Listening in order to Understand

Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

James 1:19-21, The Message.

I use a quote from Stephen Covey a lot:  “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

We all regularly encounter those who start sentences with something like “I don’t understand” but then complete what began as a quest for understanding with why what they don’t understand is clearly wrong, stupid, or something they strongly disagree with. 

This is basic human nature:  it is part of the human condition. 

My reaction when this happens is to think “you must think you understand enough about this to say you don’t like it.”  I hear the religious authorities of Jesus day saying to “I don’t understand this Jesus dude, and I don’t like him.” 

I confess I find this type of conversation jarring.  I operate in the faith that optimism, enthusiasm, and hope are contagious. 

May I invite all of us to lead with our ears and follow with our tongues? 

May I invite everyone to replace replace negativity with the "help me understand.” 

Bonhoeffer nails it (as he usually does):  "The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them."

He also writes:  "There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that .... is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person."  It almost sounds like the Covey  above!  Maybe I need to change who I am quoting from Covey to Bonhoeffer?  

Rise above basic human nature: listening is not part of the human condition.

In the 1951, John Huston movie “The African Queen” the character played by Humphrey Bogart laments that how he behaves is “only human nature” to which the Katherine Hepburn character answers:  “Nature … is what we are put in this world to rise above.” 

We are Easter people. 

Let us endeavor to spread the joy of the empty tomb in all that we do. 

John Wesley wrote: “I have often repented of judging too severely, but very seldom of being too merciful.”

It can be argued that judging too quickly is a form of judging too severely.

Perhaps in seeking understanding, we might reduce the need to request mercy later.

Selah, Dennis

A Scarlet Letter

Jesus says in Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life” (ESV).

Paul writes in Philippians 4: 6 “do not be anxious about anything” (ESV). 

A wall plaque posted behind my computer screen advises:   “Let your faith be bigger than your fear.”

Rejecting fear doesn’t mean we have to necessarily reject safety.  Safety is important. I fasten my seat belts for even the shortest trip in my car. But are we sometimes overly safety conscious?

The late Rabbi Edwin Friedman offers we live “in a ‘seatbelt society’ more oriented toward safety than adventure.” Let's bookmark that thought briefly and return to it in a few lines. 

I interact with many where one of the harshest direct criticisms is, “you are an anxious presence.” Those words have, or are expected to have, a mystical, “red letter”, scriptural authority.

Immediate penance and repentance is expected when this is uttered. Immediate!

Hester Prynne, Hawthorne’s heroine in The Scarlet Letter, was required to wear on her dress a Scarlet A, for adulteress. 

In my clergy leadership world the Scarlet A is for anxious, and within that world we avoid that A as if anxiety were synonymous with adultery.

Here is the issue: who gets to define what anxiety is? 

Anxiety might actually be a reaction to another’s desire for urgency.

Urgency is required to bring about change.

Some of that change could be altering the status quo.

Anxiety is often, not always, but often, driven by our preference to hang on to the status quo.

Is it a good idea to let any one person be the definer of what is anxiety?

Returning to Friedman, he urges us not to give excess power to the most anxious presence in the room. I posit conversely should the one in the room with the highest preference in the status quo decide what anxiety is?

If we don’t want to allow the most anxious presence to have the power, I don’t wish to empower one person to define what anxiety is.

Honest disagreement may emerge but a dismissal with the remark, ‘you are just an anxious presence’ needs to be expunged from our ‘compleat’ leadership tool belt. 

Your anxiety may be my urgency. Your anxiety may be my raising the temperature in the room to bring about change. 

John Kotter is an expert in leading change. To paraphrase Kotter: ‘The first step in leading change is creating a sense of urgency.’ Urgency might mean we need to move from a too comfortable world.

The poet Brian Andreas writes: “Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable; fall asleep ; miss your life.” 

Overcoming comfortable and missing our life’s call often requires urgency. 

I believe we need to listen to angels that endeavor to be sure we are not too comfortable and wake us up.

Jesus and Paul and Friedman urge us not to be anxious. What element of our leadership life have angels looked at and said “wake up, you are letting comfort dictate what is going on, following the call of Jesus may not be comfortable or safe.” 

There is an irony in Hester Prynne: she is arguably the person of most character in The Scarlet Letter. Her Adulteress A is gradually transformed to an item of beauty, embroidered as a reflection of her inner character.

What if allowing others to brand us with an Anxious A is actually a mark of our own transformation, an item of beauty?

Returning to Friedman: What might it take for us to leave the 'seatbelt society' and instead seek a holy adventure in some presumed unsafe wilderness? I wonder if this isn’t Exodus meeting contemporary safety standards.  

Jesus says to not be anxious.

Paul says to not be anxious.

It is scriptural to not be anxious.

As we jointly tackle an uncertain future, let’s understand that urgency is the issue, moving from the status quo, and not allow anxiety to define us.

But we need clarity within community as to why and what defines us as anxious.

For Hester, her Adulteress A became a scarlet letter of distinction and honor. 

Maybe if others label you with a Scarlet Anxious A, but you are, in holy humility, confident that you are a Jesus-like and Paul-like non-anxious presence, let it be a scarlet letter of honor. 

Urgency and raising the temperature in the room so that the status quo is chased does not immediately equal anxiety. 

If the issue is urgency and changing the status quo, I believe we can wear that scarlet letter with honor. 

Selah, Dennis

Growing in Love

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 New International Version

We love [God] because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19 New International Version

The search for meaning in my life ultimately brought me to the Church.  That quest for meaning presented me, in love, with a life defined by the life of Christ, a Christian life, shaped by the Word of God and the ongoing presence of God in my life.  A life initiated in love but further defined by the need for constant growth. 

A Christian life in a state of growth consists of at least two further searches, if not more:  Acknowledging that God searching for us, we are searching for God.  Those two searches are defined and driven by love.  In the scripture above, we understand God loves the world and we love God because God first loved us.  That affirmation of love is meant to be meaningful and transforming.  Most of our lives have been transformed by love:  think about it, where would you be without love?

The love we experience is not static or stationary.  It is a constantly evolving and at its best, constantly growing, force.  It grows deeper through trust and mutual respect, tenderness and care, growing.  I confess love has transformed me, and I suspect you as well.  Love leads to growth. 

I said this past May that “at the heart of God is to be in relationship.”  That day it was the relationship of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Today, let’s reflect on loving relationship within the Body. 

Our new Vision Statement makes relationship core by naming it – Hilltop and then addressing how we are in community:  Hilltop – An inclusive community of hospitality, healing, help, and hope, leading hearts to Christ.  Our vision is intended to be understood as a statement of being, who we are.  We provide hospitality and help, and God provides the healing and hope. 

In the First Century, long before we had denominations and set aside buildings for worship, the Christian search for meaning thrived on relationship.  We lose our way when we forget that.  People are the church:  we sing a hymn called “I am the Church.”  Too often we get focused on denominations or buildings to define the church, and that is the wrong focus.  At our best, we are a restless, searching, people who are, in humility, leading other hearts to Christ. 

We call the Church the very Body of Christ.  The Church, at its best, is focused on helping us be Christians that are constantly in a state of communicating, receiving, and giving.  We are, at our best:

·        Communicating the Good News of Jesus Christ to a cynical world, 

·       Receiving nurture, direction and hope regularly in order to be forces of transformation in that cynical world, and

·        Proudly, joyously, giving back to God our Time, our Talent, and our Treasure. 

Let’s spend some time this Season of Stewardship, a Season of Prayerful Growth, with great intentionality looking at where we are, or perhaps are not, growing.  Are we growing in the depth of our relationship and if not, what are we doing about it?  Growing in our minds, growing in our service, growing in the joyful sharing back to God what has been given to us in the first place.

Be alert, be attentive, be awake to the small still voice of God calling to you about how you might grow.  In order to truly understand that call, you may have to first be open to your potential for growth leading to joyful response. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Children Make the Parent

“We all know that parents do not make children but that children make parents … Authentic parenting is one long sacrificial act … parenting reveals the way that sacrifice at once diminishes our life as we knew it … while at the same time revealing to us larger and infinitely more fascinating forms of life … Parents know experientially that the very process which makes them suffer also makes them grow.”

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Living Gospel

Luke Johnson is a New Testament Scholar at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.  Candler people I know in ministry speak highly of him. 

Right off, there are a few things with the quote that potentially give me pause.

Initially, I was not sure I would have said my life had been diminished by being a parent, even with the qualifying phrase “as we knew it” coming so quickly.  But try as I can, I am unable to wordsmith a better image of shrinking what we thought was important before we became parents.  It certainly has a way of changing our focus.  I told my children after the birth of their children that ‘your life will never be the same.’  My son in particular recently reminded me of that phrase and said it was so true. 

I also know using the above quote can be painful for some.  Parenting can have a mixed message; it can be a mine field in how we understand it or see it.  Some want to be parents, and have not realized this goal.  Others have had strained relations with their children, birth and adopted, feeling, as Johnson alludes to, they had sacrificed much but different than Johnson, for little appreciation. 

Life is so complicated at times. 

But, Luke Johnson is touching on an element of the Christian walk that too many of us try and avoid, or see as some kind of plague or curse:  suffering. 

It seems to me that whenever I read the word suffering, I hear in my brain this echo of Paul from Romans 5:
 

¹ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.  (NIV)

Paul writes:  “Glory in our sufferings.”  Paul is using glory as a verb which means to take pride or pleasure.  For sure I do not take pleasure in suffering.  For me, suffering might at times be a badge of honor that I wear, but I don’t think Paul means suffering by itself is the badge of honor.  Paul talks about it as part of life.  We are going to suffer, but that suffering leads to positive outcomes:  perseverance, character and hope.  Hope and the character that precedes it are the badges of honor.  Johnson means it the same way:  our suffering as a parent leads to changing us in positive ways.  We grow from the experience.  We are forever different.  Growth and a different outlook are for Johnson the badges of honor. 

We don’t have to experience or be near the actual physical birth pains of a human child in order to be a parent and be forever experientially changed as a result. 

We used the image of Hilltop as a parent when we were talking about a satellite campus growing into a fully identifiable separate church somewhere south and west of us.  We did so with intentionality thinking that being a parent in this sacrificial way, would help define us, in a positive way, as to who we are.  I really think that idea still has resonance and meaning.  Because we had one miscarriage, does not mean we should swear off parenting. 

I hear those who say:  ‘we aren’t ready yet’ and ‘we tried that last year and it didn’t work, let’s focus on Hilltop first.’  I concede there are elements of Hilltop life that needs strengthening. That is absolutely true.  I am not sure our miscarriage was entirely driven by lack of strength, but let’s talk.  What does need strengthening? 

Examples of things that need our continued attention are:  money, volunteerism, lack of universal engagement, aging infrastructure, a culture with a waning interest in Christianity in a post-Christendom world, and enthusiasm for the topic of parenting.  I could go on. 

But I still plan to persevere here in hopeful and hope producing leadership.  Here I think I am doing this in the tradition of Hilltop’s Saint:  the late Reverend James Cowell.  Jim was the pastor here at Hilltop from 1991 to 1997 and was the architect of Colorado Springs Sunrise United Methodist.  Being bold, creating church children from healthy parents was a core belief of Jim’s.  Core.  I am his ideological descendent. 

Like Cowell and Johnson, I think this image of Hilltop as a parent is critical to help define who we are as children of God. 

We should do this in order to produce a Pauline like ecclesial character that looks forward to hopeful outcomes. 

Suffering, and know that we are going to, isn’t embraced because it is pleasurable, but rather look at how so many who have been able to be parents have had their very lives changed by that process. 

In the early 1900s a phrase emerged:  What would Jesus Do?  We see it abbreviated as WWJD.  Well, at Hilltop for sure, what about maybe WWJ²D.  Jesus and Jim – or J Squared. J Cubed if we add Johnson?   

It is time to start the conversation again. 

God doesn’t call us to small tasks. 

How do we strengthen Mother Hilltop so that she is capable of nurturing new life? 

How do we get started on this soon? 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Humility

“I tell you that this man … went home justified before God. For all those who … humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 18: 14 (New International Version)

Exalt means held in high regard. Good when this high regard is by others, problematic when this high regard is about ourselves. In this passage, Jesus is pointing out that proper self-awareness contains a dollop of humility.

Honest humility is an endearing quality in our interaction with others.  An honest humility, backed up by a true and honest self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses, is a positive human characteristic. In contrast, few take pleasure in being in the company of those who are compelled to be the smartest person in the room: wearying.  This is hubris, a word of Greek origin.

Hubris “came to be defined as overweening presumption that leads a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos.”  Some of that bothers me, but overall, it resonates.  My take is the disregard of who we really are. When acting in a state of hubris, we are fakes, charlatans, or to put a twist on Shakespeare “a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.”

Humility and hubris are opposites. To balance humility and hubris requires excellent emotional intelligence and a high self-awareness. 

Hubris is a character flaw, but too much humility can also be a flaw. What about those for whom it isn’t honest humility, but rather an unconscious inability to see ourselves as worthy, successful, fun, and all of the things that help lead to a well rounded soul? 

Self doubt eats at our very core and saps us of the strength for living life abundantly. 

Carl Jung, the noted Swiss psychiatrist, once wrote:  “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I love baseball. Former major leaguer Manny Ramirez provides an excellent example of the unconscious staying unconscious. Manny was a great hitter but less than thoughtful in the thinking elements of the game. His Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre was once asked why Manny did something less than helpful, and Joe said “it’s just Manny being Manny.” Some would say it was Manny’s fate to live in a world of self-absorption. Maybe because he could hit a baseball an incredible distance on a regular basis but not understand other elements of the game, Manny possessed what was arguably low self-awareness. He had hubris as it related to his hitting prowess, but a profound lack of honest humility in how all of that fit together to make him a complete player in all phases of the game. 

Our walk, in community, with Jesus is at least in part so that we can be complete players in all phases of the game of life. Jung would suggest this means we conduct an honest inventory of who we are. This can be tricky because, in the words of David Foster Wallace, “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

Jesus would suggest a proper self-awareness contains a dollop of humility, the type that is healthy and interested in growth. The commendation is not to beat ourselves up over our failures, but rather to quietly assess and inventory who we are. This is done in healthy conversation with those we trust and love, on long walks alone in the creation, and a thousand other approaches to be appropriately alone or with others for the purpose of growth. 

Selah

Strange and Foreign

Isaiah 28:11 -- For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the Lord will speak to this people.

Methodism grew out of two “Great Awakenings:” The first in England in the 1730s and the second in the United States in the early 1800s.  Both awakenings were marked by enthusiastic response to the word of God preached and offered to everyday people.  Unstated then but understood now the Methodist movement focused on ‘The creation of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.’ Transformation marked the Methodist movement.   

For example, Gertrude Himmelfarb, writes “[T]he miracle of modern England” is “the fact that England was able to survive the economic revolution of the eighteenth century without succumbing to a political revolution [the best example is France].”  She places much of credit for this on John Wesley, the people called Methodists and the Methodist blend of Justification by Faith and Good Works. 

Wesley accomplished this through field preaching, the creation of active small groups, and high personal accountability – all of which were as “strange” or “foreign” to the people of his day as in our own. 

Wesley, and the people called Methodists, accomplished this national transformation by starting a movement.  Wesley and his people changed a nation -- for the better. 

America was also changed by Methodists – providing spiritual support in a growing foreign and strange land.  Francis Asbury was one of the first two American Bishops and the most movement focused.  He was tireless in his leadership of the church.  Like in England, during a time of religious awakening, a good man was prepared to lead a movement. 

My friend, the Reverend Doctor Bob Kaylor of Tri-Lakes UMC in Monument, CO, sees “humility, confession, repentance and surrender” as critical to our Christian experience, and I offer those four words framed the Methodist movement implicitly if not explicitly.  Those words of “humility, confession, repentance and surrender” often sound as “strange” and “foreign” to our ears bombarded with the constant worship of self.  Jesus words of unconditional grace sounded “strange” and “foreign” in his time as well. 

I think it is safe to say that the movement part of Methodism seems to have “gone out” and our flame needs to be re-kindled.  Our leadership sees our goal as:  We will re-ignite a Christian movement that begins with grace, offers abundant life, and reclaims the life-changing love of Jesus Christ for ALL people.  Key there is re-ignite acknowledging that the flame has gone out. 

How do we re-ignite this flame?  I posit it is by looking at our history.  Wesley and Asbury were driven by an interest in individual souls lovingly cared for and brought back to the bosom of God.  I am their theological and biblical child. 

I once heard a person say about being a Texan as “I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could.”  I confess, I wasn’t born a Methodist, but I got here as fast as I could.  I love the Methodist movement that focuses on Grace and Faith in Action.  That is exactly what Himmelfarb is driving at when she talks about Wesley’s combination of Justification by Faith and Good Works – Grace and Faith in Action. 

But let’s be clear – the ideas espoused by Wesley, Asbury and Jesus that include humility, confession, repentance, and surrender – sound strange and foreign to us.  Those are not words with worldly endorsement, in fact, the opposite is true.  Our call is to be foreign and strange in the land in which we sojourn.  There are times in this movement leadership people will look at us and say “you are not making any sense.”  If our marks are humility, confession, repentance, and surrender, they might sound foreign and strange, but that puts us in good company, as Jesus sounded foreign and strange in his own time. 

“You are not making any sense” is a badge of honor if we are witnessing in the spirit of Wesley, Asbury and Jesus, especially Jesus! 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Ministry Moment of October 8, 2017

The idea I want to offer you today is service in the church.  As we think about this, I call to your attention what we just sang to you a few minutes ago from ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, if you love Jesus why not serve him?

My guess is that everybody here has some capacity to serve the church in some way. Just as those skill sets that I brought in from the military have allowed me to lead within the church, I believe there's things that you have, you can do, and you're called to do and that you can bring those skill sets to service on behalf of God.

I want to focus today on time and talent. We so often within the stewardship campaign talk about treasure.

To be clear, we need the treasure to turn to lights on. 

     We need the treasure to pay for various salaries of your staff. 

       I could go on, but It's really a three column test:  time, talent, and treasure. It's not pick one. It's pick something off all three.

Paul was dealing with the same issue in Romans when he would say to the church that he hadn't gotten to yet in Rome, (Romans 12: 1) "I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters by the mercy of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." He didn't say present your bodies to be burned up on some kind of sacrificial level, it was to be a living sacrifice on behalf of the church.

There are many things that we need help with here at the church. Many of them are relatively mundane and relatively easy to do. Some of them can be absolutely terrorizing.  For example, running the sound booth. It can be 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror when something goes wrong, but it needs qualified people to help us with that.

There are all kinds of things that you can do within this church.

I would hope that we would see that we have the capacity within us to answer God’s call. I'm going to talk in a few minutes about Gideon and how it is that he answers God's call, but 300 others answered his call as well, not only to lead, but to serve. 

To paraphrase Malachi 3:18, we make the distinction between those who serve God and one who does not serve him. I want you to respond because your heart is a glow; your heart is on fire. Your heart is on fire for God. That's the invitation for you today is to stop and pause and say, "Yes, my treasure is important, but I also want to contribute time and talent to this wonderful church."

I'm mindful of people here that think they don't have a lot of talent. They're like Moses, like Gideon that we're going to get to. My invitation for you is to know that God is calling you in some kind of way. What is that way? How is it that you can offer your time and talent to this church as well?

God bless you. Thank you very much.

True to Jesus

I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.

Psalm 122, Verse 1, King James Version

Roy Goodart in his congregational moment speaking about our “Step-Up” campaign on February 19^th reflected on a young adult who told him that the high point of his week was Sunday morning worship at Hilltop.  A contemporary statement of the psalmist: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.”  We try to make that Psalm opening true for everyone. 

Worship is a critical element to the beautiful transformation we pray and hope happens every week at Hilltop. 

There is a lot of thought that goes into each service.  We spend time discussing the theme, and how best to frame it in poetry, readings, prayer and proclamation.  Our goal is of course transfiguration or as I introduced last week, beautiful transformation. 

But the beautiful transformation isn’t entirely in the hands of your worship leadership.  Each of us has a role in this transfiguration.  Making ourselves vulnerable to the word(s) of God mean we have to let our guards down.  Some of us have to let them down a lot. 

All of us – all – of – us -- have to check our egos at the door.  At the symphony there is a coat/hat/umbrella check, a closet where we can leave those things so they don’t interfere with our enjoyment of the music.  There is sadly no ego check at the doors of the church.  Do you think maybe we should consider a capital campaign to properly deal with that need?  I think not.  That is an expense we don’t need to pursue, but we do all need to perhaps to lower the personality guards we all carry around with us.  We hear it:  “I’m just being true to myself.”  We of course aren’t called to be true to ourselves, we are called to be true to Jesus. 

Lent is a perfect time to intentionally pause from the world’s values and plug ourselves into exploring what it might actually mean to be beautifully transformed by the truth of Jesus.  Part of how we might accomplish beautiful transformation is to make ourselves vulnerable to the word of God in poetry, readings, prayer and proclamation.  I know that vulnerability will require each of us to check in something we are holding onto so that the beautiful transformation message washes over us.  What we hold onto might be anger, forgiveness offered but not received, forgiveness hoped for but not offered, frustration, a feeling of being under appreciated.  I could go on.  I am sure the list can be built quickly and easily if we just get ourselves started.  For worship to possibly “take” and make us “glad” we need to be prepared to be vulnerable. 

I return to Roy Goodart’s story.  That young man was prepared to open his heart to the worship experience and allow it to roll over him and carry him to a new, transfigured place.  That could not have happened without vulnerability. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

What is Hilltop About?

Hilltop’s very purpose is to be in the transformation business

We have transformed ourselves in the last few years, and your church leaders believe that Hilltop has been called to provide a way for everyone to find Jesus. We believe that the world needs his presence, grace, and transformative power.

We have heard many stories recently of how Hilltop is transforming lives, specifically the single mother from Family Promise who spoke to us about Hilltop’s participation in changing her family’s life. A new member has shared with me how much Hilltop has been a place of grace and affirmation for her and her children.

We must look out beyond ourselves and be a bold reflection of Grace and love in the world so that the world can be transformed, our very purpose. That vision and our anticipated congregational giving are out of sync. We have a financial shortfall of at least $60,000. To fully fund our programs and meet our conference obligations, we need $100,000.

Hilltop is Under-Incomed, Not Over-Expensed

We need to strongly resist the reflex to pull-back, to think that Hilltop is over-expensed. It is not. We are under-incomed.

Would it surprise you if I told you our per-attendee giving level is the lowest of the predominately Anglo United Methodist Churches in Utah with a full time pastor?  I will come back to that in a different blog in a few weeks. 

Listen and Learn

Over the next four weeks, I encourage you to read, listen, and understand. We will be explaining our bold purpose and vision, which we see as fulfilling God’s call to bring about transformation in the World. As you hear presentations or read thoughts, you are encouraged, in Grace, to ask questions.

Our first thought is “We are under-incomed, not over-expensed.”

Next Wednesday, this blog will focus on how we can all participate in realizing Hilltop’s vision. We will lay out a plan to make up our budget deficit.

Our vision is bold. It will require stretching. Transformation is an intense process. Let’s all work together toward that vision. 

Selah, Pastor 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

Encountering Jesus

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. He posits that we 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 addresses that fundamental need for 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. 

Our theme for the month is Encountering Jesus. I pray that seeking this encounter is our daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and life theme. In December we did a lot of encountering Jesus at the Rescue Mission and we have more opportunities to encounter Jesus this month through Family Promise. 

We do need to be clear that in this encounter, 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 for each of us. If that were true, then we would all find the same kind of music, preaching, service organization, readings, to be filling. I know you know that is not the case. For many, the hole in their soul is not filled with activities inside of Hilltop, but specifically interactions with those like Family Promise and the Rescue Mission:  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 2017 holds for 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. 

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 way more than luck in 2017, I wish you an encounter with the sacred in the form of Jesus. 

Pastor Dennis

New Life

There are places in our world where seasons are shadows of what we experience here in these mountains. Mountain seasons are intense and they are rapid and sudden. In these mountains, I regularly hear people say: “This is the Rockies, you can experience three seasons in one day.”  Something about the altitude and our proximity to the heavens makes seasons sudden, intense, and beautiful. The mountain spring comes with a rush but is also sometimes chased away by powerful blasts from winter that reluctantly let go. But spring does arrive. Powerful colors emerge alerting us to new life from which so assuredly seemed like death. 

Paul writing to the church in Corinth about the resurrection of the body would remind the church that death is not ultimately victorious. Winter is not victorious; it gives way to spring. That which seemed like death gives way to life, and despair gives way to hope. Philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, “The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created spring.”

The Easter biblical narrative is about the sudden, intense, and beautiful manifestation of hope. Because of Easter, death is not victorious; death has, in Paul’s words, ‘lost its sting.’

As religious people, Easter defines us. Easter, at least the hope and new life, behind Easter, is, according to theologian Luke Timothy Johnson, the “engine that drove Christianity” in the first century. Easter is about hope; and for those first disciples experiencing the empty tomb, it was sudden, intense, and once they figured it out, beautiful.  Easter defines us as religious people. In that defining, Easter gives each of us, young, old, powerful, weak, poor, or rich, a tremendous life force. That life force emerges from hope. From that hope, this life force is capable of transforming all of us without regard to who we are. William Bridges writes, “When you see a blade of grass cracking its way up through a sidewalk, you know there’s a tremendous life force in even very small life forms.”

New life is being experienced at Hilltop. In some cases it might be gradually in breaking, but in others it seems sudden, intense and beautiful. There may be some who will attempt to introduce winter into the conversation, but Easter defines us! This new life is truly like blades of grass pushing their way up in unexpected and different places. In Mark 16 the women go to the tomb wondering who will roll away the stone, and the answer is sudden, intense, and, after they figure it out, beautiful. The same force that gave and gives us life rolled that stone away. Now go and project that life force so that the new life we are experiencing at Hilltop is shared by others. 

Death is not ultimately victorious, death has ‘lost its sting.’ He is risen, he is risen indeed!

Selah, Pastor Dennis