Wednesday, Sept. 15th

O.K.  The month has flown by.  Today the kid's program starts, and Bird's Eye Bible Study is tonight.  I have to go to the grocery store before the kid's thing.  And . . . I'm starting to drag my feet, hoping that Chris' visit isn't going to be over so soon.  But it is.  Up and at 'em, Cindy!  Let's go.

Communion Meditation - September 5

This is the third in a series of sermons focused on emotions and faith. Last week was "fear". This week is "desire".

Faithful Feeling: Desire

Using Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-8 and Philippians4:8

We’ve been talking about how our emotions and our faith are related. This series grew out of several of the questions that the congregation submitted at the beginning of the summer. Some were questions about fear, anger, grief. There were no questions about desire. Which sort of reminds me of one the joke (repeatedly told by Philo’s most brilliant writer to date - David Foster Wallace. He used this most than once):

So there’s these three young fish, hanging around the ocean floor, chatting it up about fishy stuff, when an old fish swims by, and greets them - “how’s the water, boys?” And they look at each other, and say, “What’s water?”

We, like the fish, sometimes fail to recognize, and maybe don’t even know the name for what surrounds us, what we breathe in and what we “swim through” all the time. I think that’s true of “desire”. We live in a culture so awash in desire that we may not even recognize that it is all around us all the time. We live in a culture that is driven by consumer spending and depends on making us all driven consumers. Our most powerful desires - the desires for acceptance, the desire for sex, the desire for pleasure, the desire for happiness . . . these are all manipulated by Mad Men and Women. Madison Avenue has become Mainstreet in the USA and much of the world.

So lets just notice the water first, OK? As Christians, what are we to make of this water in which we swim? We can’t hold our breath, or hold our noses. This is where we live. This is where we bring up our children. Media studies reveal that
Today however, half of the clothing that kids wear include an advertisement of one sort or another. Backpack, shoes, and many accessory items also display the most popular brands for a child's peers to see. Today, ads are much more pervasive and less recognizeable as a sales pitch.

(Fast food - child’s toy - movie or TV - clothing, accessory, transportation, cell phone cell phone apps . . . )There are a seemingly limitless number of products that are then presented to the child.

These ads for children, just as those targeted toward adults, create a need where none existed previously. They also hook children, and subsequently their parents, into an endless loop of buying more and more products. (squidoo.com - advertising and children)


A lot of this desire onslaught, especially that aimed at those of us who have outgrown “Happy Meals” uses the “hook” of sexual desire. And while, on the one hand, it seems quite right that sexuality is not a subject that automatically seems shameful and unmentionable - That is good. God made our bodies and our sexuality is part of who we are supposed to be - it is also true that sexuality is hard to talk about without recognizing about how it is constantly influenced, shaped, and most of all USED to sell us things.

As people of faith, what unique insights and resources do we bring to life in this time and place? What do we know from Scripture? What does Jesus Christ’s life have to do with desire?

Well - maybe first off - our spiritual tradition does not demonize desire. In fact, our tradition recognizes desire as part of our souls from the very beginning. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the third chapter of Genesis is attempt to describe the souls of human beings:
Desire is a permanent part of human life. And God wanted to set up the world in a way that good desires would be satisfied: He put human beings in a garden with all that they needed to eat. He gave them work to do, to satisfy their desire to be useful and purposeful. He gave them each a partner - a soul mate. Adam calls Eve “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. Desires are satisfied. Needs are met - but not just in a utilitarian, joyless way. There is abundance. There is beauty. There is fulfilment.

But God’s plan is that there be something in the center of our lives that cannot be satisfied. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is “fenced”. It’s off limits. And to live faithfully is to recognize and respect that our souls have an off limits section - a desirable part - which belongs only to God.

We feel desire for beauty (it was lovely to look at) and good (to eat).

So our tradition recognizes a deep kind of desire as part of our souls’ very structure. Are we in touch with that desire?

When we see something truly beautiful - or hear something truly beautiful - isn’t there an ache of the unobtainable about it? Beautiful music. It’s so great that we have the Korean Presbyterian Choir here this morning. When we hear beautiful music, it washes over us, but we can’t grab it or keep it. Even the musicians are not in possession of the music. It passes through them, but it doesn’t belong to them. Real beauty is like that: - a beautiful person - a work of art - a stunning landscape - a perfect flower. These touch our souls and awaken in us a longing for more that cannot be satisfied. There is in us a longing for something that cannot be bought or owned. We ought to pay attention to that.

Jesus pointed to that beauty that can’t be bought when he invited his disciples to look at the birds of the air and the Flowers of the field. Look - he said, the lilies are clothed more beautifully than Solomon. Even the richest man we know of couldn’t buy the beauty that is only God’s to give.

Pastor and writer John Jewell puts it this way: If you have ever experienced a deep inner longing, but could not quite put your finger on what exactly the object of your longing was -- you have experienced the spiritual condition of humanity.  It is a longing for that original intimacy with God and intimacy with each other that only God can give. It is the soul's "not quite conscious" memory of the way it should be.
It is amazing the lengths to which people will go to fulfill that inner hunger.  Physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually we search and ingest and try to fill the void -- this God shaped blank as some have called it. And it's never enough -- never quite it.
Adam and Eve attempted to fill in the hole in the center - and we do that, too. We try to fill in the basic longing of our lives by our own efforts and initiative rather than standing in respect and appreciation of it.

Desires can be reminders of the things that we do not and cannot have. And so point us toward God. Or they can be motivators to forget and misunderstand God and so separate ourselves from Him.

I think that it’s significant that in our foundational story - Desire is symbolized as a beautiful piece of food. It is a fruit that Adam and Eve want. It is something to eat that they believe will dissolve the distance between themselves and God. And God said, “no”.

But In Jesus Christ, God turns the table - God sets the Table and offers to dissolve the distance between us - not by making us like God (which was the snake’s pitch to Eve, remember). No, God dissolves the distance between us and satisfies our deepest desire by becoming like us - and offering Himself to us - in a little bit of food. He satisfies our desire on His terms:

Finally, we come to the Table where God offers the relationship that satisfies, that nourishes and delights. Rather than saying, “You shall not eat . . . “ At the Table, God holds out to us the true bread of life and says, “Take, eat. This is for you.”

Proud Momma

Just got back from Millimeter Mountain's show at the Canopy Club. It was SO GOOD! Such fun to be the mother of a rock star. Yeah, Rachel!

My first born son is home

and I'm pretty excited about it. he arrived last night about nine, after two hard days of driving. the beagles are with him and the dogs are all getting used to each other.
pictures soon.

August 15 sermon

Fire and Rain

Start with the James Taylor song, “Fire and Rain” which is a gentle and mournful song about the end of a relationship.

Fire and Rain are two elements Jesus uses in this passage - which is so hard to hear and interpret. But, unlike Sweet Baby James, Jesus doesn’t sound melancholy and resigned. He sounds cranky and confrontational. This isn’t Jesus, Meek and Mild, that we expect to encounter.

Reminded me of the story about the flight attendent on a Jet Blue flight this week that made the news. Flight attendents are usually so pleasant and cheerful and helpful and encouraging. And they have to be. Even when passengers misbehave, or don’t follow regulations, or are extra demanding, flight attendents have to stay cool. It’s their job. But this guy finally had had it. A passenger pushed him too far, and he lost it - cussed her out and then grabbed a beer and slid down the emergency exit. We don’t want to ride with that guy! and here is Jesus sounded only slightly less exasperated with his followers and the crowd. Is this what flying with Jesus is going to be like? Maybe we should be the ones pulling the escape lever and sliding down out of church, making our escape. (In fact, I really like the image of our nice wide steps out front covered with a big red inflatable slide and the congregation exiting in a hurry.)

But before we do - I think we ought to at least listen to try to hear what this passage is really saying to us: And the first thing to notice is where in the narrative Luke places this exchange. At this point, Jesus has “set his face” towards Jerusalem. He has been preaching forgiveness over vengeance, grace over works, faith and courage rather than fear. And he knows, clearly he knows, that making these choices is going to cost him his life. He knows that the cross awaits him. And yet his disciples lag behind him in understanding in every way. So he tries to bring them to understanding by talking about fire and rain.

First fire. And this is an exchange between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus tells them, I have come to kindle a fire on the earth. Fire is a symbol of God’s presence. When God led Moses and the Hebrew people out of Egypt, he led them with a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud during the day. The burning fire, which lit up the night, was a majestic and awe-ful manifestation of the invisible God. God made Himself known in the fire. In the same way, Jesus is the visible presence of the invisible God. He is burning with a passion for God’s will and God’s way. He is the way human beings know God’s way and to follow him is to follow God’s leading.

Jesus knows that his time on earth is limited. And if people are going to follow God, Jesus is going to have to have disciples who are “on fire” for God to lead them when Jesus himself is gone. What Jesus wanted more than anything else was not to have a 120 half committed disciples but Jesus wanted 12 fully committed disciples. Those 12 fully committed disciples would change the world.

And he seems to be working with some pretty wet kindling. The disciples ask dumb questions. They miss the point of his preaching. They put earthly loyalties ahead of total trust in Him.

Two thousand years later, not much has changed. Jesus’ disciples are still smoking and smouldering, but only rarely catching fire. And I’m not talking just about those in the pews. In fact this week a series of articles in the New York Times concerned a phenomenon they called “clergy burnout”. Ministers are leaving their calling in droves, and many answered a survey saying that they are staying only because they don’t have any other way to make a living. My favorite comment on this was by Bill Easum, who has been in the ministry even longer than . . . well, longer than I have. He said, “How is it that so many ministers can be burned out, when most of them have never been on fire?”

This fear of burning people out is something I hear in relation to church work and church workers among folks around here, too. We don’t want to ask people to do too much, or make too much of a commitment to the work of the church because we don’t want them to get “burned out”. We turn down opportunities to serve, to “pace ourselves” because we don’t want to get “burned out”. Meanwhile, the people who work the hardest and most diligently - teaching Sunday School, serving meals, preparing music for worship, calling on neighbors, giving sacrificially, supporting the youth program, the mission work, etc. - seem to reap the greatest blessings. They have a glow about them, when you see them at work. And they get tired. But they don’t get burned out.

Perhaps we should worry less about getting burned out and more about catching fire and actually living out what we say our commitment is to Christ and his mission.
Garth Brooks Refrain:
Standing outside the fire

Standing outside the fire

Life is not tried it is merely survived

If you're standing outside the fire
Jesus said, “Would that the fire were already kindled.” Add these words - in my life. What would it mean for our community and our world if each of us would surrender to the fire of Jesus’ love in our lives? Become totally committed to living the life that he has invited us to share.
As I’ve been thinking about that kind of commitment, I was reminded of a story of what Julius Caesar’s soldiers did when they came to conquer Britain. Do you know that story? The Romans approached the island nation by sea of course. The Brits saw them coming a long way off. They massed in the highlands above the beach and waited to see what would happen. But when the Romans reached the shore, they did something that no one expected, and which showed their commitment to their mission so unmistakably that the Britons were filled with awe and fear. Do you know what they did? They burned their boats. There was no turning back. They were there to conquer or to die.
That’s the kind of burning commitment that Jesus is trying to kindle in his disciples - the kind that says, “I am following you now, Lord. I will not turn back. When struggles come, when difficulties arise, when other priorities vie for my attention and my loyalty, I am still going to follow you.” That’s the kind of discipleship that Jesus needed 2000 years ago, and that’s the kind of discipleship Jesus needs, still today, to set the world on fire.
The second image Jesus uses is the sign of rain. And this is addressed to the crowd. Not the disciples. The hangers-on. The spectators in his religious road show. To them he says, “You guys talk about the weather. You’re really good at figuring out the obvious: Clouds in the sky? Looks like rain. Wind from the south? Gonna be a scorcher! Instead of standing around talking about the weather, you might want to turn your attention to what God is doing right here and right now.
Part of Culpepper's (Luke, New Interpreters Bible) reflections on these verses:
To what do we pay close attention, and to what do we turn a blind eye?...
Jesus' sayings challenge us to examine the balance of attention and neglect in our own lives, to consider whether these there is a pattern of prioritizing the insignificant while jeopardizing the things of greatest value and importance. Have we given as much attention to the health of the church as we have to our golf score? Have we given as much attention to the maintenance of our spiritual disciplines as to the maintenance schedule for our car? Where in the scale of our attention to detail does our devotion to the teachings of our Lord rank? [p. 269]
Do we put off attending to those things that matter - put living our faith off for some “future” more convenient time? Jesus says there is no time like the present. Today. Now. This is the opportune moment. This emphasis on the present is not an aberration. Jesus starts out his ministry by reading a prophecy and his only commentary is “TODAY this scripture is fulfilled among you.” He says to Zaccheus, “Today salvation has come to your house.” He tells the criminal on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
The Apostle Paul, in his preaching of the Gospel picks this up so beautifully when he says to the church in Corinth, “Now is the acceptable day of the Lord. Today is the day of salvation.”
Don’t put it off. Pay attention. God is moving in the world right now. Will we participate in what God is doing right now?
Fire and Rain. Unlike James Taylor’s use of the images in his soft, sweet song, Jesus’ talk about fire and rain has hard edges. These sayings challenge and accuse us. The fire talk burns us, and it’s a hard rain that washes away our complacency. Maybe we prefer the softer, sweeter song. But we should remember that that sweet song is about the end of a relationship. “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. . . . I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, but I always thought that I’d see you again.”
And Jesus’ more difficult sayings are spoken out of his own burning desire that the relationship he offers us should not end - but deepen, strengthen, become something lasting and beautiful and true. Jesus’ fire and rain are his way of urgently encouraging us to become the disciples he has invited us to be. To not miss the opportunity we have in the present moment to follow him.
I had this sermon all written, when I thought maybe I’d look up the lyrics to the james taylor song I remembered from so many years ago. And much to my surprise, there was a verse that I didn’t remember at all. Not at all. It is a prayer. Let us pray:
Won't you look down upon me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way

Sweet Jesus, our time is at hand. Help us to make our stand with you. Kindle in us the fire of a deeply committed relationship with you - one that begins this day, one that will last throughout eternity.
Amen.

Burned out or Zonked out?

Last night I went to sleep about 8:30 and slept til 7 this morning. And I have to admit, I do feel better today than I have in weeks. Maybe I'm just tired.

Wednesday

Today is our day at VBS - to do the Bible Story and bring the food. I haven't felt real connected with the whole process this year, though we do have 7 kids and 3 leaders there, and I've tried to see them each night. Attendance is low this year. Second year in a row, and some of us are talking about maybe doing something different next year.
Of course, when I got to be in charge a few years ago, we tried something different and everyone went STAMPEDING back to the old way. (But, honestly, I think we had a good year. We had over 100 kids there, and some of them still tell me they remember it and thought it was cool.)
I wonder is we could do something more God/Creation/Renewing the Earth centered. I heard Tolono did that it turned out great. Recycling and gardening and learning. Just a thought. Charleston takes the kids camping for a night and they spend the day in a state park. Wouldn't that be more memorable?
The folks who take the lead with this VBS are such incredibly hard workers, and they put alot of themselves into it. Maybe we should just leave it be.

This morning I'm meeting someone who works with Tim for coffee and to talk about my trip to Palestine. She's from Lebanon and I want to know enough to be a good guest there. Some phrases, the right greetings, etc. So I'm tickled about that.

Jeri and Kirk got home from Malawi. The trip was incredible. The total culture change was both eye-opening and exhausting, as I remember from Nicaragua. But Africa is WAY more challenging than Nicaragua! I think it will take them a few days to get rested up before they can even recognize themselves in the mirror. Tough trip. I'm so proud of them for answering the call to go!!!

Other things to do today - send bulletin material for Paris pulpit exchange
plan 1/2 of service for Youth Sunday.
look toward fall sermon series (arg!)
enjoy the beautiful birds and flowers in my yard.
write thankyou notes to the great folks who helped pull last Sunday together.