The hopes and fears of all the years...

I found it very difficult to get "in the Christmas spirit" this year. Perhaps it was the stress of writing my most important paper of my seminary career, or perhaps it was learning a new language I will rarely use, or maybe it was the fact that it seems that the Christmas season started so early that I automatically turned myself off from wanting to be in the good and cheerful Christmas mood. Perhaps you had similar feelings this season. Maybe you had to run around getting everything ready so your family would have the perfect holiday that you were unable to experience it the way you wanted. Perhaps a loved one was brought to the more immediate presence of our Savior, and that made the season especially difficult. There are many reasons we all have for not experiencing Advent and Christmas the way we hope to. I'm not going to pretend to have any answers to why this season is sometimes the most difficult. I don't think there is an easy answer for everyone, but I must say that I took comfort in reading the scripture passages for today.

 

            I took comfort because I have come to realize that the words of prophets while seemingly daunting and perhaps even scary, have a strange comfort for me. The prophet Isaiah was the voice of some of the most prophetic visions of the coming Christ and those visions were not exactly what we would consider warm and mushy visions of God. Between the 50^th and 53^rd chapters of Isaiah, we get the following prophecies. Isaiah saw visions of the Savior who would be beaten, mocked and spit on, (50:6) One who would be rejected and despised by people (53:1-3) One who would die for our sins (53:4-6) and be "numbered with the transgressors" (53:12). While these visions might seem to be dark and sad, we still have Isaiah who greatly rejoices in the Lord…his whole being shall exult in God. For someone who has seen such terrible visions and has dreamed terrible dreams, we learn that the prophet still has this amazing hope because in the end, he knows the purpose behind it all.

 

            That brings us to the Gospel of Luke, which is filled with prophecy from the time of Moses to the very moment Jesus was blessed. The author of the text wants to make an important point to show us that Simeon was "Guided by the Spirit". This is crucial to understanding the text because it means to tell us that the next words are not his words, but are words which are far greater than he could ever come up with on his own.

 

            To understand Simeon's context, I want you to imagine the baptism of a small child or the confirmation of a young adult in our own church. This would be the part where the pastor lays their hands on the child and gives a word of blessing. Only we pastors today try to speak only positive words in order to bless. Rarely, if ever, do we hear a pastor say negative words in a blessing, which I'm guessing is because we as pastors are scared that they might come true and therefore we only stick to the good, positive blessings. The Holy Spirit doesn't allow him to do that. That is the sense of humor of God. It had been revealed to Simeon that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. I'm pretty sure that he might have worked on what words he would say for a long, long time. I know I wouldn't leave those important words to chance. I'd be stuttering the whole time. So imagine Simeon, a very old man who knew that he would be dying soon, once he saw this child, wanting to say the words he had been rehearsing for years…perhaps even decades, and the Holy Spirit giving him new words to say right then and there.

 

            When we think of the most famous words which the Spirit has spoken, we think of "This is My Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased".(Matthew 3:17) But we rarely think of this sentence which comes from Simeon… "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too." 

 

            These aren't easy words to swallow and its my guess that we rarely think of them concerning our Lord and Savior, yet here they are, confronting us this morning. These words are quite scary if you think about them. The words speak of the rising and falling of many…about our inner thoughts being revealed…and a sword will pierce our own souls…

 

            I want everyone to open up their hymnal and turn to page 282…we're going to sing only the first verse of this hymn.

 

"O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie;

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light;

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."

 

The last line of this verse of one of our favourite Christmas hymns sums up well the words which Simeon speaks. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Christ. They will cause the rise and fall of many…our inner thoughts will be revealed… and a sword will pierce our souls. Until this spring, I would have told you that these thoughts scared me too. The idea that Christ is the sign who will reveal our inner thoughts really and truly scared me. No one knew my sins. I had gone my whole life thinking that God knew my sins and that was ok…no one else needed to know…and on some level, no one ever asked me to confront my own sins. This April, I spent a few days with Brother Jim Hicks, the president of the western district. We went out into the woods of Wisconsin for one afternoon and there my brother confronted me with the fact that I am a sinful man and I tell you it was difficult. It wasn't much of a two sided conversation…mostly because I sat there realizing that if I wasn't going to allow my sin to be revealed, I was not going to be effective as a pastor, as a leader, or even as a Christian. We spent a few hours outside in the cold of the Wisconsin spring…most of the time we just sat in the silence…I think we were both thinking of our sins and how we need to be revealing them to one of our fellow sisters or brothers in Christ.

 

"A parent who loves their child knows there are times when the child will be angry at them for being corrected. A mature parent takes no comfort in rebuke. A mature Christian takes no pleasure in preaching repentance or challenging Christian infants that they are stagnant in their faith. Yet, the mature parent or Christian is willing to operate if necessary—even if the razor is double-sided; even when the pain is deep."[1] Brother Hicks did that for me earlier this year…and I am eternally grateful to him for it.

            As this year ends, I hope that you have someone who will help you confront your sins. Perhaps you have already had someone do that in your life…if you've had someone do that with you, I'd love to hear your story. If you haven't. I hope you can look around this room and realize that there are people who will love you no matter what your sins are. As this year comes to an end and a new one begins, we must realize that while our fears are realized in Christ, so is our hope. When the sword pierces our own soul, we become part of the many who will rise in Israel. This is an amazing blessing which has come to the world…In our own dark streets, shines the everlasting light of Christ. A few days ago when you held up that bees wax candle, you signaled to the world that you wanted to be confronted by the light of Christ. That you wanted you sins to be seen by Christ so that they can be forgiven. It is my hope that you will all continue to shine that light into the world…confronting and being confronted in this new year. Amen.

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[1] One Family Outreach Jerry Goebel. http://onefamilyoutreach.com/bible/Luke/lk_02_22-40.html

Christ the King 2008

Does anyone here know the name Carl Gustav? No?  Let me tell you some of his titles, perhaps it will help you figure out who he is. Carl Gustav is the Lord and Master of the Order of the Seraphim.  He is Lord and Master of the Order of the Sword. He is the Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose.  He is the Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer. Did that help any of you? Well, Carl Gustav is more commonly known as the King of Sweden and during my senior year of high school, I lived in his kingdom. Have any of you lived in a kingdom?

Fortunately for me, Carl Gustav isn’t a king with any real powers. Most of his duties are ceremonial, but for the most part, people still admire and respect him. Because of this, I don’t really know what living under the authority of a king with actual power is like. I don’t know what it would be like to live in a kingdom where the last and final word was that of the King. In fact, as Americans, on some level, we are taught that to disagree with our leaders is a positive attribute. I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of us have disagreed with our out going president at some point in the last 8 years.

Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to ponder what it would be like to live under another person’s kingship. What came to mind was the fact that whether or not we actually know the king on a personal level, we would undoubtedly know what the King expects of us. Whether out of love or fear, we would most likely do things which would please the King in order to gain his favour. We would know which laws were in place for the good of the public, and which laws were considered treasonous and going against the good will of the monarchy. All of these things would help to keep us in line, doing the things which would please our ruler.

This sounds well and good if our King is good. If our King isn’t so good, it might be rather unpleasant. Now, at this point, after hearing the gospel lesson for today, as well as listening to my sermon so far, it might be fairly safe to assume that you know where my sermon is going to go from here. Perhaps you’re thinking that I’m going to talk about feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, and taking care of and visiting the sick.  These things are the heart of the good news, and after spending just a few months here in this congregation, I can honestly say that you are doing your best to live it out. Through the new Angel Food ministry program, you are seeking ways to provide food to the hungry. I’ve witnessed how you all have welcomed Christie, previously a stranger, into the life of this congregation. It is evident that you all care about orphans in Africa who cannot clothe themselves, and you are raising money to do that. And every week since I’ve been here, in the announcements, I hear about the concentrated effort the church is making in order to reach out to those who have not been here in a while, and while that’s not being sick in the traditional sense, it is certainly sick in the spiritual sense. Congratulations. You are all doing things which are at the heart of God’s kingdom.

Now I’d like everyone to open their bulletin and pull out the nametag and either slip it into the nametag you’re currently wearing or stick it somewhere on your shirt. Each one of you is now wearing the name Jesus. I ask you to wear it now to remind you of two things. First is to remind you that you as a part of this congregation are doing your best to live in a way which Jesus, our King, desires. The second thing is to remind you that when someone outside these walls, who doesn’t know what Jesus’ Kingdom is all about, realizes that you are a member of this Kingdom, they do not see the same thing as you.

The question I hope you are asking yourself is: “What do they see when they come to realize that I am living in God’s kingdom?” Unfortunately sisters and brothers, the answer is not nearly as positive as the way we see ourselves.

There’s a book out by two authors entitled “unchristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity… and why it matters.”

The authors identify six different areas which non-Christians use as reasons for not becoming a part of the body of the church. They say that the church is hypocritical, too focused on getting people saved, that we are anti-homosexual, we are too sheltered, that we are too political, and that we are too judgmental.

These are the six main perceptions of Christians from those who are not Christians. Some of them are true, some are not, but whether or now we think they are true, it is how we, followers of Christ, are perceived.

The first is that we are Hypocritical, which is the perception that Christians say one thing but live something entirely different. To be fair, we are all, at some point, hypocrites, but as people living in God’s kingdom, we are held to a higher standard by those outside the faith. There’s a story about a 24 year old single mother who went into a church, and she found that lots of advice and thoughts were shared with her, but the church members kept reminding her that she had no husband, and that she ought to have one…unfortunately, some of them were divorced and the young mother took those giving her advice to be hypocrites. This perception needs to be changed. We as people living in God’s kingdom need to work at being transparent about our flaws and act first, talk second. (pg 41)

The second perception is that we are insincere about loving people and concerned with only converting others. As Moravians, I’m going to guess that most of you feel that we’re really low on the “Christians who try to convert others” scale. This is probably a safe thing to say, but we are called to make others disciples of Christ. The question is not if we should be doing it, but how we go about doing it. Our new perception must be that we are people who cultivate relationships and environments where others can be deeply transformed by God. (pg 67)

The third perception is that we Christians show contempt for gay’s and lesbians. As I’m sure anyone who watches the news, this is a center issue, known as proposition 8, in California. It is church members who have funded the opposition to this bill, and now the homosexual population are especially hostile towards people of faith. As people in Christ’s kingdom, we are to show compassion and love to all people, regardless of their lifestyle. We don’t have to agree with them, but we must love them. (91)

The fourth perception is that we are very sheltered. Non Christians consider us boring, unintelligent, old-fashioned, and out of touch with reality. They consider Christians to be caught in a Christian “Bubble”. Raise your hands if you think you have more non-Christian friends than Christian friends? This is one of the toughest battles we face as we grow in faith. The longer we are Christians, the fewer non Christian friends one has. The new perception we must cultivate is that we as Christians are engaged, informed, and offer sophisticated responses to the issues people face in their every day life. (121).

The fifth perception is that we are too political. This definitely comes from what we now know as the “religious right”. Currently, there is a movement of the religious left which is trying to gain momentum as a response to the conservative movement. If you’re a part of my Sunday School class, you would know that we’re looking at different ways which Jesus was political but how we might not be a member of a particular political party. We must be characterized by respecting people, thinking biblically, and finding solutions to complex issues. (153)

The sixth and finally perception is that we are too judgmental. We are seen as prideful and quick to find fault in others. It is unfortunate that we do this. The truth is that we are all judgmental. The Children’s Chat today was a thinly veiled attempt to point out how we are judgmental about things like clothing, lifestyle, anything which makes a difference between “us and them”. The new perception we must show the world is that we show grace to the world by finding the good in others and see their potential to be Christ followers. (181)

 

Perhaps you are now wondering, after all these things have been identified, why I think they are important. After all, I have already mentioned what is at the heart of the Gospel. If we’re doing the work of Jesus, what does it matter what others may think? It matters because if we cannot begin to overcome our image, we will have trouble fulfilling another commandment Jesus gave us, which is to make more disciples. If the negative perceptions and realities of the citizens of God’s kingdom (that’s code for you and me) are mainly what people see when they know we belong to Christ, then we cannot begin to make them disciples, and therefore, cannot have them join us in doing the work of the kingdom.

As I come to an end of this sermon, we are going to rise and sing a hymn, and then, once it is over, we are going to greet one another. But this time, we will be greeting one another, hopefully with a new view for two reasons. The first is that when you put it on, I want you to remember that Christ’s kingdom is within you. The second reason is that I hope that we all begin to change the perception that non Christians have of us by us doing a better job of seeing Jesus in others. When we combine the feeding of the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick with an attempt to change the way we as Christ followers are perceived, is when I think we will see the kingdom of Jesus become alive in ways we have yet to imagine.

The question is, can we do this? Can we continue to do the things God calls us to do in today’s scripture while trying to be transparent about our flaws so as not to be viewed as hypocrites? Can we be truly interested in other people, inviting them into not only a relationship with God, but with ourselves as well? Can we show more compassion and love to people with whom we disagree? Can we offer sophisticated responses to the issues people face in their every day life? Can we show that we are biblically literate and share it in a meaningful, transformative way? Can we show grace to the world by finding the good in others and see their potential to be Christ followers? I think we can, and I hope you will all join with me in taking a step on the right path, by standing and greeting everyone around you, not by viewing their name, but by trying to see Christ in them, for that is how we best see Christ’s kingdom. Amen.

A New Map

One of my favourite TV shows was the West Wing. It is no longer on the air, but one episode featured a cartographer trying to get those with political power to accept a map which basically puts the "south" on the top of the map and the "north" on the bottom. This is the map that is shown above. This is all well and good for getting us to think about how we can equate North with good and south with bad...among other things...but today I came across a website which has hundreds of maps according to hundreds of different statistics. 

http://www.worldmapper.org/index.html 

Check it out. Play around with the different maps...they are amazing to view. Especially try looking at the maps which track Disease. Africa becomes the biggest continent while others shrink...very interesting stuff.

Today's Sermon on Baptism/Stewardship

Any Sunday which a congregation has the opportunity to celebrate baptism is certainly a day to rejoice. The fact that baptism is something to be celebrated is by far one of the strangest things we do as followers of Jesus Christ. The words which are spoken in the baptismal liturgy are not ones to be taken lightly. We say that in the sacrament of baptism, “through grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are united with Christ, cleansed by his saving work, enter into the fellowship of the church, and are called to a life of faith and willing obedience.” This is a statement which if lived out, means that we are not called to live the life or an ordinary person. We are called to be different from those who seek lives of wealth, lives of place and power. Instead, we are called to lives of sacrifice, lives of service, lives of stewardship.

If this is the case, then you might be wondering why we’re using a gospel text which is traditionally used to talk about taxes. Countless sermons have been preached on “Render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s.” Now of course we don’t have a Caesar today, but we can easily substitute the word government or president. When these sermons are preached, we tend to applaud Jesus’ wisdom in a moment of confrontation. Unfortunately, this is where the bulk of sermons seem to end, on feeling ok about giving what we need to the powers that be.

I wish we had a recording of Jesus answering those who were trying to trap him. Because I think Jesus paused for dramatic effect when he said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” I think he paused so that the full force of the conclusion of his words would be felt by everyone listening. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s… and to God what is God’s.” “While there is a strict parallelism between the two halves of this statement, they are by no means of equal significance, because Caesar’s role is so vastly inferior to God’s. That is, Jesus is not saying, ‘There is a secular realm and there is a religious realm, and equal respect must be paid to each.’ The second half of Jesus’ statement practically annuls the first by preempting it.”[1] Yet rarely do we focus on giving to God what is God’s.

Why is this so? Why is it difficult to focus on giving God what is God’s? I mean, I’m pretty sure everyone in this room can give the answer of what belongs to God. It’s taught to us in Sunday school. EVERYTHING belongs to God. Because our answer as Christians is engrained into the way we already think, we sometimes lose the fact that the concept of giving to God what belongs to God is a call for total commitment unlike anything the rest of the world has ever known.[2]

The fact that we have the word God on our money has done us a great disservice in our stewardship of the things that are God’s. Somehow we assume that because God’s name is printed on it, that money is really all we need to give. But, my brothers and sisters, money is not what it is that is stamped with God’s image. It’s us! It’s You and it’s me! When we say everything is God’s, it is not something we can do in part. We cannot give our minds but not our hearts. We cannot give God our muscle but not come to worship or education classes. We can’t simply give God an hour or two a week. God longs for us to give everything. All 168 hours per week. While many of us give only 2% of our income, others 10% of it, God desires 100%.[3]

For me, the most interesting part of this Gospel text today is not the fact that Jesus is so clever as to avoid the trappings of those who would cause him harm, but that Jesus isn’t taking part in the whole financial system that Rome would have everyone be in. Neither Jesus nor his followers pulled out a Roman coin to help make the point Jesus was trying to make. When Jesus and the disciples practiced stewardship (giving everything to God and not partaking in the prevalent economy), they had to sacrifice (disciples leaving their families and friends); they had to serve others, even when they didn’t want to (Jesus had them serve the 5000 when the disciples wanted to send them away).

This type of stewardship, this type of sacrifice, this type of service begins during our Baptism. A few minutes ago, all of you proclaimed that you were baptized into the death of Jesus. Your old selves were buried with him in your baptism, when you repented of your sins, so that we might be raised to live a new life. Not only that, but you were reminded that through your baptism, you were placed in a covenant relationship, not only with God, but with the rest of the people who have made the same commitment. Every Sunday I have the privilege of leading worship and I get to look out into the pews and see the worshipping faces of a hundred people who are connected by the baptismal covenant. That connection is stronger than death because that baptismal covenant is life! It is Love! And every day we get to show love to the world around us through our stewardship of everything God has entrusted to us. In the multitude of ways in which we serve one another, in how we sacrifice ourselves for our neighbor because Christ did everything for us already.

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[1] Douglas R.A. Hare. “Matthew: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.” John Knox Press, Louisville. 1993. Pg 254.

[2] Ibid pg 255.

[3] Brian Stoffregen. Exegetical Notes. (Available online) http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt22x15.htm

Pictures of Meza's kids and some of their friends

Hospitality Sermon

As surely as god lives, I must tell you that we in our Western culture fail at hospitality. It isn't because we don't try, but it seems is mostly due to convenience. One of the things this congregation is currently working on is the gift of hospitality, but until I went to Tanzania, hospitality was really more of a concept rather than something I had ever fully experienced or even offered.

As you may recall, a few months ago I invited myself into your homes for a meal as I challenged you to do something Christ did in order to help you experience what it means to have Christ live in you more fully than you already knew. Truthfully, I have no idea who took up that challenge, but for the people who took me into their homes, one of the byproducts it produced was hospitality. Now, the next time you are a guest in someone else's home, take notice of all the things your host does for you.

Usually a good meal is the center of such hospitality. If you are staying the night, fresh linens and clean towels are usually also a crucial ingredient in being a good host. I say these things to you because while I spent the month of July in Tanzania, two things happened which opened my eyes to the meaning of hospitality. The first thing which happened was that on my first night there, I opened my Bible to the first page and began to read. Normally I prefer to read the Gospels because I love reading the parables, but because the friend I was staying with had told me to prepare for a lot of dust, a little free association reminded me that God created Adam from dust, and so I began reading from Genesis.

Reading the Hebrew Scriptures from Africa gave these words new life for me. Stories about flocks of animals were no longer stories when you're walking down the dusty road and have to wait to pass because a young boy is shepherding 30 goats past you. Or in the city where I was staying, Mbeya, which is in a valley between two mountains, every morning when I would go for a walk, I would look at the mountains in amazement, not just because of their beauty, but because the top third was covered in a thick cloud. When you look at it, you cannot help but think this is what Mt. Sinai looked like when Moses went up to meet with God.

Then when I came to Genesis 18, my eyes were opened again to something we might normally overlook. The parts of Genesis 18 which we didn't read today deals with the three visitors telling Abraham that his Wife would have a son within a year, and Sarah, who is hiding and listening in on the conversation, laughs.

So many sermons focus on the faith, or lack there of, of Sarah. They go on and on and on about how she laughed about conceiving a child due to the fact that she was 80 years old. But today, we did not listen to that part of the story because we need to focus on the hospitality which Abraham and Sarah displayed in their old age.

In our culture of convenience, we tend to show hospitality of food by sharing where we obtained our food from. You might say, "I got these steaks from Wegmans" to show your generosity. Of if you really like the person, you might say "I got this cake from L&M" (a famous local bakery). But in the time of Abraham and Sarah, and still to a large degree in Tanzania, hospitality is shown in a different way.

For example, instead of buying Prime Rib, you would buy a live chicken, carry it home, and then prepare it for your guest that night. Not only would you give your guest a room to sleep in, but that usually means kicking someone out of their room while you are there, so that they might sleep on the floor so you can rest. If you're staying for a longer amount of time, you might offer to put your guest's clothes in the laundry, but in Tanzania, it means an hour of scrubbing dirty clothes in a bucket of dirty water on your hands and knees and then hanging them up to dry. Here we might offer a shower with our fluffiest towels, and there it means boiling a pot of water so that you can get all the dust off your body with warm water. I'm not sharing these things with you in order to make you feel bad about how we do hospitality in our own culture, but to let you know the magnitude of the hospitality found in Scripture.

When Abraham saw the three strangers, he and his family went above and beyond what was required. Just a quick side note. In Swahili, the word they have for stranger, mgeni (m●gay●nee) is the exact same word as guest.

Abraham brought water to his guests so that they might wash their hands and feet, (remind you of Jesus?) had Sarah bake bread using 6 gallons of flour. He also had a calf prepared for the 3 strangers and brought them milk and curds. This is truly a feast! Just to get a bit of perspective, this is approximately the amount of bread that Sarah baked for just one of the guests (at this point, I revealed 12 loaves of bread and passed them around the congregation. Everyone took a chunk and passed it around. There was pleanty left over from the 65+ people there). If you wanted to make the equivalent amount of pancakes, that would be about 192 pancakes per person.

For anyone wondering why Sarah and the servants did most of the work, while Abraham merely got the water, let me tell you a quick story. The first week I was with my friend and host, he took me around the dusty city and we visited some of his friends and other pastors. A pastor's salary is about $175 a month, which boils down to about $5 per day. When we would go visiting someone else's house, after we exchanged greetings, the women of the house would leave and go and buy the guests and the men of the house a soda as well as prepare a small snack, of which the cost was well over 10% of a day's wages. During that time the man of house would engage us in conversation, and when the food was prepared, he would pour water over our hands to cleanse them both before and after the meal. It amazed me that the same traditions which can be found in the earliest parts of the Bible are still carried out today, even if we replace milk and curds with Coke. These small feasts of hospitality are amazing events which lead us to showing grace, love and humility to our guests.

Listen again to the words from 1 Peter 4:7-11."The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sin. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift they have received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in various forms. If one speaks, they should do so as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God should be praised through Jesus Christ.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I do not know if I will ever have the privilege of preaching to you again, so please take what I say now to you to heart… If you are to help transform the world into that which Jesus Christ calls us, you must love each other deeply. You must offer hospitality to one another not out of duty but out of joy. Use the gifts which you have been blessed with to serve others. And in all these things, praise and glorify our Lord. When you do these things, God will take care of the rest. Amen.

Halfway through my trip

Ah, I am officially halfway done with my time in Tanzania. So far it has truly been a learning experience. Everything is so different from what life is like back in the states. This is not going to be much of an update, other than to say I will be traveling to some other towns with Meza as a part of his job is taking him to sit in on his students as they teach class at secondary schools in other parts of the country. I doubt I'll be able to access my email until the 25th or maybe up to the 27th. The best way to contact me is via text message. If you know the number, feel free to send me something...although it's appreicated if you do it early in the morning...as I'm 8 hours ahead of you all time wise.

Have a good week everyone!

My first week...

July 2... Wow what a long day. I was up at 5:45am in PA only to go to sleep at 9pm the next day. My flights were thankfully uneventful with little conversation except for a few minutes with a 30 something Indian woman who was on a business trip. She was in the fashion business and was on a trip to check on some locations back in India after some flooding in the area. I asked her why she went into the business and she answered quite refreshingly with "to piss off my dad". It was a shockingly sincere answer to give a stranger. When I landed in Dubai, I got an iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts and no food...my goal was to eat as little food as possible so I would avoid using the plane/airport toilets. Always good to avoid such things in my opinion. I got through Tanzanian customs without a problem and found Meza right away. I exchanged money and went to our hotel which had a full sized bed, toilet, showers with only one temperature, and a tv which got Fox sports. It seemed quite nice, although the neighborhood would have been considered a slum, although I later found out that all neighborhoods are similar here. Then we went into Dar Es Salaaam to buy a bus ticket for the next morning for Mbeya. People were shouting out that "here comes a white person" in Swahili which I found rather strange...like people couldn't tell on their own. After getting our ticket, we went to dinner overlooking the Indian Ocean. On the way back to the hotel, our taxi was hit by a small bus who was trying to merge into our lane, but it only moved the side view mirror a bit. No damage was done. I passed out from being so tired once we got back to the hotel.

July 3... Up at 5 am to get the bus to Mbeya. It took about 11 or so hours to get there. We stopped only three times, once to pee, which everyone, males, on a wall, once for lunch, and another one function break in the afternoon. The farther you get from Dar, the worse the roads get, as well as the conditions of the house. About 3 hours outside the main city, you see a lot of mud brick and thatched roof houses, which is really only upgraded by a tin roof with fairly brittle bricks. The slum I mentioned yesterday is not really a slum, but how everyone lives. When I arrived at Meza's house, he showed me around and I have a small room to myself with a nice sized bed. They showed me the toilet, which is a nice hole in the ground and no TP, although it arrived the next day. Meza lives with his wife, 3 kids, and two or three brothers in law. A very crowded house, but cozy.

July 4... Woke up about 8am this morning and went to watch the boys play with the soccer ball I brought them. The two oldest set up goals about 5 meters apart and tried to score on one another. Shortly after watching I walked to the store down the road with Rafael, one of Meza's brothers in law who speaks English quite well. We bought bread and butter, which was expired and we had to go back, and something else, which I didn't catch. Meza was awaiting us when we got back. He was on his way to work and said to relax, so after breakfast of 2 pieces of bread and a hard boiled egg, I went back to bed, hopefully ending any jet lag. I woke up around 4pm where lunch was waiting for me. As a guest, it seems that I am to eat alone or with Meza, while everyone else either waits until I am done or they eat in some other room in the house. It is very interesting to experience what it means to be an honored guest.

All of the doors in this house squeak, and not only that, but they all squeak differently, which means you can tell which door opens and closes or who is in the toilet. It makes me realize how much privacy I enjoy and how much I like to be sneaky in my own life. My first thought was to buy oil for the doors, but I think that might be a bit presumptive. Also, everytime I walk into the living room, Meza's mother in law leaves. It was all very strange to me. I asked Meza at dinner why this happened, and he said it was normal. This afternoon, I took a walk and Joseph followed me around the block. When I came back, I played some futbol with the kids in the neighborhood who tried to impress me with their English skills.

July 5... What a long day. I didn't sleep very well because in the middle of the night, all the neighborhood dogs howl and bark. Meza tells me that they are kept inside most of the day, but at night, they are free to roam. Today, Meza and I went into town. We stopped at the bank, then had breakfast at a local place known for their world recipies, which mostly included parts of animals which I wouldn't normally consider delicious. I stuck with scrambled eggs and toast. We took a dali-dali, which is short for 5-5 which is how many shillings it used to cost, now it costs 250 shillings, which is about 25 cents a ride. On the way home, we stopped at two houses and sat for a while. As a guest, the host usually provides soda and perhaps a snack, which if offered, one should eat generously to avoid making the host feel bad. Sometimes the host eats too, but if they do, the women never eat when the men do. After we made it home, we took a short rest and went to the home of Meza's best friend, who was very friendly. We talked about some of America's strange customs, like feeding ducks in a park, or how our houses are so big that the houses the people here live in are only as big as a garage, and cold like one too. While all this is true, it was hard to take in with an open mind. I never considered myself very patriotic, but I felt it at this moment. I feigned humility, but was difficult to sit through. The whole day was filled with people...which is hard for me as an introvert. Hopefully I will get some alone time on Sunday.

July 6... Last night I began reading Genesis. Surely the garden of Eden was in Africa, if Adam was truly made out of dust. Everything here is covered in dust. Meza wore his nice black shoes to church, but after the 10 minute walk, they were a nice shade of dust.

Church, other than the music, was uneventful. I said a few words of greeting, and after that, listened with little understanding. I found out the sermon was on Matthew 11. Next time I will bring my bible so I can read along. After the service, they auctioned off a cake, which Meza won, although I think he only won because I was there. Then we went off to lunch and to get a paper downtown. We ended up staying all afternoon because of a gospel fest. All good music. Then we went to an internet cafe closer to home.

I began reading some of Thomas Merton's work today. It is called the book of hours, and it compiles a lot of his work into a traditional catholic prayer book. I think so much of his wisdom is going to be found during the rest of my time here in Tanzania.

It is true what Jeff told me... it takes you a few days to truley begin a vacation. Once you get over your apprehensions, like going to the bathroom over a hole in the ground, things get much easier and you are able to relax. This next week will hopefully be relaxing and filled with learning new things.

July 7... The room is cold...nearly freezing. I got up early to walk outside so I could warm up. Johanna, the youngest boy joined me for my walk. We returned to watch Haggai play futbol. Then Johanna took me on another walk. He took me to visit his old neighborhood and some old friends there. We were invited in and they were very gracious. After ten minutes of forced conversation, I tried to leave, only to realize that they were making me breakfast, bread and butter with hard boiled eggs and tea. Joyce, a girl who spoke English quite well, ran to her mother to tell her I was hoping to leave and to hurry up. I felt very embarrassed. Johanna, thankfully, did not know how to be treated as a guest even more than I did, so we all laughed at him as he tried to peel his egg and when he drank the tea while it was still very hot. At six years old, he did not know what he was in for. It still bugs me about how women do not eat while men do. Outside of the home, it seems that men and women are equal, but once we are inside, it all changes. Hospitality and feminism have so many different meanings. On the other hand, one of Meza's brothers in law did my laundry, so maybe there is hope yet.

Once we made it home, Meza was off to work so I took a nap. When I woke up, I asked Lwiza, Meza's wife, if she could show me how to cook ugali, which is a stiff porridge, a staple food here. She of course said yes, but everyone laughed at me because men shouldn't know how to cook. I will attempt to make some when I return for the people in Riverside.

In the evening, we went to the market and bought meat as well as maybe the heart or lungs. It tasted ok during dinner.

July 8... It was 1 celcius last night. Thankfully I doubled up on pants, wore shoes to bed, and covered myself in Jay's mosquito net. When you use it improperly, it provides decent heat. Thanks Jay, you may have saved my life! Today was relaxing, I read the book of hours, wrote Tina, my host mother in Sweden, and played with the kids during their break from school. In the afternoon, I took a walk to a new part of town. Some people are very nice and greet me with a respectful greeting. Others go an extra mile and say it in English and others still shout "white" in Swahili, which makes me uncomfortable, even a bit scared, although I know I am not in any danger. What a learning day... will hopefully write more as time allows... Thanks for reading!

Off to Africa

Well, I'm off to Tanzania for the entire month of July. I hope to keep being able to blog so I don't need to write one big one at the end of my trip. I'll be visiting Meza, a friend who studied at the Moravian Seminary with me. Most of my time will be spent with him and his family in Mbeya, although we will hopefully do a little bit of traveling together.

I hope you all have a wonderful summer. I know I will.

Last Sermon at Riverside

One of the first things that happened to me upon my arrival here in Riverside was a change in the colour of my thumb. Up until this point, the only colours my thumb had been were regular flesh, and black and blue, when I accidently hit it with a hammer. That all changed because when Jeff and Kris went on vacation and to Mississippi, as one of my tasks was to water the plants outside and inside the parsonage. Suddenly my thumb had turned green and as I reflect on my time spent here in Riverside, I have come to realize the position of student pastor means that a green thumb is necessary. Even more so, as followers of Christ, we are all called to be gardeners, people who plant seeds.

You see, for me as a student pastor, one of the best parts of my job is that I get to scatter seed as far as I can. Whether it is in a children’s chat, teaching a Sunday School class, preaching a sermon, building a labyrinth, having a shared meal, writing a newsletter article, discussion during a committee meeting, working with the confirmation class, or even during a short conversation while shaking hands at the end of a worship service, all of these moments are times when I hope I have scattered seeds which will eventually yield some amazing fruit. The disappointing part of being a student pastor is that a year is rarely long enough to really nurture such seeds so that they may bear fruit.

But between my joys and disappointments in my own gardening role is the life giving role in which you all play within God’s garden because the truth of the matter is that your pastors are not the true gardeners. Each and every one of you are the people who should be planting the seeds in the lives of your friends, your neighbors, your loved ones, every person you meet in the store, while you walk your dog, while watch a baseball game. Every moment we have to interact with another person is another chance to plant a seed which God will give water and light to in order that it yield fruit to be harvested for God’s kingdom.

Now remember the first scripture which we read today? Jesus tells us to enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” I think that when we combine both of these scriptures, we can gain a better understanding of how we can plant our seeds in good soil so that we don’t just go about scattering our seed in thorny places where they will not take a good root.

As we try and walk that narrow path, we realize that the soil on the sides is incredibly fertile. The only problem is that this path is difficult to find. Almost everything in our own culture tells us that we should take the easy route in life. Instead of making a meal at home, we have countless fast food restaurants which offer to take the time and energy out of preparing the meal. Instead of taking mass transportation because it is more of a hassle, we all drive places individually so we can get there as quickly as possible. We spend more time in front of the television than sharing stories with our sisters and brothers in Christ. There are times in which we argue with one another in order to avoid doing the right thing because the right thing is hard to do while arguing is the easy way out.

Doing something hard over something easy is what God calls us to each and every day we decide to follow Jesus. Christ raises the bar! He does not allow us to buy our salvation with money or works. He calls us to follow and then continues on ahead of us, wondering if we will try to catch up.

When I was in college, the degree I cared most about was my political science degree. My first two years were taught mainly by the head of the political science department who was considered to be a fairly easy teacher. He would post the notes of every lecture he gave and would create the tests right from his notes. And while he did not require you to attend class, if you attended every class and had a B or higher average, you didn’t have to take the final. For two years, I thought his classes were the best thing going. I always got a B in each of his classes and never had to take a single final. If I wanted to take the easy road for an example in this story, my point could be how important it is just to show up, but the easy way is not the best way.

During my junior year, we got a new professor in the Political Science department. This professor said that every class you missed, your next paper would lose 5 percent of the grade. If he thought most of the class didn’t do the required reading, he would give the class a pop quiz. Not once did he simply lecture from the notes he took from the stuff we already read…the new professor actually was ahead of us in our discussions and learning. He did not require us to regurgitate information we could find in the library, he wanted to see if we could think for ourselves. At the end of the semester, I had a C minus in this class. It was the lowest grade I ever got in college. I probably should have been disappointed with myself, but the truth of the matter is that I thought it was the best class I ever had. In fact, the next semester I took another one of our new professors classes because of how much I learned. I was challenged in ways I had not been before, and it was a great thing.

Sadly, when I look at my senior year of political science classes, I again had the teacher I had my first two years and I fell back into mediocre work. It is the perfect example of how one of my teachers planted a seed of thorns and one teacher planted a seed which would have deep roots if they were not so close together. I have to constantly struggle with the thorny bush my first professor planted. It is the seed planted in my soil which makes me lazy, which makes me only do what I need to do instead of doing the hard thing which will cause me to be a better person. And thankfully, I still have the seed along side of it which calls out to me to push myself to learn even if it is hard, even if my grade will not be as high.

After the service today, when you’re having lunch with a family member or a friend, I challenge you to share a story in your life in which a seed was planted in good soil and it produced an unexpected yield in your own life. It is when you share these stories, it is like eating the fruit which was once a small seed. It has been planted, grown, nurtured and finally shared. When that’s done, you have more seeds which will hopefully find their way to fresh soil and you can continue following Jesus down the narrow road.

To wrap this up, I just want to thank you all for your warm gifts of hospitality and the love which you have shown me over the last year. I will never forget the time we all walked in God’s garden together. It was a wonderful experience for me and I will always look back on my time here as fruitful. Amen.

Wordle Sermon

This is my latest sermon put into a word cloud. Thanks to Wezlo for finding this. Putting one's own work into this medium really is just plain awesome for those people who struggle to make art.

Romans 6: 1-13

I want everyone to go ahead and find their pulse. Everyone got it? Good, now wipe your forehead and say “phew”. I want to congratulate you. You are a resurrected being! Repeat after me: “I am a resurrected being! I am alive in Christ!” Believe it or not brothers and sisters, this is a very important distinction between us and the rest of the world. When we are baptized, we are making a public statement that we are a resurrected person. Not everyone can make such a seemingly outrageous claim. In fact, it appears that most Christians fail to embrace living a resurrected life and this is a very sad thing.

There are a lot of excuses we can use for failing to embrace living a resurrected life in Christ. We can say that we were baptized at such a young age that we don’t remember what it means to be baptized. We can say that our western culture allows us to be purchasers of faith instead people who truly seek to be disciples. We can blame TV evangelists, the liberal media, the government, or even other denominations or faiths. Because of this, it seems as if it is easier to continue to live in sin and ask for forgiveness than to be a bearer of grace to the rest of the world.

For the most part, I assume that the sins which we all normally pray forgiveness for are what we might know of as the 7 deadly sins which are Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth. If none of those are particularly meaningful to you, an Archbishop in the Catholic Church has recently added 7 more sins to the list. They are Environmental Pollution, Genetic Manipulation, Accumulating Excessive Wealth, Inflicting Poverty, Drug Trafficking and consumption, Morally Debatable Experiments, and Violations of Fundamental Rights of Human Nature[1]. If you somehow still find yourself thinking those are fairly easy to avoid, Gandhi has his own version of 7 deadly sins. They are Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Science without Humanity, Knowledge without Character, Politics without Principal, Commerce without Morality, and Worship without Sacrifice[2]. If you’re anything like me, I know that I’ve fallen prey to more than a few of these sins. In fact, there are only two which I’m pretty sure I haven’t done, which are genetic manipulation and morally debatable experiments, and that’s only because I’m not smart enough to figure out how.

Fortunately for us, if we are baptized and have a pulse, we do not need to continue to keep on committing those sins and asking forgiveness. Please don’t think I’m saying that we need not ask for forgiveness any longer, because when we do slip up, we must still ask for God’s grace and forgiveness, but I’m saying that God calls us to a higher standard. The second half of verse 13 calls us to “offer ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of our body to God as instruments of righteousness.” What this does is take the things which could be small stumbling blocks in our faith journey and transforms them into stepping stones.

Peter is my favourite example of a person who turned a potential stumbling block into a stepping stone. When he denied that he knew Christ three times, the moment the rooster crowed, he could have allowed himself to stay dejected, hating himself for being so selfish. Instead, he allowed the grace of God to overpower his sin, and allowed his initial denial to lift him to new heights in his discipleship.

If you find in your life that you are always envious of your neighbor’s flat screen television, one way of making such envy into a stepping stone is to get rid of the TV you have and find another way to spend your time or perhaps you could simply start by getting rid of cable. If you find yourself with more wealth than you really need, give it away so that it cannot hold power over you. Or if Gandhi’s lists of sins, which border on the spiritual more than the physical, are more difficult for you to keep, find a way to turn one of them into a stepping stone. Gandhi’s last sin, which is Worship without sacrifice is by far the most intriguing sin to me. Sacrifice as worship is an amazing thing which we hopefully think about every day when we make it a point to take up our cross and follow Christ. When we sacrifice, that old part inside of us which was prone to sin will die and make us a better disciple. The trick is to actually allowing it to die. I heard a story of a person who realized that when they were sinning and they were not allowing their sin to be a stepping stone, they would say words which are normally part of a funeral service. Upon realization that their sin was getting the best of them and not allowing Christ to shine through them, they would say “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Rest in peace."[3]

One of my favourite movies is the Shawshank Redemption and I think it does a wonderful job of giving us a visual example of what it means to give a tiny funeral to our sin each and every day. You see, in a funeral, some pastors as they say the words, Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, will sometimes sprinkle some soil on the top of the coffin. In the Shawshank Redemption, the character played by Tim Robbins, has slowly been planning his escape from prison. Every day he scratched a little bit of a hole in the wall in order to escape his cell. Every day when he was out on the yard, he took the dirt and dust created by digging the hole, put it in his pant’s pocket and let the dirt go as he walked the yard. Every day he allowed a little bit of the thing which held him as an innocent prisoner to return to the earth, and after many many years, he was free. Morgan Freeman’s character then quipped that his friend’s favourite part of every day was releasing that dirt and dust every day into the yard.

That’s the same way we should feel every day when we turn our sins into something which glorifies our risen savior. When we are able to say, even though I sin, I will use this moment to show how great God is. When we are able to do that, we are truly living a life which tells the world we are resurrected with Christ.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7287071.stm
[2] http://www.deadlysins.com/features/gandhi.htm
[3] Brad Braxton. Dead and Alive. http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/braxton_4502.htm

Seeking God First – Matthew 6:24-34

The Hebrew Scripture has 613 commandments in it. Most of us only know about 10, and even then, we have a difficult time remembering all of them. Thankfully, the Gospels have Jesus reinforcing only two. To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s easy to remember and hopefully leads us to better relationships with God and every other person in our lives. But there are other commandments which Jesus says which we either choose to ignore or have such a difficult time living, that we don’t even bother to try.

The Gospel lesson for today comes at the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount. Most of us have some idea as to its beginning, Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are the meek…blessed are the peacemakers… Then there’s that wonderful part about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. These parts make us feel good about who we are as disciples of Christ. We tend to forget about the latter parts, because they’re much more difficult to understand, and even harder sometimes to live.

The commandment that Jesus offers us today is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things a follower of Christ can attempt to live out. What is this commandment? It comes from verse 25 and continues at verse 31. Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink: or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?... So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

That’s tough. In fact, most scholars and preachers do a very good job of deflecting the point of what Jesus was saying. They say “Jesus' challenge is (also) not a mandate for stupidity and irresponsible planning. It is about having a clear goal and setting up the path in a way that takes us there and not down the side alleys of spending too much time thinking about ourselves”[1] This type of thinking allows us to still be members in good standing in the church of consumerism and keeps us from living in the Kingdom of God which Jesus calls us to.
Instead, our “middle-class culture always wants it both ways on almost everything; a little of this and a little of that; a world of both-and. That’s not Jesus’ instinct about the kingdom. His view is that it’s either-or. Don’t even try to live it otherwise.”[2]

This passage then, is really about stewardship and in fact, it would be extremely easy to link what Jesus is saying to giving of our money in order that it no longer control us. While this is true in some senses, I believe it misses the point of what Jesus wants us to hear. If we only focus this on clothes, food and money, “we subtly succumb to the illusion that we are the only sufficient stewards, not an invisible God. Life in the kingdom demands that this be reversed.”[3]
In fact, a couple of chapters later, we see the disciples succumbing to the same illusion. Shortly after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sends out the 12 to drive out demons and perform miracles. Upon their return, we get to read the story of the feeding of the 5000. The disciples want to send the crowds away because they are thinking about stewardship. They could not afford to pay for meals for so many people. Can you imagine Jesus smacking his head when his disciples mentioned that? Why are they still worrying about where their food will come from?
In fact, it seems to me that we in our contemporary church fully live within that model. We worry so much about our own stewardship of the things God has blessed us with, that we tend to forget the stewardship of God, who provides every basic necessity. Seeking God will lead to miracles, worrying about how you will pay for it will lead to disappointment.

I’m sure all the trustee’s right now are shaking their heads and thinking I have no idea what I’m talking about. Even though Jesus says that when we seek first the kingdom of God and all of the other necessitates will be given to us (v 33), “we know that our money problems will not all be solved by an unquestioning confidence in God. Even Paul, whose confidence in God was unbounded, often went hungry and without shelter (2 Cor. 11:27). What Paul learned from his deprivations was that God was greater than his needs (Phil. 4:11, 13).”[4]

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we cannot simply learn about what Jesus is talking about. We must live the experience. When you are thinking about having your neighbors over to your home for dinner, but have put it off because you haven’t got food which is going to show off your talents in the kitchen; Jesus says, thank God for the peanut butter and jelly you’ve got in your pantry and have them over anyway. The fellowship is much more important than the food. It is putting God’s righteousness as your first priority and your own worries and desires second.
Putting your own desires second is not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do. Sometimes it produces amazing miracles, and other times, miracles which are less than exciting. Two weeks ago, I was Sunday night and the Flyers were playing the Penguins in the conference finals. I had preached a sermon earlier that day, which for some reason tired me out more than normal, and all I wanted to do was sit and watch the game in peace. I picked a seat which didn’t have anyone around me, and the only thing on the bar was a bill for someone’s tab. It appeared that I wasn’t going to be bothered there, so I sat down, ordered some food, and began watching the game. About five minutes into the game, I found out why there was a bill in front of the seat next to me. The drunkest guy in the bar was outside having a cigarette and had decided to stumble back inside and where does he sit? Right next to me.

I do everything in my power to give off a vibe that said I don’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t take my eyes off the screen, I kept my arms crossed and I tried my best not to laugh when my drunken neighbor started getting into a funny conversation with 3 people on the other side of the bar.

But it’s not like this guy didn’t try to get me to talk. He asked me my name, shook my hand, but I was a stone wall and he moved on. For the next five minutes, this guy was verbally beaten up by the three men and somehow, the drunk guy started talking about the Tet Offensive and Vietnam and how these guys had no idea about anything and ended up getting quite upset. The bartender came over and yelled at the guy, but it really didn’t help. And all I can think to myself is, didn’t God know that I wanted a nice quiet night of watching the Flyers?

Then out of no where, this drunk guy mentions Hosea 4:6. Which is “My people are destroyed from a lack of knowledge.” Right after he quotes Hosea, which is a fairly obscure book in the Bible, he turns around and asks me what I do for a living. Still not wanting to talk to the man, I tell him I’m a preacher, hoping that would scare him off. Unfortunately, that was an invitation for him to have a conversation with me. He ended up doing most of the talking. In his drunken speech, he told me a lot of information about himself, and what I needed to do in order to become a good preacher. Some of the stuff was good information, other was complete nonsense. Then, about 45 minutes later, he starts talking about King David. How he sent the husband of the woman he lusted after off to his death and how God still said that David was a man after his own heart. My drunken conversation partner realized how profound God was and just left the bar. He was in such sheer amazement of the character of God…

Well, I watched the last few minutes of the second period and decided to leave for home. I had too much excitement for one night. After I closed the door to the bar, I turned around to see the drunken man sitting on a bench. I had to walk by him as I headed for home. As I walked by him, I noticed that he had urinated all over himself. He was wearing a grey t-shirt and it was quite noticeable. At this point, I took pity on him and tried to say goodnight. I then realized he was talking to God. Well, he stopped that conversation and began talking to me again. He kept poking me and eventually he grabbed my hand. He said that he wanted to pray. He took my hand and put it on his chest, about 3 inches away from the stain on his t-shirt. He was holding on to my hand pretty tight and began praying. I was holding on tightly too, but only because I didn’t want his hand to slip down a few more inches. Shortly after that, he finished his prayer, I said goodbye, went home, and used a lot of anti-bacterial soap to wash my hands.

It was not the relaxing night I had hoped for, but I went to bed, wondering how I was going to tell my friends what had happened to me. I told some people over the next few days, and at that point, it was nothing more than a gross story about the drunken guy at the bar. Well, I went back to the bar a few nights later to again watch the Flyers. I sat down in the same seat, although this time there was no bar tab next to me. Sometime after the first period, the man arrived, slightly more sober than he was the last time we met.

He asked me if I understood that it wasn’t him talking to me that night. That he was just a messenger. We spent another hour talking about how he spent time in prison, how he had prostate cancer, how he didn’t expect to live much longer, but that he felt God was keeping him alive because God still needed him. He told me that he sure as heck hoped that I wasn’t the last thing God needed him for and that he didn’t ever want to see me again in this bar. I have yet to go back to the bar, but that’s only because the Flyers lost the series.

Perhaps my story doesn’t illustrate my point as much as I had hoped, but to me, I realized that when I want God to give me the night off and some time to relax, I am not seeking God’s kingdom first. Luckily, God’s kingdom found me that night in the form of a person who really wasn’t hoping to be the messenger. The moral of the story is that we really do need to always be seeking God’s kingdom, even when we don’t feel like it.

[1] First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages from the Lectionary. Pentecost 2. William Loader. http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtPentecost2.htm
[2] Matthew 6:24-34. By Mark Labberton. http://www.goodpreacher.com/shareit/readreviews.php?cat=12
[3] Ibid.
[4] Douglas R. A. Hare. “Matthew: Interpretation: A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.” John Knox Press. Louisville. 1993. Pg 75, 76.

Engage us

(This sermon is based on the following scripture verses, 1 Samuel 17: 37b-55a; 1 Timothy 4: 4-16; Matthew 15: 21-28)

When I was 14 years old, a student pastor came to my congregation and discipled me as to what it means to live life as a Christian in the world. We met on a weekly basis for almost a year, and I learned a lot about life, about ministry, about sharing things with a brother in Christ, things I might not normally share with just anyone. It was during that time that I first heard God calling me to ministry. For the next 3 years or so, I did a lot of work within my home congregation to see what it would mean to become a pastor within the Moravian church. Unfortunately what I had thought that it meant to be Christian was not true. I had thought that it meant being smart, being well educated, preaching a good sermon, go to a lot of meetings in order to keep the building well maintained. It was actually kind of fun to do this stuff, but it got old really quickly.

Then, when I was 18, I spent a year abroad in Sweden and other than Christmas Eve, did not spend a single day in church. It was great! I made tons of new friends, most of who did not go to church, spending lots of time outside in the summer, relaxing in the winter, just having a wonderful time. When I came back to the United States, I went right off to college, where I joined a fraternity and lots of clubs. There was so much good stuff going on in my life, and I didn’t miss going to church at all.

One day, I was driving around as a part of my internship when I saw a Moravian church. I hadn’t been in a church in over 3 years, and something made me go back. I’m not sure what made me go, other than God. But that really isn’t the point of me telling you this part of my life. I told you this because I want to highlight the first verse we read this morning from 1 Timothy. It states that everything God created is good.

Now, if you read the first 3 verses of the chapter, which I urge you to do, you might be compelled to say that I am taking this verse out of context, but I want to tell you that one of the reasons we lose a lot of young people in church today is directly related to the fact that we as the church do a poor job of telling our younger members that everything God created is good, and sometimes that includes things which the church fails to recognize. Sometimes the church as a whole tends to say that things like music are bad, or that perhaps certain types of food are bad, or even something like sex can be negative. As a teenager, when we realize that these things in and of themselves are not necessarily bad, but that the church tells us they are, the logical conclusion is to stop attending church. If you ever do decide to go this way, you are not alone. I certainly did it, as do so many other people in our generation. But the important thing we as youth must do is continue to bring positive things which we know God created into contact with the church, in order to broaden the influence we have in the world.

I have a question for the youth today. Did you notice that what the 3 scripture verses had in common? Any guesses? That’s right… they all have youth in them. Last weekend, I went to a conference with a wonderful speaker named Mark Yaconelli who works specifically with youth.
During his presentation, he told us what we needed as youth leaders to do to engage youth today with Christianity. Most of the time we as leaders and elders think that the simple fact of having a youth group means that you are sufficiently engaged. Unfortunately, that is not true. Instead, there are 4 things that we as pastors, teachers, elders and friends must do in order to engage you in the life of the church.

The first thing we need to engage you with is the sense of Wonder. Can you imagine the sense of wonder which David had as he faced Goliath? Heck, the whole army of Israel was captured by wonder. Here is a 9 foot tall man, which is about two feet taller than Yao Ming, covered head to toe in armor with a pretty serious looking sword. I imagine that young David pretty well understood what it means to stand in Wonder, especially with the sure knowledge that God was going to be with him as he defeated this monster of a man. Regrettably, as a young person in the world today, I think it is very difficult to be in awe of anything. We spend so much time in front of screens that things happening in the world rarely intrigue us as they should. Whenever we go somewhere, we are always in a rush, always hurrying, almost never stopping long enough to be in awe of the wonders around us.

Mark Yaconelli told a wonderful story about his four year old son Joshua, who realized that his father was always rushing him to the next place he had to be. Joshua wanted to stop and look at rocks or bugs or whatever else caught his eye. So one day they were sitting around at dinner when this little child told the family that he started a new club, called the Slow Club. He was the only member, but the members of the Slow Club were committed to doing nothing fast. Everything would be done slowly, being sure to take one’s time and to be in wonder of everything around it. Mark thought it was cute, but didn’t actually join his son’s club. He went around for years, continuing to do everything at a fast pace, just like he had always done. Then, one day when they were at a camp, when young Joshua was about 10 years old, the lunch bell rang and the whole camp started to run towards the dining hall. Mark tried to hurry his son, knowing that all the good food would be gone if they didn’t hurry up… But his son invited his father with a one day pass into the Slow Club. As they slowly walked to the mess hall together, they saw a pair of rabbits, they saw lizards sunning themselves by a pond, they took in the beauty of the world around them, and for the first time, Mark, who had always been rushing his son everywhere he needed to be, realized that his son was right, and that he needed to spend more time in Wonder of the things which God created. Ever since that one walk to lunch, I believe Mark has been a member of the Slow Club.

The second thing we need to engage our youth in is a sense of heartbreak. Perhaps this seems to be a confusing quality which we should be exposing our young men and women to, but I will tell you today that it is probably the most important. In fact most parents do everything they can to avoid showing children that heartbreak is a part of what it means to be a Christian. But to engage a person in heartbreak does not mean to allow them to date and go through a bad break up. To have your heart break is to see the people which our world pushes to the margins. The gospels calls these people the poor, naked, hungry and thirsty. We must see the margins and empathize with them. Our heart must break at their condition, and we must see Christ in the people the world tells us are unworthy. The second part of engaging someone in heartbreak is to not simply to give money to those people, but to actively spend time with them, to spend part of your life’s journey on their own journey. Doing this leads to the third thing we must engage our youth in today.

We must be engaged in experiences of healing. The gospels are filled with stories of healing. We even read one of them today. A young girl was healed because of the faith of her mother. Healing can take on many forms. Sometimes it is made manifest in physical healing, sometimes spiritual. One of most profound ways an adult can engage their children in healing is through the act of forgiveness. I recently watched a movie on the Amish mothers of the girls who were killed in the school shooting. They immediately forgave the shooter who killed their young children. This is definitely a lesson we all can learn from, but those women, mothers of slain children, engaged the world in a lesson of healing. They knew they could not heal if they did not forgive. If our youth are not engaged in this, they will have a difficult time practicing it when they are leaders in the church.

The last thing we must engage our youth in is Freedom. By all accounts, Philadelphia is the birthplace of freedom, but I’m not speaking of political freedom, or the rights afforded to us in the constitution. Instead, we must be engaged with freedom in Christ. This is a different way of living which is very foreign to the world today. We must show each other that we do not live for ourselves, but for each other, because Christ lived for us.

If we listen to the words Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” I personally take freedom from the world a bit more radically than most. I love the book of Acts where we get a taste of how the first church lived, where they sold everything they had, worshipped daily, giving to those in need, and shared meals together. I wish I were brave enough to do something like that, but we can start by taking small steps of living free from the world and instead start living free in Christ. Perhaps it starts by getting rid cable TV, or perhaps it means having more meals as a family at home. However you wish to engage the young men and women in your life, showing them that there is a different way to live is extremely important.

Now, I want all the youth to stand up and face the rest of the congregation. I want you to repeat what I say to the people who promised to nurture you into Christian maturity when you were baptized.

Repeat after me:
Engage us/ in what it means/ to live life/ as followers of Jesus.
Engage us/ in the wonders of God/ and the beauty of the world.
Engage us/ in heartbreak./ Show us the margins of the world/ and how to love them.
Engage us/ in experiences of healing./ Showing us how to forgive/ people who have hurt us.
Engage us/ in freedom from the world/ and how to live a godly life.
Engage us/ please/ Engage us.



Amen.

Olympic Protests

I am fascinated by the way certain groups draw attention to their cause. Most recently, there have been protests during the Olympic torch relay. Apparently these protests have worked; because high powered political figures have either publically committed or are considering boycotting the opening ceremony. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain has said he will not attend because of China’s stance on Tibet. George W. Bush is still thinking about missing the opening ceremony, but has said that he will attend the games in order to support the Americans who are competing.

I don’t know if China even cares about such things. Perhaps in a world where a subtle public shame technique is important, but everyone who has any training in political science knows that all politics are local and such small stunts are meaningless for real change. It is the equivalent of saying “I support the troops but not the war in Iraq.”

Instead, most coverage of this issue has put the athletes in the forefront of a political battle which they seem to dislike. Half of the athletes seem to have little to no knowledge of current affairs while the others who do pay attention don’t want politics to get in the way of their performance. I guess if I was a world class athlete, I might feel the same way, but since I’m not, I can’t.

It’s time for our athletes to stand up and say, “I know I’m one of the best swimmers/soccer players/softball players/runners/athletes in the world and I have a pretty good chance to show the world yet again that the country I come from allows me to perform at my best. Because of this, I cannot compete because the Olympics are not being held in a place where this is true for all of its citizens.”

When we come from countries which promote such high standards, we ought to live up to them, even if our politicians don’t. For many athletes, this is their one shot at greatness, and sadly, I think it is wasted by the fact that they are competing. By my theory, you’re pretty good if you even make it to the Olympics…but you’re the best if you can turn them down for what you know is right.

If you leave politics up to politicians, you fail to live in a democracy. The same goes for allowing politicians to dictate what happens to athletes. If there is a single athlete who chooses not to compete because of their beliefs…there may be hope for the system after all… but I wouldn’t bet on it.