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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Monday, September 24, 2012

Psalm 1 - Wesleyan Wisdom: Scripture


This past Tuesday I met with a group of college students at Mansfield for Bible Study. The topic of our time together - wisdom in decision making. Throughout out our time together two items kept coming up, we should keep God at the center of all our decisions, even the seemingly trivial ones that we make without thinking, and the thought of making decisions can be overwhelming when we try to discern the will of God. Why these young people are at a key time in their life for decision making, I think we can understand what they are feeling for many of us feel it today. We either make decisions without thinking or we become paralyzed by our indecision. Some of us even try to seek God’s wisdom when making decisions, but we just aren’t always sure how. 
John Wesley throughout his preaching taught about four different aspects to consider when making decisions based on theology, or decisions with God at the center. Many years after his death, a Wesley scholar named Albert Outler put the four components together and named them the Wesleyan Quadlaterial composed of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. This tool is still upheld today and the book of Discipline states, “Wesley believed that the living core of Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illuminated by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture [however] is primary, revealing the Word of God.”  Because our theology informs our decision making, we are going to spend the next four weeks together exploring different aspects of the Quadulaterial.
This week we start with Scripture, which Wesley considered the first and primary authority by which truth is tested. In today’s Psalm the author writes that those who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night are blessed. Scripture, or the law of the Lord, is not simply a set of laws meant to restrict people, rather is a description of living life with God. While there are many rules laid out in scripture, their are also stories about people, just like us, and how the responded to the law given by God. Because God is part of our whole life, the Bible presents a story of different aspects of our lives as well. 
However, The Bible might not tell us what to do in a specific situation. Psalm 1 presents life and the choices in it as something relatively simple, you are either righteous or wicked. Good or bad. Accepting wisdom or rejecting it. But life is rarely that simple and choices are not always clear. I once heard the Bible described as the Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. And on one hand this may be true - the instructions the Bible gives us are pretty simple - love God and love your neighbor. But as the stories in the Bible illustrate, and our lives often confirm, living this out is not always as simple as the acronym would lead us to believe. 
When I read this Psalm the image that captures my imagination is the tree planted by streams of water, yielding fruit in due time. Life is full of hard choices, but when it comes time to make those choices what are you rooted in? Where are you drawing your life source from? Who is advising you? The college students were surprised when I told them for me rootedness was not so much about memorizing scripture, but having a well worn Bible. A Bible tattered from years of reading, so much so that the scripture has sunk into your heart. When I need to make a decision, I don’t often recall chapter and verse, but I can recall stories that I find meaningful at that particular moment - stories that I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t read them time and time again and that wouldn’t necessarily be helpful if I only memorized a few lines from it. 
Brothers and sisters, what are you rooted in? Are you rooted in the Word of God? Is your Bible well worn? While there are many tools out there for scripture reading today, everything from reading the Bible in a year, to reading a chapter a day, you need to find what works for you. For me, reading the Bible cover to cover doesn’t really work. Somewhere around the list of the tribes in the book of Numbers, I get distracted and by the time I get to Leviticus I’ve abandoned reading altogether. That’s not to say those parts of the Bible aren’t critical, they are and I’ve grown to love them and find wisdom in them just as much as my favorite parts of scripture over the years, but you need to find what works for you at this time in your life so you can start soaking up scripture. 
When you read are you meditating on the scripture, as the Psalmist instructs to do, both day and night? Meditating means that you reflect on it. You keep coming back to it in your mind. Once again there are many different ways to do this. Some people find a word or sentence that strikes their attention from what they read and keep thinking about it during the day. Others pray through a piece of scripture several times a day. Whatever you do, its not going to be helpful just to read scripture because you should, check it off the list of your things to do, and then forget about it. That doesn’t give you time to let the scripture sink into your heart and transform you. It doesn’t allow you to glean all the wisdom you can from it. 
As I reflect on the role that scripture has played in my life over the years, I realize that it has both changed and remained a constant. I always remember scripture stories being a part of my upbringing - from the felt boards in Sunday School and the silly songs (with movements) that often accompanied that time of teaching to the picture books my parents still have to this day that we were read over and over again. As I grew older I read the same stories for myself, and realized that I had new things to learn from them. The Bible is described as Living because it is the Word of God that continues to speak to us throughout our lives. We are never done reading. We are never done learning. We are never done being instructed. The Bible is not something to be read once and then forgotten or abandoned.
We need to be interacting with the Bible every chance we get - not just at worship on Sundays. We also need to study it alone and in community. Do you have a group of people in your life that you can study scripture with? Some of the most formative times around scripture in my life involved studying it in community. When I was in high school a large group of us met in a trailer connected to a church once a week just to inch our way through the book of Acts. When I was in college, I used to go up to the balcony of the chapel after class and chew over pieces of scripture with my friends. And as much as we have joked about “still studying James” for our Bible Study in the parish, I think those of us who attend would agree that it has brought new meaning to our lives as disciples to go through the book slowly and intently. Who are you studying scripture with? Who can you go to with your questions and insights and wrestle over texts with?
The original part of scripture, the Torah, was given to the ancient Israelites as they were wandering in the dessert. It was one of God’s way of providing care for them - instructing them and sustaining them during their time of need. Even after they reached the promise land, they were reminded to have the word of the Lord written on their hearts and instruct their children in it. God knew that life has mountain peaks and valleys, and scripture sustains us during all of those times, but we desperately need it during the times of darkness. If we do not have it written on our hearts, we often resort to wishful thinking or magical tactics to make the Bible speak to us. One of my favorites is to flip the Bible open to any page and see if it applies to my situation. And sometimes that works. But more often it doesn’t. Because scripture is not meant to be a quick fix during hard times, or when we face difficult decisions, rather it is to be written on our hearts, meditated on day and night, and guiding us through all of life’s moments. 
The Psalmist tells us that either we will be rooted or we will blow away like chaff. Either we bore fruit of groundness and security in the Lord, or destruction. Faithfulness to God and faithfulness in reading scriptures do not guarantee prosperity and it does not guarantee that we won’t face hard times. Rather it prepares us for whatever lies ahead, by keeping our attention focused on God, and the core of our faith centered in God’s teaching and wisdom for us. Amen. 

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Stay in Love with God - Mark 8: 27-38


What are some of the most important relationships in your life and how have you developed them? Chances are that your relationships took a lot of time and work and didn’t happen instantaneously. Instead, they’ve been cultivated by years of communication, love, trust, and respect that has lead to a growing intimacy. Like any other relationship, our relationship with God takes work and has slow growth. 
In his book Soul Cravings, author and pastor Erwin McManus puts forth the idea that all human beings have three basic cravings. We yearn for intimacy, destiny, and meaning. We have these deep desires in us for these cravings because God has designed us to have them, to lead us into a deeper relationship with him from which we derive our identity. However, after Genesis 3, with the Fall of Creation through the sin of Adam and Eve, things have become a little messed up. We no longer look to God to fulfill our cravings, but rather turn to other things and people to define who we are. 
Today,  I want to focus on the first craving. The craving of intimacy. We want to belong. To be loved and accepted for who we are. The final of the three simple rules is to stay in love with God, “by attending upon all the ordinances of God”
 such as worship, ministry of the word, Eucharist, private prayer, and fasting.
 Another way to say this is what makes you feel intimate or close to God; what makes you grow closer to God. No one else can make you attend to the ordinances of God or care for your personal relationship with God. You must make time and protect it diligently.
If we are not working on our relationship with God, it will be difficult to follow the teaching of Jesus is today’s scripture lesson to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Jesus. What makes it in your life that you are able to do this very difficult task? What keeps you close to God? 
For Wesley it was the ordinances of God. Another way to say is would be that its the spiritual disciplines. While Wesley gave a concise list of spiritual disciplines that feed most people, like scripture reading and prayer,there are others that may work for us specifically. I must have a Sabbath. One of my fellow commissioned ministers said something that has stuck with me: Sabbath and day off are not synonymous. Our Sabbath is set aside for doing the things that our acts of worship to God. I also attend Spiritual Direction with an advisor once  a month to have a wise companion along my spiritual journey. What are the ways that you spend time with God and grow and are they working? All too often Christians get caught up in the idea of what they should be doing, when in reality it doesn’t help us stay connected to God. As I said before, there are some things that all Christians need in order to grow with God - private devotion and prayer time and public worship. Like any other relationship, at times these practices may not yield the results that we would like, but we need to be committed to them, as they are the chief ways that we communicate with God and God communicates with us. We do not have the same advantage as the disciples in today’s scripture passage who have walked and lived with Jesus over the past three years in his physical form. They had to be attentive to him because he was right in front of them. They had to follow his teaching or he rebuked them. They could ask him what something confusing meant. They had all of the tangible marks of an intimate relationship that we crave. We too can have such a relationship with Jesus but it will look different and requires us to be attentive in seeking him daily. What ways are you currently seeking to grow in your relationship with Christ and what new ways can you think of to try in the coming weeks?
Our relationship with God, tended to through spiritual disciplines, should be vital, alive, and growing. Yet, sometimes we shy away from going deeper into a relationship with God because we think God will hurt us, because people have in the pat. What a tragedy! We cut ourselves off in fear from the perfection of love, the only true acceptance we will ever have! We don’t trust God’s love for us. But God calls us to remember, remember all of the times that God held us close and told us that he loves us, and has this beautiful, amazing, relationship with us. Do not let bitterness from the pain inflicted by other imperfect people block you from this relationship.
It was out of Peter’s vital relationship with Christ and the revelation of the Holy Spirit, that he was able to proclaim that Christ was the Messiah. However, it was fear that blocked Peter from fully realizing what that meant, and caused Christ to rebuke him. Is your relationship with God one of openness and trust or is it marked by fear?
If I could think of one person who had an intimate relationship with God from the scriptures I would say David.  David was a little Shepard boy who God choose to be the King of Israel. He is known for being called a man after God’s own heart and promised that one of his decedents will be the Messiah. David and God had a relationship. If you need proof just look at the psalms. David was close enough to God to vent when he was having a horrible day. He was intimate enough with God to share his highest joys and deepest pains. He had no doubt that God had made him and loved him, even when he screwed up, which he of course did. And that is the type of relationship we crave with God! One marked by steadfast, faithful love. Love that envelops us and lets us rest in the knowledge that we are loved, perfectly, forever. And that steadfast love, the love that God showed to David, God is trying to show to all of us, if only we would work on our relationship with God - work on staying in love with God. What are you doing to help you have a relationship with God like David had - one that was growing and alive?
For Wesley, staying in love with God is the key to who we are as Christians. It is where we learn to listen to God and of God’s love for us. For years now, I’ve been signing almost all of my emails with “You are LOVED.” I hope that this is a small reminder to those I correspond with that they are first and foremost loved as a child of Christ. They are loved by God no matter how they see themselves or how others see them. They are loved by God no matter what they can or cannot do, because God doesn’t alter Holy love for us. God loves us just as we are, broken pieces and all. I equate this to something that I have told a friend of mine. I love him for who he was, who he is, and who he is going to be. I love him, because I love him and I see beauty in him even on his bad days. My care for him isn’t based off of  a feeling, it goes deeper then that.  But my friend and I did not get to have this type of care for each other overnight - it was a slow process built over years of being friends. While it is not a perfect analogy to compare our relationship with God to our relationship with humans, it is the framework we have to work in. Sometimes our intimate connection with God can becomes marred in its beauty because of our tarnished human families. God loves you with the love of a perfect relationship. For those of you who didn’t have an ideal relationship in your life, remember God is the one who created you. God rejoices over you. God cheers you on. God scolds you out of love in order to make you develop into a more complete person. God  sacrificed everything for you. God wants nothing more then to be in a relationship with you, if only you are willing to put in the time and effort.
Brothers and sisters, I promise you that if you spend time cultivating your relationship with God you will be changed by God’s love for you. Your very being will be transformed. Not all at once or overnight, but like we are changed by any relationship, one day at a time, just as the disciples were transformed by their years in relationship with Jesus. Relationships are never easy, and sometimes we are fearful of the change they bring. But as we fall more deeply in love with God, having our roots in this Divine relationship, we will more fully be able to reflect Christ’s love for the world through our action. My hope and prayer is that we will be known as a church growing in God’s love so we can be in ministry to all the world. Amen. 

Saturday, September 15, 2012

James 2: 1-17 “Wesleyan General Rules: Do All the Good You Can”


What good is it brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?... Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go and keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about the physical need, what good is that?” 
For centuries in the Christian church there has been a debate about good works and faith. Do you need to show your faith through actions or is faith in God good enough? The epistle of James took a very definite stance on this issue, claiming that faith without works is dead. It is not claiming that you will be saved by your works, rather it is saying that our faith in God manifests itself in actions for others. Our faith should be noticeable by the way we treat people. 
John Wesley thought that James was critical for the early Methodist and even based the general rules on it. Last week we discussed what it means to “do no harm” and this week we turn to the concept of “doing all the good you can.” Wesley describe doing good as “being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all…”
 The Discipline encourages Methodists to embody this rule by performing acts of mercy, instructing others in the faith, reproving when necessary, and to pick up our cross daily as we continue on our journeys of faith, amongst other forms.
When I think of doing good always, I am transported back to my junior year of college, around thanksgiving time. It came to the attention of the upperclassmen that one of the college’s staff was having a hard year and that her children would not be able to celebrate Christmas. I remember thinking how sad it was that a college with so much affluence could not take care of one of its own. Yet, that wasn’t quite true. Students who didn’t even know this family began to sacrifice some of their own Christmas money for them. Together we raised enough money to get the family new clothes and school supplies, shoes and food. We even had enough to get a tree and have some wrapped presents underneath. When we were done, I was stuck by the thought that this is how Christians should act all the time - doing good for others as a mark of our commitment to and faith in God.
When talking about doing good, it is important to know what it is not. Doing good (always) is not the same as giving people what they want. In fact, since doing good is not the status quo in our society or in our churches, seeking to do good requires a direct challenge to the way that things have always been. A question to pose ‘how is my time best used to do good?’. Am I only using it to serve those whom I like or am I reaching out to new people in different ways?
Doing good is also not free from conflict nor does it mean doing things the way we always have for doing good is not just directed at church people, but to everyone we interact with, which demands that we be interacting with people in our communities and beyond. The book of James reminds us that it is easy to do good to people who are like us, or people that we feel deserve it, but it is so much more to build up those who are in need and honor them. One example that comes to mind is a college Bible study that I lead las year at the Penn State Wesley Foundation.Most weeks the number of atheists and agnostics who attend the Bible Study outnumber the Christian students, yet the students keep coming back week after week to study the Bible because someone is willing to risk loving them. Fruit is being harvested for the Kingdom, because I was willing to radically rethink what it means to do good for a community of people. People who were not like me, but whom I could love. 
We also need to be reminded of what doing good always IS. One of the key things the general rules remind us in the Discipline is that seeking to do good (as well as living out the other rules) is the ministry of all Christians. It is also both a public and private task. 
There are things that we do in our lives that are ministry, which we may not even consider to be such. Sending cards to neighbors. Preparing food. Watching children. At some point we need to examine why we do the things we do, so we can give God the glory. At times we also need to be able to tell others about the ministries we are involved in, not to brag, but so others can realize that they are living a life of ministry as well. 
I have struggled at times between practicing spiritual discipline of secrecy and the need to be transparent in doing good in order to show others how to live it out. There are still some forms of doing good that we do in secret,  but we also have to become more comfortable with modeling some behaviors, in order for others to understand what it means to do good always and why we do it - not for ourselves or our praise, but because of our relationship with God. Some of the best opportunities we have to minister to people come when we shed our secrecy and people ask us why in the world we are doing something and we can tell them about what God has done for us!
Brothers and sisters, doing good always is not easy. It is a choice we make daily to serve God by the way we treat people, reaching out to them in the name of Jesus Christ. We don’t need to wait to be asked to do something good, or until the circumstances demand aid. Instead doing good just becomes a part of who we are - and as we constantly make this choice it becomes easier and easier. Doing good always means that we follow God’s prompting in our lives as we set aside control and embrace the situations we find ourselves in. During my time in this parish I have been blessed to hear many stories of how individuals in this congregation have reach out to others on a daily basis, showing mercy, compassion, and love because they were attended to what God was asking them to do at a given moment. God is the reason we practice these rules, and God is the one who gives us the power to keep them! 
        At this point we explained Pay it Forward and handed out Pay it Forward in Faith cards in order to live out our belief to do good always. 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Wesleyan General Rules: Do No Harm - James 1: 17-27

When I think of the characteristics that mark a Methodist as described by John Wesley, the first thing that comes to my mind are, what has been dubbed in recent years, the three simple rules: Do no harm. Do good always. Stay in love with God. They seem so simple, yet they can be so difficult to live into at times. They are difficult because they require us to live as faithful disciples, in partnership with God, who will not let us simply stay as we are. God is constantly re-creating us, moving us towards being the person God can see us being. We are not called to simply be content with the person we are today, we are seeking to be transformed by God, and in our own transformation we find hope that God will transform the world.
For the next three weeks we will be looking at these three simple rules, also known as the general rules. When John Wesley penned the three-fold task of being Methodist, the first was do no harm, and avoid evil of every kind. The list of what this included seem to go on and on - do not take the name of the Lord in vain, honor the Sabbath, avoid drunkenness, salve-holding, quarreling in all forms, and speaking evil. Do unto other as you would want them to do unto you. We are to seek to do no harm and avoid all evil in order to bring God the glory.
The book of James describes doing no harm in a different way. Reminding us that all good gifts come from God, and thus we should respect God, the giver of the blessing. We do this by being quick to listen, slow to speak, and even slower at becoming angry. We are to get rid of everything that can bring us harm.
One of the things that can bring the most harm is the tongue. When we do not watch what we say, we often hurt others, either intentionally or unintentionally. Perhaps this is why James admonishes us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Elsewhere in James, the tongue is called the smallest member of the body that can cause the most damage. Often we say things without thinking about how another person may receive it, and even when we think of others we can sometimes say the wrong thing. But the rule of do no harm, makes us think about what we say before it exists our mouth. When we seek to do no harm we can no longer gossip, speak disparagingly, manipulate the facts, or diminish others. It means we intentionally put other people first and live into the commandment to love others as we love ourselves. 
But doing no harm is not the same thing as being nice. When we are simply nice to one another, we are not pushing each other to go beyond our comfort zones in order to grow in faith or holding our tongues from speaking the difficult words of truth. If we substitute niceness for “do no harm”, we are not following the narrow road that the gospel has laid out for us by the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We could actually be bringing harm upon each other by not saying the messages that need to be heard.  Those tough things that need to be said in love. James tells his listeners to follow the law that brings freedom. This does not mean that the law is always easy to follow, but it is the most life giving. What do we do and say that brings life to others? In what ways do we prohibit others from being the person God has called them to be? When our incites become trite, and seek to appease instead of lead, we are not being bearers of light and life. 

Another way we do harm is by ignoring the needs of others - not looking after those who are the most distressed. James reminds us that pure and faultless religion looks after the orphans and the widows. How do you intentionally look after those who are in need? When you look into their eyes do you realize that it could be you in need some day? John Wesley talked about two types of sin in his preaching - sins of commission - those things that we do that harm others and God, and sins of omission - those things that harm people by our lack of action or speaking up. I don’t think anyone seeks to purposely harm another human being, but often our silence does just that. When we don’t speak up on behalf of the distressed or don’t do as much as we could or treat people as if they are less then - we are causing them harm. Making sure our actions, and even our silences, do not harm another person. When we seek to do no harm, we have to ask God to show others love through us, each moment of every day. It is impossible for us to do no harm on our own, because its counter-cultural to the world we live in. It requires us to see people through the eyes of Christ and act accordingly.
Perhaps some of the times we do the most harm to another person is when we disagree with them, something we are ever aware of in the current political climate. We feel as if we are being attacked because someone doesn’t think the same way we do. But author Ruben Job reminds us, “When we agree that we will not harm those with whom we disagree, conversation, dialogue, and discovery of new insight become possible.” Seeking to do no harm opens up a world of possibilities where we can see people in new ways, interact with them in beautiful ways that find common ground instead of focusing on those things that set up apart from one another. 
Doing no harm, also means that we need not harm ourselves. This is possibly the hardest one for Christians to grasp because we are used to people telling us to put others first, which is true. But God does not require us to harm ourselves. To belittle ourselves. To let others physically, emotionally, or spiritually hurt us. For whenever we harm others or ourselves, we bring harm to the God who loves us so deeply. 
And perhaps that is the entire point behind these general rules. They exist to remind us that God passionately loves us and everyone else. They invite us into deeper relationship with our brothers and sisters and God. They weren’t crafted in order for us look at the world and see how bad things are, rather they exist to show us what the world was created to be and what it can become, through faithfulness and by the grace of God. These rules requires us to be bound to Jesus Christ, above all else. That we examine the way we live and practice our faith. And make sure that we shine the image of God that was created in our spirits, so that others may be drawn to Christ by the way we treat them. Amen. 

Meditation on John 4: 46-53


The man took Jesus at his word and departed. If it only it was that simple for us. If only we would put our hope and trust in Jesus Christ. This is hard for us, because it is not rational. And more frightening - it may not mean that we get what we are asking for. In this case, the man’s son was healed. In other cases, it may mean that we do not get the physically healing we desire. We may be healed emotionally, relationally, or spiritually instead.
What if we began to see our prayers for healing to Christ, as acts of trust. Acts of faith. Trusting that God will act. I told the Bible Study group this past week that I stumbled upon something interesting on the internet. It was labeled, a story about faith, and told of a town that had a major drought. The towns people decided to gather together to pray for rain. But as they came together, only one little boy brought an umbrella with him. In other words, only one little boy thought that their prayers would be answered.
Sometimes we pray to God for healing because we’ve run out of options other places. Prayers become a last resort. And other times we pray because its what we think we should do. But how often to we pray because we believe that God will answer our requests? Believe that God will move in a mighty way? Believe that God will heal?
The people of Cana knew Jesus performed miracles, it was the place where he turned water into wine. Yet, Jesus asked if that was really all they wanted. Just wanted a sign or a wonder so that they could believe? We are just like the people in Cana who beg for signs and wonders because we heard Christ did them before, now we want one of our own. Though we quickly forget the ways that Christ has healed us in the past when we are faced with a new crisis. A new test of faith.
Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight to pray. Its my hope that we’ve gathered together because we believe that pray matters. Believe that God acts. Did you come tonight hoping against hope or did you come tonight, like the little boy with the umbrella, knowing that God moves in a mighty way? It may not always be what we want, but sometimes, we get exactly what we ask God for. Let us be a people of prayer.