Where is GOD?

Under the Word,
Video Devotion
Exodus 40:16-21, 
34-38
(running time 7:33)

Tears In Heaven?

Of late I have been preaching through the N.T. book of Revelation on Sunday mornings during our contemporary service. Yesterday the text was chapters 4-5, where the scene of John's second vision includes the heavenly realm just before the opening of the seven-sealed scroll and the unleashing of havoc that occurs on the earthly empire that was Rome. 

(stay with me now, I'm heading somewhere)

Peter Rollins -- Rapture video

Rollins always gives us something with a sting in the tail...


The Rapture from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

Lectionary Notebook. Homily for Matthew 14:13-21

Homily for July 31, 2011, Year A

(See TEXT below --  

Matthew 14:13-21 )

The Gospel Lectionary reading for today serves to remind us that Jesus willingly faced the human condition head-on. What we learn about the Master from the present text, as he responds to the humanity in front of him and the humanity found in his own heart, is very instructive to us. 

So we ask this question of today's text:

What do we learn about 

Jesus from today's reading?

Here we see three lessons:

WE SEE JESUS FACING LOSS

WE SEE JESUS MAINTAINING HIS COMPASSION

WE SEE JESUS TEACHING THE LESSON OF COMPASSION

Pastoring the Human Condition, part 5

a continuing series

In less than two hours from now I will stand before the people; I will stand behind the altar. After having offered the word through the preaching moment, I will break the bread and offer the LORD's table to his gathered community who meets in this place.


To preside in worship seems a sacred trust given to me, but stepping behind the altar I know I am not worthy. I know I am not clean. 

What then is my excuse? 


If someone were to ask me, what gives you the right to stand before the people 


[these are GOD's people after all]


and preach and then break the bread and offer the cup, I have only one response. 


I am not smarter; I am not more controlled by the sway of the Spirit. I am not even the one with the most Christian longevity. 


My only excuse is that I have been called to do this. I have a story, and in my story there is this literal moment of calling from the Almighty that I cannot seem to shake.

The Presence & Calling of GOD

Under the Word,
Video Devotion
Exodus 3:13-20
(running time 8:03)

Pastoring the Human Condition, pt. 4

a continuing series
(edited from a previous post)

Witnessing the Human Condition

How often I have kept witness with a dear one riding the knife of grief or sitting in the waiting chair while a loved one lies naked on a table somewhere getting knifed in a sterile environment amidst tubes and technical apparatus. 

How often I have sat in the embalming station as witness to a family painfully unearthing the inert facts about the deceased -- social security number, number of copies of the death certificate, favorite songs, casket color, grave opening. 

If you've lived very long then you know the drill.

But the drill is somewhat different for me. I am a pastor and I see people at their worst. I see them when the veneer is cut and the raw wood is exposed. I see them in cursing, foul moods and tender moments where humanness bleeds through the broken spots.

As a small church pastor I am called to witness the onslaught of the human condition with them.

My job is not to offer advise or platitudes, like so much worn down philosophical capsules -- date expired, potency gone. 

No, my job is to be a witness. I am called to stand close beside the person in pain so that the pain and loss and grief does not go unnoticed.

Their pain screams out to the world, "I am here!"

Were it not for the witnesses, no one would hear; no one would take notice.

Pastoring the Human Condition, pt. 3

a continuing series

The first month after I became pastor of my present church (I have now been here 12 years) I attempted to meet with many of the members in order to gain an understanding of the mental and emotional temperature of the people, therefore gaining a sense of the church climate.

One particular visit still stands out to me. At breakfast with one of our senior men, after recounting to me an absolutely horrific experience with a pastor from many years before -- where the trust with the family was ruthlessly violated -- this man said to me: 

At the time his words knocked me back a bit on my heels, but I’ve thought quite a lot about that statement over the past 12 years, and I have become profoundly grateful for his comment because it continues to offer me a punch-in-the-gut portion of humility. 

St. Peter writes: 

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10 NRS)

“Once you were not a people, but now you are GOD’s people.” This idea is key; GOD's purpose is to create a people after his own heart, a people for his own possession. 

Therefore, we serve the Christ as we serve GOD’s people. It is important for pastors to remember that we are not the story here; the Christ and the discipleship community is the story. 

Said another way, we are not the raisons d'être of the church; that place is reserved for the Christ’s and his relationship of redemption and love with his people. This is especially important for us to remember because many of us command center stage at the altar, which if we are not careful allows our egos to be fed with our own importance.

In a few short years, more quickly than I care to think, my church will hear a different voice in proclamation and prayer and at the altar. And just as quickly I will become a distant memory -- old “what's-his-name.” 

This is as it should be. 

Considering this allows me to have the humility to remember that this story is not about me at all; it is about Christ and the discipleship community which must profoundly display his call for Kingdom living.

Lectionary Notebook. Homily for Matthew 13:44-52

Homily for July 24, 2011, Year A

(See TEXT below --  

Matthew 13:24-33)

INTRODUCTION

Today's Lectionary Gospel reading actually confronts us with a most difficult challenge. Here we are accosted by the text, ambushed out of our comfort and easy discipleship. This text backs-up what I’ve always said, “Jesus is exasperating.” Too strong? Well certainly, as we are about to see, his ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts. 

There are several ways into this text, the most productive of which may simply be to ask: What does it means to follow the Christ here at the beginning of the 21st century? However, this seems much too tame a rendering for what Jesus actually has in mind for his original hearers. Perhaps a better way into the text is to ask it this way: What are you willing to surrender in order to follow Jesus? 

Of course, we usually think of following Jesus in much different terms. We usually think of what we receive when we offer to walk the Jesus-way, but here Jesus turns the tables on us, if not his original hearers. Here Jesus talks about us seeking-out the kingdom and selling everything we have for it.

There are three statements we will use which allow the text to confront us:

TO FOLLOW JESUS IS TO SEEK HIM OUT 

TO FOLLOW JESUS IS TO SELL-OUT TO HIM & HIS WAYS 

TO FOLLOW JESUS IS TO LIVE IN LIGHT OF THE END OF THE AGE 

Ageing Church of England 'will be dead in 20 years' - Telegraph

Ageing Church of England 'will be dead in 20 years' - Telegraph

This searing article opens a clear discussion on the sociological aspects of the death of Christendom. The demographics are against them (us), but their (our) theology is as well! Just read the comments this article generated.

Christendom is dying; we are the generation saying the last amen. Last one out, please switch off the lights...

Trading A Burden For A Burden

Under the Word,
Video Devotion
Matthew 11:28-30
(running time 6:58)

Pastoring the Human Condition, pt. 2

a continuing series

An excellent path to help us think-through the pastoral task within the human condition -- by which I mean the common experiences we share as humans; the struggle for meaning, the common estrangement we feel with nature, with each other and even within ourselves, the problem of evil around us and in ourselves, and the common experience of death -- is to latch on to some of St. Paul's thoughts at the end of his letter to the churches in Galatia.

Paul is embroiled in a steep controversy with the Galatians. He is answering the question: Must followers of the Jesus-way become Hebrews (experience circumcision) before being accepted as  Christians?

Much is at stake here, including the Christian Gospel. But, what must be remembered is that this issue is so divisive that the Galatian fellowship is ruptured and on the brink of destroying itself (Gal. 5:15).  

Skeptical Faith: Hearing the Voice of GOD through the Christian Church

(This essay is a revision of three posts I offered in 2009 under the name, Experiencing GOD)

Often, I find myself in the chair of the Christian skeptic. I have faith of a kind, but for some reason it does not allow me to believe there's an angel in every room or a demon behind every bush. I suppose I have been too deeply grounded in the school of the rational, or maybe I have seen too much of the chaos of the human condition to believe that GOD directly intervenes at our every whim. 

Anyway, I would confess that my point of view could be wrong. It's happened many times before. So, when someone tells me, "The LORD said ‘thus-and-such’ to me," I try to be open minded. I mean, who am I to deny somebody's reality? And, to be honest, there has been a time or two that I may have sensed a voice not my own boring in on my mind with fresh wind.

All this opens the important question, just how do we know when the LORD speaks? How do we hear the voice of the Almighty?

Lectionary Notebook. Homily for Matthew 13:24-33

Homily for July 17, 2011, 

Year A

(See TEXT below --  

Matthew 13:24-33)

The Gospel reading for today brings to us a continuation of Jesus' parable teachings, and his practice of offering his understanding of the Kingdom through these enigmatic statements. As such, these teachings come to us as riddles and mysteries. 

As we said last week, we could think of the parables of Jesus as descriptions of the coming and present Kingdom, which was being offered by the King himself -- Jesus the Messiah, but which one had to have a particular ear to hear.

Today, we have before us the riddle of the wheat and the weeds, the riddle of the mustard seed, and the riddle of yeast. The question for us seems very simple (although the answer is not): 

How do these ancient stories, which are case-specific offers of the Hebrew Kingdom to GOD's ancient people, how is all that to apply to we who live at the beginning of the 21st century; we who are so far removed in thought and language and custom from these original hearers?

Let us attempt to find an application for ourselves by thinking-through three statements:

THE WHEAT & THE WEEDS: LIFE IN THE HUMAN CONDITION

THE MUSTARD SEED: FINDING TRUE KINGDOM GROWTH

THE YEAST IN THE BREAD: THE UNSEEN POWER OF THE KINGDOM

Pastoring the Human Condition

a continuing seris

I took part in a wedding Saturday, a funeral today, and sandwiched in between were three morning Bible presentations, two afternoon meetings, and a church fellowship yesterday evening. Pastoral ministry will give you a good case of emotional whip-lash if you're not careful.  Besides these events, I am dealing with several families facing very stiff difficulties and several individuals in very ill health.


Clearly, knowing myself as I do, I know I am not adequate to this task. If the pastoral focus is on me therefore, and what I can bring to the table, then my people are being ill-served. Worse yet, if I constantly move the chess pieces to make the outcome favorable for myself and how I come off as Pastor-Superstar then the momentum to help comes toward me and not the one in need. 


This is not good.


A better, more healthy, more biblically-grounded approach is to begin with the admission of my own needs as pastor.

"LORD, help me help your people." 

"LORD, open to me the resources of your Spirit so that I might really hear the one in front of me." 

"LORD, help me keep my mouth shut and my ears open, giving the broken what they desperately need most, not advise, but a listening ear.

Dorothy Day & Following the Christ

(photo from Milwaukee Journal)

Recently, I read a blog post that asked the question if Catholics would be able to accept Dorothy Day as a saint, knowing that she had an abortion. This caused me to remember when I was first introduced to Day and the Catholic Worker. 

As I recall, it was in the book, New York in the Fifties, by Dan Wakefield. This is an excellent read, with Wakefield recreating this powerful era in his life, a time which included the Beats, and writers like James Baldwin.

In my thinking this was probably the ebbing point, or the zenith of Western civilization. After this moment everything became derivative or dribble, mere protestations toward the absurdity of life.

Wakefield well understood this, even as he was living through it (which is no small feat), and searched for meaning beyond his considerable writing talent. He searches for soul, his soul, and finds it in the Bowery with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker.

When I first became directly involved in community ministry I had to search for models, people who had aligned themselves with the Christ and with the megalopolis ("the mega city in decline." Mumford).  Day and a few others helped me. Politics aside, her contrary unwillingness to quit her calling, even in the face of overwhelming odds, inspired me then and inspires me now. 

Is Dorothy Day a saint? Who knows? But to me she is what it means to actually follow the Christ in our flesh and blood.

 "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

Latest Happenings @ thirdspeople

Joseph & the Struggle of Providence

Under the Word,
Video Devotion
Genesis 45:1-5
(running time 7:16)

(for more episodes of Under the Word video devotions go here)

Lectionary Notebook. Homily for Matthew 13:1-23

Homily for July 10, 2011, Year A

4th Sunday after Pentecost

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

(See TEXT below --  Matthew 13:1-23)Homily for July 10, 2011, Year A

4th Sunday after Pentecost

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

(See TEXT below --  Matthew 13:1-23)

The Lectionary Gospel reading for this morning brings to our attention the famous Parable of the Soils. Here we have Jesus presenting a description of how his Kingdom offer will actually be received, and why many will miss the offer of the hidden Kingdom and the incognito King.

This is a time of popularity for Jesus. In fact the people following him were so large in number at this point of his ministry that he is forced to sit in a boat and to teach those who crowded the shore.

Curiously, he teaches by parables, which in general are short stories that illustrate a universal reality. However, we could think of the parables of Jesus as riddles concerning the Kingdom, which was now present to the people and being offered by the King himself -- Jesus the Messiah.

In today's parable we are asked to imagine a sower of seeds going about his daily work. He broadcasts the seed all around him, some on the path, some on rocky ground, some among the thorns and some on good soil.

The disciples, troubled by this parable approach to spreading the Kingdom confront Jesus and ask, "Why do you speak to them in parables?”

To which Jesus replies: " “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted." That is, you have ears to hear, but many, most, do not.

From this we should notice that not all soils are the same. Later on in the reading Jesus explains the mystery of the parable as he describes the heart-soils of his hearers:

"The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. 

The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away.

The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit.

But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”

The question confronting his hearers concerned the reception of the Kingdom:  Did their heart contain good soil to receive the message and messenger of the Kingdom, or not?