Summertime and the Living is Easy

Yesterday, I was scanning Facebook and saw lots of pictures of people on vacation, playing at the lake, relaxing on the beach, and just having a good time these last few weeks of summer break.  These are special times for families and friends to spend together and make memories that will be enjoyed for years.  Seeing all the pictures made me a little sad that our family has not had as much time as we would like to just play this summer. 

Today, I was scanning news reports and saw lots of painful images and stories: riots in England, families of Navy Seals mourning the loss of precious life, Hispanic families in our own state living in fear, and news of mass starvation in eastern Africa.  A particular headline caught my eye, “Which Child Dies? Famine Forces Impossible Choices” (http://news.yahoo.com/child-dies-famine-forces-impossible-choices-145356561.html).  Seeing all these things made me feel physically sick and very thankful at the same time.  I am thankful that the people in our congregation are not currently facing such heart breaking situations, but I am sick over there being people anywhere who have to face such conditions.

As we take advantage of these last weeks of summer, I want to encourage you to be thankful for all the enjoyable times you have spent with your friends and family this summer.  And I want to encourage you to make yourselves sick, so to speak.  Let’s not just look at the pictures, read the painful stories of others’ lives, and then turn off the computer or T.V. and go on with our easy living.  Let’s carry those pictures and stories with us and lift up the people we read about in prayer.  And let’s share the gifts and resources we have that make our lives easier to help make the lives of others more livable.

Helpful Links for Making a Difference Through the Ministries of the United Methodist Church

http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umcor/  United Methodist Committee on Relief (info and donation site)

http://www.northalabamaumc.org/pages/detail/1608  Alabama Tornado Relief Information

www.umvim.org  United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (global service opportunities)

Why did you stomp the ant?!

This morning on the way into Canterbury UMC to take my kids to their daycare classes, I saw a big ant scurrying across the sidewalk in front of us.  Then I saw my five-year-old daughter's foot come down on it with forceful intention.  I looked at her and asked, "Why did you just stomp the ant?"  She kind of shrugged her shoulders.  And maybe because I am a mom, or maybe because I am a preacher, I went into a short lecture on how the ant was just living it's life not doing anything to  bother us and then she just stomps it for no good reason.  I reminded her that it is a living thing too--that God made ants.  None of what I said seemed to sink in.  Maybe that is because she has seen me on numerous occasions smash, stomp, and slap various insects in our home--but that is totally different, right?

This memory from the morning has come back to me as I have been preparing the sermon this Sunday.  Psalm 8 speaks both of our distance from God and our closeness to God.  As creatures who are "a little lower than God, and crowned...with glory and honor" (vs. 5), we humans are in a particular role of responsibility.  Created in the image of a merciful and loving God, we are called to live like the One after and by whom we were created.  We have been "given...dominion over the works of [God's] hands" and have "all things under [our] feet" (vs. 6).  So what does all this mean when we are faced with the question of whether to stomp an ant walking across our path?  Is it wrong, or does it even matter?  What does/should our particular relationship with God and our responsibility for creation shape the small and significant decisions we make about how to interact and coexist with the rest of the world?  This question seems to apply to so many things going on right now:

• illegal aliens
• war
• "fracking" to produce fuel
• political disagreements
• making personal sacrifice to give to tornado victims

If we refuse to work with one group of people because they disagree with us, does it matter?  If we only damage a small portion of the earth, does that matter?  If we share the love of God our Creator with one person, does it matter?

If we just smash one ant, does it matter?

No Stupid Questions?

Growing up, my classroom teachers always said, “There is no such thing as a stupid question.”  Well, I disagree.  Consider these real-life examples.

o   standing in front of the open refrigerator and asking where is the milk when you are staring at it

o   asking a question of your New Testament professor who is reading from the Greek text of the New Testament that begins with “well, my Bible says…”

o   “when is the Fourth of July this year?”

We find in reading the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible that the disciples asked Jesus many questions.    Some of those questions did not receive full or direct answers from Jesus.  They may have not been stupid questions, but they certainly did not always come across as the ‘right’ or appropriate questions for the situation.  But when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus answered them directly with a description as well as an example prayer.  The prayer that Jesus taught them is the prayer we call “The Lords’ Prayer” or “our Father”.  You can find Jesus’ teaching of this prayer in both Matthew 6:5-15 and Luke 11:2-4. 

 

This prayer is more than something to be repeated verbatim over and over—which often seems like some kind of ‘magic phrase’ that will correct things in a poof of magic if said just right.  The Lord’s Prayer provides us with a framework around which to build our own prayers and serves as a window of insight into how we are called to shape our lives with prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer will serve as the focus of the July sermon series at Discovery.  Each week we will explore a different portion of the prayer.  Worship celebrations are at 9:30am and 11am each Sunday

July 3—Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name

July 10—Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as in Heaven.

July 17—Give us today our daily bread.

July 24—Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

July 31—Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

(11am worship only followed by a pot luck lunch)

Young Leaders in Mission

"Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity."  1 Timothy 4:12 (NRSV) We are blessed to have two beautiful stories of our young people leading us by example in ministry! Discovery sponsors Boy Scout Troop 23, who travelled to Pisgah, Alabama this Saturday to help with tornado recovery.  The adults spent the day cutting the downed trees into pieces, and the Scouts drug them into piles were they could either be burned, or used later. The Mayor of Pisgah came out to visit us along with a representative from the local unit of the Salvation Army. Troop 23 presented the Salvation Army representative with 165 - $25 Wal-Mart gift cards that they will distribute to local tornado victims, so that the victims can go out and get the specific new items that they might need.  That is over $4000 raised by Troop 23!  What a blessing this gift is for the many people suffering from broken homes and lives after the destructive storms! Turner, an 11 year old member of Discovery, heard that the RUSH program of Urban Ministries in Birmingham lost one of its vehicles in the storms at the end of April.  Without any prompting from his parents or anyone else, Turner came up with a plan to raise money to replace the damaged vehicle.  With the help of friends from school and two local churches, Turner raised over $1000 and purchased a new van for the mission group.  Over half of the money raised was donated by children 11 years old and younger!  What a great example of sacrificial giving these young children have offered us!

Trying Something New

A few months ago, a woman at Discovery told me about a friend of hers who asked her some questions about the Bible and God. He knew she was active in a church and thought she might be able to answer his questions. She called me and said, “I didn’t know what to tell him, Julie. I didn’t want to tell him the wrong thing.” I told her to invite him to worship or Wednesday night small groups so I could meet him. “He won’t come to church. He said he would burn up if he walked in the doors of a church.” I said, “Tell him we have air conditioning, so he’ll be fine.” She reported back that her friend liked my sense of humor, but that he still wouldn’t agree to come to the church building.


I have been thinking about this guy a lot. Although I know that we have to go outside the church to reach people, he made me see this truth in a new way. So I have been praying and trying to figure out how I can create an opportunity to meet and talk with people like him, people who have questions about Christianity, but won’t step foot inside a church building—not even for Alpha and other such programs.

Pastor Chick-Chat is what I came up with. I have published post-card size flyers and will be posting information in our church’s announcements about an opportunity for people like this man to come to a neutral site and ask their questions. Beginning this June, I will be at local restaurants (Cantina! in Patton Creek this month) two nights each month (June 9th and June 30th starting at 5:30pm). Anyone who wants to come eat or have a drink and hang out is welcome to come. My hope is that this setting will allow people to feel comfortable being themselves and have honest conversations about Christianity and whatever else is on their minds. I don’t know for sure that this will be an effective way to share God’s love with people, but it certainly gets me closer to it than waiting for people to come to the church building.

Celebrating Death?

I watched last night as the media shifted focus from saddened, devastated communities in a country grieving the loss of hundreds of lives in the wake of monstrous tornadoes to people in the same country breaking out into mass celebrations and holding loud street parties to celebrate the death/killing of one man. The contrast between these scenes struck me.


We moved so quickly from a “one for all” focus to a divided “us vs. them” mentality. But the dividing lines between ‘them’ and ‘us’ don’t appear as clear as we might expect them to be—especially with the déjà vu reflections of Middle Eastern street parties over the killing of Americans years ago now mimicked in the shouts, noise makers, and choruses of ‘God Bless America’ that rang out in Washington D.C. and New York, among other places through the night and into the next day.

It isn’t that I am sad to hear of the death of Osama bin Laden, but I am certainly not going to pull out the grill and invite the neighbors over to celebrate. I just question what lies within us that moves us to such behavior. Just yesterday I was part of a Sunday school class in which the leader focused on the example of Jesus in turning the other cheek and not seeking vengeance. So the irony of a ‘Christian nation’ bursting into impromptu parties to celebrate the killing of a man—even a murderous menace—is striking. Where were the party hats and noise makers last Sunday when we held celebrations of life?

Water Slides, Skype, and Communal Christian Life

Last Sunday I was dunked in a pool of water at church, but it wasn’t baptism. I slipped. I took a chance and tried the double water slide Pastor Leisha reserved for our church’s Celebration Sunday. I made it to the end of the slide just fine, but when I stood up to get out of the water pit at the bottom, my foot slipped and I went down. I was completely soaked, which I guess is the point of a water slide, but I wasn’t planning on it. Everyone laughed at me and then cheered me on to go down the slide again.


Maybe it was seeing me and others unintentionally dunked in a pool of water at the end of the slide, or maybe it was the look of slight terror on some of the kids faces as they “caught air” on the way down the slide, but for some reason one girl felt unsure about attempting the slide. But the other kids and her parents continued encouraging her to try. “See, even the little kids like it.” “Come on! You can do it!” “It is soooo fun! You have to try it!” Finally, after almost everyone else had gone home, this one girl tried the slide—and she loved it. She slid again and again, getting faster with each slide and gradually mastering her landing in the now completely full pool of water at the end of the slide. It was beautiful to watch her and to hear her laugh and squeal.

Thinking back, this scene made me think of the communal life of the church. Some people in the church have been “doing” church forever. They can anticipate when it is time to stand in the worship service, they know where to find particular passages in the Bible, and they are experienced in applying what they believe to the way they live. Not all people in the church are this comfortable with Christian life—not all people in the church are even Christian yet. It is the work of these experienced and the not-so-experienced Christians to encourage other people to give Jesus a shot. In the church, in the community of faith, it is each and every person’s job to encourage other people to take a leap of faith—to respond for the first time to the love of Jesus, to join a Bible study, to go on their first international mission trip, or to start giving an offering to God. It is the work of the community to encourage the ones who are uncertain and hesitant to try the slide and see how great it is when you splash into the water of new life.

Sunday—the whole day—reminded me of the importance of the community in individuals’ lives of faith. Bishop Willimon’s sermon pointed to the power of the United Methodist connectional system. Talking to the Honduran Mission Team on Skype (in worship!) helped me remember that even though only 6 people travelled to Honduras, they were there because of the gifts and prayers of the congregation, their family, and friends. The delicious pot luck lunch, without formal planning for the food, provided more than enough for the crowd gathered for worship, demonstrating for us the big things we can do when everyone shares in the work. And then, of course, the water slide. Oh, the water slide. Even when people (I) slipped and fell, it was great because the whole crowd just cheered them (me) on to get up and try it again.