Quote of the Day

And this failure of the Christian Church, of every branch of it in every country, is one of the saddest things that has happened in all the world. But it is what happens when a magnificent idea has to be worked out by human beings who do not understand much of it but interpret it in their own way and think they are guided by God, whom they have not yet grasped. And yet they have grasped something, so that the Church has always had great magnificence and much courage, and people have died for it in agony, which is supposed to balance all the other people who have had to die in agony because they did not accept it, and it has flowered up in learning and culture and beauty and art, to set against darkness and incivility and obscurantism and barbarity and nonsense, and it has produced saints and martyrs and kindness and goodness, though these have also occurred freely outside it, and it is a wonderful and most extraordinary pageant of contradictions, and I, at least, want to be inside it, though it is foolishness to most of my friends.
(Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond)

Advent - giving up and taking on

Advent, like Lent, can be a season for taking some things on and giving some things up. As for giving up, I am going to try and recover the discipline of fasting twice a week. It is something I did for years, but have recently gotten out of the habit of doing. Perhaps the over indulgence of the recent Thanksgiving feast has heightened my sense that I need to eat less and pray more?

As for taking something on - for the month of December I will be "Blogging toward Sunday" over at the Christian Century's blog: Theolog. I thought it would be a good way to get a jump on the lectionary readings for Advent and Christmas, and prod me to immerse myself in these Scriptures early and often.

Please take a moment and drop by Theolog and make sure to post any comments, feedback, or responses you may have. My first post for the month can be found here.

May the hope, joy, and peace of Christ be with you this holy Advent Season.

Brokenness is what I long for?

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:15-17

-------------------------------

One of my favorite Gospel songs is “Take my Life,” which is basically a prayer for holiness put to music:

Holiness is what I long for,

holiness is what I need.

Holiness is what you want from me.

So take my heart, and form it.

Take my mind, transform it.

Take my will, confirm it.

To Yours, to Yours, O Lord.

In truth, there has always been a bit of debate in my congregation about the other verses of the song. Each succeeding verse replaces the word holiness with other virtues that we seek to exhibit in our discipleship: “faithfulness”, “righteousness”, and the verse that is the source of debate and controversy: “brokenness.” I remember well the first time it came up: “Pastor, are we really singing “brokenness is what I long for and brokenness is what I need? I long for a lot of things, but brokenness is not one of them. Would it not be better to say “healing” or “love?”

I don't know why I thought of all this today, except that my Monday morning devotion (on the penitential Psalms!) started off with a prayer from Psalm 51 for guess what – brokenness. There I was again, faced with this troubling prayer, and once again I have a song writer trying to put it on my lips. Do I really want to pray for a broken spirit? A broken and contrite heart? Can't we just say a holy, a righteous, or a faithful spirit and leave it at that?

So I thought I would help out Bible translators and come up with a better English equivalent to the Hebrew word shabar found in this Psalm. My investigation only made matters worse: shabar – to break, break in or down, rend violently, wreck, crush, quench, rupture, be maimed, be crippled. Down near the bottom of my lexicon alternatives, I found only one other: to cause to break out, bring to the birth. It was then that it hit me. Holiness, faithfulness, and righteousness, all those things we love to pray and sing for, can only be birthed in us if we first allow ourselves to be broken – utterly and completely. God first has to break into our complacency and break down our resistance to change and transformation. God first has to rend, sometimes violently, the false idols from our iron-fisted grasp. God first has to wreck our self sufficiency, crush our false loves, quench our distorted desires, rupture our spiritual illusions, and even maim or cripple us if need be – if it will save us from sin and death (didn't Jacob walk away from prayer limping?).

So thanks to two song writers, one a contemporary Christian artist, the other an ancient Jewish composer – brokenness is once again something I am going to pray for, though I must admit, I may first pray for God to give me the guts and courage to keep praying for something so difficult, knowing that a broken and contrite heart is the only womb that can give birth to all great things God wants to do in me and through me.

Check out DBS for under $7

For those who use the Adult Bible Studies' curriculum, here is a supplemental resource that is designed for use with the student books. DBS (Daily Bible Study) has a brief, one page meditation on a daily Scripture passage that opens with a question for reflection and ends with a prayer.

The DBS for Fall 2009 begins on November 30 and ends February 28, 2010. I am the writer for the last half of this resource (Unit 3: Testimonies to Jesus as Messiah) from February 1 to February 28 along side the writers for Unit 1 and 2, which are Simon Iredale and Christopher P. Momany. Click the picture to go directly to Cokesbury.com if you are interested.

The best book on Christian Leadership you've never read ...

Or perhaps you have?

I have no doubt that many of the leadership books that pastors and Christians leaders are so strongly urged to read these days can have helpful insights from the business world, but here is a bit of a game changer or gospel paradigm shift to throw in the mix - just to help us all not to forget the gospel edge of ALL reflection we do about Christian leadership these days.

Among other great insights in this small book, Nouwen names three temptations: 1) the temptation to be relevant (countered by the discipline of contemplative prayer), 2) the temptation to be spectacular (countered by the disciple of confession and forgiveness), and 2) the temptation to be powerful (countered by the discipline of theological reflection).

Here is a great nugget from his experience with a severely handicapped community:

These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self - the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things, - and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of my accomplishments.

2009 Creo Sermon Series #12

I believe ... in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting

The Scripture Lessons
Job 19:20-27
Psalm 16
I Corinthians 15:50-57
Matthew 22:23-33

Thestrals. If any of you have ever watched or read part of the Harry Potter series, you may remember them. Thestrals. It is the name give to the ugly, skeletal, and rather frightening-looking winged horses that pull carriages of students to and from the Hogwarts School. The interesting thing about Thestrals is that most people can't see them. In the Harry Potter books, students come and go to school led by carriages that seem to move by magic, without any assistance from animal or engine. We later learn that only certain people can actually see Thestrals. Only people who have seen death, who have witnessed its terror - only these people can see the horses. Once Harry Potter had witnessed the murder of his friend Cedric Diggory, he noticed the Thestrals pulling the carriages at school for the very first time.

Now I know that the Harry Potter books and movies are just fantasy, but the story here has some truth to it. Let me ask you all a hard question today: how many of you here have witnessed death? How many here have been present at the moment another human being took their very last breath on this earth? How many of you have had our own, personal brush with death? For some, it happens at or near the very beginning of life. For others, it comes to them in the elder years. For others, it comes at any given point in-between. Death. It is an ever present reality for all who are living; sobering, final, the end of life as we know it. And sometimes, just like in Harry Potter, people who have seen death or tasted it briefly tend to see things that others of us do not see.

Some of you may have heard the comedian and actor, Robin Williams, had heart surgery earlier this year. He had to abruptly postpone upcoming performances of his one-man show, "Weapons of Self-Destruction," in order to head to a hospital to undergo surgery for an aortic valve replacement. But it was this brush with death, this wake up call for life that had Robin seeing things - seeing life - from a different perspective. As he said in a recent interview: "You literally are opened up, and you really do appreciate the simplest things like breath, and friends ... I've been calling up all of my friends and saying, 'Thanks for being there' ... that's been amazing."[1]

The theologian, Karl Barth, expressed this same truth - namely, that only people who take death seriously can truly appreciate life. He writes: "Before us lies death, dying, the coffin, the grave, the end. The person who does not take that seriously, that we are all looking to that end; the person who does not realize what dying means, who is not terrified at it, who has not had enough joy in this life and so does not fear its end, who has not yet comprehended life as a gift from God, who has no trace of envy for people who live long and fruitful lives ... in other words ... who does not truly grasp the beauty of this life ... cannot grasp the significance of 'resurrection.'"[2]

Today we focus on that part of the creed that says "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting."We don't say "I believe in death" - but facing death honestly and openly is clearly implied. Here is the first subversive truth about Christians in today's world - we do not shy away from death, but are called to face it squarely in the face. Some of you may have noticed the change in funeral services in the 1988 UM hymnal, near the back of the book. The funeral service changed its name to "A Service of Death and Resurrection." A service of death. This is not morbid wallowing and it is not pie-in-the-sky escapism; it is facing the truth about humanity squarely. We are mortal, not immortal. We are human, not divine. We are creature, not Creator.

Do you grasp how counter-cultural facing this truth is in our culture? The whole world is busy trying to escape death; trying to delay it to the last possible moment. Health care professionals are schooled to see the death of a patient as a failure of imagination that begs the question: "Did we do everything we could?" The recent debate over health care recently took a weird turn towards insanity, when some got up in arms about conversations about the end of life and getting one's affairs in order. Entire industries, from cosmetics to plastic surgery, spend billions of dollars annually to help people avoid aging, avoid gray hair and sagging skin, avoid anything and everything that might remind us of the truth so many do not want to face - that we are mortal - that our life on this earth is fleeting - that the breaths we inhale daily are numbered - that the moments we have left on this earth are finite.

If facing this truth today, squarely in the face, strikes you as morbid, or as depressing, or as a subject you would rather avoid - then I implore you to stay with me a little longer. You have only heard part of the grand Christian truth. Think with me a moment. Imagine with me a moment. Have you ever stopped to think where the greatest truth about our faith was first proclaimed? In a cemetery! While the world seeks to dance around death, dance around it finality, and dance around its implications, Jesus did the opposite. He picked up a cross and walked straight towards it, one painful step at a time.

The wages of sin is death - so Jesus stepped into the boxer's ring and went a few rounds with the grim reaper and three days later, Jesus did a little dancing of his own. On the third day, Jesus danced around a cemetery embodying the words Paul would later write to the church in Corinth: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."[3] After his death and resurrection, Jesus danced around Jerusalem, popping up for breakfast beside a lake; popping into to an upper room to break bread with "scared-to-death" and "scared-by-death" disciples - and he is still dancing - into hospice rooms, into ICU units, into morgues, onto battlefields, into places that seem dark, hopeless, and final. And Jesus brings one single, one explosive, one powerful, one unforgettable, one amazing, one hope-filled, one all-inspiring word to all such places: resurrection.

One day, some Sadducees came to Jesus, and trust me church, they are still coming today - screaming their same mantra: "there is no resurrection," there is no life after death, there is no hope on the other side of the grave, there is no day but today, so take your vitamins, submit to your surgeries, make the best of it while you can. And Jesus turns and says to us: Have you not read what was said to you by God, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? The God, not of the dead, but of the living."[4] Notice what he didn't say! He didn't say, I WAS the God of Abraham. I WAS the God of Isaac. I WAS the God of Jacob. He said, I AM. I STILL AM.

Hear me church. God steps into worship this morning and says to you: I AM the God, not of the dead, but of the living. I AM the God of the blessed virgin Mary. I AM the God of Miriam and Moses. I AM the God of Grandma Flores. I AM the God of Cousin Isabelle. I AM the God of your deceased loved ones, who are dancing with me even now and await with you the day when I will come again in glory: For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.[5]

Church - hear again our confession - we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. No one can talk you into this truth. No scientist can prove it. No philosopher can explain it. It must be believed, in the face of death. It must be believed in the darkest and dingiest of places on this earth. "It needs the witness of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the Word of God proclaimed and heard in Scripture, the witness of the risen Jesus Christ, in order to believe that there shall be light and that this light shall complete our uncompleted life. The Holy Spirit who speaks to us in Scripture tells us that we may live in this great hope."[6]

And in the meantime? In the rest of our time on this earth? In this space between the here and now and the yet to come? We believe in the resurrection of the body. Not the immortality of the soul, as some would have us believe. And here is the clincher - the implications - the "why does this part of the creed really matter for today, for me, for my life, and my faith." It is because of this Christian belief, this belief in the resurrection of the body that bodies matter - our bodies - our physical bodies - matter to God and should matter to us. As I heard one person put it recently, we are amphibians - made up of both the material and the spiritual. We can never be reduced to just one or other. We can never JUST be concerned with "saving souls" - as important as that is. We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting - and that belief should affect our days on this earth as much as it affects our life in God for eternity. That belief should affect all of our being in this life and in the next - our body as well as our soul - our mind as well as our spirit.

And the implications are all around us. As Martin Luther King Jr. once declared at a gathering for garbage workers in Memphis:

"It's all right to talk about long robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, and the [new Durham.]"[7]

I have a word for you today church. Resurrection. When you are standing before the gravestone of your loved one in a nearby cemetery- resurrection. When you are defending the right to life of the unborn - resurrection. When you are seeking to feed the hungry in this life - resurrection. When you are sharing the bread of life to feed the souls of those who do not know God in their heart of hearts - resurrection. When you are advocating on behalf of the widows and orphans for daily food - resurrection. When you are lost in hopeless, despair, and personal darkness - resurrection. Resurrection. Resurrection. Resurrection.

In the words of today's psalmist: Therefore my heart is glad, my soul rejoices; my body rests secure.[8] Amen.


[1] Interview with Robin Williams by People Magazine: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20295149,00.html
[2] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 153.
[3] I Corinthians 15:55-56
[4] Matthew 22:23,32
[5] I Thessalonians 4:16-18
[6] Barth, p. 154-155.
[7] Martin Luther King, Jr. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of MLK, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington, p. 282.
[8] Psalm 16:9

Creo Sermon Series

I believe in the Holy Spirit

Ezekiel 3:12-21 / Psalm 104 / I Corinthians 2:6-16 / John 16:4b-15

“I believe in God the Father” … (recite creed rapidly with congregation up to the pause before the clause on the Holy Spirit … then take a deep breath). If the creed were to stop there – with he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead … Christians would be in a sad state of affairs. Up unto this point, we are left with Jesus’ absence. Jesus died and rose again, but then he ascended. Wherever heaven is – whatever heaven is – whatever we want to make of the divine space at the right hand of the Father, it feels like it is elsewhere, remote, far away, distant. It isn’t, of course, but the reason we know this is because of what comes next, because our confession is incomplete, because the truth about God is horribly flawed without what comes next. So we take a deep breath here and move on in our confession: I believe in the Holy Spirit.

Take a breath. Let’s do it again – together. The miracle of breathing. It is something we do every day, so much and so often that we give it absolutely no thought until we are having trouble breathing. Every breath – every simple breath – is an intricately complex process. It begins with the diaphragm - that parachute shaped muscle beneath your rib cage - contracting and bringing air into your lungs. Air then travels in through your nose and mouth, down your throat, through your voice box, into the trachea (or windpipe), into the Y-shaped bronchi that lead to the left and right lungs. The bronchi break off into bronchioles, like small tree branches, getting smaller and smaller until the air reaches the end of these “branches” where little pockets of air, called the alveoli receive the fresh oxygen and exchange it for carbon dioxide. The fresh, oxygenated blood then get pumps to the left side of the heart which sends this life giving stuff to the rest of the body.

That whole process occurs an average of 44 times a minute in newborns; 20-40 times a minute in infants; 12-20 times a minute in healthy adults; 35-45 times a minute during strenuous exercise. And how often do we think about it? How often do we pay it attention? Around 6-10 liters of air are brought into your lungs each minute. During exercise it is possible to breathe in over 100 liters of per minute. Air – the stuff of life – the stuff that animates the rest of your body, keeps you thinking clearly, allows you to do everything else. Breathing – a miracle happening in your life to the tune of around 12-20 times a minute, and we think nothing of it until something goes wrong.

The miracle of breathing; it is a lot like the miracle of the Spirit – which is why breath is the favorite biblical metaphor for God’s Spirit. And the Spirit of God animates us and the church in much the same way as the process of breathing I described above. Believing in the Holy Spirit – breathing in the Holy Spirit – is very much like breathing, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, for when we breathe in the Holy Spirit we exchange the lies of the world for the truth of God.

Jesus says in today’s Gospel: I will send the Holy Spirit to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment … When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. The world has been living on the toxic lies of satan for too long. We need a deep, sustained breath of God’s fresh truth.

The problem with human beings is not that we desire too much but that we desire to little – we settle for too little – we are happy with too little. We get a little money, a little pleasure, a little moment of exhilaration, a little love – and then we wander around in the dark until we can find some more. The world teaches us that we are free to do what we want when we want – and yet somehow when we do so, happiness still eludes us. It is like drinking sea water to quench our thirst – it may feel good for a quick moment, but in the end it causes diarrhea, dehydrates the body, causes severe cramping, and ultimately leads to death. Why drink sea water when we can have living water? Why breathe toxic gases when you can exchange them for the breath of God?

Do you think the world revolves around you, your family, your concerns, your troubles, your fear, worries, and anxieties? Stop. Take a breath. Do you think you are alone in your battle against sickness or disease, suffering without hope of healing and companionship? Stop. Take a breath. Are you convinced you have no worth? That you are stupid? That you are somehow small, unimportant and insignificant in the larger scope of things? That you are unforgiveable? Un-loveable? Hopelessly lost? Unable to change? Without God and without a future in this world? Stop. Take a breath. Let the Holy Spirit do its work in you right now – exchanging the Truth of God for the lies that have been coursing through you mind and body for too long.

Believing in the Holy Spirit – breathing in the Holy Spirit – is very much like breathing, take life-giving, oxygenated blood to every extremity of the body, equipping, strengthening, enlivening tissue, muscles, brain function, and internal organs – for when we breathe in the Holy Spirit we breathe the life of God into the Body of Christ, the Church.

The breath of God courses through the Body – enhancing brain function – or in the world’s of the Apostle Paul again – instructing us, aiding us to interpret spiritual things …allowing us to discern the mind of Christ. I like the way many Christian accountability groups often ask the question on a weekly basis: “I will seek to discern God’s Spirit within me on a daily basis, striving to obey spiritual promptings and heed spiritual warnings.” Have you had any spiritual promptings lately? Stop take a breath. They are there if you start paying attention. Have you heeded or ignored any spiritual warnings lately? Stop. Take a breath. Pay attention.

Let me give you just one personal example I have experienced. It is how I got involved in jail and prison ministry near the beginning of my ministry. It is the reason I am still involved in such ministry 15 years later. In my first appointment out in rural, Washington County NC, I found myself traveling down a long stretch of highway 64 on a regular basis. There was not much out there except for crops, farm houses and fields – that and a little, medium security state prison on a long stretch of otherwise empty road.

For days I drove past the little prison, often wondering what the men on the other side of the barbed wire fence were doing. I would see them out in the yard on occasion – working out, playing basketball, headed to the mess hall, or simply sitting out on some outdoor tables. Every day I would pass this prison and feel like I should do something, but I didn't know what. It didn't help that I had been busy reading Matthew 28 in my daily devotions: “I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” It didn't help that I was reading John Wesley's journal; about how he visited in Castle (the city jail) one day a week, the prison on another, the widows and orphans on another, and the poor and sick on another.

Then one day, it just happened - something – call it a spiritual warning, a spiritual prompting, or something I ate night before – I like to call it the Holy Spirit – but one day I just could not pass that prison again. One day, my car just took a turn into the parking lot to see what I might find. It didn't help that it was not visiting hours at that moment in the day, and the guard with the rifle in the main tower was quick to point this out. We had a rather awkward shouting match as I walked to the main gate, trying to explain that I was the new Methodist pastor in town and would like to talk to someone in charge (as I had turned in, I had quickly determined that I would start by trying to meet the chaplain and see if there was a way I could assist him or her in any way).

I was ushered through the gate to the administrative building where I met Superintendent Hathaway for the first time. A man of God, and a committed Christian himself, we had a wonderfully surprising and completely unexpected conversation that lasted over two hours. He quickly informed me that there was no chaplain for any of the inmates in his facility. Two hours later – I left as the new, volunteer chaplain with regular visits set up for my day off on Fridays. Looking back on that day, I see providence where I once say only coincidence. Looking back on that day, I see the Holy Spirit all over what was happening.

Paul tells us this morning that we cannot see the Spirit … what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. Do you discern the things of the Spirit? The Holy Spirit is all around us this morning. In the rustling of the bulletins … in the child that is crying or fidgeting in worship … in the announcement about a new group meeting to pray and study … in the praises over that member that just found a job or the prayer over another who just got sick … in the words of a hymn … in the testimony of believers … the Spirit is all around us if we allow God to gift us with eyes of faith to comprehend what is truly God’s. The breath of God courses through the Body, equipping us for mission, sending us forth as witnesses, giving strength to tired muscles and life to dying extremities. The miracle of breathing – the miracle of the Holy Spirit.

Not sure what the future holds for you and your family? Take a breath. Worried about the future of your job? Of the church? Of the world? Of the government? Of the health care system? Of life as we know it? Stop. Take a breath. Feel like you are approaching burn-out? Becoming spiritually flabby in your discipleship? Stop. Take a breath. Hear the words of today’s Psalmist:

²⁴O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. ²⁵Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. ²⁶There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. ²⁷These all look to you to give them their food in due season; ²⁸when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. ²⁹When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. ³⁰When you send forth your spirit,^* they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.

Stop. Believe in the Holy Spirit. Breathe in the Holy Spirit. It is more than air – more than oxygen – more than life – it is God – God’s breath – God’s life – in us, sustaining us, renewing us, and recreating us – renewing the face of the earth. Stop. Take a moment – breathe – let it renew you, today, right now. Amen.