Tough Answers 5

Tough Answers—Authority Question: Job 38: 1-11;  Mark 4: 35-41

            Years ago, I went on vacation with Mom and Nana to Las Vegas. Most of glamour was lost on my high school self from a country-bumpkin town in Appalachia. But I will never forget the flight back. There was a worker strike at the time, so we ended up being routed from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, to Atlanta, to Knoxville. And the plane from Atlanta to Knoxville looked like a child’s toy. As this was June, one of those short-lived severe thunderstorms sprang up on the flight from Atlanta to Knoxville.

            Y’all…I have never prayed so hard in my life as when that plane with two seats on one side and one on the other started bouncing and swaying like it was dancing the Tango. I came several inches out of the seat. The flight attendant’s cart flew away sending Ginger Ale hurling all over the people behind it. And the middle-aged man in a suit next to me fell asleep and slumped over on my 16-year-old shoulder, snoring, like nothing was happening. I don’t know if his peace and comfort was medically induced or not, but by golly, one day I want to be that unbothered.

            Today’s Gospel and Hebrew lessons are stories about control, authority, and the ability to find peace when we have neither. Job’s discussion with God here, or rather, his lecture from God, comes near the end of the book. Job has, at some point, criticized God. We learn that God says to him (after a whole other chapter of lecturing him), “Do you still want to argue with the Almighty? You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?” God spends 71 verses over two chapters reminding Job of the sheer majesty and magnificence of God’s ability to create, bring life, redeem, restore, and deliver.

            Job is speaking from a temporary time of suffering in an eternity of God’s authority and care. Job seems to believe that God is uncaring in his time of suffering. But, as a theme for both of these scriptures, remember that unbothered does not mean uncaring. One can still provide all the care in the world but be unbothered or unconcerned about the struggle because of the knowledge that the temporary struggle is not the final outcome. Both Job and Mark’s Gospel speak to the power of God to tame the chaos and bring order into all of life.

            In ancient mythology and in the imagery created by Biblical writers, the sea is often seen as a hostile force, something often battled and tamed by those of power. It’s no mistake that Jesus calmed the raging sea in the Gospel. This miracle would have resonated with all who saw it and heard about it because it was so familiar to them. We see the imagery in Job, in the Gospels, in Psalm 107, in the creation story of Genesis. The chaos of the raging sea has a place in God’s creation and redemption specifically in that God sets boundaries and restrictions on the chaos to keep it in check.

            In our Gospel Jesus sleeps through the raging storm while the disciples are gripped by fear and panic that they will all drown. But when they call out to Jesus, he simply says, “Peace, be still,” and the storm is done. One commentator noted that Jesus uses the same language on the storm that used with demons. It’s almost as if Jesus is casting out the storm in the same way he addressed and cast out evil spirits. Here is why it’s important that it’s a storm. In Jesus’s day, any sorcerer, magician, or exorcist was believed to be able to cast out a bad spirit from a person. But only God could control the weather. In silencing the storm, Jesus asserts the power of God to the people.

            Why does all this matter? Well, for Mark’s church this was a powerful story. Marks’ church was suffering and under extensive persecution. This story pulled them away from what they were facing and reminded them who they were following, and the power that God has. Faith in God is easy when everything is going well. An easy life makes for an easy walk with God. But when the storm is raging, we are often left with a lack of trust. All we can see is the storm. And sometimes, the storm is overwhelming. The chaos appears like it has no end and will never be put back right again.

            In those times we often suspect that God does not care. That suspicion that God does not care is a rotten factor in faith. It will corrode, ruin, rot away our ability to follow Christ in faith. It leads us down a road of blaming God for everything. Sometimes we blame God for the storms we make. I had a friend who loved to gorge on sweets every single day. When he was diagnosed as diabetic, he couldn’t believe God would let that happen to him. This was one of those less than pastoral moments for me. I blurted out to him, “What did you think would happen?” This is just the natural end result of your actions, not God’s divine manipulation.

            Faith is hard in the storm because crises lead to doubts, and doubts tell us that God does not care. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unbothered does not equate to lack of caring. I had a friend who slept through Hurricane Michael in 2019 when it came through at night. I was flabbergasted. How could someone sleep through a whole hurricane? But what he said was this. I am unbothered by it. I can’t control it, and I can’t change it. If something bad happens in this storm, I will work through it in the best way I can. If the storm does me in, I’m ready to see Jesus. Any way this goes, I’m unbothered by the outcome. I care, but I also have faith that all will be well in the end. If it’s not well, it’s not the end.

            For Mark’s church, who so desperately needed to hear this miracle, it’s not so much about what Jesus did as it is who he is. Faith is not an antibiotic that fixes everything in a few days. It’s an insurance plan that lets you know things will be taken care of when the time is right, and it’s needed. We tend to be overwhelmed by the trouble of the present time before us, but faith is something we live for eternity. The God we rely on and believe in knew us before we were born, leads and guides us in the present, and loves us throughout all eternity, and nothing can separate us from that eternal, unchanging love.

            Jesus knew the struggles the disciples had and how the storm would challenge their faith. After he rebukes the storm, he turns and challenges their unbelief, saying, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” A good friend was complaining about one of the ladies in her prayer group. She said that Mildred, the name has been changed to protect the innocent, used to pray for people then go on about her day and never check in. My friend said when she prayed, she would check in with them at least a couple times a day to see how they were. Mildred, however, just prayed and went on about her business. My friend got more and more worked up about how Mildred could never follow up or check back. Finally, I asked her a question. Does Mildred not check back because she is uncaring or is it because she’s unbothered? Perhaps she cares a great deal, but has the faith and trust to believe that God heard her prayer, and she doesn’t need to backtrack, hover, and follow up on every little thing God works on? Unbothered does not equate to uncaring.

            The message from Job and Mark’s gospel is quite clear. Faith is something we must continue to work on both when life is easy and when the storms and trials come our way. Jesus cleared up the storm in a matter of minutes for the disciples on the boat. Most scholars believe Job suffered for years before his deliverance. No matter how long the storm, the severity, or the endurance we must have, we can still have faith in the One who is more powerful than any storm of life. Deliverance might not come today, tomorrow, or in this lifetime, but faith carries us through, and God’s love remains eternal.

            Many years ago, I spent an hour and a half bouncing on an airplane between Atlanta and Knoxville like I was on the worst ride at Six Flags imaginable. The whole plane full of passengers was soaked in Ginger Ale, and covered in snacks. But we landed safely. And the guy next to me slept through the whole thing. He was unbothered by the storm the whole way through. When the storms of life hit us, when we are overwhelmed, and when faith feels crushed, remember that Jesus created peace in the middle of the storm, then he reminded the disciples that faith sees them through eternity, not just immediate trial. Thanks be to God.

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1484855905477193

Tough Answers 4

Tough Answers: Who/What Question—I Sam. 15:34-16:13; Mark 4: 26-29

            Hetty Green was known as the “Witch of Wall Street” and has the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of Records for the most stingy person in history. She was a well-known name in financial circles of the late 1800s, early 1900s Gilded Age America. Hetty Green inherited a large amount of money, and kept it, and invested it herself becoming her own businesswoman in a time when women were not allowed into the inner circles of the New York Stock Exchange. But her skill and wisdom allowed her to amass a fortune of millions if not billions of dollars and allowed her to become the top lending institution in New York during financial downturns to the major investors and banks.

            She was, however, a stingy old woman. She wore one or two dresses until they wore out, sewed her own underpants, refused to have hot water, ate food cold to conserve cooking fuel, moved around from one low-income apartment to the next, and refused medical attention because doctors were too expensive. She allegedly beat her hernia down with a stick when it bulged rather than go and pay to have a surgery to remove it. When the US had major financial downturns, however, it was Hetty Green who bailed everybody out. She was the who that had the what to help everybody out when bad fortune struck…for a reasonable interest rate of course.

            In today’s Hebrew Lesson, we hear how King Saul, the first king of Israel, failed utterly and completely. God had given him a specific command, and Saul had done what he wanted instead. When Samuel confronts him, Saul further refuses to take responsibility for his action, blaming the people instead. The Lord speaks to Samuel and tells him to anoint a new king, for God has rejected Saul because of this disobedience. Now, in choosing someone for this high calling, one might think there are a few important traits: the king should be strong, skilled in battle, wise in all things, old enough to have that wisdom, well-educated in what he needs to know, a powerful person in all ways.

            Each of Jesse’s sons fit this stereotypical mold. Yet, God said no to each one, and advised Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” When David, the youngest of the sons, came in from the field, it was his heart that which the Lord found good. David was then anointed to be the next king.

            We live in a society that worships the physical appearance. We want people to look a certain way, be tall and strong, speak the way we like and want to hear, be shaped and formed body-wise in a way we find appealing, and by gosh, don’t ever age, for we most certainly worship a youthful appearance. And if any of that starts to become a problem, we bring out the ointments, oils, radical diets, and or a little nip/tuck to fix it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a nice appearance. But society is fixated on the shallow things of life. When God considers a who and what—who is be called and for what purpose—God looks to the heart of the person.

            I think of the old and somewhat cruel joke of describing someone. Whey they are unattractive in some way, we hear the phrase, “They’ve got a good personality.” But the measure of a person, their value, and their worth in the eyes of God comes from the goodness of their heart, and the way in which they engage in a relationship to God and to those around them. Out of our insecurities, we will often make jokes about our appearance or repeat old tropes we learned growing up to diffuse our own struggles with society’s unkindness about appearance versus actions. But God looks to the heart.

            Mark tells us that not only does God look to the heart of the person, but God also looks to what will be built by that person in the future. Sometimes we come under the notion that God calls us to do things immediately, right this minute. I had a friend who after the first date, every date, was planning the wedding for the guy she went out with. We function in shallowness and the need for instant gratification. But Jesus talks about the longevity of planting seeds today. When the farmer scatters seeds, he doesn’t get a full harvest the next day. It takes weeks of watering, weeding, nurturing, and so on to get the crops to grow.

            I remember growing up that my grandfather had a small farm with a garden of vegetables. I would go up with him every Saturday morning and help with help being a very relative word. I remember him pulling weeds out of the squash and beans. I remember him watering the corn and tomatoes. And I remember him killing what felt like thousands of little beetle-looking “potato bugs” that would eat the plant part of the potato. It was hard work. It took time. But it also produced a very rewarding harvest after all that time.

            Jesus makes that same connection to the kingdom of God. Building and growing a church in the modern age is hard, and it has become incredibly hard post-Covid. A recent study said a majority of Millenials aged 28-40 would rather go to a boozy brunch than an 11:00 AM Sunday service. It’s a two-fold problem. The church has focused on the cosmetics and not the heart and soul of the message, and society wants instant gratification. Faith is a long-term discipline, and that’s hard in a Snapchat society.

            We are called today to build for tomorrow. We tend to shy away from being the ones who lead, who lean into that calling, and who are ready to build. Instead of “Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord?” we sing “Here’s my friend, Lord, please take him, Lord.” Part of the trouble is we think in too broad of terms. We’re not likely to be called to perform miracles, face lions in the arena, travel thousands of miles like Paul, or stare down the Roman executioner. Instead, God calls us to plant seeds. The heartfelt, “God loves you,” today may be a turning point in someone’s life tomorrow or next week.

            But the part we can’t escape is being called. When Samuel came to anoint Jesse’s son, he found grand, powerful, strong men. David was an afterthought to Jesse. He didn’t even see a need to send for his son from the fields to come and dine at the house with the prophet. Yet God looked to his heart and knew David was the one. In the same way, we cannot escape God’s calling because God has looked at our hearts and known that we were the one needed. The seeds of faith we plant today will be harvested by younger generations down the road. But you have to be willing to go out and plant the seeds of faith in the first place. When the grain is ready, Jesus says, the harvest will come for the farmer.

            Hetty Green may have been a miser, stingy and unwilling to spend on any luxury. And frankly, she is probably the least likely person to be a major financial powerhouse in 1900 America. But it was her wisdom, her fortune, and her willingness to be a powerhouse of lending that kept banks and financiers afloat in 1875 and 1905 when the stock markets crashed. Her wisdom, savings plan, and investment strategy allowed her to be the exact person they needed to help keep things from a real financial disaster. She was unlikely, but the best person for the job. She also planted seeds of financial stability for tomorrow and years down the road which paid off long after she was gone.

            We cannot escape God’s calling, for God has given us skills, wisdom, and abilities to do great things for the kingdom of God, whether you admit it or not. We also must realize the importance of planting seeds for tomorrow and not today. The work we do in faith is for our children, grandchildren, and future generations down the years. But it starts with us now and our willingness to trust God and obey the calling God has given us.

 Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/3702835473180438  

Tough Answers 3

Tough Answers—The Fighting Question: I Sam. 8:4-9, 19-20; Mark 3: 20-35

            Years ago, while I was interning in Houston County, I observed the trial of a man who got sick of code enforcement and decided one day to shoot the code enforcement officer who was ticketing him for blighted property. The officer survived, and the shooter was charged with an assault. That man, the shooter, decided to represent himself at trial. The Assistant District Attorney prosecuting the case spent night and day preparing, considering every avenue, filing all the necessary motions. He was terrified of losing this high-profile case to a non-attorney, and he was ready for a fight. After all of this tremendous preparation and angst, the shooter stood up to question the code enforcement officer, in legal terms, to cross examine this witness. His first question was, “Were you able to recognize me when I shot you?” I leaned over to my fellow intern and said, “I don’t think that ADA needs to worry about fighting so hard.”

            The lesson there is two-fold. In a post-Covid, hyper-political, news-saturated society, the world has gone nuts, and we’ve all decided that it’s our calling to fight about everything, constantly. We hear in the old hymn, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, O what a foretaste of glory divine.” These days we have a foretaste of something, but it sure isn’t glory divine. Our world is antagonistic, difficult, riddled with angst, and lacking in prayer. We seem to have chosen these things over peace, hope, grace, and gentleness. We’ve sacrificed fruits of the Spirit, Spiritual gifts, and following the Prince of Peace for the latest, greatest ways of verbal combat on every social media platform available.

In a world where we claim to follow the One who willingly let himself be sacrificed on the cross for people who spat on him, we’ve instead chosen meanness over offering the other cheek. And the two questions we have to ask ourselves are: Why? And what has it gotten us? My guess is we don’t know why, and mostly it’s gotten us heartburn and high blood pressure.

But truly it wasn’t much different in Jesus’s day. We read in the Gospel lesson about the fighting Jesus endured. Tired, starving, and weary, Jesus enters a house where even then he cannot escape the crowds. As the youth would say, he’s tired and hangry. He couldn’t find a moment alone. The description provided in Mark makes it seem as if Jesus is delirious from the hunger and exhaustion. And instead of bringing him food, water, and getting him to a restful place, the teachers of religious law try to claim he’s possessed by Satan. Jesus turns this claim on its head. Satan cannot cast out Satan, and why would that ever happen? Jesus logically, not deliriously, tells them it’s proof his power is from God.

But then we get one of the problematic sayings from Jesus. They come and tell him that his mother and brothers are there and want to talk to him. Outside. Mark’s wording makes this feel like an intervention. They’ve come to whisk Jesus away from this absolute insanity. But Jesus says, “Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

The religious legal teachers came ready for a fight. They saw a vulnerable moment and wanted to come and finally trounce Jesus in a debate. They thought at this moment they could take advantage of this vulnerability, exploit Jesus’s weakness to ruin him. And still he won. Exhausted and all. The only thing Jesus wanted was for them to follow God’s will. That’s all he asked in that moment, and they couldn’t even agree on that basic idea. I remember a board meeting I attended, and I won’t say where. Two or three people were arguing strongly back and forth, getting loud, and making these heated points on the motion before the board. Finally, the chair had enough, and she banged the gavel loudly saying, “Do you all hear yourselves? You AGREE ON THE POINT! Why are you arguing!!?? What’s the matter?” One of the two in the fight said, “Oh, I’m sorry, looks like I forgot to turn my hearing aid up. I didn’t hear what they said. Never mind.”

We have too many people who want to be the teachers of religious law in our modern era. We have our hearing abilities turned down, our irritability turned up, and society is ready for a fight on literally everything. And into that churning pot of angst and anger we add the bitter herb of politics. In the Prophet Samuel’s day, there was no real king or singular leader over Israel. The prophets had listened to God and provided God’s word to the people of Israel. Essentially, God was their king. But they were tired of that… of listening to God. They wanted a king. Everyone else had a king, and now they wanted a king.

Even as Samuel spent ten verses (which were edited out of today’s reading) convincing the people how horrible a king would be, they still refused to listen and demanded a king to rule them. Listen to what God said, “’Do everything they say to you,’ the Lord replied, ‘for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt, they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods. And now they’re giving you the same treatment.’” The people wanted a political answer to a spiritual problem, and that only creates two problems.

If we want to be brothers and sisters of Jesus, then we must do God’s will and follow Jesus. That means accepting the places where Jesus taught hard lessons to people on both sides of the American political landscape. In a world where we are taught that power is the golden ticket, might makes right, vengeance is a gleeful endeavor, and we should win at all costs, we have to stop, step back, and re-read the story of a Savior. Jesus lived his life wandering around teaching about peace and love. He healed when people needed him. He forgave when eyes were opened to his grace. He spoke words of calling and comfort to those who were hurting. He told Peter, who was ready to fight, to put his sword down for those who live by the sword die by the sword.

And ultimately, he went to the cross, was sacrificed and died in agony. And though he rose again, those scars on his body remained. Jesus didn’t go to that cross because it was expected. He didn’t go because the law required. He certainly didn’t go because we had earned or been nice enough to deserve it. He went because he loved us so much that he was willing to sacrifice for that love. I can’t imagine any religious leader or Pharisee in Jesus’s day sacrificing out love for the people they served in faith. And, frankly, I can’t picture many of today’s Christians and Christian leaders doing the same either.

What the world needs today is more people who are sacrificial, gentle, loving, and silent. The world needs more people who will listen with Jesus’s ears and Jesus’s heart than with ears and tongue ready to offer a sharpened response. Every opportunity Jesus was given to throw stones at someone, who in all likelihood deserved it, he instead taught and practiced mercy and grace.

The Israelite people anointed the king they so desperately wanted. It was King Saul who went on to live out a terrible reign with a horrific ending. But we, as God’s people, have a different option. In a world filled with bitterness, fighting, angst, and downright meanness, we can choose Jesus. As Charlotte Elliot’s famous hymn says, “Just as I am, though tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God I come. I come.”

We live in a society that every single day wakes up and gets ready to fight over literally everything. And I have to ask, “Aren’t we tired of it yet?” The Jesus we follow offered grace, mercy, love, and most importantly for this sermon, peace. And if we find ourselves unwilling to live a life that is sacrificial in giving, loving everyone with open arms, forgiving, gentle, humble, peace-seeking, and ready to offer grace to every single person we encounter, just like Jesus, I have but one question. Who are we really following?

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/994644678395990

Tough Answers 2

Tough Answers—The Sabbath Question: Deut. 5:12-15; Matt.2:23-3:6

            There’s an old saying—“No good deed goes unpunished.” Our Gospel lesson today takes this quite literally. A friend of mine prepared a meal for her and her husband’s extended family. They were all invited that Sunday afternoon to a delicious pot roast. It was the first time her family had been invited to her home because they were difficult at times. Her husband’s family ate heartily and enjoyed her wonderful cooking. I can attest that she’s a good cook. Her own family scowled and secretly ordered Papa John’s pizza behind her back because they didn’t like “that kind” of food…meaning good.

            Many of us are familiar with the idea of taking a Sabbath. In our common understanding, it’s a set, scheduled time of rest, recharge, and a time to be holy with God—to refresh that relationship. We talk about Sabbath in terms of time; for example, I take 5:00 PM Friday to Noon-ish Saturday for Sabbath. I don’t answer calls, work on things, or make myself busy. I rest, recharge, and take a time of faith renewal in some way. But, I want to stretch that idea of Sabbath for us today beyond just time. You should be someone’s Sabbath—be the space, the presence, and the person who helps them deepen their faith and refresh their relationship with God.

            In the Gospel today we read where Jesus violated the human-made Sabbath rules of his day to be a literal Sabbath to those in need. First the religious leaders criticize Jesus’s disciples for picking grain heads off the grain to eat on the Sabbath. Their rules were such that it was expected you would starve instead of doing one iota of work to get food. Next, they criticized Jesus for healing someone suffering on the Sabbath. Their rules were such that it was better for you to let others or yourself suffer miserably than do any work at all to be healed. That is no Sabbath at all. It is fake human rule pretending to be an actual holy command from God, but their rules caused actual pain and suffering at a time that was designed to be refreshing and renewing of one’s relationship to God. That’s not respect. That’s not faith. That’s awful, and I daresay sinful.

            I have to confess that this passage irks me so much. The pharisees choose suffering over love, over help, over kindness. They chose to be hard-hearted because it preserved their power and control over the people. Jesus threw that in their faces. The Gospel points out that they had hard hearts to the suffering of those around them. Instead of celebrating that Jesus gave life, healing, and hope back to this man with a deformity, Jesus’s compassion help pushed them to plot to kill him. The worst part of it is that they had a choice, and they chose violence and meanness.

            In spiritual direction, they talk a lot about things that can be fixed and things that cannot. My own director said that in any struggle you have 5 things at play: the circumstance, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and the result. Of all five of those things, the only one you CANNOT control is the circumstance. Life will hand you some difficult circumstances, and you may go through trying times. But what you can control are the rest of those five. You can control how you think about a circumstance and how you feel. You can analyze why you feel so angry and upset, whether that’s the right feeling or not, and whether you’re looking at it from a good perspective, a Christ-like perspective.

            You can control how you respond—your action. If someone offends, you can choose the action of forgiveness, of preserving your own sense of love and life, your own personal peace. And if you manage and control your thoughts, feelings, and actions in a healthy and faithful way, you can have a result that is to your benefit even if the circumstance is horrible. Focus on what you can change—focus on creating the result of Sabbath and peace in circumstances that may be challenging or difficult.

            The Pharisees may not have liked that Jesus challenged them. He upended their notions of Sabbath, of what was proper, the good order and decency of things, and he instead focused on what was beautiful in life…being a person in whom people could rest, hope, and love. It’s the place where people experienced the presence of God in the form of this person Jesus. When they touched the hem of his garment they found divine healing, but they also simply touched a robe and tunic. When they listened to his teaching, they heard the voice of God, but they saw a humble man who would soon be killed by the angry religious leaders. Jesus broke the legalized rules of Sabbath to be a living Sabbath to those in need.

            We need more people in this world whose lives and presence are like that of Jesus. The Sabbath was important because when the Hebrew people were in Egypt, they were worked all day as slaves with no hope, no comfort, no real life, only oppression and suffering. And in Jesus’s day it was no different. They may not have been in Egypt, but they were enslaved to their rules, their control, their power, and the oppressive theocracy they had built in Judea under the permission of the Roman Empire, whose oppression ran even deeper. In Jesus’s day, there was a legalized time of no work, but there was no real Sabbath.

            In many ways, we find ourselves in the same kind of world. We are oppressed by a constant political climate, worry, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and so many more bad circumstances. We look for human answers. If we elect this person or that person, it will help. If we follow this policy or that policy, things will be fine. If we do this diplomacy, or that military answer, tensions will cool. But unfortunately, you cannot find a Sabbath peace and rest in a human answer to life’s problems. You must look to the holy. Jesus’s loving, gentle presence quietly rebuked the politics and power of the Pharisees and offered a presence of love and healing to the man whose hand was deformed and indeed everyone he met.

            Jesus challenged them even before he healed the man. Don’t miss the power of his words. He’s basically saying, that if their Sabbath rules don’t permit good works, then they have made the Sabbath a day where only evil is legally allowed to work in the world because it was illegal to do something good for another. In a very real way, they had made rules that empowered evil deeds on the Sabbath because law-abiding, good people were barred from doing anything at all. And the worst part is their hearts were too hardened to care. The result was that Jesus called out their hypocrisy, healed the man of his deformity, and did what was good, right, and holy on the Sabbath. In return, the religious leaders decided to kill Jesus.

            Growing up in church, my grandfather sometimes led singing. He had a pretty good tenor voice, and knew the old, old hymns very well. One of his favorites was a hymn called “Let My Life Be a Light.” You won’t really find it in any hymnal except the old, shaped note hymnals from pre-1950. Part of the second verse says, “Guide my footsteps aright through the dark, stormy night, give me peace, give me joy, give me love. Let my life be a light shining out through the night, may I help struggling ones to the fold; spreading cheer everywhere to the sad and the lone, let my life be a light to some soul.” It’s really the prayer we need, isn’t it?

            Disappointments and difficult circumstances can often be a part of life. My friend learned this from her tactless and crass family coming to dinner only to ruin it. We don’t always have control of the circumstance, but we can always control how it affects us and how we respond. And we can choose a place of Sabbath and rest in our lives. Yes, Sabbath is scheduling out a time for personal rest and refreshing of faith, but it is also a lived practice. Whatever you do in life, don’t be the Pharisee people encounter. Be the Sabbath that shows the love of Christ and practices peace and comfort in a world that so desperately needs it.

             Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/344874001686362

Tough Answers 1

Tough Answers: The Nicodemus Question—Psa.29; John 3: 1-17

            As I returned from Missouri this week, I spent roughly two hours bouncing down I-70 from Columbia to St. Louis on a shuttle bus to the airport. There was a man behind me who provided entertainment the whole way. He started out the trip saying he had prayed over this trip, and we would all be safe. He believes in Jesus and knows all would be well. And that is where things took a turn for the weird. He made three very loud phone calls, which all of us on the bus were privy to hear.

            The first phone call was to his wife, whom he had not seen in a while during his time in Missouri for work. The call was rather routine despite us hearing a few details that probably should have been sent in a text message and not shared publicly. The second call was to his nephew where he discussed his recreational drug use, admitted he was drunk on the bus, and talked about some of their wild exploits to come in the two weeks he would be there. The final call was to his girlfriend, and yes, you heard that right. And when I tell you we were spared no details, believe me. The lady in front of me smarted off, “Sounds like he believes in a lot of other things besides Jesus.” And therein lies the problem. Many folks believe in Jesus, but a smaller number actually follow him.

            The story of Nicodemus is a familiar one. We’ve heard it for years in sermons, Sunday School, Bible Study, and youth meetings. Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the hidden cover of night. This is also the passage in the Bible where we coined the phrase “born-again Christian” from Jesus’s comments to Nicodemus. Now, please don’t get offended when I say this. Much of that idea in Evangelical Christianity is literally the absolute minimum baseline or threshold of faith, and not the end goal. Stay with me, I’ll explain. The concept of being born again means you believe in Jesus, but there’s a big difference in basic belief and actual commitment. Look at the words of Nicodemus, “After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. ‘Rabbi,’ he said, ‘we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.’” Nicodemus gave it away; he accidently blurted out the truth! “We all know that God sent you,” is what he says to Jesus.

            The proof is there that Jesus wasn’t killed for blasphemy as the religious leaders later claim. Nicodemus tells Jesus to his face that they knew, they knew God had sent Jesus. They believed it. But they never responded with a commitment to actually follow what Jesus taught. In our belief, we are called to do more. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born of water and of Spirit. His words to Nicodemus are that he must be born again. That phrase is hard to understand. The meaning in Greek doesn’t translate to English well, and to Nicodemus’s credit, neither to Aramaic nor Hebrew. The Greek word used means both born from above as well as born anew. It is BOTH new life and life in the Spirit of God. What Jesus is saying to Nicodemus and the rest of us is that we must start over renewed, and following in the Spirit of God as Jesus taught and provided his life as an example. It’s a lot, and I mean a lot, more than just believing.

            That’s important. Demons believe. The Pharisees believed. But we are called to a belief and commitment that is more than just snatching up the golden ticket to Heaven. We are called by God to a new way of life that seeks to live in this world with the same Spirit that filled Jesus in the trials, in his ministry, and to the bitter end of the cross. Jesus then challenges Nicodemus with the true expansiveness of God’s work. He says, “For this is how God loved the world: God gave God’s one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”

            I remember as a kid in elementary school at a Christian school we had to memorize Bible verses to the alphabet. You can guess the severity level of the schooling when I tell you that for “A,” the very first one, we memorized, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” It was the ABC’s with a nice twist of penitential suffering. But “B” said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” (Yes, we had to memorize it in King James.) Those two verses work in perfect harmony—we both live in a world of brokenness, but also there is grace. Sometimes, we miss the real work and calling of Jesus. God so loved the world. That’s what Jesus said. God’s love for this world is not exclusionary, segregated, particularized, or filled with caveats. It is simply, “God so loved the world.” With belief, there is grace and hope, but there’s an underlying call as well.

            Now, if you were listening closely, you might have caught a little something. Earlier we discussed the call to more than just mere belief. But here Jesus clearly says belief is enough for eternal life, and not much more than that is said. There’s no theological, legal, soteriological, eschatological, or any other “ogical” I could come up with to connect these two ideas and make it work. However, if we simply read a few more verses that weren’t included in today’s lesson, the answer is there plainly in the text. Verse 21 says, “But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

            It is through our commitment to follow Jesus and shine that light of Christ that others see what faith is. Christianity has enjoyed a comfortable status for a very long time in this country. Christianity has been the majority religion for a very long time. And when you live with power, you don’t necessarily have to be urgent in your commitment to God. Could the Christians of today have the same commitment as the early Christians? Could modern Christians who practice their faith in life of privilege, power, and politically protected rights proclaim the same faith if they stared at the face of a lion in the Roman arena? Could they proclaim, “For God so loved the world!” if they were standing in Stephen’s place when the first stone hit? If every challenge to faith by the non-Christian world causes the faithful to be offended, then it’s not Christ to whom they are turning for answers.

            When Jesus told Nicodemus to be born anew and of the Spirit, it was a call to join the commitment lived in the Acts 2 church. There the church provided for every need the community had. They shared and encouraged the faith. They welcomed all with love and hope to this community. They healed, helped, and restored dignity to the broken and hopeless. And they did so even under the threat of real persecution.

No one has ever been saved because a legislature passed a law to make them follow a Christian legal code. Instead, people find the hope of Christ in how we live, and speak, and love like Christ in this world. You and I are the light of the world, and in living that light of Christ, we guide people to this faith that teaches love, hope, and help for those in need.

            On the journey across Missouri, as we disembarked the bus at the airport the guy in the back suddenly got really chatty with the rest of us. He must have finally realized in his rather intoxicated state that we could hear every word. He asked me what I do for work. I could have avoided the conflict and said a lawyer, but instead, I said, “I’m a pastor. I’m Rev. Will Johnson, nice to meet you.” His response was put his face down to his palm and say, “Ohhhh noooo.”

            When we claim to be people of faith, the rest of the world watches us. Saying that we believe in Jesus is meaningless unless we live it. A pastor friend of mine said, “Believing in Jesus is the easy part, figuring out what to do after that gets much, much harder.” In a world where people are falling away from Christianity in droves, the urgency to figure out how to follow Jesus in this world has never been stronger. Our faith must be both visibly practiced and authentically lived. Nicodemus didn’t let his confusion stop him. After Jesus’s death, it is both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who came to bury Jesus. I’m sure Nicodemus didn’t fully understand the death of Jesus, and he probably felt some guilt that he couldn’t do anything to stop it. But Nicodemus never stopped believing and never stopped trying to follow Jesus. My friends, we’re not called to figure it out. Instead, we are called to continually keep seeking. Faith is both belief in Jesus and a commitment, and that commitment calls us to follow Jesus. Always.

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/781030887499506

Letters from Paul Final

Letters From Paul—Use Your Gifts: Joel 2: 28-32; I Cor. 12: 2-13

            In 2002, American Idol premiered on television for the first time. In the subsequent 21 seasons, many wonderful singers’ careers have been catapulted into stardom and led to many amazing, tearful success stories. But the real fun of American Idol, if we’re willing to admit it, are those who are convinced they sing like Beyonce or Tony Bennett, but instead sound like a cross between a dog howling and a cat upchucking in the early morning.

            Come on, admit it, it’s always humorous to see someone whose ego is 100 times the size of their skill. There were some on American Idol who were absolutely flabbergasted to learn that they did not have this wonderful gift of singing. And usually, they got very angry when reality hit. But for others, the gifts that God had given them shined through in a way that could stir even the frostiest person to appreciate the skill and ability of these gifted people.

            On Pentecost we often read the Acts scripture where the fire came, and the wind of God’s spirit whipped through those assembled in the room with Jesus’s disciples. They received gifts—languages, knowledge, speaking—all manner of God-given abilities. But how do we handle the gifts that God gives us? It’s important to know THAT God gives gifts, but more importantly, we need to know what to do with them.

            Paul tells the Corinthian church that some of the gifts include wise advice, special knowledge, great faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning, languages, and interpretation. There are a great multitude of gifts which God gives us. I think you can add things like music, leadership, organization, and more to the list. Whatever gift we have which lifts up people and supports God’s church is a gift from God for us. In other places in Paul’s writings, preaching, teaching, and more conventional leadership gifts are added to this list. 

            The first question is what is your gift? You can’t opt out on this one. Many folks will say, “Oh I’m not gifted, I’m just plain and simple.” We try to wiggle away from this by pretending we are too generic to have been gifted by God. It’s the same as the student in class who feels unprepared and sits there praying the teacher won’t call on them. Verse 7 doesn’t give you that wiggle room. It says, “A spiritual gift is given to each one of us so we can help each other.” So, we ask the question…what is your gift?

            Some churches will hand out spiritual gift assessments. I’ve seen many of the newer, modern churches tried to do a multiple-choice assessment for what spiritual gifts God has given you. But that seems to undercut the power of the Holy Spirit to work. Think of it this way, you may visit a friend who is struggling, and they feel better—that is healing. You may be able to say to your friend, “I have a bad feeling about this person,” and that’s discernment. You may be able to give wise advice or figure out situations that defy the logic of others. These are all spiritual gifts. They are abilities, perceptions, and intuition which comes from something beyond what we can humanly perceive.

But the bigger question is what are you doing with your gifts? Paul goes on to write, “There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.” Whatever gift you have, God should be working in and through you as you use your gift. When I think of our spiritual gifts and our call to share them, I think of an old children’s song: “This Little Light of Mine.”

The words say, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” In the verses we hear that we will not hide it under a bushel, won’t let Satan blow it out, and everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine. When we use our gifts for God, we shine that light of God’s grace into the world. Paul spent a lot of time talking about spiritual gifts with the Corinthian church. They were obsessed with them. In that church, it was much like the more they showed off, the more powerful they became. They used this political outlook on God’s gifts as well as clinging to their old pagan practices.

God’s gifts are not a ticket to power and privilege. They are a humble offering to the church and God’s people. Let me give you an example. A friend of mine really struggled as a child. He could not be in large crowds, or he would have a panic attack as a 4- and 5-year-old. Several times his parents were called because he was so painfully shy and overwhelmed by all that was going on. His kindergarten teacher at a small religious school set about making sure that changed. By the end of kindergarten, he was the lead in the school play and had almost fully come out of his shell, social anxiety or not.

What you do with the gifts you have speaks to the way you follow Jesus. A friend of mine, who is a talented musician used to only play nights in bars and clubs. He made great money. One Friday night near closing, a visibly drunk man came up and asked him to play something nice to round out the night. He needed to hear something that would help him. My friend played a very slow, soulful arrangement of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” then closed up for the night. The next night, this guy comes back, totally sober, and says that he had lost all hope that Friday night and was going to take his own life. But hearing that song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” stopped him in his tracks, and he decided to get help instead. My friend still plays nights at the bars and clubs, but he also founded a group called “Bar Church” and they meet in different bars on Sunday afternoons to have church in a place where he knows people who wouldn’t set foot in a church might actually come. They had 300 at Easter packed into a bar all singing… “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

Paul finishes out this part of his letter reminding the Corinthian church of their diversity compared to other churches. He writes, “The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free.” Indeed, one of the strengths of the Corinthian church was how widespread the faith was, and how many diverse peoples came to follow Jesus. But as they grew, they struggled, and Paul calls them back to the central, most important thing, “We have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.” He wants them to focus on Christ and use their gifts for the good of God’s kingdom, not for their political gain.

Pentecost celebrates the birthday of the church. It is marked as the day that the Spirit of God came to those who follow Jesus and believe in him. It is also a day to be reminded that God has given us gifts. No one is exempt in this, and no one will be standing back in the shadows to disappear. We all have gifts from God. And the question Paul asks the church at Corinth, and indeed, us today is what are we doing with those gifts God has given us?

God doesn’t call you to be the best at prophecy. God doesn’t call you to have all the wisdom of the ages in discerning God’s voice. God doesn’t say you have to be world-wide teacher of the year. You don’t have to be the American Idol winner in everything you do. What God does call us to do, though, is use our gifts to the best of our ability, for the kingdom of God.

Each of us has a different call, a different gift, but we come together in this place, as this congregation to do the work of God in this world—proclaiming good news of saving love, welcoming those who need to know of God’s love, encouraging and uplifting those who feel broken, and drawing out the gifts and abilities that God has given. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.” Thanks be to God that from the moment we take our first breath to our final moments on earth and every moment in between God is working in and through us, and never leaves us.

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/7338553769525475

Letters from Paul Pt. 5

Letters from Paul: Greatest Lesson—Ruth 1: 6-18; I Corinthians 13

            As it is Mothers’ Day, it is expected that a pastor will talk about mothers. My own mother has warned me thoroughly that I should NOT tell family stories in the pulpit for this day. So, the following story is DEFINITELY not a story about me or my family at all. My “friend” was shopping with his mother while in high school. They were in a popular teen clothing store, and he was trying to decide what size to get as he had gained few pounds over the summer. After going back and forth with sales associate on sizes, he chose the extra-large over the large.

            On the way out of the store, his mother turned and looked at a different sales associate, whom she mistook for the one that helped them, and said loudly (and I mean loudly), “We decided on the extra-large!” My friend was mortified. And from that came a constant family joke in his family that someone was going to announce the sizes of the clothing every time they left a store. Paul’s lesson for us this Mothers’ Day is that love is the most powerful thing on earth…even when we are utterly flabbergasted by the person we love.

            On Mothers’ Day we celebrate those who are mothers, who physically gave birth to a child and in some form or fashion reared that child into adulthood. But focusing on physical birth misses the point of a mothering love. There’s a sense of nurture, care, grace, and support from the first contact to final breath that defines a mothering love. Paul certainly had that kind of love for the church at Corinth. He literally birthed or created that church, nurtured it, corrected and disciplined it, taught it, and prayed and hoped for the future of that church.

            Paul talks about the eternal and enduring nature of love. The church at Corinth was caught up on spiritual gifts. They almost worshiped the gift more than God, and in particular they loved speaking in tongues. Paul reminds them of the foundation of who God is and what God does. If you could speak every language in heaven and on earth, if you could prophesy every spiritual secret, and if you could practice generosity unlike any the earth has ever know, it’s all for nothing, if love is not the foundation. Love never fails because love is the grounding, the foundation, the support, and the framework on which our relationship to God is built. And it is God’s love that teaches us how to love one another in this world.

            Paul tells the Corinthians that the greatest thing in life is this love. He couches in terms of Faith, Hope, and Love. He finishes this whole chapter with the words, “And the greatest of these is love.” Why, though? Surely, faith is the greatest, because it’s what we’ve understood as the heavenly ticket for centuries, right? Well, faith, if we define it as our relationship to God, is only made possible by love…God’s love for us, and our love of God. So, love is the foundation of faith.

            But surely hope is the greatest? It’s the hope of something greater after this life that keeps us trucking along in our faith, isn’t it? Well, hope is limited. When we get to the point that what we’ve hoped for, our deepest longing and desire in the heart, is achieved, hope ends. It becomes reality. Love, though, is eternal. God loves us in this life, and God will love us into and through the next. Love never fails.

            The other important aspect of love is that it is never something we live out alone. The very nature of love compels us to care for the needs of others. And in this love secures us because we have practiced it, and love secures the other person because we have offered it. Love is never lived alone. Look to the story of Ruth and Naomi. Naomi could have demanded that Ruth and Orpah look after her and be beholden to her. But instead, Naomi knew that love couldn’t suffocate and strangle them all into poverty and suffering. Naomi released and let go her daughters-in-law because she knew they needed to go have families and be taken care of in a way she could never provide for them. This meant Naomi would be alone, and it would likely increase the potential of her suffering. But she let them go out of love and the hope things would be better for them.

            Love, then, is the context and the very power in which the difficulties and trials of life are met. Love always connects us with another and links our own self to other people. People quote the scripture not to forsake the assembling of yourselves for a variety of reasons, but here, we see that it’s because you cannot live in love alone. It bonds us and ties us to those around us.

            Ruth understood that. I will never fault Orphan in a sermon for returning home in order to get a better future for herself. Staying with Naomi was an absolute dead end in life in ai highly patriarchal society. Men controlled things, and a widow just had to hope and pray for some honor from the family. Orphan made the smart choice. But Ruth made the loving choice. Look at her promise and oath to Naomi, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!” And Ruth kept her vow.

            I know, from course of conversation, that Mothers’ Day is hard for many of you. Some had bad experiences with their mothers. Some have lost children. And some never had the opportunity. But what makes a mother is not defined by the physical act of birth. Having worked in the Juvenile Courts for a number of years, I can assure you that giving birth does not make one a parent any more than boiling water makes one a chef.

            Parenting, mothering, is defined by that love and nurture that is within your spirit, not within your body. When God looks at a person, God looks to the soul and the spirit, and Mothers’ Day celebrates those whose soul and spirit is bent towards the love and care of others, just as God has loved and cared for us. Naomi was not Ruth’s mother. Sometimes, there is confusion over this because their relationship feels so much like a mother and daught. But remember that Naomi is the mother-in-law, who has a different culture, different ethnicity, different religion from Ruth. Ruth had to find a way to live in Naomi’s world, which was totally unfamiliar to Ruth. And Naomi had to find a way to care for, nurture, and provide for a daughter-in-law who was not going to abandon and leave her alone.

            The Book of Ruth tells a powerful story of Naomi, who lost her children, lost her home, lost her identity in many ways. But in the end love holds fast for her and Ruth allowing them to find a new way together as a family. And in the end, despite the loss and suffering, God restores and redeems them both in a powerful way.

            Love never fails. In the darkest hours of Ruth and Naomi’s lives, love still held fast, and love never failed. It was love that kept them going when hope was lost, and faith felt like a fairy tale. It was love that held them together and helped them remain a family. For Paul, there was nothing more powerful than God’s love, a love which nurtures, helps us grow, holds us fast, and encourages us when life is dark and difficult.

            So, this Mothers’ Day, remember these two things: love connects us with one another, and love never fails. Sometimes you may be frustrated, flabbergasted, and at your wits end. Your mother might embarrass you. You might get sassy with your mom from time to time. You may be a mom to a furry critter and not human. Or you may find today a place of sadness. But in the end remember that today celebrates a love that nurtures, keeps safe, and holds us fast when we need it the most. Faith, hope, love…the greatest of these is love, and love never fails. 

            Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/339445435489366

Letters from Paul Pt. 4

Letters from Paul—Fruits of Spirit: Jer. 17: 5-8; Gal. 5: 16-26

         A friend of mine should have been a contestant on “Kids Say the Darndest Things” as a child. One Sunday he went to church as a sweet, innocent 5-year-old and asked for a prayer request for his family because his mom was trying to kill them. The shocked Sunday School teacher asked what he could mean. He said, “Well…Daddy said mom put enough garlic in the mashed potatoes to kill us! Pray for my family.” The next week, he came back and say pray for his dad. When asked why, he said an animal was hurting him. When pressed a little more, he said, “Mom said daddy’s hairpiece looks like a dead ferret. Pray for my daddy.” My friend’s parents were filled with the fruit of the spirit known as patience.

         One of the biggest struggles with this list to the Galatians is looking at it as a grand checklist. I remember my grandfather liked to watch Rev. John Hagee. At one point he did a sermon with this giant billboard. On one side was Satan and Hell on the other side was Jesus and Heaven. It had the sins listed on the Satan side and the fruits of the Spirit on the Jesus side. Then he proceeded to go through and define each of these sins so that you felt guilty of it no matter what. Then he went through the fruits of the Spirit in such a way that you felt like you had generally failed them regardless.

         Friends, this isn’t a checklist or a sliding scale assessment. Paul starts this portion of his letter with the most important words of this scripture, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives.” Too often we get caught up in all of these details. Am I selfishly ambitious? Did I cause dissension? Am I envious or jealous? Did I quarrel? Wait, I did, and oh no, I’m going to fail the holiness test because of this! These sins and fruits of the Spirit are meant to be examples. They are not your grocery list for Heaven’s gate.

         What Paul is getting at a bit more is how do we orient our lives? A pastor friend of mine said, “You can tell the nature of a person by what piques their interest the most in life.” If a person wrestles with addiction, they will bend all of their time towards fulfilling the desires of that addiction. If they wrestle with doubt, they will spend all of their time bending their behavior and doings towards filling the emptiness that an unhealthy doubt brings. But as people of faith, we are to be consumed by the goodness and the love of God.

         I remember a powerful demonstration during the closing arguments of a trial. The defense attorney put three cups of water in front of the jury. They were crystal clear, perfect cups of cold water. Then he talked about holes in the evidence and places where the witnesses and physical proof was lacking. To each cup he added some dark coffee until that crystal clear water was a dirty brown mess.  

         Paul doesn’t give us a checklist, but he does give us a call to ponder what fills our lives and consumes our time, and whether it is something filled with the goodness of God. That’s why he talks over and over about this competition between “sinful nature” and “God’s Spirit.” Paul was a very bright line kind of guy. There was nothing which allowed for a partial following of God. Paul was clear to say either you fill your life with God’s love and goodness, the Spirit, or you muddy the water, if you will.

         That’s why Paul wraps up with this: “Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.” The examples from our lives that we are living by the Spirit are shown in how we practice love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. As an attorney, I’m required to present evidence in court to prove my case. If we think of our claim to following Jesus as a case to be proven to the world, Paul tells us that these are the examples, the evidence and testimony, which show our faith.

         Here’s why we cannot live these as a checklist. We are too human to get them all right all the time. Faith is about living into grace and not aimlessly seeking perfection. There are times we may not be so loving and gentle, and our sarcastic snark wins the day. There are times we lose our patience. We can be robbed of our peace. And if you put anything with chocolate in front of me, I will lose all semblance of self-control. As the writer Oscar Wilde famously said, “I can resist anything but temptation.”

         Instead of a checklist, we have a directional guide. I spent a lot of time the past two days at the Regional Assembly pointing directions. Bathrooms are down the hall. Parlor is over there. Fellowship hall requires your walking shoes. This is what Paul says the Spirit does for us. As we seek to follow Jesus in this world, we orient ourselves to the direction where God’s wisdom and the Holy Spirit lead us.

         In a way, the fruits of the Spirit are both evidence and gifts. They are evidence in that they are the final product of what we claim to believe, the living testimony of our desire to follow Jesus. But they’re also gifts. It is a gift to follow peace and not hostility. It is a gift to follow gentleness instead of anger and selfishness. It is a gift to seek real, true, and abiding love instead of temporary affection and pleasure. It is a gift to live with self-control and not all the wildness of one’s youthful partying. As we go day by day, we learn how to walk in faith, following Jesus, where the Spirit of God directs us to go.

         As you know, we had the Regional Assembly here this weekend. There were close to 200 people here on Saturday. Between the week-long merciless training for the legal work and the assembly starting right on top of it, I’m ever thankful for the miracles of Ibuprofen and coffee. But there was also something powerful in hearing stories of faith, of folks who lived experiences where the fruits of the Spirit truly became the evidence of God moving in and through other people.

         There were points when a toilet needed to be plunged, part of the barbecue was late, the business meeting went a bit…well…somewhat…long. It would be easy to expect irritation, outbursts of anger, quarrelling, hostility. I’ll stop there because I am pretty certain there was no impurity, immorality, idolatry, or sorcery. But instead of grouching, there were people filled with goodness, patience, gentleness, love, peace, joy, and all these things. This is how you live in fellowship as God’s people.

         There may be times of testing. My friend, as a child, had a mouth that could test any parent’s deepest patience. If you said it in front of him, it was going to be repeated elsewhere. But thanks be to God we don’t measure our faith on the fearfulness of a checklist for perfection. We live in grace, and we live to proclaim in and through our faith and our lives the evidence of God’s Spirit within us. So may you go from here today to live the fruits of the Spirit in your family, in your community, and in this world.  

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1133988251130685

Letters from Paul Pt. 3

Letters from Paul: Maturity—Genesis 3: 1-19; Philippians 3: 8-16

            Not long after I moved to Macon for law school, a friend invited me to the early morning Ash Wednesday service at St. Joseph’s downtown. I was enraptured by the beauty and splendor of this church, the moving liturgy of repentance and confession for Ash Wednesday, and just the newness to this kid who grew up in a Baptist country church. I went through my day with the ashen cross still marked on my forehead.

            There was a Middle Eastern guy in my class at law school, whom I was friends with. My name ends in J, his in K, so we found ourselves near each other a lot in seating assignments. He looked at me in the library and said, “Hey, hey dude, why do so many of you all Jesus-y people have dirt rubbed on your face today?” I explained the meaning of Ash Wednesday the belief that without God’s hope we are nothing more than the dust we are created from, and we remind ourselves of that hope and love as we repent each year of our lack of love and faithfulness.

            He said that was really cool. Then he added, “I just thought you all got together and ate friend chicken each week.” I would have been offended, but I realized he was serious and that was his impression. So instead of a huffy reply, I just said, “No, my friend, sometimes it’s meatloaf too.” Spiritual maturity is a hard topic. It takes years of development and for many is a short-lived endeavor. Paul and Genesis speak to us about three aspects of spiritual maturity. First, don’t listen to every snake in your life. Second, we must press on. And last, we should work to find agreement, hard as that can be.

            First, don’t listen to every snake. I love this part of the creation story in Genesis. All of us who understand the hints and connotations of someone being a snake in the grass know exactly what’s coming when Eve listens to the sneaky advice of a snake. Yet, how often do we listen to the snakes in our lives as well? How many times do we listen to people around us who are toxic and ill-adjusted in life? How many times do we listen to our own intrusive thoughts that call and pull us away from the love and beauty that God intended for our lives.

            Paul writes to the Philippians, “Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Paul goes on to tell them that they need to filter out the garbage. I’ll give you an example from the opening story. When my friend asked about the “dirt” on people’s foreheads, the society we live in would have gone ballistic: “How dare he ask that? What kind of disrespect is this? He should know better! This brown-skinned guy needs to stay out of my business anyway!” From an innocent question, too many people move from being the voice of reason and wisdom to being the snake.

            A mature Christian speaks with the same gentleness, wisdom, and truth which Jesus spoke with. A wise friend once said to me, “The loudest, most absurd, most offended, and most overwhelming voices never come from the heart of Jesus, for who can imagine the man on the cross shouting like a maniac over every little thing in life?” Growing, maturing faith finds us ready to speak with wisdom, gentleness, instruction, and hope in every situation, just like the Jesus we follow.

            Second, we must press on. Paul writes to the Philippians, “I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. I have not achieved it, but I focus on this…: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.” One of the sneakiest ways maturity eludes us is when we get trapped in the past. Those who don’t mature at all shout and holler. But many of us do mature and grow, then stagnate. It happens when we get too trapped in the past to continue moving forward.

            A couple of years ago, I was helping a friend house hunt. One “as-is” home had a pool that had stopped and stagnated for years. There was still water in it, but there was enough thick, green algae on top that you could bounce a quarter on it. It was gross, stagnant, and (frankly) stinky. That cannot be the example of our spiritual life. You were meant to grow, to mature, to put away the past and press on to the call which God has given you and for which God has equipped you. Paul tells the Philippians that he…and by extension they…press on to reach the end of the race in this life journey on earth.

            Just like it’s easy to live on the defensive, it’s comfortable to live in the past. Nostalgia is a sweet, sweet trap. But God calls us to press on into what is sometimes a scary and uncertain future. Yet God is with us, Christ never leaves us, and in every trial and future struggle, God and our friends in faith walk with us. And as we mature, we realize that’s a point of trust with God and with the faithful around us. But in the end, we must press on and look toward the future God leads us into day by day.

            Lastly, we must learn to agree on the basics and let go of the pointless quarrels. Paul writes, “Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.” Here’s where things get a little troublesome for us. What are we to agree on? Paul starts that answer right in verse 8: “Everything else is worthless when compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus.” That is the foundation on which we agree and find common ground.

            So, then we ask ourselves a few questions: if we worship with guitar or organ or a mix, does that affect whether we know Jesus or not? If a person dresses differently, looks differently, has a few piercings or tattoos, does that change whether we know Christ or not? If a person, who claims to be Christian, votes Democrat or Republican, does it change whether we know Christ or not? If a person lives with a disability, mental health disorder, physical illness, sings off key, raises a hand in a rousing hymn, or heaven forbid laughs at the preacher’s joke, does any of this affect whether you can know Christ or not?

            At the end of the day, what we must agree on is following Jesus, for, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details. Too many of our worries and concerns come from listening to snakes or being stuck where God has been not where God is going. My Nana often says, “I don’t recognize the world I live in anymore, and I’m not sure I like it.” But the truth is, you don’t particularly have to recognize or like the world to continue telling of God’s love and believing that the love and grace of Jesus can still make a difference.

            I was recently told that a new friend was at the Allman Brothers museum and was asking about a church. The folks there had some high praise for how kind and nice this church is. Now, I doubt there is a whole lot of overlap between the Allman Brothers and a fairly traditional looking Christian church beyond the shared parking lot, but I daresay we’ve done something right if the Southern Rock museum and concert venue are willing to vouch for us as “good Christians.”

            At the end of the day, the true test of our maturity is how strong our foundation is. I’m going to say that Christians who have a meltdown over everything and get offended by anything have some growing up to do. Instead of listening to snakes, getting lost in the past, or bickering like children, may we instead come back to the foundation of our faith. We live in faith to proclaim the love of Christ that brings peace and hope in a broken world. May we never get distracted from that God-given calling. 

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1240678353559214

Letters from Paul Part 2.

Letters from Paul: We Must Grow—Psa.92: 8-15; I Cor.3: 1-11

            They say confession is good for the soul. However, I will not be confessing today. Instead, I will tell you a story of “If I had done that…” (wink, wink, nod, nod) if you get my drift? Almost twenty-two years ago, I was in a high school summer program which trended on the far side of boredom. The only thing I retained from that summer was 23 pounds of extra weight. Now, my roommate in the dorm for that program was one of the most obnoxious, pretentious, rude human beings I have ever met in my life.

            He smarted off in a way that really cut me hard one day. And here’s where we go to the hypothetical part of this story. IF and I say IF I were somewhat childish about it and wanted to get revenge, I would have put some of the saline solution for my contacts in his large bottle of Hawaiian punch he kept in the room to cause him to need the restroom quickly and often for the next day and a half. Now, I’m not admitting to this at all. I plead the fifth, if you will. And it’s a total coincidence that he got an upset stomach from the cafeteria food.

            As we continue our series on Paul’s letters to the churches, and what we can learn from them today, we see Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians about their need to grow and find maturity in life. We will have two weeks on growth and maturity. Paul spent a lot of time on the topic. What does it mean to grow? How do we grow? There are three things Paul tells us: Growth means moving our souls towards God’s spirit; Growth means seeking a place of commonality together; and growth takes work, sometimes hard work.

First, growth means moving our souls towards God’s spirit. Paul identifies the problem with the Corinthians very quickly. They’re childish. He says to them that he has laid the foundation for them of Jesus—the person, the teachings, and the grace, but apparently the Corinthian church stopped there. Paul identifies a few of the issues here, namely they argue and complain bitterly with one another, and have no desire to be God’s people. Now, there were actually more than a few issues in Corinth. Paul goes on to discuss violent divisions, sexual immorality as a religious practice, weaponizing the Lord’s Supper, claiming status from spiritual gifts, worshipping temptation, lying about the Gospel, and abusing love.

What it all came down to was that they loved their selfishness and childishness more than they loved God. And because of that they failed to grow in any conceivable way in their faith. A growing faith seeks an answer of grace and love in every situation. And for a very opinionated society, that’s hard. But a growing faith seeks to offer grace first, then everything else that might needed second, including accountability. Remember when you first went to church and believed in God it was because you hoped in a love bigger than yourself and what humanity could imagine. Offer the same to others.

In doing so, the bitterness, division, childishness, and selfishness that can harbor up within us will melt out of us into the love and grace that is supposed to be the foundation of our faith. When our souls move closer to God’s spirit, there we find grace and love from the start.

Second, growth means seeking commonality together. I realize that in saying we must work together in harmony for the sake of God’s kingdom might get me labeled all sorts of fun names in today’s society. But isn’t this the exact indictment Paul gives the Corinthian church? He writes, “You still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other.” Paul makes clear in multiple letters that contention, discord, bickering, confusion, and anything that is not peace and fellowship is not of God. You may draw your own conclusions about “Christian” politicians who revel in such things.

The problem for Corinth was they chose people who seemed strong and raised them up as their own godly leaders when they selfish not Godly. It was the childish following the selfish. Some claimed they came in Paul’s name, others in Apollos, others claimed power by their gifts and abilities. Growth cannot take place in the midst of fighting and chaos. If you need an example, look at the churches that constantly have fights. They don’t grow. They don’t minister. They don’t become mission-minded in their communities. They die. People leave, and they die.

Faith seeks a common ministry, common mission, and a like-minded fellowship to do the work of God’s kingdom. A fractured and quarrelling church can offer no real help and no real hope because it looks just as ugly as the world we need some kind of saving from. Growth means we work for peace, purpose, and wholeness in a broken world. Our denomination says those very words as our opening sentences, “We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a [broken and] fragmented world.”

Lastly, growth takes work. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.” There are two parts to this. First, we are all part of one ministry. But second, a bit of work is required to grow: planting, watering, weeding, nurturing.

Paul knew that the Corinthians had not put much effort into following God. Paul knew that they liked being petty, childish, and selfish. Growing is not easy in life, and they chose not to. Paul encourages them with these words, “And both will be rewarded for their own hard work. For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building.” Engaging in the work of growing closer to God and growing in faith brings a reward and peace in life.

If you learn how to work together and engage in mutual commonality, your life will be filled with people who help and work together. It’s a reward. If you sacrifice arguing, bickering, grudges, and so on, you will be free from the burden of that spiritual ickiness. Growing in faith can teach us a healthy and peaceful response to much of the rest of society’s messiness. Plutarch once said, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Too many of our churches and church goers have the Corinthian struggle. They are comfortable living at the foundation, and they do not want to do any work towards growing. Some even enjoy the drama of being the quarrelers, trouble causing, and problem-makers instead of problem-solvers. Faith is meant to be a place of growth with watering, pruning, and nurturing till our lives match the love and gentleness of Jesus and not the profoundly sick society around us.

We all have times where we act in a childish way. No matter how old we get, from time to time, a temper tantrum will creep up. I understand this. I for one cannot condone any hypothetical situation of revenge that involves giving someone intestinal distress now that I’m a mature and growing Christian. As we continue through life, may we never become stuck like the Corinthian church. Faith works when we grow into each day drawing closer to God’s spirit, finding a mutual sense of mission and ministry here on earth, and doing the hard work.

The Corinthian church lived in a childish and selfish place. And if we were honest, we would have to say too many churches share that same struggle. They argue instead of talking, they seek to support themselves instead of all humanity for whom Jesus offered grace, and they seek complacency over disciplined growth. May we never follow that same dead-end pathway. God has done and will continue to do great things in our lives and in our world if we remain committed.

Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1775839089561085