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

Casting Out Fear

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  1 John 4:18 ESV

Fear is a natural element of the human condition. 

It is easy to utter the words “fear not” -- much more challenging to live out of an ethos that actually does it.

In Exodus the Israelites construct a Golden Calf to worship rather than this God of Liberation. 

Like the Wilderness Wandering Israelites, we are quick to turn fear into our own  Golden Calf, a Golden Calf that its flawed priests point towards and encourage us to “worship and honor the God of Fear, because that God feeds a natural element of your humanness.”

It is after all, a natural element of the human condition, and as a natural element, wants to be fed.

The Star Wars fictional character Yoda sees fear as leading to darkness in our souls:  “Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.”  Jedi Master Yoda doesn’t say “a path” he says “the path.”  That is absolute: “the path.” 

Jedi Master Dietrich Bonhoeffer is equally absolute calling fear “the archenemy itself … crouch[ing] in people’s hearts.”  Again, the article is definite:  the. 

I grew up in a Christian denomination that, I felt, operated from fear.  Too often the theology was fire and brimstone, turn or burn.  The overarching approach was often to use fear to rally us away from the ‘dark side.’  I remember far fewer sermons on the idea of love being a superior or at least an equal, countervailing, force against fear.  Instead of trying to remind us of the force of perfect love, and bringing us to that, fear of hell or damnation was very often the key lens by which we were led to see the force of Jesus.

Much of what drew me to Wesley and the People Called Methodists is the idea of love made visible in Jesus.

In the First Letter of John, we see this idea of love being made visible in Jesus in striving towards perfection in love.  This leads to our fears, our natural human condition, being cast out. 

Cast out is the same phrase used to describe overcoming demonic possessions.  Think about that for a second. 

If fear is ‘The path to the dark side” and “The archenemy”, perfection in love is “The” force that leads us away from fear and towards wholeness.

“Peace is what I leave with you; it is my own peace that I give you. I do not give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset; do not be afraid.” John 14:27

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

Waiting Patiently, Listening Carefully

“But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”  Isaiah 40:31 (English Standard Version)

If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. Proverbs 18:13 (English Standard Version)

We have one newsletter for both December and January.  What is a visionary pastor to say that speaks to two different seasons in the life of the church?  

Advent is a season of anticipation, waiting for the Christ Child to get to Bethlehem.  Many of us want to rush it; we resist going through the steps of hope, peace, joy and love.  We want to get there, quickly.  “Let’s quickly move through those steps.  The department stores have had their lights out since October!”  We are trampling on Advent when we bring Christmas into that season.  It is like celebrating Easter in the middle of Lent.  

The gifted writer and Wesleyan theologian Dean McIntyre writes:

Advent is a season rich in tradition, symbolism, art, music, and liturgical practice. It has its own unique themes as well as those that point the way to Christmas. And yet, we annually confront the pressures and questions of …"Why can't we sing Christmas carols in early December?" The answer, of course, is that to do so allows Christmas to intrude. It allows the themes, practices, spirituality, history, traditions, symbols, art, and music of one season to displace those of another. We lose the richness and the benefit of experiencing the promise, longing, hope, and expectation of Advent. The world, television, and shopping malls have done all they can to convince us that Advent does not matter; it has no place in our culture; and many of us have come to accept that for our church, as well. Our faith teaches us something very different.  (Italics are not in the original.) 

Our theme for Advent will be: Waiting patiently in hope, peace, joy and love.  Each week will focus on one of those four ideas.  We want to honor Advent I think part of how we honor the season is cherishing and embracing waiting.  The Isaiah above is a theme for all who want to move quickly.  ‘Renew your strength:  wait.’ 

It is our Hilltop tradition to have a Blue Christmas service in December.  We will continue that tradition on December 12^th at 7:30 PM. 

The next season is called Epiphany.  Epiphany was originally about the recognition by the Wise Men of the Christ Child.  But we can have secular epiphanies:  “a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you.”  Many churches use the Season of Epiphany to help those who came on Christmas Eve to move from a state of annual tradition to one of faithful inquiry seeking a deep, rich “moment.”  My take of that moment is one of raised consciousness rather than true understanding.  I have personally been studying this stuff for a quarter plus of a century and parts I still don’t truly understand.  When I want to truly understand, I call our own John Davison, and he clears it up for me. 

Many have heard me say:  too often we listen in order to reply rather than to truly understand.  I hope I don’t shock anyone with the idea that all of us do this to some degree.  I hope I don’t shock anyone with the idea this is not a new problem:  look at the Proverb above.  I agree that if we are formulating the reply in our head while the conversation is going on, we are taking part in folly. 

I want to spend our time of growing consciousness around the idea of listening.  During that time, I hope to touch on the trials and tribulations of the United Methodist Church as it faces the possibility of becoming Untied instead of United.  I think the solution to some extent is one of learning to better listen. 

Join us in both seasons, a season of waiting followed by a season of listening. 

I pray that you covenant to first wait patiently, to listen carefully, and to be with us in both of these two seasons unless you are not in our fair city. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

A Constant State of Gratitude

Proverbs 22:2-4 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

“The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.”

November, both secularly and religiously, presents so many opportunities for us to be thankful. I think of it as a month set aside for us to be in a constant state of gratitude. 

The first Sunday in November is a chance to remember the great ‘cloud of witnesses’ that have gone before us and paved the way for us. The personal courage it took to leave a Bristol, England in a seventeenth century sailing vessel is impressive. This courage was displayed multiple times in multiple ways throughout our history. Others had to have the courage to survive today buoyed by hope tomorrow would bring a life of freedom. I find the courage, among other characteristics, of our forebears humbling. Their courage in the face of life challenges almost always leads me to a state of gratitude, a gratitude that empowers me to be hopeful and optimistic. 

This year the second Sunday is the actual day of remembrance for those who have served: Veteran’s Day. While officially the day is one of remembering those who have served in the military, I think including those who have answered the call to serve us in the role of first responders, e.g., police, fire, medics, are a focus I have used in the past, and want to again this year. Having been a member of the Warrior Class, I plan to try and offer a thought or three as to how we can best support those who move towards the sound of danger. Again, I find the courage, humbling. Again, courage leads me through a state of gratitude, towards hopeful and optimistic. 

Thanksgiving Day is preceded by the third Sunday, and we are going to reflect a little on what it means to respond from multiple blessings in gratitude. The Hilltop musical tradition of how we mass, play and sing “Come Ye Thankful People Come” is goose bump. It consistently makes me awe-full. 

The final Sunday of the Church Year is “Christ the King Sunday.” Awe and gratitude are always in my mind when I think humbly about Jesus as the Christ.

Sometimes, focusing so much on Thanksgiving, humility and gratitude does lead me to feel called to share with all of this precious flock called Hilltop, the joy I find in ministry. First, I think of myself as a person of ideas, and I have the happy task of getting time each week to participate in a drama focused on ideas. Further, I have spent a great deal of time over these last six plus years with you during moments of great personal pain, anguish, and confusion. Being allowed to be there at those moments is inspiring and humbling.  When I walk into the room of someone close to the end of this life, and their face lights up at seeing me is nothing short of an awe-full moment. There is nothing awful about it. And at that moment, I am each of you, there to sing, read scripture, anoint with oil, pray, listen, and quietly hold a faithful hand. It is so humbling. 

I walk into lives, that without the presence of the divine would have every reason to be in a state of despair, and I find, among other things, courage. And yet again, I find the courage, humbling. And yet again, courage leads me through a state of gratitude, towards hopeful and optimistic.

November presents many opportunities for us to be thankful. 

   Might I invite each of you to think of November as a month set aside for you to be in a state of gratitude?  

      How do we grow that gratitude for a month into a constant feeling?  

         I have found such a feeling leads to riches beyond silver and gold. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Pronouns Matter

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ.  1 Corinthians 12:12 (ESV)

In my time in the Army, I often heard leaders say while pointing to the US Army strip on our uniforms “there is no me in Army” then point to our name tags, mine of course saying SHAW and offering “there is no I in Team.” Sometimes they would close that lesson with “Go Army, Go Team.” 

There is no me in Army, there is no I in team. 

The preamble to the Constitution doesn’t say “I the person” it starts, “We the people.” 

          The New York Yankees do not allow names on the backs of their jerseys, only numbers. 

               Some coaches tell basketball, football, and baseball players to play for the name on the front of their jersey rather than the name on the back.  The back has their last name, and on the front, is the team name. 

All of those ideas point to the same concept that Paul was pointing to in his ongoing philosophical dispute with the church in Corinth: when you sign on to be a follower of Christ, you leave the stuff behind you previously held on to. For Paul, the image of a healthy human body was helpful to understanding the idea of team: the team worked together and the eye was the eye, and it didn’t try to be the ear, mouth, or ankle. 

There is no me in Church, there is no I at Hilltop. Me and I are called pronouns, which mean they can be used as a substitute for nouns. There is no me in church surely sounds better than ‘there is no Dennis in church.’ 

Here is my point: Pronouns matter, they matter a lot. 

How many times do we hear national leaders over the last twenty years get into extended dialogue where the pronouns used are I, me or my. Those are all first person, singular pronouns. Somehow when Jesus says “I am the light of the world” that is positive, but when a leader pronounces “I am the light of the world” it is jarring. 

Personally, I always try to make sure the pronouns at Hilltop are to the maximum degree possible, if first person, plural. We.  Us. 

But that is so hard. Look at the very first sentence of this thought piece: quickly it gets to first person, singular. Sometimes the I statement is unavoidable. First person singular isn’t automatically sinful.  But other times, it would be more true, more helpful, and more kind to go to plural pronouns. 

Reading European sports writers talk about the recent World Cup was interesting. England are something. Not England is something. My word processor gives me an error on are following the singular noun, England, but England in the context meant is a team, a plural. 

Maybe we need to think of the Body of Christ in a European team concept: The body of Christ are …

English teachers will freak out but in reality the plural verb makes an excellent point – a team is intrinsically plural, not singular. You want the team to get to a place of unity, oneness, functioning as one. But even in perfect oneness, perfect unity, it is still a collection of me’s and I’s. 

I used The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown last year for sermon illustrations. Boys in the Boat is the story of the University of Washington Rowing Team and how, spoiler alert, they won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1936. In part, the book is about how one man, Joe Rantz, neglected and abandoned by his family, had to learn to sacrifice his personal individuality for the unity of the team. When Rantz makes that psychological, spiritual shift in his understanding of how it all fits together, the crew is one with each other.  The nine members of the Crew becomes one. 

For Paul, this thing called church is a one.  He sees it in terms of the complexity of the human body, many diverse parts and roles, but still functioning as a single thing. All of this diversity of function and role still serves to keep the body healthy and viable. Every member of the body, that is eyes, fingers, feet, stomach, ears, all function in support of the one that is the entire body: the entire body of Christ. 

This Jesus stuff isn’t easy. It isn’t going to happen without effort and hard work and a willingness to make that psychological, spiritual shift in understanding of how it all fits together. You’ve got to sacrifice much of our individuality to make it all fit together.

One of the barometers in how we assess how we are doing on this “body of Christ” stuff is the pronouns. When first person singular dominate, we are probably focused on the wrong things. When the dominant pronouns are plural, we are probably functioning consistent with what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 12. 

There is no me in Church, there is no I at Hilltop. 

Selah, Pastor 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, finds 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 includes the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake, staying overnight for Family Promise, or creating emergency buckets at the United Methodist Committee on Relief here in Salt Lake.

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 him calling you by name, and if yes, is he calling you into the unfamiliar?  If so, listen.

Selah, Pastor Dennis