Wind and Fire

A Sermon Inspired by Acts 2:1-21 for Pentecost Sunday 2020

Today is the Day of Pentecost. It’s when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the first disciples, a gift that enabled them to proclaim boldly the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Many call Pentecost the birthday of the church!

In Acts chapter 1, the risen Jesus instructs the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until God would fulfill God’s promise to send the Holy Spirit, a helper and advocate that would empower them to do the work Jesus was giving them—to be witnesses to the gospel in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth!

And, so the disciples return to the upper room to pray and to wait, the same room where they had shared the Last Supper with Jesus before his crucifixion, the same room where the risen Christ has appeared to them on Easter showing them his nail-scarred hands and feet. Their future was uncertain. Jesus was no longer physically present with them, for he has ascended to the Father. I wonder, even as they prayed together, if they began to worry and wonder about what was next.

We know a little something about worry and wonder, don’t we? Recognizing the disorientation we are collectively experiencing, we just spent the last fifty days, the time between Easter and Pentecost, in our own season of waiting, hoping, and trusting that God will somehow make a better future out of our own uncertain present. At the beginning of this year, I would have never imagined that we wouldn’t be gathered together in one place to celebrate the birth of the church.

Still, as the first disciples gathered to wait, God showed up and something amazing happened. With the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Church was born! Happy Birthday, Church!

The Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised, fell upon the disciples, a representation of the presence of the risen Christ in their lives and in the world. And this gift of the Spirit enabled the disciples for the work Jesus had commissioned to them – being his witnesses as they proclaimed the gospel to the ends of the earth.

As you read through the book of Acts, you’ll discover that at every turn the Holy Spirit continues to show up in mighty and powerful ways, surprising the disciples time and time again at what wonderful things God is up to. We discover, along with Jesus’ earliest followers and the early church, that wherever there is love, wherever there is peace, wherever there is justice…the Holy Spirit is at work!

Throughout the book of Acts, the Spirit is shown to be a gift in three specific ways – a gift to the world, a gift to the church, and a gift to all people.

First, the Holy Spirit is for the world God’s love. Although the Spirit falls fresh upon the disciples in the upper room, the Spirit is not a new gift to the world. The Spirit, along with the Father and Son, has been present since the beginning of creation—showing up on Pentecost and before as wind, as breath, as fire. Sweeping over the deep waters at the beginning of creation in Genesis, the Spirit is gives birth to the created order and breathes the very breath of life into human beings created in the image of God. Calling Moses to action and mission through a burning bush, the Spirit of God shows up as a pillar of fire to lead God’s people out of slavery and death in Egypt and to freedom and new life in the promised land. Peter’s sermon on Pentecost borrowing from the prophet Joel’s words even remind us that the Spirit will redeem all of creation in love.

Second, the Holy Spirit is for the church God’s peace. The Spirit is sent by God to bring people together as the church and empower them for their works as disciples. The story of Pentecost is a story of peace that comes from unity in fellowship of the Spirit. ALL of the disciples are TOGETHER in the SAME place. Wind fills the WHOLE house as ALL are filled with the SAME Spirit and tongues of fire rest on EACH and EVERY person! Pentecost reminds us…we are all in this together! Together, the Spirit calls us to faith in the church and then continues to comfort, challenge, and guide us as we seek to live missionally in the world.

Third, the Holy Spirit is for all people God’s justice. The Spirit accomplishes what God desires for his people and his creation, uniting us in diversity. In our baptism liturgy, we remember that Christ has opened the church to people of all ages, nation, and races. By the Spirit, Christ brings people of all ages, all genders, all nationalities, all races, all social statues together as the Body of Christ. We are a church for ALL PEOPLE! Some see Pentecost as a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel. Where at Babel God confused the language of a proud humanity seeking to pilfer God’s power, in Pentecost God sends the power of the Holy Spirit to bring people together through language in extraordinary ways. In Acts, the Holy Spirit is always breaking down the barriers we set up as humans, challenging the ways we label and divide ourselves. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit makes clear what the disciples will spend years learning – that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

As I consider the justice of radical equality that the Spirit brings and the words Peter preaches on Pentecost about signs of “blood and fire and a cloud of smoke,” I can’t help but consider how our country is burning right now. On Memorial Day, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died at the hands of police officers who were sworn to serve and protect their community.

As we celebrate the Spirit that comes as wind and breathe and fire, I can’t help but hear the voice of Jesus in George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe” as a police officer pushed a knee into his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds.

As we seek to be a church unified past all boundaries by faith in Christ, I can’t help but remember that George Floyd was a man of faith, known to his friends as Big Floyd and remembered by loved ones as a gentle giant and a man of peace who spent the majority of his life witnesses to the power of the Gospel in his historic black Houston neighborhood, speaking to young people about breaking the cycle of violence.

But, I shouldn’t have to share the good things George Floyd did to justify why his death is a tragedy. But, its clear, church. In America, black lives do not yet matter.

While the events of the past few weeks, and the news stories about black children of God like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery being murdered by the sin of racism may feel new and shocking to us, our black brothers and sisters would tell you that “there is nothing new under the sun.” For years, for decades, for centuries, our black family has been crying out for justice and equality. The names of their fallen are engraved in their hearts and minds.

Atatiana Jefferson.

Stephon Clark.

Jordan Davis.

Alton Sterling.

Michael Brown.

Tamir Rice.

The Charleston 9.

Trayvon Martin.

Sean Bell.

Sandra Bland.

Philando Castile.

Eric Garner.

Freddie Gray.

Emmett Till.

The list goes on and on. And so, once again, weary protestors have taken to the streets to remind us, “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

And we need reminding. We seem to have forgotten. Or at least, we have been silent when Jesus, a brown man who was executed unjustly by the state, called us to be the church, to be witnesses to the radical inclusivity of the Holy Spirit.

And, when peaceful protests turn into riots, we as white people sit in judgment and say, “That’s not the way to get change.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an advocate for the power of nonviolent resistance. When faced with fire hoses, dogs, and police batons, King resisted without retaliation. But, let us not misremember King and his understanding of the grief and anger that fueled riots and resistance. Twenty-two days before he would be shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, King gave a speech entitled, “The Other America” at Grosse Point High School in Michigan. Addressing how the problem of racism creates two Americas – the one that whites experience and the other that blacks and other racial minorities experience – King said this about riots, “But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

If a riot is the language of the unheard, beloved, then it is our turn as white folk in America to listen. The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is not only found in the ability to speak in new language but also in the miracle of listening to understand, to hear the mighty works of God in each language.

And we will only understand by listening. We will not find understanding by justifying ourselves by saying or thinking, “Well, I’m not racist.” We will not find understanding by deciding what is an acceptable or unacceptable form of protest. As white folk, we don’t have a great track record of listening to or accepting peaceful protests, either. Colin Kaepernick could tell you that. And we will not find understanding until we stop talking long enough to hear, to really hear the pain and oppression our black brothers and sisters have been experiencing.

Pentecost reminds us not only of who we are as the church but, also, who we can be, who God calls us to be. As we begin to re-gather gradually, both as the local church in worship and as participants in American society, we have a choice. 

Will we insist on our own way, talking until we are blue in the face so that we don’t have to hear the pain of others, pain we do not experience or understand? 

Or will we come together again, as the first disciples did, for the sake of the Gospel, propelled into the world as Jesus’ witnesses to love God and love neighbor, empowered by the Spirit to join in the holy work of redeeming the world through the love, peace, and justice of God?

On this the birthday of the church, may we actually be the Church, the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ in the world.

May it be so, and may it be soon. 

Amen.

All Things New

A Sermon Inspired by Revelation 21:1-6a

Original Sermon Video Available Here

Part 5 of #DaysofHope Sermon Series 

(a worship series adapted with permission from 
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief 

by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection)

Over the past two months, I’ve had more than one conversation with church members or members of our community who have asked me, “Do you think we are in the end times?” I suppose these friends ask me because they think I must have some special insight as a pastor. So, today is a great time to remind you…I have no access to special knowledge that you do not also have. 

One of my good friends Krysta who is a pastor in West Virginia also received this question numerous times, and I think her answer best sums up my own thoughts and feelings and what Christians are being called to in this season. Krysta said, “We are in a time of prayer. We are in a time of adjustment. We are in a time of grief. We are in a time of watching and waiting. We are in a time of rediscovering our priorities. We are in a time of unrest. We are also in a time of hope, in a time of trusting God to do something wonderful and surprising and healing. These are peculiar times, but I don’t believe they are the end times. Instead,” Krysta says, “I believe this is a season, and what is hard about it will come to an end.”

I think part of why Krysta, myself, and other pastors have been asked this question about the end times so often is that as Christians in this particular time and place, the 20^th and 21^st century United States of America, we have been taught largely to view the book of Revelation as something to be afraid of, as a book of warning about what terrible things lie in store for all the people who don’t believe in Jesus. Some well-meaning preachers have used the confusing words and frightening images found in Revelation to scare people into accepting Jesus so they can get their faith and fire insurance, their “Get out of Hell free” card, their admission ticket to heaven.

Yet, the book of Revelation wasn’t taught in this way, as a beginner’s guide to surviving “the end times” until the last 200 years or so. While I don’t want to take a lot of time today to get into the specifics of different ways faithful Christians read this enigmatic section of Scripture, what I do want us to wonder is this: What if the Book of Revelation is something different, something more than a book of fire and fear?

To understand the book of Revelation more deeply, as with all other Scripture, it’s helpful to understand something of the historical context in which it was written. According to Revelation itself, it is the recording of a vision given to John of Patmos by Jesus to share with seven churches in Asia Minor. What we think is that this letter to these seven churches was written sometime between 69 and 96 BC. Christians were living under severe persecution during these years at the hands of the Roman Emperors Nero and then Domitian because they refused to worship and offer sacrifices to these Roman Emperors who claimed to be like Gods. 

Christians in this era pledged ultimate allegiance to Christ, not to the government or any politician, and for this they were executed. The Apostle Peter, who Jesus said was the rock upon which he would build the church, was crucified on an upside down cross. The Apostle Paul, whose evangelistic mission helped spread Christianity across the world, was executed by beheading. Other Christians, thousands whose names we will never know, were thrown into gladiator arenas or burned to death. Listen to how the Roman historian Tacitus described the persecution Christians were facing, “In their very deaths, they were made the subject of sport: for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights.”

So, first, Revelation was written to Christians suffering extreme persecution to encourage them that time was coming when the violence and danger would end and God would make all things rights. There is always hope, Revelation teaches, so hold on, have endurance, hold fast, and trust in the Lord. But, Revelation was also a way of reminding Christians then and Christians now of where we are going, what our final destiny is. More than a sequence of future events, Revelation teaches us that the direction of our lives is pointed towards God and God’s kingdom. If Genesis teaches us that our lives come from God, then Revelations teaches that, ultimately, we are headed back to God.

And if Revelation is about where we are going, then, you and I, we are on a journey together, with Christians throughout history, a journey of faith. One thing I’ve learned about journeys, especially the faith kind, they are journeys of transformation. Something in us is changing. Indeed, Jesus preached to people in the Gospels all the time that he came to help them change their hearts and lives.

When I’m trying to understand the change God is working in me, I find open-ended questions for reflection are some of the most helpful tools for discovering what God is up to. There are three questions I rely upon. They may seem simple, but they lead to some of my deepest thoughts and connections with God’s Spirit at work in me. These are the questions I ask myself regularly along my faith journey:

1.     What am I learning about myself and the world around me?

2.     What am I learning about God and faith?

3.     Now, what am I going to do with what am I learning? Or in other words—what difference will it make in my life?

These have been especially helpful for reflection in this season of coronavirus. One of ways I’m learning about myself and the world around me is by reflecting, remembering, honoring, and mourning the things we have lost. Now, let’s be clear…our losses and sorrows pale in comparison to the persecution and loss the first century Christians suffered under the Roman Empire. They risked it all for the sake of Jesus, not so they could boast that they were the best kind of Christian who would face danger in the name of Jesus, but for the sake of the witness of the gospel to others that faith in Jesus changed your life so fundamentally that you were willing to make sacrifices.

Even if our losses look different right now, we still have lost things that are important to us. We aren’t able to gather to worship God in our church’s physical building. For a while, we couldn’t go eat out in restaurant or shop in public or do other things that we enjoyed doing. Some of us have lost our sense of normal and safety.

Yet, what God is teaching me is that my loss is different than the losses of many others. Actually, I’m a little ashamed that in the first few weeks of this pandemic, the things I missed the most were eating out in a restaurant and going shopping at my favorites store. Really, when I think about it, that’s such a silly thing when compared to most tragic loss we have experienced—the loss of our brothers and sisters. 

Today, the front page of the New York Times is running an article entitled “US Deaths Near 100,000 – An Incalculable Loss.” The article is comprised not of facts or data but of the names and storied of people who have died in our country as a result of COVID-19. This article reminds us that the people we have lost to this virus were not simply names on a list. They were us.

The book of Revelation invites us to live in solidarity with all of God’s people who have suffered throughout all of time. We suffer with those who have died because they are part of us.

In the United States, being in solidarity with the suffering also demands that we be in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who face racism every single day! At the beginning of this pandemic, there was a surge in harassment of and violence against Asian Americans. Such hatred and bigotry reveals our ignorance to think that because the first place that experienced the ravaging effects of COVID-19 was in a province in China that our fellow citizens of Asian descent have done anything wrong or have anything to be blamed for.

Facebook Photo of Ahmaud Arbery

During quarantine, we learned the names of another black man who was murdered because of racism. That may sound shocking to say, but I do believe it’s the truth that Ahmaud Arbery, who was jogging in a residential neighborhood—a normal every day activity for many of us—didn’t make it home on February 23^rd, primarily because of the color of his skin. 

369th Infantry, known as the "Harlem Hellfighters"
Photo Credit: National Archives

On this Memorial Day weekend when we remember the sacrifice of veterans who died in war, like the black men ofthe 396th Infantry Regiment known as the “Harlem Hellfighters” who served on the front lines of World War I for 191 days, longer than any other American unit, we must fight for freedom and equality for all Americans, lest our military heroes’ deaths be in vain.

These are tragedies and losses we should all share in. When God promises there will be no more mourning, crying, or pain in the new heaven and new earth, God demands that we see the things that cause mourning, crying, and pain in our world right now. Asian Americans are our fellow citizens, not the people to blame for a pandemic. Ahmaud Arbery is our brother, no matter if his skin is a different color than yours or mine. The names of those who have died from this virus are the names of our human family!

The book of Revelation does not need to strike fear into our hearts in this season of life. The promises of Revelation can be hope to us in this time, just as they were promises of hope to the first Christians who read them. Through the vision given to John of Patmos by Jesus Christ, we are promised that God is making all things new. Not just a new earth, but a new heaven, too! And the good news is that GOD WILL DO THIS! GOD HAS PROMISED! And God is faithful to keep God’s promises. God doesn’t need us to make this happen. And still, the grace of the good news that makes it even better, is that God invites you and me to be part of building this new creation.

Yes, a place where death will be no more is God’s promise for the future, but Jesus taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And Jesus taught us by example that our prayers should move us into action—action to build the new heaven and the new earth, the kind of community that reflects this end vision of where we are going, the journey God is taking us on.

Right now, in this season, we can build a new earth where we love our neighbors as ourselves by wearing masks in public because we recognize that this small sacrifice protects our fellow human beings.

Right now, we can build a new earth where the tears of any who are suffering are not forgotten or denied but seen and then wiped away by justice and love.

Right now, we can build a new earth, not by going to church, but by BEING THE CHURCH!

Right now, we can build a new earth while we wait for God to make God’s home among the people, to dwell not in sanctuaries but in hearts. And as we wait and as we work, we remember this promise: “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”

Friends, carry this promise in your heart. It’s a promise of the worst thing will never be the last thing. It’s a reminder that the future will be better than the present because God is with us. It is our hope.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hope for the Weary

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 11:28-30

Mental Health Awareness Month 2020

Part 4 of #DaysofHope Sermon Series 

(a worship series adapted with permission from 
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief 

by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection)

Today at Adamsville FUMC, we are celebrating our high school graduates. While we all are struggling with making sense of what is happening in the world right now, I know each of our hearts hurts for the students in our community, especially those who are graduating. This isn’t how any of us thought or wanted their senior year to end. Yet, I’ve been amazed by the resilience our seniors have shown, making the sweetest kind of lemonade out the worst kind of lemons.

In a conversation with one of our AFUMC graduates Candice, I asked her “What have you learned about yourself and about faith during this weird end to your senior year?”

Listen to her response: “I used to be a person who had to have everything perfect or the right way. I hated when things went wrong. So, obviously, when I found out my senior year was cut short I was pretty upset. But it helped me realize that not everything is going to go my way. Putting all my trust in God, I’ve made the best of it knowing He was in control. And, honestly, if I had the chance to redo my senior year, I wouldn’t.”

Wow! What an amazing witness to the kind of hope we have been talking about in our #DaysofHope worship series – the kind of hope that is choosing to believe that the future will be better than the present!

Today, we turn to the Gospels. When I was in high school like our graduates Candice and Mollie, I discovered one of my all-time favorite Bible study tools – a concordance. A Biblical concordance is a reference material that records all the verses in Scripture where certain words are used.

So, I decided to look up how many times the word “hope” appears in the different parts of the Bible we’ve been studying in our worship series.

Three weeks ago, we started in the Book of Psalms as we learned together how the Psalms incorporate the full gamut of human emotions from the highest highs to the lowest lows. The word hope is used 22 times throughout the Psalms, which amounts to it showing up in one out of every six Psalms or so. Add in other books of wisdom in the Old Testament, like Proverbs, and that number doubles.

Then, in week 2, we turned to the prophets, the voices God raises up in seasons of disorientation to offer hope even in despair. The prophets of the Old Testament, even for all of the gloom and doom they warn about, use the word hope nearly 20 times.

Last week, we heard Paul’s famous words about the enduring nature of faith, hope, and love. The apostle Paul is probably the most prolific evangelist we read about in the early church. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that throughout his library of letters to different churches that we read in the New Testament, Paul uses the word of hope over 40 times.

So, I got really excited this week when it was time to use my trusty Strong’s Concordance and look up how many times the word hope is used in the Gospel. If you had to take a guess, how many times do you think the word hope shows up?

In all four Gospels?

No….really. Take a shot. Imagine a number. Say it out loud.

If you guessed one time, then…CONGRATULATIONS! You got it right!

In all four Gospels, Jesus only uses the word hope one time! Well, at least in the King James version. In other translations, hope shows up two or three times max!

Wow! Can you believe that? Why only once? Why would Jesus only make passing reference to hope, this essential element of our faith, the thing that keeps us going when everything else falls to pieces? What’s up with that, Jesus?

As I was studying hope this week, I was reminded by the words of Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, that Jesus doesn’t have to talk about hope very often because he embodies hope. Jesus becomes living, breathing hope for the people he encounters. In Jesus, God put on skin to get closer to us. Jesus became God’s Word living in the flesh. Jesus doesn’t have to spend time talking about hope because he actually gives hope to others by what he says and does.

So far in this series, we’ve been using Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann’s description of the different seasons that we experience to better understand how hope functions in our lives. Remember, Brueggemann teaches that God’s people go through three major life seasons.

First, a season of orientation, when things are going well, and we are pretty content and happy.

Then, something happens, life falls apart, and we enter a season of disorientation, where it feels like everything we have ever been confident in get thrown out the window.

Finally, the broken pieces of our lives begin to come back together again through reorientation as we approach life with new thinking and new hearts.

Brueggemann uses these seasons to describe what the Israelite society experiences as a whole body together. And, while Jesus clearly cares deeply about society as a whole throughout his teaching, most often when Jesus embodies hope in the Gospels, he does so in interactions and relationships with individuals.

Jesus spends most of his time with people who are disoriented, and he seeks to bring them into reorientation. Another way to say that is…Jesus spends most of his time with people who are broken, and he seeks to bring them healing and wholeness.

The people to whom Jesus ministers in the Gospels are broken for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes, people’s lives have gotten bent out of shape because of their own actions. All the time, we hear that Jesus liked to hang out with tax collectors and sinners, inviting them through love and relationship with him to change their hearts and lives, to repent and turn away from their sin, to live in fuller relationship with God. Because when you change the way you think, your heart begins to change. And when your heart changes, your life changes.

Jesus is clear about what it takes to have a healthy heart and mind. Loving God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and loving your neighbor as you love yourself…that is what a healed and whole life looks like to Jesus.

Yet, other times, the people who Jesus meets need healing not because of their sin but because they have experienced brokenness in their life or in their relationships. Whether broken by physical illness, by demon possession that we understand today as mental health conditions, or by hurt done to them by someone else, broken people are constantly seeking out Jesus. And in him, they find hope and healing.

The truth is ALL of us are broken in some way. We ALL need Jesus’ healing touch.

And, when we find ourselves broken by sin, by illness, by broken relationships, Jesus reaches out to us. Jesus invites us to come closer to him. Jesus takes us in his arms. When we are weary, in him we find rest. When we are broken, in him we find healing. Rest and healing, not because all of a sudden everything is better or fixed…but rest and healing because God is with us.

Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, comes to us in the midst of our brokenness, and he offers us hope and healing. But, how do we choose hope? How do we experience healing? If Jesus doesn’t make everything miraculously better.

First, we pray. Yes, when we or someone we love is sick, is hurt, is broken…we pray for healing. We pray for miracles. We wait for God to do something that no one expects, to make a way out of no way.

But, I firmly believe God intends for our prayers to not stop with words or thoughts in our minds and hearts but to be born as action in our lives.

Most often, I have seen God work his healing miracles through people—through doctors, nurses, researchers, therapists, social workers, counselors, pastors, friends, and the other people who support us and help our hearts, minds, and bodies heal.

I know one of the miracles of God that I have experienced in my life has been the gift of my husband Adam, and the knowledge, training, and skills God has given him as a social worker. This has been a gift and miracle not only for me in my personal life, but my relationship with Adam and the wisdom he shares with me also makes me a better pastor because I know and take seriously how important mental and emotional health is to our spiritual lives.

May is Mental Health Awareness month. Mental Health America, a non-profit advocacy organization, estimate that 1 in 5 people will have a mental health condition in their lifetime.

That means we have members in our congregation, friends in our neighborhood, people in our community who are daily caring for their mental health—whether that looks like anxiety, depression, autism, or another mental health diagnosis.

These mental health conditions are not a choice. They are not a sign of weakness. They are not a moral defect. These conditions are a normal part of life as human beings, and nothing to be ashamed of.

Some of us need medication to correct the chemical imbalances in our brains and bodies that cause these conditions. Sometimes that medication is for a season, sometimes for a lifetime.

Some of us need therapy sessions with a counselor to have a safe place to talk through our emotions, thoughts, and feelings and to learn practices to use to help us cope with the stress we experience in life.

Yes, when we find ourselves or loved ones suffering from depression or anxiety or more, we should pray! Pray fervently for healing from God. But prayer is just one of the tools God has put at our disposal. A necessary and vital one! But God is so full of love and grace that he has given us more!

It's okay to have Jesus and a therapist, too!

God has equipped people with the skills and training to be able to help us and give us the tools to be able to choose hope, to choose to believe that healing can happen and that a better future is possible.

Right now, in this seasons of collective crisis and global pandemic, we should all be checking in on our thoughts, feelings, and emotions to be aware of how everything we are experiencing is affecting our mental health.

Consider this.

Have you had stomach problems or digestion issues lately?

Have you been more irritable than usual? More likely to be impatient or lose your temper with others?

Have you had recently had trouble concentrating? Found it hard to remember things? Not been able to think clearly?

Does it feel like your heart is racing sometimes?

Have you experienced changes in your energy level?

Is it difficult for your to fall asleep or stay asleep?

Do you have a sense or uncontrollable worry or dread?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are most likely experiencing some level of anxiety right now. Which is perfectly normal!

This year’s Mental Health Awareness Month theme is “Tools 2 Thrive.”

Because I’ve experienced these signs of anxiety in my own life, I asked my favorite social worker Adam for some tools to help manage anxiety. Tools that can help us all thrive right now. Tools through which Jesus can heal our hearts and lives.

While there are countless techniques, tools, and practice to help manage anxiety, one helpful tool Adam suggested is mindfulness. When you’re feeling anxious, it is usually about something that you think might happen in the future. Mindfulness is a way of changing your thoughts away from future worry and instead focusing on the things that are happening in the moment right now! The next time you feel yourself becoming anxious about a situation or notice the signs of anxiety rising in your body, try this mindfulness exercise. Breathe!

I know it sounds silly, but I’m serious! Breathe.

When you’re anxious, it can feel like it’s getting harder to breathe. A helpful way to calm your body down is to focus on your breathing. Take deep and slow breaths. Imagine the air going in and out of your body. Pay attention to your belly and chest getting bigger as your breath in. When you breathe out, imagine that you’re breathing out all your negative thoughts and feelings.

There is even a spiritual prayer practice that incorporates this mindfulness tool called breathe prayer. As you inhale, call out in your mind a name you use for God or a truth about God. As you exhale, release your worries and remember the hope we have through our faith.

In this current season, I invite you to join me in this breath prayer. Use it when you wake up. Use it when you are preparing for bed. Use it when you are worried. Use it when you start to get angry or frustrated.

Breathe in deeply and pray in your mind, “O God, you are with me.”

Then breathe out deeply, releasing your anxiety to God and remember, “O God, you will never leave me.”

Try that with me right now.

O God, you are with me.

O God, you will never leave me.

O God, you are with me.

O God, you will never leave me.

O God, you are with me.

O God, you will never leave me.

Friends, the good news is that God will never leave nor forsake us. When we are weary, when our burdens feel heavier than we can hold, Jesus says to us, “Come to me. Find rest. Find hope. I will always be with you.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Faith, Hope, Love, and Families

A Sermon on Mother's Day 2020 inspired by 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Part 3 of #DaysofHope Sermon Series 

(a worship series adapted with permission from 
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief 

by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection)

In his letter to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul sets a high bar for what love lived out looks like. For many of us, on this Mothers’ Day Sunday, we give thanks to God that we experienced glimpses of this kind of love through our moms. I say glimpses because, let’s be real…the kind of love Paul describes sounds impossible. Consider the way Eugene Peterson translates these few verses about love:

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back, but keeps going to the end.

Love never dies.

We only need be a teensy, little, itsy, bitsy honest with ourselves to say…that kind of love is hard!

Some of us are lucky enough that we experienced love in some of these ways most of the time through the moms we celebrate this weekend, whether they are mothering figures in our lives through birth, adoption, fostering, or mentoring. Yet, I also recognize, that for many, this weekend is more complicated. Some are mourning the loss of their moms and the special love they miss in their absence. Some are full of love, ready to give it away, praying for the chance to become a mom. Some moms are barely making it through the day because the child they loved with their whole heart is gone, whether because of accident, illness, or violence, and the sting of death feels more painful today. And, yes, some will scroll past our social media outpour of love and walk quickly past greeting card and flower displays in dollar stores and drugstores because their earthly mothers left the acts of love more undone than done in this life.

How ever this particular day hits you, we can all agree that the love Paul describes in this 13^th chapter of 1 Corinthians is HARD! And for good reason.

Paul is writing to a church in conflict. The Christians in Corinth have found new freedom in Christ, but they have been abusing that freedom to justify doing whatever they want to do and asking God for forgiveness after the fact. They have been celebrating communion together through a shared meal, but as they remember Christ’s sacrifice they forget to wait on the blue collar folk in the church to get off work and get to the table before they eat up all the food. They know the power of the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon them, but they are spending more time arguing about whose spiritual gifts are the best rather than using these gifts in love for God’s mission.

Right before we pick up with some of Paul’s most famous words today, Paul has spent the entire last chapter of this letter using the metaphor of the body to describe the church. Just like a body, Paul says, that is made up of diverse parts like an eye, a foot, a mouth, a hand—the body of Christ is made up of diverse members with different spiritual gifts. Just like you wouldn’t chop off a body part and expect to be able to function like normal, Paul teaches the Corinthians that each person has an essential role to play for the good of the whole church. We belong to each other. If one member suffers, we all suffer. If one member rejoices, we all rejoice. And LOVE, the more excellent way that Paul shows the Corinthians and us, love is how we are to care for one another.

The kind of love Paul wants us to show is the kind of love my single mom of two teenage children instilled in our family with “family meetings” after arguments and fights that set ground rules for how to treat one another and always ended with hugs and saying, “I love you,” even when we didn’t feel like it. The kind of love Paul urges the church to embody is the love that recognizes we are all in this together—not to get our way with church decisions, not to make sure we get our personal preferences in worship so that we are happy and comfortable, not to let self-righteousness cover up self-interest—but to know God and make God known through the way we practice love. The love Paul teaches us about today is the kind of love that hopes all things and endures all things, even this current pandemic crisis, because we are called by our faith to this highest standard of love for God and love for neighbor.

Love is the total sum of what it means to be a Christian. To belong to God’s Church, to Christ’s body, is to be an agent of love in the world—not seeking our own advantage but, instead, working on behalf of others. When Jesus gathered with his closest disciples the night before his crucifixion, he did not say that the world would know his followers by their political policies, their unkind memes, their name calling, their judgment, their divisive talk. Jesus said, “Everyone will know you are my disciples when you love each other.”

Even in all of its impossibility, I have experienced the kind of love that Paul describes through the mothering influences in my life. As a child when I skinned my knee, I experienced it in the patient love of a mother who cared for me, cleaned me up with hydrogen peroxide that we called “magic water,” and covered me in band-aids and kisses to let me know it was going to be okay. I experienced it in the kind love of a grandmother who let her kindergarten-aged granddaughter talk her into buying a giant coloring book as they waited in the lobby of the auto shop while her car’s oil was being changed. I experienced the love that kept no record of wrong through aunts who continued to show up for me at important milestones in my life even when I was being a teenage turd.  I experienced the unjealous love of a mother-in-law who raised a son to be caring and kind and then released him to share deep love with his spouse. And, I have experienced the love that does not seek its own advantage through female friends, colleagues, and mentors who have cheered me on, have cried with me in seasons of hurt and pain, and have never, not once, seen me as competition but, rather, as another woman to lift up and empower. Not all of the women who I remember today may have children…but they have been mothers to me. And today, for their love, I give thanks to God.

Even the mothers throughout the Bible had unique experiences of motherhood and offered love in different ways. Motherhood plays an important role in the Bible. It binds the beginning and the end. The stories of mothers offer us a glimpse into the heart of God.

Consider the women we meet in the pages of Scripture.[1]

"In the beginning, the first woman was gifted with the responsibility of bringing forth life. She was named Eve because she was the mother of all living, but she was also a mother in her own right—the first of many mothers to come.

Though Sarah’s womb was closed, God promised nations and kings would come from her. Ten years passed, and motherhood seemed as impossible as the day it was first promised. But the Lord is faithful to keep his promises, and Sarah bore a son who made her laugh.

Leah was the first born, overlooked by her husband Jacob who gave his heart to her younger sister. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb. Despite Jacob’s disdain, she found her motherhood in the Lord.

When Pharaoh became angry at the fruitfulness of the Hebrews, Jochebed sacrificed her motherhood for the sake of her son. When Pharaoh’s daughter saw the child, she had compassion on him. Because of Jochebed’s sacrificial motherhood, the Israelites found freedom.

Naomi was a mother who experienced the loss of her son, yet she gained a daughter in Ruth who declared, “For where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God.” Naomi and Ruth became family by faith. Mary, a virgin, and not yet married, was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. The motherhood of this blessed woman was more than the continuation of a family name. But a means for God to bring a savior into the world to save his people from their sins.

From the garden to the cross, there have always been mothers. These women paved the way for all women, representing the full spectrum of the ways one could be called, “Mom.”

Whether, a mother in faith, mentorship, adoption, or birth, mothers play an important role in the stories of generations to come."

Today, we remember the women who have mothered us through all our ages and stages as representatives of God’s agape love, the kind of love most fully embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Jerry Irish, a professor of religion at Pomona College, reminds us, “The love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is love we experience as God’s unshakable grasp upon our lives. It is the source of our greatest security and, thus, our freedom to actually be patient and kind, to bear all things and not insist on our own way.”

In short, the kind of love we know through Jesus Christ is a love that makes the hope we need right now possible. As Frederick Buechner writes and as I often life to remind us, “Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” The love that raise Jesus from the dead, the love that Paul teaches about today, the love we glimpse through relationships with mothering figures in our lives, the love we will one day experience in its completeness in God’s presence…this love gives birth to hope and reminds up that the future will be better than the present.

Because of God’s love, a love that never fails.

So as we wait for the day when that love will be known completely in the world, even as we are completely known by God, let us hold onto and practice the three things Paul names that will remain.

Let us practice faith by trusting steadily in God.

Let us practice hope, choosing to believe the future will be better than the present moment and offering our lives in service to make it so.  

Let us practice love extravagantly…because the kind of love Paul writes about, the kind of love we know through Jesus…that love is gonna take a lot of practice. But it’s the best kind of love!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] The following about mothers in Scripture is a script of video produced by and purchased from Igniter Media for this sermon in it spoken form.

A Song of Hope in a Strange Land

A Sermon Inspired by Ezekiel 37:1-14

Part 2 of #DaysofHope Sermon Series 

(a worship series adapted with permission from 
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief 

by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection)

Abraham Rattner, In the Valley of the Dry Bones (study for "Ezekiel"), chinese ink, Smithsonian American Art Museum

“I haven’t felt this disoriented by world events since 9/11,” my friend Mike said to me this past week in a text message conversation as we tried to make sense of all that is happening around us in the world alongside God’s promise of hope throughout Scripture.

Last week, as we turned to the Psalms in search of hope, Psalm 40 reminded us that we are to live by putting all of our hope in the Lord. When we put our hope in God, we are trusting God’s promise that there is a better future coming, no matter how bad the present seems. We learned, from Walter 

Brueggemann, that the Biblical witness testifies that we live life through three seasons:

1.     Orientation – when things are going well and we are pretty happy

2.     Disorientation – when life falls apart and it feels like everything we ever knew for sure gets thrown out the window

3.     Reorientation – when the broken pieces of life start to come back together again to create a beautiful mosaic of a new normal

Today, we are going to turn to the prophets to discover how we can live with hope when life falls apart. The prophets largely operated in seasons of disorientation in the life of Israel, preaching and ministering to the people when everything Israel felt like they had ever known about themselves got thrown out the window. And, though the prophets are famous for their harsh warnings and their direct challenge to live according to God’s justice, the dominant message of the prophets are words of hope. Hope for people who God loves even when life falls apart.

Because, my friend Mike is right. We have not experienced as difficult a season of disorientation like this collectively since 9/11. Yet, seasons of disorientation are part of our life. Every generation has at least one such season that comes to dominant their collective memory…that moment of history where you will always remember where you were when you heard. Just imagine the seasons of disorientation we have faced over the past 100 years.

As a nation, we’ve seen two world wars, several regional wars like the one in Korea and Vietnam, a cold war that went on for decades, the attacks on 9/11 and the ensuing war on terrorism. There have been assassinations, like JFK and MLK, that seared the images of history in our minds. There was the Great Depression and then, periodically, several recessions. And there have been fatal school shootings every year since Columbine in 1999, robbing us and our children of their sense of safety. And, now, the coronavirus and the great lockdown.

Israel knew what it was like to live in a season of disorientation. In 605 BC, Judah, the land of the Israelites, was a tiny nation caught in the middle of a fight between the superpowers of Egypt and Babylon. These two empires were locked in a battle for control of the trade routes of the ancient world, trade routes that just happened to run right through Judah. When the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians and took control of Judah, the king of Babylon collected tribute money from Israel for its protection and took some leaders, names you might recognize like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to be advisors back in Babylon.

Yet the Israelites disliked life under the Babylonian rule, and so in 597 BC, backed by the Egyptians, they rebelled against their conquerors. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar defeats the uprising, plunders God’s temple in Jerusalem, stealing gold and other valuables, and takes the scholars and leaders of Jerusalem back to Babylon with him. One of the leaders taken in this first phase of exile is the prophet Ezekiel.

In 587 BC, the Israelites rise up against Babylon again, and this time Nebuchadnezzar brings the whole power of his armies and empires to completely crush the rebellion. Listen to how the Scripture recounts the scene of total destruction in 2 Kings. “Now Zedekiah rebelled against the Babylonian king. So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s rule, on the tenth day of the month, Babylon’s king Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem with his entire army….He burned down the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all of Jerusalem’s houses. He burned down every important building. The whole Chaldean army under the commander of the guard tore down the walls surrounding Jerusalem. Then Nebuchadnezzar the commander of the guard exiled the people who were left in the city.”

Israel is left hopeless. Its city has been leveled. The Temple, the place where God dwelled among the people, has been destroyed. Its king brought low and led away in chains. Its army and soldiers killed. The people are left in complete and utter hopelessness, forced to live in Exile in Babylon. The Psalmist captures the Israelites despair in Psalm 137as he asks, “By the water of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion….How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

This history is the backdrop to Ezekiel’s vision that we read in today’s Scripture lesson. Ezekiel is prophesying to a people living in exile. A people whose holy place has been destroyed. A people whose hope is dead. A people who wonder if they will ever find their way home. A people that worry life will never get back to normal. A people who feel like a valley of dry bones. The Babylonian exile is one of the most important stories in the Old Testament because it is the defining historical event for how Israel knows and understands itself. It becomes part of the story for every Jew, every Christian, every person who worships the God of Israel after.

Because, we can see ourselves in this story. All of us have been in exile at some point in our lives. Even before this current crisis, all of us have found ourselves in a hopeless situation at some point, wondering if life was really worth going on, asking where God is, questioning why God isn’t saving us yet? If the prophets’ words can bring hope to the Israelites in exile, then they can be words of hope for you and me in our hopeless situations, too. Even in this exile moment we are experiencing right now, where over 67,000 people have died in the US from COVID-19 and 3.8 million individuals (more people than the populations of Chicago and New York City combined) have applied for unemployment in the six weeks since the coronavirus outbreak.

Yet, Ezekiel offer the Israelites and now us hope even in the midst of exile. Ezekiel has a vision of a valley of dry bones. For years, Ezekiel has been living in exile, hearing reports of the destruction back in his homeland, watching the soul of his people gradually wither and die. Ezekiel knows that his people have become as lifeless as this valley of dry bones. They have lost heart because it’s hard to sing God’s song in a strange land.

And, so, God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live? Can this people who have lost their heart, their spirit, their soul…can they find life again?”

Ezekiel answers, “God, only you know.”

And, before we hear another word, we know the answer is yes because we know the God who Ezekiel names is the God of Israel, the God who created the world—the entire universe—and everything in it, the God who delivered the Israelites’ ancestors from slavery in Egypt, the God who made a covenant—who established an intimate relationship—with them, the God who raised up judges and kings and prophets to lead them, and the God who called them back to life and faithfulness again and again and again even when they chose death and disobedience. We know these bones can live again because the God who Ezekiel names can make a way where we see no way. That God is a God of miracle.

And, so, God says to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the bones and tell them to live again. I am going to resurrect my people and send them home to the promised land I gave them, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

I imagine Ezekiel watching the valley of bones, one by one, reform into living breathing bodies, turning to God and saying, “Wow! What good news of great hope! When can we expect this deliverance, Lord?”

Seventy years. God’s people would wait in exile for seventy years before they would return to their homeland, before they would be able to rebuild the temple, the one that Jesus would teach and preach and pray in.

When we want deliverance, what God offers is hope. We like quick fixes, instant gratification. We like to order from Amazon, and get the package in two days. We want to be able to order our groceries online and pick them up at the store in two hours without ever leaving our cars. Of course, those things that used to happen quickly are moving more slowly right now. God does promise deliverance, but reminds us through the words of the prophets that we may not experience in the timeframe we would like. God’s deliverance often comes slowly, but, as we wait, God offers us hope, hope that breathes the new life of God’s Spirit into our tired, weary, dry bones.

Often, this hope comes to us through other people, like the prophets. Where have you experienced hope in the midst of all that is going on through the words or actions of another person?

Last week, Mrs. Louise Smith, a beloved member of Adamsville First United Methodist, turned 104 years old. Usually, there would be a big party at Ms. Louise’s assisted care facility, and church members, community members, family, and friends would gather to celebrate the record-breaking birthday. Yet, in this season, such a gathering isn’t possible. So, instead, those same loved ones sent cards and organized a drive-by parade to show Ms. Louise that, even while we can’t be together, she is not alone!

Part of the way we feel God’s help and hope and care in this season is through the people who demonstrate that to us. How can you reach out and care for people who are having a hard time right now? Do you know someone who lost their job or some of their income? How can you be a blessing to them right now? What about the homebound members of our church and community? We are all getting a sense right now of what their everyday reality has been like. How can you communicate your love and care to them?

Hope takes on flesh and blood in Ezekiel’s vision, because that is how God is. 

When God wanted us to know God’s love, God put skin on and came to live among us as Jesus. When we want others to know God’s love, we show up through relationship. The volunteers of the Adamsville First UMC “Come and See” Community Kitchen have been showing up for over 70 seniors, some of the members in our community who are most at risk, by delivering hot meals to their homes twice a week since mid-March. Through their love and relationship, they are inviting others to see the hope God gives us even in this crisis. No matter what we are facing, God will always be with us. God will always be for us. And that the source of our hope.

Isaiah, another prophet who God used to bring hope to God’s people, reminded Israel of God’s faithful love. May we also hear and be reminded of God’s goodness today through Isaiah’s words:

“Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn’t grow tired or weary. His understanding is beyond human reach, giving power to the tired and reviving the exhausted. Youths will become tired and weary, young men will certainly stumble; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will fly up on wings like eagles; they will run and not be tired; they will walk and not be weary.” (Isaiah 40:28-31). 

Thanks be to God. Amen.