The confirmation class of 2012
Saturday was a beautiful day as we gathered on the bank of Lookout Creek. The water was perfect as we all waded in and I had the privilege of baptizing the members of the confirmation class of 2012. What a wonderful way to kick off our Pentecost celebration!
This Saturday at 5:00 p.m., the congregation of the Rising Fawn UMC will gather at the Rumley’s for a Creekside Baptism Celebration. I will have the honor of baptizing at least 6 of our youth as we prepare for them to join the church on Pentecost Sunday. It has been a wonderful thing to lead them through confirmation and (hopefully) help them to understand the basics of being a disciple of Christ and not just a consumer of “churchianity”. Once the baptisms are finished, we’ll celebrate with a cookout and fellowship.
I would invite you to keep these young men and women in your prayers as they become the leaders of our church today and in the future. Pray that they will fully embrace the “God of grace” and allow God to work in them and through them to change our community in a positive way. Pray that the Holy Spirit will use them to lead others to the path of discipleship and invite them to come along for the ride.
Thanks be to God!
The following post was written after I was dissatisfied with the “reblog this” feature of WordPress which made it look as though I had written Dan’s post. The “reblog” post was deleted. My apologies to Dan.
Anyone who knows me knows that I believe that Discipleship is a state of being that is not easily attained. I have been influenced over the years by the writings of Dan Dick, a dedicated United Methodist who has served at all levels in the church, along with other folks like Kevin Watson and Steve Manskar to name a few. They all call us to discover a deeper, more meaningful and more authentic model of discipleship than we have collectively practiced over the years. I have tried to model this level of commitment in the congregations that I serve, to varying degrees of success.
Dan is a delegate to General Conference 2012, the quadrennial gathering of United Methodists from across the globe who over 10 days direct the course of the UMC for at least the next 4 years. Tonight’s offering from his blog describes his frustrations at the state of our church and how we are apparently sacrificing commitment to the cause of Christ by lowering the bar so that there is no cost to following the one who told his followers to take up their cross and follow him. It makes for a good read and possibly a topic for Wednesday night at Body and Soul.
It is now the morning after the evening when the 2012 General Conference convened for its quadrennial gathering in Tampa, Florida. If memory serves me, there are approximately 988 delegates gathered from around the worldwide connection of the United Methodist Church. While I wish that I could be present for part of the conference as an observer, I will have to satisfy my geek quotient for all things Methodist by watching bits and pieces of the live feed of plenary and worship sessions and checking the twitter #gc2012 hashtag.
I was able to watch a good bit of the opening worship and the opening plenary, I didn’t catch it all. I did, however, catch the interminable posturing over the report of the Rules Committee that turned out to be all for naught since the Rules were adopted as they were originally proposed this morning. Only took about 6 hours to do something that should have been accomplished in 15-20 minutes… It doesn’t give me great hope for this conference. At least now the legislative committees can begin their work.
Unfortunately I missed the opening addresses this morning. Perhaps I will be able to catch the video of these later today.
As General Conference now (finally) begins its work, I pray that all of our delegates will put aside agendas, embrace Holy Conferencing, and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit as they determine the course of United Methodism over the next quadrennium and beyond.
The following is the Easter Sermon given at Rising Fawn and Sand Mountain United Methodist Churches on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012.
Here we are on Easter Sunday morning. It is on this day that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. But just what are we celebrating? Are we celebrating the resurrection because we truly believe that it happened or do we celebrate in the hope that we can someday believe that Jesus rose from the dead? And in either case, do we live our lives as people of the resurrection or do we crucify him again and again in our failure to live up to the ideal that Christ taught?
If you have been with us at the Rising Fawn and Sand Mountain United Methodist Churches during the past week, you’ve had plenty of opportunity to experience the passion story first hand. Starting last Sunday as we celebrated the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the shouts of Hosanna! To the King! Then we continued with the story through the clearing of the temple, the teaching and confrontations with the religious authorities and the conspiracy to have Jesus killed.
We traveled with Jesus and his disciples to the Upper Room where the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was instituted… Do this in Remembrance of me. And on this same night, Jesus took the position of a lowly servant and washed the disciples feet as an act of love. He commanded the disciples and us to love one another as God has loved us.
We journeyed to the Garden where Jesus asked that the burden that he was about to face might be lifted from him…but only if it were his Father’s will and not his own.
We watched the story unfold as Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest associates…one of his closest friends. We watched as Jesus was arrested and taken away by the temple guard.
We were disgusted as Peter denied that he even knew Christ. For three times he denied him…and then the cock crowed…just as Jesus had predicted. And we realized that we deny him all the time. We deny him by ignoring his teachings or by putting our wants and our desires ahead of what God has revealed to us through Jesus Christ.
We were spectators as the drama played out, first in the palace of Pilate, the roman governor, then to Herrod, the puppet ruler of Judea and then back to Pilate who could find no fault with this man. But the religious authorities were able to get their way by inciting the people to riot as they called for the release of Barrabas and shouted for Pilate to “Crucify him!”
We were repulsed as Jesus was scourged and beaten. We felt the sting as the crown of thorns was brutally shoved upon his head. We experienced his humiliation as he was mocked by both the crowds and the soldiers and made to carry his own cross to Golgotha.
We watched in horror as he was nailed to the cross, his flesh torn by the nails, blood everywhere and we heard the sickening thud as the cross was raised and then dropped violently into the hole that had been prepared for it.
We waited along with the others, Mary, his mother, the beloved disciple, Mary’s sister and Mary Magdalene as they grieved over the impending loss of their friend, their relative, their teacher…their Lord.
When the agony was over and he breathed his last, we grieved because we believed that “It is finished”…our Messiah was dead. We went with Joseph of Arimathea as he took Jesus’ dead body down from the cross and carried it to the tomb where he was placed. And we watched as the guard was placed around the tomb and the stone was rolled over the entrance. And we thought it was all over.
Until this morning.
This morning, we found that Christ IS alive.
We found out that Jesus HAS conquered death.
We found out that evil doesn’t have the last word. That God IS in control and that through Jesus, we have hope for eternal life.
The journey that we’ve taken together in this week was a journey worth taking because we discovered that it was our sin that nailed Jesus to that cross. Our hands held the nails and the hammer as our pride and our arrogance and our pig headed self-centeredness have caused us to ignore the truth of what Jesus taught the disciples so long ago and is still teaching us today.
He taught that God IS love and that God loves us and God wants us to love one another as God has loved us. That Love from God and the Grace that God has shown us that we too can conquer death by believing, believing in the Son of God revealed to us through the scriptures. The great truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in the hope that it brings to us.
I especially appreciate the way that Mark, the writer of the first Gospel ends his story. Those who arrive at the tomb are told that Jesus has been resurrected and they are to go and share that with Peter and the others. And they ran away terrified.
Terrified that the news that they so wanted to believe might be true. Why would they be terrified? Well, the temple authorities and the Roman officials who had been responsible for the execution of Jesus were still in power. Crucifixion was still an option for the others who followed him. They were terrified because they might be next and all of this was just too much for them to process in the moment.
Mark’s Gospel ended just as it began. With no mention of the details that perhaps Mark believed were extraneous or perhaps he believed that the details were a foregone conclusion and were well known to the followers of The Way.
It brings up an important point for us to consider.
Perhaps the most important message that Mark leaves with us is this: that it is not up to us. The resurrection is God’s act for us. It requires no action from us for it to be real. But it does require action from us to be shared and lived out. The resurrection demands our ascent as we live out the hope and the promise that the resurrection brings through our lives being changed because of it.
Back in March 1994, a young woman named Kelly Clem was serving as the pastor of Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, Alabama. On Palm Sunday, the church was packed. Kelly’s two-year old daughter, Sarah, was in the church nursery. Kelly’s fouryearold daughter, Hannah, was dressed in a little blueandwhite choir robe, sitting on the front row with the children’s choir.
As the service got underway, the congregation heard wind blowing outside. The sky turned black. Then the lightning began, followed by hail. Suddenly there was a burst of wind. The stained-glass window shattered, and shards of glass shot across the sanctuary. Somebody shouted, “tornado!” Pieces of ceiling started to fall. There was a horrible sound as the roof of the church was ripped off, and the building crashed around them. Reverend Kelly ran to check on her children. But a brick hit her on the head, and she fell hard on her shoulder.
When she finally got up, she looked around at the devastation. Someone told her that her twoyearold daughter, Sarah, was OK—that the nursery was still intact. Then Kelly looked down to where her fouryearold daughter, Hannah, had been sitting. There was nothing there but a pile of bricks. Under that pile of bricks, she could see little blueandwhite choir robes. Members of the church pulled Hannah and the other children out of the bricks, but Hannah did not make it. Nineteen people in the church that morning died, and eighty-six others were injured.
Over the next few days, Kelly performed one funeral after another, including one for her daughter. Toward the end of that awful week, Kelly began receiving phone calls from members of the congregation. Given the death of the pastor’s daughter and the destruction of their sanctuary, they asked, “Reverend Clem, are we having Easter this year?” But Kelly knew they weren’t just asking about Sunday’s services. She knew they were saying, “Reverend Clem, we desperately need Easter.” and after leading nineteen funerals, including the funeral of her fouryearold daughter,
Kelly Clem knew that she needed Easter also. So Kelly and her congregation planned an Easter sunrise service.
A few days after the tornado, a reporter asked Reverend Clem if the disaster had shattered her faith. She replied: “It has not shattered my faith. I’m holding on to my faith. It’s holding me. All of the people of Goshen are holding on to one another, along with the hope that they will be able to rebuild.” then Kelly said to the reporter, “Easter is coming.”
That Sunday morning at the Easter sunrise service, two hundred people gathered in the front yard of the destroyed facilities at Goshen UMC. With a bandage on her head, her shoulder in a brace, and her heart breaking with grief, Reverend Kelly made her way to the makeshift pulpit. She opened her Bible, looked into the faces of her traumatized congregation, and then read these words from Romans 8: “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[1]
Our hope lies in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our hope lies in Easter. It is as true today as it was 1979 years ago. We have no need to fear as we confidently proclaim together:
Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] This story is taken from the Leader’s Guide for Martin Thielen’s text, What’s the Least I Can Believe and still be a Christian? A Guide for What Matters Most, pp 63-65 at http://thielen.wjkbooks.com/Thielen-LeadersGuide-Revised.pdf, accessed 4/7/12. Used by permission.
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen, indeed!
The crux of all that we believe and proclaim is celebrated on this day, this holiest of all days on the Christian calendar.
As Christ has overcome death and destroyed the obstacles and barriers that separate us from God, may we boldly proclaim that our hope lies in the affirmation of our faith.
Christ has died, Christ IS risen, Christ will come again!
May we who believe in the resurrection be emboldened to live out our faith in a way that proclaims to the world that the resurrection of Jesus makes a difference in our lives.
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen indeed!
A friend’s posting on facebook about revival and what it means reminded me of this sermon which I presented at the opening session of the Dade Cluster Revival in October 2008. A lot of what I said then is still relevant today. As those of us in the United Methodist Church grapple with the Call to Action report and the legislative and structural changes that it suggests, let us never forget that WE can do nothing on our own. I believe that our Wesleyan/Arminian understanding of God’s amazing grace is what the world desperately needs to hear in this day and age. Rather than focus on numbers and the idiocy of equating “discipleship” with “butts in pews,” my prayer is that our entire church will enter an extended time of earnest prayer for revival as we discern where the Holy Spirit is leading us.
Revival. According to Webster’s Dictionary this word revival means an act of reviving or the state of being revived. It also means an evangelistic meeting or series of meetings to reawaken religious faith.
Now if our primary purpose in coming here tonight and over the next few nights is to sing our favorite hymns and songs out of the Cokesbury hymnal and to feel nostalgic and feel good about ourselves, then frankly my friends, I have better things to do. And really, so do you.
So if that is our purpose, let’s just call it a night, turn off the lights and go home.
But if our purpose in coming here tonight is to seek the face of the living God, and to experience God’s presence among us. If our purpose is to come seeking the experience of our hearts being strangely warmed as we realize that God is by our side, that God is always with us.
If our purpose in coming here is to once again hear the old, old story of Jesus and his love AND by doing so, we find ourselves being refreshed, revived and renewed, then I believe that we have come to the right place.
For what better place is there than here and what better time is there than now to turn our hearts and minds to the worship of the living God and to renew our commitment to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Nearly 2000 years ago, following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus promised the disciples that there would come a time when the Holy Spirit would be revealed to them. He promised that the Holy Spirit would come like the rush of a mighty wind… and as our scripture from the Acts of the Apostles is played out the disciples have experienced this coming of the Holy Spirit and all who witnessed this awe inspiring event were astounded by what had happened. They heard the disciples speaking in their native tongues as visitors to this crossroad of the Roman Empire came from every corner of the known world. They experienced miracles and wonders and the skeptics among them expressed their opinion that these folks were just drunk… on new wine.
That’s when Peter steps up and gives the first sermon… and what a sermon it was.
He reminded the audience about what the prophet Joel had said:
“In the Last Days,” God says,
“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions,
your old men dream dreams.
When the time comes,
I’ll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both,
and they’ll prophesy.
I’ll set wonders in the sky above
and signs on the earth below,
Blood and fire and billowing smoke,
the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Day of the Lord arrives,
the Day tremendous and marvelous;
And whoever calls out for help
to me, God, will be saved.”
And, in speaking of saving grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, he says
I have pitched my tent in the land of hope.
What a statement that is on his part. That by trusting in Christ, we pitch our tent in the land of hope.
In this time of national calamity as this house of cards that is our economy comes crashing down around our heads, we need to return to our roots in the faith. We need to get our bearings once again, setting our sights on what is important, reshuffling our priorities so that God is first in our lives and by doing so, we can live in the land of hope that comes from living our lives as sons and daughters of God… reclaiming the birthright that is ours as we seek to do the will of God in our lives.
The hope that we share is built on nothing less than the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.
This land of hope that we have through Christ is so foreign to this world of despair that we have come to see through the nightly news programs and their focus on the world as it is going to hell in a hand basket. And all to often it is foreign to us because we have allowed the things of this world to take precedence in our lives.
We have turned to political systems; to politicians and to governments to meet our needs and to define our identity rather than seeking to be identified with the saving grace of out Lord Jesus Christ.
In some cases we have allowed ourselves to become pawns of political parties that court us for our votes by appealing to the values that we hold and then they turn their backs on us when they gain power through the ballot box.
We have pledged our allegiance to a flag and to a national identity rather than pledging our allegiance to the Christ who suffered and died on a cross of shame because he loved us and wants nothing more for us than the very best… an ideal that is expressed in an open and loving relationship with the creator of all things.
We have allowed ourselves to be used and abused because we have continued to place our hope and our trust in the things of man rather than setting our sights on the Kingdom of God.
In this time of watching helplessly as the “stuff” that we have depended upon for our security has evaporated away as this house of cards that is our economy collapses around us, it is comforting to know that God’s economy is not our economy. Thanks be to God.
Man’s economy is based upon things.
God’s economy is based upon relationships. Relationships between God and us. Relationships between our neighbor and us. In God’s economy, everyone has a place at the table. It doesn’t matter if you’re poor as dirt or if you have plenty of the things that are valued by people, status, wealth and the like; you are welcome at the God’s table.
The grace that we have been given is a gift to all people. The gift of eternal life through acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is a gift that has been given to all people. We are just called to accept the gift.
God’s economy is not based upon greed. God’s economy is based upon justice. Justice for all the people.
It is an economy that acknowledges that God is supreme; that God is over all things and that God is at the center of our very being. It is an economy that forces us to put everything into the perspective of Kingdom principles and Kingdom living.
When God is given his place then not only do interest rates come into balance, but the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, the unjustly imprisoned are freed, children are loved and cared for, and the elderly are respected and can live the remainder of their lives with dignity and purpose.
When God is given his place, then we can throw Caesar his bone and we can get on with being the children of God that we are called to be.
When we give to God what is God’s (which I believe is everything) it also means to open our hearts and give God the opportunity to restore hope in our hearts.
It means to give God the anxieties and the paralyzing fears that prevent us from thinking and acting rationally.
It means to give God the anxieties and paralyzing fears that shut out hope.
It means that we give God our full attention so that we can hear the phrase said so often by angels and by Jesus himself: “fear not”.
When we are living in God’s economy, we don’t have to fear. Because God is with us. And when God is with us, what can stand against us? What can harm us?
Nothing. Because with God on our side we have all that we need.
The things of this world can and someday will all pass away, but the things of God endure forever. Jesus has come into our hearts and fear is gone.
We know what the future holds and we can celebrate that future and share it with others.
So the question becomes, how do we reclaim the priorities that we need to reclaim in order to get ourselves back on track and where we need to be?
Well, we are Methodists, you know. That means that there is probably a method, a system that we can use to help us get ourselves on the right track.
John Wesley developed such a system when he devised the General Rules of the Methodist Societies. Bishop Reuben Job has recently published a book about the General Rules and how, by reclaiming these rules of life we can turn our lives around, and turn our church around in the process. The book is entitled Three Simple Rules, A Wesleyan Way of Living. It gives concrete and modern examples of living in the United Methodist Way by following the General Rules as Bishop Job summarized them:
So let’s take a few minutes and look at these rules and how they can apply in our lives today.
The first rule is Do No Harm. What would it mean if we were to take this first simple rule seriously? First of all, it would mean an examination of the way we live and practice our faith. And if this examination were thorough, it would surely lead to a change in the way that we practice our faith. Bishop Job tells us that to do no harm is a proactive response to all that is evil in the world – all that is damaging and destructive to humankind and God’s good creation, and therefore, ultimately destructive to us.[1]
To adopt this first rule as a standard of our own practice means that I will see all persons as a child of God. It means that I will be on guard to see that all of my actions – and all of my silence as well – will not add injury to another of God’s children or to any of God’s creation. It means that I will determine every day that my life will be invested in the effort to bring healing instead of hurt; wholeness instead of division; and harmony with the ways of Jesus rather than with the ways of the world.[2]
When we commit ourselves to this way of living, it means that we must see each person – as well as ourselves – as recipients of love unearned, unlimited, and undeserved. It means that as we adopt this rule as a standard in our life, we begin to move toward living our lives as Jesus lived – and loving as Jesus loved, unconditionally and without favor.
The second rule is to do good. We Wesleyans have been so often mischaracterized as believing in the concept of “works righteousness”, a theological term that means that we think that by our works that we can earn our way into salvation and therefore into heaven. This is a perception that has absolutely no basis in fact. We do believe that it is part of our obligation to do good to all people and all creation as a response to the unmerited and undeserved grace that has been showered upon us by a loving God – a loving God who sent His Son to teach us how to live and how to love. Doing good means that we treat our enemies as well as our friends as God’s children – even when they are unlovable… and believe me, I have known some people who were almost impossible to love, who did everything in their power to be unlovable, yet that does not give me a free pass to not love them. In fact, it is just the opposite. The harder people are to love, the more I must work at loving them. This doing good thing isn’t so easy either… is it?
Doing good means that I must actively seek out the ways of justice for all people. It means that we must be willing to stand up to systems and authority that seek to keep people down and in bondage. It means that we must be willing to speak out for those who have no voice or who are oppressed.
It means that we must be willing to seek out need and respond to need in ways that are helpful – even if our help is unappreciated or unwanted. It means that we must be willing to extend risk taking love to all of God’s children and to all of God’s creation with no regard to the cost to ourselves or our reputation.
At the very least, it means that we must be willing to give of our time our talent and our money to help those in need. It means that we need to be willing to get our hands dirty as we struggle beside those who are struggling and we offer a hand up through programs like the Tri-County Food Pantry at Sand Mountain UMC.
By choosing to do good, we can, and do, make a difference, a positive difference, in the lives of people around the corner and around the world.
But where do we get the strength to do no harm and to do good?
The strength that we need to provide our ability to do no harm and do good comes from the third general rule to stay in love with God, or as Wesley originally said by attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are:
Our relationship with God is where we find the strength to carry out these rules of life that we have been given. We cannot expect to persevere in doing no harm and doing good if our relationship with the living God is neglected.
John Wesley said that there is no religion but social religion, no holiness, but social holiness. By this, he meant that we are meant to live as a community of faith, not as individuals. It means that there is strength and support in numbers that is lost when we try to go it alone. Just as we were created to be social beings, we are created to worship God together with others who are sharing our faith journey with us.
Through worship together on Sunday morning, and at other times, we are renewed and refreshed in the ways of God and strengthened for the journey.
Through Holy Communion we are welcomed to the table of the Lord.
Through deep and vital family and private prayer we open our hearts and our minds to the discernment of God’s will for our lives. Through prayer, we converse with the living God and through silence, we can attune ourselves to listen for that still, quiet voice that encourages and strengthens us.
Through Bible Study, in private and in groups, we get to know God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit as they are revealed to us in the scriptures.
The spiritual disciplines that we cultivate all lead us to be closer to God and they will be different for each of us. But, in all things, our goal is to know and love God with all of our heart, our mind, our soul and our strength and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Tonight, I would challenge all of us to once again put God first in our lives. I would challenge us to seek God as he is revealed to us through scripture, prayer and worship. And I would challenge us to seek to love God and neighbor as we have been commanded to do.
If we commit ourselves to these tasks, then I believe that we can once again sing with all the saints in glory:
Hallelujah! Thine the glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Hallelujah! Thine the glory.
Revive us again.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
