Exhaustion & New Life

Most days start out roughly the same – the alarm goes off for my husband, who has to get up and out before the rest of us, and I lay there, trying to get my internal gears running, while my body laments, “…but I’m still so tired.”

I know this is just a season – a season of parenthood for which we planned, prayed, and rejoiced. But just because something is a blessing, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t also very, very hard. And very tiring.

Perhaps you’re in your own hard season of life right now. Maybe there are more people demanding more from you than you know how to handle – the boss, the spouse, the parents, the children. You give and give and give until you feel like you just might give out under the tremendous pressure to be everyone’s everything with nothing left for yourself.

Or maybe it feels just the opposite is true – the house is empty except for the nattering from the television you keep on to keep you company. No one calls, no one writes, no one seems to remember that you are alive. One seemingly empty day blends into the other, with only a bit of sleep between to tell the difference. Life seems flat, dull, and so very tired.

This life is very, very hard sometimes. There’s brokenness everywhere we look, even within ourselves.

There are those out there who say that if you believe in Jesus, your life will not be so hard. You will be rewarded with prosperity, happiness, and good hair days if you say the right prayer to invite Jesus into your heart. They treat Jesus like a diet pill – you don’t have to change anything about your life to be a disciple. But that’s just not true.

God knows life is hard. God may not have intended it that way, since God created us for loving relationship with God’s self and plunked us down in a beautiful garden, where all we had to do was reach out our hands to eat sweet, perfect fruit until our appetites were content. But we were not content with that…

A clergy colleague of mine made the great point in one of his sermons that we all struggle with telling ourselves “No!” Maybe we’re very disciplined when it comes to exercise or we’re a model employee, but there’s usually at least one place in our lives where we struggle with our appetites. That’s where Adam and Eve got into trouble with the forbidden fruit and that’s the same place many of us find ourselves, too.

So where have your appetites led you? I confess that I have to work hard to rein in my physical appetite for food. It’s easy for me to eat well beyond the point of contentment because the taste or crunch or sweetness makes me feel happy. And I know many folks who struggle with things much harder and darker. Our appetites can rule over us if we are not careful, exhausting our own resources and drawing us away from God.

As we read in Isaiah, “All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat! Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk! Why spend money for what isn’t food, and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest of feasts. Listen and come to me; listen, and you will live” (55:1-3).

God offers us water bubbling up within us such that we will never be thirsty and will have eternal life (John 4). God offers us a sumptuous feast for our endless hunger and we don’t have to pay a penny.

And read the Isaiah text closely – the new life God offers isn’t necessarily full of fancy clothes or new cars (i.e. “what doesn’t satisfy”). Instead, God asks us to listen, so that we may live. Listen to the Word of God, who came into creation to teach and to heal and to embody God’s love as Jesus Christ.

When we’re so very tired, when we’ve exhausted our own strength, it’s easy to succumb to our appetites, to make bad decisions, and to suppose that this is all that life is. But life is so much more. If you need some newness in your life, get yourself to worship this Easter Sunday! We’ll be worshiping the risen Savior at 11am and 5pm and there’s always room for you.

Waiting on God

I hate waiting. There, I said it, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. We wait in lines and in doctors’ waiting rooms. We wait for test results and for traffic lights to change. We wait for our favorite TV shows to start and for our loved ones to arrive home.

So it was a surprise when I was following the readings for this Sunday to find the word that summarized the reading, Acts 1:6-14, was “wait.” I read it again, but that was the word the Spirit had for me in this season. So, I set out to overcome the glorification of busy-ness that our culture often promotes and find the way that Easter people wait.

The first memory that came to me was the mornings at my grandparents’ house on the lake. They have both gone on to glory now, but when I was little, I would often spend a good bit of my summer with them.

Each morning, I would stumble out of bed, blearily setting out to find my grandparents. Without fail, they would be out in the “arky” room, a screened in porch with a beautiful view of the lake. My Mumo would open her arms and I would climb into her lap, just resting in their soft conversation and the smell of coffee. Together, we would wait with the earth, watching the birds and squirrels go about their business, seeing the sun crest the tree line, all of creation coming to be a new day without haste or any effort from us.

Waiting is a common theme in our Scripture. Abraham and Sarah wait for the child who will fulfill God’s promise to them. God’s people are enslaved in Egypt, waiting for deliverance, then wandering and waiting for forty years in the desert before they enter the Promised Land. A persecuted and suffering nation waits expectantly for God’s promises to be fulfilled in a Messiah who will bring justice and usher in a new kingdom.

So it should come as no surprise that the first verse from the reading for Sunday, Acts 1:6, poses a question from the disciples to the risen Christ, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” The disciples are a part of a waiting people and they are anxious for the time to be now. Like a child on a road trip, they wonder, “Are we there yet?”

Despite what some would have us believe, God’s great acts in history don’t occur everyday or even frequently. Most of the Bible deals with real people living in the long gaps between God’s mighty acts. We can wonder why we have to wait so long, and get frustrated that we’re not there yet, but this is part of the mystery of our God. Jesus replies to the disciples, “"It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).

So, what is our part to do as we wait? Our reading has a few words of guidance from those first disciples:

1) Don’t just stand around watching for Jesus to come back. This earned the disciples an angelic admonishment, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

2) Wait for the Holy Spirit. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

3) Stay together and pray. “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together” (Acts 1:14a).

Bishop Will Willimon writes that “waiting, an onerous burden for us computerized and technically impatient moderns who live in an age of instant everything, is one of the tough tasks of the church.” Waiting implies that there is something that needs to be done that’s beyond our individual abilities. Something that can only be done together, undergirded by prayer and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So Easter People wait. We wait actively, not staring up at heaven, but engaging our lives for the sake of the gospel with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray this Sunday finds you devoting yourself to prayer, together with a family of faith. There’s always room for you at our house.

A Good Conspiracy

A few weeks ago, I attended one of my husband’s doctoral recitals at UNT. He is a saxophonist and, for one piece, he played with a quintet of other woodwinds. What struck me most powerfully, besides its beauty, was the fact that there was no director. Just six individuals, keeping an eye and an ear toward each other as they made music.

This was a good conspiracy. The less common definition of “conspire” is “to act in harmony toward a common end” (see merriam-webster.com). It comes from the from the Latin “conspirare,” from the root parts “con,” which means together, and “spirareto,” which means breathe. Originally, to conspire was simply to breathe together.

I know, my English degree is showing as we explore these word roots, but language is important. That’s why we spend so much time in the words of Scripture. Words have power. “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11).

 

God’s word goes out and does not return empty. In Hebrew, the word for wind/breath/spirit is “ruah.” Usually, you can’t see your breath. It’s intangible; you can’t grab it. When all is well, we don’t think about it too much. But the ancient measure between a living person and a dead person was breath – one had it and the other did not. 

In that recital, the musicians were conspiring. They were literally breathing together as they brought forth something more wondrous than any of them could have alone. I could see it in the movement of their shoulders and hear it in the rippling waves of sound that came from their instruments. And most magnificently of all, even as they breathed together, they listened to one another, balancing the volume of each part so that no one was dominant or out of accord.

There are so many lessons we can learn from the arts. It’s powerful to breathe with our fellow creatures and with our Creator. When I breathe with others, when I get down to the basic things that make us human – like wanting the best for our kids, longing to feel safe and secure, needing enough food each day – I am able to have compassion. I am able to see deeper than the picky, pesky things that separate us and see them as my brother or sister, struggling just as much as I do just to breathe sometimes.

When we breathe with our Creator, when we allow our spirit to be one with the Holy Spirit, who knows what we might do?! We become comforted such that we can offer comfort. We are set on fire for God, our souls restless for justice and righteousness. We are empowered to be change agents in a broken world desperately in need of good news that transforms.

This Sunday at the Krum Church, we’ll affirm that Easter people witness. It’s a word that’s gotten a bad reputation, as we might recall a street preacher with a bullhorn, condemning people to hell without even knowing their names. Or the awkward teenager handing out sinner’s prayer pamphlets which promise to bring eternal life without relationship.

Being a witness is our Christian calling and I encourage those of us who are shy about it, because we’ve seen it done poorly or hurtfully, to reclaim it! Being a witness is simply about being someone who has seen something happen and is willing to tell about it. I pray that you have seen the word of God work in your life. That is something to talk about!

One of our gospels states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:1-4). May the life that comes through Jesus Christ –abundant, overflowing, grace-filled – come into being in us. And may we have the courage to tell someone!

Living in Community

Come Sunday at the Krum Church, we’ll remember that Easter people live in community. Not just the superficial community some of us may settle for – the wave to the neighbors, drive through downtown, smile politely but keep the deep things to ourselves stuff of over-scheduled, underfed lives. We are made to live in community. It’s what God intended! God, who lives in community within God’s own self in the eternal relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, created us with the same capacity and necessity for love.

I found this wonderful story recently on Momastery, one of my favorite blogs: In carpentry, “sometimes an existing joist, which was designed to handle a certain load, becomes too weak. Maybe it was damaged by water or fire. Maybe it still has structural integrity but an addition is being constructed and the new load is going to be a lot heavier than before. Either way, now it is not as sturdy as it needs to be.

When a builder needs to strengthen that joist, she puts a new member right next to the original one and fastens the two together. Sometimes, two new joists are needed- one on either side. Do you know what they call that? A Sister Joist.”

We need our brothers and sisters and they need us. Sometimes something has happened in our lives, some tragedy or circumstance that has left us grieving and broken. Or perhaps good, new challenges have come along such as a change of job or the addition of children and the new load is heavier than before.

The common perception that Christianity is primarily about the individual and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is an insidious, modern heresy. Like the serpent in the garden, it whispers that we can be enough on our own.

But look at Jesus’ own ministry! Jesus didn’t collect a studio of students and only teach private lessons. No, he called together a small group, knitting them together in relationship with himself as well as with one another. The small group of the disciples and their rabbi was dynamic and life-giving. It allowed for questions to surface and lessons to be taught while ensuring that when the teacher was no longer physically present, they wouldn’t be alone in this life. Not only would the disciples receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, to comfort and empower them, but they would have each other.

It’s a good thing for all of us who call ourselves Christian to echo this example. If, for today, we aren’t the joists that need shoring up, then we are the ones called to stand alongside others, to lend our strength for a season. Because it all goes around in time. Those who lend strength today will need to borrow it someday. And if we live outside a deep community, our resources in times of need will be sorely lacking.

Some of us are blessed to find our first and best community in our families. This week also brings us Mother’s Day, an American holiday which originated with Anna Jarvis, a laywoman from the Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia in 1907.

While for some of us this holiday is a straight-forward obligation to call our moms or make sure we get a gift for the mother in our household, I ask us all to remember that for many, it’s not that simple. Motherhood, like any human relationship, can be a messy reality.

So, as you do your shopping or get your cards in the mail, consider praying for mothering relationships in all their forms. Those who have struggled with infertility. Those for whom motherhood was unwelcome or challenging. Those who have lost children to death. Those who have struggled in relationship with their mothers. Those who opened their hearts to children through adoption or foster care. Those who struggle to balance the demands of family life with work and other commitments.

Maybe Mother’s Day can be an opportunity to live a greater reality of what it means to be family. Jesus said, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33, 35). In this simple statement, Jesus reconstitutes what it means to be a family, calling us to extend the love we usually reserve for our nuclear families much wider. So, this week, consider embracing the Creator’s blueprints and live in community.

Living as Easter People

Almost two weeks ago, we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In our church, as in many, there was special music, lilies, friends and family – in short, it was our finest, offered to God in praise and thanksgiving for this miracle of redemption.

And yet, this past Sunday, many churches experienced one of the lowest Sundays in the year. It always strikes me as odd. We’ve just heard the good news, the best news, that our God is triumphant over death and offers us grace upon grace to live this life faithfully. Isn’t that the kind of thing that makes you hungry for more?

Or, is it like going to a rich banquet, with all the best trimmings and all our favorite foods, and when it’s over, we push our chairs back, loosen our belts, and feel no need for anything else. Is it possible to glut ourselves on the good news of Easter, letting its stores tide us over until next year, or maybe Christmas?

 

I certainly hope not. In our church, as in many traditional churches, Easter is understood not as one day, but as an entire season, called the Great Fifty Days. For fifty days we celebrate the resurrection, culminating on Pentecost, when we remember how the power of the Holy Spirit has brought the church into being.

To understand Easter as one day is to make the same mistake that many newlyweds make. They get so caught up in the wedding plans – the perfect cake, the perfect dress, the perfect music, etc. – that they forget about the hard, challenging, and very rewarding work of the marriage ahead.

So, we are called to live as Easter people all year long, not just on one Sunday. That’s what our church is focusing on through the Great Fifty Days. Last Sunday we walked with Thomas to affirm that Easter people believe, even though it’s often hard and messy.

This week, we’ll see how Easter people turn around. In Scripture, there are a couple of words used for the idea of turning around. The Hebrew is shuv while the Greek is metanoia. Both words are usually translated as repentance. Repentance goes beyond asking for forgiveness. It is a complete U-turn, a life transformation, a time when we turn our backs on old ways and live into new ones.

And it’s what God asks of us. It’s re-turning to God and focusing our lives on the source of all life and goodness. This Sunday, we’ll hear Peter’s witness, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:14, 36). The crowd was “cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized’” (Acts 2:37-38a).

Baptism is the public ritual that acknowledges our spiritual death in sin and the gracious initiative of God to birth us anew. As United Methodists, the first question we ask those who come for baptism is: “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sins?” It gets at this idea of turning around. We acknowledge the path we are on is broken and misleading that no amount of repair we might attempt can ever make it right. We renounce it, we reject it, we turn and walk a different way.

God offers us new life in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God offers us a new path on which to walk, the way of the Crucified and Risen One. We are baptized, cleansed, born anew by water and Spirit to walk in this new path of eternal life. And we are filled with the Spirit from that moment forward to make that path our own as we continue to turn from old allegiances or habits and learn how to live out the deliverance we have been freely given in Christ.

Easter is not just one day. If you’re looking for new life, if your ways aren’t working anymore, if you think it’s time to turn around and follow Jesus, I look forward to seeing you in church this Sunday. It’s a long road, but you have plenty of companions for the journey and a great guidebook.

Jesus Christ and His Reign

This Sunday, our church will make one final affirmation as we conclude our series on what we believe. We believe in Jesus Christ and his reign! It’s a shocking, countercultural statement to make, although most of us have lost touch with that.

But look at some of the story from Scripture – an embarrassing teenage pregnancy, a poor peasant couple forced to flee as refugees to Egypt after the birth of their baby, and King Herod’s slaughter of Jewish baby boys in a unsuccessful attempt to put an end to this new King. It doesn’t sound like a royal story. But this is the story of Jesus – a Messiah who goes to the poor and marginalized over the rich and powerful, a Savior who is rejected by the very people he is there to save, and a King who reigns from a bloody cross.

If we call ourselves Christians, this is the story we hold as true, and not just true, but the definitive bedrock of our life stories. At least, that’s what we say.

When I was in the ordination process in The United Methodist Church, which is a long and challenging journey, one of the questions I had to answer for the Board of Ordained Ministry was this, “How do you interpret the statement Jesus Christ is Lord?”

It takes going back to a governing system much different from our own to put understanding to this statement and yet it is the foundational affirmation of faith in the New Testament. Paul goes so far as to say that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

In the governing system of the ancient near east, where Jesus was born and lived, there were those in power, like governors and kings, and they were often addressed as “Lord.” To call a poor, homeless, rebellious rabbi “Lord” was to pledge allegiance to a very different system than the one the world could see and touch. It was to risk your life as a citizen of the kingdom of God, rather than a subject under rule by Caesar.

A great way to get rid of Jesus is to make him out as a distant spiritual possibility, like a great historical figure or a warm, fuzzy feeling you get when singing your favorite praise song. But when you recognize Jesus as the Lord of your life, when you allow him to take up room, stake a claim on you, and take charge, it changes the dynamic. No longer is God a convenient genie, stashed in a pocket until we need to make a wish, what often may pass for prayer. Instead, Christ takes the lead in your life, reorganizing priorities and changing things so that you are living as a citizen of the kingdom of God, no matter what your earthly papers may say.

When we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ this Sunday, we affirm that God is triumphant! God has the final say. Christ is victorious over death, such that we need not fear even the grave.

It’s a difficult reality to live out every day. On Sunday we confess Jesus is our Lord, but what happens on Monday? There’s a simple way to figure out where our allegiances really live – take a look at your calendar and your check book. Where do you spend your time and money? That’s where you’ll find your heart, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34).

So as we look forward to Easter Sunday, considering giving your Lord and King more than your words, more than an occasional Sunday morning presence, more than a logical assent to the idea that there is God. Give Jesus your whole self, your full commitment, and unswerving loyalty.

I’m looking forward to receiving our confirmands, those youth who have spent several months in fellowship and learning, into the kingdom. Through our ritual, they’ll renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of their sin. They’ll accept the freedom and power God gives them to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. They’ll confess Jesus Christ as their Savior and promise to serve him as their Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races.

They’ll be taking a bold step into the kingdom of God. I pray we all have the courage to follow!

The Power of Holy Week

Over the season of Lent, the church I serve has been affirming the basic beliefs we share in common with all Christians as well as a few distinctive things that make us United Methodists. This Sunday we reaffirmed that we believe in salvation for sinners.

It’s no coincidence that this affirmation comes on Palm/Passion Sunday. We step back in time through the power of scripture to witness Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, riding humbly on a young donkey, as the crowds spread their cloaks and branches on his path, greeting him with glad shouts of “Hosanna!” This is the same crowd that will turn, with the guidance of their religious leaders, into the mob that lets the brutal criminal, Barrabas, go free while demanding that Jesus be crucified.

It’s always a difficult thing to embody this turn in one short worship service. The tradition of the church has given us a whole week to walk the final days to the cross together, which is called Holy Week. And we’ll have a couple of services to remember particular moments in Jesus’ last days, but we also recognize that life is evermore complex, busy, and fractured. While the medieval church may have had every confidence in attendance during Holy Week, the same just isn't true today.

So on Sunday, we went from greeting Jesus with triumphant shouts one moment, to lamenting our own betrayal of the Son of God in the next. It’s right for us to do this because to leap from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday is to miss the drama of salvation that occurs during Holy Week. It’s like climbing from one beautiful mountaintop view to an even higher one, without experiencing the depth and darkness of the valley between them.

God, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, addressed the problem of sin that is real and deep. In some liturgies, or words of worship, Jesus is called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Growing up in a good-size city, I never had much opportunity to see lambs. But in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed something as I drive from my home to our church along McCart Street. There are sheep just east of the railroad tracks and it appears that many of the ewes have just had their lambs.

My son and I look forward to seeing them each day on our commute. They bounce on springy legs, finding joy in this new life. They explore the world, finding home and comfort near their mothers. But most of all, they strike me as so small, so fragile, so blameless and gentle. And this image, this vulnerable metaphor, is what our God – the creator of all life and savior of creation – choose to take on as God’s own way of being in Jesus.

I know God could have accomplished it another way. God could have behaved more like Samantha on Bewitched, twitching God’s nose and setting everything right again. But God didn't choose that way. God chose to continue to respect our free will, to come to walk alongside of us, to teach us and love us and ultimately die for us to show us that not even death can overcome God. If everything had been twitched into right-ness, I don’t know that we would have even noticed. Even as it is, many of us struggle to understand and appreciate just what God did for us. At least, I know I do.

I don’t look forward to Holy Week, but I know it’s good for me. Standing with the crowds, witnessing the sacrifice of my Savior, all with the knowledge of his resurrection in mind, makes me pause in awe and wonder.

Beyond Palm/Passion Sunday, we’ll remember the maundatum novum, or new commandment, at our Maundy Thursday service, reading the account of how Jesus, teacher and Lord, stooped so low as to wash his disciples’ feet. And on Good Friday at our service of darkness, we’ll watch as the light of the world grows dim as God incarnate consents to suffer and die.

We don’t have to pretend we don’t know the good news of the resurrection, but the light of Easter morning is so much brighter when we have waited in the darkness. I pray you find your way to the cross this week.