The Last Supper Mark 14: 12, 22-25

Special days are rarely celebrated without seasons of preparation. We celebrate the birth of a child after nine months of gestation. We celebrate the wedding of dear loved ones and friends, after a period of courtship and engagement. We celebrate anniversaries after we have made it through a year after an event, so we can commemorate it and how we have grown. We celebrate graduations after all of the hard work to took for a period of years. The same is true in the Christian church - celebrations are not divorced from periods of preparation. The two most notable seasons in the church calendar are Advent, which leads up to the celebration of the birth of the Christ child, and Lent, which leads us up to the empty tomb and resurrection of our Lord on Easter Sunday.

Lent is to be a time for us to become prepared spiritually for all that Easter means to us. For some people this looks like giving things up - such as a favorite food or fasting during the 40 days prior to Easter. For others it means adding a different spiritual practice to enhance their devotional life. And for others it may mean giving up a portion of money for the poor in the community. But whatever you choose to do during Lent it is all to the honor and glory of God.

Lent is not alone in being a forty day journey. Many people from the Bible who sought to hear God speak to them or experience God in a new way undertook such spiritual journeys. Elijah spent forty days seeking God on Mount Horeb. Moses was gone for forty days and nights when he received the law of God to give to the Israelites. Noah was on the ark for forty days and forty nights, wondering if he and his family would survive. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness, praying, at the beginning of his ministry. And so we step into this tradition of setting ourselves apart, doing life a little differently, to prepare for the gift God wants to give us on Easter with the empty cross and tomb.

In addition to preparing ourselves as individuals, we prepare ourselves as the body of Christ, the church. We provide new opportunities to explore our spirituality. Our beautiful curtains have been put away and replaced with burlap, a fabric that represents penitence. And we explore together scriptures that have significance for us corporately as we are on this Lenten journey together. This year we will be focusing on the the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life on earth - the 24 hours that the gospel writers believed changed the world, so much so that they disproportionally focused on it in their writings. At the heart of our gospel message, the message that has been carried down through the ages by the Church, is that Jesus took on our sin, underwent the crucifixion, died, and was buried, all before he was gloriously raised from the dead. Our Lenten preparations, and our focus on these final 24 hours, remind us that the grave could not be conquered, if Jesus did not first die.

How appropriate that we start our Lenten journey together through this series at the table. Or rather at the preparation for a meal. It was time for the celebration to top all celebrations in the Jewish year - Passover, a time when tens of thousands of Jews gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate that God had delivered them from slavery to Egypt. A time when both those who made it to the holy city and those who celebrate in their homes from a distance, were connected by their common heritage and religious story. Jesus and his disciples were amongst the crowds arriving in Jerusalem. In fact, they had arrived a few days early to the accolades of people shouting “Hosanna, Son of David” as Jesus came through the city gates. But Jesus had come to not only celebrate, but to die. Over the next few days his teachings and actions were heightened by his knowledge of what was to come. He became angry at the court of the Gentiles in the temple, a place of prayer for all nations, being converted into the marketplace for buying and selling goods for Passover preparations. He even overturned the money changers table, making the religious leaders angry. He taught about religious reform, challenging the leaders to the point where they plotted against him for his life.

Then on the day of the Passover celebration he sent John and Peter to prepare the Seder meal. They gathered the necessary produce - bitter herbs, wine, salt water, apples, the unleavened bread, the lamb. They followed Jesus instructions and found a man carrying water, an abnormality as it was a job for women, and followed him home to a large home, finding the place where they could all meet together and set the table. At three o’clock they joined the line at the temple to have their lamb slaughtered. The priest would take each lamb and slit its throat, collecting the blood in a bowl to be poured at the base of the alter table. The priest would butcher the lamb and give it to back to the person bringing the offering. They would have cooked the lamb for three to four hours, before everyone gathered for the dinner at seven o’clock to remember the story of how God rescued the Israelites from the oppressive hand of Egypt.

The story goes that Moses had tried time and time again to convince Pharaoh to let Gods people go. Each time, after being struck by some sort of plague, he would agree only to relent later. So God brought forth one last plague, killing the first born of every Egyptian household. The night this was to take place, the Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a lamb to God and put its blood above their door post as a reminder to God to pass over their house leaving it unharmed. The lamb was then cooked and eaten as one final meal before their journey.

Because God did such a great act in rescuing the people of God, Passover was (and still is) to be a time of celebration. A time to remember in order to look forward to the future. But Jesus changed the tone of the evening when he interrupted with the disciples knew, all of the ritual they had experienced since they were children, by taking the unleavened bread and breaking it. Then taking one of the cups of wine and saying it would be a sign of the new covenant. The disciples were probably confused. And to make things even more tense Jesus said that one of them would betray him.

Jesus’ ministry up to this point had been marked by parables that confused the disciples, but now Jesus was giving them something tangible, not simply a teaching. The bread stood for his body, the wine his blood that would be shed. Jesus was giving them one last thing to remember him by.

Even more confusing, Jesus told them that this symbolized the new covenant. As Jewish meant they would have understood covenant, for this Passover meal celebrated the acts of their covenantal God. But Jesus was telling them that the blood of the Lamb that had been sacrificed earlier that day as a sign of the covenant would be replaced by his blood, shed for all people. Later we would understand that these words and this act were part of our life story - the story of human beings brokeness and need to be liberated from sin and death through the new beginning that Jesus offered through his sacrifice.

This meal began the last 24 hours of Jesus life that tell the story of a God of boundless love, whose love could not be confined. In fact, it is a love so profound that Jesus, God’s son, was sent to lay down his life for all humanity. And this is what we now celebrate each and every time we come to the communion table, that God’s love is big enough to deliver us from sin and death. We come together and remember who we are defined through Jesus’ sacrifice. We remember who we were, who we are, and who we will be. And we come together to celebrate it as a community, not alone.

See, when Jesus celebrated this part of the Passover meal he did it with his friends. He ate with the people he was closest too in this earthly life. The people he choose to be with in this moment. If you knew you were going to have one final meal before you died, who would you want to be with you? What faces to do you see around the table? Jesus choose to gather with his spiritual friends, and we need spiritual friends as well. Those deep relationships where we encourage one another in the faith. Those relationships that you cannot possibly have with everyone in a church, but you can have in a small group. This is why small group ministry is so vital, it provides us a place to love one another and enter each others spiritual journeys in a profound way. That is why we are offering two different small groups as a church this Lenten season. Not only because their content is important, but because our lives matter to one another and we need others to walk this faith journey with us. We need a community marked by the communion meal.

No meal is more important to our faith then this last supper of Jesus. For those of you who have lost a loved one, think of their favorite meal. Do you still cook it? What memories do you have of that person when you eat it? My mom likes to cook Macarroni Salad. Every major dinner it seems to be on the table. But I don’t like it. My brothers don’t like it. My dad only eats very little of it. But she still cooks it because it was one of my grandma’s favorite dishes. So it is present, because it reminds my mom of her mom.

What memories do we have of Jesus, as we gather around the communion table? And who are the people who can help you celebrate the importance of Jesus life, this meal, and the last 24 hours of his life? May we seek those people out and be in a community with them this Lenten season and beyond, as we journey to the cross. Amen.

Small Town Life

Since I've arrived at my new appointment the question that everyone keeps asking me is "So what do you think of our town?" At the root the question is asking, what do you think of our small town life?

Honestly, I don't know how to answer any more after being here for six weeks. Being here reminds me of the town I grew up in. There isn't much to do, so relationships are strong. Everyone seems to be related to everyone else, because family is a core value. Churches are on every corner. People work hard and are invested in the community life. And I love all of that. But there is a flip side. As an itinerant pastor I don't fit in and I never will, because this is not my home and I am not staying forever. Its also not where I imagined myself being. It's nice enough, but I want to be somewhere where I have at least a chance to meet someone my own age. But my entire age group is missing. Post-college young adults leave the area to find a jobs. Some will return to settle down with their husband or wife and start to have a family near their relatives. But other then spouses the only new people coming into the area are the gas workers with their families. I miss seeing people who are my own age and the hustle and bustle of life in the suburbs. When I was talking about my trip to NYC to visit GBGM with my parents my dad asked if I would like to work there - and I would LOVE to work in NYC for GBGM. The city is where I see myself being - where I am surrounded by endless possibilities of things to do and people to meet. Where I can be surrounded by people my own age and where not being married at 25 isn't seen as abnormal. But that is not where I am right now.

Part of my struggle with small town life is that it is idolized here. People are always talking about how things were, wishing we could go back to those days. But even though I didn't live "back then" I don't want to go back. I especially don't want the church to go back. Because it is to a time where modernity was assumed to be the norm. We are living in the post-modern world, where those things aren't selling points any more. I was talking to another young adult clergy person about this recently. The church is probably the place where you can most clearly see the clash of the modern and the post-modern, with the post-modern more then often being dismissed. But post-modern isn't going away. It just is. And my generation has known nothing different so it has shaped who we are and how we want to interact with the church.

First, we don't want to join. In fact, we don't need to join in order to feel spiritual or like we belong. We want to participate, but on our own terms, not because you think we should and not simply doing what others tell us to do. I had one congregation member tell me lately that we need more young people in the church to do the heavy lifting. When I asked her what would happen if they came and they didn't want to do the heavy lifting she gave me a puzzled look. It cannot be assumed that young people exist to do the work behind your plans.

Second, we like technology. It has deeply marked who we are. It does not scare us. And we want it to be incorporated into worship somehow. I want to be able to go to your churches website and see what you are doing and how you are engaging the world through service. I want to be able to tweet during worship and use my iPad. The other day I went to a district meeting, where I was the youngest person by about 20 years, and when I pulled out my iPad to take notes, people were taken aback. I am not going to waste paper if I don't have to. One woman made me the crux of her joke to another woman about "my generations obsession with technology". Its not an obsession, its simply the way I've grown up and what I know best and can make work for me.

Third, we do not want someone up in our business. I don't necessarily want to have every detail of my situation shared to get on the prayer chain or to be named in church. I don't want someone to visit me in my home or in the hospital if I did not ask for them to be there. I don't need the entire town or church knowing every detail about my life. I want to be free to share what I want to share and keep private what I want to keep private.

Yet, small town life flies in the face of who a post-modern is and how their needs are met in most cases. In some instances, those of us who have grown up in a small town know how to navigate the waters between modern and post-modern, which is essential in a small town church where modern and post-modern clash in almost every decision and discussion. But sometimes I prefer to be in a place where I am understood as an individual and where my generation is understood in the context of who we are as post-moderns, not simply be patted on the head and told to conform.

I've also been struggling because small town life seems to be on the brink of idolatry for some residents. They openly discuss people who have moved away in a mocking way. They ask if multiple generations will return to the homestead to retire here, even when there are decades before people can retire. And they gush about small town life. And that is fine, if you love it, but you cannot dictate that it is best for everyone or is the only choice worth making as to where to live. I'm still trying to navigate the line between adoration and idolatry when it comes to small town life, but all discussions where the line is toyed with make me very uncomfortable.

So yes, I do like certain things about small town life, but no, both by preference and profession I don't see myself staying here forever. But that does not mean that I love you any less or will be disengaged from your town life while I do live here. I am called to be here, now, for a purpose. And I want to live into that vision and purpose together.

Sabbath

I think the first time I ever really heard about Sabbath and semi-comprehended it was in third grade when we read the Little House on the Prairie Series, in which the character Laura complained about how boring the Sabbath was because they weren't allowed to play as children. They simply sat around and listened to scripture being read and hymns being sung. I didn't really give it another thought until I was in college and I read Mark Buchanan's The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath, which is a powerful book which I highly recommend.

What I'm finding as a pastor in a very busy parish is that taking Sabbath is hard. It is hard because it seems like everyone wants a little piece of your time (in fact I don't feel like any of my time is actually mine anymore, but that is a different post on a different day). But it is also hard because your rhythm of Sabbath is so different from everyone else's.

When I was little, Sunday was the day for Church. We went to Sunday School and church. Had a family dinner of some sorts. Went to bell choir and youth group as we got older. If we stopped to shop for anything it was a Sunday paper and something simple for lunch if my dad was in charge. As a whole we really didn't venture outside of the home for anything other then church. And I have fond memories of those times. But Sunday is not the day for the preacher to find rest in the Lord. Or at least I don't. Between 3 services and then rotating between 3 different Sunday night activities (4 now during Lent with the additional cluster services), I do not find that time to be my time with God.

A while ago I was talking with some of the other individuals I was commissioned with and one of the women made a beautiful observation: there is a difference between a day to worship God and day to run errands. When describing my schedule to another young clergy he made the observation that I really need to stop going at the pace I am, and that it is okay to ask for, if not demand, two days off in a row. One to simply be with God and restore your body and soul, and one to run errands. The two cannot be combined.

After being blessed with this advice I have really been trying to separate Sabbath from daily living items, which is hard. But this led me to conclude that the reason people willingly break the commandment to keep the Sabbath is because it is hard. Very hard in fact. We are raised in a culture that tells us that we should be doing something productive every moment of every day. So to simply be in the presence of God, totally setting aside those things where we are working for the goal of being productive, is counter intuitive. But a beautiful thing when practiced. It is a necessary thing for everyone, but most certainly cannot be skipped out on by the pastor, who lives a public life and needs time to simply not be "on". Not be something to someone else, but to be who we are at our very core, a child of God.

Clean Us - Mark 1: 40-45

There are many different names and titles that we use to identify characteristics of Jesus. Counselor. Prince of Peace. Mighty God. Lord of Lords. Messiah. Teacher. Preacher. Son of God and Son of Man. Christ. Rabbi. The Great I Am. Most High. Emmanuel. The Almighty. The Great Lamb. Our Shepherd. The Way. The Vine. The Living Bread of Life. The Rose of Sharon. The Light. The Bright Morning Star. The Living Stone. The Chief Cornerstone. The Advocate. The Cup of Life. The list goes on and on. But in today’s scripture passage Jesus is most notably the Healer.

In fact, Jesus has been the Great Healer for most of the first chapter of Mark’s gospel. This is the third healing story within 45 verses. What is Mark trying to tell us through these narratives and what makes this healing story different then the others the gospel writer told?

Two weeks ago we looked at the first healing story in the gospel of Mark about the man with the evil spirits. That man was healed within the synagogue, amongst his neighbors and friends. He did not ask to be healed, yet Jesus cast out the evil spirits anyway. The second healing story we haven’t discussed as part of a sermon. It was of Simon’s mother-in-law who was at death’s door with a high fever. Others asked Jesus to go and heal her and she was simply healed. But in today’s story, a man had the faith and gumption to approach Jesus and ask for healing.

Why was it such a bold act for this man to approach Jesus? Haven’t we all asked Jesus for healing at one point or another in our lives? This man was a leper, a social outcast. By law he wasn’t allowed to approach Jesus or any other person. Because his disease was so contagious, those with lepersay were banished from the community and had to go and live by themselves or in a colony with others suffering from lepresey. They were marginalized by a social illness brought on by their physical disease. They were viewed as impure, unclean, and a source of dangerous contamination. So under Levitical law, once the priest became aware of someone contracting lepresey, they were were no longer allowed to pray in the temple or go to the synagogue. They were completely expelled from society.

Yet, this leper came to Jesus. He knew that he shouldn’t according to the law. He knew that he was putting Jesus at risk of contracting his isolating disease. But he was at his wits end. He had to try something. So he went to Jesus and knelt before him, begging to be healed. He obviously had some sort of faith to come and see Jesus in this way; he had to believe that Jesus could truly heal him. Further he tells Jesus, “if you choose you can make me clean.” And Jesus did choose.

We live in a culture where many preachers ave used and abused this story and others like it to condemn people who are ill. Telling people that if they just had enough faith they would be healed. But what these preachers and those following their teachings miss is who Jesus was really healing in this passage. On the surface it looks like Jesus healed the man who had faith. And this may be true. But the story doesn’t end there. Some translations, including the one that we are using today state that Jesus was moved with compassion to heal this man, but an equal number say that Jesus was moved with anger. What did Jesus have to be angry about? And can pity and anger be mixed together?

Jesus was angry at the societal norms that made this beloved man of God an outcast from society. Jesus’ healing of this man disrupted the social order and turned around all of the laws that Jesus was supposed to be abiding by concerning people who were deemed unclean. Unfit to interact with the rest of society. He was breaking down boundaries. Jesus was so angry by how the religious and civil society were treating this man, and others with his disease, that he was moved with pity, and with this pity he reached out and did something that he did not have to do - he touched the man. Jesus is powerful enough to heal people without touching them. He had already shown that when he cast out the unclean spirits from the man in the temple simply by the command of his voice. But he knew that this man needed human touch, so he reached out and caressed him, breaking the rules that had prevented the man from not having any human contact for so long. Jesus said with both his actions and his voice that he did choose to heal the man. And isn’t this truly the message of the gospel - that Jesus has come to liberate those who have been deemed unclean. Those who have been marginalized and outcasted from society. Those who are in need of the caress of hope.

This past week I was in New York City at the General Board of Global Missions, one of the parts of the United Methodist Church that serves people who are in need of hope and healing around the world through our shares of ministry. I was so impressed to see how the United Methodist Church was present in over 136 countries around the wold. Working with the poor to change systems and societal norms. Teaching native women how to share the gospel with societies where reading is not the norm. Training chiefs, preachers, and emams about malaria and other preventable diseases and helping them be agents of change through the Nothing But Nets and Imagine No Malaria campaigns. GBGM is helping pastors reach out to those in their congregations suffering from addictions and related violence. They are training young people to be peer counselors concerning abusive relationships and addictions. And these are just a few examples of how we are reaching out and partnering with people to bring hope and healing and wholeness around the world.

The seminar was two jam packed days and on the day in between our learnings we traveled to three United Methodist ministries and churches in New York City who are truly offering the caress of hope to those whom others have turned away. While there another young clergy made the following comment to me: “I love ministry that evolves from the simple questions: ‘what is God calling us to do about this?’ There is an aids epidemic? Maybe we should make it possible for people to get tested twice a week. People can’t find work? We have a kitchen to feed them and a chef who comes in to teach them how to cook so they can find work. People haven’t paid their taxes in a few years? We have a basement where some accountants came come. Let’s put two and two together.”

What I loved about these ministries we visited and the work that GBGM is doing is that it is truly the intersection between compassion for people and anger at society. Brothers and sisters we have moved well beyond the time when we can simply respond to people with compassion while allowing the same oppressive systems to be untouched and unchanged. This is neither love nor justice. Our United Methodist heritage calls for us to change systems while reaching out to people. And honestly, that can be scary work. It seems a lot easier to give people some money then to ask the hard question of what has prevented them from having a job or money to take care of their family in the first place and striving to help the individual while charing the system.It means that we need to be asking questions that do not have easy answers. It also means acknowledging our own guilt.

I have to wonder if Jesus was also angry at himself when we he saw this man. Surly it was not the first leper he had seen. Yet it was the first one that we were told that he reached out and healed. For 30 years Jesus had been part of the system, implicitly or explicitly, that ostracized this man and others like him, and now he was face to face with a human being not a set of rules or boundaries. But in that moment, Jesus set aside concern from himself, or following the rules, and took this man’s uncleanliness upon himself. Even though this man was healed by Jesus touch, under Levitical law, Jesus was now supposed to be banished even if he never contracted lepresey himself, because he intentionally put himself in harms way. And that scares us. We don’t want to be putting ourselves in situations where we may be at risk or may break rules. But Jesus felt compelled to do so in that moment, and he changed a mans life because of that, and started to change a society.

My parents are with us today, and I’m sure they can tell us about plenty of times that they have felt that I have put myself at risk for others. Times I have traveled to bad neighborhoods or have worked with people that made them feel a bit uncomfortable at first. But even with all of the risks, I felt compelled to do so because I had a vision. We are not all called to go to dangerous places, that is why GBGM represents us as a denominational church, sending missionaries to over 60 countries. And we are not called as this church to necessarily be doing the same ministries as the churches I visited in NYC - those are their missions that stem from their vision and the prayer that God has answered for them when they asked, “what are you asking us to do about this God? What are you calling us to do?” But we called to be agents of change, hope, and healing here. We are to be asking the question what is God asking us to do in this place, here and now, to bring healing. And the answer may surprise us. It may make us feel uncomfortable and ask us to put ourselves aside for others. But we have to ask. Because Jesus, the one who has all of those names and titles, has been healer in our lives so we are to be healers in the lives of others. No matter what the cost. No matter what.

Bing Single

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be single lately. The older I get, the more assumptions come along with being single, especially from older generations. The one that bothers me the most is that I must have more time because I'm single. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Yes, how we live in those 24 hours may look differently if we have a family vs. being single. However, what many people do not consider is that the same basic activities of the day - cooking, cleaning, paying bills, doing the grocery shopping, running errands - need to be done regardless of your marital status. And when you are single you have to do them all yourself. There isn't another person to share these tasks with, so you do them in addition to working a job and everything else you do.

Some older folks seem to have forgotten what it was like to be single, mostly, because they haven't been so since college or even before that. What seems to have gotten lost is that being single while a student and being single in the "real world" are two completely different things. Yet, people fondly remember what it was like to be care-free during college, and think that is what its like to be single.

We all have a lot to learn from one another. Single or married. Those with kids and those without. But all too ofter our assumptions block us from learning. Sadly. May we approach each other with open hearts and open minds.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert

This past week I went to go see Priscilla Queen of the Desert. First, I must say that some of the drag queens had very impressive legs and could certainly navigate high-heels better than I can. But my second thought is much more important. Part of what I feel called to do, as a pastor, is create a space for all people, but I'm not sure I can do that where I am at currently, or perhaps even in this annual conference at all. I kept asking myself throughout the show if someone showed up in drag to my church, would they be welcomed. And honestly, I don't know if they would be. I'm serving in an area that is still ripe with comments about "those people" and brash generalizations linking homosexuality to child abuse. And that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because no matter what I believe or how welcoming I am as the pastor of the church, it really comes down to how the people in the pews treat others and how their ideologies get lived out in their interactions.

I'm getting back into the swing of reading again for pleasure. Last week I read The Help, which has received a good deal of press recently as it was turned into a movie. I haven't seen the movie, but in the book, which takes place in the 1960s, one of the white women in the town goes on a rampage to get the domestic help in homes different toilets, either in the backyard in a shack or in the garage. Her logic was that people of color have different diseases due to the pigment of their skin which can be transmitted through sharing toilet seats. Now we may be taken aback, but wasn't this part of the prevalent logic in the early through mid-1900s that lead to segregation? Now we cringe at the ignorance of those who have come before us. I cannot help but think that we are going to have just as much shame and cringing in the future over the absurd generalizations we make about LGBTQIQA folks in the future. Assumptions that have blocked relationships and that have prevented us from being the body of Christ.

It doesn't really matter what you believe what the Bible says about various sexualities; we can use the Bible justify whatever we want. And that has caused us to cringe as well. The ways we've used the Bible to humiliate and subjugate people and strip away their humanity. Whatever you believe, the Bible is still abundantly clear that we are called to love all people. When will we begin to let the great commandment to love the Lord our God with our entire beings and love others as we love ourselves become a reality? When will the church start to see with the eyes of Christ and respond with the Heart of God with actions lead by the Holy Spirit?

Vision

The past few days I was in NYC at a seminar at the General Board of Global Ministries. It was very informative and eye opening, and affirmed my love for the United Methodist Church. While there we visited three churches/ ministries of the church that are reaching out to serve their communities. What struck me the most about the ministries that we visited was that they were all rooted in prayer. The pastor had a vision that was revealed by God through prayer. What a simple and beautiful point that we often overlook in our haste to be the biggest and the best. As my colleagues toured the ministries with me, more than one made the comment, "This is neat. I can do this at my church." to which I rebutted, "But are you called to do this at your church?" The ministries we toured were reaching their particular neighborhoods through the particular vision God gave them. We aren't called to replicate what they are doing, but to pray for our communities and wait for the vision that God reveals to us.

I love the connectional nature of the UMC, but sometimes it has its down-sides. Like when we compare ourselves to other clergy and their churches. When we judge ourselves and the churches we serve off of them. It isn't supposed to be that way, but sometimes it happens.

Could the ministries we saw be effective in our area? Certainly. But is it what we are called to do? Who we are called to be? Because that makes all the difference in the world in our ministries.