Shaking Off the Dust

When our kids were shooting off fireworks last weekend, it reminded me of my own childhood.  Bottle rockets (now banned) were among my favorites.  Some of the best things to do were to blow up the little green plastic army men.  Of course, all boys of that era had access to some.  Those toys have probably endured quite a bit through the years.

I never had a lunchbox like this one but I'm sure there
were kids at my school that did.

I remember our nation's Bicentennial back in 1975 and culminating on July 4, 1976. We had a lot of things around town painted red, white and blue to celebrate such as the local fire hydrants.  Quarters had special backs with the colonial drummer on them and a lot of my friends saved them because they were going to be worth a lot of money some day. Unfortunately, the book value today is still 25 cents!

On Saturday, we'll celebrate 240 years of independence.  It's hard to believe that it has been forty years since all of that excitement but there you go.  If you are in Edmond at the parade on Saturday, be sure to look for the church float that our Evangelism Committee put together!  The fourth of July is an important time to reflect on our independence as a nation and what we are doing with our freedom.  What kinds of things continue to define us as a country?

This Sunday, we'll continue in the Gospel of Mark for the lectionary as we examine 6:1-13.  This passage speaks of Jesus being rejected in his hometown.  Then as he instructs the disciples to go out into the villages and minister to them, he invites them to shake off the dust from their feet if they are not received by a town.  This custom was for Jews who left the Holy Land and returned.  When they were returning from a foreign area, they would shake off the dust from their sandals so as not to contaminate the Promised Land with unclean soil.  As Jesus instructs them to do this, he is making a declaration about those villages that do not show hospitality.  

Hospitality is a part of their identity.  Father Abraham was remembered as showing extravagant hospitality to strangers and it turns out that he was entertaining angels unaware!  This story became a part of their identity and when they refuse to minister to the stranger, they are the ones that miss out.

As we think about our identity as a nation, we can also reflect upon who we are as a church.  Do we show the kind of hospitality to strangers that Jesus would have us?  Do people feel comfortable coming in among us if they don't know us? 

I hope that there's not a lot of dust build-up outside our sanctuaries!

In Christ,

Sam

Photo from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum via Wikimedia Commons.

Seeing Further

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
                                                                Isaac Newton, 1676

The church is a difficult entity to define.

It is a community of believers.

It is the bride of Christ.

But it is also the body of Christ.

The church has been described as the Communion of Saints.  It is also a hospital for sinners.

The church is united through the Holy Spirit and its members are baptized into the faith.

This baptism is a covenant where we seek to be accountable one to another.  I help you and you help me.  Individualism falls by the wayside in the church and that's okay.

At annual conference, I received the Denman Award for Evangelism.  This was given to me as an individual largely for the growth the church experienced in Piedmont while I was the pastor there.  While I am proud and honored to be the recipient, I also recognize that many others went into this growth.  Staff members ran programs that helped with discipleship.  Committees oversaw important ministries that met community needs and allowed us to be on the radar of the unchurched.  Laity set the tone for friendliness and hospitality when visitors walked through our doors.  The church grew not because of any one individual but because we were willing to put aside individual needs and look to the mission of what God is calling us to do.

I'm reminded of the Apostle Paul's word to the Corinthians when he said, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." (1 Corinthians 3:6, NRSV).

We're stronger together than we are apart.

Even in the midst of decline in the church as a whole, we see places where the church is thriving.  I believe that these are churches that are allowing the Holy Spirit to lead them. Sometimes this means allowing the church to move in new directions for the sake of the Gospel.  Sometimes it means giving up being territorial or having it your way.  But it also means building something that will last beyond your life.  It means making an impact for other people in profound ways.  It means transforming a world that begins to look and act more like we would imagine heaven to be.

I'm excited to start my second year in a church that is also on the move.  As we celebrate the successes we've accomplished this past year, I believe that we have tremendous potential for continuing to live out God's call on our lives.  This Sunday, we'll explore the faith of the church through the image of the seed found in Mark 4:26-34.  We'll see what God does with us together!

In Christ,

Sam



Photo by Mike DelGaudio (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A Generous Christology

As I continue to explore the I Am statements of Jesus, the next up is from John 14:1-7.

This passage includes the following:

“No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These are the words of Jesus that follow up his identification as the Way, the Truth and the Life. This seems pretty straightforward.

If you are not going through Jesus Christ, you are not getting to God.

Worldwide, if you are gracious in who you would consider Christian, this means that a little less than one third of humanity has a legitimate relationship with God.  As Wesleyans, we believe that God loves each person and is trying to reach them.

So either God is doing a poor job of reaching the world or the Christians are.

Muslims pray formally five times
each day.  What if Christians were
as consistent in their practice?

As I consider those of other faith traditions, I've met some who are really devout and some who are slackers and some who identify with their faith in name only.  So this is pretty similar to the Christians I've encountered.

If I believe that God is trying to reach these people and they are praying to God from a different faith tradition, do I believe that God hears their prayers?

I’m hesitant to declare "no" more so for the limitation it places on the infinite God rather than on my own strict adherence to this verse.  As I explore the Gospel, I find that there are more mysterious understandings such as John 10:16 where Jesus states, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

My own understanding of Christology has grown rather generous. 

As I see non-Christians who are devout in their own faith and seeking the same fruits of the Spirit in their lives (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control), I may see Christ in them.  They would not declare this for themselves but I would have no problem seeing through the eyes of faith to declare this on their behalf.

It reminds me that Jesus talked about being the Way.  A way is more than just assent to a set of doctrines or beliefs.  A way is more than just declaring affirmation to a litmus test of orthodoxy.  A way requires that we follow through with our actions.  If Jesus is our way, we begin to take on his own characteristics.  As we study Jesus, we see that he was more generous in his day concerning those who would be thought to be in relationship with God.

And so, if I follow Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, I must begin to adopt this generosity of spirit as I encounter my neighbors.  Rather than see their lack, where do I see Christ already at work in their lives?

I think this begins to turn the conversation and it becomes more profitable for us all.    

In Christ,

Sam

More than Mostly Alive

In the movie, A Princess Bride, one of the main characters, Westley, appears to have been slain and is brought to Miracle Max to see what could be done.

Miracle Max examines him, lifts and drops the arm of the supposed corpse and declares, "I've seen worse."

Max then states to Inigo Montoya the man who brought him, "He probably owes you money huh? I'll ask him."

Montoya replies, "He's dead. He can't talk."

Miracle Max then surprises us by saying "Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do."

"What's that?"

Max: "Go through his clothes and look for loose change."

This exchange brings us to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead found in John 11:1-45.  In verse 17, it lets us know that Lazarus had already been dead for four days.  This is a long time to be dead in an ancient Mediterranean culture.  The heat would have made decomposition a quick occurrence - especially without any modern embalming techniques.  The King James Version says it bluntly in verse 39 as it reads, "he stinketh."

What this is stating is that in the ancient world, "mostly dead" was a thing that sometimes people became.  You could recover from being "mostly dead" and sometimes people miraculously did.  With no modern instrumentation, it was difficult to tell when a person had really passed.  But after three days, the ancient belief was that the soul then departed the body.  So for John to share the detail that Lazarus was dead four days showed that there could be no doubt as to his state.

For Lazarus and his sisters, Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.  It is real and vibrant and we would like to know this Jesus because we have all faced grief and loss. Sometimes our spiritual lives, our emotional lives or our relational lives may also become "mostly dead."

How does Jesus become the Resurrection and the Life for us today?  Just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, there are parts of us that sometimes need raising as well. Sometimes I may look at areas of my own life and declare, "they stinketh."  These may be the times when we need to take a new look at our faith!  As we encounter the living Lord, it could be that we become more than "mostly alive!"

Shepherds and Alphas

I am the Good Shepherd.

                       John 10:11

There has been a lot written on the stupidity of sheep.  So as we think about the metaphor of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, it is a little demeaning to put ourselves in the role of the sheep.

We are taught to be strong, self-reliant, independent individuals.

To rely on others is often seen as weakness.

Now, I'm not saying that this is healthy.  Internalizing our difficulties or fears is not a productive stress for our bodies.  It leads to heart disease or strokes or worse.

And yet because leaders are often so admired in American society, can this lead us away spiritually from this image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd?

Even lead dogs need help from the handlers.

A popular saying about sled dogs is this one:

If you are not the lead dog, the scenery never changes.  

If you are an alpha male or female, you are prone to leadership.  Submission may be an issue for you. So what do you do with this passage?

It could be that our pride is blinding us.  It takes a big person to admit when they are wrong and it takes a big person to admit they need help. This doesn't diminish them as people, it just means they are wise.

At the end of the passage in John 10:20-21, they are accusing Jesus of having a demon because he was saying all these things about being the Gate and the Good Shepherd. Others defended him saying, "Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"  This is an important question for us.  As we consider that the demonic leads one through deceit, we may find that only the truth opens our eyes.

So the question for the independent spirit becomes, "How do you really need Jesus as the Good Shepherd?"  As human beings we realize that we are social animals.  None of us is really independent when we analyze it.  So maybe the healthy thing is to cut through this myth and see the truth.

Dorothy Thrupp wrote these words in the 19th century and they are still true in the 21st:

We are thine, thou dost befriend us, be the guardian of our way; 

keep thy flock, from sin defend us, seek us when we go astray. 

Jesus is our Good Shepherd if we are wise enough to see the truth.  And if we're not, maybe that metaphor of us being like sheep is better than we would like to admit.



Photo by Wknight94 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lyrics from "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us"

Leaving the Gate Open

So Jesus spoke again, “I assure you that I am the gate of the sheep.  All who came before me were thieves and outlaws, but the sheep didn’t listen to them.  I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture.  The thief enters only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came so that they could have life—indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest.

                                                         John 10:7-10 (Common English Bible)

When I was a little boy, I had a dog named Scamper who was small, black and white with a mask.  He was a mutt but this didn't diminish his value to me in the slightest.  I loved him very much.

The bad thing about this dog is that he tended to run off when he got outside our yard. We would usually have to chase him down and he thought this was a great game!

Once, Scamper got out when we didn't know it and he wandered off and got lost.  We left the gate open and I prayed for him to be safe and to find his way home but he didn't. Days passed and we didn't see any sign of him.  I became distressed when I went into the backyard and discovered that my parents had closed the gate!  I quickly opened it up again and scolded them for this seeming loss of hope.

My prayers were answered the next day when my mother saw Scamper in a schoolyard playing with the children there.  He must have been surviving on the lunch scraps these kids gave him at recess.  When my mom called him he ran to the car and was so happy to see her.  She took him home and he drank his weight in water and then ate a couple of bowls of food.  She said that he then slept for the rest of the day.

He didn't try to get out of the yard anymore.

"Those gates are gonna swing wide!"

As we think of Jesus as the Gate, I think about this lost dog of mine.  I think about making sure the gate was open to him so that he could return home anytime he wanted.  I think about the unwavering hope of a little child.

This divine metaphor of John's speaks volumes to the human condition.  As in the hymn, "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" we sing, "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love."

It is comforting to know that the Gate remains open to us even then.



Picture by Albert Bridge [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Importance of Light

Growing up, I spent several vacations in the Pacific Northwest because my older sister lives there.  It was cool touring Portland and Seattle and seeing all the great sites in the area.  We did a lot of hiking.

I brought back actual ashes from Mount Saint Helens in 1980 when they were selling them in Oklahoma convenience stores as mementos.

I heard about the Seattle rain but you have to experience it and hear how they advertise "sun breaks" on the local radio stations which identify when the sunlight will break through the clouds!

As we hear about how dangerous the sun is for our skin, we may sometimes forget that sunlight can also be healthy for us not only physically but psychologically.

There's been a ongoing myth about the suicide rate in Seattle because of the lack of sunlight.  It may not be the most depressed city in America but science has actually labeled the winter blues that some people get as Season Affective Disorder (I'm not kidding, the acronym is really SAD).

What does it mean for us spiritually
to come into the light?

Some people may try light therapy to get them over these depressed feelings.

All of this exploration of light reminds us of its importance to our lives.

Anyone who has face the "dark night of the soul" understands the relief and change of anxiety at sunrise.

As we explore the "I Am" statements of Jesus from John's Gospel this Sunday, we will be looking at "I am the light of the world".  It is interesting that this statement directly follows the encounter of Jesus by the crowd seeking permission to stone the woman caught in adultery.

Was this to expose the deeds of the woman or the intentions of the crowd?  Or both?

If we are seeking to deepen our relationship with God, what does it mean to claim Jesus as our light?