BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

Back a long time ago when I was an avid golfer, I remember one of my partners saying to me after he had smacked a drive 300 yards staight down the middle of the fairway: “Just one shot like that every eighteen holes would keep me coming back from now on!” Sunday’s worship service made me think of that.

Yesterday, everything came together in a remarkable way…the choir anthems, the hymns, the prayers and the sermon all worked in such a way as to truly make us glad we had come into the house of the Lord. I wish every Sunday could be that way, but for a variety of reasons they’re not.

What was it that made the day so special? Several things come to mind:
First, you were out in force. Most of you made worship your priority yesterday, on the warmest, prettiest day we’ve had this year. Please note that EVERYTHING is better when the place is nearly full. It’s just a better atmosphere!
Second, we had four excellent musicians who accompanied the choir on an wonderful piece we had worked on for months. Those four, plus the choir, all outdid themselves. The music was truly a fragrant offering to God.
Third: I thought the sermon spoke to many of you, especially here in the middle of Lent…folks who needed to be challenged to a more rigorous faith, one that will stand the difficult tests of our time. Commitments were made both publicly and privately, and that always makes a service more meaningful…and it greatly encourages me as your pastor.

Now…what can we do to make Sundays like that the rule rather than the exception? Here’s how I see it: It mostly depends on you. When you make being present on Sunday morning your first priority, you facilitate a more excellent worship experience. The more people we have singing, reading and hearing the scriptures, praying, and listening to the sermon, the more likely I am to put my heart and soul into it. Like most preachers, I will work myself nearly to death when my congregation offers me encouragement!

We have far too many members who are hit or miss about attendance. They are our weakest link, and we will never be stronger than they.

How’s your attendance been lately? Wanna make worship better? Make a commitment to being part of it every week! Blessings….Steve

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After our service yesterday, during which I preached on our responsibilities to “the least of these,” one of our young families was given an opportunity to put the message into practice.

As they were driving home, they passed a woman walking down the road and carrying a baby. It was a bitterly cold day, and our family was concerned enough about the woman and her baby to stop and see if there was any way they could help.

The woman had been walking since 7:30 that morning, trying to find a friend or relative with whom she might stay for a while…she was trying to relocate, but had no money and really nowhere to go.

Our family picked her up, took her to Fifth Street Shelter, which did not open until 3:30. While waiting, they took her and the baby to a restaurant for lunch, where they got to hear all of her tragic, but all too common, story.

On taking her back to Fifth Street, they were told that the best place for the woman and her child was My Sister’s House, so they packed them back into the car, took them there, and made sure she was settled in before leaving.

This, folks, is as good as it gets. Thanks to this wonderful family for truly being the heart, hands, feet, and voice of Jesus! You make me proud!

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Alan Jones, retired Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, begins his new book with these words: I owe a great deal to many great human beings who shared with me their vision of the fully human life. Three of them were great Christians: Hugh Bishop, Anglican priest and monk; Monica Furlong, novelist and journalist; and Fielder Cook, movie director. All three were generous artists of the soul and taught me a generous form of Christianity. (from Reimagining Christianity: Reconnect Your Spirit without Disconnecting Your Mind).

Needless to say, after reading only that much, I was hopelessly hooked. Jones is a particularly intelligent priest, with an outstanding mind and a warm heart, whose writings never fail to stir something deep within me. I was especially struck by these opening words.

First, he speaks of “the fully human life” rather than “the Christian life,” as if they are one and the same. I believe they are, and that that is one of the things Jesus came to teach us and to demonstrate.

Second, I love the phrase “generous artists of the soul,” and although I don’t know any of the people he so eloquently describes, I know intuitively exactly the kind of person he is talking about! It has been my privilege to know such people myself.

Third, the phrase “a generous form of Christianity,” makes me wish that there were no other way to describe our faith. It is terribly unfortunate that there exist, within Christianity, many expressions of it that are anything but generous. Far too many are narrow, mean-spirited, stingy, dogmatic, and often downright unkind. Tragic, but true.

We United Methodists pride ourselves on being a people of Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Open Doors, and I don’t know of a better description of “generous Chrisitianity.” Now if we could just live up to it! (and don’t you just love the title of Jones’ book???!!)

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You may well have missed it, but the biggest news to come out of 1988 was that every human being on this planet today is descended from one woman who lived in Africa or Asia about 300,000 years ago. Anthropologists and geneticists say they have proved it. It is a fact.

Most people, actually, seem to have missed the news (or the point!). The human race is biologically one family, but it won’t matter much if it doesn’t find its way to a reunion of the human race…and the only way to get there is through confession and forgiveness.

Several years ago, Gerald Mann, a progressive Baptist preacher, was invited to be “roasted” at a benefit to raise money for a Roman Catholic charity. When he was introduced, he made a few jokes, then said, “My mother is here this evening. Her maiden name was Foy. The Foys came to America about three hundred years ago from France.” Everyone smiled and looked at his mother.

Then he said, “Most of the Foys didn’t come to America. There were murdered in their beds by Roman Catholics because they were Huguenots. Only a few escaped. My ancestor Foy was an infant saved by his eight-year-old sister who saw her parents and siblings slaughtered.”

The place was deathly quiet. Then he said, “I’m here tonight to make a statement: Those days are gone and best forgotten. Out being here this evening is a testimony to God’s intention to eventually make us all one human family.” (Story from Gerald Mann)

If we lived our lives with that in mind, that reunion would come much sooner than later. Let’s work for it!

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Almost in time for Valentines Day comes a story from an old preacher friend of mine:

Twenty years ago he announced he was going to preach a sermon entitled, “Great Sex for Christians.” On the appointed Sunday, the church was awfully full and awfully quiet. He began with an old joke: “Sex is great on days that start with T — Today, Tomorrow, Tuesday, Thursday, Thaturday, and Thunday!”

There wasn’t even a giggle, let alone laughter. Just gasps. Those folks had never heard the words “great” and “sex” AND “Christians” mentioned in the same sentence. Sexual enjoyment was the curse of the Fall, the aftertaste of Eve’s forbidden fruit.

I expect that today, his church is just as full and just as quiet, but they would laugh at the joke now. But the sad truth is that many Christians are unable to relate their sexuality to their spirituality. They labor under the delusion that they either have to love sex and hate God, or hate sex and love God.

The proof of that can be seen in the number of Christians who are unable to sustain relationships. Sex is a means by which union with another person occurs…a bridge to oneness. Not just a basic drive, but a symptom of our basic need…the need to become one with another…the cure for our loneliness.

Paul says in Ephesians 5 that our sexual longings are symptoms of our longing for God. He says that husbands and wives should submit to, sacrifice for, and care for each other in the same way as Christ and his Church do. Then he says the union of husband and wife is the best analogy we have for the God-human relationship.

Listen closely: The oneness between husband and wife, which cannot occur without sexual bonding, is the best illustration we have of the divine-human relationship!

My friend closed his sermon by saying that great sex is what God wants for us. People who are struggling with shabby sex lives don’t need sermons…they need to hear the good news about God’s gift of sexuality.

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There is a wonderful scene in the movie “Gandhi” where a broken man comes to the Mahatma. He says, “I have lost my soul. I am condemned to hell. The Muslims killed my children so I found a Muslim child and killed it!”

Gandhi tells him that he may yet be saved, if he will go out on the street and find a little abandoned boy and raise him as his own son. “But,” says Gandhi, “you must raise him as a Muslim.”

Gandhi, though not a professing Christian, was following in the tradition of Jesus. When people believed themselves to be lost, they were given deeds to do rather than doctrines to believe.

When John the Baptist announced that judgment was imminent, and the people asked how they might be spared, he said, in effect, “Do things which show that you belong to God. If you have two shirts, give one to him who has none. If you have food, share it. Tax collectors, don’t take more than is legal. Soldiers, don’t use force to extract extra money, be content with your pay.”

Jesus even said that we will be judged by whether we did specific things like offering a cup of water, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and feeding the hungry. What we believe is important…what we DO demonstrates it.

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Chapter one of Luke tells first the wonderful story of the announcement of the birth, not of Jesus, but of John the Baptist. Zechariah, an old priest, “getting up in years” as Luke delicately phrases it, is married to Elizabeth, who is barren. An angel appears to old Zechariah as he comes to burn incense in the temple, and announces that Zechariah’s prayers have been heard, and that Elizabeth will bear a son who will prepare the way of the Lord.

Zechariah is not only scared, but he also voices grave doubts about the possibility of this really happening. Gabriel does not take this kindly, and strikes Zechariah mute until “the day this happens, because you did not believe my words.” Imagine, a priest, a preacher, without words! And why?

One commentator (obviously with feminist leanings!) on this story pointed out that in the gospels, the first man who presumes to speak about a woman’s pregnancy is silenced (struck dumb!) by God.

There might be a lesson in there for us…. Blessings, sk

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As most of you probably know, I’ve been suffering from a really bad case of the flu since Friday night…fever, chills, terrible cough, and my body feels as if I’ve been beaten with a rubber hose! Yesterday I went to the doc for the diagnosis I already knew, and came home with about $200 worth of medicine the doc says will knock this out and have me in decent shape to perform and sing at Kelly Shaver’s wedding on Saturday. Pray that this will be so!

While nursing my aches and pains, I’ve been writing my Christmas cards to the church family. For those of you who are reading this, I hope to put an end to a Christmas practice which has always disappointed me: the sending of a card with just a signature. I do appreciate the thought behind any card I receive, but it seems to me that just once a year we should write our own words of love and appreciation rather than letting Hallmark do it for us.

This Christmas season, instead of just signing your name to your cards, why not take an extra minute or two and write something personal….doesn’t have to be an epistle, just a line or two about what makes each person special in your life. I guarantee you that your extra minute will make someone’s day.

It takes me a little longer to write personal notes in each card, but I promise you’ll never get just a signature from me. You are much more important than that. Blessings… sk

PS…Judy and I have been married 26 years today! She continues to be the best thing that ever happened to me, and I appreciate her and all she does more than ever!

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