He Bent Down

I’m back.  A long awaited family vacation, at least in part, is what took me away.  I also took some time to go to Tennessee to see my mom and dad.  Then a week of doing family things, eating out, playing games, taking short trips and then an overnight to Pokagon State Park.  Just simple stuff, fun stuff, not too stressed stuff.  Even though there were stressers aplenty.  After getting back from a few days with my mom and struggling with her continued decline but trusting that she is getting the care she needs in a difficult situation; I then learn that my dad was rushed to the hospital there in Paris with some sort of heart incident.  He is still there and we are waiting for information as to the exact nature of his condition.

While that was going on, we also got news that my uncle, my mom’s younger brother, suffered a massive heart attack and died Wednesday night.  Uncle Bill was my mom’s only sibling, and a retired United Methodist pastor.  Like mom he had diabetes pretty severely, and lately had had a number of amputations as a result.  Yet, it seemed like nothing would slow him down, until now I guess.  No slowing down, just a full stop.  My brothers are there or on their way to represent the family for us.

Whew, almost makes you wonder if getting away is worth it.  Well, yes, of course.  I had a chance to be with family, with La Donna and the kids, with mom and dad, and my older brother who drove down to Tennessee on his Harley while I was there too.  Even though I suggested he wait and go another time, so we can spread out our visits.  He didn’t take my suggestion, but went anyway.  And I was glad he was there.  Being with people is better than we realize it, every time.  Even in difficult times.  Even when there is trouble and disagreement and brokenness, being with is better than we know.

At least Jesus seemed to think so.  Take a look at this event in Jesus’ life that got stuck here in the Gospel of John.  Scholars have pointed out how this passage interrupts the flow of the narrative in chapters seven and eight, and how some manuscripts of the Gospel don’t include this story, and how it seems like a later addition.  Yet, it seems so quintessentially Jesus, I can’t believe it shouldn’t be there.  I can’t believe it was made up by John or the community he formed who wrote down all the stories he used to tell them.  Anyway, it may be out of place, but it must be a real moment in Jesus’ life and ministry.  It must be.

John 8:2-12 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.  3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them,  4 they said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.  5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"  6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."  8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.  9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"  11 She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again."  12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." 

We are still in our Questions series in the month of August.  We started with Bible Questions the first week, and then last week while I was away, Chuck Scott and Ellen Rhoades helped us reflect on Church Questions.  Now, for two weeks we’ll be looking at some difficult questions under the category of Christian Living Questions.  These are the sticky ones that make us think about how our faith gets lived out.  These questions are not just about what to think, but about what to do.  How then should we live?  These questions include those ethical stumpers that seem to have no easy answer, no clear always right and always wrong kind of responses.  Next week we’ll turn to the big picture kinds of things, those social issue kinds of topics that seem to divide even close friends.  So, stay tuned for that.

This week I want to talk methodology.  Yawn.  No, seriously.  I can’t anticipate every question, every issue, every incident and give a step by step response on how we should act each time.  So, instead it makes sense to look at some general principles.  It makes sense to find a model by which we can shape our actions, our responses.  Right?  And what better model than that of Jesus?  

So, we have this story, suspect as it might be, it still seems to give us some handles on how to follow Christ.  Even when things get sticky.  What can we learn about how Jesus approaches complicated ethical issues from this story?  

First of all Jesus rarely approaches issues as issues.  He is much more concerned about people and about relationships.  He is much more concerned about how we live together in community than he is about making issue oriented statements.  The Pharisees came to him wanting a ruling on adultery, No, that’s not right.  They wanted to challenge his popularity, his authority.  They wanted to take him down a peg or two in the eyes and hearts of those who came to follow him.  They were using the woman as an object to get at Jesus.  She didn’t matter so much to them.  She was only a means, not an end.

Jesus refused to play their game.  Instead of letting the woman be the object standing in the middle, he drew attention to himself.  He bent down, he drew on the ground.  No doubt this was frustrating to the accusers, they kept hurling questions at him.  But he kept drawing.  Drawing their attention to him, away from her.  When they wouldn’t relent, he says “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”  

They wandered off, unsatisfied, but also unable to respond.  He didn’t resolve the issue to their satisfaction.  He changed the focus from issues to people.  So, one by one, they left not wanting to deal with people, with themselves and their own sin or with the woman they dragged there and her sin.

So, Jesus then turns to the woman and says “Where are they, has no one condemned you?”  And she says “No one, sir.”  Because in Jesus she didn’t find condemnation.  But acceptance and freedom, forgiveness and a challenge to live differently.  First of all Jesus doesn’t deal with issues, he deals with people.  Secondly, he stands with people and does not condemn.  

Be careful here, however.  Not condemning is not the same as not caring.  Or not wanting change in behavior.  Jesus asks her to sin no more. Meaning that there are things that keep us from communion with God.  There are behaviors, there are decisions, there are choices that keep us from living in relationship with God and with others in a way that is healing and whole.  There is still such a thing as sin, Jesus says.

But we attack sin and sinful behaviors not with condemnation, not with accusations, but by standing with.  By standing with.  This is what the world is asking us.  Not whether we have standards or values.  They want to know will we stand with those who have fallen?  Will we approach those who are accused, not with further condemnation but with love and with hope and with the possibility of redemption?  Will we make them jump through hoops in order to be forgiven, or will we forgive in order that they might be transformed?

The methodology for walking in this world is to do what Jesus did.  He bent down, all the way down, to where we are, and he didn’t make us feel smaller for it.  Rather we felt lifted up, we felt bigger because of his bending down.  Did the woman change her life after meeting Jesus?  We don’t really know, John doesn’t tell us.  Instead he asks did we change after meeting Jesus?  That’s the question before us.  Are we different because of Him, or not?  What does the world see when it looks at us?  Accusers?  Or sinners who know what forgiveness means?  He bent down.  How can we do less? 

Shalom, 

Derek

Searching the Scriptures

Questions.  That’s what we’re about for the month of August: Questions.  Questions about our faith, questions that you long to ask but might be embarrassed because you figure you ought to know already.  Questions about stuff that just never made sense to you.  Questions that came from someone who doesn’t share our faith and wanted to quiz you, and you weren’t sure how to respond.  Questions that came during a difficult moment and the easy cliches no longer satisfy, but you were afraid to ask for fear that cliches are all we have.  Questions.  

Specifically, there are questions that the community submitted a few months ago and that I’ve been living with for a while.  Some were very challenging questions that touch on the core of our faith and theology, our practice and our understanding of who God is and who we are to God.  Some were wrenching questions of tragedy and confusion.  Some questions that made me smile because of the faith inherent in it and the desire to go deeper, live more fully.  And, frankly, some were questions about my own courage as a leader and pastor of a flock full of questions.

I took these questions and put them in general categories.  This week we will look at Bible questions.  Subsequent weeks will look at Church questions, Theology questions and what I called Christian Living questions.  We’ll take two weeks on those, because they were so many and various it was hard to do justice to the variety in one week’s worth of worship.  There is a certain arbitrariness to the categories, I’ll confess that.  Some questions could have been in more than one category, some weren’t clearly in any.  (Hence the “Christian Living” category which sounds so much more profound than Miscellaneous!)  But I wanted to find a place for them all.  I don’t promise detailed answers to every single question, but what I hope to do is to open a dialogue that might lead to further conversation, more answers and, yes, more questions.  I’m still a little nervous about how this will work on the fly in the worship service, but I’m all in.  Let’s do this thing!

But we start with the Bible.  A very good place to start, I thought.  There were some very deep and profound questions that I don’t know I’d be able to answer in a week’s worth of lectures on the Bible.  And there were some simpler sounding questions that just might be hiding something deeper underneath.  For example: “Was Jesus a rabbi?”  In the garden on Easter morning when Mary is startled by the recognition that the One she thought was dead and gone suddenly standing there talking to her and loving her, her exclamation is “Rabbi!”  Yes, Jesus was a rabbi in the sense of a teacher, of having followers, disciples who were committed to learning from him.  But his authority wasn’t recognized by the hierarchy of the time, he didn’t meet with the Board of Ordained Ministry and get voted on and handed credentials by the overseeing body.  Things were different then.  Sometimes we forget that.

No, we don’t.  Really.  The Bible is picturing a world so radically different from ours that it is sometimes hard to read, certainly hard to apply in our day to day life.  We call it a guidebook, with rules for living, and it is, in a way, but not like we usually mean.  There is an interpretive process that has to take place in order for us to understand and apply the wisdom of the Bible.  Sometimes that process is easy and straight-forward.  Sometimes the Bible is a “duh” book, so obvious that we wonder how anyone could miss it.  But the other times it feels like a different world, certainly a different way of using language and image and metaphor and story.  We hardly know how to approach some of the things that Jesus says let alone try to apply them faithfully to our complicated lives.

That’s why we wrestle with the Bible.  It keeps throwing curves when we expect slow pitch, a fastball when we aren’t even in our stance. Even those who claim to follow every word choose which words are more important, which words are worth our time and energy, and which we just let slide by.  Even people in the Bible did that!

The question is really what is it for, this Bible thing?  What are we supposed to do with it?  What purpose does it serve.  Well, Jesus had an idea about that.

John 5:39-47   "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.  40 Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.  41 I do not accept glory from human beings.  42 But I know that you do not have the love of God in you.  43 I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him.  44 How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?  45 Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope.  46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.  47 But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?" 

The Bible, Jesus says, has one purpose, and that is to bring us to Him.  The Bible points to Christ, and our job is to go through, go beyond the printed page to a deep and sustaining, living relationship with Christ.  The problem is we can hold a Bible in our hands but we can’t hold Christ in the same way.  We can see the pages and the words, we can flip through and read and reread, but standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand with the Savior is a much harder, less tangible thing.  So, we expend a lot of energy on the book and not as much on following Him.  Understandably so.  

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Bible.  I love the study and the examination.  I love reading and rereading.  I love the stories and the songs, I love the characters, as flawed as they all are, but I love them.  They feel like family.  Every time I spend time with the Bible, I feel like it is a reunion with the colorful part of the family.  It is, powerfully, like going home.  I also think there is great wisdom there, guides for living that if we only paid a little more attention we could avoid some of the pratfalls that our family members had.  If we took seriously the descriptions of a godly life, we might be a little closer to the One we want to be like, the One we want to follow.  The One who said “love one another as I have loved you.”  He told us to copy him, to emulate him.  How can we do that if we don’t spend time with the Bible?

But we are not worshipers of the Bible.  We are not “Bibliolaters!”  We are Christians, worshipers, followers of Christ.  Which means that we have to listen and learn and grow in our use of the Bible.  And one of those growing points is to ask ourselves what is there in our reading that doesn’t reflect Christ?  What representations of God in the Bible do not present the God that Jesus wanted to introduce to us?  And if the God being revealed does not match why is that?  Is it a problem of interpretation, do we just not know what it is really saying?  Or is it something else?  And what might that something else be?

What do we do with words like “inerrant” and “inspired”?  What do we do with ideas like the end of Revelation that seems to say if you add or take away from the words in the Bible, God will punish you eternally?  What do we do with ideas like the end of the Gospel of John that implies there is more to the story than what is printed in the pages of the Bible?  What do we do with the idea that our own article of religion states that the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation, which I now consider to be an unfortunate choice of words?  

Questions.  You’ve got them.  I’ve got them.  The Bible is a wonderful and confusing book, containing puzzles and insight, “aha’s” and “huh’s?” alike.  And I think that is just great.  It is not my goal in this series to simply answer all these questions in a definitive, take it or leave it kind of way.  My purpose is two-fold.  One to proclaim that to ask questions is not the antithesis of faith, not a sign of weakness or failure, but a part of the journey toward Christ that never ends in this life.  The bigger worry is when you stop asking questions, because that is a sign that faith is no longer important to you.  So, ask away.  And I want to help point toward answers, not to just give them, because if you don’t find them for yourself they won’t be your answers.  The second part is to say questions aren’t barriers or handicaps to faith, but the means by which we grow and stay alive in Christ.  Even when there aren’t easy answers.  So, keep asking.  You’ll be glad you did.

Shalom, 

Derek

All the Treasures

There’s a bit of a lull here in the culminating hours of Choir School.  So I thought I’d try to dash this off in preparation for the weekend.  This Sunday morning is the conclusion of our Ordinary Time series, where we’ve been focusing on the need to make faith an every day experience, not just a high point, once a week, save it for the special times way of living.

The irony here is that this week has been a high point, special time.  I have been chaplain for Choir School here on the campus of Anderson University, which is a choral music camp focused on singing sacred music in large choirs and living in community and engaging in worship from Sunday evening until Saturday morning.  I preached 10 times this week (well, nine so far, I’ve got one more to go as of this writing).  And I’ve known some of these people for twenty years or more.  It has indeed been a highlight, as always.

But this year there was an added dimension.  I created a Preaching Academy to go alongside Choir School.  Seven Indiana preachers took me up on it.  And we spent time reflecting on this thing called preaching, I would teach for three hours each morning and then we would either read and write or engage in conversation around the preaching process, both how sermons are crafted and what do we mean by a preaching ministry and even how do we give our hearers avenues for response to the Word they hear.  It was an invigorating time.  Deeply personal, as preaching comes from within; but also community based as the preachers mingled with the musicians and we shared some activities together, most notably worship.  We grew together as a small group of colleagues and learned from one another all week.

So, what is ordinary about all of that?  Nothing, or everything, depending on your point of view, I suppose.  There is nothing ordinary about the Choir School community.  Get this many musicians, even church musicians, together and there are bound to be sparks.  There is inspired goofiness, bruised egos, passionate worship and honest attempts to care and connect.  Extraordinary.

There is nothing ordinary about a gathering of preachers (a pulpit of preachers?  A narthex of preachers?  Hmmm). Inspired goofiness, check; bruised egos, check; passionate worship, check; and honest attempts to care and connect, check and check.  Extraordinary.

Yet, none of us feel anything but ordinary.  We are just who we are.  We are who God made us, loved and redeemed, but nothing special.  So, maybe the ordinary is overcome only in the gathering together.  The goofiness increases as the crowd increases.  The worship is more passionate when we worship together with enthusiasm and power.  You get the drift.  Maybe what seems ordinary to one, becomes transformative in community.  Maybe it is time to set ordinary aside to embrace something beyond ordinary.

Colossians 2:1-10  For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face.  2 I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself,  3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  4 I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with plausible arguments.  5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ.  6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him,  7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.  9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,  10 and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.

Paul writes (I know that some folks don’t think Paul wrote it, that some other scribe wrote this epistle.  That may be, who knows, does it matter?) that the whole fullness of deity lives in Jesus.  Which is not very ordinary.  And Jesus wants us to receive that fullness too.  Paul wants us to be like Jesus.

So, how does one go out and get such a thing?  The whole fullness?  It seems a pipe dream, it seems a vain hope.  Yet Paul seems to think that not only is it possible, but it is the ordinary expectation of every Christian.  It is how life is supposed to be lived, filled with the whole presence of God.  It seems out of reach.  So how do we reach it?  Paul tells us that too.

To begin with we need hearts that are encouraged.  That seems an ordinary thing.  Everyone likes a little encouragement now and then.  Everyone needs to be lifted now and then.  There is so much that knocks us down, so much that makes us feel less than able, less than important, less than included.  Maybe, come to think of it, hearts that are discouraged seem much more normal these days.  Those who are lifted up seem few and far between.  And the times in our lives when we are up seem fewer than the days that we are down.  So, which is ordinary?  What does ordinary even mean in this context?

I don’t know.  I know that Paul says in order for us to have the fullness of Christ we need encouraged hearts.  And united hearts.  Now, surely that’s ordinary.  United hearts.  Isn’t that we are all seeking, hearts with which we can connect.  We all want to be in relationship, we all want to love and be loved.  But there seems to be more hinted at here than just somebody to love (nod to Freddie Mercury).

Hearts that are encouraged and united in love describes the church, the community of faith. Or at least the church as it could be, should be, might be and is at its best.  Encouraging and united.  Isn’t that the church you want to be a part of?  Isn’t that what you’d like to see in your church?  Encouragement and unity? A sense of belonging to something bigger than just yourself, just your own limited vision and understanding.  But something larger, deeper, wider.  Sure there is a one on one dimension to our work in the church, but there is also the wider community.  Both for encouragement and for uniting.

As the week draws to a close on these two extraordinary events, Choir School and the Preaching Academy, I wonder how I will return to the ordinary life of the congregation in which I serve.  How will I return to the daily life and rhythms without feeling like I’m missing something.  That’s the problem with mountaintop experiences.  As soon as you leave the mountain you miss it.  Nothing here in the flatlands of Indiana comes close to being a mountain.  Right?

Except that with hearts encouraged and united in love we receive Christ in all His fullness, the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  Which would seem to me to the very definition of extraordinary.  Except that Paul goes on to say, having received Christ in this way, we “continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Continue.  Again.  And again.  And yet again.  Day after day, hour after hour, choice after choice.  We live this life, this every day, over repetitious life, this ordinary life, we live this life abounding in thanksgiving.  We life this ordinary life with an extraordinary presence.  We live this mundane same old same old kind of life forgetting that we have all the treasures, the ones in Him, in Christ, we have all the treasures.  The treasures of wisdom and knowledge that come from Christ.  All the treasures.  There is no such thing as ordinary.  Or rather, everything is ordinary, since God is present everywhere.  Even in my ordinary life

If claiming all the treasures of Christ means being ordinary, then where do I sign up?  Or where do I get my marching orders for living the ordinary life?  Cause you can’t do much better than that!

Shalom,
Derek

Ordinary Magic

Gina Barreca wrote my Bible study this morning.  Actually, she didn’t write a Bible study, but an editorial in this morning’s Journal Gazette.  There is no Bible quote in it, no reference to much of what I intended to say, but still, it is as if she was writing what I had wanted to write.  The title of her editorial is “Ordinary days’ bliss not to be missed.”  Go read it if you haven’t.  Pick up a paper if you can.  Or I’ll bring a copy to church tomorrow and you can see it there (those who worship with us at Aldersgate in Fort Wayne).  If you aren’t in town, go online, maybe you can get it there.  I don’t know.  I haven’t checked.  But I’m trying to save myself some writing!

OK, not really.  Because as good as the article is, there are some things missing.  Two things in particular.  One is the Bible passage I wanted to use to launch this whole conversation.  The other is a little bit of magic.  I know, I know, as soon as you start talking about magic then you’ve moved away from ordinary.  Either into fantasy or illusion or something darker.  But trust me, this is ordinary magic.  But that’s later.  

First, Bible.  This is a Bible study after all.  That is my supposed purpose is writing this.  Preparing for a sermon tomorrow that will help us grab hold some deeper truth that is right in front of us all the time, but until we use the lens of the living Word, we never even see it.  

Ms Barreca says that she realizes that she often doesn’t pay attention to her own life.  “The idea of being in the middle of happiness and not knowing it unnerves me because it happened a lot when I was younger.  It wasn’t so much that I didn’t know how good I had it, but that I wasn’t able to offer myself permission to enjoy what I couldn’t prove was somehow worthwhile.”

What I couldn’t prove was somehow worthwhile.  That is profound.  How do you celebrate the ordinary when it is so ... ordinary?  It doesn’t mean anything, it just is, we think.  It doesn’t make a difference, it just is our life.  Or a small insignificant part of it.  Nothing special.  Nothing profound.  Nothing transformative.  After all, we are “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!”  Get to work, slacker!  We’ve got to be doing big stuff, changing the world stuff.  Not just living.  Right?  

Well, yes but.  How does the world change?  Incrementally.  Most of the time.  We grow into it.  The world as we have it now didn’t happen over night.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  Or Constantinople.  Or Versailles.  Or Washington.  Or Beijing. Or ... well you get the idea.  Sure, dramatic things sometimes happened, wars and revolutions, discoveries and inventions, stuff that seemingly changed the world instantly.  But even those had to be lived into.  Day by day.  Step by step.  “More than the days of magnificent accomplishment or great passion, I suspect that most of us would hug the everyday most tightly if someone tried to pry it away from us,” Barreca writes.

The every day.  Ordinary.  Why is the ordinary not so ordinary?  Paul had an idea.

Colossians 1:15-20  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;  16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-- all things have been created through him and for him.  17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.  19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,  20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. 

While not giving Charles Wesley a run for his title, Paul was something of a hymn writer.  Or a hymn quoter, as some scholars think these doxologies were already being used and Paul just wove them into his writing, like I might quote a popular song or newspaper article.  But whether he wrote these words or chose them to make his point, Paul is giving us a hymn of praise to Christ here in the early part of the letter to the Colossians.  Jesus is the “He” referred to in verse fifteen, if that was not already obvious.  Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  Perhaps these words inspired John to open his Gospel with a similar tune, a similar chorus.  In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him.   That’s John’s version of this song of praise, this doxology.  It sounds similar.

It goes on from this declaration at the beginning to describe the place, the status, the power of Christ.  And the beginnings of Trinitarian theology.  “For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.”  All the fulness.  True God of true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father....”  It makes your head spin to try to comprehend it.   And maybe that is part of the purpose, to make our heads spin.  A little head spinning is good for us.  Not for confusion’s sake.  But to open us up to the wonder of Christ.  To the power of God.  What an incredible, certainly not ordinary, thing God chose to do.  To put on flesh and walk among us.  To enter into our reality, our brokenness so that we would know God understands.  We would know God feels our pain, knows our weakness.  We would know that God is not just some distant force out there, but is also some intimate presence right here.  Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.  Head spinning, indeed.

But, wait.  I mean, good for him and all.  But this was about the ordinary.  The everyday.  The moments that pass by almost unnoticed until we with a great act of will force ourselves to wake up, to pay attention to each breath, each  encounter.  How do we open our eyes to those passing moments, so that they don’t pass unheeded?  How do we stop and acknowledge those we love in front of us, the ones who make our hearts pound even if we forget to pay attention to the pounding from time to time?  How do we grab hold of the ones who are slipping out of our grasp before we even see it?  How do we hang on this moment long enough to let those around us know that we are who we are because they are in our lives, they came to bless us, they came to shape us, they came to love us even in our most unlovable?  We’ve missed too many moments, they disappear way too quickly and by the time we pay attention to them, they are gone and the chance was missed.  How do we wake up to the ordinary?

With magic.  Ordinary magic.  When I was a kid there was a presence that still resides in my memory who told us to remember the magic.  Every morning Captain Kangaroo would gently open our eyes to the world around us and would conclude every program with the admonition to remember the magic words, please and thank you.  The ordinary magic is gratitude.  Gratitude reminds us of our connection, our reliance on those around us to make our lives meaningful.  Thank you, for loving me.  Thank you for feeding me, for clothing me, for making me laugh and holding me while I cry.  Thank you for being there for me.  And, wonder of wonders, thank you for wanting to.

I’m amazed at Paul’s hymn here in Colossians.  Amazed at the wonder of who Christ is, yes.  But really amazed at the end.  After all this about God in Christ, it ends with the words that this whole thing, this whole wonderful, amazing, head-spinning thing, was so that you, and so that I could find our way home to the arms of God.  “Through him, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.”  All things, you and me.  To Himself, to God, himself.  Brought back into relationship.  And, and!  This is the best part.  He was pleased to do it.  He was pleased to bring me home. God was pleased to bend down and lift me up.  God was pleased to hold the door, to stand watch at the end of the lane so that He could run to greet you when you came to yourself and stumbled home.  This wasn’t just a duty born out of the nature of God.  This wasn’t just in the job description.  No, we are made right, brought home, welcomed into the loving arms of our Father, nurtured by our Mother in heaven because God was pleased to do so.  Pleased by us.  By you.  By me.  God was pleased.

Magic.  Thank you.  Thank you God.  Thank you who stand in for God from time to time.  Who carry the ordinary moments of our lives and make them rich and deep and full.  “Our ordinary days need cultivation and attention: They are what we harvest in our lifetimes,” Barreca concludes.  Amen I say, amen.  And that cultivation and attention is the ordinary magic of gratitude.  First to God and from there into everywhere.  Thank for who you are.

Shalom, 

Derek

Rockets Red Glare

Oh, my goodness.  I’m late with this mostly because I couldn’t get out of bed this morning.  I got back yesterday morning from a week at Epworth Forest with eleven of our Senior High youth and other adult leaders.  It was a wonderful and educational week.  The main learning is that I am not as young as I used to be.  My goodness, the constant breakneck pace of camp and the late nights and early mornings like to nearly killed me.  I thought I was doing fine, actually.  Getting by, hanging in, enjoying the time.  But after getting home (and spending the rest of Friday wrestling with Comcast - which no doubt contributed) and dropping off multiple times I went to bed only to be unable to function this morning.  Wow.  Did anyone get the number of that truck?  Yeah, it was called youth camp!

But you didn’t log on here to listen to me whine about my adrenalin crash today.  You came for something else.  For an opportunity to reflect on a few verses from the bible.  Something less intense than 24/7 young people wrestling with a faith that both excites and energizes.  Something more quiet and internal.  No flashing lights and smoke machines here in the Late Night Bible Study, just quiet contemplation.  Right?

There is an irony here that the weekend back from the high energy of “That Thing” - which is what they are calling camp these days - is also the week we launch a new sermon series titled “Ordinary Time.”  From extreme to ordinary, from sublime to mundane.  Hmm, why would we want to make such a leap?  Aren’t we all about sensation?  All about the big picture, the wide screen?  Seems un-American, on this Independence Day, to scale it back.  American exceptionalism is the order of the day.  The frequent explosions surrounding me indicate that my neighbors would agree.  

Rockets red glare.  We sing about it. We celebrate it.  The big explosions, the power and light.  How can the day to day life of an average ordinary follower of Jesus ever measure up to our heroic imagination, ever compete with an extreme world in which we live?  It can’t!  Short answer, it can’t.  Which is why we spend our lives thinking we are missing something.  Thinking we are falling short as followers.  Thinking we are wash-outs as witnesses.  

But what if Jesus wasn’t calling us to climb mountains and swim oceans?  What if we weren’t really to fight demons or battle God’s enemies?  What if we were just supposed to follow Him?  Day by day, step by step.  The little victories of faithfulness and incremental growth of discipleship.  Just live every day, every day filled with the presence of Christ.  What might that look like?

That’s what we’re about this month.  Ordinary Christians living ordinary lives and yet alive in Christ.  Is such a thing possible?  And if so what does it look like?  Or feel like?  And is it something we settle for or strive for?  The answer might surprise you.

To help us we have a few verses from the letter to the Colossians.  In fact this little letter with be our guide for the whole series.  No considered one of the highlights of the New Testament, it is nonetheless useful for our purposes.  There is some debate as to whether this was actually written by Paul.  And frankly I don’t know either.  But I’ll take the easy way and talk about Paul anyhow.  Just seems simpler that way.  

We are in the first chapter of the letter.  The usual greetings begin the letter, and then the promise of prayers takes the stage.  And in those prayers is the call to live.  To live a life of fruitfulness.  To live a life of presence and hope in Christ.  Then there is a reference and commendation to a leader, a pastor who taught and cared and helped the community in Colossae.   

Our text begins right after that.  “For this reason” is not really a beginning place.  Not the launch of a journey.  Not the start of an adventure.  Rather it is more like a continuing on.  Another day, another step, just keep going.

Colossians 1:9-14  For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,  10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.  11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully  12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.  13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,  14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 

For this reason means what Paul heard about them.  He heard that they loved one another, and that they loved him in the Spirit.  He heard that they bore fruit, that they served and helped and healed and taught.  He heard that they lived lives worthy of the gospel.  And because of that, because of the love that lived in them and came forth from them, Paul praised God for them, and asked that God continue to pour out into them all that they need to live.  Paul prayed that they might have wisdom and understanding, have the knowledge of God’s will, and that they keep growing, keep moving forward.

But it was the middle verse and a bit that caught my attention for this ordinary series.  “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully  12 giving thanks to the Father...”  There are some words in there that describe the life of the ordinary Christian, at least as I understand it. 

First Paul wishes them to be strong.  May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power.  Wow, all the strength that God’s power can bestow!  All the strength.  Hardly ordinary.  God’s glorious power is for changing the world, isn’t it.  It is for mighty deeds and feats of faithfulness that take the breath away of any onlooker.  Be strong with all the strength.  Superman level here.  

So what is to be done with this strength?  Endure with patience.  Wait, what?  Endure?  If you’ve got all the glorious power of God, all the strength that comes from Him, you’re going to do more than endure, aren’t you?  Endure sounds like surrender.  Endure sounds like put up with, outlast, tolerate, wade through, stomach - as in I’ve got to stomach this medicine that’s horrible but good for me.  Endure.  But then Paul makes it worse, endure with patience.  Yikes, we can’t even grumble about it.  About our lives that are messy to say the least, unfair, heavy, burdensome.  We’ve got to endure.  With patience.

But he doesn’t even stop there.  Endure with patience, while joyfully giving thanks.  Oh my heavens.  Endure and be joyful?  Is such a thing even possible?  I mean, I know how to endure and let everyone know I’m enduring, looking for brownie points, or sympathy.  But now I’m supposed to endure and be joyful?  Supposed to endure without dwelling on the burden, but giving thanks for the life, giving thanks with joy?  How is that supposed to happen?

By remembering whose we are.  By remembering who is with us.  Joyfully giving thanks to God means being aware of that Presence.  It means knowing that we are not alone.  Not forgotten, not abandoned.  Joyfully giving thanks to God means that we know that our help comes from the hills, as the Psalm says, the hills where God dwells.  I lift up my eyes.  Enduring with patience and joy means being able to lift up your eyes.

We are also reminded that this Presence is most often felt through the community of faith around us.  That’s the inheritance of the saints of light.  But not just those who have gone before, but those who are around us every day, every week when we gather to sing God’s praise and bask in God’s glory.  The glory that shines from the faces of the faithful who walk with us every single ordinary day. 

Another rocket exploded outside just now.  A big one, loud one.  Extraordinary.  There will be no rockets in church tomorrow.  Just an ordinary act of worship of the extraordinary God.  Joyful, but ordinary.  Like us.

Shalom, 

Derek

Rebuking the Winds

Got enough water yet?  It’s a particularly wet June here in Indiana, for those few readers who aren’t from these parts. Wet, humid, damp, soggy, water-logged, flooded basements, dogs who won’t go out even when they have to; it’s just messy.  And it drains you.  Ha.  Ironic, don’t you think?  All that water and we’re drained.  Swirling around the plumbing, spilling out into the water table, swept away in the flood, adrift on the tides of time and daily living and all the million choices that come to us each day.  And we are afraid.  Afraid we’ve chosen wrong.  Afraid we’re on the wrong path.  Afraid we’re misunderstood or worse, not even known, not even seen, just invisible, overlooked, not even real any more, just a figment of our own imagination.

See?  The rain carries us away.  The storms sweep us out to the sea of our fearful imagination.  Oh, I know we don’t live there.  Most of us anyway.  Most of the time when someone asks “how are you?” and we say “fine” we really mean it.  It isn’t a lie, or a way of hiding.  We really are fine.  We’ve got stuff to do, our desks are piled up, the bills keep coming, our kids are making decisions we don’t quite understand, but we’re fine.  Really.  We’ve got that coworker who seems to have it in for us, that teacher that seems unreasonably harsh, the boss that can’t quite see our potential, and Donald Trump is seriously running for president, but we’re fine.  Really.  Aren’t we?  Yes, certainly.  We’re fine.

Until the storms come.  The ominous signs as the car you hoped to keep another few thousand miles before trading in suddenly sounds thunder on the horizon.  The lightning flash of a bill you weren’t expecting from that last little trip to the doctor that you kept insisting was nothing serious crackles across a bank account already stressed by college and mortgage and too many other things to consider.  A cloudburst in South Carolina that somehow drenches us all no matter how much we try to say that it is them and not us.  And we’re afraid.  In the midst of the storms we are afraid.  And it has been an exceptionally stormy June, or 2015, or life.  Exceptionally.  And like the disciples, our deepest fear is that no one cares.

Mark 4:35-41  On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."  36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.  37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.  38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"  39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.  40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"  41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" 

Leaving the crowd behind.  Not every problem solved, not every need met.  But Jesus needed a break, needed a change.  He decided to head off in a different direction.  So, they got on a boat.  “They took him, just as he was.”  As he was?  Unpacked?  Unprepared for a sea voyage?  Or exhausted, spent, used up?  They took him just as he was.  And who was that exactly?

See, that’s the secret to the Gospel of Mark.  It’s all about identity.  Who is this Jesus?  I mean really, who is He?  They thought they knew.  They took the Jesus the knew and found the Son of God they hadn’t met yet.  They took the healer and teacher, and found the Lord of the wind and waves.  They took what they knew and didn’t know what they had.

A storm came up.  Because they do.  They will.  Nowhere in the whole of the bible is there a promise that there will be no storms.  Well, until the kingdom comes that is.  Then the storms will cease and calm will prevail.  But for now?  A storm came up.  Not just a storm.  A “great windstorm” Mark says.  Waves beating on the side of the boat, like the shark from Jaws.  And the boat was taking on water.  They were experienced fishermen, some of them anyway, they knew storms, they weathered a lot of them.  But this one, well, this one was big, a perfect storm.  More than they could handle.  They tried, give them credit, they tried.  For who knows how long, in the night, in the wind and the spray, they were soaked to the skin, they were sore and bleeding from holding the ropes that the storm tried to turn into lashes, into the tentacles of some leviathan from the deep.  They tried, but it was beyond them.  With wide eyes they looked around, finally their eyes landed on the figure in the back of the boat, asleep on a cushion.  And their fear whispered in their ears, what kind of savior is that?  How dare he sleep when you are about to die?  You saw him do those miracles, didn’t you?  And now, what?  Nothing.  Snoring louder than the roaring winds.  He won’t even know when the boat takes on so much water that it won’t even float anymore.  He won’t be there to help you bail in a fruitless attempt to save yourselves.  In a moment or two, the next wave or the one after that and he’ll be sleeping with the fishes.  With you.

They were angry, scared and angry, terrified and hopeless and angry.  They rushed to the stern and shook him.  Notice what their fear has done.  They don’t ask for help.  They don’t ask for hope.  Don’t you care?  They accuse him of abandoning them in their hour of need.  Don’t you care that we are about to die! 

Isn’t that the way?  He isn’t doing what we want, he must not care.  She doesn’t help the way I want to be helped she doesn’t care.  We didn’t get what we wanted when we wanted it, no one cares about us.  We accuse, we divide, we pull back, turn away.  Because they didn’t care.  Jesus didn’t care.  If he did he wouldn’t be sleeping like, well like he didn’t care.  Didn’t have a care.  Like there was nothing to worry about.

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.  9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Romans 14:8-9)   Paul wrote that.  But then he was crazy.  Didn’t he care?  He seems to say there isn’t anything to fear.  That there is One who cares for us no matter what.  No matter what we face, no matter the pain we bear or the grief we suffer, he cares.  Don’t you care?  What kind of question was that?  

A question from those who didn’t know him.  Didn’t really know him.  Him, the Lord of creation, the Son of God.  Jesus doesn’t respond to their complaint, their whining, he turns and deals with the storm.  “Peace!  Be still!”  A little kind and gentle translation.  He shouts at the storm “Shut up!”  Stop your blowing and raging and threatening!  Just stop it.  Go back to where you came from.  Where you came from?  Where do storms come from?  Well, a meteorologist could answer that better than I could.  For normal storms anyway.  This one wasn’t normal.  

Jesus’ words are the same words he said in the first chapter when telling the demon to shut up and get out.  We usually translate them differently - be still and be silent, but it’s the same word.  This was a demon storm.  The kind that need rebuking.  The kind that need rejected, need to be told to get out and never come back again.  The storm of racism broke over us all again this week.  And those winds need to be rebuked, to be cast out, named and denounced.  We can’t simply say it was one man, maybe with mental issues who killed nine people far away.  This storm raises our fears and we wonder if we will go under the waves.  Don’t you care, we shout to the one who should have fixed us by now.  Don’t you care that there are threads of hatred that bind all of our hearts?  Set us free!  Keep us safe!  Make us good all the time.  Don’t you care that we have to work so hard, that we have to fight through the storm?  

Have you still no faith?  Still?  How long, O Lord?  We’re waiting to be made strong enough to stand and rebuke the winds with Him.  He’s wondering why we don’t just claim the freedom and the gift we’ve already been given.  We’re waiting for something big to happen, He says there isn’t anything bigger than life eternal, life abundant.  What are you afraid of?  A storm?  That’s nothing.  The winds? All it can do is take away stuff, all it can do is shake our confidence in our own power, all it can do is remove the feeble assumptions we try to live by - like we are in control of our destiny, like we are better or stronger than those who aren’t like us, like our strength is found in armies or governments, like our value is found in what we can do with our own hands.  Have you still no faith?  

Some wind needs rebuking, some storms need facing, not with fear but with hope.  Hope that we, with Him, can stand for something greater than hatred and fear.  Hope in the faith that says there is something more than safety and ease.  Something like reconciliation, like community, like church.  The church, that boat swept along in the waters of a changing world, seemingly too fragile to survive the storms around and within.  But we’ll be OK.  See, I looked in the back, at the one sleeping on a cushion.  The Lord of creation is on board.  It is well with our souls.

Shalom, 

Derek 

Out at Home

Jesus went home.  He named his inner circle of disciples and went home.  Called it a day.  Well, he healed a man, on the Sabbath it turns out and got into a mess of trouble and then called the inner circle and went home.  The last time he was home, someone tore a hole in his roof and lowered a paralyzed man into the living room.  Then he called a friend, had a party - got called out for that one too, went on a hike with his new friends and they plucked some grain from a field they were wandering through and got in trouble for that (reaping on the Sabbath - not stealing grain, oddly enough), then healed a man and called his inner circle and went home.  Before that he got baptized and spent some time alone in the wilderness, cast out some demons, some of whom seemed to recognize him but he told them to keep quiet about it and he healed and walked and found need everywhere he went.  Tried to go home and lost his roof, attended a few parties and did the grain thing, the Sabbath thing, called his inner circle and went home.

That’s where we start this week.  He went home.  Except it wasn’t home.  Other translations don’t say home.  One says he entered a house.  Or the place he was staying.  In other gospels he says he doesn’t have a home.  But maybe that’s after he tried to go.  Maybe that is the result of finding that homes isn’t the haven you hoped it would be.

For those of us who move frequently, home is an elusive concept.  People often ask for a home town.  There are lots of markers I can name, place of birth, where I graduated from high school, where we got married, where the kids came, but home?  That’s harder.  Home is a now thing, though.  I’m home now writing this.  In our temporary apartment in between places to live, feeling a little crowded, trying to figure out boundaries and rules, which has as much to do with the people as the place; kids who aren’t kids anymore and parents who live most of the year without them and now love them but find them annoying at times. Everyone has to change, to accommodate, to make room when there isn’t room to be made.  Jesus went home.  And his family tried to restrain him and his neighbors tried to call him out.  Welcome home Jesus.

Mark 3:19 - 35  Then he went home;  20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.  21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind."  22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons."  23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan?  24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.  26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.  27 But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.  28 "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;  29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"--  30 for they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."  31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.  32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."  33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"  34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!  35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

He went home and found a family who thought he was crazy.  He was used to dealing with those who thought he was crazy.  Par for the course these days.  Mark follows one of his standard literary habits and makes a sandwich story.  He starts one story and then interrupts it for another story and then comes back to the story he started.  The family comes in with a straight jacket and prescription drugs to see if they can save him from himself.  But before they get there, a battalion of scribes come marching down the hill from Jerusalem, and they set up siege against the house where Jesus is, pointing fingers and calling names.  They brought out the heavy artillery for this one.  He’s not just crazy, they shout at passers by, he’s possessed.  And not just some low level demonic presence, he’s got the top dog, the prince of demons - Beelzebul!  Whoever that is.  A prince, they say.  There are a lot of demonic names that have power.  They get all mixed up in history, One of those names is “Baalzebub” which actually translates as Baal (or Lord) of the Flies.  Creepy.  Literary, but creepy.

Anyway, the fighting scribes of Jerusalem are pretty convinced they got him this time.  All these things he can do... See, that’s the crux of the problem here.  Jesus’ reputation is growing, the healing, the teaching - people keep commenting on his authority - the crowds are flocking to his side, to hear his words, to reach for his touch, to let his shadow pass over them.  The scribes are seeing their q-rating dwindle and they don’t like it.  So, they come and set up a press conference outside the house where Jesus is and say “sure he can do all this stuff, fancy stuff, unexplainable stuff, but it is because he is using black magic!  He is consorting with demons!!”  

Notice they don’t approach Jesus.  That doesn’t work so well for them.  So, they are trying to attack his reputation instead.  If they can just get enough of the goggle eyed crowd to stop and think for a moment, they can chip away at his status.   

But Mark says that he confronted them.  He wouldn’t let them shout from the sidelines, he called them in and then parabled them.  Is that a word?  No, it isn’t, but it fits.  He spoke to them in parables.  Now, we think that means he told them stories.  A parable is a story, right?  Well, that’s how we usually think of them, but not really.  The word parable literally means throw alongside.  Sometimes a story is thrown alongside a question and we puzzle out an answer.  Like “who is my neighbor?”  “A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers.”  But sometimes it isn’t a story, it’s an idea, or an image.  In this case it is an argument, a logical discussion that gets thrown alongside the accusations.  

“He is working with Satan!”  Think about it, Jesus says, does that make sense?  I’m dismantling Satan’s kingdom, threatening Satan’s power.  You think I’m working for his team?  I’ve tied him up and am plundering what used to be thought of as his house!  I’m claiming the treasure he has stolen back, the treasure which is you.  All of you.  Who really belong to God.  You are a part of God’s family.

Family.  Then someone remembers that he was supposed to tell Jesus about the family that has come for Him.  “Hey Jesus, your mom is here.  Your brothers and sisters are here.  They want you.  You’ve broken curfew.  You’ve soiled the family name.  You need to get home and have some sense knocked back into you.  They say.”  

Jesus smiled and said, “family.  My family is here already.”  It sounds mean to our ears.  Like he was divorcing the group he grew up with, the mother who gave him birth.  You don’t count, we hear, you aren’t important.  And I don’t want to blunt the words too much, there is a hard edge to what he is saying here.  But it is not so much a dismissal of his family as it is a statement of inclusion.  The family, those to whom we owe allegiance and honor and welcome and love, above all love, is not a small circle but an almost unimaginably large one.  Any who love  God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength.  That’s the family.  

That’s home.  We don’t leave home to come to church, we leave home in one sense to go home in another sense.  And wherever we gather with those who love God we are at home.  So we should greet one another not with I’m glad you came, but with welcome home.

They called him out at home, his family, those afraid for him, perhaps even afraid of him.  They called him out.  But he knew, because he understands home and family better than we do, he knew he was safe.  Safe at home.

Welcome home.  

Shalom, 

Derek