The Inside Scoop for "Let it Snow" Sunday

Sermon Notes for Luke 6:43-45

Key verse: Luke 6:45 “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.”

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Our passage today comes from the section in Luke called the Sermon on the Plain and is parallel to the more familiar Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Here, Jesus talks about the nature of discipleship as more than just words. He invites us into a relationship with God which will change our hearts and in turn change our behavior. Recent studies on religion show that Christian leaders used to believe that the change pattern began with belief: believe, behave, belong. In other words, people believe in Jesus first, which changes the way that they behave which in turn gives them a feeling of belonging. However, postmodern people prefer to belong first; they long to be in authentic relationships which then impact how they live. The pattern now looks more like this: belong, behave, believe. As people relate to others and get a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, they begin to live differently which then leads to seeing life differently, through the eyes of belief. Jesus seems to imply this relational-based pattern here: a relationship with God changes our hearts which changes our behavior and then leads us to see Jesus for who he really is. Faith involves more than just saying the right words or believing the right things or even keeping the right laws. Instead, the relationship with God changes the very essence of who we are.

What does this have to do with our topic on measuring success? Many times we become tempted to succeed at all costs because it makes us look good and we think we can do good things. But, if we lose our integrity in the process, we accomplish nothing. We may all nod our heads in agreement with this, but living it is harder than it seems. The world does not reward doing what is right; it rewards doing what is profitable and what looks good. So, we find bankers facing lawsuits because they stretched or withheld the truth in order to make profits. What about ourselves? Do we cheat on our taxes because it gives us more money? Do we step on people in order to promote ourselves? What is the cost of all of this? Jesus also asks: “What good does it do for a person to gain the whole world and lose their soul?”

So, how can we keep our soul intact? Jesus says its about bearing good fruit, which comes from a good and healthy heart. In reflecting on this passage, several others come to mind. Read the verses below and reflect on how Jesus may be calling you to cultivate the love in your heart in order to be successful in heaven’s eyes.

Jeremiah 17:10 (The Message) “I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be."

Matthew 7:16-20 (New Living Translation) “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”

Matthew 12:33-35 (New Living Translation) “A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad. You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.”

Psalm 1:1-3 (New Living Translation) “Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the LORD, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.”

Ephesians 3:16-19 (New Living Translation) “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”

Ultimately, then, we do not make our tree good; a relationship with Jesus does. It changes our hearts and our lives, our actions and our beliefs. Then, we find true success in the eyes of our Creator. How might Jesus be calling you to cultivate this heart of love? How can you spend time basking in that unlimited resource? How can you let that love overflow into your words and actions and relationships daily? How can our outer lives reflect our inner hearts?

This is Skyline. Where the light of God's hope dawns.

This first week of Advent at Skyline, my days were filled with a mixed bag of prayers, a hospital visit, scripture study, several meetings and calls to members and friends of the church and another pastor, as well as a negotiation with a contractor for tree removal and some slight assistance for the repair of our boiler. After Sunday's miraculous worship filled with baptism, music and celebration, the days of the rest of the week have been a decided mix of the mundane and routine by comparison.

A pastor and member of St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Wilmington have invited me to participate in their series of Lenten reflections next Spring, entitled "God's Inclusive Love: No Limits" primarily because they had heard of our decision to welcome LGBT persons with open arms at Skyline. Our conversation has become a time of reflection for me of the cost and the blessing of following One who calls us to bear a cross for love of the world. I have especially been drawn to the many stories of refugees from the war of hatred and exclusion who have been drawn to our community of faith, and who have transformed both our community and our experience of God's love and grace.

My favorite statements include one who celebrated the community "saving his life", another who shared that our community had revived her nearly extinguished hope that she could love Jesus among a community of people who loved Jesus - and who loved her. When I am troubled by the thoughts of the cost of our discipleship, I remember those who had given up on the church and who came to experience God again among us. Several Sundays ago, a friend put his arm around me, looked back into the sanctuary full of followers of Jesus and said: "They won't let God die, will they?!"

This is Skyline. Where the light of God's hope dawns.

We met with a truncated Staff Parish Relations Committee Tuesday evening to draft a Profile of our church for the Bishop and Cabinet to review as they consider whom to appoint as pastor of Skyline in July 2010 (for the past 13 years, the Bishop has appointed Vicki and me to serve for another year here). We prepare the Profile every year, and this year we celebrated some miraculous ministries, hopes, and descriptions of the people God has gathered into a church called Skyline.

What are the ministries we celebrate here and hope to expand?

Contemporary, experiential worship services; diverse music ministry; outreach to unchurched people in a postmodern context; children’s ministry that celebrates the presence and participation of children in worship and in the life of the church
We hope to expand our outreach to all persons seeking a deeper relationship with God, especially those who are marginalized in society and in the church; youth ministry in and beyond the church; and serving as the “town center” for the community of Pike Creek.

what are the short-term ministry goals at Skyline: (1) Youth Skate Park; (2) Outreach and Advocacy Ministry for Justice Issues in our Community; (3) Volunteer Center for Missions; (4) Mentoring ministry for at-risk youth; (5) Wellness Center for spiritual and physical health; (6) Alternative Worship in an emergent/post-modern style and setting.

What are the pastoral characteristics most helpful in Skyline's ministry?

Flexibility, delegation, and empowerment of lay partners in creating experiential, contemporary worship; openness to receive Christians who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered as full members of the church; ability to nurture all members toward expressing God’s calling in their lives in and beyond the church; embracing shared ministry with laity, in a church that celebrates the dispersion of power and initiative.

On Wednesday evening, I gathered with the the choir to rehearse a song they will sing during our Festival of Light concert next Saturday, Dec. 12 at Skyline. After sharing and celebrating our joys and concerns in prayer, we sang a celebration not only of the birth of the Christ child at Christmas, but in every heart and in every moment of our lives. We sing in the hope that our song will bring God glory and draw especially those people who have given up on hope.

This is Skyline. Where the light of God's hope dawns.

Yeasty Living

I'm thinking about yeast, and how it makes or breaks the breadmaking process. (Of course, I have other things in mind besides breadmaking.) Get a bad batch of yeast, and you're looking at a ruined, sagging loaf of worthless sludge. Put too much fresh yeast in a loaf, and the bread will explode (and sometimes, this isn't funny at all). And the most insidious part of this story is that you cannot know what you've done until it's too late to do anything about. There's no feedback until the end - the whole process is built on faith and experience.

So much of breadmaking - and baking in general - involves a bit of flying blind. The muck you've got when you prayerfully place the goods in the oven cannot be even remotely related to the product you're hoping for is the magic works as promised (like it did for Mom when you were wholly unconcerned about whether or not magic worked - because you took for granted that it simply and always did). And even though baking is a science - pure chemistry - there are many ways for the batch of gook to go south on you when it gets too hot in the kitchen.

So we're always a bit surprised when it all comes out well, and no one more than the cook, who would prefer the rest of us enjoy the feast in blissful ignorance of the measure of anxiety that forms the part of all but the simplest recipes. Farmers probably share this kind of anxiety during the growing season - or perhaps it never lets up for them from seed to market. Yet they plant.

To live in this kind of realm is to never be free of the necessity of flying blind, of faithfuly planting that which we cannot see but for eyes of faith. And the connection happens often enough that we continue to plant and to knead and to mix the ingredients in the ways that have been gracefully handed down to us. We will hand these ways down to our children, it goes without saying. The holy books in our kitchens explode after generations until interrupted by indifference and the lack of time to have faith in a process you cannot control.

Those who continue to hold to these practices infiltrate the earthly family with the yeast of our fierce hopefulness. Thankfully, it doesn't take much to expand and rise the whole of the earth in faith, hope and love. We remain fresh and waiting for the baker woman to knead us into the measures of flour and dough. We do what we do. Spread throughout the whole in the quiet, determined way the woman's strong fingers find every yeastless place with careful precision. Later, when the heat is on, we will expand, and the gooey mass will rise - nearly imperceptibly at first, but later unmistakably and ubiquitously.

Inevitably.

The Light that Shines on our Functional Atheism

November 11, 2009

I’ve been reading and thinking a great deal lately about how we go about thinking theologically in the church and the way we live out our theology in the church community. More and more as a pastor, I’ve become aware of the horrible tensions between what we say and what we do because, as a “company man”, the institution of the church requires my absolute allegiance to theological formulations I am acutely aware the church neither believes nor lives out in our daily life. And as a Christ follower committed to the Truth, Life, and Way of Jesus, I find it increasingly unbearable to live as a pastor as if this tension does not exist.

In other places, I have called this exploration a “Quest”, and wondered whether or not the motivation for such a quest comes from merely selfish or more altruistic intentions. But increasingly I sense that my position in the church as a pastor places a heavy responsibility on me to speak not only for myself but for the communion of the saints, living and ancestral. And it is in this communion of faith where I sense the gulf between our creedal statements of faith and our practical understanding of God and way of life devoted to God and to each other, particularly as we understand that way of life as the one we call Messiah lived it.

I see this gulf everywhere in the life of the church. Social researchers have long exposed the lack of any significant social distinction between Christians, in particular, and other communities of human beings, though there are many notable individual exceptions, and perhaps a few communal exceptions, like the Mennonite and Amish communities of faith. But what I have observed as pastor runs far deeper than these social manifestations of Christian faith. Parker Palmer has called the way Christians approach God in postmodern life “functional atheism”, a term that describes the theology of a people who live as if God makes no real claim on their lives (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Jossey-Bass, 1999).

Functional atheism manifests in ways that go far beyond holiness or righteous living. As a pastor, I have lamented not only the profound level of scriptural illiteracy in the Christian church, but also the many ways in which sociological realities and concerns trump any real form of theological struggle among those of us who claim to follow Christ. The reason we do not know how to engage in theological discernment stems in large measure not from apathy or ignorance, but from our very real fear of where such discernment might lead us.

Lay persons abdicate all responsibility for theological reflection to the clergy (only performed after the fact, if at all, in order to justify our preconceived notions and ideology). And if they disagree with the clergy, they simply find a pastor who espouses a theology more conducive to their way of thinking, rather than engaging the offending pastor in a dialogue that could be fruitful or transformative for the relationship. Clergy are only too happy to accept this no-contest plea from laity, at least until we realize the tyranny of popularism requires us to seek not the truth but a justification of the current social reality.

As a backdrop to this morbid dance, we idolize some imaginary divine ally who puts paid to all who argue against us – not that we would actually have to live by any of our arguments, but so that we might be vindicated among those who cannot see the world as we do. And since we know that such an idol is but a fantasy, and all we hear conclusively from heaven is silence, we conclude that there is no God but our own power to have our way in this world – be it the power to persuade, dismiss, or dominate.

And since the “real” God will do none of these things, we quite consciously overthrow God (who at any rate allows this overthrow without protest) and live as if God were not a part of human existence even and perhaps especially in the church. (I say especially because the church places such a relentless value on articulation.) We prefer this rebellion and idolatry to the intolerability of a silent and apparently impotent deity – yet for some reason our makeup requires that we maintain a façade of faith in such a deity, at least in ceremonial form. I cannot fathom for whom we play this religious act – unless we put it on for ourselves.

Here is the grand lie and its rationale: we need it in order to anesthetize the pain of the nihilistic reality of our Faustian bargain. We leap from the searing frying pan of a God who leaves us entirely alone into the consuming fire of utter separation and meaninglessness. And who wants to face up to such a brutal reality? So we speak on God’s behalf, as infallible holy persons who know the secrets of the infallible holy books, in order to pierce the deafening silence from the deep wells of our souls, where no one remembers how to seek a God we have ceased to hope might be found.

The key to our lust for unchanging Truth lies not in its infallibility but that it lies within our grasp – that we can know and claim such Truth – about God or ourselves. We will trade anything for the existential comfort that comes with certainty – even God and whatever we mean by freedom or justice – or even life itself (in all its abundance, whatever that means). We who claim allegiance to the Christ idea appreciate the incarnation (how conveniently articulate) but not the enigmatic Rabbi Yeshuach who even now refuses to be comprehended or claimed by any of his disciples. Dostoyevsky speaks for all of us in the dungeons of the Inquisition: “Go away, or we will kill you again.”

Yet incomprehensibly, he refuses to die.

Of course I would pin the blame (or credit) for the persistent awareness of the gulf between what we say and do as Christians on our namesake – even though we have transformed his name into a hope. He speaks as one with authority, not necessarily because he has “descended” from “heaven” but because he relentlessly lives into the promise of a realm of truth and life which claims us but which none of us can claim. Like a bull in a China shop, he tramples conventional ways of making peace with hopelessness and of sleeping with the enemy, regardless of the consequences for himself or for anyone who dares to come along for the ride. Because he has not come to bring peace.

The stories told with voice and ink and blood convey a sense of passionate identity that refused to rely on any of the conventional ways in which human beings typically seek meaning. Like his mentor, John, Yeshuach lived a wild and untamed life to its violent (tragic? Or inevitable?) end, and promised to accompany anyone with the chutzpah to leap into this passionate whirlwind of reckless, angry love. He also promised pain, injustice, and enslavement to a fearful path of destiny beyond ourselves.

How we have tamed him – mocked his euangelion and the martyrs of his Way, of whom the world was not worthy – and killed him endlessly on the cross of our comfortable, controllable “faith”.

But how else could we have created a powerful, popular faith expression in the world? After only a mere three centuries of sporadic debate about whether or not cowardice and apostasy negated discipleship, the young church was more than ready for the killing embrace of the Emperor – the true (or at least realistic) god of all gods. How much more efficient could be our penetration into heathen lands and peoples who would inevitably fall beneath the boot of raw power. And once we had sealed our pact with power, it would cease to matter with whom we allied ourselves. Any rabid, effective dog would do. Power and infallibility would come to justify any means toward the end of “saving” the world from ambiguity and the maddening call of a crucified “lord” to empty ourselves for others.

We believe in God the Father Almighty…

And yet… and yet. Like sand agitating relentlessly within an oyster, the life of a savior who suffered in life and in death refuses to bow to the idol we have fashioned of steel, silicone and weapons grade plutonium. He mocks our houses of worship where we insulate ourselves from suffering and ruthlessly enforce a homogenous form of faith in ourselves. The revolutionary rabbi taunts us as we read (while anxiously watering down) the incendiary stories his early followers called euangelion. We would mob and carry him to the brow of a cliff and toss him to his death to shut him up if we could only get our hands on him – yet he passes through us like a draft, the source of which we dare not discover – because we know his breathing on us keeps us alive in this coma in which we have learned to settle.

…the resurrection of the body…

How persistently he called to his rotting friend, after days of comforting rest from the labor that is life. Did he weep because he can never leave us alone? Because he knows he bids us to die again and again? We sleep while he prays, sweating blood as he wrestles with the silent God who places relentlessly before us the cup of sorrows. Yet every time we gather to break and bless and chew and swallow we are remembered into his body, forever broken and spilled out. Every time we rehearse the ancient stories, a fire kindles and then rages within us that wearies and overcomes our attempts to hold it in.

Our darkness cannot comprehend such light. We cannot know, even dimly. But perhaps it is enough to know that we are known. Enough to be overwhelmed by love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Our theology and our sociology can be far more tentative – more awestruck by the sense of the realm of love that never – never fails. Perhaps this, finally, is the measure of life in all its abundance – to live beyond either questions or answers about the nature of God or humanity, embracing love that never fails in every moment of our lives, fearlessly, relentlessly, even recklessly, in the wake of a savior who beckons us to suffer together for love without end.

…and the life everlasting.

Bonhoeffer's New Wine

I need to say more about Nashville, and what happened when I rubbed shoulders in a great cloud of witnesses whose love reminded me who God calls me to be. We become who we are created to be only in companionship with others who push us, hold us and release us in the dynamic kind of interpretive, improvisational dance of our lives. And I don't much care if that dancing metaphor sounds overly dramatic - human life is dramatic and miraculous, even as it can also be mundane and heartbreaking.

One of the speakers at Nashville invited us to take another look at Bonhoeffer's "Life Together". As I began to read this fascinating journal of a triumphant community of resistance to the monstrous hatred of Hitler's Germany, I was struck first by Bonhoeffer's invitation to recognize my own community of faith - the people who gather as Skyline - for the miracle God has created us to be for each other and for our neighbors.

Bonhoeffer writes that the kind of gratefulness a prisoner feels for a visitor who brings encouragement into darkness can multiply a thousand times over when we are surrounded by pilgrims on the journey of faith. But we often take each other for granted, of course, precisely because we are surrounded by an embarrassment of riches.

I remembered the way I used to feel so isolated as a Christ-follower and officer aboard USS Bunker Hill, in the vastness of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. When I would gather with a few others to pray or to read the scriptures together, I would often feel as if we were the last Christians on the face of the earth. I missed the hymns and the liturgy and the fellowship of the congregations of Christians God had surrounded me with in my youth. A Chaplain visited us when we got in helicopter range of the aircraft carrier in our Battle Group, and I wept as I received communion.

Jesus knew far more about wine than I do.

But when he spoke of the new wine of God's realm, he decanted an overflowing cup from his experience of wine to demonstrate something about those who dared to believe in his message of God in the midst of our life together. The frothy, fermenting "fruit of the gods" that refused to be contained reminded Jesus of those who left behind everything to follow him - those who would go where they did not wish to go after he released them to invite the world to celebrate God's love in a community called the Kingdom of God.

Our capacity to refresh others who are thirsty for love staggers our imagination. If we could but have a taste of what it is like to bring another (a stranger? a friend? a sibling?) to life, we would gladly accept Jesus' grace-filled invitation to pour us out for the sake of God's love for our hurting and lonely world. Our worship is a never-ending party - a celebration of the new wine, the very best wine of God's love, flowing without measure. It pours into the streets that stream from where we gather to return and search out the parched and dry.

New wineskins deliver the wine of gladness and reception into improbable but amazing grace. They do not contain it; there is no time or need to patch old containers, weary from holding it in. This wine is restless for the celebration - to be consumed and to consummate the marriage of God to the whole human community - indeed, to all of creation.

I drank this new wine to the dregs among pilgrims gathered in Nashville who gave their lives to minister in the name and power of Jesus to all people. This wine also flowed through my life into others, and I found that being poured out makes room for the never-ending stream of God's grace and love for the world. And I know that what draws me back to the saints gathered at Skyline is the reckless way we welcome the Messiah to recommend the vintage of our love to any and all who dare to believe in a world redefined by the love of God in all people.

Pour it on, God!

Back to Galilee

Last week, I spent six days in retreat, worship and contemplation of ways in which I can walk the journey of life as a pastor as a pilgrimage with good friends. Sixty of us gathered in Nashville to worship, reflect, exchange gifts of encouragement, and prepare to return to Galilee in anticipation of meeting Jesus in the daylight and dishes. After a rough journey home through delay and turbulence, I arrived home in a different state of mind and spirit.

During the week, Vicki asked me to tell her what was happening in Nashville, among the gathered pilgrims and falling leaves. I didn't have to think long. I told her that we all were learning the grace of walking in the Way of Jesus the Messiah as a pilgrimage rather than a solo journey - we did not have to do this alone. And I get the feeling pastors aren't the only ones who need to hear this gracious invitation to join a great cloud of witnesses as they seek God in the journey of life.

None of us returned with a ToDo list, or a 10-step process for turning things around. One of my friends voiced an invitation to treat their family members with a holy regard. On the flight home, the flight attendant reminded me that there "may not be a later". As I reunited with my family on All Hallows Eve, I savored the hugs we shared and listening to their stories of the week I had missed while in Nashville, as much as I enjoyed groping for words to tell about my adventure there.

And though I'll have more to say as I sift through the many memories of that week, I know for certain that I rediscovered a sense of my first love of God, and the people God loves, in the holy place we gathered in near Music Row and Vanderbilt University. Strangers who became companions in an instant of conversation or sitting quietly together in worship reminded me again and again of the irresistible love of God that drew and draws me to serve others in the name of Christ.

We reflected on the cycle of Grace and the cycle of Works, and the waxing and waning of our souls in both streams. I knew that my ability to trust God's love determines the direction of grace or works I pursue - my need to determine the outcome or the faith I experience simply and always to fall into love. To give into a stream of God's grace involves letting fears go as the tide washes over me and bears me to others. We talked often of fears and anxieties the crowd out our ability to fall into love.

And when I returned to the dishes? I discovered that the sense of grace waxing under a swelling moon returned with me. As I walked to church to gather around a table and talk of God's surprising and mysterious movement in our lives, Debbie Christie called me to tell me our nursery caregiver was unable to watch over the infants and toddlers. So I allowed the flow of grace to take me to watch over them.

I had baptized many of those little ones, but we had not played much together. And as we sang songs and danced in the chaotic flow of the nursery, I enjoyed the freedom they gave me to sit on the floor and enjoy learning about life. Vicki preached upstairs, but my return to the nursery seemed a fitting return to Galilee for me. I was looking for Jesus and found myself surrounded by toys and exuberant toddlers in the Kingdom of God.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

We had a rude awakening at September's end this fall at Skyline, when our Administrative Assistant informed us that she would be unable to cover our pay with the money she had in the bank as the month came to a close.

Yeah. I said rude awakening. I wasn't kidding.

Now before we get into interpretation mode, there's this little matter of "What Do We Do Now" that fairly screams for attention, and it got all of ours as October winds started blowing. We gathered leaders and contacted the people we are accountable to - we prayed and planned and spent some time with mentors and spiritual advisers. And we let everyone at Skyline Church know what was going on.

Which was weird at first. But refreshing in a way. Before we let the congregation know, the weight of the problem gave us little room to breathe. Here's how bad it got: I called the Navy recruiter in Philadelphia and started the process to become a navy chaplain. Serving as a chaplain is an honorable path - but if I had followed it at this point in my life, it would have meant an unending separation from my wife and children.

On October 5, we met with out District Superintendent, who directly supervises us and who advises the Bishop regarding appointments for all churches in the Wilmington District. We told him about our financial situation at the church. He told us to hang tight, at least until next July.

There's a funny thing about ordination. When we became United Methodist pastors, we vowed to serve the church and only the church - working 100% as pastors, resident theologians, spiritual counselors, and church administrators. This present crisis brings those vows into crystal clear focus. We serve under orders.

And so far in October? We've received offerings sufficient to cover expenses for two consecutive Sundays. The members and friends gathered Sunday have responded to our full disclosure with a renewed sense of calling and conviction - just as we have. The work and ministry of this faith community continues with passion and hope. Members face medical, spiritual and financial difficulties with courage - in the midst of a supportive and loving community.

Our theme this year is God's Future - with Hope. Yup. That's the ticket. I'm on board.