Resonate

Struck by Myanmar

It is a gray day in Indianapolis.  Sometimes the sun just takes a hiatus, and we come to accept that in our world.  Its hard to find much energy, though, during a gray day.

On NPR this morning they had a story on Myanmar and the fact that aide still can't get into the country.  People are dying because of lack of resources and for whatever reason some in the ruling group won't allow aide to reach them.  Kind of makes you want to cry out to God (see the Psalms for help).  Certainly makes for a gray day.

So do we have to accept that in our world - the gray days I mean?  I hope not.  When I was a kid on rainy days we went downstairs and built forts out of the couch cushions and threw nerf balls at each other.  The day didn't seem so gray anymore. 

As adults, we might be looked at funny if we build forts out of couch cushions.  But we can play with our own children on a gray day, making sure they know they are loved.  Or we could go out and bring a little light to the world by doing something for someone else.  Or we can say a prayer. 

Let's pray today for the children of Myanmar and around the world, where gray days come all too often.  Perhaps all our prayers together can create a little light.

Peace and blessings,

Brian

It Is Good

Sometimes a picture isn’t enough.  As powerful or moving as an image may be, capturing the original experience requires engagement of more senses if one is to feel the sense of awe and wonder.  So be a child for a moment and come with us on an adventure. 

Let your imagination put you in the safari van with us, the roof open so you can stand and look in all directions.  You’re bumping along a dirt road through the trees at the edge of the savannah, looking intently in hopes of spotting some animal that until now you’ve only seen at the zoo.  Suddenly you see a vague shape in the trees.  You’re the first to notice and excitedly tell the others.  Peering through your zoom lens you see it – a lion.  A tree-climbing lion, your guide informs you, and a rare sighting in this park. 

Something comes alive inside you as you see it – something deep and primal and wondrous.  You’ve seen a lion before, but never like this.  Some combination of the sound of the baboons running alongside the van, the exotic birds chirping, the running gazelles and zebras in the open expanse of the plain, the shallow lake covered in a sea of pink flamingos, the giraffes loping along, and now this tree-climbing lion – and suddenly you realize there is something beyond what we know in any human terms that makes this spectacular world we live in so remarkable.  Here is life and death, wildness and order, danger and hope, and exquisite beauty.  Here is a stunning reminder of the circle of life that God created, and “it is good.”   

A Full Refrigerator

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus..  – Philippians 2:3-5

                  

When I was in elementary school, my mom went to the hospital for surgery.  While I don’t even remember why or how long she was there, one memory is vivid in my mind to this day – a refrigerator full of food.  And not just snack food.  I remember cheesy potatoes and green bean casserole and homemade cookies and cake and applesauce and fried chicken and lasagna.  The day before mom went to the hospital the food began to arrive from families in the church and neighborhood, and the meals lasted until a day or two after mom came home.

            

While we probably would not have starved without the food (my dad was a master on the grill and I could make a mean macaroni and cheese), the support was such a blessing (and we ate vegetables).  Our family knew in the midst of a difficult time that people in our community cared; cared enough to do something.  Through the support of others, we knew as a family that we were part of a loving community.  For this I believe – at the core of human existence is a deep longing to be in communion with others. 

                            

I believe that we connect to community through service, by doing something for others and graciously accepting from those who wish to serve us.  Why?  Because when we care for others we overcome our selfish nature and draw into community with those around us, and when we receive we recognize that others care.  We realize that others have needs like us.  And when we experience that sense of community, we fill our deep longing for connection and there experience God, who created us to be in community with each other and with God.

                        

Think about a time when you cooked a meal for someone, or visited a shut-in, or helped to cheer up someone who was sick or in the hospital.  Or think of a time when someone served you.  In that experience you were connected to a community, reminded that you weren’t alone and that in the caring acts of individuals the hope of God was real.  In our Christian faith, we hear in these experiences the echo of the words, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink…” (Matthew 25:35).  In those acts of serving others we meet Christ.

                         

I believe that we need community-builders now in our world more than ever.  I believe we need people who care enough to do something, providing real and deep and personal connections for those who feel disconnected.  I believe that God calls us as church to be that community for each other and for the world.  Imagine how the world would look if we went out and filled everyone’s refrigerator (or pantry or cellar or shelves) with food.  That dream begins when we say no to a world and culture that says to look out only for ourselves and yes to looking out for the needs of our neighbor.   

                         

Prayer:

God, I know that sometimes I get caught up in feeling sorry for myself or thinking my needs are greater than everyone else’s.  I sometimes just want to be alone so that the world can’t hurt me.  Help me, Lord, to know that You love me and invite me to be in Your community of love and support.  Help me to have the attitude of Jesus and to reach out to love my neighbor.  And thank you, God, for those who have cared for me.  Amen.

Effect Questions

Who in your life has demonstrated God's love to you?

What do you need to "clothe yourself" with to best share God's love with others?

How do the actions of Christians in their community reflect on what it means to be a follower of Christ?

Effect - Colossians 3:12-17

A young man who used to attend our youth group is spending a college term in China. He emailed me recently and said he was amazed at how people there wanted to learn about Christianity.  He reported that they know little about what Christians believe, but that he was strengthened by one particular encounter.  He had a conversation one day with a man who had lots of questions about Christianity.  While the man didn’t know much about the Christian faith, he said that he knew a few Chinese Christians and that he was struck by their kindness and sense of peace and so he wanted to know more.  The young man wrote back to me of this encounter, “It's nice to know that almost wherever you go, there are little Christs popping up here and there.” 

   

Think for a moment about the effect we can have on the world when we live out the values Christ taught.  What an amazing invitation we can offer to others to experience the love of God that we have encountered.

   

In the letter to the Colossians, the author says to a group of Christ-followers, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience…”  Then the letter goes on to say, “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another…”  The author seems to know that this young community, with beliefs very different from other pagan religions, is going to be watched carefully by those who want to know more about these followers of Christ. Yet the author also must believe that this community has something extraordinary to offer.  Every action you take matters, the author seems to say.  How the world experiences the word of Christ is directly related to how you live out that word, how that word “dwells in you.”

   

That is an incredible responsibility.  If my actions speak for the faith community, what if I stumble?  Here the author turns to importance of Christian community, for the “you” where Christ dwells is plural.  The word of Christ dwells in the community of Christ-followers – in the church.  Which is why teaching and admonishing one another in Christian community is so important.  Those who have encountered God’s love seek together to be the effect of that love in their community.  They seek to guide each other to replace judgment with unconditional love, ego with Christ-like humility, and anger with patience and kindness – all that others may encounter the love of God through Jesus Christ through them.

    

Energy, encounter, effect.  When a drop of water with potential energy encounters a surface of water, the effect is ripples of energy carried out in all directions.  When we encounter the energy of God’s love, we are invited into Christian community.  And as part of that community, we become the effect.  God’s love resonates through us and sends ripples of blessing out into the world.  We are the effect.  What an extraordinary blessing.

Encounter Questions

Where do you encounter God in your life?

What is sacred space for you?

How is encounter with God challenging? exhilarating? joyful?

Encounter - Exodus 3:1-6

We like Hollywood endings in our culture.  You know, the kind where the hero struggles and suffers and works hard and does the right things and finally, in the end, everyone is happy and the hardships pass.  This idea has passed into our faith understanding as well.  When I was in college confronting a time of crisis a friend with a deep faith told me to pray and trust in God and everything would fall into place.  It seemed like good wisdom until things in life fell apart.  I had prayed and given control to God and then things began crashing in around me.  I know as a friend and pastor I’ve said the same thing to others, so I don’t fault my friend’s advice.  Yet the idea that faith will lead us to the perfect ending isn’t the whole story.  Such a theology causes people to doubt their faith, wondering if they didn’t believe enough or didn’t pray hard enough.  Sometimes we believe and we trust and life still is messy.  So what does our faith tradition have to say in the real messiness of life?

 

Some scholars believe that the final form of the book of Exodus was edited, the stories of the tradition all linked together, during a time of real messiness for the people of Israel.  The temple, the place of worship and community in Jerusalem, had been destroyed.  The people of Israel were dispersed from their own countries throughout the empires of Assyria and Babylon.  With the temple and so much of normal life gone, the rabbis, or teachers, of the community had to grapple with what it meant to be a people of God and where God might be as they faced the challenges of life in exile.  So they turned to the words of God, the stories passed down through the generations of God’s encounter with their ancestors, and they looked for wisdom and learning that came from those stories.  And through those stories, in the midst of their own trial and struggle, God’s word spoke to the messiness of life, and through them, God’s word speaks to us in our own trials and struggles.

   

Whoever edited the book of Exodus as we have it today gave a prominent place to this story of Moses and the burning bush.  All of the action of Exodus begins with this encounter.  What is fascinating is how this story, central to the whole book, speaks to a people exiled and without the temple as the place of worshipping God.  Moses is out tending the flock, doing what he did everyday, and this is where God encounters him.  Not in some holy place, but in the everydayness of life.  And Moses doesn’t have to find God, for God initiates the encounter.  All Moses has to do is show his curiosity, to stop and pay attention in the midst of his normal day to wonder at the burning bush.  And once Moses stops and wonders, the very ground he stands on becomes sacred.  Suddenly what is sacred, or what can be a symbol of God’s presence with us, is not limited to the temple, or for us the church.  God can initiate an encounter with us anywhere, at anytime, and anything can become sacred.

 

The story does not end at the burning bush, however.  This isn’t an encounter that simply has a neat, happy ending.  Encounter with God is not easy.  Moses protests, and God affirms, and then Moses is faithful, but the tasks are difficult and don’t always go as planned and there is trial and struggle and pain and disappointment in the rest of the story.  Other witnesses to the faith affirm the challenge of encounter with God.  Abraham is asked to leave everything behind.  Jonah is swallowed by a whale.  Paul is struck blind.  Did I mention that encounter with God isn’t easy? 

 

When a drop of water falls from the sky, it has energy.  But that energy isn’t active until the drop hits the surface of the water below.  The disturbance, while sometimes violent, is necessary for the energy to flow from the point of impact.  When we are curious like Moses, when we pay attention to how God may be calling us in our lives, we encounter God’s energy, God’s abounding love.  This encounter can shake us up, disturb us, and call into ways of loving our neighbor that we never imagined.

 

 

Yet while the Bible doesn’t promise the encounter to be easy, notice the legacy left by those who encountered God and were faithful to what God asked of them.  Their encounters are legendary because they were open and they let the ripples of God’s love pass through them.  Moses’ encounter didn’t lead to a Hollywood ending for him, but his faithfulness affirmed God’s presence to others and brought God’s blessing to his people.

 

The joy of a life of faith isn’t in everything working out as one plans, but in knowing that by opening oneself to encounter with God, by being faithful to God’s call, we participate in the blessings God seeks to bring in our world.  May we be curious enough to open ourselves to the encounter, and faithful enough to recognize God at work even in the messiness of life.

Energy - John 1:1-5

I passed by a church sign a couple of weeks ago – you know, the billboard kind where they change the message every week.  On one side it had the sermon title for that week.  On the other it said, “Join us and become a Christian.”  I’ve been wondering since then about all who read the sign.  I wonder what they think it means to become a Christian.  Do you have to do something?  Do you have to believe something?  Does it make a difference to be identified as a Christian?      

 

Some youth recently, in a major study of religious trends in America said it doesn’t.  Significant numbers of Protestant youth ranked their faith as a lesser priority than just about anything else in their lives.  Below family.  Below hanging out with friends.  Below school.  Below watching television or playing computer games.  Another author, in relating to the study, said that these teenagers, who identify themselves as Christian, see the church and religion as wallpaper, something that is there and must add something but no one is sure exactly what. 

Perhaps even more interesting from these studies is that while the church has little meaning for these young people, there is more interest in spirituality and deep mystery than ever in society.  People are drawn to anything that helps them get in touch with the energy of their lives and the world – yoga, the Hindu concept of Prana, the eastern idea of chi.  So is the church just wallpaper around the room where this conversation of spirituality is happening?  Does Christian identity have anything to add to the conversation?    

Something tells me that if the author of the Gospel of John were here today he would be screaming for us to read chapter 1 of his gospel again.  He’d be saying, “Hey, you missed it.  You got caught up in trying to figure out how the trinity works and you missed the point.  I was giving our community a sense of spiritual identity.  I was inviting you to claim the energy of our universe, the creative energy of God, as your own.”  

       

“In the beginning was the Word…”  This is where our identity as people of faith begins, outside of time and space, in not just the words of the Bible but the very expression of God.  And through this expression of God everything, not just Christians and not just humans and not just the earth, has come to be what it is.  God’s creative energy is everywhere, and as long as there is creation, God is there.

          

Have you ever had that experience of creation?  You know, the kind where for a moment everything stops and you just know there is some mystery beyond what we can ever know.  Take a minute right now and remember that your heart is beating.  Around 70 times every minute.  As you breathe in and out slowly, oxygen is taken into your lungs and there transferred into your blood.  As your heart continues beating that blood is carried to the heart and then out into all areas of your body, carrying food and oxygen and disease fighting cells.  Life.  That’s what is happening inside of you right now.  Is that not amazing?  God’s creative energy is right there inside you!   

   

John was concerned about identity when he wrote his gospel.  He needed the members of his community to know who Jesus was and what it meant to be a follower of Christ.  So he started with his own creation story.  And he said that the energy of the universe is of God and its everywhere.  And we know this because it became fully known through Jesus.  And now we have the story of this incredible, creative, life giving expression of God and it can be ours.  We just have to step into the light. 

   

Physics wasn’t my best subject, but I paid attention long enough to grasp a few concepts.  One is potential energy.  A drop of water that is about to fall into a puddle has potential energy, but that energy isn’t actualized until it drops and comes in contact with something where energy transfer can take place.  We, like that droplet of water, are filled with this spiritual potential energy, just waiting to come out of us as life-giving spirit from God.  That is our very identity.  We just need the encounter with the word – with the God-expression for us – and that energy will be unleashed.  Powerful stuff – this creative energy of God.     

 

So how do we unleash it?  There is another term in physics called resonance.  Resonance is this idea that a system will absorb more energy when the frequency of the oscillations of an energy wave matches the system’s natural frequency of vibration.  In other words, some systems are more likely to transfer energy than others simply by how they are put together.  Water transfers energy from a raindrop better than a table.  We are created by God to naturally absorb God’s love.  We just have to open ourselves to encounters with God, into what God is calling us to be, and God’s energy – God’s love – resonates through us.  If the drop of water is the incredible potential of God’s love offered to us, the ripples on the surface after impact are the waves of hope and peace that occur when God’s Word is allowed to resonate through us.      

   

You see, as Christians we claim our very identity from God's Word in and among and around us.  That is our identity.  That is the mystery.  That is where the awe and wonder come from in our life.  We are God’s children.  The very life-giving, creative energy of God is in us, is resonating through us.  That is what we have to share.  We’re not the wallpaper around the room where spirituality is explored, even if we have been acting like it as an institution that has forgotten what it means to be excited about the gift of God's expression that we’ve been given.  We’re connected to the very center of all that is – to God.  That’s exciting.

Resonate

We are so excited about a new worship service we've started at St. Luke's called Resonate.  We'd love to have you join us sometime at 11:15am in Luke's Lodge for the service.  It is a generation building service where you are invited to actively engage with the Bible.  The service features acoustic music, spiritual reflection, and a brief message followed by an activity or conversation that allows those gathered to personally interact with each other, with God, and with God's word.  We believe that God's word resonates through our lives, not just on Sunday morning but throughout our daily interaction with the world.  To help us to interact, the messages from Sunday morning will be posted here for comments and thoughts as the words continue to resonate in us during the week.  Join us on Sunday mornings and let God's word resonate in your life. 

What do you see?

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "The question is not what you look at, but what you see."  We look at things everyday, but do we really see.  Sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone, leave behind our routines and daily activities, and experience life in a completely new way to do more than look at the world around us as it passes. 

Yesterday we had the opportunity of visiting the Imani Workshop in Eldoret, Kenya.  The workers there all have AIDS.  Many have been ostracized by family and friends.  We took a wonderful tour of the shops, seeing how they make the crafts and products.  We looked at the workers and their products.  Several of our group were impressed with the beauty of their products and did some shopping, but we didn't truly see the worth of the products or the place.  Then we were invited to sit down next to these workers and produce the crafts with them.  We sat down next to them and rolled beads from strips of old magazines.  We created clay beads and animals.  We cut paper in the first step of the process to make recycled cards.  As we worked, we heard the stories of the workers.  We gained an understanding of the work.  We gained new friends.  And we were able to see.  We saw that these products represented hope and a new found joy of life.  We saw that the proceeds of the products go to support these men and women in living positively with HIV.  We saw in every bowl and bead and card a reflection of the precious people who created them. 

What would happen to our world if instead of looking at people as we pass by without really paying attention to the stories that shape them, we took the time to see them for who they are?  To know the stories that have shaped them.  In the Lion King, Rafiki takes Simba to a pond and tells him to look into the water.  When Simba claims he doesn't see anything, Simba tells him to "look harder."  And then Simba sees his father.  When we look harder, perhaps we can see God at work in the world and through the people around us.