I can't resist posting this one as well: "The command of the gospel is a summons to give the allegiance of body and mind, heart and soul, to Jesus; and its basis is neither more nor less than the event that constituted him in Paul's eyes as Messiah and Lord--namely, his resurrection. And it is in the proclamation of this gospel, and its acceptance in faith, that people begin to glimpse a great curtain being drawn aside and the covenant faithfulness and justice of God displayed to view." (Wright, p. 427)
Yes! That is exactly what I would say about my own experience of God. At some point I realized that I could give my allegiance to God because God was and is absolutely trustworthy. And that continues to be the case. Whenever I start to worry, God enters into my life in a way that reminds me that God is in control.
Monday, June 29, 2009
What Romans is teaching me
Sometimes I am amazed by what excites me these days. I am working through N. T. Wright's commentary on Romans found in the New Interpreter's Bible, Volume X. I find this incredibly fun and fulfilling. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising for a pastor, but 20 years ago I would not have thought, "Yippee! I get to spend a morning with just the bible, my commentary and my computer!" Especially the letter to the Romans, which, until I discovered N. T. Wright, has always been a bit hard to read. So, since I have this blog going, I think I will post some of my reactions here.
Today I am reading about Romans 1:16-17. This is the quote from Wright (p. 424) that struck me:
"In the gospel, God’s righteousness is unveiled. This revelation happens, not just in the events referred to in the gospel, true though that is, but in the very announcement of the gospel. . . .
The gospel message about Jesus . . . opens people’s eyes to see for the first time that this was what God had been up to all along. It enables Jews to see how the promises they had cherished had been fulfilled, quite otherwise than they had expected. It enables Gentiles to see that there is one true God, the god of Israel, the creator; that this god has purposed to set the world to rights at last; and that this god has now in principle accomplished that purpose. . . . Paul believed that the announcement of the gospel wielded a power that overcame the unseen forces, inside people and around them, that prevented them from responding in obedient belief and allegiance."
What I find interesting about this is that it is the announcement of the gospel that has power. I find myself hoping that Paul is right. Because that is what I do; I announce the gospel. And if it is the announcing that has power, that means that I can relax a little about explaining the gospel. Being who I am, I want to explain things, but I don't always know how to explain the gospel. I didn't come to relationship with Jesus because the benefits were explained to my satisfaction. I came to relationship with Jesus because somehow I met Jesus in the course of my experience with the Christian community. Can't really explain it, just know it happened!
So this word about announcing the gospel both rings true to my own experience and gives me the courage to keep on announcing in my own preaching without the burden of having to explain everything. Of course, this doesn't mean that I shouldn't make sense in what I say or that I shouldn't try to be coherent! But it does mean that I can trust the power of God working through my imperfect words to enable people to respond to God's faithfulness with faith of their own. Hallelujah!
Today I am reading about Romans 1:16-17. This is the quote from Wright (p. 424) that struck me:
"In the gospel, God’s righteousness is unveiled. This revelation happens, not just in the events referred to in the gospel, true though that is, but in the very announcement of the gospel. . . .
The gospel message about Jesus . . . opens people’s eyes to see for the first time that this was what God had been up to all along. It enables Jews to see how the promises they had cherished had been fulfilled, quite otherwise than they had expected. It enables Gentiles to see that there is one true God, the god of Israel, the creator; that this god has purposed to set the world to rights at last; and that this god has now in principle accomplished that purpose. . . . Paul believed that the announcement of the gospel wielded a power that overcame the unseen forces, inside people and around them, that prevented them from responding in obedient belief and allegiance."
What I find interesting about this is that it is the announcement of the gospel that has power. I find myself hoping that Paul is right. Because that is what I do; I announce the gospel. And if it is the announcing that has power, that means that I can relax a little about explaining the gospel. Being who I am, I want to explain things, but I don't always know how to explain the gospel. I didn't come to relationship with Jesus because the benefits were explained to my satisfaction. I came to relationship with Jesus because somehow I met Jesus in the course of my experience with the Christian community. Can't really explain it, just know it happened!
So this word about announcing the gospel both rings true to my own experience and gives me the courage to keep on announcing in my own preaching without the burden of having to explain everything. Of course, this doesn't mean that I shouldn't make sense in what I say or that I shouldn't try to be coherent! But it does mean that I can trust the power of God working through my imperfect words to enable people to respond to God's faithfulness with faith of their own. Hallelujah!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Love in Any Language
Do you know your love language? Do you know the love language of your spouse/children/friend?
Dr. Gary Chapman helps us understand why we feel loved and how we can be better at loving intentionally. He speaks of the five love languages:
1)Words of Affirmation
2)Quality Time
3)Receiving Gifts
4)Acts of Service
5)Physical Touch
The premise is that we all have a primary and secondary love language, and if we are not loved in those languages we may not feel loved at all!
I have always had trouble figuring out my own love language. When I reread the book this time a statement jumped out at me: If your love tank is either very full or very empty, you may have trouble deciding what your love language might be. I have been blessed to always have felt loved in my family of origin and in my marriage, so I have never paid much attention to my own love language. But this book and its ideas have helped me to become better at loving others.
I would love to hear from some of you in reflecting on this.
Blessings,
Martha
For more information on the five love languages, go to Gary Chapman's website:
http://www.fivelovelanguages.com/
Dr. Gary Chapman helps us understand why we feel loved and how we can be better at loving intentionally. He speaks of the five love languages:
1)Words of Affirmation
2)Quality Time
3)Receiving Gifts
4)Acts of Service
5)Physical Touch
The premise is that we all have a primary and secondary love language, and if we are not loved in those languages we may not feel loved at all!
I have always had trouble figuring out my own love language. When I reread the book this time a statement jumped out at me: If your love tank is either very full or very empty, you may have trouble deciding what your love language might be. I have been blessed to always have felt loved in my family of origin and in my marriage, so I have never paid much attention to my own love language. But this book and its ideas have helped me to become better at loving others.
I would love to hear from some of you in reflecting on this.
Blessings,
Martha
For more information on the five love languages, go to Gary Chapman's website:
http://www.fivelovelanguages.com/
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Good Enough Dad
It's funny how little things can make us remember those we love. I heard a radio commercial the other day about McDonald's new sweet tea. My first thought was how Dad would have loved that! He always put 6 or 7 teaspoons of sugar in his tea. And he spent many hours in McDonald's drinking cokes and figuring out how to make money on napkins. He never did make the money; he was not a perfect Dad, but he was good enough. He taught me how to love, he taught me how to dream, and he encouraged me to be who I was.
I talked about a less-than-perfect Dad in my sermon today. Abraham--despite the grand sounding name that actually means "father of peoples"--wasn't really much of a father. He sent one child into the wilderness and the other he took up the mountain to sacrifice on an altar. Abraham was caught, as all fathers are caught, between difficult choices. He was caught between God's promise of many children and God's command to sacrifice his only child. He had to learn that God's promises and God's commands could never contradict one another. Abraham may not have been a perfect father, but he was good enough, because, in the end, he learned to trust God. In the end, both of his sons received blessings from God. And that is all a father can really ask for.
Okay, fathers out there, what do you feel caught between? What apparent contradictions make it difficult for you to be the father you want to be? Can you accept that your heavenly father loves and forgives you and can strengthen you for the work of fatherhood? For those of you who do not have biological children, are you aware that you are not off the hook? That you are responsible for fathering the children in your community (here I am talking to those who are Christ followers)?
If you would like to comment on any of this, on my sermon or on your own father, feel free to post.
Blessings and Happy Fathers Day!
I talked about a less-than-perfect Dad in my sermon today. Abraham--despite the grand sounding name that actually means "father of peoples"--wasn't really much of a father. He sent one child into the wilderness and the other he took up the mountain to sacrifice on an altar. Abraham was caught, as all fathers are caught, between difficult choices. He was caught between God's promise of many children and God's command to sacrifice his only child. He had to learn that God's promises and God's commands could never contradict one another. Abraham may not have been a perfect father, but he was good enough, because, in the end, he learned to trust God. In the end, both of his sons received blessings from God. And that is all a father can really ask for.
Okay, fathers out there, what do you feel caught between? What apparent contradictions make it difficult for you to be the father you want to be? Can you accept that your heavenly father loves and forgives you and can strengthen you for the work of fatherhood? For those of you who do not have biological children, are you aware that you are not off the hook? That you are responsible for fathering the children in your community (here I am talking to those who are Christ followers)?
If you would like to comment on any of this, on my sermon or on your own father, feel free to post.
Blessings and Happy Fathers Day!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Filling the W/hole: Your challenge
So, I preached a sermon yesterday on "Filling the W/hole." Here are the basic points:
We have an emptiness inside of us that only God can fill.
We try to fill that emptiness with other things: work, family, church, relationships. All of those things have a proper place in our lives, but if we try to fill the place within us that is made for God then eventually our lives will be as distorted as if we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. We may no longer feel the emptiness, but neither will our lives be whole and healthy.
Lots of scriptures talk about how we are made for God, but the scriptures that I suggested were these: Psalm 42:1-6; Psalm 84:1-12; Colossians 1:9-23; Ephesians 4:10-32; 1 John 4:1-21. (See http://www.biblegateway.com/ for a searchable online bible if you need one.)
I also used the story about the loaves and fishes from Matthew 14:15-20
15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 16 Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." 17 They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." 18 And he said, "Bring them here to me." 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.
My point here was that Jesus filled them not only with bread but with the bread of life, his presence. He first gave it to the disciples and then the disciples shared it with the people. As people who are moving towards more faithful discipleship, we are to receive from Jesus, be filled with his Spirit and then share with the world the life-giving love and forgiveness that we have received. (If you want to hear the sermon, go to www.svumc.org and click on sermons.
I ended the sermon with a challenge: spend an hour this week by yourself, with perhaps only the scriptures above for company. No music, no tv, no computer, no phone. Spend an hour thinking about what you are filling your life with. If you would like to share what insights you have gained, then feel free to post here.
Blessings,
Martha
We have an emptiness inside of us that only God can fill.
We try to fill that emptiness with other things: work, family, church, relationships. All of those things have a proper place in our lives, but if we try to fill the place within us that is made for God then eventually our lives will be as distorted as if we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. We may no longer feel the emptiness, but neither will our lives be whole and healthy.
Lots of scriptures talk about how we are made for God, but the scriptures that I suggested were these: Psalm 42:1-6; Psalm 84:1-12; Colossians 1:9-23; Ephesians 4:10-32; 1 John 4:1-21. (See http://www.biblegateway.com/ for a searchable online bible if you need one.)
I also used the story about the loaves and fishes from Matthew 14:15-20
15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 16 Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." 17 They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." 18 And he said, "Bring them here to me." 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.
My point here was that Jesus filled them not only with bread but with the bread of life, his presence. He first gave it to the disciples and then the disciples shared it with the people. As people who are moving towards more faithful discipleship, we are to receive from Jesus, be filled with his Spirit and then share with the world the life-giving love and forgiveness that we have received. (If you want to hear the sermon, go to www.svumc.org and click on sermons.
I ended the sermon with a challenge: spend an hour this week by yourself, with perhaps only the scriptures above for company. No music, no tv, no computer, no phone. Spend an hour thinking about what you are filling your life with. If you would like to share what insights you have gained, then feel free to post here.
Blessings,
Martha
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Musings
I am reading a book called Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the churches that reach them. I am also working on my sermon, "Filling the W/hole." At the moment those are parallel activities, but I think that by Sunday they will be intertwined.
I am always struggling with how to let my passion for Jesus come through (I LOVE JESUS!!) and thus being authentic in my preaching, without being too overwhelming (and "preachy").
I am also struggling, as a result of reading this book, with thinking about why younger persons seem to find church unnecessary to being Christian. Not because I don't understand intellectually, but because my experience of the church has always been so crucial to my following Jesus. Now I will admit that the formal structures of the organized church haven't always been helpful, but, for me, the church is the people that I journey with as a community of faith. And that community of faith is facilitated by those formal structures, even though I don't always like them or agree with them.
We just had Annual Conference this week, one of those formal structures. The meetings weren't all that fun, and the sitting for hours is difficult for me, but the sense of being together with a large group of people who are trying hard and faithfully to reach the same goal is just a rush. It was particularly strong at the service of ordination and commissioning where the crowd at Custer Road UMC read the prayers, recited the liturgy, and sang the hymns with this huge community voice. I get chills.
I have discovered that what is needed is double vision: the ability to see clearly that this is a very human organization with all the problems that entails, but that somehow it is also the body of Christ and a work of the kingdom of God.
We talked in small (well, relatively small) groups about the need to reach younger people and be authentic (so here I am back to the topic this post began with and that word 'authentic.') I hope that the younger generations can see that we are authentically trying, even though we sometimes fail at being Christlike.
So back to thinking about the sermon. (Yes, this really is a post of "musings") I am thinking about all the things we fill our lives with instead of God. If you have any thoughts on that, let me know.
I am always struggling with how to let my passion for Jesus come through (I LOVE JESUS!!) and thus being authentic in my preaching, without being too overwhelming (and "preachy").
I am also struggling, as a result of reading this book, with thinking about why younger persons seem to find church unnecessary to being Christian. Not because I don't understand intellectually, but because my experience of the church has always been so crucial to my following Jesus. Now I will admit that the formal structures of the organized church haven't always been helpful, but, for me, the church is the people that I journey with as a community of faith. And that community of faith is facilitated by those formal structures, even though I don't always like them or agree with them.
We just had Annual Conference this week, one of those formal structures. The meetings weren't all that fun, and the sitting for hours is difficult for me, but the sense of being together with a large group of people who are trying hard and faithfully to reach the same goal is just a rush. It was particularly strong at the service of ordination and commissioning where the crowd at Custer Road UMC read the prayers, recited the liturgy, and sang the hymns with this huge community voice. I get chills.
I have discovered that what is needed is double vision: the ability to see clearly that this is a very human organization with all the problems that entails, but that somehow it is also the body of Christ and a work of the kingdom of God.
We talked in small (well, relatively small) groups about the need to reach younger people and be authentic (so here I am back to the topic this post began with and that word 'authentic.') I hope that the younger generations can see that we are authentically trying, even though we sometimes fail at being Christlike.
So back to thinking about the sermon. (Yes, this really is a post of "musings") I am thinking about all the things we fill our lives with instead of God. If you have any thoughts on that, let me know.
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