A Mother’s Day Tribute to My Mom

My parents and I at my college graduation, May 1980

When my mom was born, Calvin Coolidge was President. (I am sure she would give me her look for saying that..)

She was born in the ‘hills and hollers’ of Eastern Tennessee. When I visited there with her, her mom, and my father in the summer of 1969 I understood what a ‘southern breakfast’ truly was… never did steak and eggs taste better than after sleeping in a down filled bed!

She was part of what has been called  the “greatest generation.” The day after she graduated from High School in 1943, she packed up all her earthly possessions and moved to Dayton, Ohio where the work was. Within a week, she had a job and became a part of an important part of the war effort – a civilian employee with General Motors. She left Dayton only to go to college and returned to Tennessee only a few times.

College was on her agenda after the war but she postponed it a year to help her parents buy a house using the money she saved for college. She never regretted doing it.

She had (and still has) high standards when it came to men. No divorced men, no smokers nor drinkers. Pictures of her in those days showed a blonde beauty who had, I am sure, numerous suitors. But she dated little and told God that if she was to be an “old maid” then so be it and she did not want to be a cranky one!

But in 1946 she met a family, including a 15 year old boy, who would become a key part of her life to this day.

Independent to the exasperation of her father, she secretly learned to drive after getting off work. He did not want her to do so and then refused to help her find a car. She asked a cousin to help her and she found her first car, bought with her own money, a 1950 Dodge (black with red interior and the personal car of a local police chief). Though chagrined, her father loved her car and liked the sound of the horn!

By the mid-1950′s the 15 year old boy had become a man on the battlefields of Korea and held a passionate interest in her. Much to her chagrin. “Why doesn’t he date girls his own age?” Well, she would find out that what he wanted, he usually got.

And in October 1955 the 31 year old library employee and the 24 year old tool and die maker got married and stayed married until my father passed away in 1991.

Time then flew by with my birth and the life that comes from living and raising a son and church and school and family… She worked for a bank, then as a private kindergarten teacher, then a public school substitute teacher for over a decade until she retired in the early 80′s. When I went off to college “two states, 300 miles, 6 hours, and one time zone away” she admitted that she cried all the way back across those two states. (I KNOW she would give me the look right now.)

When my father retired in the late 80′s they traveled to California and back with plans for a Pacific Northwest trip that never materialized because of my father’s sudden death from a second heart attack.

I remember how hard it was to leave her, alone for the first time in over 35 years, on that Mother’s Day, a widow.

But today, I left her recuperating from major heart surgery this week, her independence currently curtailed as she regains her strength. But as I neared home her nurse called me to let me know that she was awake from a procedure, talking her up, and that she wanted me to know that and also to know if “I got home safely.” Yup, that’s my mom.

My mother is an example of a woman in which learning and education has known no bounds. She is a person of great faith. Both have contributed to me creating this blog nearly 6 years ago.

So I salute my mother today and give thanks to God for her as we now navigate together a new chapter with uncertainty as to the next steps but with gratitude for the life we have lived together and apart and now closer (geographically and otherwise) together again.

Happy Mother’s Day mom!

Review of Karen Swallow Prior’s Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

“I thought my love of books was taking me away from God, but as it turns out, books were the backwoods path back to God, bramble-filled and broken, yes, but full of truth.”

Karen Swallow Prior has reminded me why I love reading and literature and why it has shaped both my mind and soul in the 35 years since I embraced it both as undergraduate discipline of study as a student, as a spiritual discipline, and one of my greatest loves since I was in grade school. Her book Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T.S. Poetry Press; Ossining, New York 2012) is an invitation for the reader to join her on a look back at her journey of faith and doubt, as she recalls her life through the study of literary classics through which God revealed Himself via the “backwoods path” of literature.

I resonated with her journey as she recalls her very conservative Christian upbringing with its singular focus on “the world to come” (the Kingdom of God) and it’s intolerance of popular culture. I too, grew up in such an environment, and though I have continued to believe in a gracious God of redemption and hope, I found it a struggle at times to reconcile faith with my wide ranging interests in reading.

As she shares her journey,  Prior takes the reader on a re-read of several classic novels such as Charlotte’s Web, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre and Gulliver’s Travels; the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, (“Pied Beauty”) and John Donne’s Metaphysical Poetry; and the unforgettable tragedy of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman through which she unpacks various episodes of her life and addresses the issues of intimacy, doubt, faith, the difficulty of compartmentalizing life, and how tragedy and comedy can bring new hope to life.

Using an overarching theme of ‘promiscuously reading’ for truth (via John Milton in his Areopagitica) to share her journey, Prior ultimately concludes that

“It was many years before I learned that repentance means a changing in thinking, not just a change in heart. During those restless years of unrepentance, I would like awake at night and think about the things I was choosing to do-all of them variations of my failing to live up to the expectations I had been given and, deep down, had accepted for my life. But I did not desire to change a thing. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, during that dark night of the will…

…Some nights I would sing over and over in my head a portion of a song I had heard as a little girl and turned into a kind of prayer. And some nights I would really pray. I asked God to give me the desire to desire to change. That was as close as I was willing to meet him, and no further.

And he met me where I was. In the books.”

What I liked about this book is both her simple honesty regarding her own journey of faith combined with a deep understanding of literature across several periods and genres and how her soul was fed at a far deeper level as a result. This is an honest and penetrating book written in a style for those thinkers who are seekers of truth with a capital ‘T’ not just for the mind but for the soul.

I rate this book a ‘great’ read.

Note: I bought a Kindle copy of this book for my own reading and chose to review it.

Sunday Sermon: Your Past Has a Future !

Scripture Passage – Matthew 1

Hands Passing Baton at Sporting Event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Description – First of 2013 series on Being Empowered by God

I begin this morning with a word that you will frequently hear over the next four weeks and throughout the year.

Empower.

To empower something is to equip, supply, and/or enable that something or that someone to accomplish something.

Now we can empower something or someone for good reasons and for bad reasons. We can enable people to fail or succeed, remain addicted or get in recovery from something, or to decline or grow.

A local church can be equipped, supplied, and enabled to succeed or fail; grow or decline; be effective or be ineffective.

God wants the local church, including our church, and Christians, including us, to be equipped, supplied, and enabled to grow. He does not want us to fail. (Amen? Amen!)

He wants to empower us so that His good work is done in our lives and in the lives of those we reach out to on a daily basis. Our mission field is outside the door of this church.

As such I believe that God has given us the following things to help us live and be empowered to serve Him:

Our salvation through His saving grace

Scripture

The Holy Spirit and the Spiritual gifts which come from Him

Our skills and abilities.

The question becomes, “Do we/Do I choose to live empowered or not?”

This is the first month of 2013 and as I prayed about what I was to share with you in the opening weeks of this year, the theme of “First Chapters for First Months” came to my mind. As I pondered this theme I took time to go through the Bible and scan all 66 first chapters.

Then I prayed some more and I pondered some more and thought (some more) about this word empower (which is my focus word for this year – kinda like a new year’s resolution) and re-reviewed the chapters again.

And these five chapters made the cut because, I believe, they speak to both barriers and opportunities to live empowered.

Matthew 1

Deuteronomy 1

Psalm 1

Revelation 1

Philippians 1

So this morning I begin with a chapter, the first chapter of the New Testament and one of ‘those’ chapters – the ‘begats.’ However, I want us to read and hear this chapter from this perspective this morning:

God can, and does, use anyone to accomplish His mission and purpose. Our past, with its failures, its victories, its joys and its pains, and our future with its potential and purpose has a place and future in God’s hands and for God’s purposes.

Here is Matthew 1 from the New Living Translation:
(To read the passage, click on this link
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%201&version=NLT

The latter fourth of this chapter, verses 18-25, are the ones we most often hear and read. But first three fourths also has something to say to us as well.

To read verses 1 through 17 is to get an over view of Old Testament history in a very compact way and I think that if one was to spend time studying each of these persons listed, a clearer understanding of it would occur. Some of these people are described in great detail in the Old Testament. They have had many sermons and even books written about them and their faith journey. Their success and failures with following God are well documented.

Others of them have been presented as models of faithfulness in the midst of tough times. And yet another group represented in this passage are basically unknown to us.

One of the ways that we can study this passage is by using the generational groupings as defined in verse 17. There are three of them and they reflect three different and important Old Testament historical periods.

The first group contains a group of people who are familiar to us because much is written about them or they are involved in some important moments. This is the group of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Boaz, and King David. But let us not forget Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth as well! This makes up the patriarchal period followed by the time of the judges and then into the early years of the ancient Israelite monarchy.

I have selected three persons, one from each group to illustrate the point of God using our pasts as part of His current and future purposes.

 The first person is Jacob.

A twin who talked his famished older twin brother, Easu into giving him his birthright and then, with his mother’s assistance and direction, deceived his father into thinking that he was Easu and received the all important blessing. The result was chaos, bitterness, rage, that required Jacob to leave home. At least fourteen years passed before he came face to face with his brother and they were reconciled but not before he came face to face with God and was no longer Jacob the Deceiver but Israel, God fighter, because “you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

Jacob was a stinker.

He was a trickster.

He was mamma’s favorite!

And he left a trail of conflict and bitterness behind him as he moved through life. But, God would use him, letting his mother know, in a prophetic moment prior to his birth, “your older son will serve your younger son.”  Eventually he came to grips with who he was, a deceiver, a gypster, and he had to finally face the truth about himself. But God used him. He was part of the human line through which Joseph, the man who served as Jesus’ earthly father. He serves an example to us that no matter how we have lived our life, God can still use us to accomplish his purpose – even though we may walk or live with a ‘limp’ because of our choices.

The second group, from King David through the Babylonian exile, is a list of kings, of a united Israel and then the two divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They are an interesting group.

Some were wonderful rulers and others were awful and even downright evil. And some were a mixture of both.

 One who has always caught my attention was King Hezekiah. He ruled the Southern Kingdom (which were ruled by the descendents of King David) and we can read about him in 2 Kings 18 and 2 Chronicles 29.

Here is a portion of what was written about him:

“Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became the king of Judah, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.  He did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, just as his ancestor David had done. In the very first month of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah reopened the doors of the Temple of the Lord and repaired them.” 

Hezekiah’s father was Ahaz who significantly altered the Temple to accommodate the practices of the pagan Assyrians’ who were next door by having a new altar made that was just like the pagan Assyrians. Ahaz also required one of his sons to walk between two fires which was a pagan worship practice as well.

The southern kingdom suffers under Ahaz until his death. Then his son Hezekiah becomes king. What is he going to do?

He did what was right and he restored the temple in Jerusalem to the way it was supposed to be and reinstituted worship of the one true God. I have a sense that there were a lot of nervous people when Hezekiah became king. He had a choice in how he was going to govern. He chose well.

But while king he faced some challenging circumstances. He faced invasion from the Assyrians who were now the dominate power in the region and desperately sought God to deliver the tiny nation which happened. Then he was faced with a serious life threatening illness to which he appealed to God for healing and was healed.

Hezekiah grew up in a family that would perhaps be labeled dysfunctional and even abusive today. He faced a leadership and a health crisis. But he kept on believing that the one true God of Israel would deliver him and God did. I think that he serves as example of one who chose to serve God in spite of his upbringing and the pressures he faced that he could have chosen to deal with in a way that would have taken him away from God.

Then there is Zerubbabel, mentioned in Matthew 1:13 and part of the group mentioned after the Babylonian exile.

There are several Zerubbabels mentioned in the Bible but this is the one referred to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and was believed to be the grandson of King Jehoiakim. In Ezra 2 we read “Here is the list of the Jewish exiles of the provinces who returned from their captivity. King Nebuchadnezzar had deported them to Babylon, but now they returned to Jerusalem and the other towns in Judah where they originally lived. Their leaders were Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, and Baanah.”

       70 years have passed since the southern kingdom of Judah had been conquered and now Israel is about to be repatriated and Zerubbabel is among the leadership of the returning Israelites. And what Zerubabbel does when he returns is to help start the rebuilding of the Temple altar in Jerusalem so they again have a place of worship.

But as time passes Zerubabbel and the others are opposed by a group of people who did not wish to see the temple rebuilt. They basically get the equivalent of a court injunction to stop the work. But when the prophets Haggai and Zachariah show up in Jerusalem their prophetic words empower Zerubabbel to re-start the process. It is thought that twenty years went by before the work was complete

He too, encountered difficulties and challenges that probably stretched and tested his faith. But he gave of his skills and talents and was used by the Lord to help rebuild the Temple after 70 years of exile.

He serves as example of using his skills and abilities in difficult situations to serve God.

So what does all of this mean for us? How does this related to the issue of empowerment.

At ‘A’ certain point and in some instances certain points, these three men chose to obey the Lord and push forward. They serve as an example to us of faithfulness to the Lord through all kinds of situations and circumstances. As a result, they were empowered to serve the Lord in some difficult situations.

The image of the baton truly represents want it means to be empowered and this year I am handing off some batons to you. Each of us are empowered in some way and for some area of ministry and mission to my single goal for this year is to help you discover where you are empowered to serve and empower you to do so. Will you take your baton this year?

Amen.

Hump Day Prayer for the Wounded

We want to pray ‘Good and gracious God’  today but some cannot because they have difficulty seeing You as good and gracious when their bodies and their souls are deeply wounded.

So we pray to You with that awareness this day.

But we pray because we do think that Your goodness and Your graciousness does matter and can matter for those so wounded.

We come to You on their behalf and ask that You would place Your grace, love, and mercy within their mind, heart, and soul and as You do, they would experience them in a helpful way.

We pray for those who wounds, both physical and inner, came while on the field of battle no matter if it was a decade ago, recently, or five, six, or seven decades ago. Grace these men and women with Your presence even now though the physical pain and memories are fresh or they are of long ago.

For those Lord who deal with wounds from domestic violence, inner and outer, O God help them to experience Your safe and powerful love and grace now and in the days ahead. Renew their spirits and souls with Your powerful grace and mercy.

For those who are wounded because of accidents, help them Lord as they deal with healing that is coming this day and as they deal with healing that has never come. Remind them in some way great or small, they still matter to You.

Dear Jesus, for those who are wounded because of addiction, theirs or someone else, help them to have the capacity to be honest and to walk through the pain they have caused and has been done to them so that they move forward in life.

And in all things, move in their minds, by and through the power of Your Holy Spirit, to help them think and believe that You are a God who is not limited by their wounds but because You were wounded as well, understands what that means and that there is redemption and possibility because of Your wounds.

Show them Lord Your wounded hands and feet and…

Your wounded, gracious, and loving heart.

Amen.

Sunday Sermon: Pray Without Ceasing

Scripture Passage – Luke 11:1-13; Matthew 6:5-13

Description – First sermon of 2012 Lenten Series

 Today is the first Sunday of Lent.

I know that for some of us here Lent has been a part of our worship experience since childhood because we were raised, or at least acquainted with, it. For others of us Lent was never a part of our worship or church experience.

To me, these 40 days prior to Easter, have become a time to not just give something up but to add something to my life so that I am walking more faithfully with God. This requires what Joan Chittister calls “a purging of what is superfluous (or unnecessary) in our lives and the heightening, the intensifying, of what is meaningful.”

We have taken time the past six to seven years to spend the six weeks prior to Easter Sunday reflecting on Christ’s death in a focused way. This year I have really felt led to change the focus, not away from Christ to be sure, but toward the practices or disciplines of faith that can help us make our walk of faith in Christ more consistent and ever more meaningful and helpful.

Now when some people hear the word discipline they think of punishment as in, “because you misbehaved, I am going to discipline you.” That is not what is meant by its use in this series.

A discipline is a practice. It is a focused practice.

And when I think about such focus, I am reminded of the stories told by an NBA shooting coach who came, and perhaps still comes, to our local Y every year for a shooting clinic for budding basketball players. He both told, and shared, some of the shooting drills that he observed Michael Jordan use, when he would show up several hours before a game, to get ready to play. It was practice and it was discipline that paid Jordan well as a player.

 

Three important disciplines or habits we can call them are the focus of this series. This week and next, we are going to focus on discipline of prayer.

The following two weeks we will shift our focus to the discipline of fasting. And I am telling you that fasting is not necessarily entirely abstaining from something for long periods of time, either. It will be a good two week series.

And then for the final two weeks, our focus will shift once again to the practice of sharing our faith. For many, if not most of us, this is probably the greatest fear we have when it comes to our faith. We are afraid of being made fun of, of getting in trouble at work, of being rejected, and the like. But sharing our faith is not a ‘sales pitch.’ It is a conversation that people want to have at times when you least expect it.

 But for now, we focus on prayer.

If you want to learn to pray, you start praying.

It is like wanting to ride a bike. You learn to ride a bike by getting on and learning to ride one.

 

The impulse to pray is one that is reflected in the gospel accounts in the passage we have come to call “The Lord’s Prayer” passage. The disciples, at least in Luke’s account, come to Jesus and simply ask Jesus as noted in Luke 11:1 “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

Jesus then gives them a prayer that serves as a model to pray and has become a prayer that is prayed every Sunday somewhere on this earth.

Jesus said, “This is how you should pray:

“Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
Give us each day the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation.”

In Matthew 6 this prayer appears as part of what is known as “The Sermon on the Mount” and within the context of Jesus telling them to pray privately and not publically in the way they were observing others to pray.

“When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

“When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.

Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!  Pray like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.^”

 

But it is what Jesus turns to in the Luke passage, after verse four, which forms the focus of this morning’s message.

“Then, teaching them more about prayer, he used this story: “Suppose you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to him, ‘A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.’  And suppose he calls out from his bedroom, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can’t help you.’ But I tell you this—though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.

       “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

This is an illustration of one of the most vital aspects of prayer: persistence. Or, as it is translated here, “shameless persistence.”

We are to persist in prayer.

Paul simply says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “Pray without ceasing.” And then he goes onto say, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the Spirit.”

Prayer is vital in doing these things. To discern God’s will, to keep hearing and responding to the Spirit, require us to keep praying. Day in and day out. Week in and week out. Month in and month out. Year in and year out. Decade in and decade out.

How then do we persist in prayer?

Two ways.

First, we make the choice to persist in prayer and second, we keep persisting by praying.

How do you learn to ride a bike? How do you learn to drive a car? How do you learn a new subject or skill? How do you learn to stay married? How do you learn to keep following God?

You make the choice to do so… and keep doing so.

Woody Allen has said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

He’s right, you know!

I think that we need to see, understand, and act on the link between persistence in prayer and the Biblical idea of perseverance. Dictionary.com defines perseverance as a:

“Steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.”

In James chapter 1 we read these words:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

I know with a reasonable certainty that none of us present this morning likes to be tested or go through a trial. It is unpleasant and discomforting. It is hard and even, in certain situations, painful.

But I remind us of what 2 Peter 1:5-7 says, “…make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.”

How does prayer fit into all of this?

Prayer becomes part of the persistent practice of waiting on God to help us get through tests and temptations. We use prayer when the going gets tough. When our patience runs thin; When we are starting to get angry way beyond the level of suitable frustration; When we are tempted to give up and find a shortcut to a situation that cannot be shortcut-ed.

Prayer gives us strength to do what it is necessary. To stand strong and wait upon the Lord when we are experiencing difficulties. (6a) Prayer is not a crutch. Prayer is a Jedi Light Saber!

We pray to do the right thing when it is hard: change jobs, end a relationship that is not safe, go to a counselor for help with a problem, or allow a child to appropriately (and safely) learn a lesson they need to learn.

Prayer is a practice that can be accessed at anytime and anywhere. We can pray with our eyes open as we drive down the road for the driver who is holding up traffic in the left lane! We can pray for the co-worker who is struggling to keep up with work, our work, while they struggle with a family problem on the phone that requires their attention.

But how Jim, how do we pray?

Here are two suggestions that I conclude this message with this morning.

Take two chairs and place them facing one another. In the one chair envision a person that is important to you, a family member, a friend, co-worker, whom ever, that you want to pray for.

In the other chair envision Jesus sitting in it. He is intently focused on the other person. While standing to the side of them, turn to Jesus and begin to express your concerns and desire for the person in the first chair.

This is intercessory prayer and it is vital and essential.

Another thing to do, comes from a suggestion made by the late Keith Miller. He would cup his hands together and, as part of his praying for another person, envisioned Jesus standing in front of him with his hands cupped together as well. Miller would then place whomever he was envisioning in his hands into the hands of God.

Again this is intercessory prayer but I also think it illustrates something about prayer that we need to acknowledge. We really do not often know how to pray for someone or what to pray for them. A simple act of truly turning them over to God is sometimes the best thing to do.

Do not give up praying. Do not be discouraged by your feelings of inadequacy.

To pray without ceasing is to pray when it is easy and when it is hard. When the words roll off the tongue and when the fall out of our mouths and drop to the ground. When the intention of our heart is clear and when we are in the midst of emotional turbulence. We keep praying because God keeps listening.

Amen.

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• Sermon/Passage Outline: Luke 11:1-13 (allisonquient.wordpress.com)

Sunday Sermon: Love: What do we do with it and without it?

Scripture Passage – 1 Corinthians 13

Description – Sermon for February 19, 2012

for audio of sermon click on the link

What might be the greatest love story in history? I am not talking about God and us right now. I am talking about the love between two people.

Some go back centuries and say Anthony and Cleopatra was the greatest love story in history. He was the leader of the Roman Empire and she was the leader of the Egyptians. Talk about your power couple.

Some turn to the movie screen and say that Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, the main characters of Gone With the Wind, were the greatest love story of all time.

Others to more recent history and talk about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Victoria was the Queen of England from 1837 to 1901. Albert died in 1861 and she mourned his passing until her death 40 years later.

 And then in the field of science there was the marriage of Pierre and Marie Curie. They won a Nobel Prize for Physics together and then she won a second seven years after his death in Chemistry. They discovered radioactivity together and when Pierre died in 1904 Marie took his place as a teacher at the Sorbonne, a historic university in Paris and continue to honor his legacy as a scientist until her death in 1934.

The interesting thing about these stories is that all contain great tragedy which raises lots of questions that I am not going to address this morning. Yet romantic passion was very much a part of each of these stories.

 This past week was Valentine’s Day. Does anyone here know who Valentine was or why we celebrate Valentine’s Day? Seriously?

There are many different views on who Valentine was and the origin of the day. But a common theme is that martyrdom (dying for the Christian faith is a theme in many of these stories.  (Kinda kills the romantic notions doesn’t it?)

This morning, post-Valentine Day and between our initial 2012 series on ways to study the Bible and our Lenten series on prayer, fasting, and evangelism, I want to spend time walking through 1 Corinthians 13 which is one of, if not the most, quoted chapters of scripture, perhaps second only to Psalm 23. But I want us to view it this morning from the perspective of love being the central value of our faith AND the practice of it as well.

 Here is the entire chapter from The Message version.

“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

           Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

           But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”

So what is love and what do we do and not do with it?

First a bit of context for this morning before we take a closer look at chapter 13 and attempt to answer this question.

This chapter is introduced at the end of chapter 12 (that ends with “But now I want to lay out a far better way for you”) after St Paul, who is writing this very intense letter to a very conflicted, but full of potential, church begins to address numerous problems that need to be squarely faced. They were problems which affected the morale and life of the congregation and the relationships within the congregation.

Chapter 12 deals with the issue of congregational unity AND harmony with the focus on the fact that God has gifted the church with a variety of abilities and gifts much like a human body is gifted with eyes, ears, feet, and hands which bring unity through a harmony of diverse parts working together. But when he gets to the end of chapter 12 he makes his main point in the chapter.

“…it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that Christ’s church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It’s not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts.

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.”

And he launches into chapter 13 concluding, as we have read, about the supremacy of love as an ultimate pursuit of faith.

And then he goes on to address the next issue the controversial issue of tongues or more specifically praying in an unknown language in public worship in chapter 14 he says, “Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does.”

So between the issue of place of service and accepting one’s place in the life of the church and essentialness of order in worship, Paul brings a much needed focus about the ultimate value and importance of love to bear on this situation. Why? Because to love, love well, and love correctly, is the bond that must be made for the church to come together, stay together, and grow together. Love is more than an emotional thing. It includes emotions and it affects emotions but it is more than emotions. Love is a choice. Love is an attitude. Love is a motivation upon which we faithfully function as followers of Christ.

The opening verses of our main text speak of love as a motivational or attitudinal issue. Let me offer a re-phrase of the opening verses of this chapter as a way to understand this:

“Even if I am the most caring, knowledgeable, and influential person on the entire earth and even if I leave a legacy of sacrifice and commitment to all the right things, if I do not really care about those I serve or lead, it means that I am simply a performer and not a servant.”

Love is an attitude that must underlie everything we do in Jesus’ name.

Paul is telling the Corinthian church to ask themselves, “Why are you doing this?” Are you speaking, teaching, and/or leading out of love or out of a selfish or prideful heart?”

The kind of love that Paul is getting at is not a ‘me first’ love. The kind of love that Paul is getting at is an ‘others first’ love.

This is made clear as we move into the middle of the chapter where Paul says, among other things:

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,

I know, and you know, that last Tuesday is one of the hardest days for some people, and not just single people, during the year. I read in my Twitter feed other Christians expressing frustrations and even hate for the day and what it has come to mean. The word ‘shallow’ was often said.

Why is that?

Maybe one reason is that it has to do with unrealistic expectations that have come to be associated with this day. Maybe the pain of broken relationships from breakups, both before and after a wedding, is another reason.

I think that a big reason is because we have exclusively linked love with romance. Love is more than romance. Romance is important to be sure and we need to celebrate it. But romance is a spark for love and commitment and not a steady burning fuel. That requires a deeper and more deliberate decision to love.

And the love of which Paul speaks in this chapter is a love that goes way beyond romance. It is a steady fuel kind of live. It is a commitment to the long term and the health and well-being, spiritual and otherwise, to another person for their benefit.

How then do we start expressing this kind of love?

First, we start with a attitude check by with a simple question to ask: Why am I doing this to advance what I want or what God wants?

The opening segment of our text for this morning serves as a reminder to check our motivations. If I speak with…but don’t love? But motivations are often hard to sift through. We do things for many different reasons but becoming aware of our motivations is essential to share the love God in the right way. The late Keith Miller addressed the issue of mixed motives and said “… this voice that we hear over our shoulders never says, “First be sure that your motives are pure and selfless and then follow me.” If it did, then none of us could follow. So when later the voice says, “Take up your cross and follow me,” at least part of what is meant by “cross” is our realization that we are seldom any less than nine parts fake. Yet our feet can insist on answering him anyway, and on we go, step after step, mile after mile.”

The middle part of the chapter is a checklist for us to use in determining our attitudes:

 Love never gives up.
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, 

Trusts God always,

The final thing we need to do is to become a maturing adult with Christlikeness as our goal. I say maturing and not mature because to become like Christ is an ongoing process. We never fully arrive and Paul reminds of this when he says, “We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.”

I am still growing in my faith and in my character. The two are deeply and profoundly linked together. The more I determine to be like Christ the more “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control” become targets at which I aim to hit so that my character reflects Christ in this area. I still have a ways to go.

So what is the greatest love story in history?

Let me suggest Dolores Hart as an example. Next Sunday night she will be in attendance at the Oscars. It will her first time back since 1959 when she was a presenter and an up and coming starlet who made Elvis Presley blush as she kissed him. She was considered an on the rise actress and eventually was ready to marry but as she is quoted as saying “when it hit her that she was in love with God.”

A friend suggested that she take some time off during a stressful and visit a monastery to gain some perspective. She did and eventually she walked away from Hollywood and entered the monastery at the age of 24.

Many people had trouble believing her story and thought there was some kind of ‘love child’ from Presley. But there wasn’t. It was her faith and her love of God that led her to do what she did.

Following God and loving God as we follow Him sometimes does not make sense. Because the love of God, when we truly begin to surrender to it and allow to permeate our lives, moves us to do things that sometimes are called crazy… like becoming a nun.

I’m not saying become a nun. What I am saying and what I think that Dolores might say to us and what Paul does says to us is this “Loving God will change us and lead us down a path that will require sacrifice. But it will also lead us down a path that is truly in line with who we were created to be.”

What do we do with love and without it?

We can do nothing with it. It has to do something to us first. And we can do nothing, especially follow the Lord, without it.

Let’s spend a moment in silent prayer for those we love and ourselves that we will choose to love God again and again and again…

Review of Sarah Sentilles’ Breaking Up With God

“My relationship with God was never casual. When it began to unravel, I was going through the ordination process to become an Episcopal priest. I was a youth minister at a church in a suburb of Boston and a doctoral student in theology at Harvard. You might say God and I was engaged and the wedding was planned – church reserved, menu chosen, flowers arranged. Calling it off would be awkward.”

But call it off Sarah Sentilles’ did and she writes about her break up with God, mostly the before and during, with a little after, she walked away from the church, the ministry, and God.

As I read through this book with the decision to write a review of it, I discerned that this review would take one of two tracks – to deal with the theological issues, a key theme in the book, raised by Sarah and respond to some of them. Or, I could respond to Sarah’s journey that her crisis of faith includes and is caused by.

To respond to the theological issues is, to me at least, more suited to face to face discussion and dialogue because I think that when we use the pen (or much more today, the pixel) it can degenerate into an unproductive point and counter-point dialogue.  And I will admit that I disagree with Sarah theologically at several points.

But, it is her journey, her anguish, her frustrations, and her anger that has been the bigger draw to me in this book. 

To me her story is the story of many young adults of this day, women and men, who are disappointed with, discouraged by, and angry with the “institutional” church. (And it makes me want to ask, with respect and courtesy, which institutional church they mean – Catholic? Lutheran? Methodist? Non-denominational? Evangelical? Fundamentalist?)

Clearly and passionately written Breaking Up With God is both the story of one women’s struggle with faith as well a generation’s struggle as well. A generation that is disappointed with the lack of respect for human dignity

If you read this book from a more conservative theological perspective, listen to Sarah’s story because it is a common story among many younger adults today. They are uncertain, disappointed, and angry.  Platitudes and short answers do not and will not satisfy them. A series of long conversations need to be had with them. A conversation, I suggest, that could begin with a reading of this book.

I give this book a “great” read rating.

Note: I bought and purchased an iBook copy of this book for my own personal use and reading.

A Dad’s Hump Day Prayer

Father,

In the middle of this week, on the last Wednesday of this first month of this new year, I come to you on behalf of …

my wife.

She is working hard these days Father and not just at home but at her place of work. Give her strength to accomplish what she needs to accomplish. Help her to find time for herself (and help me help her find time for herself) so that she can rest and gain renewal in things that bring her joy and hope. Renew her faith and confidence in You. Help her to honor You in all that she says and does. I give You thanks for her.

my kids.

They are working hard at school. Help them to keep learning well and to the best of their ability. Help me Father be emotionally available to them so that they will become responsible and God honoring men one day. Encourage them as they deal with discouraging situations and relationships. Help them to honor You in all that they do and say. I give You thanks for both of them.

my friends.

Father some of my friends are dealing situations that are tough and painful and not easily resolved. Some are dealing family matters that are still unresolved. I ask that You help them during this time. Others are dealing with work situations or employment decisions and need Your wisdom to come to the best decision. Some are hurting for their kids and the decisions they have made which create fear and anxiety in their hearts. Help them Lord to be honest with their kids and yet love where they are.

myself.

I have had days recently Lord when waves of loneliness, soul pain, evil, anger, and self-pity have swept over me and I have found myself nearly drowning  in all of it. I turn to You Father to help me get back on the boat and not be afraid to tell others what is going on inside of me. But I am grateful as well for Your grace, mercy, and love for it and You have sustained me in ways large and small. Thank You for Your saving grace which graciously grabbed hold of me many years ago as a child.

Take us through this day with faith, hope, and love in our hearts and strengthed our resolve to follow You through Your Holy Spirit.

Amen

Thursday Thoughts: My “One Word” for 2012

My mom always told me that I took the long way from point A to point B.

My wife continuously asserts that I am “time-challenged.”

I did, and still do, take long ways from time to time.

I am time challenged (I should be home for dinner right.now!)

And I need to be more sensitive to the time issue.

But I am also wired differently.

Every time I have taken the Myers-Briggs personality test I have had an N for ‘intuitive.’

What does this mean? It means that I don’t do well with details or math or something precise.

I am a global person that thinks in many different directions.

This has held true for my faith journey.

I came to faith in Christ at age 8. It was Sunday and I had a deeply spiritual experience where I knew that I needed God in my life.

That took place nearly 46 years ago now.

But my journey of faith has meandered to and fro, and away from God at one point, over the years.

It was not a goal setting, get there at all costs journey.

It was a measured, and at times, deeply intense and introspective journey.

That is why my one word for 2012 is ‘follow.’ Just look over to the right hand side of the page and you will see a button with it.

I have joined the One Word campaign for 2012 and look forward to seeing what God has in store.

See more at www.oneword.org

I am seeking to follow Jesus much more intentionally this year.

What does that look like?

Well, I think that the Fruit of the Spirit is a great checklist but other than that…

I have no idea…

When Jesus called me to follow him, I took it as a journey to somewhere and not a performance check list.

Well, by the time you read this, I will have eaten dinner late (it’s 5:07 PM on Monday) and probably will

be hustled out the door to whatever is on the schedule for tonight.

But I am following Jesus this year…

and I will dedicate this blog column to sharing my journey.

Sunday Sermon: Eating God’s Word by Pronouncing It!

Scripture Passage – Ezekiel 3:1-3

Description – The first sermon in the 40 Day series, ‘40 Days in the Word.’

It is the time of year when we are encouraged to come up with some resolution or resolutions to make some changes. Many people focus, because of all the holiday goodies most likely, to change their eating habits and lose weight. Others resolve to get better organized with their time or their money.

And it seems to me that the majority of resolutions are focused on stopping something or letting go or losing something. I know of very few New Year resolutions that are focused on adding or getting something.

But I would like for each of us to consider making a resolution for 2012 that adds something to our lives. Here it is:

 To add 15 minutes of daily Bible reading and study to my day for the rest of this year.

And to help you achieve this resolution we are going to spend the next 6 weeks learning how to study the Bible in different ways. And here they are in the order that we will take them along with a focus verse for that Sunday:

Today:  Pronounce It!
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.  Colossians 3:16a       

        January 15^th: Picture It!

Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Psalm 119:18

January 22^nd: Probe It!
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. James 1:22

January 29^th: Paraphrase It!
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11

February 5^th: Personalize It! Pray it! (Communion)
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24

February 12^th: Principles of Biblical Interpretation
Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light for my path. Psalm 119:105

        To help us in this series, we will be using some of the “40 Days in the Word” material that has been developed by Rick Warren and Saddleback Community Church. But, I encourage you to bring a Bible with you each week that you can write in and thus serve as your personal study Bible.

Also, I remind us that we will be focusing on this series in a Wednesday night small group, and if you have kids coming on Monday nights, I have decided to offer a Monday night small group as well. These groups will allow you to ask questions and engage in more Bible Study practice. (On Monday nights we will be meeting in a room downstairs and on Wednesday nights we will be meeting here in the sanctuary.)

Reading, studying, and applying the Bible is a very important part of growing in our faith. Prayer, worship, fellowship and the like are also important. But a regular acquaintance with scripture is vital and so we begin this new year with a series devoted to learning how to study the Bible.

We will visit our key verse, Colossians 3:16 in a few moments. But first a visit to our main text this morning is in order and it is Ezekiel 3:1-3. I will read it first in the New Living Translation and then in the Message:

“The voice said to me, “Son of man, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he fed me the scroll. “Fill your stomach with this,” he said. And when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.”

 He told me, “Son of man, eat what you see. Eat this book. Then go and speak to the family of Israel.” As I opened my mouth, he gave me the scroll to eat, saying, “Son of man, eat this book that I am giving you. Make a full meal of it!” So I ate it. It tasted so good—just like honey.

The word for ‘eat’ in this passage means to consume or devour. And the prophet Ezekiel is being instructed by an angel of God to consume a scroll of words. And while it tastes “so good-just like honey,” when we go back to the end of chapter two we discover that the words on this scroll are “were covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow, and pronouncements of doom.”

And Zeke’s mission becomes the telling of these words to the ancient Israelites who are not living the way God wants them to live and who, as we further read in chapter 3, “won’t listen to you any more than they listen to me! For the whole lot of them are hard-hearted and stubborn.  But look, I have made you as obstinate and hard-hearted as they are.  I have made your forehead as hard as the hardest rock! So don’t be afraid of them or fear their angry looks, even though they are rebels.”

 And then Ezekiel is directed to do something very important “let all my words sink deep into your own heart first. Listen to them carefully for yourself. Then go to your people in exile and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says!’ Do this whether they listen to you or not.”

Notice the progression: Ezekiel is to let the words, ‘sink in’ first by listening carefully to them and then, and only then to go and ‘say, ‘This is what the Lord says.’ This is more than good advice to preachers and people sittin’ in the pews. This is how to study God’s word.

It involves reading, meditation (or thinking deeply about), and then doing what it says. This has been known for a long time as Lectivo Divina (or divine reading) which requires one to read, meditate, pray and contemplate a passage of scripture. We will be doing these things during this series though we may not recognize it.

Now Ezekiel has a very challenging mission from God. He is going to speak words that are blunt and not very hopeful to a group of people that are not very receptive.

Studying God’s word is sometimes a very difficult and even painful thing to do. We read in Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.”

There are moments when we encounter God’s word and it will make us squirm in our seats. It will be a two-edged sword that does damage as it goes in and as it comes out. It will bring the convicting power of the Holy Spirit into our hearts, minds, and souls.

But, there are moments when we encounter God’s word and it will be a breath of fresh air. It will be a load lifter. The discouragement we feel we go away. The fear about a situation we facing or in we dissipate. The words we read in the Bible will bring hope, healing, and peace to us.

The Bible then is a vital part of our faith that we must continue to read, study, apply, and practice.

Now, let’s begin our journey with a stop at our key verse for this week, Colossians 3:16.

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

This is really the first part of this verse, there is more to it. But there is a great deal here as we will find. It is the NLT version and while I know some here like the NIV or the KJV, I use different versions not to frustrate any of us but to provide some comparison that is part of good Bible study.

The first method of Bible study is called the “Pronounce It!” method.  Take the blank piece of paper in your bulletin and write what will be helpful to you to remember as we practice this method.

Here is how we do it:

We read it out loud and emphasize a different word, or perhaps phrase, each time we read it.

Here we go! Let’s read together the following:

 Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

What are you letting into your life these days? As we have begun a new year are you letting God into your life in a new way or perhaps for the first time?

How are you letting Christ in to your life? Will you let the Holy Spirit take these words and begin to change you for the better?

Is there something that you need to let out of your life so that you can follow the Lord better?

        Ok, join me in reading the passage this way…

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

What message do you need to hear the most these days? Is it that you are loved, that you matter? You do matter to God! You are loved, deeply and dearly, by God.

What kind of message are you sending in your daily life? Is the wonderful love and mercy of God through Christ being sent out in your tone of voice, your words, your actions?

The Bible speaks of being God’s messengers. How we are each of us doing as His messengers?

Here’s the next reading…

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

Is the message of your life, my life, our congregational life about Christ? Or is it about something else?

I caution each of us to not be church consumers but missionaries. Our message is a message about Jesus Christ and what he has done for us – forgiven us and begun the process of transforming us into Christ-likeness. This message is to be told and demonstrated in our offices, factories, classrooms, homes, and neighborhoods. It is a message about God and not us.

Our message is a message about Jesus and not a host of other issues. Yes we seek to bring God into all aspects of life. But our main message, the message that Paul tells the Colossians, is about letting the message of Christ’s work do its thing in our hearts and souls.

Say with me…

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

What is in you? What is in your heart? What is in your souls? Again what are you letting into your life? Christ wants to come in to your life and give you a greater life now and as well as in the hereafter.

Ok, we are now going to read the rest of the passage out loud and then you are going to be given a few minutes to reflect on one of the words that remain. Let’s read each phrase together:

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

(Allow a couple of minutes for writing)

What do you think? We have spent maybe 10 minutes with this one part of one verse and look at what you’ve got?!

Now, here are some thoughts from Rick Warren that are very helpful regarding Bible study. Write them down as I share them for your future reference:

The ultimate purpose of Bible study is to change our lives.

As you study the Bible, Rick reminds us:

Ask the right questions

Write down your observations

Don’t just interpret it apply it

Study it systematically

Read it over and over again

So what does all of this mean for us today and this week?

I firmly believe that the Lord is saying to us this morning, “Read my word, study and apply it, I will help you do this.” And we do this by being very intentional about marking out time each day to read and study the Bible.

Scripture reading and study is vital to spiritual life and scripture reading, study, and application is one important part of fulfilling the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor and the Great Commission to go and make disciples.

 So let us be “doers of the word and not hearers only.” Let the truth of and behind scripture, God’s truth and God’s power operate in each of us this new year and every new day.

Amen