Bath United Methodist Church Front Door

Bath

United

Methodist

Church

206 S. Main St.

Bath, NC 27808

Phone 252.923.2841

www.bathumc.com

 See “Find-A-Church”

                   Founded in the year 1785

                                         **

This prayer was written by Bishop Will Willimon but I offered it on Sunday morning on behalf of the congregation:

Blessed God, who calls us to worship and to follow you – thanks.

For all the scripture that is larger and deeper and more difficult than our ability to understand – thanks.

For all the tasks to which you call us that are more risky, more demanding and more time consuming than the tasks we would have taken up on our own – thanks.

For times of illness and times of pain when we experience the limitations of our physical bodies and are reminded of the blessings of times of good health – thanks.

For people who don’t always agree with us, or like us, people who challenge our opinions of ourselves, people who demonstrate to us the limits of our ability to love – thanks.

For the church, that can be such a pain, the church that so often disappoints us and aggravates us, reminding us thereby of the wonder of your love for the church – thanks. Amen

The text for 8/16/2009 – Ephesians 5: 15-20

Some of you may remember that several weeks ago, I asked you to begin to cultivate a sense of thankfulness. I asked you to, before you go to bed at night, to think of 5 things from your day for which you were thankful. I want to challenge you this morning to take a step beyond that thankfulness into Living with an Attitude of Gratitude. When you wake up in the morning to face the world, it will make all the difference if you are Living with an Attitude of Gratitude.
There is a difference between gratitude and thankfulness. Gratitude is that deep down joy that motivates you and gives you power to do more, to respond in gratitude. I want you to think of one thing for which you are grateful. Not just thankful, but deep down grateful for and hold on to that for a few minutes with me this morning. Studies show that it takes our bodies 6 hours to overcome the chemicals released when we get all wrapped up in thinking about or arguing about negative things, when we are focused on problems in our lives or in the lives of people around us. Now go that place of gratitude, that place of thinking about something that gives you great joy. You can live with an attitude of gratitude and it will make all the difference. It is what the Apostle Paul is talking about here and it’s what God wants for each of us. In fact, when we live in an attitude of gratitude, we will see the world and God in the world in ways to which we are simply blind to when we ignore the blessings in our lives.
I wish you could hear my friend, my Christian brother, Shawn Mitchell preach. He is a Christian of the finest caliber and has the gift of preaching that is given to so many in his African-American culture. I can imagine Shawn preaching this sermon and the way he would get fired up about that phrase – Living with an Attitude of Gratitude. I wish I could get hold of that line they way Shawn would: Living with an Attitude of Gratitude. OK, that’s me trying to sound like Shawn, so I will just have to be Kelli.
Living with an attitude of gratitude can do all sorts of things in our lives. This morning I want to talk about just three of them. One, Living with an Attitude of Gratitude helps us see where we really are. Two, living with an Attitude of Gratitude, helps us to see where God is already at work in our lives and the divine appointments He has set up for us. Three, living with an Attitude of Gratitude, helps us see the future and makes us a part of God’s future.
Let me tell you the things I am grateful for this morning. I am grateful that I am saved. I am grateful that the God of the Universe loves even me and has taken the circumstances of my life and spun straw into gold. Through Jesus Christ, the Lord has given me a future and a hope. He has taken my past and redeemed for His future. Not only that, I am grateful that he has not left me alone but has put me here, squarely in the midst of his people, doing his work on a path that leads only to higher places of service and of glory.
In response to that gratitude, I can see where I am really am. Not the way the world sees me, or my bank account describes me or my age or gender or the color of my skin. With God all things are possible. When I look around in gratitude to see all that he has already done for me, then my trials and troubles here are light and momentary compared to the work He has already done and is doing to make me more like him, to make this world I am living in to be more like His kingdom.
Do I miss my children and my grandparents? You better believe it. Yet, in the light of whom God is and what he is doing, I can trust that He loves them even more than I do and He is caring for them even more than I can. Even in the midst of pain and grief, living with an attitude of gratitude means that I can see where I really am and who is really in control. Lest you think I am being flippant here, let me give you another example.
This afternoon, I am going to a funeral to support the pastor of a nearby church. In his church family, there is grieving a wife and two teenagers whose father inexplicably committed suicide last week. As my friend Paul ministers to that family and pastors that church, where does hope come from, where does comfort come from? It only comes from knowing that no matter how painful and mysterious the circumstances of life may be, we can praise God in the storm for he is the Master of the storm, the master of the wind and waves and we can be grateful for his care, even when life doesn’t seem to makes sense. Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means we can see where we really are, not hopeless and doomed, but hopeful and redeemed.
Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means that we can see God at work around us. Let me tell you two places I have seen God at work this week. One is at the Martha Project. When the Martha Project is at its best, we are doing the very things Jesus told us to do – feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. When the Martha Project is at its best, we are not just dispensing food and clothing out of our abundance as if we were superior in some way; we are walking alongside others as they walk in the world. We are sharing Jesus as we share our lives with them, as they share their lives with us. Another place I have seen God this week has been in the meetings that have happened around the issues of the air conditioner for the Fellowship Hall and the new appliances we have had to buy. There is a real change in the air as we have been able to come to consensus on important topics, to share the leadership of the church family and to linger after the business was taken care of to share in each others’ lives, to visit and laugh and be together. Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means that we can see God at work as we reach outside the church and as we look inside the church to each other.
Finally, Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means that we can have vision, we can see what the future can be like as we walk with God and each other. We can see where we are, what God is already doing so we can do more in the ways that God is leading. Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means that we can be part of where God is already at work. Think about your life right now, not about the things that you don’t have or the problems to which you wish you had the answer. Think about what is already working, what you wish you had more of. If that desire falls in line with Scripture, if your want and God’s will are in line, then do more of that, do more of what is already working.
Let me give you a personal example. When I focus on the things I am grateful for – being a child of God and working in God’s Kingdom, then I can think about what I want more of. My want has to line up with God’s will. I want to be around Sarah and Mark and my grandparents. All of us living in the same town, in the same house is not God’s will right now. So how can my want line up with God’s will? I can see God at work in my being able to pick up the phone and call them, in being able to make plans to see them soon. So, Living with an Attitude of Gratitude, I can accept the ways things are and trust God for the future.
Let me issue a warning here – this is not a prosperity gospel. God will not be put in a box, controlled or treated like a cosmic vending machine. I can believe I am Living with an Attitude of Gratitude, think that I want more money and expect that God should have to give that to me. There is a subtle trap of the devil in that kind of thinking. If I want more money for me, so I can gave more stuff or more good times, then I have missed the boat. That is like saying, “OK God, I am thankful, here’s my gratitude, now what are you going to give me?” Our gratitude and our wanting more must be aligned with God’s will and God’s ways. Frankly, why would we want to be out of God’s will or out of God’s way in the first place?
Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means we can see where we really are, we can see our lives from God’s eternal, perfect perspective. Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means that we can see God at work all around us and not be blinded by fear, selfishness and blind ambition. Living with an Attitude of Gratitude means that we can see into God’s future and where our place is in it. Not just going to heaven when we die but working alongside God here and now, in this place in these days, praying and working for God’s Kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven. Think about the things that give you the deepest sense of lasting joy and say “Thank You God, I’ll take more of that!”

The Lone Ranger wasn’t ever really alone. He always had faithful Tonto by his side. That television series reinforced many negative stereotypes:  1. The white man was always intellectually superior, 2. Tonto was just a sidekick, to be turned to when something needed to be done that didn’t take too much intelligence or sophistication, 3. The world depicted was a simple 1950’s world in which moral decisions were either right or wrong, everything about life was cut and dried. You always knew who the bad guys were and they were always the other guy – the one in the black hat, with the black mask and the black horse. As long as you had a white hat, rode a white horse named Silver (money, perhaps?), then you were morally superior and the hero of the story.

Those aren’t the lessons taught to us in Scripture. In fact, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians strikes a very different note, one that we would do well to consider and follow. When we read Ephesians 4:25-5:2, it is easy for us to assume that this is a list of simple, moral prescriptions – do this, don’t do that. It’s not that simple. Ephesians was written to a church of Jews and Gentiles who were trying to learn to live and worship together.

It was natural for each group to want to hold on to its own form of life and worship as much as possible. To the Jews, it was worshipping the God of the Torah as the chosen children of Israel. For the converted Gentiles, it was the ways of worshiping the more feminine goddess Artemis. It was ingrained in the Jews to live out the Exodus story, going away from the world to meet God. For the Greeks, it was the opposite, they were cosmopolitan, sophisticated and very much a part of the social and political world around them.

The temptation for the Jews was to put the Gentiles in the place of Tonto, useful sidekicks to do the dirty work. The temptation for the Gentiles was to completely throw out the Hebrew history of the Jews in favor of something totally new. This either-or tension is what Paul is addressing here, that is the point of his call to be rooted and grounded in love, to speak the truth in love and in chapter 5, verse 2 to live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Here in this section of Ephesians Paul gives specific instruction about behavior for the simple reason that it is not always easy to identify who the bad guy is and who the good guy is. Sometimes, heaven forbid, it might actually be the Lone Ranger who is the one working against the unity of the body and the purposes of God.

We aren’t too far removed from those Ephesians. There are some Chrsitans that still would like to run away from the world, to find a hideaway in some place where we can ignore the corruption and pain of the world around us, only deal with other Christians and forget about anything and anyone else. There are other Christians that want to run full-tilt into the world, throwing away our history and traditions and liturgy, so Christianity can be relevant, cool and fit within the structures of the 21^st century instead of the other way around. Paul is proposing a middle way here, a way that God has created between the two extremes. Paul is talking about a place where we live in the world but are not of the world. And in that middle way, it is sometimes difficult to discern where God is and what following God looks like. So here Paul lays out what the hallmarks are – certain ways of being and acting that show who is following Christ and who isn’t. Just like Jesus said, it’s all about the fruit you bear, how your life grows or doesn’t grow the proof of what’s going on inside your head and heart.

Let’s look at the flow of Paul’s argument and notice an unusual use of images. Why in the world does Paul bring thieves into the discussion? I can’t imagine that there were many pick-pockets or bank robbers sitting around listening while this letter of Paul’s was read out loud.  Just like now, if I were to take a leaf out of Paul letter and start talking about thieves here this morning, you’d probably look around to see who I was talking to or get offended that I might be making some unfounded accusations.

I think Paul is playing a trick on his listeners here. The talk about thieves would certainly get their attention, every listener would be united against a common enemy, the one who takes what doesn’t belong to them. It’s easy to boo and hiss when the bad guy is easy to spot. And we can righteously cross our arms and agree with Paul. “That’s right, if you are a thief, go get a real job so you can contribute to society and be useful.” we might say.

It is in that moment that Paul pulls the rug out from under their self-righteous feet (and ours!). “Let no evil talk come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building up.” All of a sudden, Paul has equated those two things, thieving and evil talk and we don’t like that one little bit. While we are settling into that comparison, Paul points to the one form whom we are really stealing – we are not just hurting the unity of our Christian community but grieving the Holy Spirit of God.

Paul follows this up with a laundry list of the things that grieve God and destroy the church:

Bitterness,

Wrath

Anger

Wrangling

Slander

Together with all malice

And he sets those things over against their opposites, the life-giving, community building behaviors:

Kindness

Tender-heartedness

Forgiveness, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.

These ways of acting are how you tell the good guys from the bad guys and are the ways in which we, strengthened and given courage by the Holy Spirit, are to act.

As much as we want to identify ourselves with the Lone Ranger, we need a new way of looking at it, a paradigm shift. We need to look at the picture in a whole new way.

God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the main character, the lead actor. All that is and was and is to come belongs to Him. We are Tonto. We are not some slightly pitiful sidekick. We have important work to do based on our own gifts and God-given abilities. It is up to us to work with God, to live in harmony with his purposes even when it seems difficult and doesn’t make sense.

It is not as simple as being able to identify evil by outward appearances, by masks and hats and the color of someone’s horse. Sometimes, the evil lies inside of us. God has given us ways to spot the sin whenever and wherever it occurs. Kindness, gentleness and most of all, forgiveness are the marks of Kingdom living, living like Jesus.

Let’s continue to pray with David that God will cleanse our hearts and renew a right spirit within us so that our lives will be a fragrant offering both in this world and in the heavenly realm as well.

Begin today with the story of David and Bathsheba from II Samuel. It’s a familiar tale and all too realistic. It could just as easily happen today as in ancient Palestine. The difference is that the prophet Nathan doesn’t let David off the hook, whether or not David was king.

Hear the stinging indictment – You are the man! That finger, that prophetic pointing finger could be leveled at each of us for we have forsaken our covenant with God and to his church and gone our own selfish ways. We have focused only on what we want or what we think we deserve. We have withheld our time, our talents, our money, our hearts – held them back from God to go chasing after the Bathshebas who so seductively parade before us: material possessions, gossip and slander, sheer laziness that the Proverbs writer speaks of -‘a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest’. Not just sins of omission but sins of commission where we have found excuses to be unhappy, to refuse to serve by blaming the behaviors of others.

That stinging indictment comes to each of us who have doubted the word of God, who have put our own need for power and control above the moving of God, who have withdrawn from participating in the work of God because of our own human agenda. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4 we are called to be unified in the body of Christ. Speaking the truth in love we are to build each other up and build up the body. Anything that isn’t speaking the truth in love about anything, anywhere, anytime, is sin, plain and simple.  There is spiritual wisdom in what our mothers used to tell us: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Speaking the truth in love isn’t back-biting and ugliness. It’s said to the person it concerns and is honest. Let me give you an example. Several weeks ago, we were discussing spiritual warfare in Sunday School. Someone asked me about demon possession and I was waffling about my answer. Finally, I just admitted that I hadn’t figured that out yet. That wasn’t the end of it, firmly and passionately, Miss Rowena Tankard said “Kelli, you better get that figured out, not just for yourself but for us!” And she was right. She reminded me not only of my personal Christian walk that needed attending to but also my responsibility as shepherd. Now, she didn’t say it in an ugly way that was humiliating to me, she didn’t say it to three other people in the parking lot after church. She communicated clearly and truly lovingly in holding me accountable for things I need to know and discern. That is speaking the truth in love.

The love that Paul writes about here in Ephesians 4 is the same love he writes about in Ephesians 3 – the love that is rooted and grounded in Christ. We must spur each other onward as steel on steel with courage and respect and love that doesn’t tear down but builds up.

In recent days, this church has been incredibly active – concerts and ball games, book clubs and Bible studies, worship and prayer meetings. At the same time, there have been other forces to try to stop those things from happening. There lies within each of us the seeds of selfishness, of fear and the need for power and control to get what we want instead of what God wants. That is the influence of the evil one, who wants to stride around among us, and tear down anything that has to do with the Kingdom of God. We must be vigilant, united in prayer and fellowship, individually and as a church saying no to anything that would divide or harm us.

Nathan said to David – You are the man. Thanks be to God the story doesn’t end with that condemnation. David was a man after God’s own heart. In all that is best in each of us, so we too are people made in God’s image, possessing God’s heart as we follow him. So David poured out his human heart before the Lord, owning up to his sin in the words of Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  ² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.  ³ For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  ⁴ Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.  ⁵ Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.  ⁶ You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.  ⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.  ⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.  ⁹ Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.  ¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  ¹¹ Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.  ¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

The sacrifice that God requires of us is the sacrifice of ourselves. We must give ourselves over to His way, His plan, His work.

In John 6, the disciples are alone on a boat with Jesus. Jesus has fed the multitudes and the disciples are trying to figure out what they are supposed to do to follow Jesus, to be like him, to fit into his plan. John 6:28-29 ²⁸ Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”  ²⁹ Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” That is our work, to believe in Jesus the Son of God, to do the work he has given us to do here in this geographic location at this specific point in time. Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,  ² looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

This is the moment, this is the day of salvation, this is the day to take that next step in walking in faith, to being committed to speaking the truth in love, to being committed to the unity of the body. It takes seeing your sin for what it is and then in repentance and forgiveness there is hope, hope for today and bright hope for tomorrow/blessings all mine and ten thousand beside. Great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me, even when I sin and fall short, even when we sin and fall short, there is hope and help and real, eternal love.

Ephesians 3:11-21 ¹¹ This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord,  ¹² in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him. ¹³ I pray therefore that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are your glory.  ¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.  ¹⁶ I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit,  ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.  ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  ²⁰ Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,  ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Paul wrote this letter not just to the church at Ephesus but to many of the churches he had started and was supporting. These words are not meant to solve one particular problem at one particular time, like the letters I and II Corinthians. This letter is meant to be read out loud from start to finish like a written sermon. It sums up all the things Paul would have said if he could have been in all those places at once. The little bit of the letter that we take as our text today sets out plainly what Paul wanted for these new Christians spread in cities around the Mediterranean Sea. In our day and time, we too, can hear the message of this prayer of Paul’s for it transcends time and distance. Paul’s words can be heard despite their ancient historical context clearly for us today as those who follow Jesus.

It is the death and resurrection of Jesus that Paul gives as the reason that we have access to God and not just access but we can come to him with boldness and confidence. But that boldness and confidence cannot be mistaken for pride or a false sense of importance. The boldness and the confidence that springs from being children of God the Father is balanced by being rooted and grounded in love. That little phrase can contain all of our life’s work, all we need to check ourselves and to grow in Christ. Am I, are we rooted and grounded in love?

Being rooted is an image from gardening. Think of a little spring of a plant being set out in the field, or a rosebush being planted in the yard. Somehow, mysteriously to me but set up completely by God, that plant sends down roots into the soil and an exchange takes place that causes that plant to grow and prosper. With the right conditions, all the potential that is contained in that seed or that cutting becomes a perfect plant, bearing fruit and producing other plants just like it. That is the image Paul wants us to see here- the image of being rooted in love, going down deep, drawing the nourishment and energy we need to fulfill the unique potential God has planted in each of us.

Being grounded is an architectural image. Grounding a building is setting the foundation upon which the structure or superstructure can be built. We can think of simply pouring a slab foundation for a house or digging down deep into the ground to set the foundation for a cathedral or a skyscraper. The structure has to sit on something sound, something that ties the building to the ground. Yet, the building that goes on the foundation can only rise as high as the foundation itself will permit. Jesus himself used this image when he talked about the man that built his house on rock and the man who built his house on sand. The rains came and the winds blew and the house that was built on sand fell. And the house built on rock remained.

Rooted, like a plant, grounded like a house in love. We can imagine the earth a plant is set in and the solid ground under a building but what is this love that Paul says comes from Christ living in our hearts and the Holy Spirit strengthening us? It is not sentimentality. It isn’t the love of valentines and chocolates. It isn’t love that is a feeling. It is love that is a choice. It is God’s choice and it is our choice. It is a commitment that outlasts feelings and circumstances. Our commitment to our spouses and our children, whom we love no matter what, it simply a shadow of the love God has for us individually and as God’s family, the church.

Here’s the basic problem, we can’t be good enough. We can’t be good, period. We are naturally selfish, we want what we want when we want it. We can dress it up as ambition or try to twist the will of God around to make it what I want to do anyway. We as humans down deep inside are broken, God made us perfectly, sin takes that perfection and ruins it. So what can we do? How do we handle this selfishness, this desire for power and control, this knee-jerk reaction of self-preservation? We give it up to the One who created us in the first place and through Christ, has paved the road of the way back home. When we set our roots down in the soil of God’s love, we are strengthened and guided by the real-time presence of the Holy Spirit that helps us overcome our selfishness. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, Paul writes in Philippians 4:13. We are more than conquerors, he says in Romans 8, through him who loved us. And God chose to love us and continues to choose to love us.

In response, we must choose to love him. Not just that once in a lifetime commitment that we call salvation but that day to day, sometimes minute by minute commitment that we call the Christian life. It is sitting in traffic and choosing to breath in God’s Spirit instead of getting frustrated at other drivers who are not nearly as good as driver as you are. It is choosing to not bite the telemarketers head off when they call in the middle of dinner for the third time this week. On a larger level, it is looking at our lives, our future plans, our budgets and asking God what He would have us do instead of making decisions based on what we think we deserve, what we think we have earned.

It is on this foundation of groundedness, this stability of life that comes from being chosen by God and choosing to live with God, it is on that foundation then that Paul builds the magnificent cathedral of praise: ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  ²⁰ Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,  ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

All of that glory and praise, all of that love that surpasses human knowledge, all that abundance that God wants to accomplish in each of our individual lives and in the life of the church is based on that simple phrase, being rooted and grounded in love. Where have you let your roots sink down deeply so you gain nourishment and strength? Where have you set your foundation to that when the storms come, the rains fall and the wind blow, your house will stand solid and safe? Only in the love of God can you reach your fullest potential, only on the choice of loving God will your house stand firm. Be careful, our sinful selfish selves can say our lives are grounded in God’s love but our checkbooks, our free time habits, the way we treat other people may tell a completely different story.

God continues to choose us again and again and again. Hear God’s commitment to us his people as written by John Keith (1787) in the hymn How Firm a Foundation

1. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
   Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
   What more can He say than to you He hath said—
   To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
2. “Fear not, I am with thee, oh, be not dismayed,
   For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
   I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
   Upheld by My gracious, omnipotent hand.
3. “When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
   The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
   For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless,
   And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
4. “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
   My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
   The flame shall not harm thee; I only design
   Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
5. “The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose,
   I will not, I will not, desert to his foes;
   That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
   I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”

May each of us abide in that love, rooted and grounded both now and forever. Amen

Here in the gospel of Mark, chapter 5 we find a classic literary structure, a frame story. The outer frame is the story of Jairus and his daughter. The inner story is the story of Jesus and the woman with the 12 year long hemorrhage. It is important to visualize what the scene is here. Swirling all around Jesus here in the beginning chapters of Mark there is demonic insanity, uncleanness, blood and death, scorn and criticism and accusation. If you graph the stories moving outward from this one moment, there seem to be concentric rings or ripples of all the confusion, wonder, hope and fear that surround Jesus during his ministry.
I confess to you that I worked hard to find some structure, some mathematically logical way to make sense of Mark’s account of Jesus’ actions and words. But all I could see around him was chaos. Jesus, in this part of Mark is doing wonderful things, wonder-filled things. Some people respond with faith, some people respond with greed “what’s in this for me?” Some respond by just tagging along to see what’s going to happen next. It is helpful for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the people in this story: Jairus who comes to Jesus with his hat in his hands asking for help; the mourners at Jairus’ house whose mourning turns to scoffing when Jesus arrives; the disciples who are both Jesus’ inner circle and a foil for his teaching; the woman with the 12-year-old bleeding problem who pushed herself from the margins into the vortex of the crowd to reach out for help and healing.
We have been taught and argued about the theological hinge of the gospel of Mark is in chapter 8 when Peter confesses that Jesus is in fact the Son of God. Perhaps the text really does lead up to that moment and everything that follows is a result of Peter’s confession. We as humans want to stand with Peter and say “that’s it Jesus. I know who you are, I get it! What can I do? What can I do?” But when we stand with Peter, in his shoes, when we stand with the mourners and the scoffers and the crowds, we are missing the point. Because it is not about what we say or do or think or feel.
It’s about God.
It is about Jesus being the Son of God. It is about God at work in the world drawing us to him, healing us, re-creating us, making all things new. The pivotal moment is when Jesus speaks to the bleeding woman. And not just speaks to her, but speaks in a three-fold way that explains who He is, who God is and what God is up to.
Imagine the scene. Jesus is at the center of a jostling, hot, dusty crowd. This nameless woman comes up behind him and touches his clothing. “Who touched me?” Jesus asks. Hear the echo of the questions that God has asked throughout the ages. “Adam, where are you?” “Cain, where is your brother?” “Job, where were you when I created all this?” “Isaiah, whom shall I send?” “Who touched me?” Jesus asks. He looked around to see who had done it and the action of the scene stops. The crowd fades into the background and the woman comes forward and as the text says, tells Jesus the whole truth. We don’t know what her ‘whole truth’ is. The text is mercifully silent here for us to fill in our own ‘whole truth.’
Here is the central moment, here is Jesus explain what he has been doing, what he is doing and what he will do not only for that woman and for Jairus’ daughter but for us. Mark 5:34 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Just a few paragraphs earlier in this gospel Jesus had explained faith and the Kingdom of God in terms of the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed. Even that size of faith in the Kingdom, Jesus says, can make you well. Go in peace, Jesus tells her. And this is the peace of shalom. Not just the absence of suffering but the creative, life-giving way that makes all things new. Be healed of your dis-ease, be healed of that which keeps you from experiencing and living into my shalom, my peace.
How does that threefold blessing come upon us? By coming face to face with the living Jesus. Think of all the crowd around him that day. I am sure that there were many who bumped into him accidently, who perhaps even reached out to grab his sleeve, to tell him something, to ask him for something. Why was this woman the only one who received his healing, holy power? Because she touched him with intentionality, with purpose. How many of us come to church and are the crowd? We mill around the things of power. We sing but not with our whole hearts. We hear the word but we have our defenses up so it doesn’t sink down to where those dark places are. And we focus on the things the crowd is doing. We get irritated with crying babies, rattling gum wrappers, music we don’t like, communion not delivered to us in the way we desire. And all the time, we are missing Jesus.
We read this story focusing on the people in it and we miss Jesus. When we miss Jesus, we miss what He has not just for us but for the whole world through us. We don’t even know we are doing it.
When we were struggling with the call to come here to North Carolina, I was bound and determined not to leave Mark, my then 16-year-old son. He was bound and determined not to move here to the ‘edge of the universe’ as he calls it. One day I was in my room reading and Mark came and stood next to my chair. “Mom,” he said, “I just can’t go, I just don’t think it’s the right thing for me to do.”
“Well, Mark. I am not going to leave you. You are my son and I am not leaving you here.”
Mark sat down on the stool at my feet and looked up and me. “Mom, remember a couple of weeks ago you preached on hearing from God? You said that as long as we focus on other people we will always be disappointed but I we keep our eyes on Jesus we never will be. You are focusing on me. Your call is to go to this church, to help these people as only you and God can and you are missing it because you are focused on me and not Jesus.”
You never know when your sermons are going to come home to roost. He was right. I was so caught up in being his mom that I was denying my call to be God’s servant.
Where is your focus this morning? Is it on the chaos, is it on the million and one things you cannot control, the complaining, the scoffing, the mourning, the sickness, the death of a dream you held dear?
Brothers and sisters, hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ: your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease. Go and spread the good news that we are not doomed and destined for chaos but for peace and life and purpose. We can be healed of the brokenness and woundedness that mark us only human. Our world is not headed for a slow freeze up or a dramatic meltdown but for God’s shalom prophesied in Revelation when the new heaven comes down to the new earth and all sorrow and pain and death will finally pass away.
That is what Jesus is up to in Mark 5. He is living out the promise of new creation, he is showing what God is like, what God’s love is all about and we, like the healed woman who touched his robe, like Jairus’ little daughter have all the world and time to live in God’s peace and God’s new creation here and now, today.
Live into it, trust it. Chaos is not winning. God has already won the victory. Hear the words of the Psalmist and live into them:
Psalm 130:1-8 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. 2 Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! 3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. 5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. 8 It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

TO WHOM DO I BELONG?

At issue here is this question: “To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?” Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me… Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.

– Henri Nouwen in The Return of The Prodigal Son

How I want to belong only to Christ. Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.

A new way of praying
That isn’t about me.
Not my laundry list of how God should ‘fix’ things
Yet, my openness to to how God wants to move through me.
Not that I don’t care about
people
situations and circumstances
hurting and sorrow and grief
I trust God enough to lift these things up before Him and let God be God.

So what is prayer if it isn’t dumbly reciting lists or rote recitation of liturgy?

It is the list and the liturgy
infused with the recognition and offer of my life
met by and subsumed in
the reality and the power of the Holy Spirit

One wave running back out to sea (which is my life tossed briefly up on the shores of reality) where it meets the larger waves rolling in (the work of God though the Holy Spirit in the world). Prayer is where those two waves meet, they come together and are reunited, inseparable. It takes place in the rough waters of the surf, not up on the dry land or out in the deep water beyond the surf line.

We hold the lists and the liturgy lightly to offer them and then let them go.

Welcome to NCCUMC.net Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

or the pier on Silver Lake actually. Why is it that when I am on vacation the ideas flow fast and furious, everything is seems possible and the cold-water-dash of ‘you can’t do that’ doesn’t seem to exist? More and more I am discovering that not everyone sees the connectedness of all of life the way I do. To me, it’s no coincidence that I can sit on Ocracoke at the pier on Silver Lake knowing that my beloved grandparents house sits on another Silver Lake back home in Kentucky.

I am preaching and singing this morning at the Ocracoke UMC with two of the finest musicians with whom I have ever been privileged to work: Marcy Brenner and Lou Castro. Lou is the best guitarist, his fingers fly, amazing. Marcy has a transparent soul that captures the poetry that is her life, distills life as all poets do and sets it to music, to sink down into that deep place that is the core in each of us.

Good stuff. God stuff.