One Body

Ours is a DIY (do-it-yourself) era. Ours is a technological time. Ours is an independence obsessed society. We’d rather do it ourselves 90% correctly than have a trained professional do a perfect job. We’d rather consult webmd than a trained doctor or Wikipedia than a thoroughly educated, specialized teacher. We’d rather use TurboTax than enlist a certified accountant to file our tax returns.

There are all kinds of benefits to living in this era. Money is saved on labor expenses. Time is rescued from waiting rooms and put back into the lives of patients. Effort toward the goal of increased knowledge is spared and funneled into other areas of life. Time and money are wrested back into the hands of taxpayers as they don’t have to wait as long to get back guaranteed larger tax returns.

But there are drawbacks to living in this age and downsides to living in this era. For the more and more we do ourselves, the less and less we need each other. The more and more we can handle ourselves, the less and less we value the gifts of others. If we are not careful, before long, we have bought into the myth that is independence and autonomy. We don’t need anyone’s help. Training is irrelevant. Expertise is immaterial. Sooner or later we begin to think we can exist entirely on our own.

Such a mindset is harmful enough in our everyday lives. It is even more devastating, however, when it shapes the way we approach the community of faith into which we’ve been reborn as sons and daughters of God. So we devalue the unique gifts of others, content to try to imitate them, even if our best efforts barely come close to others’ worst efforts. In the process, we begin to see others as disposable or replaceable.

Paul will let us have none of that, however. For as one body, every part has a role to play, every component has a function. The minute we forget it, we begin to die a slow death. But in the moments we remember, we experience life like none other.

Growing with Jesus

Here is the audio of Sunday's sermon, "Growing with Jesus," based on Luke 2:21-24, 41-52, which kicked off the new year for our church family. In it, I describe several of the tangible steps our church leadership is taking in an effort to help each member individually and our entire congregation communally grow with Jesus "in wisdom and in favor with God and people." You can stream the audio below or download it here.

Who's Got My Back?

No one would have faulted him for being nervous. In fact, most probably would have expected him to be at least slightly unnerved. Yet when asked after pitching a masterful complete game in game one of the World Series whether he had been nervous, Cliff Lee responded quite matter-of-factly, “I really never have been nervous in the big leagues. This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life; it’s what I enjoy doing. I put all the work in between starts . . . there’s no reason to be nervous if I did all the work. The game is the time to go out there and have fun . . . and trust your teammates and your skills.”

Listening to the interview, I was struck by Lee’s confidence. Confidence in the skills he had spent years practicing. Confidence in his teammates to have his back and cover his mistakes. Confidence in his coaching staff to provide strong leadership and appropriate guidance. In some ways, his confidence almost seemed absurd. He was, after all, pitching in the home of the greatest team in the history of baseball. He was surrounded by tens of thousands of screaming fans and dozens of reminders of the great players in history who had roughed up pitchers as good or better than he. He was going up against one of the most potent Yankee lineups in the last few decades. Yet during the game he looked so relaxed the commentators noted it was like he was throwing batting practice, not pitching the opening game of the World Series in which his team was the underdog.

It is interesting how often church people talk about the circumstances in which they find themselves living. If you listen closely you can hear all kinds of conversations about the devil’s well-chronicled history of success in convincing people to accomplish his purposes. You can hear all kinds of chatter about the hostile environment of people who seem to want Christians to fail and see dozens of reminders of those who have gone before who have been roughed up by evil. You can hear all kinds of short-sighted speculation about how it’s harder than ever to live a faithful life in these times.

It is altogether appropriate to have a healthy respect for your opponent. But there is a huge difference between worrying yourself into losing before you’ve even taken the field, deciding you’re likely to lose before you’ve even thrown the first pitch, and throwing yourself fully into practice and preparation, aligning with a team to watch your back and cover your mistakes, and submitting yourself to the leadership and guidance of a coaching staff. It seems to me as we enter into the Yankee Stadium of life we have no reason to be nervous. This is, after all, what we’ve spent so much time preparing for, and we have a wonderful team to support us and an unrivaled coaching staff to lead us and to guide us!

Paying The Cost To Be The Boss

Many years ago B.B. King recorded a song that would become a blues classic with its recurring refrain, “As long as I’m paying the bills, I’m paying the cost to be the boss.” Perhaps more accurately than any other song, “Paying the Cost” expresses a widely held sentiment in our society that by “paying the bills” one earns the right to be the boss.

It’s not difficult to comprehend the logic behind such a declaration, nor to be persuaded by it, for in many areas of our lives this is a very tangible reality. Moreover, many of us have experienced times when no clear decision-making structure was in place and an entire organization suffered because of a power struggle. Given the necessity of strong, decisive leadership and the ease of organizing along the lines of ability to “pay the bills,” many of us have grown quite comfortable with this approach to life.

Sometimes outcomes resulting from this approach to leadership are ideal. Unfortunately, however, we don’t have to look far to recognize the difficulties of such a philosophy. All too easily this organizational principle can become a fortress behind which abusive behavior is protected. A working spouse can oppress a stay-at-home spouse because he or she doesn’t work hard to pay the bills. A parent can manipulate children into all kinds of unhealthy or even inappropriate behavior by pointing to his or her bill-paying ability. A boss can coerce employees into compromising actions because as boss he or she is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the company, not the lowly employee. A member of an organization can even try to force that organization’s leadership to submit to his or her agenda by threatening to withhold funds necessary for the organization’s financial stability.

Sadly these abuses are all too common among people who claim to follow Jesus. May God have mercy on us and forgive us for all the times we’ve tried to seize power. May we look to Christ to lead us into lives of service. And may the Holy Spirit teach us and shape us along the way.

A Common Vocation

One of the challenges we face as people of faith is not disconnecting faith from life. In Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others, Todd Hunter observes the tendency we have of associating the notion of vocation solely with whatever it is we do with our lives, especially our career or job. In my experience Christians often seem to have been left with the impression that whatever they do in their various everyday roles has little or nothing to do with their faith. The ability to live out faith is thus restricted to one's private devotional life or one's participation in the activities of the community of faith. While these are certainly appropriate ways of living out one's faith, I think these words from Hunter are a helpful reminder that we can live out faith by doing whatever we do all in the name of the Lord Jesus:

Vocation or calling is about much more than what we do. It is one person--God--calling to another person--me. Cooperating with God, growing in him for the sake of others, is our singular vocation, no matter what we do to get a paycheck. We are principally called to God and his purposes. Fix this in your imagination--following Jesus is our special function--and the rest will fall into place. It becomes our self-conscious identity. We can live this vision out as school teachers, police officers, business partners, actors, managers or construction workers. Life suddenly pops with meaning, power and adventure. This--cooperating with God--is why we were created. (53)

In your roles as teachers or accountants, truck drivers or doctors, stay-at-home parents or retirees, how does your faith give meaning to your ordinary routines and activities?

One More Year: God and Manure

Yesterday was a day of celebration for our congregation. Each year in August we have a homecoming assembly, when we celebrate God's work in and through our congregation. Yesterday marked 113 years of worship and ministry for our church. I am thankful to have had the chance yesterday to meet many former members who are a part of the legacy of our congregation, but who have moved on to other places.

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Here are the thoughts I shared in my bulletin article regarding homecoming.

What a wonderful joy it is to be able to gather together today as God’s people. This day, which we have designated “homecoming,” affords us the opportunity to join together with God’s people to celebrate the past, present, and future.

We celebrate God’s work in and through this congregation for 113 years. It is a joy to welcome back many who have worshipped with us through the years and have moved on to other locations. Though we are separated from some by many miles, we celebrate the unbreakable bond we share in Jesus. While the faces and songs and building may have changed, the gospel entrusted to us is the same.

We celebrate God’s work in and through this congregation today. We celebrate the parents in our congregation whose commitment to Christ flows into a commitment to raising their children intentionally and thoughtfully, and who have worked toward such a goal by participating in a parenting class this summer. We celebrate the work of Hohenwald Christian Counseling. Due to the increase in clients seeking counseling from a Christian perspective, AGAPE will be sending a graduate counseling student as an intern with Paula Wiemers. We celebrate the lives of faithful witness being lived by our members, who in their daily routines allow Christ’s light to shine through them, whatever they do.

We celebrate with anticipation God’s work in and through this congregation in the future. We wonder how God will call us to serve our neighbors here in Lewis County. We wonder who will join us in that service. We wonder how God will work to unite followers of Jesus who have a tendency to divide. We wonder and we hope and we pray, all the while celebrating God’s promise to carry on to completion what has been started.

We celebrate with anticipation the day in which the renewal of all creation will be complete, the moment when that which began on the day of creation is fulfilled in the day of re-creation. We anticipate that day when humanity’s selfish destruction of God’s creation is eclipsed by the new heavens and the new earth, when God’s people from past, present, and future, from Jerusalem, Rome, Hohenwald, and everywhere in between, are united together in the presence of God. Today we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face!

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Lastly, here is the audio of my sermon, "One More Year: God and Manure," based on Luke 13:1-9.

Nobody's Business?

One of the common ways people pass time is to play what I call the “Desert Island Game.” The idea is to pose a question to a group about what they couldn’t live without were they to find themselves stranded on a desert island. I must admit I’m not a huge fan of the game; I’d prefer not to have to make such choices. But if I were forced to choose just one type of music I could listen to while stranded on a desert island, it would probably be the blues. There’s something about the honesty of the lyrics and the dynamics of the music that surpasses most other music.

What fascinates me is the schizophrenic attitude at the heart of blues music. On the one hand, blues is, at its core, a means of opening oneself up, of revealing one’s inner turmoil to anyone who will hear. Often the songs give voice to cries of deep hurt or to shouts of protest. As such, they serve to invite others into those stories, and to take action of some kind as a result, whether reaching out to the narrator to comfort or rescue, or to join in the narrator’s cries. On the other hand, however, there’s a deeply ingrained notion of privacy inherent in many blues standards. Perhaps no song represents this better than “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” which has been recorded by numerous artists, including B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Jonny Lang, and Susan Tedeschi. The song's chorus, which repeatedly declares, “Ain’t nobody’s business what I do,” serves to build walls between the singer and the audience. The incoherence of these two sentiments is quite clear: you can’t invite people into your mess and then tell them to stay out.

While we may not all enjoy listening to the blues, the incoherence of these two sentiments reflects with incredible accuracy the incoherence in many of our own lives. We want to pour out our cries of hurt and shouts of protest to God, but we don’t want God getting involved in our business. We want to pour out our cries of hurt and shouts of protest to our brothers and sisters in our community of faith, but we don’t want them getting involved in our business. Whether it’s Jesus telling the woman caught in adultery to leave sin behind her, or Paul encouraging the loyal yokefellow in Philippi to intervene in the dispute between Euodia and Syntyche, or James instructing his audience to confess their sins to each other and pray for each other, the witness of Scripture is clear: our lives are not to be closed off from God and from others, but open that God through the Spirit and through others can work to transform us to be like Christ. May we never allow our culture’s obsession with privacy to keep us from Christ-like openness to God and to each other.

I wonder: what concrete steps can we take to be more open to God and to each other?

Growing in Community

As Christians we are called to be apprentices of Jesus, walking alongside Him, observing Him in action, listening to Him speak, and joining in when the time is right. Just as Jesus gathered multiple apprentices around him to live out their faith in community, so we must live out our faith in community. It is my hope that this blog will serve as another means of engagement in the communal life of faith and that as a result of whatever conversations may arise, we may each become more faithful apprentices of Jesus.

Much of my time as a minister is spent speaking or writing. Unfortunately, our traditional environment has tended to limit, if not prevent, opportunities for dialogue. Bulletin articles, sermons, and classes often become one way streets, with traffic always flowing from minister to congregation. My hope is that this blog will serve to open up another lane for traffic in the opposite direction.

Not only that, but many of us aren't able to engage each other in conversation when we are gathered together. We need open lanes between each other as well.

One of the ways in which I hope to open these lanes is by posting my weekly bulletin articles. This will allow people in the congregation I serve, as well as others, to enter into conversations about apprenticeship. Since apprenticeship is an everyday kind of lifestyle which takes place in the ordinariness of life, I'll share observations and reflections on the ups and downs and ins and outs of the journey.

I invite you to join in the conversation and hope that through our interaction, we might learn from each other, as together we explore what it means to be apprentices of Jesus.