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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!

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Anchor Moments

    There are moments that ground you when everything else seems to be up in the air. Moments that help you remember who you at your very core. Moments that help you remember your call. Moments to cling to when stress hits in all of its furry.

   This past week life was full of many such anchor moments as I was ordained an elder in full connection. I've been telling people who weren't able to be there that its hard to describe what I feel about the holiness of the ordination service or all that has preceded and followed it that has nourished my soul. So here are just a few of those anchor moments that I know I will cling to:

  * Being yoked with Bishop Middleton's stole before being asked the historic questions.
  * Being able to share dinner with the retiring class and hear their words of encouragement and wisdom.
  * Being told by a presenter on stage that he originally didn't like the idea of passing stoles for the mantle, until he saw how Julia and I received them with such genuine humility and a gracious spirit.
  * Receiving words of encouragement from other Elders.
  * The weight of the hands as I was being ordained.
  * My mentor of the past six and a half years being the one to yoke me with my stole at ordination.
  * Being told that my stole matches my personality.
  * Being told of my radiating joy.
  * Receiving a stole from the pastor who baptized me. He still remembers the day I was baptized and how many were in the baptismal class. The stole I was given was the one he wore when I was baptized that day.
  * Receiving a stole from one of my commissioning brothers.
  * Surprise party from MUMC.

Holy and beautiful moments that are etched into my mind and onto my heart. Truly anchor moments.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Respect


I’ve been thinking a bit the past few weeks about what respect really is. I think respect is one of those things that is hard to define outside of its opposite - disrespect. One can tell disrespect right away - with an almost visceral reaction - thus respect is the opposite of disrespect. Its also following the Golden Rule - doing unto others as you would want done unto you. However, this too is complex, as different people want to be treated different ways. What may be respectful for you, may be disrespectful for someone else. 

Sunday, June 16, 2013

A Community Concerned for the Poor - Neh 5: 1-13


When I was in Australia, I volunteered part of the semester at a safe house for women engaged in prostitution and inner venous drug users. It was heart breaking work, especially as the women started to trust me with their stories - stories of poverty, not seeing any other options, and losing their homes and children. This is the first time I remember the issue of poverty having a face for me. In fact many faces. It changed how I relate to people and how I address such a large issue as concern for the poor.
Even as heartbreaking as the stories I heard were, nothing was as hurtful as the story we confront in today’s scripture passage. The people of Israel have returned to their land and are united once again. For a period of time during the exile there were two different parts of Israel - those who were taken into captivity in Babaloyn and those who were left behind. Upon being reunited they faced the daunting task of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem, including the temple and walls. 
Now that unity is breaking down and the people are exploiting each other. Those of means were forcing the poor to become impoverished. In fact, there were three different groups of the poor being exploited. The first group, the most destitute, were selling off their sons and daughters as indentured servants just to have food on the table - and not even enough food at that. There were simply too many people in the community now and not enough food to support them since the land had faced both a famine and lower crop production in recent years. They also had to sell their children as indentured servants just to pay the exhorbant tax. While this practice was allowed, it was still frowned upon by the community. The situation had reached such unfathomable heights that the women in the community, those who were usually silent, felt the need to address their leader, Nehemiah directly. The fact that they spoke of selling their daughters was also telling. While sometimes sons were sold in order to pay off debts, it was extremely rare for daughters to be sold. The situation was dire.
The second group in poverty were those who owned land. This group was a bit better off than the first, so they didn’t have to sell their children as slaves. But they did have to mortgage all they owned - their field, vineyards, and homes, just to have enough food to eat. Once their land was mortgaged, they would continue to work it but all of the proceeds would go to those they owed a debt, thus propelling them even further into poverty.
The third group, didn’t have to mortgage their property, but they had to borrow money in order to pay taxes on it to the King. So they made a pledge that would be collected on later. The larger the loan, the larger the pledge. Often because of the size of the loan needed, this group would end up having to mortgage their land as well.
While what was happening to the poor of the land was distressing, what enraged Nehemiah was the fact that their own kin, other Israelites, were forcing them into poverty. The enemy had been named and the enemy was within. The unity that the people had rebuilding the city had now been substituted with greed and exploitation. The law said that Israelites cannot charge interest to one another, yet here the nobles were blantly violating that law. Nehemiah had no choice but to bring charges against them in front of the entire community. He wanted everyone to hear the charges he was bringing forth and the solution he was proposing - to have the year of Jubilee now, when all debts would be forgiven in order to protect the poor and to preserve the unity of the community. The Israelites had already faced captivity and the task of rebuilding the city. They still have to worry about their neighbors who could become their enemies at any moments. They did not need to be dragging one another into poverty. 
One of the statements that I struggle the most with is “why don’t the poor just help themselves? Why can’t they just stop being poor?” This passage however bucks the popular notion that poverty is something that can easily be reminded or escaped. It also shows that people did not bring it upon themselves - it was their kin and neighbors who put them there, so it was their kin and neighbors who had to think creatively, under the guidance of Nehemiah, about how to rectify the harm they caused.
I don’t think that any of us set out to harm our brothers and sisters around the world and next door. But the reality is that sometimes our choices, especially our financial ones, do impact them. And it doesn’t need to be anything as be anything as large as the stock market crash. But we do make choices every time that we spend money that impacts someone else. For example, Kathie Lee garments, which were sold for a period of time in Wal-Mart, produced 300 million in sales each year, yet they were being manufactured by teenagers as young as 13 in Honduras working 15 hour shifts and earning 31 cents an hour. 
When we hear stories like this and many others, one response may be “well 31 cents may be a lot in their country”. We try to rationalize how our spending habits aren’t really effecting others, when we know in our heart of hearts that children should not be treated that way and this is not a living wage in any country. 
Usually their are layers of insulation that separate the rich from the poor. My life changed when I came face to face with my sisters who were in poverty at the safe house. The lives of the community in Nehemiah were also changed when the nobles stopped thinking about gaining more and protecting their families alone, but worked to protect the community, which included their families. God did not return the people to the land only to have them die of starvation. Their would be enough food and resources if only the community came together to share. Of course, this is easier said then done, just as it is easier to talk about what tragedies we have slipped into by how we spend our money instead of how to fix them. 
But as the church we have the hard task on diving into these difficult questions about how to imagine a new way of sharing our resources that protect the poor, not exploit them, knowingly or unknowingly. Each and every Sunday we pray the Lord’s prayer together, asking for “our” daily bread, not “my” daily bread or “my families” daily bread. Ours - the community. The world. This passage in Nehemiah invites us to imagine new answers to old questions. To think about how our decisions impact other people. To tell us that there is a different and better way to live where the community comes first, not security for the individual. 
Brothers and sisters, now is our time to have the same care and compassion that Nehemiah had. What I find interesting about this passage of scripture is that Nehemiah had become so isolated that he didn’t know how bad the problems were. But when he came face to face with the women before him, his fellow Israelites, he had to remedy the problem that he was unknowingly a part of. Now is our time to work on behalf of those we see every day that are struggling with poverty. Now is our time to get to know their stories and have our hearts transformed. Now is our time to seek and pray for daily bread for all, not just ourselves. Now is the time to show God’s concern for the poor through our actions of love that reflect God’s abundance. Amen. 

Monday, June 10, 2013

Thoughts from Spiritual Direction

   Two statements have clung to me after Spiritual Direction class this past weekend. One is "holiness is being whole." The other, "you should be so full of Christ that he pours out of you being given away, not yourself."

   After a string of about six hard and trying weeks, I've emerged into a place of being centered. Or rather I've come to a place where I can work towards being centered. Spending time each day reading. Doing devotions at a time when it is most meaningful to me (which is not right when I get up). Taking hikes and being outside when its nice. Listening to what my body needs. Being connected to the earth and to God, I feel more at peace, which helps me deal with the demands on my time. I really do feel like Christ is following out of me when I am truly centered in him, instead of giving myself away leading to exhaustion. I truly feel whole.

   The other part of feeling whole and allowing Christ to flow forth is saying no. No to unrealistic demands on my time. No to things that while fun, are not what I need at the time. Saying no is hard for me, but once again it helps with being centered. To know my limits and to live into them joyfully instead of trying to test them and feeling worn down.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

What Goes Into Who You Are?

     This past week I've been reflecting on what exactly makes a person who they are - especially what reflects their character. Some times we seem quick to attribute every little accident or happening to a person's character without considering the circumstances. Other times we overlook values that truly are part of one's character.
    This lead me to think about myself. And to think about others whom I know and treasure dearly. What makes you know someone? Is it the memories you have with them? Knowledge of events of significance in their past? Living into the future together? The answer to all of these things is of course, yes. But at the same time we could know someone for years and not know of those little (and big) things that say something about who a person is at their depths. This resounded with me as I was parking my car in Lewisburg this week. Often, when I know how much time I will be in a place, I add two extra quarters. One to allow for more time to be in a place or with a person, to not have to rush. And another to give a gift to the person who will park their after me. I'm not sure that anyone has ever realized that I do this - but it does reveal something about who I am. It speaks of the value I put on relationships and experiences, seeking to live into them in the fullest. And it speaks of generosity and the discipline of random acts of kindness, which I highly value. And both the generosity and hospitality towards what the day may hold flow from my relationship with God.
     How do we plum the depths of another person's character? By getting to know ourselves better. By being gracious unto ourselves so we can extend that grace to others. By recognizing what truly reflects our character so we can look for those things in others, in hopeful anticipation. But all of this - self-knowing and getting to discover other's true character, takes time. But it is certainly well worth it.

Neh 3: 1-16 - Staying on the Wall


I don’t know about you, but I normally am not a fan of a passage like this one - filled with lists on names that are hard to pronounce. Names of people I do not feel a connection to or know anything about. Honestly, most of the time I would rather skip right over them. Yet, as time passes such passages intrigue me, especially this one. Each of the names listed represents someones hard work in rebuilding part of a society that had been left in ruins. They joined together in the hard work of something that is bigger then themselves. They model what it looks like for us to work together for the Kingdom of God today.
Brick by brick. Checking that each stone and piece of each wall is placed perfectly, both so the walls are functional, not leaning to the point of collapsing, but also to honor God. Can you imagine how slowly progress is being made? Could the men see progress or did they simply see more work in front of them? Were they excited about what they were called to do, or were they bemoaning the endless work?
When I was in elementary school my parents decided that we needed more space. We had two options - move or add an addition on to the house. After looking at a few houses my parents decided to build on - and the result is now an extra master bedroom, large kitchen, laundry room, mud room, and basement. But the process of getting there wasn’t always pretty. The house just seemed to be in shambles for months, as we were confined to even less room in the hopes of having more. The living room doubled as the dining room. There seemed to be dust everywhere. We were tripping over each other. Plastic sheets hid the work from us, but once in a while we would go through and see the progress being made. At first we were able to rejoice over every little thing done, every little brick laid. It was exciting! But as time dragged on, even with leaps and bounds being made, we were less apt to rejoice and more likely to focus on bemoaning the process.
Another example is road construction. No one really enjoys it. Most people complain about it. And its worse when it seems to be never-ending. I apparently have the plague of never ending roads. There was a stretch of road outside of Pittsburg that brought traffic to a snail like pace the year I went to school there and the many years that I visited following. In fact, I went to a wedding along that same road in 2009, five years after I started driving it, and it still wasn’t finished. I could tell similar stories of both of the other schools I went to. Yet, really, even if I cannot see progress by my standards I have to trust that progress is being made.
In the midst of the rubble, back-breaking work, and slow (and perhaps unnoticed if not uncelebrated progress), the Israelites had to trust that they were working towards a vision they had, a call from God to rebuild. What makes this task even more remarkable is the fact that these men working alongside each other would have never seen the original temple in all of its glory. By this point at least a whole generation has died off in captivity. They would have surly heard stories around the table about the splendor of the temple. Of the God of the chosen people who would one day lead them back to the land where they could all worship together in one place. They would have heard the longing for Jerusalem in their parents and grandparents stories. But these were of a different generation. Not only were the a generation who had never seen the temple with their own eyes, never worshiped in it, or felt an intimate connection with it, they also aren’t the first to work on building the temple. This is the second wave of people rebuilding. They were laying bricks upon the foundation of the work of others - work that they were unable to finish. 
I can only imagine how distressing it must have been to those first builders. The ones who now had to watch others with their work, trusting that they will complete it in a way that honors God. Maybe the second wave of builders learned under the tutelage of the first. Would that make it easier to hand over such important work? Perhaps one of the most humbling things that we need to realize in this life is that while we may start working on something, we may not be the ones to bring it to completion. We may not be the ones with our names in the history books. We may not even be the ones to plant the seeds. Sometimes we are just one of many waves of workers on a project whose task is to bridge the gap between those who have come before us and those who will work next.
Of course as with anything, there were some who would not put their hands to the work of the Lord. They thought the task of building was beneath them, unworthy of their time. Around them the community was doing this new thing, but they refused to participate. No matter how passionate we are about working for the Kingdom of God, there are simply some who will not come, stand, and build with us. And there will be others who quickly grow weary of the work without immediate results, so they will not stay with us on the wall building. 
We live in a world full of instant things and expectations that follow. If we turn on a light switch we expect their to immediately be light. If we turn the faucet we expect water. And we have a host of appliances to make our work more efficient, easier, and faster, such as microwaves. But the downside to a society filled with the instantaneous, is that we quickly tire out if we do not get the results quick enough for our liking. So we abandon the work we are called to, we leave the work of building the Kingdom.
But part of the reason the building took so long is that the Israelites wanted to do it right. They wanted to rebuild the temple in a way that honored God. They wanted to build it the specifications of their ancestors through the laws handed down to Moses. And that was time consuming work. Sometimes instant is not always better. Sometimes its the hard work, over a long period of time, with very little progress that people notice, that honors God the most.
This week I have been reading Change the World by Mike Slaughter, the pastor of the second largest United Methodist Church in the United States. The church he serves, Ginhinsburg UMC, did not always used to be large. In fact, it would be generous to call it mid-sized when he first got there. It took many years of hard work, tears, and sweat, and nights of prayer to help the church see growth. Mike writes that one of the biggest dis-services that we do for the Kingdom of God is make our membership requirements to laxed. When we focus more on the quantity of people we are ministering to instead of the quality of the ministry we are sharing with them. When we give up and don’t stay on the wall, even though we know it is the path God is leading us to, because it simply seems too hard. To honor God, we don’t need to have big results right away or fast growing programs, but we need to do our best to be faithful to what we are called to do - giving our very best. 
Friends, are we going to be the people who stay on the wall, working for results we know we may not see, but that we are called to? Are we people who can give our very best and raise the next generation to continue to work with a passion for the Kingdom? Are we going to trust that the ground work the God has laid cannot be stopped? This week, in the Ridge Runner, our district newsletter, this passage of scripture was highlighted because it speaks of people working side by side, doing something bigger than themselves. Are we going to be those people? Working towards something we may not have ever seen before ourselves, but that we know glorifies our God and Savior! It is my hope and prayer that we do not see this passage simply as a list of names, but rather as part of our own stories, working together, doing the hard but beautiful work of building up the Kingdom of God! Amen. 

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Prayers for the People - Neh 1: 3-10


Sometimes we receive news and all we can do is weep. The death of a loved one. A national disaster. A school shooting. Someone we love making poor choices. Sometimes in the midst of so much hurt and destruction in the world, crying seems to be our only response. 
Two weeks ago I was at a fellow pastors home after giving a presentation in her area. When I walked into the house I found her slowly rocking in her chair as images of Moore, OK flashed across the TV screen and the death count scrolled along the bottom. She has a one year old son who is usually giggling with laughter, but even he was quiet, seemingly feeling that something wasn’t right. In moments like these, when news is so devastating, it seems like tears are the most appropriate response.
The prophet Nehemiah has just received disturbing news, that all of the hard work the Israelites had made on rebuilding the temple and the city of Jerusalem now stood again in shambles after a siege. The gates have been broken down and destroyed by fire. When Nehemiah heard these words all he could do was weep. He sat down in the ground and cried for days. Cried for hard work lost. Cried remembering the destruction of the temple before. Cried for a people who kept having set backs as they tried to come back together as a community. And admist these tears, Nehemiah prayed.
Author Anne Lamont in her newest book says that we basically pray three types of prayers - prayers of need, prayers of thanksgiving, and prayers of amazement. Nehemiah was praying the first type of prayer, crying out to God to help the Israelites and to remember them in their time of need. At a time when others certainly had received this news as well, we are only told that Nehemiah prayed - taking the burden of the people on to himself. Often it is easy for us to pray these prayers of help when we are in personal distress, but Nehemiah was crying on the behalf of an entire nation. 
Two times in the past year I have traveled down to Washington, DC for meetings at the General Board of Church and Society. Part of being a connectional church means that we have boards and agencies that work in various areas to bridge the gap between church members and needs. Sometimes those gaps are discipleship, sometimes they are higher education or missionaries. But GBCS has the unique role of bridging the divide between the church and the government. This agency is located in the only non-governmental building on Capitol Hill. While I was there one of the staff told us that the buildings unique shape allowed it to be pointing right towards the buildings where decisions were made, reminding them of the presence and prayers of the Church for decisions that honor God. But sometimes such decisions are not made, and those staff people who have worked so hard weep. Weep for a broken nation. Weep for hard work that seems in vain. But like Nehemiah, their tears are prayers for a better world as they cry out to God. They stand and cry out to God for an entire nation , pleading for help.
As Nehemiah mourned before God his character was revealed. In his rawest moments we can see that he was a man of deep compassion and feeling, as he wept for days. And he was a man of prayer - fasting on behalf of the people of God. But he was also a man of confession. 
Let us pause here. When bad things happen there one of a few different responses. Some people blame God, saying that God caused the bad event to happen. Other’s take some of the blame off of God by saying the sin of people caused God to act a certain way. Other times people picture God as the Divine who is distant, and wonder why God did not intervene. Nehemiah certainly doesn’t view God as distant, but in his prayer it seems like he is saying that the sin of the people caused God to punish them in this particular way. 
However, there is another way to view God when bad things happen. That is to say that God has given humans free will and does not intervene in their choices, which have consequences. But when something trying happens God walks with us through those dark and troubling times. And because human sin causes calamities to happen, like this one, it invites us into a time of confession, not because our personal sin caused God to punish us, but because we know we could have just as easily sinned in this manner for our sin is just as wicked as the next persons. 
Nehemiah lived in a society that believed in a retributive God who blessed people when they were good and punished them when they were bad. We know that life is hardly that simple, but within Nehemiah’s worldview, the sin of the people must be confessed for their punishment was directly linked to their disobedience. So he confessed. He confessed the sin of the entire nation. He confessed the sin of he and his family that played into the collective sin. He brings all of his short comings before God and honestly repents.
Whether we believe that we live in a world where everything is part of an equation or we don’t quite understand how God works into disasters that take place, we all need to confess. To lay our own faults before God’s throne of grace and ask for forgiveness. Daily. This is why the prayer of confession is so important in our worship service, for it is our collective chance to ask for God’s forgiveness for the sin that has lead us astray. And it also models how we confess our personal sin before God. 
For we too have violated God’s law. Nehemiah was a man of spiritual discipline. He knew the law of God as handed down to Moses. He knew it well enough to know that he faltered and broke it. He knows it well enough to quote it. Yet knowing something does not always mean that it has sunk into our hearts or changes how we act. Sometimes we simply follow God’s will because we are scared, not because we are in relationship with the Holy One. And other times we deliberately break it, as if to test God. Nehemiah knows these responses, for he too has fallen short from keeping the law. So in his prayer he confesses his inability to uphold God’s commandments.
Finally, Nehemiah closes his prayer by reminding God that these are the chosen people. The people whom God delivered from Egypt and returned to the land after their captivity in Babaloyn. They testify to others by their very presence of the God who delivers them with a strong hand. Because of God’s actions in the past, Nehemiah pleads for the Israelites to be delivered once again.
Friends, those times when we simply weep for our pain and the pain of others, what is revealed about our character? Like Nehemiah are we revealed to be a people of compassion? A people of prayer? Of confession? A people who know God’s law and try to follow it? Do we sit down and weep in prayer for others? For this nation? For our own sin? I hope that when things touch our hearts and spirits that we are not a people who quickly forget or move on, but a people who turn to God in honest prayer. Prayer that reveals who we are at our core. May we be the ones pleading before the Lord to deliver us. Amen.