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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, December 16, 2015

Sent: Jesus is God with Us Matthew 1:18-23-25

Incarnation. God is with Us. The belief that God came to us in the form of a baby is one of the key tenants of the Christian faith that set us apart from other religions. Our God loved us so much that God sent Jesus, both fully human and fully divine, into the world to save us. And because of that we are not alone.
Some people get a little squeamish with the idea of Jesus coming as a baby. Wouldn’t it have been easier if Jesus came as a ruler, fully grown and here to conquer evil. Couldn’t God have saved us another way? Possibly. But when we let our own misgivings about Jesus coming as an infant get in the way we miss the point. Jesus, God’s own Son, came as the form of a baby to usher in the Kingdom of God in the most unexpected of ways - a way that people can easily miss or look over if they are not paying attention. Jesus came in the form of a human so he could feel our pain and die our death so he can welcome us fully, into eternal life.
But all of those theological beliefs sometimes take a lot of effort to hit the ground during the season of Advent. We know that for too many, the season of Advent can be painful. It may be a painful reminder that things are not as they should be. It seems like every day we are hearing more reports of violent acts. People hurting other people. It can be painful because ones that we wish could be here aren’t - either because of physical distance or because of the separation of death. And other times the sheer magnitude of the cheeriness doesn’t reflect what we are feeling inside of us. We feel alone. 
During times of hurt and pain, especially during the season of Advent, it can become hard to cling to the truth that we are not alone. That God is with us through Jesus Christ. We get so caught up in the heady part of theology - wanting to reason out the nature of God - that we miss the heart issue, miss the presence of God right in front of us in so many ways. Its almost like Jesus is hidden in plain sight. 
Sometimes, some years, I reflect back on the Holiday season around the first of the year and I have this aching feeling that we missed the point. That I missed the point. That under the guise of wrapped gifts and twinkling tree lights, the truth of the incarnation is missed. The truth of this God who sent his very son to us in the form of a baby just to understand us better and walk our life so we don’t need to be alone. That is a gift that cannot be easily wrapped in a box or put in a bag with tissue paper. 
In fact, sometimes all of the gifts and large meals and tinsel leave us with this hallow misbelief that God is indifferent to us, and that we are alone in our pain. So the holiday season can do the exact opposite of what we intend for it to do as we start to doubt the love of God. The very love that we are to be celebrating. We start to think that we have all of this pain inside of us that God cannot possibly understand and that the culture at large tells us to shove aside this time of the year. 
Perhaps that’s why we have the countercultural season of Advent. To stand up and say that maybe what we need is a little less of the twinkle and a little more of the silence. A little more of the time to sit in silence with our grief and hand it over to God, instead of pretending like it doesn’t exist. Perhaps we need a little less of the bustle and a lot more of the stillness in our spirits. A lot more waiting. 
I say all of that while acknowledging that for some of us the waiting and the silence seem like torture. Because in the silence we have to come face to face with who we are and what we are running from with all our busyness. If we sit in the silence we may be afraid at what we are going to find, but it may be exactly what we need.
Somewhere along the line we bought into this lie that if God loved us then God would give us everything that we want - like a giant cosmic Santa. In fact, I have this secret hobby of looking at Christmas books that try to compare Jesus with Santa just to see how far culture’s incorrect beliefs about God have marked our Christianity. There is one book in particular where children were taught that Santa gave us the gift of the Christ child that I found particularly troubling. See Santa gives us what we want, but God, God gives us exactly what we need. And just because we may not get what we hope and wish for does not mean that God is unloving or indifferent. 

So this holiday season, this time of waiting during Advent, what to you need? Not want, maybe, but desperately need? What can you do this holiday season to connect with a Holy God and with the incarnate Christ? How can we hold each other in the silence? Amen. 

Sunday, December 13, 2015

“Preparing our Hearts: Rebuilding and Restoring” Ezra 1: 1-4; 3: 1-4; 10-13

Have you ever received something you never expected to get? Maybe it was something you had your eye on in the store that someone picked up for you for your birthday or Christmas. Or maybe it was an answer to prayer, that you were so sure you were not going to get that you had all but given up hope. 
In this morning’s scripture lesson we find the Israelites getting the most unexpected of gifts - the ability to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.  A bit of background. Way back with the prophet Jeremiah, the people of Israel were taken captive by Babaloyn. They cried out to God again and again asking how long they would be in exile until God finally gave them an answer through the prophet: its going to be a while. Settle in. Build houses. Plant gardens. Marry and have children. Because you are not leaving this state of exile anytime soon. As you would guess this was not the answer the people wanted. At all.
And then just when all hope had been lost - when they were leaving into God’s commands to settle in and not think about leaving any time soon, the unexpected happened. God, through Cyprus the Great, ruler of the Persian empire, to let the Jews return to their native Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, their place of worship. In fact, he believed so much in the decree that he put it in writing. Think about what you put in writing - things that you want to remember - dates go on the calendar, things that must get done get written on our to-do lists, journal entries chronicle the days events. And those binding covenants in our life also get written down - marriage liscenses are signed as well as other important documents. This is a decree for the people that Cyprus wanted them to remember. One that was binding, as he declares that God has appointed him to rebuild the temple that had been destroyed so many years ago. As a result, anyone who so wished was welcomed to return from Jerusalem to build a temple for the Lord of Israel. 
One definition of hope, put forth by Pamela Hawkins, a spiritual author in her devotional Simply Waiting, is the first sign of life where there was thought to be no life at all. Brothers and sisters, how true for the Israelites. They had been captives of another country for so many years that only a few remained of the original group of people who were taken captive. They were generations removed, and yet they had heard the stories. The stories of how Jerusalem, which used to be the center of all life, had become destroyed and desolate. Only a few people remained there but it no longer was what it once was. It was no longer the epi-center of their faith - the place they worshiped God. Yet, now they were being given the gift of hope - the gift to go and rebuild and restore the city to something even better than what it once was - to bring life to a place that had no spiritual life left.
Often when people talk about why others are not in church today there is a laundry list of reasons. I hear things like if we only bring back the blue laws. Or if only sports teams didn’t compete or practice on Sundays. If only parents thought this was important for their children. But even with all of those things being lifted up as reasons as to why people don’t attend church I see one thing - I see hope. In the Philipsburg area, according to census data over eighty percent of folks do not identify themselves as having a relationship with Christ. There is hope that the life and love of Jesus Christ can take root in them. I see hope that people will have to choose to be active participants in the church - that they will want to come to know the Lord, not just show up because everyone else is. There is hope that people will hear the good news because of us and will invite God to work in their lives. At the times it seems the most desolate brothers and sisters, is when we are most apt to be surprised by hope. 
But here is the thing about hope - it also requires hard work. The people who responded to the decree of Cyprus took a step of faith. They had never seen the Holy City themselves, but something inside of them yearned to return. They didn’t know what they would face in Jerusalem, yet they went. They probably had no idea how to build a temple, yet they willingly responded. And when they arrived, the task was daunting. It was a long journey back to Jerusalem and when they arrived they had to reorganize for the sake of the mission in Jerusalem. It took seven months after the decree for everyone to be assembled together. Even as they built, we are told that they were fearful of their neighbors - they built the alter first and offered a sacrifice to God as an act of worship. 
Just because we are hopeful doesn’t mean that all of our worries and fears disappear. Remember that the city Jerusalem was surrounded by people who worshipped other Gods and the Israelites had no idea how they would react to them moving in and rebuilding the temple for their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But they did it anyway. 
Sometimes we need to have enough hope in our hearts to take that first step of faith to invite someone new to worship with us. To invite them to come to know the God who has changed our lives. And yes, sometimes people are going to tell us no. But we need to take the risk of asking before anyone will say yes. We need to do the hard work of asking and inviting and telling people what Christ means to us in order for people’s lives to be transformed. Hope opens up the human heart and gives us courage to try new things and be bold in our inviting people to come to worship a Holy God. 
After the alter came the building of the foundation of the temple. And even before the walls were built up, only after the foundation itself was laid, the priests put on their vestments and sang a song of praise to God with trumpet and cymbals. Some wept with joy, those very few remaining folks who remembered the original temple. Who had told the stories from generation to generation about it. Others shouted with joy. The excitement could not be contained and it was heard from afar.
What are you excited about in your walk with God? What excites you about when  we gather to proclaim God’s word on Sunday mornings? Yes, there are many reasons that folks do not come to church on Sunday, but I fear that one of the most prevalent is that our love of the Lord isn’t spreading and exciting and joyful. We talk like church is one more thing we had to attend instead of an experience that stirs our spirits. Maybe that’s because this celebration isn’t about us - its about God - but it certainly has the ability to change us, if we seek to be open to the movement of the Spirit. What brings you so much joy that you cannot help but share it and a joy that can be heard from afar? 

Brothers and sisters, this is the season of God’s dreams and our hopes. Hope that others will come to know the love that came down at Christmas. But no one else can do the hard work of sharing that hope, but you. For there are people God placed just in your path, in your life, to share that message with and to invite to come to know the Lord and worship with us. Share your hope. Share your joy. For the sake of the Kingdom of God. Amen. 

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

“Jesus Sets Us Free” Luke 4: 16-19

Jesus went back to his home town. The place where everyone knew him since he was a little boy. A place where people saw him at best as ordinary. He went back to the synagogue on the Sabbath and started to read from the scroll of Isaiah 61. He started to read words about the one who is anointed to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind. He continued on about the one who would set the oppressed free. And at the end of the reading he rolled up the scroll and told the people gathered together that today the scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing.
I think we often speak about Jesus’ saving us for eternal life, but sometimes we overlook that Jesus came to change people’s lives here, now, today. Jesus came to set the oppressed free. Maybe we don’t always proclaim this because we don’t like to consider ourselves to be among the oppressed. We like to act as if those suffering from addictions or financial strain or marital difficulties are different than us - we want to make them into an “other” at a safe distance. But then Jesus comes into our lives and reminds us that we all need saving, here and now. We all need to be freed from addictions - whether its the addiction to food or alcohol or money or the need to be liked. Jesus has come to free us. Jesus shows up and tells us that he will not let us stay the say and the while calling us to follow him as his disciples.
Jesus calls peculiar people to follow him. Its not the best of the best or even the top of their field. Its not people who know every word that is written in the Bible. Jesus simply calls those who are willing to follow and empowers them to serve in his name. It is not the degrees that we possess that make us able to serve Christ - it is simply a heart that has been set free in order to follow him.
Christ then takes our freedom for service one step further. He frees us not only from whatever chains are holding us back from serving him fully, but also from the guilt and shame that blocks us from experiencing the unconditional love of God. He sets us free from the doubts and fears that tell us we are not good enough to be a disciple and replaces it with joy and the freedom to be bearers of the Christ light.
Advent is this peculiar season for peculiar people when we stand in awe and wonder of the unfathomable love of God. But it is also this peculiar season when we can name those things that we long for - like forgiveness and restoration - that we need to fully serve God. While we normally think of Lent as a season of repentance and laying our burdens down, Advent actually offers us the same opportunity in order to pick up the yoke of following the Christ-child. 
But there is something that comes with being a disciple of Jesus Christ - that thing is the ability to serve as Christ would serve and see people as Christ would see them. You may have noticed by now that I have very little tolerance for when we try to group people together like “the blacks” or “the homeless” or “the addicts”  or “the poor” because when people are spoken of in these terms I only see people who I have served and loved deeply. I see the faces of the congregation at my first church, which was almost all African-American. I see the faces of the women I served when I was an intern in Clearfield at the women’s shelter. I see the faces of the people I walked beside week in and week out at a drop in safety shelter in Australia while I was studying abroad for IV drug users and prostitutes. I see the the faces of children living in a bad neighborhood because that’s all their family could afford as their moms and dads worked as many part time jobs as possible just to keep them in a house with food on the table. 
When we follow the call to be Christ’s disciple, we are called to see people as individuals, who are deeply loved by Christ, whether you like them or not. We are called to see and respond to people as Christ does. But what blocks us from having the eyes and hearts of Jesus? In the words of Pastor Lanecia Rouse, “We often miss Jesus because we haven’t correctly understood how God is in our midst”. We expect Jesus to show up and look and act exactly like us, but the season of Advent reminds us that Jesus shows up in unpredictable places - a stable and in unpredictable ways - born to a teenager mother as a baby. 
All too often we let our human mid-understandings and standards try to to define who is worthy of Christ’s love and forgiveness and acceptance while all the while Jesus is saying he is for everyone. That it is he who is anointed to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind. He continued on about the one who would set the oppressed free.
And because our Lord and Savior is preaching those things - so should we. We need to set aside our spiritual anxiety and claim the truth of Christ’s love found in the gospel message, especially this season as we retell the radical story of how Christ came to the save the world in the form of an infant. 

The truth is none of us are probably the ideal candidates to be Christ’s disciples by the worlds standards, but we are the perfect candidates in the eyes of Christ. Let us approach this season with awe, thanksgiving, and grateful hearts that Christ has set us free and called us to spread the good news to all the world. Amen. 

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Preparing our Hearts: Hearing the Cries

My family has always been ones to prepare for things early. My mother is always good about making us have our Christmas lists complete before October, shopping done before November, tree up in November, and so on. Our preparation is not limited to Christmas – even to this day I usually have my bags packed a week before I make a trip. 
But really that’s what makes part of anything we look forward to worthwhile, right? The sense of expectation that comes when we begin to prepare. The mounting joy and sense of wonder that comes as each day brings us one step closer.
The people of Israel had lost their sense of expectation. Their sense of having something to prepare for. The place they lived and worship, the place that they believed the spirit of God dwelled had fallen – Jerusalem had been taken by the Babylonians and with it, the people of power had been marched on a three month journey to be exiled in Babylon. It was a bleak time that lasted for many years. So many that those who were first taken away had died off, leaving only their legacy and stories of what once had been of the people of Israel and the mighty city of Jerusalem. And with the death of those who first traveled so many miles seemed to be the extinction of any hope of returning.
The people felt that they were being punished for breaking their covenant with God. It is what the prophets of old had told them. It was what their forefathers and mothers had drilled into their heads. It was what they believed.
But then. But then the unexpected happened. In a community so wrought with despair, God appeared. God not only appeared, but God did this radical things. God commanded God’s very self to comfort the people of Israel. Let’s stop for just a moment and think about that. No one on this earth or in the host of Heaven has the power to command God and actually expect God to do what was commanded. No one. No one, except for God’s very being. And that is what we have here; God telling God to comfort the people of Israel. God wants Israel to know that their time of trial is coming to a close. That salvation is just around the corner. God gives the people something to hope for. Something to prepare for.
Whenever we are given something hopeful to look forward to we prepare more. Both of my brothers got married in 2014 - so there were a lot of preparations in our household. Now we are preparing for the birth of the baby. My sister-in-law is preparing for the birth. Their will be baby showers and advice given. A nursery to set up. And all of that takes time. When we have hope on the way, we prepare. 
God tells the people that help is on the way. A road must be cleared for the Lord. God is going to walk across the terrain that no one could survive before – the desert places – in order to make a new path for his people to follow as they return to Jerusalem.
And this must be done – for God has commanded God, and God cannot go back on the very word of God. Everything else is this world may only be beautiful and true for a fleeting period of time, but the word of God always is fulfilled without mortal limitations.
God is doing a new thing. God is about to come in and declare Holy might by gathering up this people, God’s very own, and carrying them back to the place of freedom form which they came. 
What a powerful message. What a radical message for a people who had never actually seen or been to Jerusalem. We will find is subsequent weeks that not all followed this message of God and not all believed this message of God commanding God’s very self. But maybe this message and the reaction to it by God’s people isn’t too far off from our reality today.
We are in the season of advent – the season when we prepare individually and as the community of God for this radical thing – the Son of God descending into flesh like ours to live among us. And through the presence of the Christ Child, God will make a new way in order to bring us back.
But for far too many of us this message gets lost amongst the hustle and bustle of wrapping presents, shopping, and baking cookies. We become preoccupied with the details instead of focusing of the excitement that the truth about advent brings. 
And maybe the reason we can become so easily distracted is because we forget who we are. We forget that we are the people of God and that God is so faithful, because we are being held captive by the world around us. So when some of us hear this message of hope that some in our midst become excited about and start to prepare for, we dismiss them as optimists or dreamers. Because in all actuality, we don’t want to return to this place we have never been. We don’t want to trust this God whom had just be handed down to us through our ancestors but whom we have never met. So we choose to stay put. We continue in our bleak daily existence, because we don’t have anything radical to become excited about any more.
But others of us will hear the still small whisper of the truth about this season. The truth about what is yet to come. So we become excited. We look forward to something that we don’t know quite what to expect. We prepare. 

We can see our preparations  from different angles. We can either see it as an act where the church is just prescribing to the greater culture around us – buying into the bustle of the season. Or we can make it mean something – we can set this up to be our reminder of what we expect to come. Be our tangible reminder of the presence of God that has come to dwell among us. This could be a constant reminder over the next few weeks that we are excited because God is moving among us and will continue to move among us in this amazing way. We prepare together. Because we are a community. Those who believed this message today in Isaiah dwelt with those who did not believe it. For they were still a community. So come from the east and come from the west. May we once again become excited about the message of God as we live together these coming weeks.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

“Jesus Reconciles” Luke 2: 8-20


It is so good to have each and every one of you at our mid-week advent services as we prepare to welcome again the birth of Christ and to listen in our hearts to where Christ is sending us to share our faith. Advent is a particularly “church-y” word because it describes a season in our Christian journey. Does anyone know what the word Advent means? Arrival or coming. The early church mothers and fathers set aside this particular four week time frame leading up the celebration of Christmas to prepare anew for the arrival or coming of the Christ child. They did so, recognizing that the birth of Christ was not a one-time event in history. Instead, each of us has the opportunity to have Christ born anew in us - both during this season of Advent and each day of the year. Where in your life do you need Christ to be born anew in you?
There are generally two ways that folks answer that particular question about needing Christ to be born anew in them? Perhaps the most common is to say that they already accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior so there is no need to be born “anew”. To this particular group, one of our United Methodist Bishops poses a second question - what has God done in your life in the last month? If you can’t think of anything, maybe you need to pray during this season for Christ to be born anew in your sense of recognition or wonder. 
The second group of folks answer this question of where Christ needs to be born anew in their lives with a laundry list - all of the places that they feel they are coming up short and need Christ’s help. However, sometimes laundry lists become crutches - things that prevent us from moving forward in sharing the good news we hear about in this evenings passage because we feel that we are not yet good enough to do so.
This evening’s particular passage is one that is usually read on Christmas Eve - and for my folks you will be hearing it again on Christmas Eve - about the Shepherds receiving the good news of Jesus Christ in their lives for the first time. If anyone would have felt that they were not good enough to be the bearers of the good news, it would have been the shepherds. They were looked down upon as one of the lowest occupations in ancient times. Not good enough to have a well paying job, or even a job that took place during the safety of daylight. Instead, they had to protect their flocks every moment of every day. Against other people who wished to steal them and against wild animals that sought the devour them. They were out in the elements - blazing sun or pouring down rain. They were considered undesirable people to be around and other people told them that they were not good enough. In fact, according to Pastor Jacob Armstrong, “we miss some of the Christmas story’s power if we neglect to see that the shepherds were unsuspecting, unqualified, and undeserving to be included. And God picked them anyway.”
Yet, it was exactly the shepherds, those those that others deemed to be not good enough and who were looked down upon who heard the good news first that fateful evening. Angels came to them and the glory of God shone around them. And they were the first to hear the good news for all people. Including them. Especially them. The shepherds were simply doing that evening what they did every evening - protecting their flocks when their “normal” was interrupted by God. 
Brothers and sisters, the season of Advent is our interruption to life as “normal”. During these particular days we are called to step outside of what is normal in order to see the glory of God in new ways. To have our hearts tuned into the glory of God. Now that doesn’t mean that we stop doing what we need to do - we still need to show up for work and make sure the family is fed and that things are taken care of. But it does mean that we are intentionally seeking out the glory of God. Intentionally seeking to have Christ born a new in us. For when we start to have our eyes and hearts open to the movement of God, we tend to see God’s glory more readily. We can not only see what God has done in our lives in the past month, but we can see what God does amongst us every single day!
When the angels showed up in the darkness to proclaim the good news, notice what they say to the shepherds. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. This was good news for the shepherds that could not be contained. It was both personal for them and universal for the world. And if the good news of this Jesus was good news for them, good news for all, it is good news today for each of us, including you. And this good news cannot be contained just to us. We are sent by God into the lives of the world so that others may come to know the good news of Jesus Christ. It is good news for you, but not just for you. 
Its good news for the people working hard just to make ends meat. It good news for the workers on the third shift, who like the shepherds are all too often overlooked and not thanked. Its good news for the single moms and dads. For the people carrying around the weight of the world. For the widowers. For those who have been Christian as long as they can remember and those who are new to the faith. Its good news for the youngest among us and the oldest. Its good news because Jesus Christ reconciles us - restores us and reconsecrates us - every moment of every day for the sake of the Kingdom of God - if only we take time to notice and respond. 
Our hearts are made to long for Christ’s restoration of us. Folks around the world state that there is just something about this season of preparing for Christmas, whether they call it Advent or not, that seems to make their hearts wake up to something greater than themselves. Even in its busyness. Even in the midst of to-do lists that seem to endlessly go on. Whether people realize it or not, our hearts are made to long for the coming Messiah. Are you willing to share that good news that cannot be contained with others this Advent season so that their hearts have a chance to respond?
A closing thought about being sent to share our faith this Advent season - its scary. It seems like hard work and we are often afraid of it - which is why we make excuses as to why we aren’t the ones who are called. We will simply leave that work to the super-religious or the pastors. But brothers and sisters you are called, by virtue of your faith, to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. To bring hope by sharing how Jesus has changed your life and can change the lives of others. What would have happened if the shepherds would have let fear limit the call of God on their lives? And what will happen if we let our fears limit the call of God on our lives? For Christ doesn’t just reconcile us for our sake alone, but for the sake of all. 
So go about your lives this Advent season but have the eyes of your heart open to the movement of Christ in and amongst you. Go about your lives, but look for opportunities given to you by God to share the good news. Go about your lives, letting your heart long to be reconciled to the lover of your soul, the one who is the Good News, Jesus Christ. Amen.