Green Day

These tips from www.consumerenergycenter.org were taken directly from Forbes top list of Energy myths… (with the exception of correcting some of their misspellings)

Myth: Temp Kept Constant Saves Energy Over Raising And Lowering It
Why would you want to heat your house while you're at work, or while you're cozy cuddled up in your down comforter? Keeping your thermostat at a constant temperature is a waste. If you're at home during the day, set it to 68 degrees. At night, turn down the thermostat to 55 degrees. Every degree you lower to on your thermostat between the 60 and 70 degree range, lowers your heating costs by 5%.

Ceiling Fans Don't Work During Winter
We all know heat rises. But what if you could pull it back down to where you’re curled up on the couch wrapped up in your Snuggie? Most ceiling fans have the ability to do that. Reverse the switch on your fan so the blades blow upward. It forces the heat back down to thaw you out on a cold winter day.

New Windows = Significant Cost Savings
Replacing single pane windows for energy star rated dual pane windows will save energy. That energy savings, however, is a function of the size and number of windows in your home, their orientation and overhangs, and the location of your house and the climate zone you are live in. This typically amounts to a small fraction of your total energy use, and given the expense of replacing windows, there are typically much more cost effective ways to reduce your energy bills.

Green Day

This website hosts video that was shot during Expeditions 28 and 29 aboard the ISS from August-October of this year. I could not imbed the video because the original had a terrible music overlay. Visit the following site for the footage with a much nicer instrumental music track: The Earth's Auroras.

Green Day

Over 180 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer is used each year by farmers and rancher worldwide. Much of this nitrogen ends up in our rivers, lakes and oceans, leading to huge colonies of algae that kill other aquatic life. A new tech, known as Forage Boost, could replace all current use of nitrogen fertilizers, particularly large farming operations. The 30 microbes in Forage Boost can replace naturally occurring microbes lost in overfarming and can increase productivity by 20%. With runoff reduced by over half, watering needs (and costs) go down too. At about $40 a gallon, this could be one of the biggest agricultural breakthroughs in decades.

Green Day

Four young women at Harvard had an inspiring idea based on existing technology and proven business models. Motion captured as energy is nothing new, neither is consumer model of buying a product that you take home while the proceeds purchase one for someone else in need (see companies like Tom's shoes). The inspiration came when these four students linked a need with a solution that fit existing cultural structures. What do people in the developing world need? Power. What do they all have in common? They play soccer. In fact, over half of the 265 million soccer players globally live in the developing world.

So the students invented a soccer ball that could store the energy used in a game in a battery that could then power an electrical device. Two hours of play time can power and LED light bulb all night. The "s0ccket ball" has the feel of a traditional ball with only 6 ounces of extra weight. For more information, see their website or the videos below.

It's Funny 'Cause it's True

So often, we say that comedy is funny because it's true. In one of my favorite movies, they say that politicians use lies to hide the truth while artists use them to reveal it. In an old black and white era comedy, Charlie Chaplin plays a barber who is mistaken for Hitler. In the end of the movie, he's put on international telecast to deliver a speech. The lie that is his mistaken identity leads to a speech that still rings true today. Truly, it's not very funny, and in some ways, it's ironic that it takes comedian under absurd circumstances to speak such words with sincerity. Thank you, Charlie...

- Watch MoreFunny Videos

Please Let Me Get What I Want

I love Christmas. I love Advent because it celebrates the anticipation, the giddiness, the hope leading up to the birth of Jesus. All too often in the secular world, it's a shopping season that anticipates everything else we are about to receive. This short video stands that idea on its head...

The track 'Please, Please, Please let me get what I want', was originally recorded by the Smiths, and has been rerecorded by emerging artist Slow Moving Millie.

Green Day

Very exciting fun invention for saving power in the third world. May be useful here too...

God's Big Bang

Today was Wellshire's first annual Faith & Science Sunday. We read from Genesis 1 (the Creation story) and Job (most of Chapter 38 and 40:1-2).

Listen to it here.

God's Big Bang

I’d like to tell you the simple story of how the universe started… To begin with, 13.7 billion years ago, the building blocks of everything that ever existed were packed into a space smaller than one hundred-billion-trillion-trillionth of a meter across. The universe entered the Planck Era, a time from that beginning up to one ten-million-trillion-trillion-trillionth of a second later. Gravity came into being, and by the end of the first trillionth of a second, the strong and weak forces and nuclear force, along with a seething ocean of quarks, leptons, antimatter and bosons. The entire universe got as big as our little solar system.

And after that first whole millionth of a second since that beginning, quarks turned into hadrons, and then everything turned into photons, and light was all that existed. And now the first whole second of the universe was over. 90% of everything in the universe turned into Hydrogen and the other 10% was Helium. And by now two whole minutes had passed. Then nothing much happened for 380,000 years before all the electrons everywhere combined with free nuclei and turned into every other substance we know about, from stars and rocks and rainbows to potato chips and pianos and politicians and porcupines. Did you understand any of that? Me either.

Those words I just read are excerpts from a wonderful 6 page article written by Neil deGrasse Tyson who won the 2005 Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. Tyson is one of the most brilliant scientific minds in the world, with a gift for explaining the most difficult scientific principles in the history of time to school children on PBS shows and planetarium visits. Those words are his watered down version of how scientists think the universe came into existence.

Holly was going to read that version for the children’s sermon, but I talked her into the more kid-friendly version she used with flashcards. I imagine their reaction would not have been terribly different from the reaction God could have expected from a farmer or goat herder three thousand years ago, even if he’d watered it down as much as Tyson did. As a Christian, I am deeply thankful that the God I believe in was far more poetic than Dr. Tyson and far wiser when he breathed the words of our creation into the ear of the Biblical writer. I say this not to dissuade you from clinging tightly to an interpretation that God created the world in precisely six 24-hour days as we know them, but to offer you the concept that a loving and compassionate creative almighty God might have the same approach most loving parents do in explaining the difficult and often impossible to understand concepts of the world in an accessible and simple and poetic way.

The translation we read said “to begin with…” rather than the familiar, “in the beginning…” The Hebrew doesn’t actually use the word “the” here and so the less familiar translation leaves room for some of the mystery that surrounds creation, the same mystery that still plagues scientists. What existed before?

We believe in a God who laid the foundations of the cosmos, as he tells Job. And what greater feat of engineering is there than to determine the four forces of physics in under a trillionth of a second? We believe in a God who created absolutely everything, forming the universe from chaos. These beliefs are not contradicted by science, but rather science, also authored by God, lends us the tools for understanding the vastness of God’s majesty. Proverbs says wisdom will protect us, that God gives wisdom and that we are commanded to seek wisdom and knowledge. So God provides us with that which helps us to gain wisdom.

Too often, however, we make science and faith out to be so different from one another, even enemies. Science and faith share too much in common to believe they are so fundamentally different. They have their own language. They share the same potential to unify and divide, to heal and to harm. No other forces on earth have as much power to do both. At its best, faith can provide hope, healing and community, even peace. When twisted and perverted, faith can breed hate or violence, even war. At its best, science can bring people together and heal wounds and disease. And unchecked by morals and people of conscience, it can maim, harm and destroy beyond measure.

And yet, time and time again, science and faith have worked hand in hand, and helped one another, or even taught one another great lessons. The Catholic Church is more often credited with standing in the way of science, most notably astronomy. It was only recently, in 1992 that the Catholic Church officially acknowledged that Copernicus, and later Galileo, was right in claiming that the earth was not the center of the universe. But it is Pope Gregory XIII to whom we owe credit for our modern and highly accurate calendar, created by astronomers. The Church wanted Easter to remain fixed in the calendar, not slowly shifting later and later. Pope Gregory established the Vatican Observatory, staffing it with Jesuit priests who observed the night sky to determine a more accurate calendar. Thanks to him, Dr. Pholenz can now plan for Easter Sunday music well ahead of time each year, without worrying the Super Bowl will interfere.

Science has provided the discoveries and methods needed to save lives through medicine that is one of the greatest missions of the Church. The hospitals and clinics of every nation that people of faith build and operate rely on the science of medicine to carry out that mission. And science relies on people of faith who care about the sick and hurt to carry those means to the people in need. If ever there was an example of the Gospel lived out, it is caring for the sick, the partnership of science and faith.

Despite examples of God’s creation working together, we plead ignorance and continue to pit them against one another. We turn from our own disputes just long enough to weigh in on the larger ones. Believers pause from debates on economic and legal policies that affect the poor and arguments over ordination of homosexuals to disagree with scientists about the proof that God exists. Scientists set aside arguments over whether intelligent life can exist elsewhere in the universe or if we already found life on Mars to weigh in on the archaeological evidence of the life of Jesus or proof the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. And we pretend that either of us can answer questions for the other. We pretend to be experts. Time and time again, scientists pretend they are evolved and believers prove none of us truly are yet.

Many Christians try claiming the Bible as a science text book, and fail to claim it as the inspired Word of God, gifted to us by a creative and loving redeemer who yearns most for us to be in right relationship with God and all of God’s creation. We lose something important when we forget that and I think we disappoint the one who created both science and faith. God is our creator, sustainer and redeemer. An understanding of God as creator does not discount a big bang or expanding universe as the method and mechanics of that creator. An understanding of God as sustainer does not discount evolution and extinction as being the tools of that sustainer. By arguing that God created and then never allowed for, planned for or guided changes in that creation, we theologically argue ourselves out of a sustainer entirely.

To limit the tools of God is to limit the creator and sustainer’s power. And for a people naturally inclined to limit God’s power as redeemer to our favorite in-crowd, we should think twice before we force God into a tiny creator/sustainer shoe box.

I stand here this morning, not before a panel of leading scientists (my apologies to any actual leading scientists here this morning), but before a community of believers, a people of faith. And as people of faith, to what calling are we charged? We are called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, heal the broken and sick and visit the lonely no matter where they are and to care for all of God’s created world. In a world this full of hungry, naked, homeless, broken, sick and lonely people, a world we’ve done so much to neglect and to harm, we need all the help we can get to fulfill this command to love one another and this world as Christ did. So much that science has to offer can help us do just that.

Medicine, psychology, technology and new methods and ideas can save people, improve quality of life and protect all God’s people and God’s creatures great and small. And don’t imagine for a moment that embracing the ideas and encouraging the people who participate in their discovery will fail to give purpose to the scientists who labor in their passions, nor show them the love of Christ. We are called to benefit from science and to benefit science. We have been given a great gift for understanding the world around us and to work toward the good of all. We are called to be thankful for that and to use that gift responsibly. Only when we are grounded in our beliefs and eager to learn can faith and science both reach their full potential. I encourage each of you to embrace faith and science, and to study both and to challenge both. Read articles, watch shows, ask questions, engage in debates, sure, but be a living example of someone who can live in both worlds: faith and science. Encourage your children, your friends and your peers to open their minds and open their hearts and remember that faith and science are not enemies, but both gifts from a God who loves us, a God who is creator, sustainer, and redeemer, who takes delight in his creation. Shouldn’t we take delight in it too?

A Hand Up for the Environment and the Poor

The Department of Energy hosts an annual Solar Decathalon in D.C. on the National Mall. One of this year’s most exciting entrees is Empowerhouse, a superefficient, solar-powered family home, built by a team of students from three universities in the Northeast. It is unique for a number of reasons, including its low cost and real-life feasibility. It will be moved after the competition to a neighborhood in Northeast Washington and become a home for a family from Habitat for Humanity and be a model for future energy efficient and green housing in the future for this organization.

This is the first year that homes will be graded on both their energy efficiency and attractiveness… as well as their affordability (in construction and purchase), moving the competition toward real-life application and not merely a concept that might provide ideas to the construction community. Last year’s winner was a house covered in solar panels, which produced more energy than the house needed. The problem… the house cost over $2 million.

One of the most attractive aspects of Empowerhouse is that employs “passive house” design principles, including thicker walls, insulation and air-tight design, even triple-glazed windows. They can reduce energy consumption by 90% compared to the average home and even 40% less than the average “high-efficiency” home. This reduces the need for expensive renewable energy sources on the home and the repair and upkeep of such systems.

As with energy efficient appliances, the upfront costs for Habitat are greater, but the long-range costs achieve the organization’s goals of making homeownership affordable in the long run. The cost of this kind of home is 10-15% more than Habitat for Humanity currently spends, but over the life of a 25-year mortgage, a family could save somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000 to $130,000, a dream come true for some families.

The group behind Empowerhouse will host a conference in June of next year for Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the United States to share information about passive house design technology. This could mean a huge leap forward in green design and be a way for the organization to lead the way in giving a hand up to the poor and to the environment.

Why Men Should Not Be Ordained

Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained

(note: this blog is also sarcastic, please take the proper precautions against feather ruffling)

10. A man’s place is in the army.
9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.
8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.
7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.
6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.
5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.
4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.
3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.
2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.
1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

SOURCE: By way of David Jones... Presented by David M. Scholer on February 20, 1998, at the Fuller Follies at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. David’s version was taken, with small modifications, from a November 24, 1997 internet communication from W. Ward and Laurel Gasque, who have long been champions of Biblical equality.

First Follower

Whether it's Jesus or a leader you admire, this video demonstrates a fascinating lesson about being and recruiting followers.

Spiritual but Not Religious

As church attendance drops in many churches across the US, we’re seeing a trend toward the “spiritual but not religious” category amongst Americans. Being of the younger generation and having my own issues with power and authority, there is a lot I respect about this stance. However, today I do want to challenge it a little with a few quotes and superbly written post by a UCC pastor. Fair warning, if you are SBNR (spiritual but not religious) and cannot handle small doses of sarcasm with your sunsets, I bare you no ill will, please take the opportunity to exit here: (intended to have a link to sbnr.org here, but it is now inaccessible due to being reported as a malware attack page).

Standup Comic Jim Gaffagan says he hates living in California sometimes because girls come up to him at parties and say, “Hey, I’m spiritual but not religious.” To which he responds, “Well, I’m not honest, but you’re interesting.” It’s not just girls in California, nor most of the residents of Colorado. LifeWay Christian Resources did a survey in 2009, in which 72% of millennials (18- to 29-year-olds) said they're "more spiritual than religious." According to a recent Barna Group survey only 21% of self-identified Christians believes that spiritual maturity requires a vital connection to a community of faith.

Christians and secular Americans alike seem to responding to the snobbery they perceive to be associated with that statement as much as to the snobbery of religious folks who look down their noses at church truants. The UCC is not at all known for their religious imperialism, but a recent brief post by Lillian Daniel, senior pastor of a church in Illinois, wrote is worth sharing in its entirety… (This is actually the passage on which I recently preached)

Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.

August 31, 2011
Matthew 16:18

"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo.

Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets. These people always find God in the sunsets. And in walks on the beach. Sometimes I think these people never leave the beach or the mountains, what with all the communing with God they do on hilltops, hiking trails and . . . did I mention the beach at sunset yet?

Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building. How lucky we are to have these geniuses inform us that God is in nature. As if we don’t hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition.

Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community? Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church.


More resources on SBNR:

Beliefnet
More than one fifth of Americans describe themselves with this phrase. What does it mean?

CNN
Are there dangers in being 'spiritual but not religious'?

If It Feels Right...

The following excerpts are from a NY Times op-ed by David Brooks...

If It Feels Right ...

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America....

Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.

The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, “Lost in Transition,” you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

Rejecting blind deference to authority, many of the young people have gone off to the other extreme: “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.”

Many were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, “I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.”

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America...

Charles Taylor has argued that morals have become separated from moral sources. People are less likely to feel embedded on a moral landscape that transcends self. James Davison Hunter wrote a book called “The Death of Character.” Smith’s interviewees are living, breathing examples of the trends these writers have described.

In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.

What have you observed?

Spirit-breathed

Presbyterians love the words Holy Spirit. We love the idea of it. We love to invoke the concept. We don't often try to nail down exactly what it is or what's in its job description. And in some way, I am very glad of that. We also like the concept of human imagination. And though we are perhaps more brave in our invocation of the term and concept and more apt to assign it certain tasks, we hesitate to nail it down either. And we cringe at the idea of defining the boundaries for the two, or where they may overlap.

The discomfort level rises among my more secular friends in trying to determine where humanity ends and divinity begins, particularly in the cretive process. And if there is a major difference between my more spiritual and more secular friends, it is who gets the blame when it all goes to hell (divine concept) and who gets the credit when the artist really nails it. Many pastors I know struggle to remember to let themselves get out of the way in the creative process and to remember they can take very little credit for good sermons and try not to shoulder too much blame for the bad ones.

Saw a fascinating TED Talk from the recent author of Eat, Pray, Love. She struggles with the same ideas in her creative process, although the concepts and vocabulary are new to her. Without the same ideas about how God or the Holy Spirit intervene in her work, she stumbles, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes beautifully to capture the essence of inspiration, blame, responsibility and reverance in ways that express her own experience and hope for others. I think it's worth watching to gain a perspective of one person's search for the relationship between the human and the divine in the creative process.

Seeking to Serve

This week's text and sermon I preached... (audio)

Romans 12:9-21

English Standard Version (ESV)

Marks of the True Christian
9(A) Let love be genuine.(B) Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10(C) Love one another with brotherly affection.(D) Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not be slothful in zeal,(E) be fervent in spirit,[a](F) serve the Lord. 12(G) Rejoice in hope,(H) be patient in tribulation,(I) be constant in prayer. 13(J) Contribute to the needs of the saints and(K) seek to show hospitality.

14(L) Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15(M) Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16(N) Live in harmony with one another.(O) Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.[b](P) Never be wise in your own sight. 17(Q) Repay no one evil for evil, but(R) give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18If possible, so far as it depends on you,(S) live peaceably with all. 19Beloved,(T) never avenge yourselves, but leave it[c] to the wrath of God, for it is written,(U) "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20To the contrary,(V) "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.



In 1824, a small group of young women in Paris felt a strong call to ministry and service amongst those in need of medical care. These 12 young Catholic women wished to serve those in greatest need, starting their own new and very unique order of nuns. They lived at a time of great conflict and distrust of the Church, especially the Catholic Church in France and a time of rampant illness, disease and poor sanitation. Most of the poor could not afford to go to the hospital and many saw hospitals as death traps. The poor often resorted to relatives for home healthcare, most of whom had no experience in tending the sick.

It is into this world, these brave young women sojourned. Popular belief at the time was that, if nuns left the safety and security of a convent, they were to return by nightfall. However, the needs of the sick could not be scheduled solely in daylight hours. The young sisters would stay on floor mats and tend to the sick all night, if need be. These sisters would tend not only to the patient, but to the patient’s whole family. If the mother was sick, they would care for the children and cook the meals and tend to any housework. If it were the father, they would work the land or his shop. They practiced a tireless, faithful hospitality… not in a church or a convent or a hospital, but they sought out those in need and when they found them, they did all that was needed and more.

The sisters broke the tradition too of going only to those within their faith tradition and they refused to offer their help upon contingency of belief or repentance of sins. Their radical love acted out in their “sisterly affection” was unmatched. And while the Catholic church was skeptical about granting them their own order, by the end of their first year, they had more than doubled in size and continued to grow. More sisters flocked to “associate with the lowly.”

These young women, who became known as the Sisters of Bon Secours, the sisters of good help, would go on to become a large order that established hospitals internationally, including throughout the United States. I worked at a Bon Secours hospital as a chaplain in seminary, and they continue their holistic ministry of seeking to show hospitality even today. They do not merely extend medical care to all those in need, regardless of ability to pay, but they will do all they can to serve the entire family of the patient in whatever way may be needed.

In this way, the Sisters continue to serve in a way that reflects Christ’s ministry in a way that so many hospitals, hotels… and churches… do not. They do not merely provide the highest level of hospitality to those who pass through their doors, but they seek out those in need. It is that seeking that is unique in Christ’s ministry and teaching. Try to imagine a gospel devoid of seeking. Jesus opens up a back room in his father’s carpentry shop and takes applications for 12 spots in his disciple visioning team. He tells these disciples that the son of man has come to save the lost who stop by his shop. He tells them stories. Once there was a shepherd who lost one of his sheep. He sat around all day and when the sheep never came back, he was very upset. A young man takes his inheritance early, squanders all his money in a foreign country and when he heads home, his father sees him coming and sits at the kitchen table till his son peeks his head in the door and gives him a disapproving look before hugging him.

What kind of Gospel is that? Where is the Jesus who seeks to save the lost? Where is the good shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep? Where is the prodigal son’s father who goes running out to his lost son? Where is the seeking? Where is the associating with the lowly? Without leaving the house, without getting out in the world, without turning over stones, without seeking, hospitality is just good customer service. It’s not “brotherly affection.” It’s not “associating with the lowly.” It’s letting the lowly associate with us. And it’s certainly not “overcoming evil with good.”

We worship a God who seeks us. It is the example he sets from the beginning of creation. Adam and Eve, for all their stupidity, know that their God is a seeking God. They go and hide. And sure enough, God comes looking for his children. The Bible is a history book… in that it is a history of the times God has gone looking for his people. As Presbyterians, we often baptize infants and small children. We do this as a symbolic act that before we ever profess faith or go seeking God… he is seeking us. It is one of the most deeply important reminders for us as Christians… that we worship a God who seeks us. And he sent his son to find us and to show us that same example, to seek out the lost, to seek to show hospitality.

As a freshman in college, I can only remember one or two care packages I received. One of them was a complete surprise. I received an air mail package from my home town. I couldn’t imagine who would send me an air mail package or why they would do it from only 2 hours away. I opened the box and found 2 dozen fresh chocolate chip cookies, made with love by my best friend’s mom. She had shipped them air mail so they’d still be fresh when I got them. More than cared for, I felt sought out. I felt found. I felt loved. That is seeking to show hospitality.

Many of us know that kind of love. Many of us have experienced the feeling of being sought after. This is a feeling, a knowledge and a hope that we cannot deprive another from feeling, from knowing, from sharing. In seeking to show hospitality, we show others the radical love of Christ in a way that we cannot do passively. We can be good people by being kind to those who walk through our door. But we cannot be good Christians, good disciples if we do not run out our own doors and go look for those who are lost or in need. We are to be a church on the move. And what is it we must do when we get our own doors? We must seek out those in need and seek to do everything we can for them. And there are even deeper needs than those of a lonely, hungry college student.

Emperor Julian of Rome once remarked of the early Christians that “the godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own.” In order to feed people who didn’t come to their churches and homes, the Christians had to leave their homes and go find these hungry people. And it was so common a practice and so radical a notion that even the emperor knew what this fledgling group was up to. It’s the Gospel manifest in the faith of a people who are convicted.

What is the Gospel if not a collection of the hope we are promised and the expectations we are given by a God who loves us? If the Gospel you profess is full of love, so too should be your life and faith. If the Gospel in which you believe is full of forgiveness, so too should your life be. If your Gospel is full of stories of seeking and saving the lost and seeking to show hospitality, shouldn’t your life be a story of the same?

The prophet Isaiah was big on hospitality. And his brand of it was not an easy one. If you don’t like being challenged in your lifestyle, stay out of Isaiah. It’s one of the bad neighborhoods of the Bible. If you decide you’re gonna read Isaiah, don’t go in there unprepared. Have your excuses ready. Be ready to defend your lifestyle choices with arguments about how much you need your creature comforts and expensive possessions to be happy, or how you need an expensive car because it’s reliable. And if you get backed into a corner, do what I so often do and pull out the big guns and be ready to say your biggest concern is the safety and security of your family. Because Isaiah is tough. Isaiah isn’t interested in excuses and good intentions.

Isaiah says we must not only make up a nice room for relatives and even the in-laws. Isaiah says we must not only give money to the homeless and provide them places to stay, low income housing and shelters. Isaiah says we have to invite the homeless into our own homes! Most of us get around that by living in nice neighborhoods and high rises where the poor dare not venture. We seek safety and refuge far more often than we seek to show hospitality to those in need.

The people with whom I worked in inner city Richmond moved into the worst area of town for just that reason. Richmond, like many cities, Denver included, is designed to minimize the interaction those in different socio-economic groups must have with one another. There are skywalks that connect office buildings so you don’t ever have to risk running into a homeless person. Not only are the bad neighborhoods separated from the good ones by geography, but even the highways that pass through have strategically placed trees, planted by the city, that hide the lower income neighborhoods from view.

This had to be pointed out to me by my mentor there. As I drove from my safe home in a neighborhood that had one car break in over the course of a year to this neighborhood where homicide was a daily reality, I had never noticed all the carefully constructed barriers that kept me not just safe from crime, but safe from ever seeing the need. The people who moved into this neighborhood found the need because they were seeking. I hadn’t even thought to look.

We have had 9 baptisms this year at Wellshire. Each is a reminder that God seeks us. Each is a reminder that we are called to seek. My prayer for each of you as you leave today, a church on the move, that your eyes be wide open to need, always seeking those in need. I pray that when you look, you find everything but the excuses that will keep you from showing hospitality to all. Seek to serve. Amen.

The Gates of Hell

Matthew 16: 13-20
English Standard Version (ESV)

Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" 14And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" 16Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed[c] in heaven." 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Hear It Here

It’s a dangerous business, going out your front door. So starts the Children’s book, The Hobbit. I’ve been rereading a lot of those recently, in anticipation of the arrival of our little one... It’s well documented that stepping out your front door is dangerous business. A lot can happen out there. In many ways, it’s the hardest part. It’s how Jesus begins his ministry, calling the disciples out of their homes, out of their lives, out of the boat. It’s no accident that Jesus does this. Once he’s got them out the door, they can do almost anything.

I was among the group from Wellshire this summer that visited the Holy Land. We had the privilege of visiting the house of Peter where Jesus very likely said these words. Beside the house is a little beach on the Sea of Galilee, a beach covered in small pebbles. A reminder of the words he spoke. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Does this choice seem odd to any of you? At first glance, it should. This is the guy who couldn’t sit still. We don’t have one instance of Peter in scripture twiddling his thumbs or sitting on his hands, meditating or reading the paper. Peter would not have made a good Presbyterian. Peter is the hyperactive disciple of the twelve. Jesus is transfigured… Peter has a hammer and nails out, ready to build mountain cabins for the group. Jesus is taking a stroll on the water… Peter is jumping out of the boat to go skipping across the waves. Jesus is being arrested… Peter has a sword out, ready to defend his Lord and teacher.

So why on EARTH, does Jesus turn to this wiggle worm, busy body, robe-full-of-springs bouncy fidgeter and say, “you’re a rock and I’m gonna build my church on you?” Could it be that Jesus is building a church that will never sit still?

What the heck kind of rock is that? If Peter, whose name is Greek for ROCK, was an ordinary rock, he wouldn’t have made it two steps out of the boat when Jesus called him. He would’ve sunken immediately. In fact, the moment we begin looking at rocks in scripture, we start seeing that they don’t sit still much longer than Peter does. A very small rock takes down the Philistine giant in the hands of a young shepherd boy who would become king. Rocks are the backup singers that are ready to shout if the people who welcome Jesus fall silent. And a rock rolls away as our savior rises from the dead.

All three of the verses from Psalms this morning speak about rocks on the move, rocks that save and protect…

The LORD lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation!

To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.

Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily! Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!

Our Lord is a rock that lives. Our Lord is a rock that can hear our cries for help. Our Lord is a rock that goes out to save. This is the kind of Rock that God sets his church upon. Jesus doesn’t say Peter is his immovable steady rock upon which the church will stay, unmoving, still, motionless, invulnerable to and unconcerned with the outside world. This rock is not a sinking stone, but a Holy Rolling Stone!

A favorite classic movie of mine is Sister Act. Whoopi Goldberg’s Reno lounge singer character witnesses a violent murder and is hidden in a convent till she can testify. As you can imagine, she turns the place upside down, and the convent has an effect on her as well. She becomes Sister Mary Clarence and tries to fit in… in her own way. Everything about the convent is designed to protect the sisters from the outside world, and so is a perfect place to hide Sister Mary Clarence. However, she cannot abandon the outside world so quickly, and finds that many of the sisters share that passion, desiring to help those outside the walls.

When Sister Mary Clarence succeeds in bringing people in off the streets with her music, the Monseigneur is delighted. Mary Clarence takes the opportunity to speak for the mother superior, the very protective head of the convent, purposely undermining her, and says, “She wants us to go out into the neighborhood and meet the people.” As the mother superior begins to protest adamantly out of fear for herself and her nuns, the other nuns plead with her… “Oh, sister, that’s why many of us became nuns.” And an older nun says, “There’s a lot more that we could for these people than pray for ‘em.”

And so they go out to meet the people and their church gets moving. It gets outside itself, outside the walls, outside its own gates. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” So Jesus is not building a Church that is heavily fortified with gates that can withstand the attacks of hell and evil… he’s building a church that will attack the gates of hell! The Church can certainly be a sanctuary for those in need. The church in Sister Act began by extending hospitality to those who came in off the streets. But if that’s all they had done, they would have missed the whole point. Only the people within hearing range of the church came in for the music. There were many more people dwelling in poverty, in hunger and oppression and sickness and hopelessness than who lived within a block of the church building. How sad it would be… if the Church became confined to the buildings in which it resides and worships.

As the church in Sister Act begins to turn the tide in the neighborhood… feeding people, loving people and bringing music, joy, hope… the aging mother superior becomes incredibly nervous about their new direction, terrified of the real-life danger it invites into the lives of her nuns. Discouraged, she tells Mary Clarence, “Could I keep this going, even if I wanted to? No. I am a relic… and I have misplaced my tambourine.”

When a Sister Mary Clarence inspires us, we all desire to rise to the occasion, to help Hunger Task Force pack boxes, to travel to Haiti, to head to Galveston or Joplin or the local Denver schools and shelters. But how often do we misplace our tambourines? How often do we see the Church as our refuge, the safe base of operations from where we conduct our saintly chores? How often do we associate our church attendance, Sunday school, worship, Bible studies, youth groups, fellowship groups, circles, committees and sessions on tap… with actively storming the gates?

I don’t mean to say that any of those is bad. Holly would have my head. Those are recon, strategy sessions and battle plans. But imagine science teachers who could never hope for a student that would go on to cure cancer or invent a new sustainable energy source. The last thing any Sunday school teacher hopes for is to inspire their students merely to a life of good Sunday school attendance.

Jesus does not say, “Peter, you are the immovable object on which I will build my church and the gates of it will never be penetrated, scaled or obliterated by hell and evil.” The Church of Jesus has no gates. What then, are the gates of hell? What in this world is evil? What is so deeply entrenched that it cannot easily be removed? At one time, the gates of hell in America looked like the institution of slavery… and then Jim Crow laws. And not one of us should pretend that racism, bigotry of all kinds or indifference is not a part of daily life in this country and all over the globe. We cannot pretend that children all over the world, even in Denver, don’t go to bed hungry each night or that our economy isn’t contributing more and more intensely to our homeless population and putting a greater and greater strain on our food banks. Those are the gates of hell… the seemingly-impenetrable barrier that separates us from one another. And the Church is called to assail, to attack, to bring down those gates.

It would be foolish to believe we could put a real dent in any of these gates from within the walls of this building. A church full of people who are so well-educated, so aware and so passionate cannot be content to try. We cannot be stones on which holy moss grows. We must be a rock like Peter, fidgety and discontented. We have to get out there. For some of you, this will look like family vacations that look more like mission trips or field trips, so your children will learn your passion for God’s children everywhere. For some of you, this will look like volunteer hours at MetroCareRing or Denver Inner City Parish. For some of you, it will be going somewhere here in Denver or to Joplin or Haiti in October during our week of Work-ship. We cannot be content to see ourselves as relics who have lost our tambourines.

Mark Yaconelli, author and profound story teller, meets with small groups of adults and will ask them, “at what time in your life did you stop dancing?” The question gets at the heart of our transition from childlikeness to adultness… as opposed to our transition from childhood to adulthood. When in our lives does joy stop being a reason in and of itself to dance? When do we stop moving? When do we become settled? When does our church stop moving?

This morning, we celebrate in joy with many among us who have gotten out of bed and walked or run for a purpose, for a cure. They walk and they run and they stand with others to attack the gates, to fight for a cure. This is a church on the move, God’s people storming the gates, a rock that will not stay put. God built his Church on a moving rock, and upon that Rock, the Church should always be moving toward the gates of all that hurts and oppresses and stands against the good news of life and love. It was no accident that God built his church, our church on a rock that would never sit still. God never wants us to sit still.

In this passage, Jesus not only establishes his Church, but he makes a promise… that building this church on the rock he has chosen… the gates of Hell shall not prevail. We are a part of a church built on the rock God chose, the rock that God set in motion. When I was in Galveston, I saw a motivational poster in the hallway of the small church in which we stayed. It portrayed a beautiful beach sunset and in lovely script, it shared the wisdom of a wiser generation and the enthusiasm of a younger one… “May the Lord bless you and keep you… and rock your face off.” Go, be not the church that fortifies gates against the storm. Be the church that storms the gates. All glory be to God. Amen.

Green Day

Fly Me to the Moon... A recent post on Lonely Planet is about some of the least Eart-like looking places on Earth. These pictures are of places here that look just out of this world. Please check them out.

Also, if you have a picture of somewhere that looks just out of this world, send me the picture or a link and I'll enter you to win this month's little prize: pick the topic of Brian's next blog. This can be anything related to culture, the Church or religion that you think needs to be discussed.

Green Day

"We are the only species that celebrates Shark Week. Sharks don't even celebrate Shark Week." -Jeff Winger, Community

It's True. We do celebrate Shark Week. Discovery Channel has been hosting it for 24 years now. It's gotten so popular, pop icon Lady Gaga does their promo song. If you've never experinced Shark Week, you don't know what you're missing. It's phenomenal... for more than a few reasons. First of all, it's a whole week dedicated to one kind of animal... every year... for a quarter of a century! Perhaps even more interesting is that it's sort of the "bad guy" of the animal kingdom. Despite the very few shark-related fatalities in the history of the world (compared to car crashes and lightning strikes), sharks get an awful rap.

So for one week each year, the media redeems itself by bringing us a realistic look at one of God's most spectacularly fascinating and awe-inspiring creatures, one of the oldest species alive. They've outlived the dinosaurs and some experts believe they may even outlast Survivor. So, if you have cable (we don't), tune in and get hooked. Or just watch Jaws on Netflix.

Green Day

I cannot do this article justice with a synopsis, so I will simply provide a link. A recent article in the NY Times outlines the often hidden costs of diving head first into renewable resources. As with all things in life, you must look before you leap. Recent, well-meaning, laws and government initiatives have met with great public approval, but may be leading us in environmentally costly and damaging directions.

The following op-ed piece does a superb job of examining the potential pitfalls of recent decision-making and legislation: The Gas is Greener by Robert Bryce.

Back from Pilgrimage

And we're BACK! After three weeks of trecking through the Holy Land and following in the footsteps of Jesus, I'm back. From the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea to Jericho, Bethlehem and Jerusalem (plus stops in Haifa and Akko), and all the way down to the Red Sea and over to Cairo, this trip covered most of the land JC walked. I took lots of pictures and kept a very detailed journal. I will share from that journal in the coming days, but for now, you can find the pictures in these Facebook albums. You do NOT need to create a FB account to see them, if you don't yet have one. I was able to see many of the holy sites where Jesus and his disciples and family went and to read the stories there. I was also able to meet people of many faith traditions and other believers from all over the world and hear their stories. Enjoy...


Pictures of the Young Adults who went to Israel on Pilgrimage

Pictures of my first week on my own (Haifa, Akko and Jerusalem)

Pictures of my second week on my own (Eilat, Cairo and Jerusalem)

ETA

Our current best guess in optimum traffic conditions is to be in Denver between 3:45 and 4:15pm MST. See you then!

Rise and shine and find the golden arches

Now in:
413 S Lakeside Dr
Amarillo‎ Texas‎ 79118

Guessing that barring traffic, we'll be home around 5pm MST.

Where are we now?

Childress, TX

GPS says we'll arrive in Denver at 4pm. However, the GPS isn't counting on 50 teenagers stopping for breakfast and lunch.

On the road

Just stopped at:
2311 Jacksboro Hwy
Wichita Falls‎ Texas‎ 76301

ETA

We are on our way home! We left at about 9pm (CST) [8pm MST]. We are hoping to be in about 4 or 5pm tomorrow (Saturday- MST). I will update this post every 6 hours. See y'all soon!

More Mission Pictures

Just a few more pictures here.

Mission Update

Our group has been working hard here in Galveston. They've all been working on 5 different worksites to do work for homeowners and organizations here.

Steve has taken more pictures, which you can see here.

Some Pictures from Galveston

Steve Cearley has been taking pictures of our youth down here in Galveston. You can see his pictures here: pics.

Arrived!

All 46 youth and 9 adults are safe and sound in Galveston, TX! Thanks for your prayers! More soon.

MISSION TRIP

We Leave this Saturday, June 11th for the Youth Mission Trip to Galveston, TX for hurricane relief work. We'll be partnering with One Mission Galveston to help families whose homes and lives were torn apart by Hurricane Ike.

I'll post on this blog when we arrive on Sunday and again on Friday to let all you parents know our return ETA. Cell phone numbers for me and a few other leaders are in your inboxes. If there is an emergency, contact one of us. No youth should have a cell phone with them. Thank you!

It’s not in the Bible

Demitri Martin has said that “sort of” is a harmless phrase. Although sometimes it can mean everything. Like after certain phrases… “I love you…” “You’re going to live…” “It’s a boy!”

This is true of the phrase, “It’s not in the Bible.” There are variations of course. “Jesus never mentioned it.” "Paul never wrote about it." 'Moses never told a joke about it." Now sometimes this is a really helpful point. Other times, it’s quite misleading.

Does the Bible ever use the words “nuclear bombs” or “chemical weapons" or even "asassination?” No. Does the Bible have things to say about how we treat our neighbors and our enemies? You betcha!

Does Jesus ever discuss cocaine or huffing? Not in my version of the NT. Does Jesus talk about all of us being God’s children, about our bodies as temples and a gift from God? Does he tell us to love ourselves that we might love others? You better believe it.

When thinking about these topics, it would seem like saying “It’s not in the Bible” or “Jesus never talked about it,” could always be dangerous. However, when followed up with… “But the Bible does say….” Or “Jesus did teach…” it can be a useful tool for studying scripture.

“The Bible doesn’t use the phrase ‘premarital sex.’” True, but it does talk an awful lot about the power and consequences of sex, including a heck of a lot of illustrative cautionary tales. It does talk a lot about the special gift from God. It does have a lot to say about loving others as you love yourselves and not ever taking advantage of other people and has a lot to say about relying on God to resist temptations. And just as importantly, it has a lot to say about making mistakes and the overabundance of God’s forgiveness and expectation that we do the same.

“Jesus never utters a word about homosexuality.” True. And he does have tons to say about loving one another, seeking God’s will as found in the holy texts and words of the prophets. And Jesus has a whole lot to say about loving others, feeding the poor, visiting the sick and imprisoned, sheltering the homeless and standing up for the downtrodden. How we doing on that?

Now, admittedly, as a Presbyterian, born and raised, my first instinct to a moral or social quandary is maybe not to say to their friends, “I wonder what the Bible says.” (I'm working on this, thanks to some non-Presbyterian friends) But the next time someone says, “that’s not even addressed in the Bible,” I challenge you to say, “are you sure that’s entirely true?”

Guest Post: Why [mere] Tolerance is not a Christian response

Guest Post from Shawn Smucker, with permission. You can find him here.

Why Tolerance is not a Christian Response

“You have heard that the law of Moses says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, TOLERATE your enemies!” Matthew 5:43 – 44

“Honor your father and mother. TOLERATE your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 19:19

“I command you to TOLERATE each other in the same way that I TOLERATE you.” John 15:12

* * * * *

I have four children, ages seven, six, three and one. Having them around the house is a hoot. Even this morning as I write, the two youngest have managed to climb over the sofa and wedge themselves between the wall, the sofa and the coffee table. And now they’re stuck.

My kids love each other. Don’t get me wrong – they fight and scratch and claw like any other kids. They have their selfish moments, their irrational outbursts. But at heart they are great friends and enjoy each other’s company.

They love each other. I do everything in my power to keep it that way, because they’re my kids and I want them to love each other as much as I love them. Experiencing moments where they genuinely care for one another can be some of the most moving times of my life.

Would I ever want them to get to a place where they were only tolerant of each other? No way.

* * * * *

In case you didn’t realize it, I altered the verses above, substituting the word “love” with the world “tolerate.”

We are not called to tolerate people, although in the current world system tolerance has become a virtue of sorts. See, tolerance is a superficial action that has little power to bring about actual change. When we tolerate people, our goal is strictly modifying our external behavior. I can tolerate someone in public and still talk about them when they’re not around. I can tolerate someone and still end up perpetuating stereotypes.

Love is so different from this.

I think turning to tolerance is a natural response in the face of conflict or injustice. I can understand why we call for tolerance, when so many people treat each other with such incredible hate. While tolerance might be part of a process, it can never be our end goal.

Perhaps at some point tolerance can be helpful in bringing two people into the same room, but it is not a long term solution for conflict, inequality or misunderstanding. Tolerance alone cannot change societies or transform hearts. Tolerance cannot keep the peace for an extended period of time.

Only love can do that.

Green Day

The US Postal Service is Going Green!

The Go Green (Forever®) stamps have cartoon depictions of simple things everyone can do to make a difference.

Recycling just one aluminum can reduces waste and saves enough energy to run a computer for three hours. Imagine the effect, if everyone in your neighborhood did that. Simple insulation like caulking or weatherstripping pays for itself in reduced utility bills in under a year. Properly inflating your car tires improves gas mileage by up to 3%.

It is Well with my Soul

Shalom! Mah-Shlom-chah?

This is how almost every conversation starts in our Hebrew class. It’s a wonderful group of people and a lovely elderly couple who teach it. We look forward to going each week and as we’ve moved from Hebrew 1 to 2 over the last few months, we’ve become rather invested in one another.

Shalom is a pretty standard greeting, “Peace.” And the question that follows is one we typically understand as, “How are you?” As we have come to care how each of us is doing each week by that evening, we usually answer pretty honestly with how we’re feeling or how the day has been. Answers like Yah-feh (tired) and Rah-ev (hungry) are common (a few of the students are pregnant).

However, Moshe, our professor, explained some new grammar to us this week and in doing so taught us something culturally significant. The question is not quite, “How are you?” but closer to “How is it with your being?” In other words, not how are you this moment, but how are things with you or how are things with your being, your soul? This is an entirely different question, not just because it’s deeper or broader in its inquiry, but because the responsibility for answering it is also greater.

When we ask someone how they’re doing in the United States, we really mean how they’re doing recently, typically in this very moment. And we answer accordingly. Maybe we’ve had a good week, month, year or even lifetime on the whole, but we answer for the moment. “I’m doing horribly! I had a bad morning at the DMV followed by a parking ticket.”

Ask the same person how it is with their being, how it is with their soul? Their answer may have to put that lousy morning into perspective with a bigger picture. “I’m doing ok really. Lousy morning, but doing well, you?”

We live in a culture now where our every emotion, stray thought, insult or commentary on every person, action, political position or event can be broadcast instantaneously. Why ask how someone is doing? Follow their Facebook status updates or Twitter feed. You’ll have a blow by blow of their emotional status and mental analysis of everything they’ve encountered recently.

The problem then is that you are possibly well-informed about the general status of their being, but none of us has had the opportunity to reflect each time on our being as a whole, how our soul is doing. Our reflection is shallow, our analysis narrow. Twitter doesn’t ask you how you’ve been or how your life is going. Facebook doesn’t ask you how content your soul is or how your being is. They ask how you are this moment, what you’re thinking. And so do we.

I think the importance in the question, “Mah-shlom-chah?” is not merely to be a more deeply concerned friend or family member, but that answering it requires reflection and perspective. So in case I’m the only person to ask you this today, “Mah-shlom-chah?”

The Power of Words

Not long ago, I blogged on the power of words. I reflected mostly on their power to do harm. However, just as importantly, they can do good. Here Morgan Freeman introduces a great video that reminds us what GOOD words can do...

God's Children

...and as the Israelites watched, the waters of the Red Sea came crashing together, drowning Pharoa's army. The Israelites danced and cheered and rejoiced. And God said to Moses, "Why do you rejoice?"

"Our evil opressors who have kept us slaves to them and to fear all these years have been slain!" Responded Moses.

"Yes," said God. "And they are my children too."

That story has been told to me at least twice and is supposedly from the Talmud, the body of non-canonical Jewish stories that help to explain and illustrate moral lessons of the Hebrew Bible. It is the first thing that came to mind last night as I saw people celebrating the death of bin Laden.

Now, I recall that tragic day ten years ago very well. I was a senior in high school. I recall how poorly our school handled the news and its dissemination. I recall the national uproar when my university chose Approaching the Qu'ran as our summer reading. I recall the serious talk about a military draft being reinstated the following year and that I was of age to be among the first in line for that, those turning twenty that year.

I recall not only the events, but those emotions. And I am a man who has always had a deep sense of justice and a need to see it brought about. I deeply believe that my God is a God of justice and as in the story, I believe God moves in our world to help bring justice. I do not believe God is always happy to do so. And I do not believe our God calls us to be either.

I do not wish to say it is wrong to rejoice when evil men are brought to a just end. In fact, we should be a people who are resolutely dedicated to justice and grateful for leaders and soldiers who seek it and bring it about. We should, however, be careful never to rejoice in the death of one of God's children, lest we believe or suggest to others that we believe that God does not love a single one of them or that we have not loved our enemies and prayed for those who have persecuted us.

CHAT - What It's All About

I spoke about my job with CHAT (Church Hill Activities and Tutoring) in Richmond, VA during my Maundy Thursday homily. This news story just ran recently there. Percy was my mentor during that summer and largely responsible for the interpretation I shared from the John passage...

Green Day

Sharing is caring, or so they say. Community bikes are nothing new. Many large cities in Europe and Asia have had them for years. It's a relatively new concept in the States and DC's program is really catching on. With over 1,000 bikes currently and expected to expand to 1,300 soon, this program is working out for a lot of commuters who are eco and health-conscious. The following video is on Capital Bike Share's main website...

The Lost Cause

Last night was Maundy Thursday. Our scripture was John 13:1-20. This is the homily I preached... (You may be able to hear it here)

The Lost Cause

The Gospel of Luke has been called the Gospel of the Lost. It contains parables about lost sheep, lost coins and lost people. In Luke, Jesus says his mission is to seek and save the lost. However, I think it could just as easily be said that the Gospel of John… is the Gospel of the Lost Cause.

The Bible is full of tales of bad men and women, evil deeds and awful circumstances. Cruelty and betrayal are common themes. Perhaps one of the greatest examples is Judas. At this time of the year, we are pretty tough on Judas. We’re pretty tough on Peter too. And yet we find when we read the Easter story… Jesus… is not. Judas betrays Jesus. Peter denies Jesus. Jesus knows they are both going to let him down tremendously. In Chapter 13, we learn Jesus knows Judas will betray him. He knows Peter will deny him. He knows they will all abandon him.

And yet, does Jesus spend his last night lecturing his disciples, his merry band of screw ups and cowards? Does he spend it begging them not abandon and betray him? No. As the writer of John tells us, he loves them till the end. Jesus spends this time sharing a meal and washing their feet. Jesus spends this time serving them. He spends this time loving them.

After leaving seminary, I worked as a summer school teacher for an inner city ministry in Richmond, teaching Math and English. This neighborhood, Church Hill is one of the ten most dangerous neighborhoods in America, having improved in recent years from number four to number eight on that list. The ministry with which I worked had two main goals: to educate and encourage the kids and families in Church Hill, helping in any way possible… and to work toward racial reconciliation. The kids in the school and tutoring programs and camp are kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks, most of whom would never complete high school, let alone attend college, and many of whom would fall victim to drug and gang violence. There was a murder every day for our first two weeks in the neighborhood that summer.

With so much need and so few resources in time, money and manpower, it was tempting to feel overwhelmed. It was tempting to affect a sort of emotional triage. It was tempting to do what so many before us had done, to focus on the kids with the best chance or even those with the worst chance and devote our time and energy to those few. It was tempting to identify the Lost Cause and to steel ourselves for the inevitable failure, the countless let downs, the ongoing disappointment.

That was the temptation. The reality, most days, was that the people in this ministry knew we’d never make any progress, if we succumbed to that mindset. Our example is Jesus, and triage was a foreign concept to him. He loved them to the end. Jesus didn’t suspect that Peter would deny him. He knew it. Jesus didn’t suspect that Judas was a Lost Cause. He knew he was. And yet… Jesus washed each disciples’ feet… even… Peter… and Judas.

In that ministry in the heart of Church Hill, they knew that example didn’t let them off the hook. The example Christ gave us in knowing what he knew and loving them till the very end is our example in every moment of our lives. Because the real hook is this… Jesus knew who was a Lost Cause… and he served them just the same. No more, no less, with no exasperation, with no defeat or surrender. And brothers and sisters, as wise as we may believe ourselves to be, we do not know who the Lost Causes are. And we cannot. And Jesus shows us that even if we did, we are to serve them… to love them… in spite of this.

My mother, a lifelong school teacher, has always told me that, “you cannot reach someone you don’t love.” And it’s far too difficult to love someone you believe is a Lost Cause. And yet, this is precisely what Jesus does. Our Lord, our teacher and our example doesn’t abandon or vilify those who will betray him. We completely vilify Judas. And if we didn’t read all the way to the end of our Gospel, we’d string Peter right up alongside Judas. How dare he?! But Peter, Lost Cause number two… he becomes the rock upon whom Jesus builds his church.

How different is Peter from the convict who sits on death row or the college dropout heavy into drugs or the unwed pregnant teen or any one of us in our darkest hours? He isn’t. The Peter of our Gospel accounts between this night, Maundy Thursday, and Sunday morning is a story whose ending has not been written, whose hope is not in this day, but in the Jesus who comes looking for him, the Jesus who comes to seek and save the lost. What are we, each of us, if not lost? Who are you? Who am I, if not a Lost Cause who Jesus has refused to give up on, no matter the outcome? And who are we, if not a people called to go and do the same?

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Benediction:
As you go forth in silence tonight from the Chapel, go forth in the knowledge that no one you meet is a Lost Cause, not one. God has only granted one person the knowledge of who is a Lost Cause, and his example to you is that this knowledge is irrelevant. Go forth loving and serving, knowing that no one’s story is finished yet.

Green Day (Special Edition)

I'm aware it's 4/20. So if you're gonna grow something in a pot and go green this April 20th, try a Solar Plant. The Solar Plant is a little electrical potted plant that looks little and cute in your window sill and can charge your portable electronic devices. The eco-friendly energy produced by the Solar plant can be used to charge your gadgets whenever and wherever you want. Just don't water it.

Green Day

On Palm Sunday this year, Wellshire will dedicate its new Solar Panels. We're very excited about this. These panels will reduce our dependence on the grid, though not fully power all of Wellshire's energy needs. It is one of many steps Wellshire is taking toward better stewardship of our earth and the resources of God's world.

In honor of this, for the next several weeks, we will take a look at the latest inventions that are helping to move us away from such extravagant energy consumption and toward better stewardship. This week... the amazing new nearly-waterless washing machine!

Researchers at Leeds University have designed and tested a washing machine that uses only one cup of water for a load of laundry. That's 90% less water than a typical washing machine. How is this possible? A technology by Xeros uses nylon polymer beads to attract dirt and lock it up, reducing the need for water. If that's not exciting for you, think about reducing your water bill by 90% every time you do a load of laundry. For now, this in production for commercial use, but with the hope of following it with domestic shortly. Stay tuned.

A video of the latest prototype could not be embeded, but a link can be added. Go see the prototype here.

Quality of Life

A friend and colleague of mine from seminary is an assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU Medical Center and neuro surgeon who specializes in those with various forms of dimentia. He has also worked on a Sunday school for curriculum that teaches young children about how to interact with grandparents with dimentia.

He recently wrote a piece for the Richmond Times Dispatch in VA and I'm providing the link here for those of you who would like to read it. It outlines some of the natural prejudice we all have about quality of life and who should determine it.

Absolutely Tragic

Amidst all the recent tragedy and suffering, I didn't think the news could get any worse. But I have to say this latest story moved me to absolute nausea. As we approach the anniversary of the Columbine shooting 12 years ago, which is still keenly felt here in Colorado and the Denver area, this story hits home especially hard.

A new video game is being released. It's title... School Shooter: North American Tour 2012. That's right. As the name implies, it is a violent first-person shooter game that allows you to roam school buildings and murder your classmates. It promises to be "the best school shooter" ever, as if this is a real and normal video game genre.

Creator Jaime Lombe had even more disturbing things to say about his game. "Nobody has ever tried create a proper game about a school shooting," he told reporters. Then he told them that he was not particularly moved by the tragedy at Columbine. "The way the news victimized the victims and overplayed the evil of the shooters disgusted me more than the actual shootings themselves."

The only thing as tragic as this school shooting is glorifying the actions that took place here out of depression and anger and frustration. And even more unbelievable is that no one person can program, advertise and release a video game. It takes teams of people. And apparently none of them have the sense or compassion to say no to this ghastly idea. It's not a new idea to capitalize on tragedy.

There are hundreds of games about WWI, WWII, Vietnam and so on. What seems unique is how recent, how raw, and how evil the intent and motivation is behind this game, as well as what sort of message it sends. These days, the measure of resolve about any issue seems to be how many and how big is the Facebook group for/against something. I was unable to find any such group when I searched. There's a page with 0 likes. Is it not well known or have we become that complacent?

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes."

Luke 19:40-42

Green Day

A promising new way to use salt water as fuel has been discovered by accident. A man studying ways to cure cancer serendipitously discovered a means to pull apart the hydrogen and oxygen in salt water and ignite them. The news story...