Month: April 2012

Resurrection & New Life: Betrayed

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Resurrection & New Life: Betrayed
image found at:  http://mikefriesen05.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/dealing-with-lifes-great-wounds-betrayal/

Scripture:  John 13:21-32

In the scripture today Jesus is said to know that one of his disciples will betray him.  I want you to take a moment to consider this.  How many of us would ever knowingly keep someone who will betray us in our group?  I mean, if I know someone is talking behind my back or acting jealously (etc.) you had better believe that I will stop confiding in them.  If I know that a friend does not have my best interest at heart, you’d better believe that I no longer consider them friend.  My interests have to be important to my friends, right?  My needs have to be a concern for a true friend.

Christ does not define life or friendship as you or I do.  As Jesus approached the cross, he began to make it very clear that Life is far more than what we can see or experience.  In those last days of life, Christ showed us that there is more to experience than this lone world.  When Judas is invited to continue at the meal, in fact, invited to ‘do what he must do’ but quickly…Judas is shown that he is still cared for.  Jesus remained committed to Judas even when Judas was clearly not committed to Jesus.

There will be many times when we will betray our God.  It is part of being human, by the way.  Our God will be hurt and saddened by the decisions that we make and the things that we choose to do, yet God does not send us away from the table.  Jesus not only continues to eat with Judas, he actually dips bread and feeds Judas.  Jesus feeds the one who will betray him!?  I want to suggest that this is what happens for us at communion.  Communion is the act when we come forward in church and feed upon bread and juice as a sign of being fed by Christ….when it comes to that act, we are much like Judas.  We are imperfect human beings, yet God sees beyond us and our limitations.  We will mess up and betray God, yet God will still love us, feed us, commune with us.

During Holy Week consider what it means for us to still be at God’s table after all of these millennia.  What does it mean that Christ still communes with us?  What does it mean that Christ offers body and blood for us to partake in?  What does it mean that God does this knowing that we will commit betrayals?

Christ invites all of us, even though we will mess up, to walk with Him to the cross.  Christ invites all of us to journey the Easter  experience and to know his love.  Will you journey with Christ this Easter?  Are you prepared to be loved in a new way this Easter?

What Would Jesus Tweet?

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What Would Jesus Tweet?
Image found on HuffPost

I’m going to steal some words from Leonard Sweet today:  It’s not a question of whether Jesus would have tweeted or not.  It’s a question of what Jesus would tweet.

You see, Jesus engaged in the community of the day and, I believe, continues to engage.  It’s not a question of whether God would use twitter.  God is using Twitter and Facebook and Google…the church may not be, but God is present and active in community and our community is ever-shifting to the internet.

Today we have to ask ourselves a lot of questions about how we are going to communicate as a church.  We seem to think, these days, that the goal is to get our church on the internet and that will be ‘good enough.’ Maybe a website or a facebook page will get more people to come to us…where the real church is (behind a big stone wall).  No.  Not good enough.  We have to take our experiences of Christ into our online communities if we are to live out our faith authentically.

Do we remind people not just to “like” the church (which, btw, is waaayyy luke-warm) with our bulletin or do we ask people to check-in to show their friends they were at church.  Do we put an informational announcement out on our facebook page or do we RT (re-tweet) the pastor or church friend so that our followers become her or his followers?

What the “Googler” generation has grown up in (and what us older people may never catch onto) is a culture about relationships.  It is not just about what we say, but, just as importantly, how  we say it.  The church needs to delve into the relationship-building connections of the web.  We need to become more social and less institutional…and we need to find authentic ways to share God’s love with the people of this world.

Resurrection & New Life: Approaching New Life

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Resurrection & New Life: Approaching New Life
Image found at:  http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/st-edwards-stained-glass-window-recalls-resurrection-1428418.html

Starting today I want to focus on the Easter experience.  For those who might not be sure what that means…I want to focus on what it means to have new life.  Do you have a story or reflection on what it means to have new life in Christ?  Please email or comment below so that I can publish your reflections during the season of Eastertide (Apr. 8 – May 26)

Scripture today:  John 12:20-36 (CEB)

I want to focus, especially upon this part of the scripture:

Jesus replied, “The time has come for the Human One[a] to be glorified. 24 I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their lives will lose them, and those who hate their lives in this world will keep them forever. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor whoever serves me. 27 “Now I am deeply troubled.[b] What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. 28 Father, glorify your name!” 

As most of my readers probably know, by now, I have been re-appointed to First United Methodist Church in Normal.  In case you aren’t familiar with the United Methodist Church, it works like this:  Each year I am told whether I will be staying at the church where I am appointed or whether I will move.


Finding out that I was moving was a strange situation because everyone at my current church is naturally curious about where I am going (and when) and people naturally expect for me to be excited, but on the other hand I am leaving behind a community of people who I care about.  I think about Christ, in this regard.  I think about how mixed up Jesus and those who believed must have felt as they approached the cross.  It must have been exciting for Him to go on to God’s glory and yet heading toward one’s own death and suffering just simply isn’t!  As Christ moves toward the Easter experience, toward being killed, he admits that there is real trouble upon his soul.  He says, “What Am I supposed to do,”  “Should I want this or not?”  When you read this passage you can feel Jesus’ mixed emotions about what lay before.


We will come to many moments like this in our lives.  We will all have times where we wonder about the road ahead.  For me, I must worry about how I will work with a new church and if you think I look forward to packing boxes, then, think again!  Yet, I face the packing because it is what I must endure in order to experience a new life.  I must let go of relationships and people who I hold dear in this Pontiac-life, so that I can experience the new life (the Normal-life?).  God seldom calls us to turn away or to turn back, you see.  God calls us to walk forward and step out in new ministry.  As we prepare for Easter we must ask ourselves, “What is God calling me to do,” or maybe:  “Is God calling me to a new life this Easter (to do something new)?”



Resurrection & New Life: A New Blog Series

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Resurrection & New Life: A New Blog Series
Image found at:  http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/st-edwards-stained-glass-window-recalls-resurrection-1428418.html
A new Easter series from April 8 (Easter Day) – May 27 (Pentecost).  I have invited a number of friends, scholars, pastors, lay people, and even some bishops to share devotions about Resurrection and Eternal Life.  Over the next few weeks you will hear from me and many guest bloggers as they share about Easter from a variety of places, ages, and world views.  Be sure to come back often.  I’m already giddy with anticipation about some of the people I’ve lined up for you all!!!
If you would like the opportunity to contribute, simply send me a devotional (1/2-2/3 of a page maximum) and I will be glad to consider it:  scotteugene79@mac.com

A New Church Audience: Online?

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A New Church Audience: Online?
Image from flicker:  H Sundholm:  “This door belongs to Torshälla kyrka, i.e. the church in Torshälla, outside of Eskilstuna in Sweden.”

The days of “going to” church are nearly over.  No, those days have been over for some time, now.  The days when people looked for their own denomination when they moved into town and came knocking at the doors to get in were lost in the 1960’s.  There is a remnant, but the church has failed to respond to everyone else…

Today we have an opportunity to share the experience of faith with remarkable crowds.  Don’t believe me?  While I was preparing for and recovering from surgery I blogged.  Over the past 6 weeks my wife and I have averaged 1000 hits per week on that blog.  One of the posts, alone, boasts over 400 hits.  On a Sunday morning I don’t preach to crowds that large, sadly.  That means that if we take our faith to the web in dynamic, interactive ways there are untapped ways to share the Gospel.

We don’t need to advertise the upcoming rummage sale or fundraiser, we need to authentically share our experience of life and faith.  That is what changes lives.

Geodes

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Song of the Week Sunday

Rev. Cindy Watson shared this video on Facebook and I felt it was worth sharing with my friends as well.  Isn’t this a great song as we approach the transformation that is going to take place this Easter Sunday?  Wow.

Carrie Newcomer performs this song, “Geodes” with Gary Walters, Chris Wagoner and Mary Gaines at the Buskirk-Chymley Theatre.

Pain & Empathy

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Pain & Empathy

Recently I told someone that I’ve had a headache since February 7 and the person responded in a way that I felt they were minimizing me, “Oh, now, come on, Scott…” they said.  No.  I won’t come on.  Seriously, I’ve had a headache since February 7.  A two centimeter (in diameter) piece of my brain was taken out and my head has hurt consistently since.  Sometimes it feels like what I’d call a “normal” tension headache and other times I find myself completely debilitated.

Usually it feels like there is a rubber band connected between my temple and the back of my head and sometimes it feels tight and “pops” with pain and other times, especially after I’ve taken medicine, it feels looser and less-noticable.

I say all of this not for pity, but with a point in mind.  Even before I was a pastor, my life has always seems to intersect with people who were hurting.  That’s not a bad thing to me, btw, but there have been many people I have sat (or stood) with and heard words like:

“My back just always hurts”
“Every since my surgery I can’t sleep”
“My sciatica keeps me from _______.”

Before my own recent experience, I guess I tucked these people into my prayer list and must have thought “oh, that’s too bad for them.”  I could sympathize, I guess (I could feel bad for them), but I had never felt pain that wouldn’t go away so I couldn’t empathize.

Pain in my life has always been fleeting.  In a way, that is weird to say.  Before this surgery I might have told you that I had experienced pain, but I, now, don’t think I had.  Oh sure, I have had headaches from time to time and I’ve had spasms, cuts, bumps, bruises and sores…   but I had never before experienced pain that wouldn’t go away and pain that  doctors simply called, “expected.”  Think about it: that means that there is nothing to do about it.  Pain that just “is.”

What I realize is: many of the older members of my congregation, especially, know what it is to have pain that just ‘is.’  Pain that is expected and pain, for which, there is nothing to be done.  Before a few months ago, I would have prayed for these prayer concerns without knowing anything of what they have felt, but now I have empathy for what these people endure.  I feel a pain inside that doesn’t simply go away or subside.

I wonder if that is why Christ was so willing to die upon the cross for us?  Until God felt our human pain, until God has walked a short distance in our shoes, God could not entirely understand us:  could not entirely love us as God wished to.  Perhaps, by feeling our pain, God and humanity could dwell within one another and have wholeness in a way that we could not otherwise experience!

As we come into Holy Week and as we consider what it means for us that Jesus suffered, we need to consider what it means that we should love others as Christ loves us.  Does that mean that we must suffer as others suffer?  Does that mean that we must experience what others experience?  Does that mean, as people of faith, we must open up our hearts to feel ‘the other?’