Golden Rules

Although the "Golden Rule" sounds to me like a friend's advice not to eat at a certain Chinese Restaurant, in truth the Rule is probably Jesus' best known teaching from the four gospels in your New Testament.  "Do to others as you would have them do to you."  

I confess I like this more nuanced interpretation of the Greek from Donald Hagner, a scholar on the gospel of Matthew:  "Therefore everything you would like others to do to you, you yourselves do to them."  That version brings out a sense of going first, of stepping up, leaning in to relationships first instead of always leaning out and waiting for others to take a chance.  Any time a teacher looks at the group you are in and uses a reflexive pronoun, pay attention.  "You yourselves!"

In other words, if you want love, then love.  If you want respect, then respect.  If you want healing from a past wrong, then get busy following Jesus and liberally work his healing balm into the wounds of the world around you.  I hear this subtext of the Golden Rule as Jesus saying this disciples, "If you want to follow me, then love others first and you will learn to let go of the need for them to love you back as a second."  Perhaps the fruit of Jesus-Golden-Rule living is, perhaps, not the sacrifice of letting go of things we want for ourselves ... but the freedom not to need them so much in the first place.  

By Day and By Night

Our journey with Jesus through our Lenten wilderness continues this second Sunday of Lent with a reading from John 3:1-17.  The central character of this episode is a prominent Jewish leader named Nicodemus.   His prominence in the community is noted, inversely, by the fact that he must come to see Jesus "at night."  Indeed, strange and unsettling events often happen under the cover of night.  Cars are stolen and fences are crossed and windows are busted out.  The sun's departure invites all manner of tomfoolery in this broken world.

But sometimes the Holy happens upon us at night, too.  In John 3, the darkness provides a prominent religious leader the careful cover he needs to have the kind of open, searching, curious, and even agnostic conversation he cannot have in the daytime.  Persons of some prominence often lead fairly settled lives because of their settled roles and the settled expectations placed upon them by those among whom they are protuberant.  But Jesus's ministry, particularly his healings, has prompted lots of unsettling questions for Mr. Nick, who seeks out the young, potent Preacher at great risk to his settled religious reputation.  Thanks to the gospel of John, we get to listen in on their conversation.

What questions are you carrying through this Lenten season, ones perhaps you can only reveal under the cover of Jesus' patient and listening grace?

Weaknesses

Our weekly saunter through the first few chapters of Paul's voluminous words to the followers of Jesus in ancient Corinth continues this week with a reading from 2:1-16.  "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom."  This, following Paul's earlier rebuke of all the self-important "wisdom" and philosophical posturing of every age, in light of the 'embarrassing' way God has come to us in a helpless child.

The Apostle Paul rejecting the value of lofty words is like Miss Universe downplaying the importance if outward beauty.  Paul was a smart man, an educated man, a public figure accustomed to public speech.  For him to come to a place in his life where lofty words have lost their luster is a sign, not only of some newfound humility, but of a major movement of God in his life.  It is not hyperbole to say that the death of Jesus, and the life lived by his first followers, changed everything for Paul.  And so he can say to the Corinthians Christians, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."  The weakness of the cross is, for New Paul, the key to everything.

Paul has learned what we all must learn before God: The end of our ability to manage this life on our own is the beginning of God's way forward in and for us.  Our weaknesses, when we admit them, have the nice side benefit of accentuating God's strength.  Paul:  I tried not to dress the faith up in too much finery. They way you know your faith has been built on manifestations of God's presence as a savior, not on my cleverness as a communicator.  Only Jesus saves; never his people.

Foolishness

In these rancorous times in which we live, there seems to be a prevailing assumption that "he or she who talks the loudest must surely be Correct."  Subscribe to cable TV these days and you can enjoy three dozen channels of talking heads shouting it out about impeachment, Ukraine, Golden Globes, Pro Bowl pics, and hair care secrets.  It is striking to me that I can no longer even pump gas into my orange Jeep without enduring a screen in front of me, belting out audio selling this or news-breaking that.  So much for 5 minutes dispensing Mid-grade as a quiet chance to collect my thoughts.  Although my daddy raised me always to stay informed about this world, I'm starting to wonder if in fact willful avoidance (of so much noise) may in fact be a necessity for discipleship.  One can only take so many talking heads.   And this ... from a preacher.

Pumping gas while enduring more Opinions makes me appreciate Paul's cultural critique in 1 Corinthians 1:18–31, our lectionary reading for this Sunday.  "So what about these wise ones, these scholars, these brilliant debaters of this world’s great affairs? God has made them all look foolish and shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense."   According to the apostle, this good news about Jesus is not just one more strand of super-Serious-Opinion in an already tight knot of rancor.  Everyone scrambles to be Right in this world, and many assume that the Divine will always take up Their Case ... but meanwhile God is usually up to something different; something so righteous (i.e. according to God's own terms) that it appears ridiculous to its Cultured Despisers.  Talking Heads seem to always tighten our spirits; only a resurrecting God can loosen them.

The cross of Jesus is proof to Paul that the living God gets a kick out of flying in under the radar of what everyone assumes to be True and Right and Obvious.  The cross turns out to be an open secret in a Loud Landscape; it is a whispering God dealing with a cantankerous world by showing up in God's own way: quietly, sacrificially, passionately, from the inside out ... and as a Fool.

Guess what?  For an hour or so this Sunday, we get to turn off MSNBC and Fox and all the Other Ones ... and celebrate the absolute "foolishness" of the gospel.  How about we practice being fools for Christ in such a Serious Season?  You won't even have to pump.

United but not Confused

Christian unity is at once both a fact and a calling, an indicative and an imperative, both already-eternally-true and always-humanly-fragile.

It is the blessed indicative of the good news about Jesus that, because the Father and the Son are one (united but never conflated), and because the Son has called us by name, therefore we are now one (united but never conflated) with God and one with each other.  Unity is a gift given that precedes our choices.  Praise be to God.

But in this Christian confession, most indicatives also come with an imperative.  "It is so ... so live like it!" the New Testament often asserts.  That's what the Apostle Paul seems to be insisting in our 1 Corinthians passage for this Sunday, chapter 1 verses 10-18.  "I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose."

 Let us rejoice that the Christian movement is never a cult, wherein one is required to surrender the individual mind and forfeit one's individual will for the sake of some falsely-holy homogeneity.  No, we are called the Christian unity, not cultic uniformity.  Unity is a choice, because it is a first a gift; such unity never dissolves our differences, it merely softens them so that we no longer have to have our way on everything in order to see the way to God.  It is a choice to stand together, to work together, for seek together the word and way of Jesus.  Indeed, we are more united as one when each of us, in our own ways and in our own times, commits and recommits to loving our God and loving our neighbor.

Each week begins with the gift of unity; each week ends by our asking, How did we do?

Readiness

Speaking of Stewardship Season, here's a nice nugget of wisdom from our Presbyterian tradition:

"Those who follow the discipline of Christian stewardship will find themselves called to lives of simplicity, generosity, honesty, hospitality, compassion, receptivity, and concern for the earth and God’s creatures."

What a list.  This week I'm struck by the word RECEPTIVITY; not the first term one might associate with an emphasis on stewardship giving, inside or outside our congregation.  But I think it fits.  If one starts with the spiritually cascading truths that all is God's and all is on loan from God and all is offered back to God as worship and gratitude — and that Jesus is our leader is no doubt the exemplar steward — then good stewardship invites us to learn again and again a supple posture of receptivity.

Openness.  Nimbleness.  Readiness.   After all, one never knows what is next in this way of walking.

What opportunities for good giving will present themselves?  Where will I sense the divine Holy Spirit nudge?  When a moment of extra giving comes along, how can I trust that giving away more of the gifts of God will be good for my soul, thereby flipping the script on the tendency to grasp and cling?  Maybe you have a talent:  Are you open to new and surprising ways that our Providential God might put it to use for blessing others?  And given that we serve a Resurrecting God, full of Easter Surprises and Pentecost Interruptions, how can we each pay attention for the prompting of that same Spirit in the nooks and crannies of ordinary days?  and in the week to week of this congregation we love?

Sunday's gospel teaching is again from Luke, again it is Jesus teaching us in simple parable, and again is about a posture toward God and God's world around us that could rightly be called stewardship.  Luke 12:35-48.  Read ahead, and “be dressed for action.  Have your lamps lit!"  Jesus-receptivity and Jesus-readiness apparently call for a smart source of light.  After all, a follower of Jesus never quite knows what the morrow will bring.

That is the blessing of this stewardship business, not a curse.

Friendships as Ministry

We all have friends.

Granted, the breadth and depth of friendship may vary from person to person, but surely all of us traffic in at least a few friendships.  As such, other than our families of origin, friendships are probably the most ubiquitous of all relationships.  Not everyone is called to marry.  Not everyone raises children or grandchildren.  Most of us do not loom large in public life and therefore the benefactor of hundreds of social acquaintances.  But by virtue of the great commandment to love our neighbors as well as we would love ourselves, all of us are called to the ministry of friendship.

Our simple summer sermon series for June and July explores some themes in the Christian ministry of friendship.  We started with a refresher on the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, in some ways rescuing those familiar lines from the clutches of wedding ceremonies and repositioning Paul's teaching as direction for every Christian in every relationship -- not just for couples "in love."  Next we'll mine the collected wisdom of the book of Proverbs for reminders on the nature of friendship.  Then we'll sit at table with Jesus and his first disciples as he announces to them, and us, that he no longer calls us servants, but rather "friends."  The implications of this new and provocative nomenclature are many, so we'll take a look at what that means both for us as his friends and for others who know us as a friend.

Behind the scenes, your session is in prayerful discussion about specific areas and directions of ministry for the next five years in the life of our beloved Northminster church.  We hope to discern a handful of mission endeavors that will guide our common life and offer ministry to others in Jesus' name.  Those are sacred and important discussions, and I know we will be sharing with you soon what we are discerning and where we hope to go in the way of direction, vocation.  The ministry we do together is important.

But meanwhile, regarding ministry, it seems to me that everyone of us also has a ministry waiting for us every time we connect with our friends.  One does not always have to cross the seas or cross the town or cross cultures in order to share in Jesus' ministry of mercy, reconciliation, and love.  Sometimes his kingdom is as a close at hand as a text message, a lunch date, a golf outing, or a note.  I hope this short summer series will be an encouragement to you as you steward the friendships God has providentially placed in your life.

Found but Lost

The fifteenth chapter of Luke and the "parable of the Prodigal Son" have been for many years fertile soil for preachers and therefore familiar ground for congregations.  Indeed, the images are rich and memorable: the younger son insisting on cashing out his inheritance early; the whorish squandering of his monies in foolish Las Vegas living; a wised-up, sobered prodigal, down on his news asking for forgiveness from a father who has every right to judge.  He is we, our preachers have often said: We are each the Prodigal.  We are all saved by grace alone.

True enough. But a fresh reading of the whole of Luke 15 reveals that the oft-preached Prodigal Son story is actually a gateway narrative for the climactic story Jesus really wants to tell. It is the sad song of an older sibling, with its own provocative images: an embittered, resentful older son who stubbornly refuses to join in on the Prodigal's welcome home party.  While the DJ cues up the homecoming dance, the older son is passive-aggressively out in the parking lot — declaring his disapproval of the father's lavish grace.

Who are we in the full story of Luke 15?  Are we the once-lost? Are we the have-always-been-here found?  Are we the younger or the older brother?  Are we guilty ... or are we angry?  What side of God's grace do we most need to hear in this stage of life?  ... the unfettered welcome home of the foolish prodigal? ... or the pat-on-the back "you have always been with me" ... but "we need to celebrate" reminder to a resentful older sibling?

Join me Sunday morning in Luke 15 as we celebrate the good news that both brothers — the lost and the found — are welcomed back by the Father's sumptuous, unmerited favor.

Highs and Lows

Life in this world brings with it some highs and some lows, especially when one leans into the good news and seeks to love God and neighbor. Ups and downs: That much is clear. Apparently it was not so different for Jesus in his public ministry. This Sunday we sit together before a another memory from the Gospel of Luke. Last week we sat with Jesus in his 40-day tempting and testing wilderness. This week, we hike with a few of Jesus' first disciples as together they climb toward a mountaintop and experience a high of all highs — a magical moment of heavenly overlap the church clumsily labels "transfiguration." Who wouldn't want to stay right there, basking in the glow of God? But mountaintop highs can't go on forever, at least not in this life. With Luke's help, Sunday we'll see what happens on the other side of the mountaintop, when Jesus takes the high of heaven down to the lowest of earth. Read and prayer this encounter ahead of time — Luke 9:28-43 — and help your preacher find the good news when we all gather again this Sunday.

Less Is More in Lent

The forty day season between Ash Wednesday and Easter morning (minus the Sundays) known as Lent is something of an enigma for many Presbyterians.  If you grew up Protestant before the late 1960s, Lent was likely not a part of your spiritual upbringing.  In fact, many mid-century Protestants would have probably shunned the season (and other liturgical seasons like it) as being "too Catholic."  It is true: the Protestant reformers of Europe did push back on many of the calendars, observances, and seasons that marked medieval Catholic worship in Europe and later brought to America, concerned as the new Protestants were about liturgical rites taking on a life of their own and overshadowing the preaching and teaching of the New Testament.

However, our English word "Lent" simply means "spring" and as a Christian observance, its roots are much older than the squabbles of the Reformation era.  Lent originally developed as the final season of spiritual preparation for those new followers of Jesus being readied to be baptized on Easter Sunday.  As these preparations usually called for self-examination and repentance, the six week period became known as a time of intense piety and sacrifice.  Some of that spiritual DNA comes down to us in the form of "giving up something for Lent," but in the ancient baptismal preparations, the spirit of that sacrifice was less about "going without something I love" and more about "making more room in my life for prayer, worship, and service."  The point of Lent was not to add to your spiritual suffering, but to take away from your daily burdens — for Jesus' sake.

That last point is instructive for us.  Lent need not be a dark, serious time of feeling more guilt.  Indeed, as a springtime season even the creation all around us welcomes more sun after cooler months.  Rather, let Lent be some weeks during which we offload one or more of life's distracting comforts ... in order to make room in our daily lives for what the Protestant reformers would have called "deeper piety" — personal examination, silent prayer, spiritual reflection, preparation for public worship, acts of mercy among our neighbors, etc.  If eating less chocolate or binging less Netflix or skipping Starbucks in the morning helps you welcome fresh piety ... great!  But remember, the point is not so much additional suffering (especially first world suffering!) for suffering's sake, but rather additional prayerful consciousness for Jesus' sake.  Less of one thing makes room for more of another.  Lent need not be any more complicated than that.

So, no, Lent is not a native experience for many Presbyterians of certain generations.  But since the late 1960s there has been among American Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, a much greater awareness that we could probably stand to learn from one another the various ancient practices of discipleship, of following Jesus.  I for one am grateful for Lent's arrival on our Presbyterian scene in recent decades.  I appreciate its sharper focus, its simplicity, and its call to pay closer attention to how we are remembering our baptisms and following Jesus in our daily lives.

This month, we will follow the ministry of Jesus through the gospel of Luke, as the lectionary gospel readings serve up living examples of his lordship and love.  I'm looking forward to making this Lenten journey with you for the first time.

Gifted Gifts

Presbyterians have a large gene labelled Modesty running around in our spiritual DNA.

Most of our parents taught most of us to 1. stay nice and quiet during the worship of God, and 2. never to brag.  Makes sense. You can add to these parental prohibitions a strong emphasis in our Reformed tradition on glory always being given to God and not to humanity.  Even faith itself is a gift, we say.  Boasting is the cardinal Presbyterian sin.

Given all of this, the invitation to talk about ourselves in the context of faith and church likely leaves many of us feeling a bit uneasy.  Even more, the language of "spiritual gifts" might sound to some like it better belongs in one of those other Christian churches, perhaps one on a cable access channel.  Bottom line:  Is the naming aloud of our spiritual gifts — be they communal or individual — a form of bragging?  Is it, inevitabily: "I have the spiritual gift of wisdom ... Look at me!"

The New Testament is chockablock full of language about the gifts Christ gives to his church, in every generation and in every place.  Ephesians 4 is my favorite example, where the apostle lists a sacred chain of invisible gifts that are given by the Spirit for building up the visible church.  The logic of Paul's gift-talk seems to run like this:  God gives good gifts to those God calls to faith, gifts for blessing the whole of the faithful, all so that the faithful can become the kind of persons whose lives and love bring glory back to God amid a watching and wanting world.

It is this logic that hedges against bragging.  Our gifts come from God, not us.  No one can claim original ownership.  And when gifts bear fruit in the church and in the world, the taste of said fruit will develop an appetite in others for the divine, not for us.  Glory (emphasis, reputation, legacy, credit) goes back to God, not to us.   In short, spiritual gifts are gifts to be given away.  There is no room in that chain of logic for self-referential bragging.  But given the mandate to use them for blessing, there is also no need to keep the whole matter under wraps.  Indeed, there is a real sense in which we need each other to help each other discern what our own gifts might be.  That calls for conversation, and prayer, and encouragement.

There is freedom in the grace of gifts, freedom to ask of our lives and of a congregation's culture: What particular invisible gifts has God entrusted to me and to my visible community?  All disciples and all communions share Jesus in common, as well as his faith, hope, and love.  But beyond those sacred universals, what are the particular marks of God's gifting grace in our history?   Asking these questions, sharing in this discovery, and celebrating our findings — this activity is not bragging; this is stewardship.  To whom much is given (by God), much is expected (by God).  Staying clear about what has been given TO us helps us stay alert to those moments when grace invites us to give AWAY the spiritual blessings Christ has deposited in our communion.

What gifts of a spiritual nature has the Holy Spirit invested in your life?

Peaceful Intruders

Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”  (Luke 2)

Who knows the last time you brushed passed an attendant of the Almighty.

According to the long-winded preacher in Hebrews (13:2) in your New Testament, it could have happened on Tuesday, on the way out of the Post Office. Then again, that may have just been your local interloper.  Whoever it was, Hebrews says: "Be nice.  Could be an angel on the loose."

Tis the season for intruding divine agents, like when Christmastime Joe is awoken in the middle of the night to the news of a paternal custody hearing (Matthew 1). He gets a nocturnal visitor.  No, not the Lunesta butterfly; middle-aged Joseph gets a dream.  And an angel.  And a word from the Lord.  “Wake up, fella.  Time to be a daddy.”

Adolescent Mary gets a visit, too (Luke 1).  That encounter always makes me chuckle: “… sent by God, to a town called Nazareth.”  Really?  Backwater Nazareth? I can see evanescent Gabriel trying to type N-A-Z- into his loaner GPS.  It blurts back, in a soothing British tongue, “Unknown destination.”  Indeed.  Who knew the Divine Word would be carried through gestation in a commoner’s womb?  She’s a nobody, this girl -- at least by the world's expectations.  The mandate from heaven: “Go surprise her, Gabe. I am doing a new thing.”

They’ve got a quite a list of clients on their website, these meddlesome messengers:  Cast off Hagar, down by the water (Gen 16).  Old man Abraham, with his PG-13 knife in the air (Gen 22).  Used-car-dealer Jacob, in a fuzzy stupor (Gen 31).  And of course, who can forget the canon’s best-known ass: ridden by Balaam, who is greeted by an angel from the side of the road (Numbers 22).  They all add the same comment on Facebook’s official Angel page: “Watch out, people.  You just never know what a day will bring. They come out of nowhere! OMG.”

They appear.  They hover.  They greet.  They intrude.  They show up by streams, in byways, or in the cursed middle of the night.  They even have an auxiliary unit that sings and dances and puts on quite a Sunday show (Isaiah 6). (But who cares for that contemporary music, anyway?  I prefer the standard old hymns, thank you.)

My favorite of all the angelic interruptions?  This one: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”  Even a third-shift trick of no-name shepherds gets an impromptu flash-mob in the sky, on the dodgy outskirts of Bethlehem.  The choral anthem they sing turns out to be no less than the news that the glory that already floods God’s space (heaven) will now be spilling over into our space (earth) in the form of a lasting shalom, i.e. a goodness and grace that will not fade even after the holiday rush is over.  And its (his) name is Jesus.  So sings the Newsboys, a band from Austrailia:

Entertaining angels
By the light of my t.v. screen
24-7 you wait for me
Entertaining angels
While the night becomes history
Host of heaven, sing over me

Angels.  Everywhere.  Speaking.  Surprising.  Summoning. I like that God is into a great deal of subcontracting when it comes to handing out messages.  That’s good for the economy, in these uncertain times.  And it means some group of them might just show up on your back stoop.

So watch your step on the 24th night of this Advent month, when, home from the Candlelight Service, just after dark, bedecked in last year’s Christmas-gifted bathrobe, just before heading to bed, you wheel out the trash can from under the back porch, and strewn across the crisp night middle-Georgia-sky over your neighbor’s yard, high above his crumbling tool shed and the wife’s composting garden, there is in the lower atmosphere a merry band of supernal beings, warming up with pitch pipes for the big revelatory number, carolling a new song from heaven, complete with a personalized summons to send you packing in a whole new direction in what remains of your gifted life, and all in the name of Jesus.

When and if this happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you (Luke 2).  And maybe you already have your own tale to tell of peaceful intruders.

Either way, be at peace. God still speaks.

O Christ, our Living Lord, made known to us in the humor of scripture’s stories and in the holiness of the incarnation, we welcome your word of peace and likewise pray for more of it around the world in our own day and time.  We are honored to bear your name, and grateful once again to celebrate your remarkable advent among us as a lowly child.  Send your angels to your church once again, that we might sing and sign your news.  Amen.

Vital Veterans

Four years ago this month, during a two week ecclesiastical visit in Africa, I departed and locked my hotel room one evening, only to discover that my traveling companion's room next door was being secretly searched by what I could only assume was an official from the country's hardline Islamic national government.

We two pastors were there visiting Presbyterian schools that for years had been supported by congregations in our presbytery.  Our visit was largely unscathed, and the room tossing was relatively innocuous in the scheme of pressures, but our visit proved to be another reminder to us of what remarkable religious liberties we followers of Jesus in America often take for granted.  "Listen," I once said to a Presbyterian congregation at the start of our worship. "Hear that?" Silence.  "No one is coming to stop us."  Many of the planet's Christians cannot take the sound of that silence as a given.

Whatever the many shortcomings of our American-style democracy, a Christ-follower from the United States only needs a brief taste of another, more repressive political context in order to appreciate what it means to come and go in this gospel unhindered and unsuppressed.  And to the extent those religious liberties have been preserved and protected by those who have served in our nation's military forces over the years, I believe as Chrsitian disciples we owe American veterans our deep gratitude.   Freedom to be free in Christ, and freely to share his light and love — it is not free.

Given that this year Veterans Day officially falls on a Sunday, as an act of Christian discipleship — if not also as an act of American citizenship — let us give thanks to God in prayer for those who have served to keep religious freedoms free.   At the top of my list is my own father, who served in the Army during the Korean conflict; along with him, countless other veterans I have known and loved in the congregations I have served.  Heartfelt thanks to those in our Northminster ranks who have served.

Who's on your hallowed list?  For what aspect of religious liberty are you most grateful?  What will you do for the Good News this week with the freedom we enjoy?

Dedicated Saints

In conversations leading up to Flippy Denton's recent funeral, someone was sharing with me some sweet and funny stories from Flippy's life.  When the gentle laughter trailed off, and there was a holy moment, this person looked at me with tender eyes and said, "Flippy was a fine Christian woman."  I could not imagine a better period that could placed at the end of a life's sentence.  Thus followed more stories; these, tales of kindness, hospitality, and forgiveness — marks of a dedicated disciple of a dedicated Savior.

This Sunday we do double duty in worship.

First, we celebrate our Protestant version of All Saints Day.  It is our time together to remember those who in the last year have left our earthy fellowship and now wait in the safe care of the risen Jesus until the resurrection; the "church triumphant," the ancient Christians called them.  It is a day to give thanks for the witness of Flippy, Tom Goodwin, and all those many others who, despite their own shortcomings, have shown us what faithfulness looks like.

Second, it is Dedication Sunday: the culmination of three weeks of Stewardship emphasis.  We will gather our Time and Talent cards, together with our financial pledges, and we will dedicate ourselves afresh to the ministry of Jesus in and around us.  We've deliberately kept this season simple this year, looking ahead as we are to a fresh new season of being church.

In truth, the two duties go naturally together.  How do we best learn the art and grace of the stewardship of God's gifts in our lives?   Mostly by watching others do it well.  From whom have you learned the shape of giving?  Who has taught you the generous way of Jesus Christ?  For that matter, who is watching you, learning the moves of discipleship from the gait of your walk?

Let us gather this Sunday, to remember God's saints and to dedicate ourselves to the same.

Soil Tests

They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,
and they prosper in all they do.

— Psalm 1 (New Living Bible)

A chief challenge of the times in which we live is that most of us are cut off from the real sources of our food.  Ask a child from whence cometh apples and—no real fault of her own—she is likely to say “from the store.”  Never mind the toil of those who labor in groves far away; never mind the remarkable yield of such productive creatures as fruit trees, doing their thing season after season. Fruit just happens in our world.  Unlike earlier generations, so much more agrarian than our own, most of us have no daily connection to its upbringing.

The convenience of the produce section of Fresh Market not withstanding, there are implications to this cutoff for our Christian walk.  Spiritual fruit does not simply happen in our lives. Just as no farmer would propose standing before a bare field and simply shouting “make fruit!” … so we cannot expect our lives to bring forth signs of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25) without proper planting, tending, and harvesting.  It turns out that modernity contains an ironic twist for believers: The more convenient the world around us, the more challenging it becomes to nurture within us a deep and abiding Christ discipleship.  Last time I checked, Kroger doesn’t carry piety.

Still, “those who delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, they are like trees planted along the riverbank.”  This is not mere moralizing on the Bible’s part.  Think less of the psalmist wagging his finger at us and more of a fellow student who has lived long enough to figure out that soil matters, where we plant our lives makes a difference.  The psalmist can look back over his life and appreciate that good farming makes for “bearing fruit each season.” (Matthew 13:3-8)

Remember this background as you prepare your Stewardship Packet this week.  Without much reflection, we are tempted to look upon pledge cards and time commitments as narrow one-way streets.  “The church needs more from me,” we might sigh, scribbling down some hasty numbers.  Turn it back in on Sunday, and we’re off the hook for another year.

But your new pastor invites you to resist this flattened view of discipleship. Instead, consider this matter of stewardship as a busy two-way street.  There is no doubt that a congregation needs from God’s people their time, talent, and treasure in order to do the ministry Jesus is calling us to do.  The arrow pointing from you to the church is clear and obvious.

But there is also an arrow flowing toward us.  We need the church.  We need it in our lives to call us to attention, to take notice of our walk with Jesus, to consider the soil in which we are planted.  Stewardship materials are soil tests:  Am I bearing any fruit?  Am I growing or dying? Am I planted by streams of righteousness or by ditches of degeneracy?  Am I cutoff from the true source of my life or is there living water flowing through me?  (John 4:13-14)  It is the difference between casually plunking a bag of apples down in your cart ... or spending a day in an orchard—planting, fertilizing, harvesting.

A wise elder in a previous church once said from the pulpit: “God is not an accountant.  God looks at our hearts.”  This is another way of inviting us not to confuse the apple (our giving) with the tree (our lives).  God desires our hearts, not our wallets; still, our wallets—perhaps more than anything else—will likely show in what kind of soil we are planted.  Our fruit will tell us about our soil, if we are open to learning.

Let us be open to learning.  You could make quick work of your Stewardship materials and be done with it for another year.  That is your choice to make.  But your pastor invites you to dig a little deeper.  Let us all commit to take some soil samples in this new season, to remember again the source of our abundant life.  Let us press beyond an easy, convenient faith to instead discover (again!) the “joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked … but [instead] delight in the law of the Lord.”

From whence cometh our fruit?

Four Dimensions

"My God, my Father and my Savior, since it has pleased thee to preserve me by thy grace through the night just ended and until the present day, grant that I may use it entirely in thy service and that I may, say, and do nothing but to please thee and to obey thy holy will, so that all my actions may redound to the glory of thy name and the edification of my neighbors."

Sunday is Reformation Day among us Protestants, an annual date intended for the celebration of our heritage as spiritual children of the 16th century Christian reformation in Europe.  The quotation above, a sentence from a prayer by reformer John Calvin -- arguably the father of what would later become our Presbyterian way of being church -- is not only a nod to our Reformation roots but also a lovely prayer for the middle week of our stewardship season.

All of life, every sleeping and waking breath, is fundamentally a generous gift from a magnanimous God.  That perspective is the only proper starting point for considering our role as stewards of God's good gifts.  So the question before us this week is not merely "What am I giving to the church?"  Calvin taught us, instead, to ask always: "What have I been given by God?  What has God entrusted to me in this life?  What time, talent, and treasure is Jesus calling me to share as a pointer for others to God's love and light?"

Sunday morning in worship we return again to the witness of Ephesians 3:14-21, this time with a close look at verses 18-19:  Paul's prayer for us that we "may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."  Paul celebrates the four dimensions of God's generosity in our lives, a grace that spills over in every direction.

How WIDE are we being called to make our Northminster fellowship?  To what LENGTHS will we go to share and model the good news that God is love?  How can we continue to HEIGHTEN our worship, that it would always be a showcase for God's story?  In a world marked by tight and trite soundbites, how can we plumb the DEPTHS of the gospel in ways that inspire and equip others to walk in his way?  I myself am confident that if we attend to these sacred quesions, and are open to being ourselves a part of God's answers, the money we need to be the church naturally follow.  This is how, in Calvin's words, all our actions "redound to the glory of thy name and the edification of my neighbors."

Let us together grasp all the dimensions of the gospel at work in our lives.

Homiletical Gumbo

In my childhood years, my mother Lucile would spend the better part of a day chopping up onions, celery, and bell peppers.  I can still hear the TAP TAP TAP of the knife on the cutting board.  Later in the long process, her aluminum cauldron on the stovetop would come to a low boil.  The house would begin to smell like onions, garlic, and bay leaves.  Into the pot: okra, crab meat, and later on, oysters.  The whole menagerie would cook down for what seemed like hours.  It was hard to wait until dinner time, but a few stolen pieces of hot french bread and butter would usually make the waiting bearable.  Then, at last, soup's on.

Gumbo was a staple of my childhood growing up on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans.  So maybe that's why it is also my favorite working metaphor for learning to listen to the witness of scripture.  Like a deep seafood soup, scripture listening takes some time to cook down to a meal of discernement flavored with faithfulness.  And likewise, the necessary, traditional ingredients are many.  Each one matters.

This Sunday, we finish our short stint through the sacraments -- BATH, MEAL, BOOK -- with a taste of what it means for us as Presbyterian disciples of Jesus to be steward's of the good Book.  We'll serve up a helping of Luke 4:16-30 -- Jesus first "sermon," in his hometown church building.  The story has all the needed ingredients for a good gospel gumbo: the rich promise that the Spirit of God speaks to us, again and again, through the pages of the scripture.  Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Associations

Is it just me, or does your mind also make interesting associations, and often in a split second?

Whenever I can smell the smell of licoriche in a candy store or a quickie mart, my mind immediately takes flight from the Miami airport, across the blue Carribean waters, to the northern coast of the Domincian Republc.  A nanosecond later, I am no longer in a checkout line paying for gas but am in a block-stacked sanctuary belonging to the Iglesia Evangélica Dominicana.  A smiling friend is handing me bread; in Spanish she says aloud what I can safely assume is something like, "The body of Jesus, broken for you."  And as a hunk of that torn bread nears my mouth, my nose is filled with the potent aroma of Anise -- a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to the eastern Mediterranean region and Southwest Asia. The Dominicans always serve anise bread at communion, one of a hundred little traditions of worship that localize the good news for their little corner of the world's increible neighborhood.

So in my mind, at least, the smell of licoriche (so similar to anise) is forever welded to the sacrament of communion, to the taste of a Caribbean Jesus in my mouth.

World Communion Sunday, which we celebrate this week, is for us an annual joyful reminder that the living body of Jesus is infinitely larger than our own ecclesiastical square footage tucked in along Wimbish Road.  Of course we know this in our minds; a drive up and down said Wimbish makes it clear that Jesus' people, although one, gather in many different tribes.  We are not World Changers; World Changers are not we; thank the heavens Jesus loves us all.

But the communion meal affords us the blessing of remembering his Oneness in other ways: touch, smell ... taste.  We see, touch, taste the various breads ... and we are struck again by the beauty of the good news: it is singular in its oneness -- Jesus is alive!  -- yet is is pluriform in its practice, worked out uniquely and locally in every zip code around this great green planet.  In Sabaneta de Yasica they bake in the anise seed so that the bread wakes up your senses.  In New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, they serve up the sugar-sweet shortbread.  In a homless shelter in downtown Pittsburgh, the break whatever bread was donated in excess the day before.  In Forsyth, Georgia, every week, another sourdough loaf appears from a bread maker just in time for eucharist.  One body ... many loaves.  One gospel ... many places.

World Communion Sunday.  God is licoriche and love.  Come hungry.

We Are They

When my pastoral ministry was presbytery leadership, I would often say to our congregations, "Remember that the presbytery is we; we are the presbytery."

My point was that the "presbytery," when functioning as a wider expression of the church, was not some bureaucratic entity over and apart from our congregations, some ecclesiastical monkey on our backs or some Big Brother only checking our minutes.  The presbytery is we: our pastors, our sister congregations and their elders -- our common life in Jesus our Christ.

It is true that the "congregation is the basic form of the church."  Like politics, all Christian ministry is local.  You cannot finally institutionalize or nationalize the body of Jesus; it lives and moves through relationships.  And yet a localized congregation by itself is not a sufficient expression of the Christian movement.  Churches need each other just like we need each other.  Sibling congregations need their siblings to share, encourage, and correct.

We see this lived out in the pages of our New Testament: The church in Corinth is not the church in Philippi, or vice versa.  They each need different interpretations of the one gospel message, which is why your Bible contains all these peculiar letters to churches with funny first century place names.  Yet they also need each other, learn from one another, and together with all the churches form a multifaceted expression of the community of Jesus.  At our best, it is not dissimilar to what we Presbyterians are up to in a presbytery.  Two truths are true:  Northminster is the basic form of Jesus' church.  And Northminster needs our siblings.  And they need us.

This month, we have the opportunity to practice the wider Christian expression we call presbytery.  On Sunday, October 14, we will abbreviate our Sunday morning worship so as to reconvene at 4pm for a Service of Installation led by our Flint River Presbytery.  Three elders and three preachers from sister congregations will lead us in worship and officially "install" me as your pastor.  It is a marriage ceremony, of sorts.  Vows will be taken, promises will be made, and prayers will be offered for a faithful and fruitful season of ministry -- together.  As I am now a member of Flint River Presbytery, there is a real sense in which my (new) spiritual fellowship is coming to meet with your (longstanding) spiritual fellowship, and together we are a better expression of Jesus' body.

We are particularly honored in this 4pm service to welcome as our preacher the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, currently the Co-moderator of our national Presbyterian General Assembly.  Cindy, Deb Tregaskis Bibler (our terrific executive here in Flint River), and I all became good friends in recent years through a national learning cohort of presbytery executives.  This summer, Cindy was elected co-moderator of our General Assembly and well spend the next two years traveling around the denomination representing the best of what we hold in common with everyone in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  Cindy is as terrific a friend as she is a preacher, so I know we will be blessed by her presence with us.

I hope you'll make time the afternoon of October 14 to continue our Lord's Day worship later in the day and to welcome our presbytery into our worship space.  They are we.  We -- blessedly -- are they.

Wade in the Water

Thanks to apartment living here in Macon, I no longer count yard work among my domestic responsibilities.  I am not sad about this.  Not one bit.

What I will miss, however, are the post-yard-work showers.  Few middle class privileges outrank the feeling of washing off hours of raking, weeding, and mowing.  To watch the dirt, grime, and sweat circle the drain and disappear into the great gone -- sublime!  A fresh start at cleanliness.  Relief.

After several weeks sitting together in the witness of Acts chapter 1, this Sunday we begin three weeks on the sacraments -- BATH, MEAL, and BOOK.  World Communion Sunday (October 7) will be the midpoint in this short run of sermons, but this Sunday we go down into the BATH waters with a journey in John 9:1-12 -- Jesus' act of healing near a public pool called "Sent."

Lest baptism remain merely some remote or sentimental event in our distant infancies, we will consider what it means to say that, in Jesus, we are a "people of the bath."  His bath.  His dirt dissolving, grime gracing, sin-sweat solvent of a bath.  Come, after another week of walking around in the dirt of our lives, let's get cleaned up together in scripture.  "Go, wash in the pool" called worship.

See you again on the Lord's Day.   Bring a towel!


[photo: St. Francis Xavier College Church, St. Louis MO — RWH]