Devotion - Thursday, January 31

I was probably only 8 or 9, which would have meant that my brother was 12 or 13.  The snow storm canceled school, but Mama still had to go to work.  We convinced her were were big enough to stay by ourselves; that we didn't need one of the slightly older female cousins to come stay with us.

In the woods behind our house, my brother and a neighbor boy (with some help from me) had built a small cabin, covering it inside and out with black tar paper.  We spent most of the day in the cabin, "roughing it in the snow."  Weeks earlier we had built a stove in the cabin - a tin wash pan with wooden legs nailed to it.  When we decided to build a fire in that stove, we both remembered Mama telling us never to do such a thing.

But we did, and the cabin burned to the ground.

The next Sunday, we were the talk of the congregation.  I acknowledged to mother that I got a sick feeling in my stomach every time someone commented on the fire or asked questions about how it happened.  "That is what guilt feels like," she told me.  

I also remember Pastor Lippard changing the tone of the conversations.  "How wise of them to call the fire department, and not merely run and hide from their mistake."  I was too young to realize what he was doing.  He was introducing a word of grace into a situation over run with guilt.

I made a similar mistake last night.  I seeking to help the kitchen crew I put a drying pad on the oven while also managing to knock the control button on.  There was a small fire; Hannah and Ben noticed and put it out - probably minutes before it became a huge fire.  All through the night, I kept replaying the events in my mind.  And I had those feelings of deep guilt.

As a pastor, it is good for me to pay attention to such feelings.  Only by remembering my own fault, my own most grievous fault, am I able to be pastoral with others who confess their guilt to me.  When (hopefully) forgiveness is expressed, I am able to understand the power of those words, "God has forgiven you, and so have I."

Forgive me if I have turned this devotional offering into a protracted confession with some misguided aim of obtaining cheap absolution.  That is not my intention. It seemed to be too good a situation to speak of guilt (undeniable guilt) and the ways in which God's servants assure us that we are forgiven.  If this proves to be true for a bumbling campus pastor, it can serve as a reminder that it is true for all of us.

Devotion - Thursday, January 24

Today would have been my parents 70th wedding anniversary.  They were married in 1943, on January 24.

They married young; Daddy was 19, Mama 18.  They also got married secretly.  They didn't tell their parents for a while; each continuing to live with their own parents rather than being together. But they were united, and none of the trials which came their way over the next 65 years separated them.

I hear that some of you (mostly the female students) recommend you speak to someone other than me about matters of the heart. "He isn't much of a romantic." they report.  And they may be right; I am more pragmatic.  Though I felt the pain of two conversations yesterday, within minutes of each other, of unwanted break-ups.

Then I opened my bible to this morning's reading from Ephesians 5.  In this passage, Paul says we are to be subject to one another.  Wives subject to husbands is only one line out of a full section which speaks of how our human relationships are to mirror our relationship with God. 

Emotion may move us into relationship, but it can seldom be maintained at a level sufficient for 65 years of marriage.  To achieve that, you need commitment.  You need the kind of love which God has for us; a love that does not wax or wane but remains and never ends.

In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis writes of this: 
"Love in this second sense - love as distinct from being 'in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep this promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

The imperfect, at time obnoxious person that I am - who could remain by my side for the past 29 years?  Only someone drawn to me by being "in love," but soon thereafter welded to me by virtue of "the love" which comes from God.

Devotion - Wednesday, January 23

Mark 4.1-20 contains the parable of the soils.  In this parable, Jesus compares the response to the word to a sower who scatters seed upon the ground, but not all the seed takes root and bears grain.

In the parable some seed falls on the path; some on rocky soil; some among thorns.  Only the seed that falls on good soil takes root and produces.

I worry sometimes that when this parable is heard, with its ending about "bear(ing) fruit, thirty-fold and sixty-fold and a hundredfold," that we assume the purpose is for us to achieve something for God.  Surely, something is accomplished for God, each time the word takes hold.  But the fruit which is produced can also be understood as that which is beneficial in our lives.  The word, taking root in us, enables us to endure heartbreak and disappointment; it makes it possible for us to withstand adversity and trials.

Jesus hopes that our hearts will be good soil, so that we will have the confidence of God's love and God's grace even when the concerns of the world attempt to choke us or the evil one tries to snatch hope and promise from us.  This is the thirty-fold or hundredfold production that Jesus wants to see.

When others see our confidence, it is a witness to God's presence in our lives.  But that may be the side-bar.  The true gift of the word taking root in our lives is the assurance that nothing will separate us from the love of God.  When the word takes root in our lives, we can withstand all things and endure all adversity.

Devotion - Tuesday, January 22

This morning's reading from Ephesians 4:17-32 encouraged me to continue a thought raised in yesterday's offering.  I had spoken of morality and how the drive to be moral can supplant the call to be a person of faith.  Being a person of faith makes one a moral person; but it does make you one.

Paul speaks of the difference between followers of Jesus and those whom he refers to as "the Gentiles."  He says of the Gentiles that "they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God." 

"Alienated from the life of God."  This phrase reveals to me what is different about those who are in Christ.  We know that we live in God; we understand that our life is from God; and we strive to live in such a way as to not become alienated from God.

Will God forsake me if I fail the morality test?  That is not the question to be asked.  The question I ask myself is whether I am as fully connected to the life of God as I can be.  I do not fear that God will condemn me; I worry that I will slowly allow my understanding to become darkened.  I am concerned that I will fool myself into thinking I can say uncharitable things about my neighbor and then go on basking in the light of God's life.  Of course this cannot happen.

Our sense of morality rises out of an appreciation of how wonderful it is to live in God and to have God live in us.  We strive to do the right thing, because we understand that we have been "created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."   (Ephesians 4)

When I say hurtful things about my neighbor I am separating myself from the life that I desire, the new life which God has made possible for me.  It is a crisis of faith, not a lapse in my moral fiber.

Devotion - Monday, January 21

As I prepare for my day of service, as a participant in Clemson's ML King Day of Service, I realized my tendency to separate the devotional aspects of my ministry from the activist parts.  Notice that I am admitting doing this in my ministry, not in my life.  It would be impossible to do this in the case of the latter.

I do consider myself to be politically active.  I vote.  I write my Congressional representatives.  I contribute to political action committees.  I read and I discuss issues - with those whose opinions differ greatly from my own as well as with those who agree.

If there is any legitimacy to the suggestion that as a campus pastor I am in the role of mentor for a group of young adult disciples, then I need to make sure this part of my spiritual quest is also open for critique and/or possible imitation.

ML King, Jr knew that it is impossible to separate what we believe from how we act.  The actions we take reveal what is at the core of our existence.  "Why We Can't Wait" is a call to the religious community to stand up for the Word of God and stand with those who are suffering from modern day Pharaohs. 

We see the same kind of conviction and linking of faith in Barack Obama.  His is not a religious identity formed by a moral code, but a following of Christ to do the right thing.  Most of you are too young to remember the contrast between the Christianity of Jimmy Carter and that of Ronald Regan.  The Moral Majority chose to support Regan and that group of Christians have (until this most recent election cycle) continued to select that type. 

Our faith in Christ does lift us to a higher moral code.  But being a Christian ought to mean something more than forcing moral codes on those around us.  There are religious zealots who seek to do that.  And, for the most part, we have chosen to oppose them.

Our faith in Christ moves us to "bring good news to the poor.... to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free."  The  piety which rests in my heart is one which binds up the brokenhearted, regardless of whether they might pass some religious litmus test.

I will be joined by some of you today, doing the behind-the-scenes work which makes it possible for families to live in a good, decent house.  The work I do this day is every bit as much of my devotion to God as was the work I did yesterday (Sunday).  And this work grows out of my dedication to studying scripture and out of the conversations I have with God.  I am doing what it is that God has instructed me to do.  If He had not, then I would not be doing it.

Sermon - ML King Weekend - 2013

2nd Sunday After the Epiphany - Year C   

I Cor 12:1-11                                                                                                        

On the Use of Spiritual Gifts 

Of all the courses I took at the seminary, the one which had the most dramatic effect on me was the one I took in order to learn the life-story and the theology of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I had always known that he was a “preacher.”  But I was unaware of the ways in which his life-story emerged out of his faith experience.  He knew that he was a man, blessed by God, with certain gifts.  And he knew that God gives us gifts in order for them to be used.  His sermons and essays instilled in me a tremendous appreciation for God’s insistence that we assess our spiritual gifts, and then use them for the common good. 

  I grew up in rural south.  I supposed I had heard something of the earlier work of Pastor King, but it was his assassination in 1968 that I remember most vividly.  I remember being in my fifth grade classroom; listening to the comments, shouting at my classmates and friends.  Those are painful memories.  It is really the first time I remember thinking, “I want to go somewhere else.”  “This isn’t where I belong.” 

Moving to Chicago, eleven years later, didn’t make me feel more at home.  Neither did enrolling in Seminary.  And then I took that course on ML King.  While we were still reviewing his life-story, before we had ever gotten to his sermons and books, we read of his struggles upon graduating from Crozer Theological Seminary.  King had left the south, with it Jim Crow laws and its “white’s only” signs.  He had moved to the north – where there was racism for sure, but not the kind that was likely to get your house bombed.  He had opportunity to remain in the protected halls of academia and tolerance.  But he realized that no place would feel like home unless it was the home that had birthed him and nourished him.  He returned, writing that the only hope for the south was her native sons (and daughters.) 

He knew that he had been blessed.  And he understood that blessings are not given in order to elevate the recipient.  They are given for the common good of all God’s children. 

ML King accepted the call to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.  In 1955 when events began to unravel the illusion of normality which permitted segregation and racism to go unquestioned and unchecked.  He was one of the pastors, but he was only one of the pastors.  And, in 1955 he was not the most well-known or the one to which the community would have looked for a word.  In C. Eric Lincoln’s account of what happened, it is suggested that King was chosen to be the speaker not because of his great gifts of oratory, not as a result of his understanding of the history of the issues, but because he was lesser known than many of the others and therefore less likely to be ignored or dismissed before anyone heard what he had to say. 

This moment came in King’s life as a result of someone else making use of their gifts.  Rosa Parks remained in her seat when asked to move to the back of the bus.  The earliest reports quote her as explaining her actions by saying, “My feet were tired.”  But the story is more complex.  Ms. Parks had competed her training at the Highlander Folk School where she had learned about civil disobedience.  She had gone there because she was tired, tired of giving in.  That day, on the bus, it was exhaustion which motivated her – she was tired of never feeling at home in the place that was her home. 

The Highlander Folk School is still in existence.  They continue to prepare individuals for activist lives.  It is quite an impressive place; and there are many notable persons who keep it moving forward.  Miles Horton was one of the founders.  He, like Clarence Jordan of Georgia, refused to accept the status quo that persons of African descent and folks with European blood lines could not and should not live together as God’s children.  Their spiritual gift, was the ability to see a new home, a home in which all of God’s children are recognized as brothers and sisters; a home in which no one is made to feel unwelcome or desire to run away. 

All sorts of folks – each one doing their part.  And as a result the world is a better place than it was in 1954. 

All sorts of folks – each one doing their part. 

This is the message of today’s reading from I Corinthians.  Paul is addressing the issue of spiritual gifts.  He reviews some of these gifts and he celebrates their being offered for the common good.  ML King, Rosa Parks, Miles Horton and the Highlander School – all examples of those who upon realizing they had received a gift began to look for a way to use it – for the common good.

The list of gifts, shared in this brief reading, is not intended to be exhaustive.  These are but examples which Paul uses in order to make the point that to each of us God has given some abilities.  These skills, these traits, these abilities are not ours for the hording.  They are given to us so that we might be of service to others. 

The text would also remind us that no one of us receives all the gifts that are to be given.  We are typically only given one, maybe two.  Just because an individual has one gift to offer, we should not assume they have them all.  This is why someone who is wonderful in teaching might not be such a good example of doing.  Or why a person who can bring about healing is totally incapable of getting anything organized.   

The gifts are spread around.  And sometimes one gift is totally useless unless it is coupled with the gifts of those around us. 

When we use our gifts, in service to others, the world is changed.  It is changed by the results of our sharing; it is changed by the very act of sharing. 

What are your gifts?  Are you too modest to name them out loud?  The greater tragedy is that you probably haven’t been challenged to identify them.  Maybe, in one of those career builder workshops you were forced to refine your three-minute self-presentation in which you rehearsed the phrases which are most likely to get you an interview.  But when have you sat with another servant of God and identified the things you are able to do and willing to do for the sake of God’s people? 

What are your gifts? 

Sometimes gifts are discovered in the moment.  King’s gifts were revealed when he was picked for reasons other than his keen intellect.  And he had a lot of help refining them, as the years passed by. 

What are your gifts?  And what are the needs or the world which call upon you to offer those gifts? 

I want to challenge you to hear in the messages of this ML King Weekend the examples of how various individuals (not just King himself, but so many others) offered their gifts for the common good.  I encourage you to see the ways in which their willingness to offer their gifts made it possible for others to do the same.  And above all, I want you to start to see the blessings which God had given you as an invitation to contribute to the common good.  It is a start to sit with a career builder and answer “What am I good at doing?” but it needs to move beyond that to an understanding that these are gifts God has given you and God has given them to you for a reason.  It is God’s intention that these gifts be used to make the world the home that it is intended to be for all of God’s children. 

Amen.

Devotion - Thursday, January 17

Mark 2:1-12 tells us of the paralytic whose friends get creative in bringing him to Jesus.  When they can't get in the front door, the remove tiles from the roof and lower him to the center of the room.

The exchange which follows attempts to show Jesus' role, by his offering two things to the man - things which are both wonderful; things which are clearly in the realm of God.

The first thing Jesus says to him is "Your sins are forgiven."  This upsets the religious authorities, "Who but God can forgive sins?"  Jesus then asks them which is easier, to say "your sins are forgiven" or to say "get up and walk?"  So Jesus then tells the man to get up, and walk.  Which he does.

It is probably easier to say "Your sins are forgiven."  After all, who knows whether that has been accomplished?  In a way, no one knows, until judgement day.  If we say "Get up and walk," then folks will be able to determine rather quickly the power of our words and command.  The former may be easier to say; it may also be the more difficult to accomplish.

While not intending to diminish the desire for healing in those who cannot walk, or are battling cancer, or are loosing their vision - the struggle to feel forgiven and reunited tears not merely at our body but at our spirit/at our soul.  Forgiveness, and its promise of being in right relationship(s), gives us the foundation upon which we can endure many physical hardships.

I remember during my seminary days speaking to a friend who had betrayed his wedding vows with another of the congregational leaders.  He  cautioned me against ever speaking the absolution on a Sunday morning without imagining the sins which had just been confessed in the Brief Order.  He spoke of wanting to grab the pastor by the robe and say, "Do you know what I have done?  Are you sure you can assure me that God has forgiven me?"

I hope it is not a fear of being exposed which leads me to seldom pronounce a promise of healing.  I pray that it is with deep appreciation for the significance of the offering that I speak of God's forgiveness.  And may it be found to be true that the promise of reunification does happen, when we hear those powerful words - "Your sins are forgiven."