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

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 once said in a sermon 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. 

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 our lives 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, Dennis

Becoming

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse.  'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become ….’”

The Velveteen Rabbit

I once was asked why I didn’t title my sermons.  

My not serious, tongue in cheek, quip was that I was a closet Episcopalian, and while I believed in Jesus, I didn’t believe in titles.  Episcopalians do not title their sermons, Methodists normally do.  But I assure you, I am not a closet Episcopalian.  Their Sunday duds are just not me.  I might become an Episcopalian, but I doubt it. 

I wonder if the issue is less about title and more about the why, the purpose of the sermon, and for me, it is about being, becoming.  “What does it mean to be a Follower of Christ?”  

Spanish has two verbs to be.  One has an element of permanence, and the other is understood to be temporary.  If you use the wrong verb to say someone is smart or beautiful, you are actually suggesting it is not part of their normal state.  I see this doing/being in the same way.  We have to do the church enough, that at some point it stops being doing, and it becomes a vital statement about who we actually are. 

I assure you that after having prepared right at 500 sermons I am not the same person I was 500 sermons ago.  Church is a different reality for me than twenty years ago, sometimes even twenty minutes ago. 

Being a Christian within the church is, in the sense of the two Spanish verbs to be, permanent and temporary.  Gradually as we become real in terms of being little Christs, the meaning of Christian after all, he becomes permanently part of who we are, and we leave more and more of the temporary behind. 

Wesley would call it "moving on to perfection." 

I suspect this moving on is never completed, that in this life, we are never fully 100% finished.  To paraphrase Paul from 1^st Corinthians 13, I suspect it is a state of constant becoming, a state of seeing in the mirror and just getting it dimly, always seeking more light, more clarity, moving always towards becoming. In the words of the Skin Horse, you become real, real as a follower of Christ.

Selah, Dennis

Gifts of the Spirit

Galatians 5: 19-23:  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. 

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.

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.  One is quoted here.  Paul was having trouble with Galatians Community UMC.  Things had fallen apart after he had left. 

I like to think of the 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. 

The issue here is how we use our gifts in order to produce Fruits of the Spirit.  Sometimes we know what those gifts 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, plus 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. 

Look to the dashboard lights and crosscheck them against Galatians 5.  Green?  Red?  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, 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

Denied Pain: A Redux

“Courage is forged in pain, but not in all pain. Pain that is denied or ignored becomes fear or hate.”

 Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness

 I think many of us know the expression, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

As Brené Brown offers in Braving the Wilderness, that expression is sometimes, but not always,true.  Courage can be forged, but fear or hate might be as well.

Too often those in pain try to talk to someone, you, me or another friend, about their pain.  On our best days, we listen.  On our worst, we tell them to be tough and soldier on.  I have, too often, witnessed this danced out with exactly this be tough and soldier on choreography when asked to deal with depression.  Sadly, I have led this dance myself more than once.

A person has a broken ankle and we stop, cast them, operate if necessary and shower them with special care.  A person has a broken heart stemming from life’s pains, and we often, too often in my opinion, tell them to suck it up and drive on.

On forced road marches in the Army, I often heard non-commissioned officers telling soldiers to “take two salt tablets, put your mind in neutral, and drive on.”  It worked.  Often in fact.  Not always.  When I comment that we need to be prepared to listen for the pain, it is the deeper pain that is being denied, or ignored.  That is the type of pain that leads to anger and/or fear.

A powerful, insightful, book I read several years ago was Hillbilly Elegy.  The author deals well with the deep pain of living in a culture where that pain is denied or ignored.  To re-quote Brown:  “Pain that is denied or ignored becomes fear or hate.”

I think there are movements in this country right now feeding from the trough of denied or ignored pain.  These movements are across our political landscape, and not isolated to any one group.

How people are often moved to action is through a careful, intentional dose of hatred that is used so stoke the ovens of fear.

What we have too often is a single coin, with two sides:  one side – fear, the other - hatred.  Fear and hatred are two sides of the same coin, minted by those who use that coin to fund and fuel dissension and separation.

We live longer, have less poverty, are better educated, and are generally healthier than at any time in human history.  But still we live so often in fear.  Communities lock down because of a shooting and helicopters fly over our heads shaking us out of a world of confidence into a world beset with basic human fear, and we ask do I face this and rise, or do I flee, and if I do flee, where do I go that is truly safe?

So often FEAR is Forgetting Everything is All Right and that is a basic element of the human condition.  I was once told, there are 365 times we are told to Fear Not in the Bible.

In Romans 5: 3-5 we are told “we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. 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.”  Each of us has a role in the steps here from suffering to hope.  Moving from suffering to hope is not a personal, singular journey.  Each of us are potential messengers of the Gospel on this journey.  

Our task, our sacred call, is to listen deeply for the pain in others (or ourselves) and be agents that cause that pain to not be denied or ignored.  Listening to others is important.  Allowing yourself to be supported by others serves to help release that pain.

Sometimes we minister by quietly sitting, quietly listening.

     Sometimes we minister by moving from sitting and listening to rising so that we are instruments of change in a world that might too often be guilty of the charge of not listening for the pain.

          Sometimes, two salt tablets and putting our minds in neutral is not the Christ-like response.  You figure that out by listening, and being open to not believing everything you think.

               Sometimes what doesn’t kill you, makes you meaner or more fearful.  Learn to recognize that in yourself.  Be alert to seeing it in others.

Everyone of those sometimes contains a suggested Christ-like response:  be a friend to those to whom love is a stranger.

Selah, Dennis

I published a slightly different version of this two years ago based on a Sermon Series preached at Hilltop UMC in Sandy, Utah, thus "a Redux".  

Trust and Faith: Maternal Cousins

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not rely on your own insight.

In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.

Proverbs 3: 5-6, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Trust and faith are related, cousins, not twins. 

Faith, leaning on Hebrews 11, is about assurance and conviction (NRSV:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”). 

Trust is about character.  Our own character and how we feel about the character of the other.  Heart in biblical terms is usually about character rather than our bodily organ.  Both, organ and character, are vital, necessary, life giving. 

How we understand the character of the other is driven generally by experience.  It takes time for us to know someone well enough to get a full measure of their character, and after we do, it is often fixed:  concrete.  A great example of this is after Saint Paul gets metaphorically knocked off his horse in Acts 9 on his way to Damascus, Paul reaches out to the gathered community of Jesus followers, in Damascus and Jerusalem, but fails to connect.  Simple:  they don’t trust him.  ‘We know this guy; he has shown us who he is.  Don’t trust him.  It’s all an act.’  Even the intervention of trusted Barnabas fails until Barnabas gets his own appointment in Antioch.  He remembers Paul and puts him to work.  Paul is redeemed, and that redemption hinges on Barnabas’ trust in the character of Paul’s repentance. 

I expect we have all heard the phrase:  “In God we trust, everything else, we check.”  It says everyone else’s character is untrustworthy. 

That worldview, that statement of the human condition, is remarkably cynical.  

In fact, that cynicism is organizationally cancerous.  Like undiagnosed, untreated cancer, lack of trust is fatal:  killing vision, killing mission, killing hope, killing creativity.  Mistrust is a cancer on our view of much of our current world:  government, media, business, and the church.

But this is a reflection on leadership, not our entire culture:  Leaders must be open to self-examination.  Must.  Self-examination leading to self-awareness is a leadership imperative.  Leaders, true leaders, those who actually bring about change, must be willing to trust in their judgment, their own growth and maturity, and others.

What would have happened if Barnabas had trusted the judgment of the crowd in Damascus and Jerusalem, and allowed the mistrust of Paul to cause him, Barnabas, to not invite Paul to assist him with Antioch First UMC? 

Often mistrust is a function of fear.  1 John 4: 18 tells us there is ‘no fear in love’ and that ‘true love’ casts out fear. 

What is it we fear individually?

What do we fear organizationally?

How do we overcome those fears as individuals and within the organizations we are part of. 

Those questions will not be easy, and if one generates an answer quickly, reflexively, then the gentle, seeking completeness, reader might need to go back and re-read this short reflection until this dose of chemotherapy, this dose of radiation treatment, this surgery, has begun to excise the cancer of mistrust from our organizational body. 

Selah, Dennis

Now as a Threshold Moment

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11: 1 (New International Version)

Several years ago I was attempting, and failing, to make a sermon illustration using physics. 

I asked if anyone knew the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  I wasn’t really expecting an answer but voices in the congregation shouted “Bonhoeffer!”  We laughed and it is still funny. 

When Bonhoeffer is the answer to the vast majority of my questions when preaching, shouting out his name is the “just right” answer, right? 

We see the same kind of “just right” answer from the children to questions during Children’s Time:  “Jesus!”

In Utah, at Hilltop United Methodist, I was in a choir where when the director would ask a question about a vowel sound, we would all shout out “schwa”!  That sound is the most common English language vowel sound in our spoken language, and most of us don’t even know what it is!  It is the ‘uh’ in how we say Philip in English.  A gazillion examples of this sound exist:  Again, family, bottom, support, and syringe all have an “uh” sound and that sound is the schwa.  Schwa is “just right.” 

Those three answers are often the expected response to those particular questions and often, they are “just right.” 

Sometimes however, the proper response to a moment in our lives is unexpected, it might not always seem quite right as it is happening to us.  In fact, that response may actually seem dangerous. 

Let’s return to the question that got the answer “Bonhoeffer!”  Let me offer you one way to understand that law of Thermodynamics is left on their own systems move from order to disorder.  You might hear it phrased things move from order to chaos.  But when the moment is a threshold moment, when the ingredients and the moment combine just right, something miraculous happens – instead of chaos, the system moves to a new complexity that has a new order.  In other words, it moves from simplicity to an ordered complexity.  It may look like chaos for a while, but it doesn’t stay that way. 

I offer the decision from antiquity to not eat gathered grain, and instead, put it into the ground.  One scholar calls it a Goldilocks moment:  when the right ingredients encounter a moment when everything is just right.  It’s miraculous, and it is a threshold moment. 

On an Easter Sunday a few years ago, I used the idea of Peter pondering the empty tomb and the women’s encounter with the Risen Jesus.  It was a threshold moment. 

In physics, a threshold moment doesn’t require our assent, but in our theological, spiritual, and religious world, it does. 

We must assent to the possibility that something miraculous has happened:  the moment is just right for a new reality, a new creation:  it is both faith and trust. It is also scary because it is so dangerous. 

Alix Harrow writes:  “Thresholds are dangerous places, neither here nor there, and walking across one is like stepping off the edge of a cliff in the naive faith that you'll sprout wings halfway down. You can't hesitate, or doubt. You can't fear the in-between.”

We can’t fear the in-between.  We must be prepared to step off that edge in faith, in trust. I wonder if now isn’t for many of us a threshold moment, and needing faith and trust to step out into a new unknown.

Scary. Dangerous. Necessary.

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

Jesus: An Unraveling Revelation

Colossians 2: 2-3 (NIV) My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

This Lenten Season we look at the revelation that is Jesus.  Lent begins on March 6^th with Ash Wednesday; we are going to set the Lenten stage on Transfiguration Sunday (March 3^rd).  In our reading that morning, Jesus will be encountered both on the mountain top and in the valley (Luke 9: 28-43). 

On that mountain top, the voice from the heavens will say:  “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”  For the rest of that scene, Jesus is silent but the next day, when they come down from the mountain, Jesus is frustrated by a failure of the disciples to sustain healing powers displayed earlier in the Gospel.  Jesus says:  “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you and put up with you?”  The disciples were previously able to heal people “everywhere” but now, they fail.

The text is unclear, at least to me, as to what has gone wrong:  one scene, they have it, a few scenes later, whatever they had, is gone.  Jesus calls them “unbelieving and perverse.”  I understand “unbelieving” but perverse is less used in our 21^st Century world.  One definition is the “showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences.”

“A deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences.”

The disciples have just themselves healed others.  Three of them have been on the mountaintop and heard the voice of God pronounce Jesus as divinely chosen and, given their first shot out of the barrel to show they get it, they stumble. 

What happened in that movement from mountain top to valley? 

I’m just guessing here mind you but I wonder if it just wasn’t life.  Don’t we often have a deep and fundamental desire to behave unreasonably and unacceptably?  We glory in mountain top moments, but journey into that valley, unbelief.

The reality is that Jesus is an ongoing mystery with a revelation of knowledge and wisdom.  That knowledge and wisdom might be revealed to us is in testing while listening to the prophetic voice of Jesus himself.  My personal take is that the more I study Jesus, the more I realize I don’t know, I don’t understand.  I am sure that at times, Jesus could accuse me of being faithless and perverse. 

Are we in the United Methodist Church being faithless and perverse, and if yes, who?  My knee jerk is it must be those who do not agree with me, but that is less than gracious. 

I am saddened by the most recent experience in St. Louis this week by the United Methodist Church to reach some kind of accommodation with how we understand human sexuality, specifically, homosexuality.  We are clearly not of one mind on this.  I am frankly, still digesting what happened.

But even in my despair, I invite us to urgently refine the prophetic call of the mysterious but revealed Jesus.  I believe that means being in, but not of, the world.  Instead of being so vanilla and bland we might be a church in the “middle of anywhere”, I believe we are called to be a church on the "edge of somewhere” with that somewhere located more in valley than in mountaintop.  That somewhere is emotionally closer to despair than exhilaration. 

Join us in March as we try to unravel that revelation that is both the mystery and beauty of Jesus. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

There Should Be No Division in the Body of Christ

1 Corinthians 12: 24b-26 (New International Version):  “But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

One of the more famous quotes that John Wesley never said is: 'In essentials, unity; in non-essentials liberty, and in all things, charity.' It is unclear who said it first, maybe St. Augustine, but it appears doubtful that Mr. Wesley, the founder of the worldwide movement called Methodism, said this. But it is a good quote, a very good quote, nonetheless.  It is quite clear how Mr. Wesley felt about division in the church: he was against it. 

The United Methodist Church has been debating human sexuality for about three years less than half a century. That is a long time, a very long time. At issue is the current position of the United Methodist Church that states homosexuality is incompatible with a Christian life-style primarily leading to restrictions in the area of ordination, weddings and the use of church space.

 

This February in St. Louis, over 860 elected delegates from the World-Wide Church will gather in legislative session once again, and thrash out where we stand on this issue.  We will be represented by four clergy and four laity, six from Colorado and two from Montana. They were elected in 2015 and their term of service effectively ends this summer.

There are three competing plans for what we are going to do about human sexuality:

1. Remove the restrictive language and allow various levels of the church to make their informed decision as to what works for them in their context. No church will be forced to accept an openly homosexual pastor. No pastor will be forced to perform a same sex wedding. No church will be forced to allow their space to be used for a same sex wedding. This is the “One Church Plan.” 

2. Retain the current restrictive language and it would strengthen the response for those who violate these restrictions. This plan would permit “gracious exit” for churches who find the language problematic. This is called the “Traditional Plan.” 

3. A very contextual solution that would eliminate one layer of church hierarchy and keep us United in name, but would allow for three different theological understandings to be their defining ethos. It is reasonably safe to say these three approaches are: more open and affirming, roughly where we are now, and something between the two. This is the most complex plan, and will require the longest to implement for various reasons. This is the “Connectional Conference Plan.” 

As with any legislation, amendments can be offered, debated and voted up or down. It is quite challenging to know precisely what will be approved or disapproved. This will be a defining moment for the movement called Methodism.  There will be some leaving no matter what is or is not agreed to, that is a simple fact. Division is going to happen: the issue is how to minimize the division while being faithful to scripture as informed and illuminated by our traditions, experiences and reason. 

I believe that if we are attempting to minimize division and want to find solutions, we can. I confess often, I hear voices that are uninterested in reaching common understanding and I hope a spirit of active listening leading to understanding will be present in St. Louis. 

I personally endorse the “One Church Plan” as a pragmatic solution that allows conscience to be invoked at multiple levels: conference, local church and pastor.  Is it perfect? No. There may come a day twenty-five years from now where such an agreement with the “One Church Plan” will be viewed consistent with barring pulpits to women so long ago is viewed now. “You were part of a denomination which permitted some churches to refuse to accept homosexual pastors and refused to perform same sex unions?”  My explanation at that charge would be:  We had to accept that compromise in order to keep the United church from becoming Untied. 

Barry Welliver, your Lay Leader, and I will be discussing this on Saturday, February 9^th, at the United Methodist Men’s Breakfast. Breakfast is at 8:30 am, and our discussion will probably start about 9:00.   Send a note to office@hilltopumchurch.org if you do not normally attend the Men’s breakfast and would like to attend to help with head-count. All are welcome. 

I pray we can find a way to stay United on the essentials and agree to a Grace-filled state of being less than United over non-essentials.

Selah, Pastor 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