Position

Recently, I was amazingly asked, "How do you remain humble when you are obviously gifted?" Obviously this person does not know me very well for two reasons. First, I am not all that humble. Second, I am not all that gifted. My response was, however, above ordinary and I wanted to share it here this morning.

First, I know that when it comes to grace, the unmerited love of God and salvation offered in Christ Jesus, I am simply a beggar. When I tell others about the love of God and the grace I have experienced in my life, I am a beggar telling other beggars where I found bread.

Second, I am to view every person as if they might be Christ. This is not always easy. As Mother Teresa said, "Lord, you come in some costumes that made it difficult to see you today."

The thought that I am a simple beggar and every other person might be Christ puts me in a proper perspective and position.

God and Money and the UMC Clergy

This is a bit of what you might hear from me in a sermon on this Sunday morning:

It is pretty easy to see how we cannot serve God and money, manna, wealth at the same time. Our worship and focus on money often drives us to worry about things beyond our control and listen for things that are not of God. We suddenly worry about things like the stock market, our pension plan, our home equity. But God is not worried about the stock market. As one person said to me recently, “God did not lose a dime in this recession. God didn’t loss a dollar in the Madoff debacle.” God still has every resource in heaven and on earth. The problem is not God’s bank account; it is much more our unwillingness to trust God in all times and in all things.

Take for example, the reality of the United Methodist Clergy. We often speak about things like good news for the poor, there are a group who are going to the city council to speak against cutting the budget to aid the homeless here in Fort Worth. At the same time, we voted to maintain our healthcare coverage at an annual cost of about 4.2 million dollars in 2009 and the cost is going up in 2010. This is not paid for by the clergy. This is the cost handed on to the local churches of the Central Texas Conference in mandated health insurance payments and apportionments. What would happen instead if we pulled that mantel off of your backs and said, “We the clergy of the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church will not take as a benefit any health insurance until all Texans have adequate health care.”

Not so good at this

Ok, so apparently I am not so good at this blogging thing. Again, it is because I have had a couple of friends recently ask me about my posts that I come back to this forum. Apparently, for some I am "a voice in the wilderness," a "social conscious", a "voice unheard." I am not sure exactly what all that means or if it is a good thing.

I will say that being on the CTCYM trip last week reminded me of the great painful divides in our country. Divides of education. Divides of wealth. Divides of race. Who am I that I can afford to go out to eat when just this morning a woman did not have money to eat at all? Who am I that I can receive health care when a brother goes without basic medicines? Who am I that sit in an air conditioned office when an 84-year old woman has not electricity? Who am I that I am not weeping in pain and changing my ways?

Maybe I don't blog more because I am not sure anyone really wants to hear the questions I find myself asking.

Really?

Ok, so this weekend, within 10 hours, I had two friends mention that I had not posted on my blog sight in a while. Really? Does anyone really care what I have to say? I mean, I am just a guy traveling down this road of life. Yeah, I am a pastor, who is supposed to have some sort of wisdom, but I also know many people do not pay much attention to what their pastor, or any pastor, has to say.

So, to whom do you listen? Who is it that gets your attention and somehow speaks to you? Who is the noise in your life? Who is it that if they shut-up you would only find relief in their silence? Who is it that you really want to listen to you?

Anyway, thanks to two people who may not pay attention to what I say, but notice, and question, when I say nothing at all.
Peace.

The New, Ancient Mandate

New mandate? What do you mean it is a "new" mandate? There is nothing new about it. We are reading from a book that is 1900 years old. How on earth is that considered new? And isn't that part of the problem? We want something new all the time. I just got a new car (a red Saturn Vue to be exact), and my wife just bought new furniture for the upstairs family room. (0% financing and good deals makes for a buyers market . . . recession ha ha ha.) And the faith we are given is ancient, almost timeless.

It is Holy Week and Passover, so even secular talk radio has religious experts on as guests. Emergent experts were a day or two ago. And yes, we need something new. The way we have done church for the last 150 years is not working. But how much has to change? It is hard to say what is most important. If we are given an ancient faith that will stretch into the end of time, how do we keep it fresh? If we really are given a new, 2000 year-old, mandate tonight, how do we embody that today?

I want to make a modest proposal that we start with our Christian brothers and sisters. We have to stop looking at each other as the enemy. I think one of the major broken pieces in the modern church is that for the last 150 years, we have said, "I disagree, so I am parting ways." We have churches all over the landscape, but we have little love for one another. The ecumenical movement of let us all hold hands and act cordial is ridiculous, because one group will look at another and overtly or passively say, "You are not REALLY Christian."

So, I beg my fellow Christians, clergy and lay, to take serious the new mandate. "Love each other as I have loved you." Let's take something new out of this ancient word.

April Fools

So today was April Fool's Day. I first realized this as I listened to one of my favorite five minutes of radio every week. At 7:55 Frank Deford gives a commentary on NPR's Morning Edition. To hear his commentary from this morning go to Sweetness and Light. Yep, I fell for it too.

Then, an hour and a half later, I sat with a gaggle of preschoolers trying to convey why fooling people and then laughing at them is not what Jesus wants us to do. I mean how many of us really want to be the butt of a joke? I assume most of you just said, "Not me." So, if the Goldren Rule says, "Treat others as you want to be treated," then why would we make anyone the butt of one of our jokes.

Twelve hours later, I found myself feeling the fool. I, along with the two music directors, made plans for Easter Sunday a few weeks ago. We felt a common face for our two Easter Sunday services would be a good effort and a way of bringing some unity in the community. Instead, what I realized after listening to some complaining, is we did not follow the Golden Rule. We did not treat the band or the choir like they want to be treated. We planned and idead without really considering what they wanted for Easter. MY plan sounded more like a cruel April Fool's joke to some of them.

So here I sit, playing the fool and it has nothing to do with Frank Deford.

Land of the Dying

When John Owen, the great Puritan, lay on his deathbed, his secretary wrote in his name to a friend, “I am still in the land of the living.”
“Stop,” said Owen. “Change that and say, ‘I am yet in the land of the dying, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living.”

What a thought as we come running into Holy Week! We are in the land of the dying. It is true for everyone of us who takes breathe. It is with this great reality that we came to Ash Wednesday several weeks ago, "From the dust you have come and to the dust you shall return." We watch over the next few days how even Jesus when faced with the reality of mortality breaks down in tears in the garden.

Still, ours is not the land of the dying. Our future and our hope lies in the land of the living that waits on the other side of the viel. With that in mind, what do we have to fear? Why do we continue to be held by fear? Do we not believe? Have we not faith? Have we not hope?

If we be Christian, if we truly believe that ours lies in the land and time God will make home among mortals, and God wipe away every tear and death will be no more and the covenant will be fulfilled, "I will be their God and they will be my people," then let us no more live as people who are going to grave, but live as people prepared to enter the land of the living.