Today was a day of cleaning up.

As many of you know, our early childhood Sunday School room was a disaster. It was absolutely a complete mess. I felt bad having the children walk into the room and attempt to learn anything. There was just too much stuff in the room. Until yesterday afternoon and today.

Three of us came by church and cleaned out the room, removing all of the older and useless toys (which are the exact toys the young were attracted to!!), taking what was left on the walls down, and moving the furniture. The room, at 4pm on Saturday, looks spectacular!

This is the first part of our revamping of our youth education programs. In the course of the coming months, we will be laying out the changes to the entire youth program that will set Saint Matthew’s on a strong footing for the future.

It’s getting close to worship — if you are in the area, we start at 5pm. If you are not around, try and make some time to join us tomorrow morning at 10am.

Nutrition 1 (Photo credit: prayingmother)

Last Saturday, I was talking with a member who made an excellent suggestion — maybe we should ask to see if our local Thrivent branch would be willing to host a sort of cooking demonstration show with members in our branch offering to cook certain dishes they really enjoy. I thought this would be a fun event – maybe even I would get involved and make some vegan, plant-powered dish.

A couple of days later, this topic came up during a telephone conversation with another member who added to it — why not start a sort of cooking club/health group at church where we could get people together to talk about healthy eating and living. Adding to the concept was the thought that the group could use the church to prepare a healthy meal and bring it home to their families.

And what about a health group? We could ask local nutritionists and health promoters to come in and talk about healthy eating and lifestyles.

But most of all — we could open it up to the community.

I really got excited with this idea. Maybe we could start in March?

For far too long, I’ve been too tied into the theological understanding of the differences between the pastor and congregation. Essentially, the congregation runs itself and I, as pastor, keep the spiritual realm moving along. In this understanding, I have willingly separated myself from a good portion of the administrative duties that traditionally have been handed out to people in the congregation.

And this has been wrong.

Honestly, I have been all too willing to cede these duties to others. I mean, who really wants to deal with specific programs and office administration when others within the congregational structure are all too willing to take the reigns?

The only problem with this is sometimes the church-focus gets lost. Christ becomes secondary to money. Our Lord becomes a Sunday morning Lord, not an everyday Lord.

See, everything that we do at church is to have Christ at the center. Our first and primary role is to reach out to the lost; to take the Word of God to God’s people; to use our talents for the betterment of the Kingdom of God.

Without have the pastor at the center of church operations, this spiritual directive can easily be lost.

I decided this week — call it a post-cancer present, of sorts — to shake things up. I will be taking a greater role in our youth education programs starting now. I will be working on a congregational evangelism program that will include all aspects of our faith life. And there are other areas in which I will be taking a leading role. More on those as the weeks go by.

For several years now, I have heard about the practice of some Christian pastors/priests/ministers standing at bus stops or going to community centers on Ash Wednesday to apply ashes to the foreheads of anyone who wanted them. It struck me as odd since ashes are, to be blunt, a meaningless symbolism of sinfulness.

Yes, you read that correctly: Ashes are meaningless.

Of course, some of my brethren will fight back against my rather harsh opinion of that annual smudge on foreheads across Christianity. As a symbol of the payment of sin — God promises that we will return to dust since we were created from dust — ashes provide an outward symbol of the decrepit nature of humanity. Instead of a dirty symbol, why not acknowledge the reality? Lent gives us that opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Jesus Christ and Him crucified for us. Just because some people smudge burnt palm on their heads, it doesn’t mean they take their sinfulness any greater than the rest of us who did not get ashes yesterday.

To me, the importance of Ash Wednesday and each subsequent day is the daily reflection on our sinfulness and the forgiveness won by Jesus at the cross for us.

But in that reflection, there is another response — a faithful one. I’m new to this thinking but I thoroughly enjoy the stark contrast to the spiritually vapid outward sign. Why not live the next forty-five days in love and service to the Lord? Respond to our sinfulness by focusing on the good our faith compels us to do. I believe a faithful response to Lent and its meaning is more spiritually uplifting and makes Easter as equally exciting and important than if we wallowed in sadness and longing.

And with ashes, they provide nothing spiritual. The best place to receive that spiritual uplift is in church. But don’t tell the Episcopal priests that.

In today’s Record, they report about a group of Episcopal priest who fanned out throughout Northern New Jersey, fully vested mind you, and swiped ashes on the foreheads of anyone who wanted them.

Or as a priest was quoted in the story:

“We wanted to go to the people rather than have the people go to church.”

Aargh!!!

What is more important?

A smudge of ash on your forehead or living a life to the glory of God?

Is it more important to show an outward sign of sinfulness or is giving of yourself to help others a better outward example of the forgiveness won by Christ at the cross?

After church today, I headed off to Shop-Rite to pick up a loaf of bread. Earlier, I decided that my lunch was to consist of an Amy’s Kitchen Sonoma veggie burger on bread with spinach and ketchup. Upon arriving home from church, I pulled out the veggie burger, the organic ketchup, and the baby spinach from the fridge. Of course, I lacked the bread.

So there I was earlier this afternoon, walking through Shop-Rite in New Milford, carrying a loaf of store-baked whole wheat organic Italian bread that was on sale for a buck. And then I ran into a mother and her son arguing over cereal. The young man I guess was about 10 years old, wanted a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. His mother wanted the regular Cheerios. They were going back and forth. The boy said his mother never gave him anything. The mom said she gave him too much. He complained that plain Cheerios taste terrible. She said he was going to eat what she buys. And the argument went on as I walked away.

Standing on line (or as friends tell me, “in line”), a young woman came with her items and stood behind me talking on her phone. The woman said to the person on the other end that she was picking up pork chops for dinner. After a few seconds, her snarky response to whatever the person on the other end of the phone told her was, “I don’t care if you don’t eat pork chops. Go home to your mommy for dinner then.”

Finally after checking out, I was walking back to my car when I ran into a man and woman arguing over why the guy didn’t wear his coat. She told him that if he got sick, she didn’t care if he was running a fever tomorrow, he was going to work. He told her not to get overly dramatic. She told him to “mark” her words, to which she received a pleasant response of, “will you just shut up.”

Even on a Sunday, people forget good manners and behavior.

A number of congregants here at Saint Matthew’s have asked me numerous times what I eat since I follow a plant-powered, vegan-like lifestyle. Since I have been asked to keep my Google+ and Twitter accounts very active today, I thought that since I posted the following on my Google+ account, why not post it here as well?

First of all, since I am a plant-powered, vegan-like person, I do not consume anything that comes from an animal. Second, I stay away from adding oil to any of my meals. Third, I like eating this way. I have more energy. My head is clearer (on most days). And it has helped me realize that I do not need a pile of vitamins to get me through my day.

On the menu this morning:

- Tofu scramble made in the oven with spinach, onion, an orange pepper, zucchini; a quarter cup of nutritional yeast; 1/4 teaspoon of tumeric; spicy brown mustard, about two teaspoons or so (I didn’t measure it today; just a big blob of mustard); a teaspoon each of onion powder, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning; black pepper to taste (about three turns of the pepper mill for me); and crumbled extra-firm tofu.

- One serving of that Lightlife Gimme Lean vegan sausage, cooked in a pan with a spritz of non-stick spray.

- Unsweetened soy milk.

- My cup of coffee from earlier since I didn’t drink it.

- A banana and a half-cup of blueberries. Later on, as it sits in the background of the picture, for a midmorning snack, an orange.

President Harrison said it so clearly.

Reshared post from +CNSnews.com

The Obama administration’s health insurance mandate compelling employers to provide and pay for services they and their employees find morally unacceptable is a threat to Americans’ religious liberty, faith leaders told lawmakers Thursday.

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Lutheran Pastor: ‘Get the Federal Government Out of Our Consciences’ | CNSNews.com
(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s health insurance mandate compelling employers to provide and pay for services they and their employees find morally unacceptable is a threat to Americans…

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Below is a terrific article written by a wonderful writer, mother, and Lutheran, Mollie Hemingway, after a commentator on CNN.com wrote the following about her stance on the recent Planned Parenthood-Susan G. Komen for the Cure flap:

“Karma will hit and Mollie will be struck with breast cancer tonight and have to have a double masectomy [sic]. That’s what she gets for being against the poor being able to have mammograms done. May her Chemo be very painful.”

In her article, Mollie is right on the button about the corrosive nature of political rhetoric and discussion. When did vileness and viciousness such as wishing someone to get sick, or in the case of conservative commentator Cal Thomas, who said that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was a good argument for birth control, become so commonplace?

(Thank you to Vicar Eric Ekong for Google+ tip)

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‘I Hope You Get Cancer’ (and Other Thoughtful Critiques) – Ricochet.com

I’ve been writing quite a bit about Planned Parenthood and the media campaign on its behalf that we’ve been subjected to in the last week or so. Over at CNN, commenter Teddy N. kindly …

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“When after much internal debate the Obama administration finally announced its decision to require religiously affiliated hospitals and universities to cover birth control in their insurance plans, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops were fully prepared for battle.

Seven months earlier, they had started laying the groundwork for a major new campaign to combat what they saw as the growing threat to religious liberty, including the legalization of same-sex marriage. But the birth control mandate, issued on Jan. 20, was their Pearl Harbor.”

And the nearly the rest of American Christianity followed suit.

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Bishops Planned Battle on Birth Control Coverage Rule
Roman Catholic bishops began mobilizing months ago for a major campaign against a requirement that religious-affiliated institutions cover birth control in their insurance plans.

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