marilyn Salmon, Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary put it this way:

According to Mark, Jesus defines discipleship as a contrast between human values and God's values.

According to human values, one's own life comes first. We might be kind and generous and thoughtful toward others, yet cultural norms dictate the priority of our own safety or privilege or physical comfort. Jesus advocates risking your life for the sake of another. In other words be willing to lose your life for the sake of the gospel in order to save it.

According to Mark's gospel, the disciples represent human values. They aspire to power and greatness and assume that Jesus shares these values. Jesus represents God's values, best summed up by the willingness to risk one's own life for the sake of others…"for the sake of the gospel" and Jesus is the exemplary model. Jesus invites his disciples to follow his example, to be willing to risk our lives for the sake of others.

Time and time and time again we are instructed, as Christians, to put others first. That if we are really living out our faith, if our faith is truly grounded at the core of our being, then our concern will be for everyone else before ourselves. I will be the first to admit that I fail, miserably, at this. It is as if I’ve heard this so much the novelty’s worn off, the shock value’s gone, the sense of urgency has passed. It is as if I think, “yeah yeah yeah, put others first, look both ways before you cross the street, wash your hands after you use the restroom…I get it.” I go about my business, thinking only of myself and doing those things that will make me more spiritually, emotionally or physically secure – all the while folks all around me are grieving, lost, hungry, naked, isolated, abandoned – and I don’t even bat an eyelash. And what’s worse is that if I do pay them any mind it is more often than not because I’m judging them for their circumstances, or choices, or behaviors and NOT because I am concerned about divine things. I’m not thinking about how I might show compassion, or Christ’s love, or lend a helping hand, or a word of comfort, or a hot meal, or a warm bed, or a meaningful conversation.

I’m quite sure that Jesus would look me full in the face and call me Satan too. Maybe you can relate to that…

Disappointment with God

But there’s another element going on here, too, that I want to explore. I can’t help but wonder if Peter’s decision to take the Lord aside and rebuke him might not have a whole lot to do with Peter’s own shock, and fear, and disappointment with what Jesus was saying. Up until this point Peter had given his whole life, his whole self to following Jesus. He’d left everything to learn from Jesus, to serve along side him and to be his disciple. Can you imagine the heart-break, the shock, you would feel if you heard the person that you loved and admired most in the world say, “that [they] must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again…” Perhaps Peter was just trying to make sense of what was going on. Was Peter wrong to question Jesus about these predictions?

I appreciated this reflection from David Lose – the preaching professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota:

I think a lot of our people feel that way when they voice their own disappointments with God -- that it is wrong to doubt God; that they are wrong to do so. And some of them have probably been told this verbally. And yet I want to suggest that there's not something wrong with Peter. He may be mistaken about how events will play out and he surely has more to learn about the God he worships and the Messiah he follows, but he is not wrong in assuming that God's Son should suffer no harm. Everything he has been taught and everything he knows about God screams that this just can't be true.

And, to be perfectly honest, do we really think we would we have been any different? I mean, who would imagine that the God of heaven and earth would redeem Israel and the world by dying a criminal's death? Who could predict that God's strength would be revealed most fully in weakness or that God's judgment would be rendered so completely in undeserved and unexpected mercy? It is, plain and simple, unthinkable.

The truth is that despite our best efforts, despite how much we want to focus our hearts and minds on divine things – we are human, and our minds are going to return to human things. Inevitably there will be times when we will be disappointed in God, or in how God works, or doesn’t work, in our circumstances. We are going to want to “Take the Lord Aside” and rebuke him. We’re going to want to say, “Are you outta your mind? This can’t possibly be how it is supposed to be, God. My child is not supposed to die, my marriage is not supposed to fail, my health is not supposed to be in jeopardy, my business is not supposed to go bankrupt, my home is not supposed to be destroyed by a tornado, our church isn’t supposed to split…”

And I want you to hear me say that you, we, are not wrong to wonder where God is in the midst of our own disappointments, disasters, and heartbreaks.

And yet, like Peter, we have a lot left to learn.

Professor Lose says:

…The God revealed in Jesus…shows up always and only in the broken places of our lives and world. Like Peter, we are disappointed because we do not get the God we want, the God we've been taught to worship, the God we have a right to expect.

But, also like Peter, in Jesus and his cross and resurrection we discover, not the God we may want, but the God we desperately need. The God whose sheds glory to join us in our shame; the God who leaves heaven to enter our hells-on-earth; the God who abandons strength -- at least strength as we imagine it -- so that God can join us, embrace us, hold onto us, and love and redeem us at our places of weakness. The God we meet in Jesus, that is, comes for those broken in body, mind, or spirit to be one with us and for us. This God will understand our disappointments, and even expects them. Moreover, this God will meet us in them to teach us anew and again that it is at the places of our brokenness that we sense, meet, and are enveloped most fully in God's strong love.

Jesus calls us, as his followers, to take up our own crosses and to follow him. He doesn’t say, “I’m going to take up my cross so you won’t have to take up your own.” No he says, basically, that we’re on this journey together so get your cross and come along. Jesus walks the hard road first so that we when are walking it, we’ll know we aren’t alone. Jesus triumphs over evil and death to ensure us that we can triumph over the broken-ness that is within us. Is it going to be easy? No. Is it going to hurt? Yes, probably a lot. But minds set on divine things can see past that. When the last becomes first, when we put others above ourselves, when we risk shame, loss of status and loss of fortune to be the very presence of Christ to those who need it most – well, that’s precisely when God shows up.

Christian tradition teaches us that despite the fact that Peter rebuked the Lord, despite the fact that he denied the Jesus before his death, despite all his failings and short-comings and human-mindedness – somehow God saw fit to “found the church” upon Peter. And this, my friends, gives me hope. God hasn’t given up on us despite our own tendencies to rebuke God, or to deny or betray our faith – no God shows us mercy, God showers us with love, God surrounds us with grace and God continues to call us to embody love and mercy and grace in the world. And for that I am truly humbled and grateful. Thanks be to God. Let’s Pray.

Resources:

http://cdis.missouri.edu/exec/data/courses/2296/public/lesson02/lesson02.aspx

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/4/2012&tab=4

http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=562

http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1453?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=take-up-your-what-a-reflection-on-mark-831-38

http://mccoffey.blogspot.com/2012/02/ooops-wrong-savior.html

(Preached at St. John's UCC - Pleasant Hill; March 4, 2012)

Flood

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Mark 1:9-15

If Rev. Lynda regularly preached from the Lectionary texts, and I am pretty sure she did, then you might be aware that this is the third time in three months that Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism has been the gospel lesson in our Scripture readings. I wonder what it is about this story that the folks who compile the lectionary texts wanted us to hear? I had the joy of preaching on part of this text a few weeks ago as my last sermon at Central Baptist Church in Kentucky. That day I shared a story that I want to share with you today.

Maybe you heard about Rachel Beckwith’s last summer. The local news station in her home town tells her story this way: She was just 9 years old when she was critically injured, her spinal cord severed in a pile-up on I-90 last July. The Saturday after the crash, her parents finally took her off life-support.

For her birthday in June, she told everybody she didn’t want any presents. She wanted people to donate to Charitywater.org, a group that drills wells and brings fresh water to people in developing countries.

Rachel raised $220, pretty good for a 9-year-old but $80 short of her $300 goal. "No problem," she told her family. "Next year for my tenth birthday I’ll just work harder and raise more!" She didn’t get that chance of course, but boy, is she raising more money.

Rachel's donation page was re-opened when she was in the hospital. By…the Friday night after the accident Rachel’s total was up to $6,000. Monday evening it climbed past $140,000. By Wednesday morning, more than $380,000 had been raised.

The cable and broadcast networks heard about the story and ran various versions. It spread on Facebook and Twitter with some high-profile help. Actress Alyssa Milano tweeted it to her million-plus followers, Seahawk quarterback Matt Hasselbeck tweeted too.

Rachel’s Pastor, Rev. Meeks notes that, “It is something that hits us at our core. There is nothing natural about losing a nine-year-old girl. But there's something that we’re attracted to when life comes out of death.”

And now Rachel Beckwith’s quest to pay for water in far-off lands is a flood of love. People from all over the world have watched, listened, tweeted, messaged, followed, friended and best of all donated. Pastor Meeks sees a simple and obvious lesson in Rachel’s actions, and the world’s response. “A child teaching us adults that maybe it is that simple. You do what you can.”

There’s something that we’re attracted to when life comes out of death…

I think it is no mere coincidence that the Gospel of Mark begins Jesus’ story with his baptism and temptation – not with his birth, not with the visit from the Magi, not with his foray in the temple as a young boy, not with his first miracle even – but instead with his eagerness wade into the River Jordan with John and John’s followers and his willingness to wander into the wilderness for 40 days of temptation and fasting.

Mark notes that Jesus’ baptism establishes the beginning of the Good News; the inauguration of a new era of peace; the beginning of a future filled with hope. Just as Israel’s own journey with God took them through wilderness and chaos so, too, does Jesus seek God first in the wilderness…

Kathryn Matthews Huey, a UCC pastor, reflects on today’s Gospel lesson as follows:

“Our stories about water, even at its best, have a kind of power and risk and drama. Our beautiful images of baptism…are balanced by the nightmares that must haunt survivors of tsunami in Japan. Think of the book and movie, "The Perfect Storm," and the image of a little boat, struggling against a mighty wave. It's no wonder we use the word "engulfed" when we're talking about being overwhelmed by something. Oddly, though, drama, power and risk are not so much associated with the "nice" little story (in Mark, stories are often shorter than in the other Gospels) of Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan. In our mind's eye, it's a lovely scene, John dipping Jesus beneath the waters of the river, and Jesus hearing God up above claiming him as God's beloved Son, and a sweet dove, the Holy Spirit, hovering above. A little time with this text, however, stirs our imaginations. We read of a sky that doesn't just open up but is "torn apart." A rugged prophet preaches a dangerous message of repentance, renewal, and return to God. [In this Gospel Lesson], we're exhorted to "Remember our baptism," not as a sentimental journey or an effort to recapture lost enthusiasm, but to seek equilibrium on a storm-tossed sea, to get our bearings, to remember who (and whose) we are.”

In essence, baptism is our ark in the midst of the flood of life. Mark’s rendition of Jesus’ baptism sets the tone for the entire Gospel – there is an urgency, a suddenness, an explosiveness, an immediacy in Jesus’ ministry.

I was baptized by immersion as a nine year old child. The water was as warm as bathwater and I wore a dress which floated up around me. I remember being worried about that dumb dress pretty much the whole time I was in the baptismal pool. And while my baptism wasn’t facilitated by a wild man in a rushing river, and while the heavens weren’t ripped apart as I emerged from the water, and while I wasn’t immediately thrown into the desert for testing and temptation – I distinctly remember feeling full to bursting with a sense of urgency to give my whole self to God.

Do you remember your baptism? Were you an adult, or a child? If you grew up in this congregation or another UCC congregation then it is likely that you were baptized when you were just a baby, sprinkled with water, blessed of God. Perhaps your parents felt that sense of God’s urgency on your behalf. However or whenever you found yourself in the baptismal waters – I’m guessing that, like me, you didn’t see a dove, or hear God’s booming voice. The heavens remained peacefully intact, you weren’t banished to the desert and you didn’t set off on a world changing mission like Jesus did. But I am convinced that God blessing was equally upon us – whether we felt it or not – those waters giving us life anew.

As our gospel lesson reminds us the urgency of Jesus’ ministry didn’t end with his baptism. In fact his baptism was only half of what was needed for Jesus to truly begin the ministry to which God had called him – Jesus had to wander in the chaos of the wilderness first. In the Bible the image of the desert or the wilderness is always a sign of grave spiritual danger.

One commentator says it this way:

If we are going to follow Jesus to the cross in Lent, then we have to start where he started, where John the Baptist started. We have to start in the wilderness. John went out there first to declare the fulfillment of those prophecies that forth-told God’s plan to build a salvation highway—a road back to shalom—starting right there in that dangerous desert. Jesus then joins John in the desert but is no sooner baptized and hailed as God’s beloved Son before he is violently thrown—quite literally hurled—into a far deeper wilderness experience where the wild animals prowled and howled.

Think of that: In Mark, Jesus says not one single word in public, preaches not even two minutes’ worth of a sermon, before he is dropped down smack in the middle of a very bad place of chaos. It’s almost as though Jesus cannot credibly say or preach anything until this happens. Jesus has to enter the worst of evil on this planet before he can reliably declare that the kingdom of God has drawn near…

Jesus could not say the kingdom was near until he had been to the front lines, until he had engaged the evil of this world head on in the wilderness. Because then when he spoke words of hope and promise, everyone could know that these were not the sunny predictions of some starry-eyed, unrealistic optimist. No, this was someone who had engaged the jagged edges of real life in a fallen world and had emerged victorious.

This Lenten season is a chance for us to wander in the wilderness with Christ. To battle against the evil that is within ourselves, to get to know our own chaos and make sense of it, to meet those jagged edges of life head on and to work for God’s Kingdom in their midst. We have to wander in the wilderness, we have to wait out the flood – before we can truly live into the lives God has called us to.

A favorite singer-songwriter of mine, Luke Reynolds, has a song entitled “Flood”. The lyrics are as follows:

There’s nothing I could do to stop you, I wouldn’t even if I could. And all that I can do is watch you, flood. There’s nothing I can do to change you, I wouldn’t even if I could. Cuz all the things that are happening to you, should.

There’s nothing I could do to guard you, you got to walk it on your own. You’ll never know you’ve made it home until you’re home. If you could see what all is coming, would you run or would you stay? Would it even make a difference either way?

I can be sensation when you cannot feel. I can be your memory, this is real. I can be the straight line through the maze you’re in, and I will be there waiting at the end.

This song was ringing in my ears as I prayed and meditated over our scriptures for today. There’s a reason why Lent is built into the Christian calendar. Just like Jesus we have to journey on our own through the darkness for a while. We have to linger in the maze of chaos. We have to find our own way home.

The hope that we have as Christians is that God is our straight line through it all and God will be waiting for us – triumphant despite the cross, jubilant in the face of death – at the end. Have hope, dear friends, that we will come out on the other side of Lent stronger – more whole and fulfilled than we’ve been in a long time – filled with the urgency of God’s love in our life.

One scholar suggests “that Mark and Jesus believed that the spiritual life and ministry itself should be shrouded in urgency. When life and death, light and darkness, hope and despair, love and hate are at stake, there is no time for laziness. There isn’t time for ho…hum…what to do now? People are hurting, fearful, sick, hungry, thirsty, and mired in sin and death. Light and life needs unleashed on the world immediately. Now. Right now.”

May our journey into the baptismal waters and through the wilderness with Christ prepare us for the task at hand.

What do you need to do today to be filled with new life in the midst of the chaotic places in your soul?

Do you need to respond to John the Baptist’s call for repentance and forgiveness? Frederick Buechner says that “to repent is to come to your senses. It isn’t so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry” than to the future and saying, Wow!” Today I encourage you to look toward God’s future for you with awestruck wonder. Reach out and seize the life God has for you.

Do you need to remember and re-affirm your own baptism? In Mark’s Gospel “the people were hungry and thirsty for God, and they were anxious and eager to experience a new day, long promised to Israel…so they flocked out there to the river, closer to wilderness than to nice, clean temple, and sought forgiveness for their sins.” How might you re-kindle your own hunger and thirst for God? Perhaps you need to recommit yourself to the wild and urgent work God has called you to in this world.

Perhaps you are in the midst of your own wilderness journey – surrounded by trials and temptations. Perhaps your life is flooded with death, and darkness and sorrow. May you find comfort in the companionship of Christ – knowing that he too walked to road of temptation and death so that he might be victorious over the darkness in your life too.

Maybe, like Rachel Beckwith, it is time to make your life about something greater than yourself before it is too late. Are there ways in which you can bring life out of death? Can you give drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, companionship to the infirmed, solace to the imprisoned? Make today the day you commit yourselves to working for God’s goodness in the world.

We have hope, as Christians because – through Jesus – life really does come out of death. In our descent into the baptismal waters we die with Christ and when we emerge we are raised into eternal life. As we journey through the wilderness of Lent may we hear anew, and be convinced, that we are each God’s beloved child; may we know that God is pleased with us; and may we focus our hearts and minds on the urgency of God’s calling to Life, full and eternal Life, for each of us. Amen

Resources:

http://www.charitywater.org/

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=1/8/2012

http://www.gbod.org/site/c.nhLRJ2PMKsG/b.3879973/k.9C35/Lectionary_Planning_Helps_for_Sundays.htm?override=yes&date=20120108

http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-8-2012-the-baptism.html

http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yearb/2012-01-08/baptism-jesusfirst-sunday-after-epiphany

http://www.preachingpeace.org/lectionaries/yearb-epiphany1/

http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php?title=Proper_1B

http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearB/Bepiphany1nt.html

http://www.king5.com/news/local/Stunning-fundraising-around-girls-dying-wish--126148123.html

http://www.water.cc/living-water/resources/

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/default.aspx?page=3686

http://thewaterproject.org/?gclid=CJr00vO9vq0CFTOCtgodrRLoxA

http://act.ucc.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=49684&em_id=39443.0

http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php

http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1437?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=baptismal-urgency-a-reflection-on-mark-19-15

http://lukereynoldsmusic.com/

Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking and Peaceful Treasures

Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, Mark by R. Alan Culpepper

(February 26, 2012 - St. John's UCC - Pleasant Hill; portions of this sermon re-cycled from here.)

The State of Your Bed Isn’t Necessarily the State of Your Head

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0000

As is common for most of us these days I spend a lot of time on the internet. I peruse websites, I post things on facebook and twitter, I read articles, I keep up with the news and when I can I read blogs. One of my favorite bloggers is a Zen Buddhist priest and author named Karen Maezen Miller. Karen blogs about the intersection of her faith, family and parenting and I resonate with much of what she has to say. One of Karen’s favorite sayings is, “The state of your bed is the state of your head.” In essence, if the space around you is messy and chaotic you will feel messy and chaotic on the inside. Somehow if we put things in order around us we find order within ourselves. In a lot of ways I find this to be very true. I often tell Matt that I see our home as an extension of myself – for better or for worse. So if the house is a disaster – as it is often apt to be with animals and a small child in the midst of a muddy winter – then I feel like a disaster. So for those of you who have stopped by this past week to find the house covered in muddy paw prints, piles of boxes and overflowing recycling bins – know that I’ve felt more than a little stressed out about it. Thank goodness for my parents who are helping me create order in the midst of the chaos!

In many ways bringing order out of disarray is a good, godly, important thing to do…indeed God’s very creation of the world was an act of organizing the chaos of the cosmos. But today, as we begin our journey into the Lenten season, as we walk the wild and dangerous road with Christ to the cross, I would encourage us to linger a little longer in the chaos before we rush ahead with making things nice and neat and shiny in our souls. There is meaning to be found in the messiness.

In our Gospel lesson today Jesus encourages us to live out our faith behind closed doors, a more accurate translation literally suggests that we say our prayers in our closets.

I’ve spent a lot of time these last few weeks in my closets. Packing them up and cleaning them out just to turn around and unpack them again, trying to organize them in useful ways – throwing away things we don’t need, discovering things I’d forgotten we had. It isn’t a fun job, it isn’t a pretty job. It’s a job I insisted on doing myself…you just don’t ask other people to unpack your closets. Our closets are the messy, crowded, dark, dusty places in our homes. I think that is precisely why Jesus encourages us to practice our piety in these secluded places instead of out in the open for all the world to see.

It is good for us to gather regularly in this place to worship and fellowship with one another and to seek God’s face as a community. But when we come here we bring our best selves. We wear nice-ish clothes, we use civil language, for the most part we don’t air our dirty laundry…we present ourselves as we want to be seen. We leave our muddy paw prints, overflowing recycling bins and dirty dishes behind. But it is precisely in those chaotic messy places that God resides most fully. When we only display the nice, neat, shiny parts of ourselves we do that for our own glory, for one another’s praise. It is only when we are willing to let God, and to let others, into our cluttered, smelly closets that the real work of faith begins. God doesn’t just want our best selves, God wants our whole selves. Jesus was born in a filthy, muddy, muck filled stable; he spent his ministry befriending and loving those who were considered by society to be the throw-aways, the unclean, and he died a cruel and humiliating death fit for the lowest of the low in the criminal world. You could say that Chaos was Jesus’ middle name.

Our gospel lesson today suggests that the harder we try to be Godly the farther from God we get. Ash Wednesday serves as a reminder that no matter how hard we try to defeat death, it is waiting for us…someday…sooner than we’d like we are going to return to the dust. Jesus reminds us that a simple, humble life is really all we need to honor God.

God loves us and seeks us out in the midst of our own chaos. God asks us to be our true selves, not our perfect selves. God asks for an invitation into the dark, messy, secluded spaces of our lives. God loves us even when our beds are unmade, when there are muddy paw prints on our floors, when our finances are in ruin, when our reputations are marred, when our faith is weak or non-existent, when our hearts are broken with disappointment and grief. When everyone else looks away with judgment and shame, it is precisely then that God looks right into our eyes and enfolds us with love.

In a few moments we are going to participate in the imposition of the ashes and holy communion. In these two profoundly simple acts we are reminded that God meets us in the most basic elements of our lives – bread, wine, and dust. As we journey over these next few weeks to the cross of Christ may we think about the ways that we might become more fully, more authentically ourselves with God. Perhaps you are considering giving something up for Lent – a way to rid your life of something that separates you from God. Perhaps you are going to take something on – establish a new spiritual practice that will draw you closer to the Lord. However we walk this Lenten road may we think about how to find God’s presence in the simple, every day aspects of our lives - in our messy places, in the dark recesses of our spiritual closets. May we find God’s love in new and life-giving ways. And may we share that love with one another and with the world. Thanks be to God.

(2012 Ash Wednesday Service - St. John's UCC - Pleasant Hill - Nashua, IA)

Your Servant is Listening

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:54:00 +0000

(Preached on January 15, 2012 at St. John's United Church of Christ)

Allow me to begin by saying, thank you, from the bottom of my heart for inviting me and my family to share this day with you. It has been an honor to spend these last few months getting to know your search committee, praying for God’s direction and listening for the Spirit’s leading during this search and call process. I am grateful for the kindness and welcome that you have extended to our family and I pray that today will be a day of joy and blessing for all of us.

You may be familiar with the story, The Emperor’s New Clothes, but just in case you aren’t, here’s a recap –

“A vain Emperor who cares for nothing but his appearance and attire hires two tailors who are really swindlers that promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretense. Suddenly, a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession, deciding never to be so vain again and to take his position more seriously.”

Many contemporary biblical scholars suggest that the passage from 1 Samuel 3 reads like an ancient folktale similar to this one. Much like The Emperor’s New Clothes – the narrative of God’s call to Samuel certainly has its fair share of scoundrels, villains, liars, and lack of vision. The back story is as follows: Eli has – for all intents and purposes handed over the reigns of his priestly responsibilities to his two deviant sons – men who make a mockery of the priesthood by stealing from the sacrifices offered to the Lord, violating the women who served in the tent of meeting and threatening violence against any worshipers who protested their abominable behavior. Despite being warned several times that his priestly household is on the wrong path – Eli appears to be oblivious to it all. Our text tells us that he is physically blind, and alludes to the fact that he is spiritually blind as well, “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread…”

Samuel is set in contrast to these foolish men as the more worthy priest, despite being just a child – just as it takes an innocent child in The Emperor’s New Clothes to point out the Emperor’s nakedness, the obvious truth that everyone else was ignoring. One commentator suggests that, “While the story of Samuel’s call is told for the larger purpose of predicting the fall of Eli’s family – the nature of the story suggests an important truth regarding any individual’s personal relationship with God.”

In Samuel’s day and time the word of God was rare. There were no visions. No one was being called to do God’s work. The priests were corrupt and uninspired. So much so that Samuel – despite being raised in the temple since he was weaned - supposedly didn’t even “know” God. And while I’m sure Samuel knew “about” God, we are reminded that knowing God’s stories and rituals and scriptures is not the same as knowing God personally and intimately. Knowledge does not equal relationship. Relationship requires risk.

In our text today God took a risk on Samuel. God knew that no one else in all of Israel had the ears to hear or the eyes to see the message that God so urgently needed to convey. No one, that is, except Samuel; a child; the least of these.

But Samuel also had to take a risk on God – it took God repeating his name four times before Samuel could even believe that it truly was God calling him. And then Samuel had to take a risk with Eli…he had to take this horrible message of God’s disappointment back to his boss, his mentor, the only father figure in his life. And yet Samuel responds – “Here I am…”

Today I challenge us to see Samuel’s story as our own story. To see ourselves – bumbling and fumbling like Samuel – in our effort to respond to God. Today, like Samuel, we will take a risk with God and with one another.

How might we listen for God’s call in our own lives today, in the life of this congregation?

God calls when we least expect it and God’s call is rarely as clear as we would like. But despite the distractions that bombard us, despite the rarity of God’s call, despite our fear of taking God’s risk, let us believe, confidently, that no one is too small, too unimportant, too inexperienced to be used by God for meaningful work. Even today’s Gospel Lesson reminds us that the earliest disciples wondered if God had truly called Jesus as the Messiah – Can anything good come out of Nazareth, Nathanael wondered…

In his book, Is It I, Lord? Discerning God’s Call to Be a Pastor, James Chatham offers this insight, “At the top of my church bulletin each Sunday, under the church’s name is [this] logo, “Ordinary people answering God’s call.” The term “ordinary people” is appropriate because that is whom God calls…God selects shepherds who have been tending sheep in the desert, female judges holding court under a palm tree, fishermen hot and sweaty in their fishing boats, teenage girls frightened and shy, herdsmen and dressers of sycamore trees. In response to God’s call we pose a bundle of questions, good reasons why God should call someone else. Those doubts can nearly dominate our brains, making us hesitant to even consider God’s call. God’s reply is, “GO!! and I will be with you.” That may not seem like a lot, but it is enough.”

One commentator notes that two things will always be true about God’s call – it will be something we “can” do even if we are unsure and it will bring us joy even if we don’t expect it. Samuel – lowly child that he was – was able to speak truth to power. He conveyed God’s message to Eli in a way that Eli had no choice but to hear. And, although I am sure sharing this message with Eli did not bring Samuel joy in the moment, our text reminds us that “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.”

From my own experience I’ve found that God’s call is not just a one time thing. We are called over and over and over. As I look back at the journey that has brought me to this day I am aware of multiple moments in which I heard God’s call. The time when, as I nine year old child, I first professed my faith in Christ. When as a 16 year old girl I felt the call to vocational ministry on top of a mountain at an Navajo reservation in Arizona, when as a young adult, after sharing with the conservative church of my childhood about my experience of a mission trip to Africa, an elderly woman approached me and said, “God has big plans for you…I could go on and on.

And I am convinced that God has called each of you, too. One scholar notes that “God may speak to us in the words of a parent or a friend…God may whisper to our hearts as we drive our cars or sit by a shady lakeside or lie awake in the dark of the night. God calls each us of us personally, not generically, and God will speak in a way that we can understand. God’s call for us may not be as specific as it was for Samuel – but God has given each of us special gifts and has called us to use these abilities in service to the world.”

It is out of our humanity that God calls us.

It is easy to fill our lives with so many distractions that we lose sight of who we are in God. Eli’s family allowed power and corruption to close their eyes and seal their ears from seeing and hearing God’s call. The Emperor allowed this pride, vanity and insecurity to make a fool out of himself and his kingdom. Like Samuel and like the child from the folktale, may we allow ourselves to be transparent – to seek after truth – so that the word of God might remain alive and evident in our world today.

Tomorrow as a nation we will honor and celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. Raised in a family of ministers, Martin Luther King initially ran from God’s call on his life. King majored in sociology and was determined not to follow in his father and grandfather’s ministerial footsteps. Like Samuel, God had to call Martin Luther King, Jr two, three, maybe even four times before he finally heard and responded. Like the child from The Emperor’s New Clothes, King found the boldness to name the reality of discrimination and injustice that so many others were ignoring. Thanks be to God that Martin Luther King, Jr. finally said, “Here I am Lord, you servant is listening…”

In reflecting on how he wanted to be remembered, King said this:

“Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" … I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important. Tell him not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

As a nation we can say with confidence that Martin Luther King, Jr. did all those things and more. King - an ordinary, imperfect person – fulfilled God’s call on his life in ways that few of us could ever imagine. King took God’s risk and changed the world.

Today, as a congregation, like Samuel, like the child from The Emperors New Clothes, Like King you will take a risk. You will step out on faith and seek to follow God’s will for St. John’s United Church of Christ. I am humbled, honored and grateful to stand before you today as you consider calling me to be your pastor. It is my sincere hope that the Spirit is leading us in the same direction and that we might partner together to seek God’s vision for this community; that we might say together, “Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.”

Thanks Be to God.

Water is Life

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:12:00 +0000

Water Is Life

Mark 1:4-11

Maybe you heard Rachel Beckwith’s story last July. A local news station in Seattle tells it this way,

“It was a horrible weekend: shootings in Des Moines and Auburn, fires and accidents, more and more mind-numbing details of the hateful, cold-blooded killings in Norway - all of it making a nasty stew of evening news. But it was a horrible weekend with one glowing kernel of love and faith and good cheer: Rachel Beckwith.

She was just 9 years old when she was critically injured, her spinal cord severed in a pile-up on I-90 last week.

The Saturday after the crash, her parents finally took her off life-support.

Too young to be taken, yes, but the way she lived and what she left behind when she died put energy and light back into a cold, dark weekend.

For her birthday in June, she told everybody she didn’t want any presents. She wanted people to donate to Charitywater.org, a group that drills wells and brings fresh water to people in developing countries.

Rachel raised $220, pretty good for a 9-year-old but $80 short of her goal. "No problem," she told her family. "Next year for my tenth birthday I’ll just work harder and raise more!" She didn’t get that chance of course, but boy, is she raising more money.

Her church Pastor Ryan Meeks says Rachel seemed to naturally recognize when people needed help. “I think that’s incredibly mature for anybody, let alone a child of 9,” Meeks said.

Rachel's donation page was re-opened when she was in the hospital. By…Friday night Rachel’s total was up to $6,000. Monday evening it climbed past $140,000. By Wednesday morning, more than $380,000 had been raised.

The cable and broadcast networks heard about the story and ran various versions. It spread on Facebook and Twitter with some high-profile help. Actress Alyssa Milano tweeted it to her million-plus followers, Seahawk quarterback Matt Hasselbeck tweeted too.

“It is something that hits us at our core,” said Pastor Meeks.”There is nothing natural about losing a nine-year-old girl. But there's something that we’re attracted to when life comes out of death.”

And now Rachel Beckwith’s quest to pay for water in far-off lands is a flood of love. People from all over the world have watched, listened, tweeted, messaged, followed, friended and best of all donated. Pastor Meeks sees a simple and obvious lesson in Rachel’s actions, and the world’s response. “A child teaching us adults that maybe it is that simple. You do what you can.”

There’s something that we’re attracted to when life comes out of death…

Rachel, in her 9 year old innocence recognized that Water is Life. The primacy of water is at the core of our beings and at the core of our universe. If you been keeping up with what’s going on in contemporary astronomy, then you’ve heard that a planet called Kepler-22b was officially discovered in December in another solar system’s Goldilocks Zone - that region around a star where a planet with sufficient atmospheric pressure can maintain liquid water on its surface…leading to the reasonable conclusion that this planet could very well likely maintain life. Water is life.

We also know that lack of water leads to death…

I’m sure you’ve heard these facts – they are bounced around us all the time – but I’m not sure that even now we’ve really ever heard them.

• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world’s population. (WHO-UNICEF)

• 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 5000 deaths a day. (UNDP)

• Water-related disease is the second biggest killer of children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like tuberculosis. (UNDP)

We often choose to ignore these facts:

The average North American uses 400 liters of water a day. (UNDP)

• The average person in the developing world uses 10 liters of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC))

• Agriculture accounts for over 80% of the world’s water consumption. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

And now the kicker:

It is estimated that America spends an average of $450 billion a year every Christmas. Does your bank statement or credit card bill reflect your contribution to this astonishing number? I know mine does.

The estimated cost of reaching “basic levels of coverage…in water and sanitation” is thought to be about $9 billion. A mere $30 billion a year would allow for the “achieving universal coverage” for water and sanitation worldwide. $420 billion less than what we spend on Christmas every year.

Water is dangerous and can destroy life:

The flood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2008, fifth largest national disaster to public infrastructure in the U.S’s recorded history, resulted in $6 Billion worth of damage.

The tsunami in Japan in 2011 resulted in 27,000 death, injuries and missing persons.

And despite all this we continue to turn to water for solace, for relaxation, for respite and for rest. We place fountains in our offices and our homes and our gardens in hopes that the gentle flowing water will reduce our stress levels. We play music with crashing ocean waves in the backdrop to put ourselves to sleep. We flee from our every day lives by taking our vacations to the rivers and lakes and oceans in the world.

How can something so central to our human existence…Water…be both soothing and terrifying, life-giving and havoc-wreaking?

I think it is no mere coincidence that the Gospel of Mark begins Jesus’ story with his baptism – not with his birth, not with the visit from the Magi, not with his foray in the temple as a young boy, not with his first miracle even – but instead with his willingness to wander into the wilderness and wade into the River Jordan with John and John’s followers.

Indeed Mark notes that Jesus’ baptism is the beginning of the Good News; the inauguration of a new era of peace; the beginning of a future filled with hope.

Just as Israel’s own journey with God took them through wilderness and chaos so, too, does Jesus seek God first in the wilderness…

Kathryn Matthews Huey, a UCC pastor, reflects on today’s Gospel lesson as follows:

“Our stories about water, even at its best, have a kind of power and risk and drama. Our beautiful images of baptism, or of God "leading us beside still waters" (Psalm 23) are balanced by the nightmares that must haunt survivors of tsunami in Japan. Think of the book and movie, "The Perfect Storm," and the image of a little boat, struggling against a mighty wave. It's no wonder we use the word "engulfed" when we're talking about being overwhelmed by something. Oddly, though, drama, power and risk are not so much associated with the "nice" little story (in Mark, stories are often shorter than in the other Gospels) of Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan. In our mind's eye, it's a lovely scene, John dipping Jesus beneath the waters of the river, and Jesus hearing God up above claiming him as God's beloved Son, and a sweet dove, the Holy Spirit, hovering above. A little time with this text, however, stirs our imaginations. We read of a sky that doesn't just open up but is "torn apart." A rugged prophet preaches a dangerous message of repentance, renewal, and return to God. [In this Gospel Lesson], we're exhorted to "Remember our baptism," not as a sentimental journey or an effort to recapture lost enthusiasm, but to seek equilibrium on a storm-tossed sea, to get our bearings, to remember who (and whose) we are.”

Mark’s rendition of Jesus’ baptism sets the tone for the entire Gospel – there is an urgency, a suddenness, an explosiveness, an immediacy in Jesus’ ministry. It is, in fact, this urgency that distinguished John’s method of baptism from other commonly practiced forms of ritual washing in the early first century.

If you’ve ever heard another sermon about Jesus’ baptism, as I am sure most of us have, then you will have heard of the complications and the controversy that surrounds it in the other Gospels.

If John’s baptism was for the repentance and forgiveness of sins then does it imply that Jesus had something to repent from or to seek forgiveness for?

Since Jesus was baptized by John, and since Jesus never actually baptized anyone himself, does this somehow imply that John was superior to Jesus, or that John’s ministry was superior to Jesus’ ministry?

In Mark’s gospel these concerns appear to be of no importance. John issued the urgent call - repent, seek baptism, be forgiven – and people from all over the surrounding area responded…and so did Jesus. And in an astonishing act of God’s own self-disclosure the Heavens are ripped open and Jesus is confirmed and affirmed as God’s Beloved Son. God has become known and is accessible in the person and work of Jesus because of this event. God’s spirit hovers over Jesus’ baptismal waters just as the Spirit hovered over the chaotic waters in the beginning of creation.

Frederick Buechner says that going under the baptismal waters “symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human and coming out of the water is the beginning of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.”

As Jesus submerged himself into the rushing flow of the Jordan River – supported by John’s callused hands, Jesus radically identified with our human nature, our weakness and our sin. As he splashed out of those waters Jesus’ divine mission was conferred upon him, his sonship was affirmed by God’s own voice and he was filled with the Spirit of God’s Holy Love.

I was baptized as a nine year old child. The water was as warm as bathwater and I wore a dress which floated up around me. I remember being worried about that dumb dress pretty much the whole time I was in the baptismal pool. And while my baptism wasn’t facilitated by a wild man in a rushing river, and while the heavens weren’t ripped apart as I emerged from the water – I distinctly remember feeling full to bursting with a sense of urgency to give my whole self to God.

Do you remember your baptism? Were you an adult, or a child? Maybe you were just a baby, sprinkled with water, blessed of God. Perhaps your parents felt that sense of God’s urgency on your behalf. However or whenever you found yourself in the baptismal waters – I’m guessing that, like me, you didn’t see a dove, or hear God’s booming voice. The heavens remained peacefully intact and you didn’t set off on a world changing mission like Jesus did. But I am convinced that God blessing was equally upon us – whether we felt it or not – those waters giving us life anew.

Today, Christians all around the world are pondering Jesus’ baptism. We are challenged to remember and reaffirm our own baptisms. These texts compel us to search again for the urgency of God’s call on our own lives, to find ways to partner with the Spirit in God’s continuing creation.

What do you need to do today to be filled with new life?

Do you need to respond to John’s call for repentance and forgiveness? Buechner says that “to repent is to come to your senses. It isn’t so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry” than to the future and saying, Wow!” I invite you to use the end of our service today to look toward God’s future for you with awestruck wonder. Reach out and seize the life God has for you. If you’d like to be baptized we can plan to make that happen for you.

Do you need to remember and re-affirm your own baptism? In Mark’s Gospel “the people were hungry and thirsty for God, and they were anxious and eager to experience a new day, long promised to Israel, and here was this powerful preacher telling them to get ready for it at last. So they flocked out there to the river, closer to wilderness than to nice, clean temple, and sought forgiveness for their sins.” How might you re-kindle your own hunger and thirst for God? Perhaps you need to come forward, dip your hands into the water we have in these basins at the front of the sanctuary, and recommit yourself to the wild and urgent work God has called you to in this world.

We have hope, as Christians because – through Jesus – life really does come out of death. In our descent into the baptismal waters we die with Christ and when we emerge we are raised into eternal life. May we hear anew, and be convinced, that we are each God’s beloved child; may we know that God is pleased with us; and may we focus our hearts and minds on the urgency of God’s calling to Life, full and eternal Life, for each of us. Amen

Resources:

http://www.charitywater.org/

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=1/8/2012

http://www.gbod.org/site/c.nhLRJ2PMKsG/b.3879973/k.9C35/Lectionary_Planning_Helps_for_Sundays.htm?override=yes&date=20120108

http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-8-2012-the-baptism.html

http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yearb/2012-01-08/baptism-jesusfirst-sunday-after-epiphany

http://www.preachingpeace.org/lectionaries/yearb-epiphany1/

http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php?title=Proper_1B

http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearB/Bepiphany1nt.html

http://www.king5.com/news/local/Stunning-fundraising-around-girls-dying-wish--126148123.html

http://www.water.cc/living-water/resources/

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/default.aspx?page=3686

http://thewaterproject.org/?gclid=CJr00vO9vq0CFTOCtgodrRLoxA

http://act.ucc.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=49684&em_id=39443.0

Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking and Peaceful Treasures

Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, Mark by R. Alan Culpepper

Fear and Forgiveness and Worthiness

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:51:00 +0000

Hey...Look! I have a blog. I totally forgot about this poor website which is understandable I guess - you know with all the car wrecks, and single parenting since I still haven't found a job in Iowa yet, and the utility disasters...I suppose it makes sense that I haven't had the time or energy to put fingers to the keyboard and pound out something thoughtful or witty in the last few months. But never fear an idea for a new post has been ruminating in my head for the last few weeks and I finally decided to try to put it out there for the world (or my handful of readers) to see. So here goes...

Disclaimer: This post contains non-orthodox, potentially heretical (although in our post-post-modern world I'm pretty sure nothing is heretical anymore but alas that is another post...) assertions about faith and God and humanity. These are simply thoughts that have been stirring around in my heart: they give me comfort, they draw me closer to God, they shape how I understand Jesus and they allow me to make meaning out of the tragedy that I see day in and day out as a hospice chaplain. So while I welcome the theological debate, please be kind.

Occasionally as a chaplain I have patients who request a pastoral care visit to specifically talk about sin and forgiveness. In preparation for their nearing deaths these patients often verbalize a lingering fear that despite having made professions of faith and following the tenets for salvation as delineated by their respective Christian Traditions they are still afraid that some sin from their past will hold them back from being in God's presence at the time of death. They are confident that they have done everything anyone had ever told them they needed to do to be SURE of their salvation - and yet they still aren't sure.

They don't have peace.

They are afraid.

As a chaplain I do not evangelize. Ever. To Anyone. I listen. I explore. I listen more. I affirm or challenge. I listen more. I pray. I hold hands. I listen more. I keep silent.

With these patients I ask what they might need to feel peace? Confession of specific sin? Participation in a specific ritual? Affirmation from Scripture? Affirmation from an authority greater than me?

The responses are usually the same - "I don't know what I need...I'm just afraid."

And that...my friends...makes me sad.

How heartbroken God must be that fear has become the foundation of our faith. We have taught people that at the core of our beings we are broken, battered, unlovable, and unforgivable.

I refuse to believe this. In fact I stopped believing this a long time ago and I am saddened every single time I see someone tortured spiritually by the fear that a God who is supposed to be loving might damn them for all eternity for sins they can neither recall nor confess.

I do not deny that we sin. I sin every day, an infinite amount of times a day. I sin with my words, thoughts, deeds, actions or failures to act. I fall far, far short of the goodness that I know to be at the core of my being. I know that God sees my failures. I believe that God knows them intimately. If God has emotions then I am certain that I frustrate the shit out of God on a regular basis; I anger God; I embarrass God; I break God's heart. I believe that God wants more for me and from me that I will ever be able to give. I trust that God is working tirelessly for good within me and in the world around me to make right the wrongs that I notoriously make. I believe sin is personal and corporate.

And yet...

I believe that God loves me, you, my patients, every single thing that has breath - fiercely, tirelessly, relentlessly, wholly, abundantly, irrationally, perfectly.

I believe that God has forgiven me, you, my patients, every single thing that has breath - completely, mercifully, extravagantly, undeservedly, blissfully, unhesitatingly, unconditionally.

There is no reason to fear. God wants us to be at peace.

It is good to want to know with confidence that when we close our eyes in this world we will open them again and look full into the face of God. It is good to want to be better - to sin less, to love more, to fail less, to honor God more.

But how much better is it to want to do these things so that we might live fully into the worthiness the God has already placed upon us rather than striving to do them out of fear that God might not find us worthy.

_____________________________________

Last week Anderson had a bad night. He was making poor choices left and right and I was frustrated and fed up and I snapped at him. He came into the kitchen and said, "Mommy - do you still love me?"

My heart broke.

I knelt down so I could look in his eyes and I said, "Anderson I need you to listen to me. I have been frustrated tonight. I don't like some of the choices you've made. I should not have yelled at you. BUT. No matter how frustrated I am. No matter how many bad choices you make. There is NOTHING you can do that will ever make me stop loving you. I love you with my whole heart."

If only we could believe that God loves us like that too.

________________________________________

Finally a quote from Succubus Revealed by Michelle Read (I highly recommend this series especially if you are into vampires and paranormal stuff, lots of adult content and angels who chain smoke and drink whiskey like it is water.) This conversation takes place after Georgina has her soul reclaimed from Hell and has become human again; part of a conversation with her Guardian Angel Carter.

"I'm not worthy of that," I said. I might be human now, but I understand how powerful a heavenly creature Carter was. "I don't deserve that much regard."

He reached out and tipped my chin up. "You do, Georgina. And if you don't believe me now, then strive to be. Live your life. Be kind. Love those you know. Love those you don't know. Be worthy of your soul."

Would that we all might strive to live fully into the worthiness that God has already identified within us.

Peace be with us. May we not be afraid.

Do What You Want

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:40:00 +0000

A few days ago I posted to facebook that I'd received a call to schedule an interview for a job in Iowa.

(Side note: The interview is this coming Friday at 11am (CDT). I'd appreciate your positive thoughts and prayers...)

Anyway...the comments rolled in - congratulations, celebrations, kind words, expressions of sorrow from folks who we will leave behind once our family is permanently settled in Iowa - but there was one comment that gave me pause. A friend said, "Wow. That's news! Hope this is what you want!"

Another friend checked in with me today via twitter asking, "... is hospice work the area you are still wanting to focus on or do you want to expand your horizons? or serve a church"

In an email message exchange with one of my mother-in-laws last week (I'm blessed to have two wonderful mother-in-laws) she encouraged me to journal about my experiences...perhaps to make lists of things I'm grateful for, or things I want to do someday...

It is as if every time I turn around someone else is asking me:

"What do you want?"

"Is this what you want?"

"What do you want to do?"

And the answer is...well...I just don't know.

It is clearly a privilege to even have the option to entertain this thought...that I might have a choice with regard to my vocation, my job, my calling is more than the majority of humans ever have the chance to know. For that in and of itself I am grateful...and mindful...and humbled.

And yet the question still haunts me.

I've followed my mother-in-law's advice and I've journaled some.

On July 30th I wrote:

I'd like to pastor a small church in the country where I can preach and teach and write and do pastoral care without charting and officiate weddings and funerals and baptize folks.

I'd like to live in the country where it is quiet and calm; where Anderson and the dogs can play; where I could have a garden and chickens...

On August 5th I wrote:

Someone asked me what I want...

What I want is...

A peaceful job that pays $45,000+ and that is meaningful.

Our family to be reunited soon.

The be able to pay all our bills on time and to have a little money to save or spend.

To live in a more rural setting that is peaceful and quiet.

I'm clearly sensing a theme in the direction towards which my heart is yearning.

But I also know that small rural churches in the country likely won't pay enough to enable us to pay our bills on time, or save anything - and there are no "off" days, no PTO, no flexible spending account, things I've been spoiled with in the corporate world. The search and call process can take months to years and so reuniting our family quickly is likely not an option.

AND...

I know that taking a corporate job means that the pace of life won't be peaceful, I won't have time to write or preach or teach, there will continue to be lots of charting...and probably little time for a garden or chickens.

My response to my twitter friend today was this, "I guess in this economy I'll be happy w/just getting a job :-)"

And on some level...that's the god's honest truth. Just having the opportunity to interview for anything in this day and time is a gift and I'm grateful for it. My life will only be peaceful when I make peace within myself. There will be time time for writing and preaching and teaching and gardening and chicken-keeping if I make time for those things.

But a farmhouse way out in the country sure would be nice...

(I love this song. I love this band.)

For Sale By Owner

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:13:00 +0000

Hey folks! I interrupt this friendly theology/random musings blog for a brief sales pitch.

In anticipation of our move to Iowa we need to sell or rent our house! This is an adorable 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath townhouse located in a very quiet neighborhood in Nicholasville, KY. The house boasts just over 1400 sq feet, with a spacious, fenced back yard. The house is within walking distance of the city park, the dog park and the library. This is the perfect home for families with kids and pets. So if you know anyone looking to buy or rent (maybe Asbury seminary students??) spread the word! Please send me an email at jlmschirm@gmail.com if you are interested in knowing more or coming by for a showing!

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom (door leads to large walk in closet)

Full sized bath in upstairs hallway

Bedroom #2

We currently use this for a playroom/library. There's plenty of room for a queen sized bed and additional traditional bedroom furniture. Good sized closet too!

Bedroom #3 (see additional photos of this room below)

View of main hallway from kitchen. All appliances convey.

Passthru to dining area.

I love kitchens with a pantry!

Half bath on the main floor.

Main living space with new, beautiful laminate floors as of Dec 2010.

Dining area

View of living room from dining area.

View from deck.

Plenty of room for a chair, grill, etc.

Side yard landscaping.

HUGE fenced in back yard! Perfect for dogs, kids and a swingset, trampoline or a pool!

The flowers are all mature perennials that will come back just a beautiful year after year.

Oversized one car garage.

Additional view of Bedroom #3.

View of dining area from living room.