A Sacred, Transforming Encounter

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and behold the face of God?

My tears have been my food day and night,

while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”

Psalm 42, Verses 1-3, NRSV

C. S Lewis in Mere Christianity suggests we are created with needs for which the means exist in the creation for those needs to be met.  Examples are food, water, rest.  He suggests that God is just such a need:  a need for which the divine encounter fulfills that.  He posits that we to seek the divine, the transcendent, through time and space.  Said another way, seeking the divine has been true across time and across cultures.  It is a universal constant.  That need is for Lewis, and he has persuaded me, a deep inner need for the spiritual. 

David in Psalm 42 is addressing that fundamental need for encountering, meeting God through the image of longing.

I have heard it suggested that we have a God sized hole in our souls, and we are incomplete until we allow that hole to be filled.  We long to have that hole filled and the world is ready to provide suggestions on how fill it for us with work, commodities, and self-worship.  That is an abbreviated list.  The world is far better financed and replete with marketing savvy than faith communities to persuade us to buy their hole filling element du jour.

We do need to be clear that in this meeting, we are expected to walk away from it, different.  Jacob wrestles with the angel in Genesis 32 and he walks away physically and spiritually changed.  His very name is changed:  Israel – one who wrestles with God.  We are all at some point, Israel:  one who wrestles with God.  But at the same time, our “soul longs for you, O God.” 

Lewis does not remotely suggest that the hole in our soul is filled in exactly the same way, with the same transcendent moments and events.  If that were true, then we would all find the same kind of music, preaching, service organization, readings, to be filling.  I am confident now you know that is not the case.  For many, the hole in their soul is not filled with activities inside the building called church, but specifically interactions with the homeless and with those in need of spiritual care and nurture:  many gifts, many elements, all together making up “the body of Christ.” 

I observed earlier about Jacob wrestling with God and then arising from that match with a new name:  Israel.  Immediately after that cosmic wrestling match, he encountered his brother.  He was fearful that in that encounter, his brother’s righteous indignation over the way Jacob left years earlier would continue to be present.  Instead, the reunion was a happy one, and the one who had wrestled with God, said seeing his brother was like seeing “the face of God.”  We see the Face of God when we encounter those around us.

 

I have no idea what the future holds for all of us.

But I believe that turning down the volume of the world message, and turning up the volume of the Jesus message comes about when we encounter the sacred.  Are we travelers passing through this world or is this world our permanent address?  Our biblical message is that we are traveling through, not staying.

 

In a quote of uncertain origin:  “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human one.”

When we buy into the idea of encountering Jesus, we say that we are prepared to take up the values of Jesus, and tell the values of the world to move back a row or two in our pantheon of values. 

Peace be with you and I wish you far more than luck in life, I wish you an encounter with the sacred in the form of Jesus. 

Selah, Dennis

Familiar in the Unfamiliar

[The Angels ask Mary]:  “Woman, why are you weeping?”

[Mary] said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (Which means Teacher).  John 20: 13b-16 (NRSV)

I was in my fifties before much of the significance of this scene started to really lay claim to my soul.  Every time I explore the scene again, it grows in power, its meaning sharpens a little more. 

Easter, 2018, found me preaching from the Gospel of John and the extract above is part of the common reading for the day.  I will touch on other elements of the scene, but the center piece of the message is how Mary recognizes Jesus through the calling of her name.   

John in his beautiful writing style is looping back earlier in his Gospel where the Good Shepherd says about his sheep: "The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out" (John 10:3). The Good Shepherd then adds, "I know my own and my own know me" (John 10:14).  Mary is part of his flock, so it should not be surprising that she recognizes the risen Christ when his voice is heard calling her name.

Mary is experiencing the familiar, Jesus, in an unfamiliar place, the garden outside the tomb. 

Because she is a member of Jesus flock, she recognizes Jesus through her called name. 

For Mary, here in this scene, it was the voice of Jesus calling her by name, making the unfamiliar, familiar.  Life is like that, we are able to live and survive in the unfamiliar because of the familiar. 

Sometimes, for some of us, the familiar is television, the older the better.  Remember the television series that started in 1983 and ran till 1992, about a bar in Boston, ‘where everybody knows your name:’ Cheer’s?  Our name is a powerful force to take us to familiarity even in a place of unfamiliarity.   

The familiar is often best understood, experienced, in community.  James Baldwin published in 1961 a collection of essays about the black experience in the United States, under the dark title Nobody Knows My Name.  Baldwin’s title suggests he is haunted by the absence of community, i.e. Nobody.  In comparing Baldwin’s essays with the Gospel of John with community one writer suggests:

When one's name is known and called, one is enfolded in community. When Mary's name was called by the risen Jesus, she was enfolded into the company of heaven, and she recognized the One who now lives directly within and from the life of God.”

That is goosebump:  Jesus is calling Mary into the community of heaven.  In her case, it is a community of the faithful who encounter the risen Jesus.  At this moment in the John biblical narrative, it is a pretty exclusive community:  her.  Be not anxious:  It doesn’t stay that way. 

Do we understand, when Jesus calls us by name, it is a call to community? 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:  “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”  Are you ready to be interrupted by God? 

Here’s the question: if Jesus calls you by name, would you recognize his voice?’  Here my Bonhoeffer twist is, ‘would you want to recognize his voice?’ 

An industrial size dose of candor would compel many, if not most, to admit we do not truly believe that Jesus will come to us in the garden and call us by name. 

If Jesus does, we will do everything in our power to pretend we don’t recognize the calling voice. 

For many, if not most, recognizing Jesus voice in the garden would scream out for immediate rejection.

Jesus is calling us to disconnect from the preferred familiar, and emerge in a reality so profoundly different, so totally unfamiliar, we cannot imagine it.

At least, we cannot imagine it, until Jesus calls us by name. 

It is important to place ourselves in spaces where we experience and affirm Jesus in our midst.  We do this in hearing “the body of Christ, broken for you”, in the scent of the oil from the candles, in the familiar sound of a favored hymn or anthem that stirs us in places too deep to be named, in the feel of the Bible given to us in love in a confirmation class fifty years ago.  Those are the familiars that help us to live in the unfamiliar and are part of how we hear the voice of Jesus calling our very names.  The unfamiliar for me from 2012 to 2019 included the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake, my wife staying overnight for Family Promise, or in community creating emergency buckets at the United Methodist Committee on Relief in Salt Lake. Last night it was for me feeding the needy at Asbury UMC here in Charles Town.  

Easter comes, and then it comes, and then it comes again.  Easter in a familiar rhythm, sound, sights and smells.  However, from those familiars, we are called to serve, and that can make the familiar pretty unfamiliar. 

Are you familiar enough with the voice of Jesus to recognize he calling you by name, and if yes, is he calling you into the unfamiliar?  If so, listen.

Selah, Dennis

Persist

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”  1 Timothy 4:16 (ESV)

I suspect most, if not all, of us have heard part of the purpose of education is to help us learn how to think, rather than what to think.  Critical:  both what and how are important.  Balance is also important.  People who win on Jeopardy have what mastered.  There are probably few how questions on Double or Final Jeopardy.  Much of our spiritual thinking is how over what. 

How over what leads me to self-awareness.  How we see ourselves and, importantly, others, is beyond important, it is vital!  Paul knew this well enough in the scripture above to admonish Timothy to be sure to “keep a close watch on” himself and that watch would be of salvific value, to Timothy as well as those interacting with him. 

This watch keeping is to be more than occasional, Paul encourages persistence.  To be persistent is to be doggedly engaged in this “close watch” for an extended period of time.  I liked doggedly.  It implies a tenacious spirit. 

Vital -- Self-awareness hinges on reflection and how we integrate this reflection into our own emotional intelligence.   

Emotional intelligence is our own reflections in terms of our own knowledge about our emotions, and our ability to observe and draw meaning from the emotions of others.  There is in this a “what” (reflection) that leads us to deeper understanding of how (we relate to others and ourselves.) 

David Foster Wallace sounds like Paul when he said in This is Water: 

“Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.  It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

A person with high self awareness, high emotional intelligence, is one who makes their own choices rather than operating from some internal default setting.  A derivative of this level of self awareness is remembering to listen, think, speak, rather than listen, speak, think.  For many, our default setting is listen, speak, think.  This is low self awareness, low emotional intelligence. 

This reflection leading to a better understanding of self and others is arguably more important than pure facts and figures, dates and heroes, theorems and formulas. 

We absolutely need what to be a success in the world, but how we are in relationship is also critical.  A positive relationship with ourselves, and with others, leads to success and our success depends on our ability to properly read other people and react appropriately to them.  Remember Paul?  Keep a close watch on yourself. 

To keep this watch, we must look, in as well as out. 

Now here is the paradox in all of this:  we learn a lot by failing.  That great bard of life truths, Anonymous, once said: “Those who have never failed have never attempted anything.”  There is no shame in failing, the shame is not learning from it, and not conducting the inventory afterwards of what was learned. 

Brené Brown, writes in Rising Strong:  “We need more people who are willing to demonstrate what it looks like to risk and endure failure, disappointment, and regret—people willing to feel their own hurt … willing to own their stories, live their values, and keep showing up.”

She nails it:  feel our own hurt but at the same time own the story from the hurt, the pain.  To live our values, we must reflect enough to know what those values are, and to keep showing up.  Key is that single idea from Paul -- persistence. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

United but not Untied

Recently, my wife and I went to the Turks and Caicos to reaffirm the wedding vows of two friends. Great people.  

That Sunday morning, most of the community gathered from across the United States was Roman Catholic, so that was where we went ... the local RC Church.  

The experience was transcendent.  The music had a local flavor but used ancient words.  The liturgy was powerful and the sermon orthodox.  The gathered community was multi-cultural and young. I was strongly touched by the remembrance of what God has done mixed liberally with our anticipation of what God is yet to do, making our now a special, worshipful, grateful, place. 

Following communion, the priest invited those who could not take communion to come forward and receive a blessing.  About 25% of those present came forward ... 

People don't have a tattoo that says "I am divorced" but I wonder if that wasn't a significant element of this sub-community, that was still seeking the blessing of the church? I felt like I was witnessing beauty.  

This observation led me to wonder how is it that Jesuits and Franciscans can get along? It intrigues me that Catholicism can at times be so both/and rather than always either/or. I am mindful RC can be either/or, just not always.  

Catholicism can truly be quite orthodox in what it tolerates (or doesn’t), but at the same time, seek a big tent approach on many things.  

I wondered then if the second most famous quote that John Wesley never said might potentially apply: 'In essentials, unity; in non-essentials liberty, and in all things, charity.'

Elements of our community seem in a rush to declare schism the reality and that we should proceed as such. I do get it.

While I get it, I not so sure I agree with what I get. I vote slow down, please.  

What if we instead tried to reach some agreement (I didn’t say consensus for a reason) about what we agree on – and define these as elements of unity, granting liberty on those issues we did not declare to be essential. 

Baptism of former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS is the preferred term at least in Utah, preferred over Mormons) might be a United non-essential, that would be quite essential to the UMC in Deseret (the name for the LDS footprint in the West).  For me, what does the person receiving the LDS baptism think of the theology behind the action words of ‘baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’?  I am not saying it IS a non-essential, just it might be.  Deseret is probably Utah, Southern Idaho, Western Wyoming and Colorado, Northern Arizona and Eastern Nevada and there it would be an essential, but for the national “United” church, I think ‘meh’ might be the general reaction to this issue.  At least to most members of most non-Deseret touched conferences, I suspect. Trust me, for the United church to essentially say 'the baptism of your parents, grandparents, and other relatives is not a Christian baptism [our current position]' may make sense to some, but it is problematic in the extreme in Deseret.

I intentionally chose a regional issue rather than a national one, so we could potentially see one such issue through different lenses.  

   

What if our #nextmethodism/#dreamumc modeled an organization of local churches within (still) regional conferences who had a common set of non-essential values.  We are United on essentials, but on what has been agreed to be non-essential, we are not.  We are in effect, on non-essentials, Untied. 

We could then I think evolve into a system where certain national and international boards and committees are united between the two untied elements.  The United Methodist Committee on Relief comes to mind, but maybe the board that manages our health and benefits?  I would hope that we could hold United that which provides hospitals in Africa.  The United Methodist Church says this is an important essential of who we are and we are going to fund this.  I think the fewer illustrations I offer here, the better the dialogue will go.  A lot of hobby horses out there for sure. 

I probably don’t get it, but is the potential loss of our ability to link the needs of the world with the passion of our hearts a risk we wish to take over doctrinal issues of tradition and scripture?  I think most of us, if not nearly all of us, can agree that Jesus called on us to reach out to those in need and hear in their voice, their needs, and their calls for justice.

Can’t we find a way to stay United on the essentials and agree to a Grace-filled state of being Untied over the non-essentials? 

If we want to find solutions, I think we can.  I confess often, I hear voices that are uninterested in finding solutions.  Show me where I am mistaken. 

If Catholicism can simultaneously embrace Jesuits and Franciscans, I wonder if we are not able to simultaneously embrace two sides which see the world on some issues, very differently  

Selah, Dennis

A Prayer for January 11, 2017

O God of excellence, remind us to be models of good works and in all our teaching, demonstrations of integrity and dignity.  Amen

Titus 2:7

A Season and a Time

Ecclesiastes 3: 1 (NRSV) “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven …”

Ecclesiastes 3: 7b (NRSV) “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak …”

Sometime during a misspent moment in my youth, I was humming and singing along with a vinyl version of the Byrds to their hit “Turn, Turn, Turn” when somebody disarmed me by noting “you know that is from the Bible.”  I was in that moment of life where the Bible held no truths.  I was convinced she didn’t know what she was talking about.  I was – of course - wrrrrrrong, utterly wrong. I might even have been mistaken! 

At times this has been a scripture with tremendous centering power for me.  At times this divine insight pierces my soul.  It is at one and the same time, brilliant and true. 

There is a season and a time for everything and even as we enter the season of Advent and Christmas, we are still in the season of stewardship and budget development. I confess when it comes to talking about money, I am inclined to follow the injunction to “keep silence” and forget that the counter weight to that silence is “to speak.”   Even though we are in the spiritual, soul-healing business, we cannot ignore and neglect the everyday “business” of the church. To support your spiritual journey and your witness to the power of creator God, we have to address the funding side of life.  Every time we turn from the challenging, we run head long into divine insight that invites us to turn and has an impact on our soul.  My soul is pierced, again. 

Over the last twelve months (November, 2015 to October, 2016) we have had the highest level of congregational giving in the last five years - $372,000.  Our previous high was a little over $368,000 in January, 2012.  I am going to use this time to speak the voice of gratitude for your trust in the leaders of your church.  Thank you.  Thank you very much. 

You have made much possible through the generous sharing of your treasure.  We are making a difference in Sandy, in Utah, and in the World. With humility, paraphrasing Luke 4: 18-19, the Spirit of the Lord is upon us because we are bringing good news to the poor and we are setting captives free, we are helping with the recovery of sight, and we are proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.  I love the message of God’s unconditional Grace, slathered out on each of us.  To be a follower of this radical Jesus requires us to think and act radically. 

One of my goals for 2017 is to get your staff to a higher level of compensation, Jim Collins writes in Good to Great, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.” I pray you agree with me that we are blessed with exceptional staff. We want them to be fairly paid for their talents and contributions to the health and growth of Hilltop, but we still have much uncertainty over what our income will be for 2017.

Now is the time for those who fully intend to eventually turn in a pledge form to do so. Now is a time to speak with your trust and commitment 

For those of you who do not intend to turn in a pledge form, might I invite a conversation with your church leadership so we might understand why you cannot speak with your trust and commitment. 

For those who have turned in a pledge form, we are praying for a ten percent increase in congregational giving in 2017.  I am mindful that at a time when we are at our highest level in nearly five years, we are praying for a new highest level. Our goal is to support your staff.

Candidly, your church leadership assessment is now is the season, now is the time.

Know that I am spiritually, emotionally, and financially invested in Hilltop.

Many others are as well. 

Are you? 

If not you, who? 

If not now, when?

Now is the season.

Now is the time. 

As a community, let’s make 2017 a year when we proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor to all who have ears. 

The year of the Lord’s favor starts now. 

The year of the Lord’s favor starts with you. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Gifts of the Spirit

1^st Corinthians 12: Verses 4–7: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Galatians 5:22-23: By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

Galatians 5:19-21: Now the works of the flesh are obvious:…impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

 Scripture is NRSV

Paul is big on the idea of the Spirit. The Spirit is clearly an important theological idea for Paul. References to the Spirit fill Paul’s letters as he coaches his far flung flock. Three are quoted here. Paul was having trouble with both Corinth First UMC and Galatians Community UMC. Things had fallen apart after he had left.

 

Things are not falling apart at Hilltop UMC, let me assure you. We are doing well.  We can do better. 

I personally like to think of the two Galatians readings in terms of car dashboard lights. When we are in proper relationship with God, our fellow co-laborers in the church and ourselves, our dashboard lights are green. Love, joy, peace and other good things are displayed consistent with what Paul enumerates in Galatians 5: 22-23. The machine should work well when the lights are all green. However, we need to check our spiritual engines when the dashboard lights are red with strife, anger, factions, envy and the like. In the car dashboard world, green is normally good, red is normally a problem. Fruits of the Spirit are good; Works of the Flesh are not. Galatians 5 helps us understand and measure how we are doing with this relationship stuff. The passage is an indicator of relationship.

 

If Galatians 5 is about how we are doing, 1^st Corinthians 12 helps us frame what it is we should be doing.

 

Paul’s specificity in Galatians is largely absent in the Corinthians. In Galatians Paul gives us the names of lights we can read as green or red. In Corinthians Paul resorts to an illustration of the church as a body and points to body parts as how the body should function. An ear listens but it does not see. His illustration is very good.  I augment the body illustration from Paul in terms of team, and as a baseball fan, I see it in terms of baseball. You need a variety of different skill types to play baseball, and a team made up of Yogi Berra’s, a Hall of Fame catcher and pontificator, might be a good one for providing pithy quotations, but it might have trouble pitching effectively. 

The church, like a team, like the human body, needs different skills, as given to us by the Spirit, to be put to labor on behalf of the Kingdom of God.

 

What are your God-given gifts? Sometimes we know what they are: I am good at numbers, and I am not particularly good at small engine repair. But I didn’t know I was good at numbers until I got dropped into a position in 1973 that called for me to be a numerical analyst. I struggled for a while but mentors and coaches helped me and turned that struggle into strength. What we now see as a gift was at one time not a gift. It was honed and developed by others, enhanced by my own willingness to be coached to success. I had to be a numbers disciple, a student, for a while. In reality, I am still a numbers disciple, constantly looking at web sites and articles about how to better display data so that it becomes information, but I digress.

 

I had to trust others to see that gift in me that I didn’t know that I possessed. 

In my learning and growing here, I didn’t become angry or exercise poor self-control. In fact, this endeavor became an object that lead to joy. When it comes to being a numerical analyst, my dashboard lights here were never red, always green.

 

Here are some thoughts:

• Gift Assessment Axiom: When you don’t think something is a gift, you might be mistaken. 
• The Converse to that Axiom: When you think something is a gift, you might be mistaken. 
• The Corollary to that Axiom: Listen to others about your gifts. Another might see your gifts more clearly than you. 

Look to the dashboard lights and crosscheck them against Galatians 5.  Green is good.  Red is not good.  Listen to your heart.  Listen to others.  Listen for God.  Remember that God sometimes speaks in a small, still, voice, except when small, still isn’t working. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

One of Us

I like Brian Andreas as both a poet and an artist. A piece of his art and poetry graces the entrance to my study. It is on the wall nearest where I often hear the joy of children animating the life of Hilltop.

One of my favorites is: “I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do.” I am at an excellent, light-filled, place right now: I do not have time to tend flowers grown by dark thoughts. My life is full of tremendous light, but I wonder if this thought piece might not be helpful in moments of darkness?

This is my thought: How much energy do we spend cultivating flowers that only grow on our darkest thoughts?

In the Gospel of John we are told that darkness is a hopeless drill if we are really followers of the Christ: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5 ) and later that same community, if not the same author would write in 1st John – “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:5-7) and later in the Gospel of John "… But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” (John 11:10)

But we all stumble and commence with watering and caring for flowers that only grow from dark thoughts. But watering and caring for those plants that thrive on dark thoughts – they can be at times so beautiful; the colors they display so addictive. I know how to create problematic beauty out of gossip, low expectations and self-indulgence, including the most self-indulgent idea of all … the dark idea that everyone else needs to change, but I am just fine, thank you, very much. How dark is that? 

Sticking with John “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-21) -- so Jesus gets it. When we gossip and have low expectations and we are focused only on “our” needs we are acting as Jesus said we would and we love what Jesus said we would – darkness: Human Condition 101.

We say, “But those flowers in the garden are so alluring, so gorgeous – don’t tell me I have to give them up ….”

Paul would say to two of his churches in Thessalonica and Colossae – “For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness” (1 Thessalonians 5:5) and “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).

I think what Paul and Jesus and John, and yes, maybe even Brian Andreas are all saying is that caring for plants that thrive on darkness doesn’t work. I wonder what would happen if we made a choice to try and be Stained Glass People. An anonymous poet once wrote – “People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But in the darkness, beauty is seen only if there is a light within.”

George Fox – the Founder of the Quakers – believed that with enough study, enough self-reflection, enough time set aside to truly focus on scriptural and personal holiness, we could with God’s help learn how to turn on that inner light. Maybe Fox was suggesting just a moment or twenty that we should reflect on how we really let this light of the world (Jesus), really light our world. I guess the alternative is to keep caring for those flowers that only grow on dark thoughts. The choice is ours … and cultivation within ourselves the light of God’s understanding can be a thing of beauty … all we have to do is recognize that beauty takes us to a higher place … maybe evenly a heavenly higher place …. Where do we want to be and what do we want to be?

Returning to Brian Andreas and this is what is on my wall nearest the children: “Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life?; though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us.”

I am proud to be “one of us.” Us is the us that are followers of the Risen Lord, the "People called Methodists", but perhaps most proud of all, a people who seek to manifest belonging, believing and becoming in their very essence, to be people of light, not darkness, to be like Stained Glass.

Let me invite all of us to pray the following daily: 

"O God of Light – continue to pursue us with your love so that through your Grace we can reject the darkness that comes with gossip and self-indulgence and other sins that we commit when we forget that your son – Jesus the Christ – is truly the light of this world. Amen.”

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Seek, Lose, Keep and Throw Away

 (Pastor's Musings for the June Hilltop Newsletter)

Antiquity speaks to us through Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 with the following words:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;  a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;  a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;  a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;  a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

For me, these ancient words are part of my youth, part of my own passage from youth to young adult. When I read these words, my memory starts creating sounds in which I mentally hear the 1960s American answer to the British Invasion, The Byrds, reminding us in the Folk-Rock classic “Turn, Turn, Turn” that within life there is a time for all things. This is a true “golden oldie” drawn from ancient scripture. 

The book of Ecclesiastes is part of the Hebrew wisdom tradition. The title Ecclesiastes echoes from the Greek with sounds like “preacher,” “assembly” or “those who have been called out.” The root word in Greek is the same word that gives us the word “church.” For my purposes here, I want to focus on the translation “those who have been called out.” Within a community, those who have been called out pass along their wisdom from one generation to the next.  

On the first Sunday in June as we recognize our seniors, we will focus on graduation as a passage from one element of life and maturity to another. (I confess, the first time I heard the term “senior recognition” Sunday, I thought it was recognition of our older members and wondered what age qualified a person to be a “senior.” You have permission to chuckle at my lack of wisdom.)

Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is “a time to seek, and a time to lose.” I suppose that many of the seniors are ready “to seek” an adventure, while many of the parents are reluctant to “to lose” their senior.

Ecclesiastes also reminds us that there is “a time to keep, and a time to throw away.”

I offer that part of the passage of life includes knowing what “to keep” and what “to throw away.”  In fact, it is more than what, it is both what and when.  What do we keep and throw away?  When do we keep it and throw it away? 

What we keep and knowing why we keep it is foundational to understanding the future being created before us. Our ability to accurately see the present and vision the future is clouded by parts of our past that should not be kept, but rather discarded. All of us, to varying degrees, keep parts of the past that are better thrown away. This is a natural part of the human condition. Naming what needs to be kept and what needs to be discarded is important in creating our future. It’s what the Byrds tell us is necessary: to “Turn, Turn, Turn” in their paraphrasing of Ecclesiastes.

We should note that in the Hebrew Bible “to turn” includes the idea of repenting. In short, it is about looking at who we are, and turning the very direction of our lives.

Our individual and corporate goals are to understand who we are in order to allow us to connect with our best possible future and then shift our focus so that we can make that future a reality.

That is a passage worthy of the name.

Selah, Pastor Dennis

David ... A Man for our Time?

This is week number two of a series focused on David: A Man for our Time. I had really thought that the sermon would be, given the Independence Day theme, about David as Priest over King. It seemed like a good passage to remind each of us that church and state are not truly equal, separate, yes, but not equal. The passage selected is from 2 Samuel 6 and it is where David dances at the entrance of the Ark into Jerusalem.

Instead, I feel called to talk about why Michal, his wife, has become estranged from David.

By all appearances, he seems to want her for what she can bring to him in the way of power. Gradually, as the story unfolds in 1st and 2nd Samuel, she grows less enamored with David and here, finally, as he dances into Jerusalem in front of the Ark, genitals showing to all who want to see, even 'slave girls', he has crossed some kind of emotional Rubicon for Michal and she says enough.

David seems to have brought this on himself. He treats her abominably over time, seemingly wanting her for what she brings to him in the way of power and prestige, and she keeps giving him slack, and finally, enough.

On a day where our hearts and minds will be looking for the pastor to speak in some kind of illuminating way about freedom (Fourth of July weekend), the words seem to be pointing this pastor towards a reflection on how we can lose our way towards political leadership by treating others shabbily on that journey to kingship.

Peace ...