A Tall Order

Jesus begins His Sermon on the Mount with the beatitudes, as we see in Matthew 5.  In the very next verses the call of Jesus is to live as the "blessed" people of God.  Jesus calls the blessed people of God to be the Salt of the earth - the light of the world ---- probably even when we don't feel like being salt and light.  A tall order, the bar is set high, but when we think about all that God has done in Jesus for us, even when we are weary and discouraged, we are reminded to be the salt of the earth and light of the world.  As we take on our identity as salt and light our perspective changes and perhaps we grow less weary and discouraged, and instead renewed and filled with hope. 

A Journey With Rylynn

I had the special opportunity to take Rylynn to preschool.  Usually, if I am called to duty I pick her up after preschool and take her to daycare, but this time it was a different routine.  On this day I picked her up and took her to school.  I always enjoy the conversations we have, about family, school, things we see, and even church.  As I took her to preschool she started talking about children’s choir, she told me they were singing, “Lamb of God” and that the director wanted them to sing out.  We got to school and I told her she was going to have to show me where her room was, this routine was entirely different.  With joy Rylynn showed me her room, and her teacher greeted us.  I asked her teacher if I needed to do anything and she said no.  Rylynn looked up at me with a sense of expectation, and then I realized there was one more ritual to this journey to preschool.  I bent low and kissed my grand-daughter Rylynn and told her to have a good day.

The week ahead will beckon us to a different routine.  There will be the remembrances of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, what we celebrate on Palm Sunday.  There is the drama of the Last Supper, the betrayal, and all the other aspects that prepare us for the fulfillment of our journey, a new morning and an empty tomb, where our teacher will meet us as He met Mary Magdalene on that first Easter.  There is nothing routine about the week ahead.  We cannot come to Easter without first experiencing Good Friday and the Passion of Our Lord and joining in singing with Rylynn and all God’s children, “Lamb of God you take away the sin of the world.” 

Don’t miss the week ahead, it is a profoundly different routine that will enrich your Easter celebration and deepen your faith life.  Join the journey of this week.  There are many fine churches who would welcome you to this week of different routines, this week called “Holy”.  If you don’t have a church home, doors are open and a warm welcome awaits you.  Or if you haven’t been for a while there is no time like the present to take on a different routine. 

 

the Maker

A rainy morning such as this one, especially when rain has been so precious and rare, reminds us to look out of the window.  It reminds us that we are not after all creatures of the indoors however much the peril of winter temperature and icy wind might keep us inside.  We belong to God’s nature and not man’s constructions. 

Henry Beston spent a year living on Cape Cod and observing nature from his small home.  He paid special attention to the wildlife.  He watched the fish and the birds and saw the cyclical nature of the land and sea.  He wrote: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.  Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.  We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.  And therein we err, and greatly err.  For the animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.  They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” 

If it is true that we need a more mystical concept of animals and nature, then I think it is perhaps even more true that we need a more mystical concept of ourselves.  If birds and fishes can remind us of the power and majesty and completeness of God’s creation, then surely looking upon our brothers and sisters in the human race should also inspire us to praise God.  For though we might be tainted by sin and though we might live farther from nature, we are from the same ancient and beautiful place from which springs all of nature.  We are from the creating hands of God.  When we look to the beauty of the outside world we are reminded of the beauty that we all carry within ourselves; the indelible mark of our creator who has made us in his image.

On this day when mother nature refuses to let her beauty be ignored, let us remember that everyone with whom we will speak was made by a loving God.  We are all caught up together in the splendor and travail of the Earth along with every living creature, and we praise God that it is so. 

Of Elections and Life

"Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife"

Mark 10:2

 

 

 

This Gospel text is tough, because there are many who are divorced and know that pain, and there are also a number of people who have talked about divorce or contemplated divorce.  But lets look at this text and matter in a larger perspective.  It isn't as though Jesus picked this topic out of the air and decided to address it.  Rather, the Pharisees are once again trying to put Jesus to the test.  The Pharisees came with one test after another.  Divorce is a tough subject.

 

You see in this section when Jesus talks about divorce it takes us to the broad context of how so many times he talks about the brokenness of all kinds of relationships and most profoundly the brokenness of our relationship with God.  We are reminded of when Jesus says, "why do you see the sliver in your neighbor's eye and ignore the log in your own eye."  And when he says, "as you did it to one of thee least of these you did it to me...."  When the Pharisees ask Jesus about the greatest commandment he speaks of loving God with your whole being, and a second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself.

 

Divorce represents one aspect of the brokenness of our lives, but there are a whole lot of other relationships that are equally broken.  The truth is I am not sure we are very good at relationships.  Friendships, relationships with people we work with, or relationships between parents and children, even within the church our relationships can be far from exemplary.  No we are not always very good at relationships nor do I think we are getting a whole lot better with relationships.

 

It is election eve in our country and we are suffering greatly from a profound brokenness with each other.  No matter who wins the elections working together looks rather bleak.  Maybe if we start at home in the relationships that we own most closely, with our family and friends, our neighbors and co-workers, maybe grassroots efforts of living in relationships with each other that are respectful and caring can help win over those in higher places to a kinder and gentler day.  You see in and through the cross of Christ God meets us in our brokenness and seeks to take us to a new day.   

Distance

When a relationship is struggling people may use the word distance to describe what is happing.  Even when the two are side by side, it can seem as if a great gulf is between them.  That kind of distance is a great tragedy, but it can be resolved.  Through patience, deliberate communication, forgiveness, and prayer those imagined distances can be traversed and relationship can be revived. 

There is a flip side to this dynamic, and just as the first is a great tragedy its converse is one of the greatest joys of life.  It is a fact that there are some people who are so precious to us that no physical distance can change how we feel toward them.  As I am fond of saying in sermons, the Lord blesses us with the gift of each other.  As we go about our daily tasks we do things that remind us of them.  A song, a restaurant, the echo of our friend in the voice of another, and a thousand other minutia can make our loved ones as present to us as if they were standing right beside us still.  As I sit here in Hutchinson Kansas I am aware of people I love in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Mississippi, and of course right here in my own town.  They are the people who have helped to make me who I am.  We do not live this life alone, but rather we only know ourselves as we know each other.  I can sit here physically alone, and yet not alone at all. 

It is comforting on this anniversary of a great tragedy for our country to remember that despite any distance, even the distance between life and death, that we are all connected in a holy bond.  We are gathered together spiritually into one body from which nothing in heaven or earth can separate us.  We may of course still feel alone at times.  We may miss those who have gone on before us.  But in Jesus all distance is temporary, and in that knowledge we give thanks for Him and for those we love who, for whatever reason, are not by our sides at the moment.  We are united in Christ.  More than any dogma or doctrine, this is the mark of who we are. 

 

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

John 13:35

 

 

Pr. Phil

The State Fair

The State Fair is at hand.  The State Fair is an event that for 10 days comes into our lives and our community with sights and sounds, tastes and smells.  What is your favorite place at the Fair?  I have those regular places I go.  I go to see the biggest pumpkin and watermelon and other exhibits in the Pride of Kansas Building.  I go to the Domestic Arts Building to see the beautiful quilts and handwork that are such works of art; the ladies of the congregations that I have served who love to quilt would be proud of me.  While in the Domestic Arts Building I also check out the cakes and other baked items, such creativity, and all I can say is that it is a good thing they are behind glass.  There are so many other things, new born animals, large fish and snakes, and all the rest.  I see lots of people I know.  I see members of my congregation, people I know from the community that our paths just don’t cross often enough, and I meet new people every year. 

I encounter God at the State Fair.  God is in the people that come, the gifted exhibitors who have been  blessed with wonderful talents, in those who care for and show animals and those who man exhibits inviting us to learn, understand, and grow.   God is in us, the residents of this community that welcome the State and beyond to our hometown.  And every evening that I am there I just like to sit there by where the train stops and the kids play in the water that squirts up from the sidewalks, and I like to breath deep and watch the people and listen and realize the God can even be at the Kansas State Fair.     

Pr. Tim

Of Forks and Relationships

I found them in the car, in the center console where they had been since that day.  My wife, Jean, and I had visited a member in another community and were too full from lunch to have a piece of pie, so we decided to take one to go.  On the way home the food had settled and I stopped at a convenience store and got some plastic forks and napkins, and we went to the city park and shared the pie.  So the other day as I was cleaning the car I came across the forks, but I left them for another day and another time in some park in some small town. 

Jean often says, “just surprise me”, whether it is where we might go to eat or what we do on vacation. 

We too often become creatures of habit, doing the same things over and over again, in the same way.  Some habits and routines are okay and good to have.  But sometimes doing things in a new way helps us see things in a new perspective.  One of our members last Sunday was sitting in a different place in worship and I went up and asked her if she was feeling alright.  Not really, but I did ask her about sitting in a different place, to which she responded, she thought she would get a different perspective on things.  Jesus invites us to see things from a new perspective.  Jesus invites us to see things often as God sees things.  Jesus uses powerful images of unlikely people to speak about God and God’s grace and love.  Again and again we see it in the gospel narratives: a Samaritan woman at a well, a widow and her mite, a prodigal son and his loving father, a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to go look for one lost lamb, and so many others. 

Sometimes we get set in our ways, we get in ruts and ride the ruts until it is quite difficult to get out of them.  It is true of people, communities, churches, and all kinds of institutions.  It not only can be difficult to get out of our ruts it can be difficult to see life outside of the ruts.  Our relationships can become that way.  Sometimes we find our relationships are suffering because they have become predictable and centered so much on ourselves that we fail to see the other person from a new and healthy perspective.  Look at things from a different perspective and act in a new way.  

The secrets to a great marriage:  forks in the center console and pie in the park; surprise each other; and sit in a different pew (see things from a new perspective).