Faith Comes

I’m late.  Apologies.  It was a weekend for the ages.  And now the week ahead is another wild one.  Our saying around the house, amid the boxes and the piles and the confused creatures wondering what in the world is going on now, is “It’ll be great in October!”  Meaning, we should be through this messy transition place, where we aren’t here and we aren’t there and no where seems like home at the moment, and settled in a new abode carving out a new chapter in our lives by the month of October.  For a while there, we thought we might have to restate the mantra as “It’ll be great in November!”  Because it seemed like things weren’t happening fast enough and we might get stuck betwixt and between.  I don’t know exactly what betwixt means, but it sounds really cool.

But then this weekend, we were actually in Fort Wayne for the wedding of some dear friends.  I was invited to preside over the ceremony, which was held in the Allen County Courthouse, of all places.  It is gorgeous and marble and echoey.  We stayed in town Friday night after the rehearsal and Saturday night after the wedding and then came home to Indianapolis in time to pack and get on the road for Nashville.  Whew.  

Betwixt, it’s my new word, all of that, we were making offers on houses in Nashville.  Three different offers, actually.  The first one didn’t get very far because we found out things we didn’t like early on and so didn’t submit it.  The second one we were really invested in and did a lot of back and forth with the realtor to get the offer right.  But it wasn’t accepted.  We were ready to give up and figured that I would start all over again when I got back to Nashville.  But then La Donna saw one in the same development of the second offer.  We hadn’t seen it, but it was the same floorplan and we were willing to go offer without seeing it.  Then our realtor did a video walk through and we liked it, maybe even better than the other one.  We made the offer, it was countered, we accepted the counter and here we are!  Homeowners.  Well, homeowners to be, as many of you know there are lots of steps to go from here.  But we are excited and relieved and anxious, and believers.

Believers?  We believe in a future we had begun to give up on.  Ask my office mates, many of them stopped in and were worried about me last week.  I seemed down, or burdened, or despairing.  I had lost faith that it was ever going to happen.  Not completely, I wasn’t ready to give up, but I wondered.  I worried.  I was tired of looking at inadequate houses, or beautiful ones that someone got before we did.  The difficulties of living, often drag us down from living the life we’re called to live.  They often keep us from seeing the new way of being alive in the world as we prepare for the coming Reign of God.  It’s hard to hold on to faith, which is why we need to hear it and sometimes see it from time to time.

Romans 10:13-17 For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." 14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" 16 But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" 17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

Actually, it wasn’t the house issue that brought these things to mind this week, though it does seem to fit.  Not, I was and am celebrating the fact that I am preaching again!  I first got to preach for the wedding on Saturday.  An admittedly short sermon, though I threatened them during rehearsal with 45 minutes worth, but still it was a sermon.  A proclamation of the Word in this celebration of love and covenant and family and the ability to see beyond the present into a lived future.  I loved having the chance to preach again.

And then this week, I am preaching the Wednesday service in the Upper Room Chapel.  The worship team from Discipleship Ministries is leading worship this week.  It’s a chance for us to present the kinds of things we write and talk and teach about all the time.  I was asked to preach.  Imagine, the Director of Preaching Ministries is going to preach!  In fact I’m titling the sermon “No Pressure” as a tongue in cheek nod to the moment.  What might they be expecting from the Director of Preaching Ministries?  Indeed what does any attender of church, member or not, expect from the preacher?  I’m wanting to address this expectation a little bit.  To admit that maybe we preachers have let people down over the years and the expectations no longer are there.  Maybe the hearer isn’t expecting to hear about faith anymore, or about a call to see a new reality toward which God is moving us.  Maybe people are just expecting a little advice on how to live a better life.  Which isn’t a bad thing, but seems a little small compared to the grand vision Jesus gave us about kingdom living.  

How shall they hear, Paul asks in Romans.  What are we listening to these days?  What are the voices who declare the good life to us, who describe our dreams for us?  Every now and then I read an article that says preaching is a relic of the past.  It is fading away, they claim.  Unnecessary in this postmodern world.  Except that there are preachers in the world aplenty.  Preachers who capture our attention, who beguile us with images and sensations that are compelling.  Secular preachers, consumer preachers, political preachers, social activist preachers who are drawing us into their sermons because we don’t have a compelling vision of the message Christ brought, the message Christ is.  

Part of my job is to help preachers compete in a world full of proclaimers.  I have decided, after two whole months on the job, that my main function will be one of encouragement.  Preachers need to hear how vital they still are to the movement of the church, to the vitality of the church.  They might need to change some things as the world around us changes, but I believe that there will always be a place for preachers to cast a compelling vision of hope and grace and faith in a complicated and wearying world.  We need to stand in opposition to the polarization of our culture, to the anger and violent speech that we hear all too often.  We need to help the church find its voice in a noisy world.

Yeah, that’s one change I intend to advocate for.  For too long preaching has been understood and practiced as a monologue.  The time for monologue is over, I believe.  Instead the preacher engages in a dialogue with his or her congregation.  Not necessarily in the sermon time – though there is a great opportunity there, it was one thing I experimented with at my Fort Wayne church in an event we called Genesis. Some of the folks I met with at the wedding remembered that experiment and spoke of finding it creative and affirming.  

But if not in the sermon, then elsewhere.  Find a place for dialogue.  Find a way to let other people than just the assigned preacher speak, share, preach.  I believe we’ll be surprised at the depth and passion and power that will rise from the church again when we do.  

And maybe when we find a way for all to speak, then we will become the church with the beautiful feet.  OK, as slogans go, that may not be the best.  But faith comes from what is heard.  So let’s practice listening.  Listening to the Word, listening to the preachers, listening to one another.  And then faith will come.

Shalom,

Derek

Life Happens

“Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.”  Who said that?  Apparently there is some debate.  The one who popularized it, oddly enough, was John Lennon.  In his song “Beautiful Boy” on the album Double Fantasy, a song written for his son Sean, Lennon says “before you cross the street take my hand. / Life is what happens when you are making other plans.”

But those who know these things, or know how to check these things say that the quote is actually older than that.  The first recorded appearance of “life is what happens,” was in 1957, in a Reader’s Digest, and is attributed to an Alan Saunders, who just might have been the cartoonist behind Steve Roper and Mary Worth (Google it kids).  Which means the saying is as old as I am, thereabout.  Which maybe says that it is my theme quote.  Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.  Not bad, as quotes go, don’t you think?

Now, some folks see tragedy in this quote.  That it’s a warning that terrible things will come along and interrupt and disrupt and throw you off track.  It’s another version of a similar quote: “Stuff Happens.”  Yeah, OK, there’s another word there, but I’ll leave it with stuff for now.  And maybe that’s what Lennon had in mind as he was contemplating raising a child in a complicated and dangerous world.  Hold my hand, because stuff happens. Watch out, stuff will happen and your plans will come to nothing.  

I can see that.  And like Lennon, I know that raising a child is scary stuff. And that in fact, the scary stuff never stops.  And we live in a scary age, with tragedies happening as a matter of course almost daily.  This is our life, we think, this dash from tragedy to tragedy, from horror to horror, and it isn’t going to get any better, no matter how many plans you make.  Life happens.

Sure, I live in this world too, I can see scary.  But at the same time, I can see something else.  Something maybe even comforting.  Something about plans and about life and about me and about us.  Something like this, maybe:

Jeremiah 29:11-14 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

First of all, I know.  I know that all you biblical scholars will point out that we so often misuse this text.  We like to make it personal and individual, and it was really designed to be communal, corporate.  That God, through the prophet Jeremiah, was talking to a people and not a person.  And we have to resist the all too frequent urge to turn everything into a personal message just for us.  We are prone to individualize everything, when God wants us to see ourselves as part of something larger, part of a family, part of a nation, the people of God.

And yet.  I’m not undoing the previous paragraph, but hear me out.  If this is indeed how God acts to all, can we not also interpret that this is how God acts to each?  Yes, God wants me to read the plurals in the Jeremiah text.  “I know the plans I have for all y’all, God says, plans for all y’all’s welfare not harm, to give all y’all a future with hope.”  Jeremiah 29:11 DWSV (Derek Weber Southern Version) I know God wants me to know that my future and my plans aren’t just about me, but about a larger we.  My part is woven into a whole with so many others.  

But still, I can see the hand of God at work in the threads of my life as they begin to take shape into a tapestry of which I am a part, and not the whole.  The pieces of my life, our lives, are falling into place, maybe not always in the exact way that we might have envisioned, but it is coming together.  La Donna announced on her Facebook page that the house is sold, one piece fallen into place.  Although a very helpful friend, thank you John, pointed out that it isn’t really sold yet because all the papers haven’t been signed just yet.  True, and it all may fall apart, in which case we go back a few steps and start over.  Trusting.

Just like we made a list of seven different houses that I was hoping to send to my realtor in Nashville so we could look at them next week.  But when we checked again, six of them had been sold.  Or at least under contract, thank  you John again.  I have to say that it is difficult to look at a house online, see the photos and then begin to imagine yourself in that house, with your stuff filling those spaces, only to have to undo those thoughts and pictures because that one is now gone.  Life is what happens when you are making other plans.  So, we look again.  And again.  And again if necessary.

Let me say, I don’t think I believe that God has a divine finger on the house that will be the one we finally get.  I don’t believe that’s how God works.  But that God’s Spirit sustains us through the anticipation and the disappointment and the working out of the transition that surrounds us.  That God actually wants us to make plans.  I’ve never been a fan of that other saying I’ve heard.  You know, the one that goes, “you want to know how to make God laugh, tell God your plans.”  That might on the surface seem like another version of life is what happens.  But it actually seems to suggest that God doesn’t want us to make plans, doesn’t want us to work things out.  That our job is just to sit and wait while God works everything out for us.  I don’t think that’s how God works either.

We are supposed to plan, we are supposed to work things out. We are supposed to seek God’s will and how best to fit into the world that God intends us all to live into.  At the same time to not be so wedded to those plans that we collapse if it doesn’t quite work out the way we first envisioned.  And all along trust that God is with us.  Even when things aren’t quite going the way we plan.

Go back to the text, and see what the promise really is.  What is the future with hope that God wants to provide?  What is the fortune that will be restored and the home that we will be gathered into?  The real promise is this: “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD ...”  

That’s where we’re going, that’s the home God promises to us.  A home in the neighborhood of God.  A home in the Presence.  I don’t believe God has our house picked out in the Nashville area, that’s work that we and our realtor have to do.  But I do believe that God will be there, wherever it is, and will sustain us and strengthen us and guide us as we seek to find our fortune there, the fortune of the family of God, the mission of God’s people, God’s church.  And there are so many people with whom we will interact and connect and grow and serve alongside, here and there and everywhere.  We are bound together in the plan of God. 

In the meantime, there are pieces fitting together.  This house is nearly sold.  Rhys has a plan that will let him stay here, Maddie has a new job in Boston, things are coming together.  Lots more questions, more plan to work out.  And in the meantime, life happens.  For us and for all.  I pray that the life that happens to you is one of joy and peace and is full of the Presence of God.

Shalom,

Derek

Through the Waters

One of the items on my job description is that I’m to “acquire knowledge of best practices and learning in the field,” “in order to become a broker of knowledge for preaching ministries.”  Which means I have to listen to others, to learn from others.  Which means a lot of things, no doubt.  But one thing it means is that I need to go to conferences and seminars where others are doing interesting and innovative work in the field of preaching.  So, this coming week I am going to a Summer Preaching Seminar at one of our United Methodist Seminaries.  The leader of this seminar is a woman professor of homiletics of whom I am unaware.  But her subject fascinates me. The instructor is Dr. Joni Sancken, and the seminar is titled the same as her recent book on the same subject, “Words that Heal: Preaching Hope to Wounded Souls.”   

What better topic for preachers to consider than how to preach in the face of trauma of various kinds?  Dr. Sancken has an emphasis on pastoral care through preaching, and also peacemaking and preaching.  Which might be expected given that she comes from the Mennonite tradition, which has a long history of working for peace.  

Here’s the added dimension to this event, the seminary where Dr. Sancken teaches is United Theological School in Dayton, OH.  Dayton was the site, as you know, of the second mass shooting of last weekend.  Nine people were killed in 32 seconds, according to reports I read.  I’m sure it will add an air of necessity to the proceedings next week when we meet together.

It seems like there is trauma around all the time these days.  Whether it our own personal trauma or the national trauma of violence and death, polarization and finger-pointing, or even a global trauma of natural disasters increasing at an alarming rate and refugees swarm the shores of other lands seeking an end to the degradations of poverty and racism and hate.  The ability to find words that heal seems a prerequisite for preachers everywhere these days.  And perhaps always has been.  And yet can words do?  How can words heal when the brokenness seems so overwhelming?  

Well, maybe I’ll bring back some new insights after next week.  Stayed tuned.  In the meantime, what can we say in the midst of our own personal and corporate struggles?  How we find words that bring if not healing then hope?  I think there are lots of words that can be used to address difficult issues, but I usually want to start with this word: Presence.

Isaiah 43:1-7  But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.  3 For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.  4 Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.  5 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you;  6 I will say to the north, "Give them up," and to the south, "Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth--  7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." 

Isaiah speaks a word to people who are longing.  And underwater.  Or walking through the rapids of loss and exile, of war and death.  And the word he speaks is one of hope.  It is a word of redemption.  It is a word of comfort.  Just what they need.  But maybe not what they want.

What they want is a rescue.  Take us out of here!  Fix it, fix them, fix us.  Make it right.  That’s what we want in desperate situations.  But what we get instead is Presence.  I will be with you, thus says the Lord.  OK, a good thing.  No, a wonderful thing, but ... why don’t we get what we really want?  Why don’t we get a wave of the divine hand and circumstances change?  Why don’t enemies get sent packing, and good guys get sent home?  Why doesn’t God  just get up and do something about everything that is wrong is our world right now?

Why doesn’t it say in the forty third chapter of Isaiah that when you sign up for God’s team there won’t be any waters?  Why doesn’t is tell us that following God means you won’t have to walk through fire?  But it doesn’t say that, does it?  No, it says, when you walk through fire!  It says when you pass through the waters!  When?!  It is like it is inevitable.  Like a safe bet.  Like you’d better just count on it.  Well, thanks.  Thanks a lot.  If God followers aren’t any safer from disaster or catastrophe, then what’s the point?  If we don’t have some divine protection from harm, why bother?  OK, it does say that you won’t get burned.  That sounds good, until you get to the second rendition of the phrase.  You won’t be consumed, meaning you won’t get burned up.  But that doesn’t seem like a real blessing, does it?  Where’s the promise to make it all right? 

That “what’s in it for me?” question really gets under my skin.  It sounds like a consumer approach to faith.  I’m only interested in what I can get out of it.  But once in a while, it is a question that needs asking.  What do we get, Isaiah?  When the chips are down, when all seems lost, when the questions outnumber the answers, what do we get?

Presence.  John Wesley’s last words, it is reported, were “best of all God is with us.”  Best of all, he said.  Presence is the greatest gift.  Presence is grace at work within us.  Presence is what enables us to endure whatever the waters bring, whatever the fire burns around us.  We are not alone.  And not only that, but this Presence is a loving Presence.  We are precious to that Presence.  We are known by name.  And the promise is that wherever we go, wherever this life drives us, for good or for ill.

And perhaps it is the function of the people of God to practice presence.  Not simply for themselves but for those around them, for those who are hurting, those who face tragedy.  We can’t always fix what’s wrong, but we can be present.  We can offer grace, present kindness, express fellowship.  It is our inclination to want to find the words to speak in moments of tragedy, to bring consolation.  But many, if not most of our words can have the effect of trivializing the pain, overlooking the tragedy.  “It’ll be all right” seems hollow in the face of 9 deaths in half a minute.  Despite the words that might come to mind, perhaps we are best to fall back on the words that God uses in Isaiah, “I’m here.”  It acknowledges the depth and speed of the water that rises.  It recognizes the heat and the destruction of the flames.  And yet it says that no matter the pain that surrounds you, you are not alone.  I am here, God is here.

I’ll be interested to hear what Dr. Sancken has to say about Words that Heal.  But I suspect it will include something from Isaiah 43.

Shalom,

Derek

Rush Job

Whew, what a week.  I’m still catching my breath.  It quickly got out of control and for a while I was feeling like I wasn’t up to the task presented to me.  Let me explain.  One of the tasks my team (the worship team of Discipleship Ministries of the United Methodist Church) is tasked to do is to help local churches do worship to the best of their abilities to enhance the making of disciples and to connect with the world around them.  We do this in a variety of ways, some of which I am still discovering.  But perhaps the most obvious, or certainly the best used, are the worship helps that we post on our website.  We try to do them far enough ahead so that as people are planning their worship service we will be ready to help.

This week we discovered a problem with the notes for the worship series in November.  So, I agreed to do my best to produce something for us to send through the system to get posted ASAP.  So, I wrote.  And wrote.  And read and thought and prayed.  Prayed lot.  And wrote some more.  Late into the night sometimes.  Trying to get something ready to send to our editor.  

When I sent it out late Thursday night via email, I wrote in the email that while I felt good about the project basically, it was not my best work.  The pressure of the deadline caused me to cut some corners that I wouldn’t normally have cut.  I would have taken more time to make the material more rounded, more resourced and more collaborative.  But it was, in short, good enough.

Good enough?  What’s good enough?  And how often do we settle for good enough?  In way too many arenas of our lives we have been settling for good enough.  We’ve been getting by, making do, too accepting of the way things are, too apt to say, well, things are like that these days.  We shake our heads, we still complain, but then we shrug our shoulders and say, “what can you do?”

Romans 8:22-25 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

You might be wondering where I’m going here.  And the truth is that I’m not sure.  Except that as I thought of my experience this week, rushing to get something done, with a deadline past due, and knowing that I could have done better if I had more time, and I thought about patience.  Patience is listed in the fruit of the Spirit passage that we enjoy so much.  It is something that Paul talks a lot about.  Jesus doesn’t seem to use the word, except in a parable about forgiveness.  You remember that one?  There was a man who owed an impossible sum.  As Jesus tells the story, the man owes ten thousand talents.  I’ve heard various interpretations of how much a talent represented.  One point of agreement is that it is a lot.  The smallest amount I heard described was everything a person could earn in a year.  That’s one talent.  This man owed ten thousand of them.  Ten thousand years worth of income.  Be patient with me, he said to the creditor and I’ll pay you everything.  How patient isn’t defined in the story.  Ten thousand years patient seems ... excessive.  But here’s the kicker.  The creditor says, what the heck, just forget it.  I beg your pardon?  Yeah, ten thousand talents here, ten thousand talents there.  No big deal.  (Note to self: send this parable to the people who hold our mortgage!  Matthew 18:23-35) Ahem.  

Of course there is a part two, and patient appears there too.  The only time the word appears in the Gospels, any of them.  The guy just forgiven a debt of ten thousand years worth of wages, runs into a guy who owes him a buck fifty.  No, that’s wrong, it was more.  A hundred denarii.  That’s not something to be sneezed at.  Almost a third of a year’s worth of income. 

When we first went to England, we went to work in the British Methodist Church.  It was an amazing and sometimes troubling experience.  But the reason I bring it up is that in the British Methodist Church the pastors are paid once a quarter.  Up front.  So, I arrived and was handed a check (actually it was Britain, so it was a cheque) that had three month’s wages in it.  Dang!  It was a little startling to say the least.  But I was smart.  I did the very smartest thing I could think to do, I brought La Donna with me.  Whew.  She of the lists and organization and budgets.  I would have been living on the street begging for left over fish and chips inside of a month and half without her.  Well, maybe not.  But my point is it was not an insubstantial amount of money. 

So, the guy forgiven the huge debt stumbles on the guy who still owes a significant (compared to the other hardly even registers on the Richter scale!) amount, who says the exact same thing that he just did.  You have to wonder if the second guy was listening to the first guy make his plea and recorded it on his phone so that he could play it back when it was his turn.  Be patient with me.  But the forgiven guy says, no!  Give me my money or go to jail.

Patience is in short supply it seems.  Yeah, the guy gets in trouble for his lack of grace.  The master says he will go to jail until he pays the last penny.  So, he’ll be there for at least ten thousand years.  And when he gets out he will have nothing.  And be really old.

We wait for what we don’t see with patience.  That’s what Paul says in the passage I chose to show.  Wait for what?  Wait for what we hope for.  And what’s that exactly?  Well, um, I dunno.  What do you hope for?  Paul is want us to be hoping for a new world.  A different reality.  The Reign of God.  The Kingdom of Heaven.  That’s what we’re waiting for.  But not some abstract strumming harps on clouds kind of thing.  No, this is a new earth too.  It is a better way of living.  A way of trusting and caring.  It’s a way of working collaboratively and way of honoring those who think and act and look differently.  About acceptance and inclusion, not about name calling and finger pointing, not about sending home those who might be a different shade, not about so narrowly defining love of nation that unless you want exactly what I want then you must hate my country, not about finding things to complain about in others when someone tries to hold you accountable for your words and actions.  We are hoping for something better than what we see in front of us every day.  We don’t see it, says Paul.  It seems to far from us, and moving farther from where we are and who we are becoming than ever before.  But still we hope.  And we wait.  With patience.

But, here’s the key.  Patience, especially waiting with patience, is not about sitting still.  About keeping your head down and waiting for the hammer to fall, the change to come and then coming out and taking our place.  No, patience is about writing.  Even though you’re behind the deadline.  Writing the best you can, working the best you can, speaking and sharing and living and giving the best you can.  Patience is not letting the lack of reign of God sightings keep us from looking for them.  And better, keep us from doing them, those sightings, those glimpses of a better world.  Others can come and wait with patience with us because they see in us the hope put into action.  They see the kingdom because they see it in us.  They hear it in us, they read it in our words, they feel it in our love.

That’s the key you know.  Patience isn’t really one of the fruits of the Spirit.  Because there is only one fruit.  Go look it up.  I’ll wait, it’s singular.  The fruit of the Spirit is ... Love.  That’s what it says.  Not the fruits of the Spirit are ....  Singular.  The fruit of the Spirit is love.  But it is love that is joyful, and love that is peaceful, and love that is patient, and it is love that is kind and generous and faithful and gentle, and it is love that is under control.  Patience isn’t a thing in and of itself, according to the Spirit anyway.  Patience is an aspect of love.  Often when we run out of patience it is because we’ve run out of love.  If we come back to love, we just might find more patience.  Remind yourself of the love you have for those who are trying your patience.  Or the love you are called to have with them.  Even when the deadlines loom and the work piles up.  Return to love.  That’s a job we can’t put off, but can’t rush either.  We wait for it with patience.

Shalom,

Derek