Maundy Thursday: The Shadows of Suffering

The Jesus we see in the Garden of Gethsemane is not the Jesus we are used to. We are more familiar with a gentle Jesus, as he tells His disciples to “let the little children come to me” or teaches His disciples how to pray. We are pretty comfortable with hearing the challenging teacher, who tells such insightful stories, and who faces down a bloodthirsty crowd by telling them, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” By now, we expect to see a powerful Jesus who turns water into wine, stills the storm and feeds the five thousand. By now, we expect to hear Jesus boldly calling out demons by name and telling them to get lost. On this Thursday night, we may be surprised to see Jesus so upset, so intensely burdened in prayer that his sweat was like blood. Are we not surprised to hear Jesus pray, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me...”?

On the other hand, the disciples that we see that night are exactly what we are expecting. Jesus says, “One of you will betray me,” and they all ask, “Surely it’s not me, is it?” Jesus says, “You will all desert me tonight,” and Peter says, “I would even die for you!” Jesus says, “Stay awake and pray with me,” as Jesus prays for his very life…and they all fall asleep. Oh yes, we expect the disciples to be clueless, though we are still shocked that one of his closest followers would betray him. We expect the disciples to want to do their best, and if they come up short on loyalty, courage and sleep, well…we understand. We understand the disciples’ responses, because they in some ways mirror our own responses, don’t they? Jesus says someone will betray me, and we say, “Not me…uh uh…not me,” but we often betray our faith for comfort. And how often do we desert the One Who could be our Lord and Savior because we are afraid or confused? When things are easy, we are quick to say like Peter, “I would even die for you,” but when push comes to shove…well, sorry Lord. And we are so easily distracted and exhausted by the news or our gadgets or our plans, that we forget to keep watch and pray. When we are honest with ourselves, we understand the disciples’ responses, because they could be our responses. Sometimes they are our responses. We, too, have failed Jesus.

The Jesus we see in the Garden is not what we are used to, not what we are comfortable with, and certainly not what we expected…but maybe just the Jesus we need. The Jesus we find in the Garden is battling with God, with Himself and with the forces of darkness that are arrayed against Him. Of all the moments of His life to this point, this must be the hardest—asked by God to face a brutal and painful death, living with fear and despair, betrayed and abandoned by His friends. But in this hardest moment, we see true victory achieved as Jesus suffers. Because Jesus suffered in the Garden, when we battle with God and ourselves and the forces of darkness, we know Jesus is with us. And that changes everything. In his book, Breathing Underwater:  Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, Richard Rohr writes, “Many of the happiest and most peaceful people I know love a God who walks with crucified people, and thus reveals and ‘redeems’ their plight as his own. For them, Jesus is not observing human suffering from a distance, but is somehow in human suffering with us and for us.”[1] Because Jesus won that battle, with Him on our side, we know we can battle and have victory. But there’s something even more mysterious at work in the Garden—Jesus shows us that the road to true holiness runs through deep suffering. Rohr asks, “Would any of us even learn to love at all if it was not demanded of us, taken from us, and called forth by human tears and earthly tragedy? Is suffering necessary to teach us how to love and care for one another?”[2] The short answer is…yes! So if we struggle to find meaning in our own pain, we would do well to gaze long and hard at the Jesus we see struggling in the Garden. In the end, Jesus prays, “Not my will, but yours be done,” and He finds peace that will carry Him through the rest of the night and that next awful day. Watching how Jesus endured the shadows, even a centurion could see that “Truly this is the Son of God.” May Jesus’ struggle and His Presence, give us the grace to endure, and to pray to our heavenly Father, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

[1]Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater:  Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (2011), p. 122.

[2]ibid. p. 123.

Into the Wild! Wandering into Praise!

The classic illustration is told of a man who was driving down a road a little too fast. The road took a sudden turn and the car went through a fence and headed for a cliff. The man leaped out of the car in the nick of time, and grabbed onto a root coming out of the wall of the cliff. The man wasn’t much of a praying man, but still he prayed, “O God! If you’re really there, save me please!” The clouds parted, the sun shone and a voice boomed out, “I’m here. Do you really want me to save you?” “What kind of a question is that? Of course I want you to save me!” “So you’ll do anything to be saved?” “Absolutely. I’ll do anything you say, just get me out of here!” “Great. Let go.” The man thought for a moment and then shouted up, “Is there anybody else up there?” That is totally me some days—wanting for God to speak to me, and then not sure I want the answer I get. In fact, most of us face at least one moment in life when we seem to “hit the Wall,” as Peter Scazzero puts it. In his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It’s Impossible to be Spiritually Mature While Remaining Emotionally Immature, Peter Scazzero writes, “For most of us the Wall appears through a crisis that turns our world upside down. It comes, perhaps, through a divorce, a job loss, the death of a close friend or family member, a cancer diagnosis, a disillusioning church experience, a betrayal, a shattered dream, a wayward child, a car accident, an inability to get pregnant, a deep desire to marry that remains unfulfilled, a dryness or loss of joy in our relationship with God. We question ourselves, God, the church. We discover that our faith does not appear to ‘work.’ We have more questions than answers as the very foundation of our faith feels like it is on the line. We don’t know where God is, what he is doing, where he is going, how he is getting us there, or when this will be over.” We will all “hit the Wall” in our lives. In fact, chances are pretty good that some of us in this very room are facing our Wall right now, and the question is how do we face it, and how do we move through it to the deeper, more joyful, life with God on the other side? The beauty of our passage for today—and all of the Holy Week story—is that we can see both the Wall and, in the life of Jesus, how to live into the Wall so we break through.

As we look at the Wall in our lives, John helps us understand two ways we often get stuck when we face that moment. First, life is just not the way we want it. Watch and listen to the crowd as they cheer Jesus on. The palm branches are a sign of a national hero’s triumph. The shouts of “Hosanna!” mean, “He saves,” and they shout all the louder, “Blessed is the King of Israel!” Perhaps they have had it with being occupied by the Romans and the disrespect they and their faith are getting. Perhaps they are feeling beaten down by the economics of the day—the rich are getting richer and the poor are taking it on the chin—until it seems like something has to give. Jesus will be the King they want. But by Friday, Jesus is not the King they want, and so their shouts turn to “Crucify Him!” Many of us have faced the Wall, as life is not the way we thought it would be—should be—and like the crowd, we are angry about it, so angry we tell God to get lost. We face the Wall, and we get stuck in anger because life is not the way we want it.

Second, life is more than we can understand. Watch and listen to the disciples as they walk with this Jesus, the King who is different, humbly riding a donkey. John writes, “His disciples did not understand these things at first…” A priest, a minister and a guru sat discussing the best positions for prayer, while a telephone repairman worked nearby. “Kneeling is definitely the best way to pray,” the priest said. “No,” said the minister. “I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to Heaven.” “You’re both wrong,” the guru said. “The most effective prayer position is lying down on the floor.” The repairman could contain himself no longer. “Hey, fellas,” he interrupted. “The best prayin’ I ever did was when I was hangin’ upside down from a telephone pole.” In our society, everyone thinks we should be able to understand everything, and many of us have faced a wall with things we can’t understand. We may be forced to wait, to watch, to think, to pray in ways we never thought we could. We face the Wall, and can get stuck in confusion or frustration because we do not understand.

Well, if those are some of the ways of facing the Wall that don’t work, what do we learn about facing our walls from Jesus that will help us find the deeper, real life?

#1:  Keep praying. Jesus hits the Wall in Holy Week. It begins Thursday night, as Jesus confronts the real possibility that He’s going to be killed. He says to His disciples in the garden that night, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…” (Matthew 26:38–39) Confronted by a future that is not the way Jesus wants it to be, not something he entirely understands, Jesus prays. Jesus stays in conversation with God.

#2:  Stay faithful and obedient. It’s not that Jesus is happy with how things are going, but Jesus keeps doing the good that God would have him do. Can’t feel God? Don’t understand what God is doing or saying? Hang in there. Clarity will come. Jesus prays, “…nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.” The disciples endure the pain, grief and fear of watching Jesus die, but clarity doesn’t come until they go through Good Friday. John writes, “but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.”

#3:  Lean in. It’s easy to think we have all the answers, but if life is not the way we want it, and we don’t understand, perhaps we need to lean in to the pain or frustration or unhappiness to listen more closely to what God might be trying to say. “Oh Jesus,” we might pray, “I really don’t like this…but I love You!” God is happy to sit with us as we share our grief and anger with Him. And then, slowly at first, we might begin to pray, “Lord, what are you trying to show me?” That’s the thing about facing the Wall:  we have to let go of what we know, so that we can learn the new way God would teach us.

The mystery of The Wall, what St. John of the Cross called “dark night of the soul,” is that it comes to all of us, but not all of us will make it through the Wall to new life. While we face the Wall, God refines us by burning away the moldy, old self that’s not working, run by anger, hopelessness or fear. While we face the Wall, God, rewires us for love. Facing the Wall is not fun, but it is the only way to true spiritual growth.

Where is God finding you today? Some of us are really mad that Cynthia and I are leaving, and some of us are really sad that we’re leaving, and all of us have no idea how we are going to make it through these next few weeks and months. Oh we will season our anger and grief with gladness for a future that is still out there us, but at the end of the day, we will just keep praying, keep trying to do what God wants, and lean in, because we know that God is going to make a way.

Remember the man who was hanging from a root, asking if there was anyone else up there? The answer came back, “Nope. Just me. Let go.” Figuring death was going to come anyway, the man let go and landed on a ledge a few inches beneath his feet. From there he was able to work his way back to the top of the cliff. I sometimes wonder what changed about this man as he goes on from nearly dying, encountering God and learning to trust. For Jesus, letting go meant actually dying, but because of his sacrifice as he leaned into God, something spectacular happened:  Jesus was raised! That’s the promise of The Wall for us as Christians, that if we will keep praying, stay obedient and lean in, we too will be raised to a new life with God. As we face the Wall, we will experience brokenness and be more compassionate. As we face the Wall, we will know true pain and find more delight in God. As we face the Wall, we will find that God is indeed with us, and that the Wall is actually a gateway to a season of wonderful change and renewal. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday, the crowd got it right, Jesus is the King, and the question today is, will we open the gates of our hearts and lean in to receive Him…and find great joy and an abundant life of love!

Into the Wild! Wanderers Witnessing Wonder

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director how he knew whether or not a patient should be institutionalized. “Well,” said the Director, “we fill a bathtub with water, then we offer the person a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub.” “Oh, I understand,” said the visitor. “A normal person would use the bucket because it’s bigger than the spoon or the teacup.” “No.” said the Director, “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?” How much of our lives is spent making things more complicated than it has to be! Every day, we live in a wilderness of too many choices, and so we try to fit in everything. People try to do the same with our faith too—pray this many times a day, every church should have this, everyone should do this, and don’t forget to forward every religious e-mail you get or bad things will happen. In our passage for today, Paul helps us cut through all the “stuff” to see what truly matters, and how God can bring sanity to our lives.

First, Paul encourages us to move from self-focus to Christ-focus. “It’s all about me” seems to work great on TV and in the movies, but it doesn’t work so well in real life. One of the guys I knew in college was a very interesting, very funny guy to be around. He made me laugh, but it was all about him, his studies, his greatness, his going on to medical school. There was very little space in his life for anybody else. A while back, I went back for my college reunion, and there was my friend, yes, a doctor now, but very lonely in many of the same ways. In verses 4–6, Paul lists all the reasons he would have for thinking he was hot stuff. If you are a Jew, they are very impressive. Then Paul adds in verse 7, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.” As long as we are focused just on what works for ourselves, all we have and all we do will fall short and fail to satisfy. Ultimately, no matter how impressive our resumé, no matter how good we may think we are, what we do for God is never as important as what Jesus has done for us.

Second, Paul encourages us to keep moving forward. Have you seen the Disney movie, Meet the Robinsons. It’s great! It’s about a boy named Lewis who is given up for adoption as a baby, and likes to invent things. Lewis has a remarkable opportunity to travel into his own future and see the world as it will be. It’s full of amazing technology helping people make a great community. But best of all, he meets a wonderful family who love and enjoy each other. He comes to find out that they will be his family—if he continues to work hard and with imagination. Many of Lewis’ inventions will help make his own future. Indeed, Lewis discovers he is willing to give up anything in order to have this great family in the future. One of the challenges of being a great church family is that we really truly like being together. We like what we have, partly because so much of what we have by God’s grace is so wonderful. Unlike Lewis, we are not able to travel into our future to see what our church family will be like in the future, though I think we catch some glimpses of it when we see our children playing together, or when we sit around the tables at Porchfest. We are people of the promise. Jesus promised that “whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be in the midst of them.”(Matthew 18:20) Jesus also promised that if we would follow Him, He would always be with us, even to the ends of the age. And He called on us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”(Matthew 28:19–20) From the beginning, we have been a people who were looking forward to enlarging the family of God. It’s the whole reason Jesus came. It’s the whole reason our church was founded, so that the family of God could include more people in this part of North Quincy. Moving forward together is our mission.

Finally, Paul encourages us to let ourselves be refined. No, not the nose in the air “refined” that may come to mind. Refining is that process of heating a chunk of rock with silver or gold or whatever in it and burning away everything that is not metal until all that’s left is pure. I know I’ve told this story before, but I really love it. Once a journalist wanted to learn about how silver is refined, so she found a silversmith and asked if she could watch. The silversmith put some silver in a crucible and heated it, hotter and hotter, until the ore inside melted. Mesmerized by this process, the observer asked, “How do you know when it’s ready?” “Oh that’s easy,” said the silversmith. “I know it’s completely refined when I can see my face in it.” Paul writes in verses 8–9, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” When we are in the fire of our daily lives, we can just go through the motions, keeping up and not much more. Or little bit by little bit, we can learn to let go of what is not of God, and discover that our lives more and more belong to God. As we give ourselves over to Jesus and His purposes, as we let his life and teachings live and guide us, people begin to see Jesus more clearly in and through us.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein would add, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Which is why the numbing busyness and choices that our society encourages can make our lives feel crazy and very complicated with. Like the choice of how to empty a bathtub, I wonder if all the choices and busyness we are given miss the point. Part of what I love about following Jesus is that it makes all the rest of my life make more sense. Instead of having to build a resumé as a good person, we simply try to become like Jesus. We don’t have to wonder if we can make it to heaven, we just have to trust that the one who loves us will take care of us. We don’t even have to do the heavy lifting for becoming the person Jesus made us to be, we simply have to place ourselves in His hands and say, “Teach me, mold me. Shape me in your image.” I would worry about whether this could really happen if Jesus hadn’t already run this race. But He did. He was a man like you and me—born a baby, grew up like us, dealt with problems and temptations of living you and I deal with—and yet somehow, Jesus was able to love completely even in the face of an unthinkable death He did not deserve. Jesus has run this race and can help us run ours too. To paraphrase Paul, “Not that we have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but we press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. Brothers and sisters, let us not consider ourselves yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing we do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, let us press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.” This week what busyness or false choices could you leave behind, so you could run your race better? How will you trust Jesus more this week to help you run well?

Into the Wild! Wanderers in Need of Encouragement

Laurie Rubin was born blind in California. She has never seen the blues and greens of the ocean, or the yellows and oranges of a sunset. From an early age, her parents drove her to the most beautiful places—Yosemite and Santa Barbara, Lake Tahoe and the red woods—so she could experience beauty with all of her senses. Her music teacher had her hold and play each of the instruments in the orchestra, so that she could learn to recognize their feel and sound. She started voice lessons when she was about ten and before long decided she wanted to sing opera. The interesting question she says she is most often asked is “Do you dream in color?”[1] In our passage for today, Jesus encounters a man born blind, and the question on everyone’s mind is “…who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It’s the wrong question for three reasons.

First, the blame game wastes energy. A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes that he is lost.... He reduces altitude and spots a woman down below. He lowers his balloon further, and shouts: “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”

The woman says: “Yes, you are in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above the ground in this field”

“You must work in Engineering,” says the balloonist.

“I do”, says the woman. “How did you know?”

“Well”, says the balloonist, “everything that you have told me is technically correct, but it’s of no use to me.”

The woman says, “You must work in management.”

“I do,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well” says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault!” We can spend our time and energy trying to sort out who is right and who is wrong, where does that really get us? Let’s be clear: there’s a place for asking those questions so that we can learn from our own and others’ mistakes, but most often people use the blame game to take the attention off themselves. In our passage for today, the Pharisees are focused on how Jesus was breaking the Sabbath—it was a violation of Jewish law to work on the Sabbath, and both healing and making clay with spit were considered work. The real questions are not whose fault it is, but what does this mean, and what are we going to do about it?

Second, the blame game assumes that someone is at fault. Sometimes bad stuff just happens. Why can two people be in almost identical car accidents—one is killed and the other walks away? When a tornado tears through a neighborhood in Oklahoma, why is one home left standing and the rest of the block is destroyed? We can study auto safety. We can delve into home construction and materials. But at the end of the day, we may be asking a question we can never fully answer, because it may not be anybody’s fault. In the passage for today, the disciples want to know if the man is blind because of something he did or something his parents did. But who except God can know why something happens? The real questions are not whose fault it is, but what does this mean, and what are we going to do about it?

Third, the blame game shuts everyone down and locks us in to a negative cycle. Several years ago, a gentleman I’ll call Joe began coming to church where I was. On the one hand, he could be quite charming, warm and he would give you the shirt off his back if you had a need. On the other hand, he could be terribly judgmental. One day in Bible study, someone said something and Joe just went off about how bad things were, how bad some people were, and how God was going to punish people for what they had done. I looked around the circle and saw some people were shocked by what Joe had said, some people were hurt, and some people were angry. In judging others, Joe had locked himself into a cycle in which his hurt and resentment, was creating hurt and resentment in the people around him, which of course would make them more likely to treat him negatively, and to judge him in turn. Do you think that would make feel better or worse about the world and his life? When we blame someone, we put ourselves in a position to judge another person, and we often find what we really want—grace and joy and hope—escapes us. The real questions are not whose fault it is, but what does this mean, and what are we going to do about it?

At the heart of the blame game is the idea of sin. Sin is a word that makes us uncomfortable. People often use the word, “sin,” to communicate that someone has done something wrong or bad. By that definition, a “sinner” is someone who is just inherently bad. For Jesus, sin is not about what you do, it’s about a broken relationship with God. The blind man is not blind because of something he or his parents did…“he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” There’s no blaming, no wasted energy, no negative cycle. In fact, Jesus does something about this man’s need, and everything starts to change for this man. Can you imagine the wonder this man must have experienced as he saw his parents or grapes or a sunset, as he walked without a stick, or as he caught a ball for the first time? Can you imagine the look on his face? Jesus’ healing points to that wonder and joy! Jesus’ healing points to hope and purpose and fun! Jesus’ healing points to renewed relationships and wholeness inside and out. Jesus’ healing points to who God really is. The real sin in our story today is that the Pharisees cannot or will not see God at work and rejoice! They can’t or won’t make the connections between what they are seeing and the God who is at work in their midst in Jesus. Sin is what locks us up, what traps us in negative cycles, what keeps us from seeing God at work and rejoicing. And Jesus knows the way out.

I love Laurie Rubin’s story. I think about her parents who didn’t spend years in bitterness and reproach. They didn’t say, “She must get that from your side of the family.” Her folks saw in their daughter a bright and thoughtful person who could learn and know and be a blessing. Laurie attended Oberlin where she majored in music and sang the lead in Rosini’s opera on Cinderella. Laurie went on to get her master’s in music from Yale and has won awards for her operatic mezzo soprano. She has been water skiing and even has her own line of jewelry! When asked, “Do you dream in color?” Laurie responds, “I dream what I experience.”[2] In Laurie’s life, God has revealed his works in surprising, almost miraculous ways. I look at her life and I am so humbled. Are you? How often do we blame or judge others, wasting our time and energy on rants that get us nowhere or lock us into darkness? Like the man who was born blind, we all have our issues—disabilities of the body or mind or experience—but because of them, when God does something great in us, God’s fingerprints will be even clearer to those who see it. Perhaps that is part of how Jesus can give us new eyes today, so that we can see the joy and grace and hope around us. Maybe instead of asking the wrong questions and finding fault, we can look to Jesus and find the source of all the good in our lives. Like the man born blind, may we fall at Jesus’ feet and say, “Lord, I believe” and worship the only one who can help us see with new eyes how God wants to work. May others experience through us the grace and warmth of the amazing Jesus we are coming to know. Maybe then we can all dream in the colors of grace.

[1]I heard Laurie Rubin interviewed by Diane Rehm, October 22, 2012. Laurie Rubin’s book, Do You Dream in Color? Insights from a Girl Without Sight, is available from most book distributors. You can listen to the interview at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-10-22/laurie-rubin-do-you-dream-color-insights-girl-without-sight.

[2]From Laurie Rubin’s poem, “Do You Dream in Color?” Printed in the show notes of the podcast at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-10-22/laurie-rubin-do-you-dream-color-insights-girl-without-sight.

Into the Wild! Wandering with Halos and Clay Feet

Today’s wilderness is not only one created by God in nature but also discovered and organized by humans such as the ‘wilderness’ of the internet and Artificial Intelligence both of which are so vast and fast changing it is hard to keep up with their impact on our usual ways of communicating and sharing of what’s happening in our lives.

It is easy to be confused when dealing with the fast pace of change.

Everyday we experience changes going in the shape and size of our communities and prices of food in stores, but also with the intense requirements being made just to stay current with ordinary things – like news about what’s happening in Quincy, and Massachusetts and the rest of the world.

Behavior Science studies human behavior and what factors determine what we do and the results we can theoretically expect from our behavior as individuals and as a society.

We arrive on earth with human feet (all different-just like the rest of us) which may be prone to wander – in healthy ways and not so good ways.  And individual minds – again each one alittle different from all others. None of us are perfect which becomes more evident as we grow – making choices every day about how to apply our limited energy and resources to the challenges that we face.

In the wilderness in nature: (especially if there is no internet reception therefore no GPS) it becomes essential to have a compass that will tell us where true North is. It is not fun to be lost in mountains (or at sea) or in a forest and become disoriented.

Even in our ordinary surroundings it is dangerous when ones life is in “freefall” with nothing to save us from falling.

Bad news seems to travel much faster than good news – sometimes they seem to go together.

In this world we are impacted both by some things that are corporate (like national or state legislation), and also by those things that happen to us as individuals.

The terrible attack which destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City took thousands of American lives. It also resulted in many dedicated responses seeking to save lives and rescue those trapped or stranded. Tragic results for many families but also times when strangers stepped forward to help even at great cost to themselves.

“God so Loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting Life. God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world. But that the world through Him might be saved.”

God’s Love for us and all God’s creation never wavers and it can be experienced anytime any day by each of us – sometimes without our even asking for God’s help.

Susan and I are part of the Congregational Church family in Hanson. We just finished putting together a short Lenten Devotional Booklet. It is the sharing of a ‘Lesson from God’ experience in the lives of over 40 members and friends of the Hanson Church past and present.

A cheerful older lady who sits across the aisle at church on Sundays shared the following experience of God in her life:

“John, my husband of 56 years, and I loved traveling on his motorcycle.  We rode across this beautiful country three times!

On October 16, 2016 we went for a ride with our son, Andy and a friend, Paul.  It was a beautiful fall day. We were in Lakeville by Tamarack Park, when a driver came around the corner two feet over the line and hit us head-on.

I know God was with me! I don’t remember anything about the accident, but within minutes a firefighter, who was taking his son to a soccer game, stopped. A nurse also came to our aid. They put a tourniquet on my leg and stabilized me to be airlifted to Rhode Island Hospital. When I arrived, I heard someone say “The driver did not make it!”

Bad dream? Sadly no. Andy had run into the debris but his injuries were limited to a torn hamstring. My husband Paul had been able to stop and was uninjured.

Almost every bone in my body was either fractured or broken, but my head was fine. I lost my right leg above the knee and had casts my right leg and both arms covering my hands. Thank you, God, for saving my right leg so I can drive.

I was in the ICU for two weeks until my family could find a nursing home that could take me, as I was unable to feed myself. Life Care of Scituate was my home for three months. They were wonderful to me.

My family and friends gave me such amazing support through my recovery…. I would also like to thank everyone for their continuous prayers for me.

As long as we have memories, yesterday remains.
As long as we have hope, tomorrow awaits.
As long as we have love, today is beautiful.
As long as we have God, anything and everything is possible.
Dear God thank you for all You do and for giving us the
Strength to carry on. Amen”
Lorriane Edwards

Lorriane’s halo is not visible but as she greets everyone with a smile and cheerful word it’s easy to be encouraged and to believe and trust in the loving God who is her strength and companion.

God’s wisdom is complete. God knows each of us better than we know ourselves. There are no secrets hidden from God yet while we are yet sinners God sent His Son to stand in our place and take the punishment we deserved to restore the broken relationship and open the door for us to return to right relationship with our good good Heavenly Father.

In the often confusing ‘wilderness’ of our current society let me highlight a recent example broadcast by mainstream media that demonstrates that our culture even today has not totally forgotten its roots in the God shown us in Jesus Christ.

Damar Hamlin, (24) suffered cardiac arrest after a tackle on a Monday Night Football Conference game with a sold-out stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio. His heart was revived on the field by CPR and resuscitated by a defibrillator before being air lifted to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He had a second resuscitation before being connected to a ventilator.

Meanwhile the game had completely stopped. The whole Buffalo Bills football team gathered around him on the field, some kneeling in prayer, some standing and looking up to heaven. Then the members of the Cincinnati Bangels emptied its bench and came out on the field and knelt or stood and joined them in prayer.

The entire stadium had gone deathly silent as people rose, in respectful prayer for the life of this one player. Then the sports caster was heard praying over the entire crowd. This was prime time professional sports broadcasting America praying for the life of one football player suddenly cut short on the field.

The entire game was postponed – later cancelled by the NFL.

In this sometimes ‘Wild Wilderness’ of society around us, God has many more people like you and like me who have feet of clay but also still have a heart for God.  God’s ways on earth are still enfolding, sometimes through circumstances, sometimes through persons with clay feet like you and me. Yet we can also be instruments of God’s joy and inner peace, like with Lorraine.

There are many unexpected ways to show God’s Love  kindness and actions that we can take to show it quietly and humbly. We receive God’s Love which helps open our minds, our eyes, and hearts day by day. 

When we think good thoughts, seek the spark of God in other people, and are moved to do random acts of kindness, your action may be just what God uses to lift a burden dragging someone down. We can be a light in their discouragement or despair.

“Love isn’t Love til you give it away.” And God’s Love is unlimited.

“When God’s Spirit dwells among His people

The power of Love can never be denied.”

God’s light shines through Jesus perfectly, and through each of us when we rejoice in the Lord of life. God knows us all together and still loves us and always seeks our best.

“Therefore we do not loose heart
But though our outer body is decaying,
yet our inner (spiritual) spirit is being renewed day by day…
2 Cor.4:16

Therefore let us not look at the things that are seen
But at the things that are not seen
For the things that we see are temporary- they will pass away
But the things that are not seen are eternal
They shall never pass away. 2 Cor. 4:18

[Jesus came and showed us the Way through every wilderness,

is the Truth and the Life everlasting.]

The shepherd’s prayer the end of Psalm 139 is (vs. 23-24)

“Search me, O God, and know my heart.
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,……
And lead me in the way everlasting.”

Amen!

Into the Wild! Our Indispensable Companion for the Journey

One afternoon many years ago, my dad and I drove up to see my grandparents, a little more than an hour north of LA. I have forgotten many things about that drive. I can’t tell you what year it was, what car we road in, or even all the things we talked about. I do remember that I was in college and that I was sharing my feelings about breaking up with a girlfriend. My father began to share some of the temptations he had faced in his life—situations in which his character was tested—with women, with despair, and with work. Story after story bubbled up from his past, to be shared with his son. It was a very special day for me. As I look back on these stories of testing—and my own stories, I come to realize that testing comes when we have ability, resources and power. Our abilities, resources and power open up possibilities before us, and we must decide what direction we will go. Not until we are old enough to walk and think for ourselves are we able to walk knowingly away from our parents. Not until we physically mature are we tested by sexual relationships. Not until we learn to drive are we tempted to ignore speed. Not until we had money were we tempted to spend it. And it was not until Jesus was baptized and God’s voice was heard, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” that Jesus is tempted as he is in today’s passages. In each test, Jesus shows His life is guarded by His need for God and His adequacy with God.

To start with, Jesus’ need for God guards His life. In the first temptation, Satan focuses on Jesus’ for food and Jesus focuses on his need for God. “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In the second temptation, Satan focuses on Jesus’ need to be spectacular and Jesus focuses on his need for God. “It is also written: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” In the third temptation, Satan focuses on Jesus’ need for achievement and Jesus focuses on his need for God. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” In all these cases, Jesus moves past the competing distractions to the truth of His life: Jesus’ need for God.

Lastly, Jesus trusts that with God, He is more than enough. In the first temptation, Satan focuses on Jesus’ lack of food and Jesus focuses on his fullness with God. How could he lack anything if God was looking out for his needs? In the second temptation, Satan focuses on Jesus’ lack of proof that he is the Son of God (remember, God had only said the words after his baptism) and Jesus focuses on his contentedness with his relationship with God. Why would Jesus test God on something he already knew deep down inside? In the third temptation, Satan focuses on Jesus’ lack of accomplishment and Jesus focuses on his completeness with God. In all these cases, Jesus cuts through what seemed like shortcomings with this truth: with God in His life, Jesus was more than able to face any obstacle.

When we face temptations, how often are we tempted by our needs to step out of God’s plan and make something happen? Maybe it’s a physical or emotional need—a sweet-tooth, loneliness, frustration, or people-pleasing—all of these can suggest to us that our physical or emotional need is the most important thing in our lives. And yet, God knows our needs, loves us, and provides for us. When we stay focused on our need for God, then the other needs do not drive our lives—God does, and God can meet the true needs of our hearts. In the same way, how often do we get the message that we are not good enough, that we would be better off if we had this TV or phone, this air fryer or car, this drink or that food? And yet, God shows us in Jesus that you and me—we are worth dying for. When we stay focused on how much God loves us, then we know we are more than enough.

Sometimes we can really feel lost in the wilderness of life. We will be tempted to take shortcuts, to follow the latest hot tip for getting out of the wilderness sooner. But going through the wilderness—with all its struggles—is the only real way to get to a better, more fulfilling, more joy-filled life. That’s why we need someone to go with us. One of the reasons hearing my dad’s stories on that afternoon drive meant so much to me is that I knew I wasn’t alone. Many of the temptations I face even today—they are ones my dad faced. His example gives me courage. I could learn from his experiences, and so miss some of the pitfalls he battled through. Knowing that Jesus was tempted and tested just like me is even more important. Oh I know I will probably never be tempted to make bread out of stones, or leap from a steeple so God can catch me, or worship Satan so I can save the world. I know, too, that unlike Jesus, I am going to fail, to forget the full strength of God’s love and abundance. But knowing that Jesus has passed through temptations like mine helps me know that I can go to him and talk with him about my struggles…and He understands! Knowing that God loves me enough to let Jesus be tempted, to let Jesus die on the cross for me, and to make sure Jesus rose again on third day gives me great hope that God will make sure to raise me up when I fall. And knowing that Jesus passed through temptations like mine and won through helps me know that if I will trust him, he will guide my footsteps so that I might win through my temptations too. Jesus is, indeed, the indispensable companion for all our life’s journeys through the wilderness.

Into the Wild! Why We Need the Wilderness

Rev. Bob Leroe, a Congregational pastor in Massachusetts tells this story:

Astronaut James Erwin is one of but a few men to walk on the moon. As he stood upon the lunar landscape and looked up at the earth, he prayed for the first time in his life. He thought about the strife among nations, poverty, hunger, and rampant evil; and he thought to himself: “What is more important than man walking on the moon, is that God should walk on earth.”

This is what we mean when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” We are praying that the King of the Universe would come and put things right.

“Thy Kingdom come” is a prayer for revolution. It’s what the Jews prayed for in Jesus’ day—perhaps it’s true for some even today—that God would step onto the world stage, take the enemies of Israel and knock their heads together. For the people in Jesus’ day, that meant first of all, sweeping out the Romans—who occupied Palestine, and who imposed a corrupt tax system on the province. Then God would clean house of all the corrupt shepherds of Israel who sought power for their own sake, and ignored the cries of their people. In Jesus’ day, this included political figures like Herod Antipas, decadent and diminished son of Herod the Great—and the religious elite of whom Jesus would say, “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them….they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.” (Matthew 23:4, 6–7) Jesus said, “Do not be like the hypocrites…”(Matthew 6:5) because Jesus knew the Kingdom of heaven was going to be different.

“Thy Kingdom come” is a prophetic word and a battle cry. When we pray it, we reveal how far short our world falls from what God has in mind. In the wealthiest country in the world, we have people who go to bed hungry at night. In a nation that spends more on military might than most of the world combined, still we do not have security. In a nation where we spent $1.189 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day presents for our pets, we cannot find enough money to pay our school teachers. “Thy Kingdom come” reveals all the ways we are caught up in this broken system and contribute to the kingdom of this world, but it also calls us forward to become part of the solution. The world must change–we must change—and we will see it done. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.”

“Thy Kingdom come” is a prayer of surrender. It’s the cry of a mom who’s at the end of her rope, looking for hope only God can give. It’s the cry of a man who has reached the bottom of his addiction and knows it will finish him if he doesn’t change. It’s the cry of Jesus in a garden, who sees nothing but pain and a brutal death. “Father, not my will but yours be done.” Whatever God brings, it will be better than this. Whatever God wants, that is what we will do. Our lives will change. We are ready. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.”

“Thy Kingdom come” Jesus taught us to pray, that God’s rule might be felt in our world and in our lives. The kingdom of this world appreciates fancy words and a good show—a longer prayer with longer words means God must hear you better. Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” And all they will get is what the kingdom of this world can provide—social status, prestige, the applause of people. The Kingdom of Heaven is found in the pure, honest prayer of a person who runs out of words, and can only place the deepest, aching needs of their lives before “your Father who knows what you need before you ask.” Because when we pray in an attitude of surrender, then the Kingdom comes into the world through our lives. When we pray like that, we have the applause of our Father, and the Kingdom comes in power to transform us.

In Lent, we head into the wilderness, just like Jesus did. In a sense, we really don’t need the wilderness. Who would want their life to be harder by giving something up? Who would want to add something for God to their lives when they are already so busy? In another sense, we desperately need the wilderness—a chance to look our selves and our God in the face, and learn we don’t have all the answers—but God does. In the wilderness, the powers of this world are revealed to be less important, and we realize that God’s Kingdom coming is absolutely vital.

The problem with most of our ideas of God is that they are so small. The Jews prayed the Kingdom would bring revolution, when the revolution was that their lives had to change. We pray knowing the world could be different—should be different—and know that we are part of the problem. In Jesus, we find all our ideas are blown to Kingdom come. It’s when we stop trying to make the kingdom in our image, and allow ourselves to be made in the image of the Kingdom that we find peace…and the Kingdom comes…in us. That’s why we need the wilderness. When we truly, deeply pray just that simple prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done” then we begin to live as Jesus still teaches us…and God walks the earth as God’s Kingdom comes and God’s will is done.

Post-Pandemic U — Week 6: Making Lasting Change That Makes a Difference

Children have an amazing way of asking questions that cut through all the fluff of life to the core issues. One day, I was driving to work, getting ready to drop off Jordan at daycare when they asked, “Daddy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” How would you answer that question if you were asked? As I thought about it, I realized how much things have changed in our world. Fifty years ago, children who asked their parents that question could have received a firm answer:  most of the time, whatever job you started after your education, that was it. We could say, “I am a firefighter, a homemaker, a teacher, a plumber, a nurse” and that would be true all our lives. That choice defined who we were. Twenty years ago, the average worker could expect to be retrained five times, and now they don’t even have a statistic for it—so my reflection is not unique or even unusual. We live in a day when a single career spanning one’s whole life doesn’t happen very often, and multiple careers is normal. Change is upon us, all around us, even inside of us. How do we make sense of these changes? Where is the road of faith through our changing world? Our passages for today offer some critical guidance on change.

According to Gene Appel, former pastor of a wonderful church in Las Vegas and author of a great seminar entitled “Successfully Managing Change in Your Church,” the Bible has two guiding principles for dealing with change:

1.  Some things never ever change. We stand upon a rock that will never move. In Hebrews 13:8, we read, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” In Psalm 102 we hear, “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but… you remain the same, and your years will never end.” Jesus quotes Hosea when he says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” The love and compassion, the power and promises of our God will never end, nor will they change. The hope of Jesus Christ who died on a cross for you and me, to make a new life possible—these will never change.

2.  Some things always change. In preparing for sermons, Paul used papyrus and stylus. I use a laptop computer. When Paul preached, he shouted above the sound of a market. I use a microphone. He wore a toga. Aren’t you glad I’m not? And yet, if he and I are both preaching faithfully, our hearers hear the same message, the same hope, the same challenge. As our world and the culture around us change, we get to learn a new culture, new ways of expressing our faith, and new ways of living grace-filled lives for Christ, in order to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ has for this new day. Gene Appel gave a great illustration of this principle. Do you remember the Dairy Association’s wildly successful ad campaign, “Got milk?” I love seeing all these hotshot folks with milk mustaches. Well, the Dairy Association decided to take this campaign to Mexico where it completely bombed. Why? When you ask someone in Spanish “Got milk?” you are really asking, “Are your breasts giving milk?” The expression of faith has got to change to speak God’s love to the new day and our new culture.

But how do we deal with the change that comes?

First, God delights in freshness, change and newness. In our New Testament passage for today, when Matthew gives himself to God and follows Jesus, the first thing he does is throw a party, instead of fasting. The Pharisees and John’s disciples say in effect, “God only likes things the way we like things.” What a small box they tried put God into! Our God is creative. The God we know makes every sunset different and yet they are all spectacular. The God we know works it out so no two snowflakes and no two people are exactly alike. The God we know seems to revel in making octopus, platypus and pussy willows. Our God delights in pouring out new life, new wine and new ways into our world.

Second, because our God is always pouring out what is fresh and exhilarating, let us recognize that sometimes we can’t just fix up the old, comfortable wineskin; sometimes we have to get a whole new wineskin. Jesus says, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.” I have watched people and churches die that way, sad and confused as they work harder at what isn’t working and wonder why they aren’t getting anywhere. But they liked the old, comfortable garment of their life and worship. In sharp contrast, I cannot tell you how excited I am to be with you as we are charting a new course. Look at the amazing changes that that have helped us become more relevant, more compassionate, and more welcoming to people who are new to God and spirituality! We are coming to the place where we need to take a deep look at ourselves. Are we resting too much on what we have been? Are all the pieces of what we do communicating the grace of God? I believe our best days with God still lie ahead of us.

Third, because our God delights in freshness and change, God will help us, guide us, strengthen, and inspire us. Think about all the ways the word, “new,” is associated with God in the Bible. “Behold! I am making all things new!” “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”(2 Corinthians 5:17) “I will sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth.”(Psalm 96:1) “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you…”(Ezekiel 36:26) God wants us to succeed! God wants us to have the kind of lives other people dream about! God wants us to have a fellowship that people have dreamed of all their lives! God wants to pour new wine and new zest for life into our lives, and the lives of those around us. God will show us how to navigate the waters of change if only we will listen.

My friends, we are living in one of the most exciting times in the history of this planet. We are seeing a kind of change that has come maybe two or three times in human history. The last time people saw change like this began when the printing press was invented in 1458, and the first thing printed on Gutenberg’s printing press in Mainz, Germany was the Bible. Fifty years later, Martin Luther would use the press to kick off the Reformation that would revolutionize political and religious expression. By the mid-1500s, Bibles which had been one to a town, were becoming common enough they could be one to a household. The whole society reorganized. The basic principles of science were worked out as a way to manage the dramatic increase in the amount of information. In the midst of all this change were people of faith, not all that different from you and me. Indeed, Congregationalists were part of the critical mass of people figuring out how to study the Bible and worship the Living God in a way that brought out meaning and changed lives. What is different about change in our time is that the information revolution caused by the invention of the printing press was largely complete in 250–300 years (10 generations), where the digital revolution is likely to complete itself in three generations! We are practically sloshing in new wine! And we worship the God who has a plan for even this to make us greater, to draw more people into the loving arms of God, and speak hope and healing to all who are spiritually hungry. In his book, The Post-Quarantine Church, Thom Rainer writes, “As we enter this unknown era, we’re uncertain about the specifics of what will unfold, but we remain certain that the God of all wisdom and power will be with us every step of the way.”(pp. 110–111)

When Jordan asked me, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” My first answer to Jordan’s question was, “I am doing what I dreamed of doing. I am a minister.” The curious thing about my answer—and many of our answers—is that we confuse the doing with the being, our tasks with our identity. I realized that though the times have changed, the importance of that question is the same, and not just for teenagers anymore. It has become a key question all of us must ask over and over. But underneath it are the questions of faith, “God, what is it you want me to do with my life?” to which the answers are always changing. And perhaps more importantly, “Lord, am I a fresh wineskin ready for the new wine You want to pour into me?” No matter what changes might be swirling around us, I am convinced that for those of us who follow Jesus Christ, our answer can always be, “I am Yours, O Lord. May may life shine with Your love.” Amen.

Post-Pandemic U — Week 5: Changing the Center of Worship

The story is told that in 1930, King George V was getting ready to address the opening session of the Naval Conference in London. Radio was in its infancy, but through this medium, the king’s message was to be carried around the world. Just before the king was to go on the air, Harold Vivian, a young engineer of the Columbia Broadcasting Company, discovered a broken wire in the transmitter. This was a disaster! There was no time for repairs, and the world was waiting to hear the message of the king. When most of us think about the pandemic, we often think like Walter—disaster! And for some people, the pandemic really was a disaster—people lost love ones to COVID, couples had to cancel or change their wedding plans, childcare and school required a whole different skill set for everyone involved. But the pandemic also served to refine us—to help us focus on what really matters, as Jesus says, “the things that make for peace.” Our passages for today highlight some of those issues that we started wrestling with during COVID in a whole new way.

First, the question of who belongs to God is God’s choice—not yours or mine or anybody else’s. When I was growing up, my Aunt Ellen was married several times, but each time they seemed to get worse! Somewhere around husband four or five—I think I was probably 9 or 10—one of her husbands came up to me after worship at the church where my father was pastor, and asked, “Are you saved?” I just blinked at him. He must have wondered if I was alright in the head, because he asked me again, “Are you saved?” “What do you mean?” I asked. I thought maybe this was a trick question, and wondered if I had missed part of the conversation, the part that would help me know what the heck he meant. “Do you know Jesus Christ?” Whew! I’m a pastor’s son. Jesus is the answer to every children’s sermon! “Oh. Yeah, I know Jesus.” And I escaped to the playground. The problem is not the people who ask the question, “Are you saved?”, but rather the people who think there is only one answer. As the Council in Jerusalem proves, the Christians who believed in only one answer were wrong. God had a plan—that everyone could come to Christ and find forgiveness and new life. Who gets to come to God is God’s choice. What that looks like in a church is arms wide open in welcome—to everyone—a welcome as warm and accepting as God’s own embrace.

Second, we still have to find a way to live together. The second question in our passage is a question of practice, asked by some of the members in the Jerusalem Church. When I was serving North Shore Congregational Church in Milwaukee, I said to the Moderator how much I admired the top of the stained-glass window that had two different pictures, that changed with the seasons of the church. He told me the story of how there was supposed to be only one, but when the stained-glass artist did the proposed designs, one of the deacons liked one, and another deacon liked the other. For weeks they argued, and it was stirring up the whole congregation. Finally, their disagreement exploded into a shouting match in the sanctuary over which stained glass window should be used. Fortunately, the Moderator had been there and together they came up with a scheme for using them both, sliding one into place for part of the year, and the other could be there for the rest. They left arm-in-arm, and the church’s worship was richer for the compromise. Sometimes we argue about silly things in the church. Does God really think one stained glass window is better than another? I love that James finds a compromise that allows everyone to keep living and loving Jesus Christ together.

Third, it’s all about grace anyway. True story. Two pastors were on their way to Atlanta, Georgia for a large Christian men’s gathering. One of them had never been in the south before. After staying in a motel overnight, they stopped at a nearby restaurant for breakfast. When their meal was delivered, the pastor who had never been south before saw this white, mushy looking stuff on his plate. When the waitress came by again he asked her what it was. “Grits”, she replied. “Ma’am I didn’t order it and I’m not paying for it.” “Sir, down here you don’t order it and you don’t pay for it, you just get it.”[1] That’s grace! We didn’t ask Jesus to die for us. We can’t ever truly repay Jesus for dying for us. We can “just get it.” In today’s passage, I see lots of grace, the undeserved blessing of God. I see grace in all the joy people have at other people’s lives changing. I see grace in choosing to come together to make decisions that work best. I see grace in recognizing that when God changes a life, who are we to say it didn’t happen? I see grace in those who are learning a new way of being and find that the church is loving them into it. All of that is grace! And it’s what we are meant to be about in this church, in every church. It’s the hallmark of what it means to know Jesus Christ, to experience the power of God’s forgiving love, and to show it to the world.

In the wake of the pandemic, we in the church have had a tendency to just want things to go back to the way they were. But as Thom Rainer suggests in his book, The Post-Quarantine Church, the pandemic made it clear that the building is another tool for us—the church—to use so God can reach and serve the community. Before the pandemic, some people thought that the only way to deliver the message of God’s love was worship and Sunday School on Sunday morning. Thom Rainer points out that technology and people’s lives are shifting the center of worship away from Sunday morning, to whenever someone has the time or the need. Instead of churches building larger and larger buildings, they are creating many and more smaller places and times of worship and study. Oh, we are not giving up on Sunday morning! It’s still a vital, heart-stirring way our fellowship comes together. But in the wake of the pandemic, perhaps welcoming people and showing grace may look differently. And lastly, Rainer reminds us that what we—the members—think about our fellowship may not impact our community for God nearly as much as what people in the community think about our fellowship. How are we using our resources to help the community know and appreciate what God does for the community through us?

When King George was about to go on the air in 1930, Harold Vivian discovered a broken wire in the transmitter. He didn’t have time to fix things, so how could he make sure that people could hear the message of the king? Inspired, the young engineer knew exactly what to do: He took a piece of broken wire in one hand, and a piece of broken wire in the other hand, and for fifteen minutes Harold Vivian took two hundred and fifty volts of electricity through his body so that the king’s message could go through. Amazing! He knew what was most important, and he became the conduit, the channel the king could share his message. Now King George’s message was delivered on the opening of the Naval Conference in London—a completely forgettable moment and message. But the message the King of the Universe wants to send out is immensely more important, more relevant and more enduring. The need for real and lasting peace in people’s hearts, and lives and communities is so huge right now—and we are often clueless about how to find that peace ourselves. Yet the world is waiting to hear the message of our King, and the one way for that message to go through is to be carried to a needy world through us who profess to be His disciples.[2] Is your life—is my life—centered on how much God loves us? Has the power of Jesus’ death on a cross, cleansed each of us through and through, and allowed us to let go of silly arguments in order to grasp the lasting truth? Then let each of us—and all of us—become the connection that lets grace and power of Jesus Christ flow through us to the world around us.

[1]Ray Raycroft. From a sermon by Timothy Dolan, Lives of Worship, 5/22/2012. www.sermoncentral.com

[2]Willie W. White, 52 Soul-Winning Sermon Outlines and 52 Windows to Lighten Them, p. 19. www.sermoncentral.com. The events of January 21, 1930 appeared in the NY Times on January 22, 1930.

Post-Pandemic U — Week 4: Next Level Praying

One of the things that lightened up COVID was that people had too much time on their hands and they made memes to help us through. Not that I want to trigger you, but here are some of my favorites:

1.    Because suddenly, there was no toilet paper.

2.    We started working remotely with the best of intentions, but pretty soon.

3.    And homeschooling was sometimes its own train wreck.

4.    We learned some things had to be different. Here’s Ikea’s new furniture line.

5.    So we started getting creative. One family looked at the floor plan of their house for weekend travel ideas.

6.    All in all, we thought if we got caught up in the apocalypse, we would be ready for zombies in hard-core leather, and instead we had sweats and fuzzy slippers.

7.    As we started finding our way through COVID, we had to learn new rules And new hygiene rules—the dog looks entirely too pleased with itself.

One of the biggest things we learned was how little control we had of some things, and how to focus on the things we could control. Turns out, praying was one of the things we could do—even if we couldn’t be with someone we loved, we could pray for them. Even though we couldn’t make something happen, we asked for guidance and inspiration for how to make things special. Those are ways of praying! In the post-pandemic world, these approaches to prayer are good, but we have the chance as individuals and as a church to go to the next level. Our passages for today talk about how to pray better and more powerfully.

First, Jesus teaches us to make the need of the person our focus. In our New Testament passage today, what is it that gets someone up in the middle of the night to go find some food? It’s the need of a friend. So if we are going to pray deeply for someone, we have to focus on their need. We can imagine with our heart’s eyes what the other person might need. I say, “with our heart’s eyes” because compassion may help us understand the person better. For example, when I’m praying for my children, I often recall what I remember about being their age, and what was important to me—what I was thinking about, and what was hard or painful.

Second, once we have the need in view, and we hold up that need for God to see, we can begin to imagine what God would want to do about that need. In A Slow and Certain Light, Elisabeth Elliot tells of two adventurers who stopped by to see her, all loaded with equipment for the rain forest east of the Andes. They sought no advice, just a few phrases to converse with the native peoples. She writes: “Sometimes we come to God as the two adventurers came to me—confident and, we think, well-informed and well-equipped. But has it occurred to us that with all our accumulation of stuff, something is missing?” She suggests that we often ask God for too little. “We know what we need—a yes or no answer, please, to a simple question. Or perhaps a road sign. Something quick and easy to point the way. What we really ought to have is the Guide himself. Maps, road signs, a few useful phrases are good things, but infinitely better is Someone who has been there before and knows the way.”[1] That’s what’s cool about God:  God can reach into the person’s life we are praying for, can see and hear the true needs of their life and can guide us in how to pray. Since God loves the person we are praying for, and God wants what’s best for them, we can let God be the guide for this part of prayer.

Third, pray like you believe it’s already done. Television interviewer and journalist, Larry King, tells the story of three farmers who gathered daily in a field during a horrible drought. The men were down on their knees, looking upward, and praying the skies would open and pour forth much-needed rain. Unfortunately, the heavens were silent, and the petitioners became discouraged, but they continued to meet every morning to lift up their request to God. One morning, an uninvited stranger approached and asked the men what they were doing. They responded, “We’re praying for rain.” The newcomer looked at each of them and shook his head, “No, I don’t think so.” The first farmer said, “Of course we’re praying. We are down on our knees pleading for rain. Look around; see the drought. We haven’t had rain in more than a year!” The outsider continued to nod his head and advised them their efforts would never work. The second farmer jumped in and said, “We need the rain; we aren’t asking only for ourselves, but for our families and livestock.” The man listened, nodded, and said he still wasn’t impressed. “You’re wasting your time,” he said. The third farmer couldn’t take any more, and in anger he replied, “Okay, what would you do if you were in our shoes?” The visitor asked, “You really want to know?” The three landowners answered, “We really want to know! The future of our farmlands is at stake.” The guest said simply, “I would have brought an umbrella!”[2]

As a church fellowship, praying is something we could get more intentional about, and draw in the community more. I know many of us have strong prayer lives privately—after all, I look at the amazing decisions and movements of our fellowship, and there’s no doubt we are a praying bunch. But I wonder if part of what would help our fellowship to the next level would be getting a prayer team or prayer circle going. Maybe we would meet monthly, but in between time, we could share prayer concerns as they pop up. We could use our FaceBook page for prayer requests, develop our presence on NextDoor Squantum, and put a link so folks could ask for prayer on our website. One of the cool things about this fellowship, is that our Congregational Meetings have the flavor of a prayer meeting, as we mull over together how God might be leading us. In three weeks, February 26, we will have another one of those times when we put our heads together to imagine how God might be leading us in the coming year. Corporately, we follow the same guidance we have as individuals, to ask God to show us the needs that addressing, to ask God for guidance in how we should approach those needs, and to trust that we will have what we need when we need it.

Here we run into the part of the mystery of praying for others that may make many of us squirm a little. Oh we know that prayer is a good thing. We may even have a sense that through prayer, God can do things we can’t. But to believe that God could really truly heal someone of a disease, that God could shatter an addiction, that God could do what seems impossible…well… I heard about a church that had bought a new organ, and they invited a talented musician to play that organ during the dedication recital for that organ. The organist came and sat down at the organ to begin playing. And as soon as he touched one of the keys there was silence - nothing. A custodian there at the church knew what the problem was; the organ was not turned on. So a minister stood and called on a deacon to pray, and as the person prayed the custodian went to work and then jotted down a note and slipped it into the hands of the organist. The note simply read: “After the prayer, the power will be on.” In this story, we can ask ourselves who the real pray-er is. Is the real pray-er the minister who stops things and asks someone to pray? Is it the deacon who calls on God be at work? Is it the custodian, whose insight allows him to diagnose the problem and figure a way to fix it? Or is it the organist, who has to start playing when the deacon says, “Amen”? I wonder if they all have their part to play, just as we all do. And we are all learning about this praying thing, how to pray more deeply, with more compassion and more heart, more wisdom and insight, faith and trust. We can hear all those things as Jesus prays on the cross for all of us, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” As Jesus suffered for us, we should be encouraged to enter into the hurts and needs of others, and to give those hurts and needs a voice to the Father who will give us what we need:  more of God in the world.

[1]Craig Brian Larson, Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching (Christianity Today, 1993), p. 106.

[2]Larry King, Powerful Prayers (Renaissance Books, 1998), p. 243.

Post-Pandemic U — Week 3: Reconnecting with the Community Near Us

Many years ago Mordecai Ham, the famous preacher, was getting ready to come out on stage. He was in a large auditorium because no church in town was big enough to hold the crowd. There were a couple of teenage boys that went to this church service. It was packed out and they couldn’t find a seat, so they decided to leave. But one lone usher saw those two teenage boys and he said, “Come here, guys. I’ll find you a seat.” A lot of us may feel like this usher—overworked and unappreciated, expected to make miracles happen with less. And so often we feel like everything we do just doesn’t make a difference, like we are spinning our wheels and going nowhere fast. At times, the pandemic really multiplied that feeling—decisions were being made in the school or at work or in the community, and we didn’t have a lot of say. At times, the pandemic demanded that we find solutions or make do with no solution—figure out the kids, figure out work—figure it out! Into our sense of inadequacy and meaninglessness, God speaks three words that change everything!

First, we are where we are for a reason. In our passage for today, we drop in on Peter and John in the early days of the church—and we discover they were part of the neighborhood. They know this guy who can’t walk—he’s always there. They know how he gets to that spot where he asks people for money every day. During the pandemic, many of us rediscovered our neighborhoods—going for walks, talking with neighbors—socially distanced of course—helping each other out, making sure everyone was ok. There’s a reason you live where you do—and it may be the people around you! Do you know their names, and about their life? And there’s a reason you work where you do, play where you do, take your kid to dance or sports, or go to the doctor where you do—and it just might be one of the people you find there. I know, some days you just don’t feel like it, or they seem too busy, but who knows when simple greetings, smiles, or learning people’s names open a door to being a blessing. We are where we are for a reason.

Second, look for the real need. For Peter and John, they not only know this guy who can’t walk, they know what he needs. They say, “I don’t have any money, but I’ll give you what I do have. Through the power of Jesus Christ from Nazareth, walk!” Friday afternoon, I went to see Doris Simmons. We had a fantastic conversation. One thing she told me was that the staff in her facility are wondering how long they can stay with a new management that is focused on the bottom line. How does she know? Because she cares about the people around her, she continues to talk with them about their lives, and she stays curious about what’s going on for them—what is it they really need? You know what? She’s praying for all the staff, and she’s praying for the management of the new company! Do we know our neighbors well enough to know how to pray for their real needs? In all of the places we go, you and I run into people all the time, and we just never know when God will give us an opportunity to hear what someone really needs.

Third, grace creates community. Peter and John are super clear that it’s not their power that did this miracle—it was the power of Jesus at work through them, and curious things happened after. One was the guy who couldn’t walk starts walking, then running then jumping and praising God, which sounds like it might have been really hilarious to watch. But his gratitude and the changes in his life? They affect everyone else who knows this guy, so much so, that Peter has to explain what Jesus has done. When we have relationships with our neighbors, and our co-workers, and the people at the store, and the people in class—and we begin to learn how to pray for them, the great news is this: Jesus is smiling because we are creating community! Oh we didn’t really mean to. We thought we were just being kind, thoughtful and curious, but suddenly it becomes clear, by helping our neighbor, we are making a better neighborhood. By being a blessing to our co-worker, we are creating a better workplace. By showing grace to someone at school or the grocery store or the playground, we are helping our community get stronger. Grace creates community!

These post-pandemic lessons are ones for our fellowship too. Rainer points out three lessons that could help us in our post-pandemic age:

1. Remember why we are where we are—to show Jesus’ love and grace to this community. We can and should show grace to others beyond Squantum—especially to those Jesus calls “the least of these”—but we have to get it right here.

2. Listening to the needs of our neighbors and our neighborhood is vitally important to the future of this church. We can only know how to show grace, when we understand the needs of the people and the neighborhood. One of the ways to do that may be offering to pray for people.

3. Rainer argues that the post-pandemic church has to learn that it is primarily for the community, not primarily for its members. That’s going to be hard for some of us to hear, because some of us think of the church as existing for its members. But Jesus is always focusing His grace outward—bringing wholeness, peace and joy to our lives—and hoping we will keep thinking about passing that grace on to others. Jesus wanted wholeness, peace and joy to ripple through the world. If grace creates community, then our fellowship is here to help Jesus mold and shape Squantum into a blessed community. That means all our ministries, and all our resources, find their best expression touching people’s lives with grace. How can we use our building to show grace, and help create community in Squantum?

In the post-pandemic era, we are reminded to keep our outward concern, because welcoming loving on people is the core of living out the grace of God.

So if you are feeling overwhelmed by change, like nothing you do is making a difference, consider for a moment that overworked, under-appreciated usher trying to find seats for these two teen-age boys so they can see the stage. The usher looked around in the auditorium until he found two seats right down front. That night, both those boys gave their lives to Jesus Christ because of that usher and that small act of love and kindness. One of those boys was named Billy Graham. Have you heard of him? Most of us haven’t heard of Mordecai Ham, but millions and millions of people will be in heaven because of the ministry of Billy Graham. All because of one usher taking time to promise, “We’ll find you a seat.” When he got to heaven, do you think that usher got any credit for some of Billy Graham’s ministry? Count on it! He did his part. He played his role. You never know how just a little minor seemingly insignificant thing that you do from kindness can turn the tides of history. By faith, we know we are where we are for a reason, and so we look for how God might be working. Then we do what we can now—even what seems meaningless—trusting God will bless it. By faith, we look for the real needs around us, and we love with our whole heart, knowing God will touch those we touch. By faith, we show grace to those who need it most—the lost, the last and the least, the clueless and the clued in, trusting that in our welcome, the grace of Jesus Christ will be felt. By faith, we share what we have—our time and our resources, because we know God is going to make beauty and community all around us! By faith, we become a way that our neighbors and all the people around us reconnect with the One Who longs to shower them and us with grace.

Post-Pandemic U — Week 2: Seize Our Opportunity to Reach the Digital World

I vividly remember the first time I went fishing, I think I was about five. One of my grandfather’s best friends, Tom, took me down to a small pond in rural Georgia, and he taught me how to bait a hook, cast a line, reel in the fish, and later, how to clean the fish to feed our family. Have any of you been fishing? Can you tell me one thing you learned?

[Take responses from the congregation]

Excellent! I want you to keep those things in mind as we go on from here. One thing I think is fascinating about fishing, is that Jesus thought it was a great metaphor for helping people to find the wholeness of meaning, joy and gratitude that is a life in relationship with Him. Especially as we think about our lives and our church in the wake of the pandemic, Jesus and Paul have a lot to teach us.

Lesson #1: Jesus comes to us where we spend our time. In our passage from Luke today, we see Jesus is preaching and teaching, and the crowds are making it harder and more distracting, because of the crowds. So what does Jesus do? He sees some fishing boats which are pulled up after a night’s fishing and the fishermen who are winding down for the day, and Jesus asks Simon if he can use his boat. In the same way, Jesus comes to us where we spend our days. Are you shopping? Are you working? Are you going on a play date, or spending time at your kids’ game? Jesus is not with us just on Sunday morning…Jesus comes to us where we are, in the middle of all we are doing, and climbs into the boat with us.

Lesson #2: Jesus knows where the abundant life is. The thing that blows me away about Jesus in this story, is that He knows where the fish are. Simon is the fisherman—and he hasn’t caught anything all night. How many of us are running through our days, dealing with hassles, getting things done, and doing the best that we can…and still we feel like something’s missing? How many of us are living from crisis to crisis, climbing the ladder of success for ourselves and our kids, and thinking about what we want to do next…but no matter how much we achieve, no matter how much success we experience, it’s never enough? Like Simon, we have been fishing all night where we know how to fish, and we have come up empty. Jesus knows things. Jesus knows where we can find what will fill our nets and fill our lives—fill them until we have more than our old nets and old lives can handle! Jesus will guide us to where we can find God’s abundance and be filled with meaning, gratitude and joy.

Lesson #3: Jesus takes what we know, and gives us purpose. Jesus says to Simon and Andrew, James and John—“Do not be afraid. From now on you will be catching people.” The disciples knew fishing—so Jesus makes it clear, they will still be fishing. If you are an entrepreneur, then Jesus might have you working on a start up. If you are a teacher, then you will have the chance to teach grace. Whatever our gifts and expertise, Jesus knows that they have a purpose in building the Kingdom of God—our “Kingdom purpose.” If you’re working for someone, bring loving care and excellence to what you do. If you’re coaching a little league team, help each kid know they are loved and appreciated. If you’ve got time on your hands, fill it with things that make a difference in the lives of others. Whatever we do, can we demonstrate how much Jesus loves us to the people around us? Jesus takes what we know and gives us purpose.

In the post-pandemic, we may be spending our time in different places with different people than we were. That may mean we have to rethink how Jesus comes into where we are, to re-examine the opportunities Jesus is putting before us, and to consider what it is that we know now and how Jesus can give our lives purpose. The curious thing is that all these “fishing” lessons are ones that work in the church context too!

According to Thom Rainer, one of the trends that accelerated during the pandemic is the growth of people’s participation in the digital world. Our kids and grandkids were zooming. We learned about zooming. But we also learned about YouTube, got hooked into FaceBook, Instagram, TikTok and more. We tried out PeaPod for ordering groceries, bank apps for managing our finances, and UberEats and DoorDash for bringing us dinner. In his book, The Post-Quarantine Church, Thom Rainer points out that—post-pandemic—the church has four different “ponds”—different groups of people—we are working with.

1.    Digital only people. Some people will find us online, watch and relate to us online, and never make it into our physical building. There could be lots of reasons for this. Perhaps people are physically or emotionally unable to be here, or perhaps they are geographically distant. Rainer asks, “How will churches reach and minister to these people?” (p. 31)

2.    Digitally transitioning people. Rainer defines this group as “mostly connected to the church digitally…[but] somewhat open to connecting in person.”(p. 32) For this bunch, we want to create pathways and encouragement to come in person when they can or want to.

3.    Dual citizens. Rainer says, “They are connected to your congregation both digitally and in person.”(p. 32) A dual citizen may come in person for special occasions and then worship online most of the time, or come in person most of the time, and pick up a service online when they are traveling. What are the ways we can increase connectivity, so they can feel connected even when apart…and want to be.

4.    In person only. This group is small, and shrinking. Most people have figured out—or have family who have figured out—how to get connected online. We still need to find ways to reach and minister to these people who are increasingly isolated from the growing digital world.

In many ways the digital world is as mysterious to us as the disciples found underwater life—Where are the fish? What kind of bait do we use? How are we going to bring them in? How are we going to help Jesus change their lives too? In other ways, we know what we would look for—a good experience, a loving connection, and the hope that only Jesus can bring. Rainer concludes, “We know that the world is both digital and physical. For that reason alone, our churches must respond to both. And though the ways we reach these two mission fields will vary and change, it is imperative that we do something and do it well. Waiting is not an option.”(p. 38)

The interesting thing about the fishing that I did with Tom was that I learned that you can only catch the kind of fish that lives in that pond. The little pond he took me to, I caught lots of tasty bluegill, and if I had gotten really lucky, I might have caught a bass, or maybe even a catfish. In our lives, we have different “ponds”—different social circles—that we are in. And now we have this great, big digital world we as a church have access to. All the things that make us a great church—worship, teaching, fellowship and serving—those are things we have the chance to not only do in person, but to figure out digitally. With our church, we are blessed with a warm sense of community around Jesus Christ in person, and now we have this great opportunity to help create the same warm, Jesus-centered sense of community with folks who have a digital presence with us. It’s as if Jesus has gotten into the boat with us, and said to us, “Put your nets into the internet for a catch.” We cannot see the fish, but if we stay focused on worshiping God, loving people and sharing the grace of Jesus Christ—we know God’s abundance is just around the corner!

Post-Pandemic U — Week 1: Gather Differently and Better

How many of you remember where you were when you first learned about 9/11? How many of you remember where you were when you first heard about COVID-19? Thom Rainer uses this contrast to point out how different this world-changing event is from the others in our lifetime. The fact is lots of things changed for us, and lots of things have changed for our church, but we haven’t really talked about those changes and what they mean for us. So for six weeks, we are going to take some time to “go to school” about how we are different and how God might be working in our lives, but also how our society is different, and how our church might think differently about how God is leading us. Today is the first in the series.

So could we spend a few minutes reflecting on how the pandemic affected our lives at first? What are the things that you and your loved ones experienced at the beginning of the pandemic?

[Take responses from the congregation.]

So now let’s think a little more about what we learned from those experiences.

[Take responses from the congregation.]

In some ways, we are still trying to figure out what we’ve learned, but we all have a sense that things are really different now. And we have questions that came up around our faith: how could God let this happen? But also, for some of us, thank You God, that we’re ok, and Lord, how are we going to get through this? Need help here!

What kinds of things did we have to think about with our church that were different from how things normally were?

[Take responses from the congregation.]

So during the pandemic, what did you and other people learn about church?

[Take responses from the congregation.]

Isn’t that interesting? I feel like I learned some things about what really matters in my life—my family, my sense of community with you all, that I could be creative in how I spent time with others, that God was able to be with me, even when we couldn’t be together, that we could still connect and have a presence in each other’s lives through video and Zoom. In the darkest, loneliest, crazy-making days of the pandemic, I found myself really leaning in to the rest of the promises of Jeremiah 29: “Then you will call to me. You will come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 When you look for me, you will find me. When you wholeheartedly seek me, 14 I will let you find me, declares the LORD. I will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I’ve scattered you, declares the LORD. I will bring you back from the place where you are being held captive.”

At the beginning of his chapter, “Gather Differently and Better,” Thom Rainer uses a great illustration to talk about a big thing we learned in the pandemic. Did you ever play this game when you were a kid? [Do the motions with my hands.] Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and there are the people. That’s how we thought about church back then. There was always some wiseacre—sometimes I was that wiseacre—and I would fold my hands like this, then say the same words, Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and where are the people? Up on top! One, maybe two or three days of the week, the church gathers in this facility [do the motions with my hands the first way] but most of the time—[change hands to do it the second way] we are out in the world.

So what does it mean to be church? Why do we get together?

[Take responses from the congregation.]

Sure, that’s all good. What does the Bible say? So let’s look at our passage from Hebrews to see if we left anything out. For right now, let’s focus in on 10:24–25. According to this, why do we gather together?

[Take responses from the congregation.]

Do you see how this really sums up all the reasons you originally gave? Oh and by the way, does it say when we should gather? Or how we should gather? I think that’s very interesting!

Another thing Thom Rainer talks about is that our understanding of gathering is a little different now—we gather in person and online for the same worship service. And now we have folks who join our worship—but at different times and on different days—by watching the recordings. We have embraced pieces of this, right? As a fellowship, we have decided livestreaming worship is something we want to make available. We have continued to post recordings of our worship on YouTube. And for Bible Study, we gather both in-person and by Zoom. Did you know some of our most faithful attenders for Bible study are on Zoom? And our Trustees often regularly gather on Zoom and in-person. It suggests that our church has the potential to gather people in lots of different ways at lots of different times, and that our fellowship becomes a connector for all these different groups of people. We used to have just one way and one time to gather for worship and study, and now we have many more!

There are down sides to this too, though, right? We don’t see the same people every week in the way that we used to—because some folks are online sometimes—and at some point, we do need to talk about what that means for us.

Which brings us to thinking about our building and how we use it. Thom Rainer writes, “During the quarantine, many…discovered that the church was still the church, even without its facilities. Yes, we desired to return to in-person gatherings so we could be with our friends again. But we found we could do a lot of things as a church without relying on our buildings…We realized, it seemed, that our facilities were more tools than necessities. What if we now use those tools to reach and minister to our community?”(p. 17) Or put another way, how is our facility demonstrating God’s love to the community? Do they feel welcome here? When someone is in our facility, how do we make sure God touches them? Isn’t that part of the reason we have done Impact Squantum? To make our building more accessible for more people, to open up the front of the building, so more people could find and be drawn into our facility? So our building could be as welcoming as we are?

You know, it’s weird to think about, but in the earliest days of the Church we learned about in Acts today, they didn’t even have a building. Baby church shared the Temple with other Jews, and they met in each other’s homes and shared meals together.

So here’s my suggestion to us as we look forward:

Let’s do more to reconnect as a fellowship, to remind ourselves really how much we enjoy walking through life together. Perhaps we could do a regular gathering together—maybe a monthly potluck that Leslie Doyle’s been suggesting for a while, or dinner groups that meet in each other’s homes, some way that we are gathering, as Hebrews says, to encourage one another and spur each other on to love and good deeds.

We have always said the church is the people—not just the building—and through the pandemic we learned some things about looking after each other and trusting God. Now is a great time to remind ourselves how God works through our time together to help us stay encouraged and motivated in loving each other and releasing God’s grace into our community. At the end of the day, we don’t have to stress or worry about our church moving forward. The pandemic did not catch God off guard—God was already ahead of us to work even this for good. And God has great things in mind for us here in Squantum! Let us hear God speak to us through Jeremiah, “I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD. They are plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future filled with hope.”

Making Room for Jesus Week 5: Leaping into Love

This is a first-person account from a mother about her family as they ate dinner on Christmas Day in a small restaurant many miles from their home.  Nancy, the mother, relates:

We were the only family with children in the restaurant. I sat Erik in a highchair and noticed everyone was quietly sitting and talking. Suddenly, Erik squealed with glee and said, “Hi!” He pounded his fat, baby hands on the highchair tray. His eyes were crinkled in laughter and his mouth was bared in a toothless grin, as he wriggled and giggled with merriment.

I looked around and saw the source of his merriment. It was a man whose pants were baggy with his zipper at half-mast, and his toes poking out of would-be shoes. His shirt was dirty and his hair was uncombed, unkempt and unwashed. His whiskers were too long to be stubble and too short to be called a beard. His nose was red, and so covered in varicose veins that it looked like a road map. We were too far from him to smell, but I was sure he smelled. His hands waved and flapped on loose wrists. “Hi there, baby! Hi there, big boy! I see ya, buster,” the man said to Erik.

My husband and I exchanged looks that said, “What do we do?” Erik continued to laugh and answer, “Hi!” Everyone in the restaurant noticed and looked at us, and then at the man. The old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby.

Our meal came and the man began shouting from across the room, “Do ya patty cake? Do you know peek-a-boo? Hey, look! He knows peek-a-boo.” Nobody thought the old man was cute. He was obviously drunk. My husband and I were totally embarrassed. We ate in silence—all except for Erik, who was running through his repertoire of charm for the admiring, skid-row bum, who in turn, reciprocated with his “cute” comments.

We finally got through the meal and headed for the door. My husband went to pay the check and told me to meet him in the parking lot. But, the old man sat between me and the door. I prayed, “O Lord, just let me get out of here before he speaks to me or Erik.” As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back trying to sidestep him and avoid any air he might be breathing. As I did, Erik leaned over my arm, reaching with both arms up in a baby’s “pick-me-up” position. Before I could stop him, Erik had propelled himself out of my arms and into the man’s. Suddenly, a very old, smelly man and a very young, smelly baby consummated their love and kinship.

Erik in an act of total trust, love, and submission, laid his tiny head upon the man’s ragged shoulder. The man’s eyes closed, and I saw tears hover beneath his lashes. His aged hands—full of grime, pain, and hard labor—cradled my baby’s bottom and stroked his back. No two beings have ever loved so deeply in so short a time.

I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Erik in his arms.

His eyes opened, and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm, commanding voice, “You take care of this baby.” Somehow I managed to get out an “I will” from a throat that contained a stone. He pried Erik from his chest, lovingly and longingly, as though he were in pain.

I received my baby, and the man said, “God bless you, ma’am, you’ve given me my Christmas gift.” I said nothing more than a muttered thanks.

With Erik in my arms, I ran for the car. My husband was wondering why I was crying and holding Erik so tightly, and why I was saying, “My God, my God, forgive me.” I had just witnessed Christ’s love shown through the innocence of a tiny child who saw no sin, who made no judgment; a child who saw a soul, and a mother who saw a suit of clothes. I was a Christian who was blind, holding a child who was not. I felt it had been God asking me, “Are you willing to share your son for a moment?” when He shared His Son for all eternity. The ragged old man, unwittingly, had reminded me, “To enter the Kingdom of God, we must become as little children.”

I wonder if the baby in this story might be Jesus, who with joy has room in his heart to love even a smelly, homeless person. Wouldn’t Jesus be charming and disarming—touching people’s hearts in a way that opened them up, like this guy in the restaurant? Ah! Perhaps Christmas is the story of Jesus, propelling himself into the world, with joy making room in His life to love even a sometimes smelly, embarrassing person like me—like you! Why would this perfect, loving child launch himself into my arms—or yours? I don’t know. But that is grace! Jesus loving us before we can deserve it.

What I want to suggest to you and me tonight, is that at our best, we walk through this world, holding the love of Jesus like this baby. And when we meet someone, Jesus longs to launch himself into their lives, if they will receive Him. Sadly, more often than not, you and I are a lot like the narrator in our story, embarrassed by Jesus’ joy in living, and His openness and acceptance of other people. How often do we decide we would hold Jesus back from someone, not make a scene, not share with that person—judging them by their clothes, habits, culture, or color. The question is not whether Jesus loves us, or the other person, but whether we will love with the same love and trust. Tonight, we get a chance to ask ourselves again, with more love and joy from Jesus than we can hold, will we make room for Him and for each other?

Merry Christmas!

Making Room for Jesus Week 4: Walking Us…Home

When Morgan, our oldest kiddo, was two, God called us to leave Quincy, IL for a church just outside Milwaukee, WI. Now even as a two-year old, Morgan was quite the talker, and she loved the adventure of moving because we were excited about it. As we got closer to Christmas, one day she came into the kitchen and asked Cynthia what was on her mind: Does Santa know where to find us? In Morgan’s mind, we had moved, so maybe Santa would show up at the wrong house, and wonder why we weren’t there. We assured Morgan, Santa knows these things—Santa’s elves are always updating the database. She looked relieved…but then she looked puzzled. “But how is Santa going to get into our house? We don’t have a chimney!” Is this Christmas going to be different for you? Are you wondering if Jesus can find you with all the changes you have had? Fortunately, our passages for today help us answer these questions.

First, Jesus knows what it’s like to have a messy life. We like the idea of a neat and ordered existence, but usually, that’s just not how life works. In his book, Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People, Mike Yaconelli wrote, “All of us tend to seek comfort, to structure predictability, to eliminate the new and different from our experience. The word, 'messy,' strikes fear into the hearts of the comfortable. According to the comfortable, God does what He always does. ‘God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow,’ which they interpret as ‘stays the same.’ There are those in the church who honestly believe God is a nice and neat God. One quick run through the Bible gives you a different picture. The God of the Bible is a master of surprises: frightening clouds of smoke and fire, earthquakes, windstorms and firestorms, donkeys that talk, pillars of salt, oceans splitting apart, using a little boy to kill a giant, the Messiah in swaddling clothes and dying on a cross. No one can follow God and be comfortable for long.”[1] Our passage from Matthew today tells the story of how messy Jesus’ life started out. To start with, Mary and Joseph have to go to Bethlehem to register for taxes at a very inconvenient time, and then—wouldn’t you know it—the baby decides it’s time while to be born while they are in this strange city. And still, they make a life there, but then Mary, Joseph and two-year old Jesus had to flee from Palestine and move to Egypt, because the King was after them. Our passage tells the story of how they also moved back to Palestine from Egypt, certainly before Jesus was 12—though we don’t know exactly when. And they tried to move back to Bethlehem, but ended up in two days travel north in Nazareth. There’s nothing easy about all that! When we are dealing with our messy lives, trying to figure out where we are, trying to understand what our life is going to be like now—we know that Jesus gets it. Changing cultures, homes, jobs, relationships—yep, Jesus has been there, and Jesus gets that all that can be challenging. So Jesus doesn’t stand in judgment, but comes alongside us in the messiness of our lives.

Second, Jesus walks with us wherever we go. Have you ever tried walking hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm with someone? It’s trickier than people think, right? When I was in high school, I was 6’2”, and one young woman I dated was 4’11”! I like snuggling up to someone, so when we would go for a walk, she would put her arm around my waist, and I would put my arm around her shoulders. The next thing we had to figure out was how to match our strides, right? I mean, if I walked with my full long stride, she would have to jump on each step. So it was much easier for us if I shortened my stride. When I imagine Jesus walking with me, I think Jesus probably has to adjust to the way I’m walking and living—maybe He’s got a longer spiritual stride than I do. Maybe Jesus is bigger and stronger in the faith than I am. Still Jesus walks with us, runs and plays with us, goes with us wherever we do. Part of why I love the story of Jesus and His family evacuating to Egypt and then coming back, going to Bethlehem and then on to Nazareth, is that God cared for them throughout that journey. In the same way, Jesus is with us wherever we go, however we are, walking with us, sharing our days, loving us through thick and thin, through all the changes. Jesus walks with us wherever we go.

Finally, Jesus walks us home. One Halloween, my friend and I decided to watch the original Halloween movie—the one with Jason, and Jamie Lee Curtis? It was just the two of us watching the movie…late at night…in a big, empty, dark house…and we were pretty freaked out by the movie. So when the movie finished, my friend and I agreed that I would walk her home…at midnight…through the fog… and we were really glad when we got to her house. She went inside and I realized that I had miscalculated…because I was going to have to walk home…by myself…at midnight…through the fog…and did I say the grass was slippery from the dew? I stood there for a moment, undecided, then I ran like something was after me all the way home. That’s the thing: when we walk someone home, there comes a moment when we realize, “Wait! Who’s going to walk me home?” That’s where Jesus comes in. In John, on the last night Jesus was with His friends, He didn’t just pray for Himself. He didn’t just pray for His friends. He prayed for us. He prayed, “Father, I want those you have given to me to be with me, to be where I am. I want them to see my glory…” That means Jesus is not only going to walk with us, He’s also going to walk us home. We don’t have to worry that it’s dark or foggy or scary…or messy…in our lives. Jesus wants to be with us. Jesus wants to walk us home.

Morgan’s worries about Santa make a lot of sense for a two-year old. How is Santa going to know where we are? How is Santa going to get in with our presents? We told Morgan that chimneys were just a convenient way in for Santa. I mean after all, Santa has to park the reindeer on top of the house, so chimneys make it easier to get in. But Santa is magic…he doesn’t need a chimney to get in with the gifts. He can just walk in. Right? Morgan’s face brightened. Christmas was going to happen after all! But really, Morgan’s questions are ours too, especially at this time of the year: Does God know where we are? Can God reach us with His grace, even if we can’t see how? The answer of course is yes! That’s why Jesus came, to show us that our unpredictable, messy lives can’t get in the way—Jesus comes to us as we are. That’s why Jesus came, to show us that wherever we go, through every change, every heart-ache, every joy—Jesus will walk with us. It’s not magic…it’s better! Because at the end of every day, and especially the end of our days, Jesus will walk us home. Christmas is the story of Jesus coming, so God could walk us home.

[1]Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), pp 42-43.

Making Room for Jesus Week 3: Leave the Light on

When I was a senior in high school, I remember going to Homecoming at my high school with a member of our youth group. She loved to dance, and I loved dance, so we had a great time. After the dance ended, she wasn’t expected home for a little while, and the stars were beautiful, so we decided to park the car at my house, and walk in our neighborhood which didn’t have street lights…did I say the stars were really beautiful that night? So we pulled up to my house, and all the outside lights were on! I was a little irritated with all the light—was this really necessary?—so I quick ran inside to turn them off—I mean, really…I was 18 after all—and there’s my dad waiting up for me. It was impossible to be irritated with the man who was clearly tired, but doing this for me, so I told him that we were going for a walk, and that he could go to bed if he wanted. In some ways, many of us approach God a little like I approached my dad that night. We are busy out in the world, having a good time, and every so often, we check in at the church and are surprised to see that God has left the light on for us. We are adults, and we are quite good at managing our affairs, and maybe sometimes, we are not so keen for God to know everything we’ve been up to, so we might be surprised—perhaps a little irritated that God has been waiting up for us. “It’s ok, God! You don’t have to care what’s going on in my life. You can go to bed if you want.”

A few years later, I learned something more about God’s light, but not in a way I expected. As a college student, I worked at a wilderness camp in NH, just north and east of Wolfeboro. It was pretty dark out there, but the stars were so bright, that once my eyes got used to it, I could walk the quarter mile from the main lodge to my tent even at night without a problem. But one night it was pouring down rain, and I forgot my flashlight. While I could find the road when the lightning went off, the rest of the time, it was dark as pitch. Still, I could kind of feel my way towards my tent…if I hit any bushes, I was getting off the road. It was taking a long time to get to the side-road that led to my tent, and I was starting to get worried that I had gone past the turn off, when a bright beam appeared off to my right. It was my co-counselor coming up the side-road with a flashlight! I was so relieved! For thousands of years, humanity has been caught in the storms of life, sometimes drenched and cold, sometimes befuddled by the darkness. The darkness is not new to us—violence, oppression, loneliness, addiction, self-loathing, greed, hatred—but at just the right moment, in the middle of the storm, God made a light to shine. Ed Robb writes, “Two thousand years ago, God knew that his children were not going to win their battle against the darkness on their own, so God “Struck a match”—creating a flame that would ignite the world and the hearts of humankind.”[1] Jesus is that match, and His bright beam is still coming towards us, because God knows that we need a guide through the storm.

Which brings us back to my dad waiting up for me with all the lights on. This fall, when Cynthia had COVID, I stayed a few nights with Dad and Sue, and when I got there the first night, sure enough—the lights were all on and my dad was waiting up for me. I realized Dad doing that had nothing to do with how old I was or how responsible I was—Dad was going to leave the light on and be waiting up for me, because he loved me and that’s who he is In a sense, God always leaves the light on for us because He loves us and that’s how God rolls. God is always waiting up for us, hoping the light of Christ, the light of Christmas, will help us find our way home. But Jesus didn’t come to just leave the light on for us, because God is not just waiting for us to come home…Jesus is God heading out into the storm with a flashlight! How amazing to think of Christmas as God coming out into the darkness and storm with a light to look for us!

Of course, what’s even more amazing, is that once Jesus, the Light of the World, has found us in the storm, the Light of His Love begins to shine in us, and Jesus enables us to carry the light of His love into the storms of the world. How do you and I feel about that? Maybe we don’t feel like we could or should be ones to carry the light of Jesus’ love into the world. But as Nelson Mandela put it,

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,

talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so
that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

…

“Light and life, to all He brings,

Ris’n with healing in His wings

Hark! The herald Angels sing,

“Glory to the newborn King.”

[1]Ibid,  46

Making Room for Jesus Week 2: Welcoming Strangers

When I think of strangers, one of the funny moments that comes to mind was when Cynthia was having our first child, Morgan. We rushed to the hospital about 1:30 in the morning. There was a very kind nurse who helped us and stayed with us most of the time. Cynthia tells the story of how she was taking a breather from pushing, looked up and there were 12 people in the room! And she only knew me and the nurse! One of the things Ed Robb drew my attention to this week was how many strangers kept showing up to where Mary and Joseph after she gave birth to Jesus:

• Shepherds, fresh from the fields of sheep

• Wisemen, with their whole entourage, suddenly filling the space

• Maybe the innkeeper checking things out

Most new moms that I know would not have been a fan of any of those folks walking into the birthing room, but Mary and Joseph seem to take it all in stride. Now maybe that’s a cultural thing—back then, maybe folks were more open to strangers just showing up. But I wonder if there’s something deeper at work.

One of the deep themes of the Bible is God using what happens to us, to help us be deeper and more compassionate people. Did you hear it in our Old Testament passage today? “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Cynthia and I still remember with great gratitude how warm and welcoming you all were when we first got here. We were complete strangers and we had no clue about anything. So many of you, and our neighbors, and strangers we met in the street and at the grocery store helped us figure out where to go, and how to find what we needed, and how things worked here. Whenever we find someone new to the neighborhood, we try to figure out the best way to help them.

Another deep theme of the Bible is God working through strangers to bring grace. Ed Robb tells the story of “a young woman who received a call while grocery shopping, informing her that her grandfather had died. The death wasn’t unexpected, but to hear the news was still a shock. ‘I just stood there and went white and numb. An older couple happened to be standing near me and sensed something was wrong. They asked but I couldn’t make words come out. They sat with me for a while, got ahold of my best friend to come pick me up, AND bought the groceries in my cart…That was one of the worst days of my life and I miss my grandpa every single day, but that kindness and humanity makes me cry in a good way.’”[1] What an extraordinary moment of grace! Are there bad apples out in the world? Sure, and we have to be vigilant, but I think most of the people in the world are far more kind and compassionate than we often think.

The idea that we do the right thing for someone else, help someone in great need, take care of someone who is a complete stranger, is really a crazy idea on the face of it. But this Biblical idea—welcome strangers because you were once a stranger—I think captures something really powerful about grace. Sometimes we are the ones who need grace. We are the ones who are new and unsure, awkward, left out and lonely. We know what it’s like to be with people who think or dress or talk, mourn or celebrate differently from us. And sometimes we are the ones who can show grace.

Welcoming strangers is actually part of why the church is. I love you all and I’m glad we are together and that we have good times together, but God is calling for us to grow even more into the kind of group that looks for the immigrant and the foreigner, for those who are lonely or left out, who are struggling and need a hand, who are lost in all the busyness and wondering if there isn’t something more. For Jesus, “no one was really a stranger to him. Meeting a stranger was an opportunity to demonstrate love and inclusion into the community of God.”[2]

As it turns out, when Morgan was being born, not everything went according to plan, and that crowd of strangers in the room helped everything turn out just great. The best things in life involve risk, being vulnerable, and into that space comes grace. The whole idea of Christmas starts with God taking a risk and becoming vulnerable…and sending Jesus. “Immigration, becoming strangers in a strange land, is never easy. Our Lord experienced this difficulty not only when his family had to flee to Egypt for safety but also when he first came to earth. Isn’t the Incarnation the ultimate example of migration? The story of Christmas is rooted in the truth that God’s only begotten son left heaven and came to earth—Immanuel, God with us.”[3] In Jesus, God stepped out of immortality and was born as a baby. Because God knows what it’s like to be born, and grow up, and have friends, and lose friends, and even die—we know God can help us through, love us into the future. Who knows how and through whom God is going to bless us? Who knows how God will work through us be a blessing!

[1]Ed Robb, Making Room: Sharing the Love of Christmas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2020), pp. 29–30.

[2]Ibid, p. 29.

[3]Ibid, p. 41.

Making Room for Jesus Week 1: Being a Neighbor

Ok. So we are getting started with Advent, which means we are already thinking about Christmas coming. So let’s imagine for a moment that we were organizing a Christmas Pageant for Sunday School, and we were handing out parts. What parts do we have to find for the kids to play? No fair looking a Christmas pageant up on your phone, but you can use your Bibles if you want. Everything is in Luke 2 or Matthew 2. Let’s make a list together. Ready? Go!

[Take responses from the congregation.]

Great! You forgot one person: the innkeeper. You know why? Because he’s not in the Bible! The Bible mentions an inn, so we all just imagine there has to be an innkeeper, right? So I have to confess that I have always imagined the innkeeper as one of those older men who shouts, “Get off my lawn!” and complains about kids these days. “There’s no room at the inn,” I can hear him say, as if wondering what could Joseph and Mary be thinking of traveling at night without a reservation.

But I have been reading Ed Robb’s Making Room: Sharing the Love of Christmas, and I think I’ve changed my mind. I wonder if the innkeeper is the one who found space for the couple after all. I remember when Cynthia and I were traveling with our first child as an infant, we booked a hotel, and we asked for a crib. But they didn’t have one. We were just too tired by that point, and we gratefully went to find our room. It was clean and the bed was fine. Cynthia pulled out a dresser drawer and lined it with an extra blanket and some towels, and Morgan slept fabulously well that night. I wonder if Joseph and Mary were just glad to have a place out of the wind, warmed by the animals, a place where they could find refuge. So maybe, as Ed Robb suggests, the innkeeper was “doing the best he could to provide accommodations in a nearly impossible situation.”[1] Everything was full, but still this person found space.

I think Jesus calls us to make space in our lives for loving on people too. Of course, we have to prepare our hearts for what “making space” doesn’t and does mean. First, “making space” does not mean that we have to be perfect. In fact, how many times do we not invite someone into our car or our home or our office because it’s perfect enough? If we are honest, we are all a mess. Some of us are messy on the outside. Some of us are messy on the inside. We don’t have to be perfect to make space for someone, just real. So we can’t let our desire to be perfect keep us from making room.

Second, “making space” does mean showing hospitality. Ed Robb writes, “True hospitality involves providing shelter for others with our words and actions. True hospitality involves [the] healing of lonely hearts, of disconnected lives, and of the fear of being unknown and unloved.”[2]

Let me give you an example that may make things clearer. When I was growing up, people said of my mom that she “loved to entertain.” I’m not really sure that was true. You see, entertaining pressures us to be perfect, to have a perfect house, cook a perfect meal, and have a perfectly wonderful time. I think my mom’s real passion was hospitality—taking care of people, providing a place they could relax and be themselves, and know that however they were, they were loved. Sometimes we have to let go of the illusion of perfect entertaining, to find the reality of loving hospitality.

Amazing things happen when we make space for people.

When they first moved into their house, [Jenn] and her husband [Guy] did not take the time to get to know the neighbors…But Jenn’s three whippets and the two neighbor dogs began to engage in exuberant barking “conversations”…Often these barking matches would escalate, and the dogs would lean into the fence, eager to crash through to the other side. The result was frequently broken fence slats.

With each broken slat, Jenn and her husband, Guy, slowly got to know their neighbors, through exchanging names and phone numbers, contributing to a joint lumber fund for replacement slats, and exchanging ideas to outwit their persistent pups. Then late one afternoon, Jenn’s doorbell rang.

It was her neighbor, with another broken fence report. As he was about to leave, he stopped, paused for a minute, and then said, “I know you are a woman of faith. My wife and I see you and your husband going to church on Sunday mornings. Would you mind praying for my daughter?”

The neighbor’s eyes filled with tears as he told Jenn that his daughter, a relatively young woman, had recently been diagnosed with cancer. After listening to his story, Jenn…[asked] if they could pray together right then and there….In that moment, what had first been small acts of reaching out (mostly because of the actions of their dogs) became true neighborly bonding.[3]

We never know when making a little space might lead to God really making a difference through us.

I think lots of us approach the run-up to Christmas like the old version of the innkeeper. So many things to be done, so many people to think about, parties to go to, and traditions to manage. Does it ever seem to be too much? Do you ever feel overwhelmed, even grouchy? Does your life ever seem so full, that like the innkeeper we say, “There’s no room in the inn!” and close the door? “Whew!” we might say to ourselves. “There’s one thing I am not responsible for!” But, “All of us need to connect with someone who cares. Perhaps this was the first gift presented to Mary and Joseph on that bustling starry night in Bethlehem, before the wise men arrived with frankincense, gold and myrrh. Perhaps it was the gift of the innkeeper who cared. Someone with a listening ear who heard their need; someone who, though the inn was filled, made room.”[4]

This Advent, the Deacons and I believe God is calling for us to make space in our lives for Jesus to be born. The idea is that as we make room for our neighbors, not to entertain them, but to show them hospitality and acceptance, we make room for Jesus. In fact, we never know how God is going to use the space we make, to heal a wound, to offer forgiveness, to share a bit of the peace. When we make space for our neighbor, in fact, we are really sharing the love of Christmas, the love that Jesus came to share with us.

[1]Ed Robb, Making Room: Sharing the Love of Christmas (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020), p. 7.

[2]Ibid, p. 20

[3]Ibid, p. 17

[4]Ibid, pp. 21–22.

Seeking Peace, Finding God: Moving from Private Faith to Common Hope

So let me ask you this: do you have a sense of what the world should be? Right before our passage, today, Jesus lays out some of the ways the world is meant to be:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

And there are more, but even when I look at just these, I tend to think that Jesus is not paying attention or has got it wrong. What is blessed about being poor in spirit? Doesn’t that just mean that people are going to walk all over you? What is blessed about someone experiencing loss? By definition, aren’t they in pain? What is blessed about those who want to be peacemakers? More often than not, aren’t they are the ones who get smacked down for reaching out and trying to bring people together? How often do people trying to make a difference wind up on the losing side? Today, Jesus wants to encourage you and me.

First, we are the salt of the earth. Most of the time, we think of salt as flavoring. The curious thing about salt, is that in the right amount, you don’t taste it as a flavor. Rather, it brings out the flavors that are already there. You don’t need a lot of salt to completely change the way food tastes. When God makes a difference in our lives, we change and become the salt of the earth.

Second, we are the light of the world. Lots of us take light for granted, but it’s essential. An old story tells of a desert nomad who woke up hungry in the middle of the night. He lit a candle and began eating dates from a bowl beside his bed. He took a bite from one end and saw there was a worm in it, so he threw it out of the tent. He bit into the second date, found another worm, and threw it away also. He figured that if this went on, he wouldn’t have any dates left to eat, so he blew out the candle and quickly ate all the dates. I feel like our world is quite happy turning out the light so they cannot be bothered by the worms in the dates. We are the light of the world, and because we know Jesus, know Jesus’ love, and have Jesus’ hope—at our best—we remind people what is right and what is not. But light also reveals the world around us, and allows us to navigate without hurting ourselves. When God makes a difference in our lives, we change and become a source of light to the world.

Except we are not very much salt…we are not very big lights. Take courage! God seems to have created the world to take advantage of “not very much” and “not very big.” One of the great principles of the universe is called the “Butterfly Effect.” It was given this name by Edward Lorenz in 1961 when he was studying weather. He learned that no matter how much we know about the weather, the smallest change in local weather can have a global affect. The illustration he provided was of a butterfly flapping its wings in the Andes setting into motion a cascading chain of events that could cause flooding in Bangladesh.[1] A small change can have exponential consequences!

Of course, Jesus turns out to be a great example of this. He lived in a darkened world too—full of faceless global tides, harsh economic realities, greed, injustice, violence and corruption. How did Jesus turn these vast forces into hope? Instead of committing violence and injustice, Jesus absorbed it. Instead of avidly watchingthe extremes and harshness of his society, Jesus spent his life healing those wounded by the uncaring, power-hungry forces of His day. He healed lepers, partied with prostitutes, forgave sinners, and cared for the sick and lonely—helping them (and us!) develop healthy, loving relationships. We, too, are called to turn these vast, uncaring forces into hope, to use the one real tool we have—the love of God poured out in a torrent of grace for us. Jesus told his disciples, “You are salt for the world,” because he knew God’s love in us could bring flavor to a tasteless world. He told his disciples, “You are light for the world,” because he knew God’s grace in us could bring illumination to darkened minds, hope to the hopeless, relationship to the alienated, and peace to the troubled. He did not say it would always be easy or fun—they crucified him after all—but he did say “they will see the good that you do and praise your Father in heaven.”

It’s tempting to think we are not very much and not very big. Especially in a world in which some Christians have been a source of great pain and suffering, we may be tempted to not want to share our faith, or even show our faith. But Jesus gets how the world should be, and Jesus’ love is at work in our lives, and His hope compels us. He was just one man, but here we are. Just one man, but haven’t people’s lives—including ours—been transformed? And so through us, God adds flavor to the world, allowing people to experience Jesus’ grace on the playground and in the checkout line. God helps neighbors with our hands, is company for the lonely with our presence, and defends the weak with our courage. Because of Jesus’ love at work in us, our lives and our community are flavored with gratitude and joy. Through us, God also shines light into our community. Truth is revealed, justice is sought, and love is chosen. Because of Jesus’ love at work in us, the world sees more clearly its brokenness that needs fixing, its people who need looking after, and the way the world could be—should be. Jesus has more than enough grace and justice, power and love to change the world, but change will come only if we are salt…only if we are light. A private faith does only us good, but living out our faith in the midst of our darkened world? That’s how we and our world will find hope. Jim Wallis writes, “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.”[2]

[1]Gleick, in Chaos: Making of a New Science(NY:  Penguin Books, 1987), p. 23.

[2]Jim Wallis, Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus (NY: Harper, 2019), p. 262.

Seeking Peace, Finding God: Moving from Isolation to Community

A mother was making pancakes for her sons—Kevin who was five, and Ryan who was 3. The boys started arguing over who would get the first pancake. The mom thought this was a good moment to teach them a lesson about sacrifice. She said, “If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake…I can wait.” Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!” We laugh, but at some level many of us think like that: “I love the idea of loving like Jesus…you go first.” We and our society wrestle with trying to understand who Jesus is and what Jesus wants, simultaneously drawn to Jesus as He welcomes and challenges, and at the same time, not really sure about how far to go with living like Jesus. Jesus gets that, and in our passage today, Jesus shows us a new way to live.

First, we know the right answer, but we often want to make God more manageable. When I was a senior in high school, I attended a leadership camp where they would bring leaders of character from all sorts of walks of life. One of their guests was a foreign correspondent for ABC News. After he finished speaking, he took questions. I asked, “How do you know how to keep yourself from being corrupted?” He looked me straight in the eye. He said, “You know,” and he held my gaze for a moment. In that moment, I was pierced by his gaze. In our passage, the lawyer gets it right—Love God and love your neighbor—but that’s not enough for him. So he wants to justify himself, to make sure that he’s checked all the necessary boxes. And don’t we do that too? “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” And we want to know…what does that mean?...because we know…we know…that loving God and loving our neighbor is more than just checking off boxes and then moving on. But we ask…and we hope that love will be simple and manageable.

Second, there are always reasons not to stop. A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars. Then wham! Something smashed into the Jag’s side door! He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where something had hit the car. There was a brick lying in the street. The angry driver jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car, shouting, “Just what the heck are you doing? That’s a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost me a lot of money. Why did you do it?” “Please, mister…please!” the frightened young boy cried out. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do,” he pleaded. “I threw the brick because no one else would stop...” With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the small boy pointed to a spot just around a parked car. “It’s my older brother,” he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.” Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.” Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat, he hurriedly lifted the bigger, non-communicative, handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. Nothing too serious. “Thank you so much,” the grateful child told the stranger. Too shaken to speak, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. Are we driving so fast through our lives, that the only way to get our attention and help is for a brick to hit our car? In Jesus’ story, the priest passes by the wounded man. So does the lay minister. How many reasons did they have for passing by? Are we so focused on where we are going and getting there fast, on what we need to do, on the next box we have to check, that God struggles to get our attention?

Third, we are all neighbors—every act of compassion goes farther than we think. About fifteen years ago, in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, a mosque moved next door to a Christian church, named Heartsong. Steve Stone, pastor of Heartsong, writes, “We had been talking with them from the moment we knew they were moving next door to us. These were not enemies or strangers but neighbors, acquaintances, and friends. When they asked us if they could use our space [while they were working on their building]…what do we do? How do we respond? Our response has to be grounded in our love for Jesus and our commitment to follow only him…Jesus intentionally chose as the hero of [the Good Samaritan] one whom his hearers would most ‘naturally’ have feared and hated. He said that the one they despised out of hand is the very one who was the neighbor…The decision was based only on our understanding of the mission and nature of the church.” So they said, “Of course!” A couple years later, the anti-Muslim sentiments were rising, and CNN aired a piece about this church and this mosque, showing this pastor and this imam. Telling this story, Jim Wallis says, “You could tell by watching that these two clerics knew, respected, and liked each other…The reverend and the imam told the story of how their communities had come together…and even minister[ed] together in the community.” But the best part is the story that Wallis heard when he called up Steve Stone. “[Last night,] I got a phone call at two in the morning. ‘Is this the pastor?’ a voice said. ‘Yes, this is Steve Stone,’ I replied. Then the voice on the phone said, ‘We are a roomful of Muslim men, calling from Kashmir, Pakistan [one of the most conflicted places in the world], and we saw the CNN segment. We were all silent for a long time afterward. Then one of us said, ‘I think God is speaking to us through that pastor.’ Another said, ‘How could we ever kill those people?’ I must tell you what happened with another one of us because he can’t speak English to tell you himself. He went out to the small Christian church near our mosque and washed it clean with his Muslim hands. Now we are all back together to call you. Pastor, please tell your congregation that we don’t hate them, we love them. And from now on we will protect that little Christian church near us because of what you did.’”[1] The curious thing is that sometimes we are the neighbor who helps someone who is hurt, and sometimes we are the neighbor who is on the ground hurt and needing help. Who would have thought that acts of compassion and neighborliness in Memphis could forge relationships between neighbors in Pakistan!

Loving like Jesus did is way more than figuring out who gets the first pancake. Loving like Jesus did is more than a checkbox on our life’s to-do list—eternal life secured…check. What Jesus seems to understand about us is that we use checkboxes and reasons to keep God at arms’ length, to keep God manageable. What Jesus longs for is a relationship that’s much closer—to tell Him first about what we’re going through, to put Him first in our decisions, to ask Him first when we hit a rough patch, to seek Him first. We stop trying to manage God and let God manage us. When we do that, when we love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, and when we love our neighbors as ourselves, change comes to us. We don’t just show gratitude, we become grateful people. We don’t just do kind things, we are kind people. We don’t just do loving things, we are loving people. Becoming. That’s who we are. That’s why we are here. To help each other down that road of becoming. That’s why we are here. To show compassion to neighbors who need it, to defend those who are bullied, to open our doors and our embrace as wide as Jesus has opened His arms to us, so our community can become. Loving like Jesus did means sacrifice and inconvenience. How will they know what loving like Jesus looks like? Only because we love like Jesus first. Grace has a way of traveling much farther and changing people more than we ever imagined.

[1]Jim Wallis, Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus (NY: HarperOne, 2019), pp. 40–42.