A godless GALILEAN

Green Day

2012-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Organic farming may actually be defeating its own purpose. What happens when an environmental ideal is accomplished, even at the risk or harm of the environment?

On to Joplin: Why do we travel?

2012-01-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

Often, when I begin to discuss past mission trips or plans for future ones with my youth, I am confronted by people with the age old, “We have plenty of need right here in ____.” It doesn’t matter where I am currently living. That statement is always true. The simple argument that there is greater need elsewhere is often true, but it’s not even the best argument, and certainly not the only one. Anyone who has ever worked with young people knows that there are myriad of reasons to take a mission trip. Recently, I came across a top 50 list of travel quotes. I found that several of them were particularly relevant to mission travel. When someone else has said it better, let them speak…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons for mission trips, particularly, but not exclusively to destinations abroad. I have never taken a young person (or even a not so young person) anywhere that didn’t come back as a person more aware of themselves and others and more inclined to a greater love of all God’s children.

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

As to that statement that people close by are in need, this is true. Without fail, the people I take on mission trips come back with greater yearning to help those in need, resulting often in people who look for that need around them when they return. One of the questions I hear most often toward the end of a mission trip is, “How can I keep doing this when we get home?”

“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson

If travel to places in need only had the consequence of making people grateful for their blessings, it might almost be enough in and of itself. In my experience, this is rarely the only side effect of a mission trip, but it can be one of the best.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

Traveling can be tough indeed when we’re staying in unfamiliar places, eating things that may be making us sick, possibly being electrocuted in the shower and/or left behind in an unfamiliar city or country. Relying on the hospitality of those whom you serve can be a humbling experience though, and one that reflects the true kingdom of God, serving and being served.

″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

Our mission trips tend to be very productive. When we leave, new structures are built or repaired, lives and families healed. But I would consider any such trip a failure, if the people I took with me never saw God moving in those acts, big and small, or never came home to share what they learned and how they were changed. It’s why we take pains in small groups and conversations to process what we experience.

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

The hope when I take young people on mission trips is not to make them better youth or young adults, but to help them become wise adults, changed forever in positive ways, as better believers, better citizens and better people.

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

Pattie, the other associate here at Wellshire often says she won’t take high maintenance people to foreign countries. I echo the sentiment whole-heartedly. It is not about the strain or stress it puts on the leader or the group, but that a mentality focused on one’s self cannot serve others because it cannot truly love others.

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

Twain is right. There is no greater bonding experience for the youth than when they travel together, and particularly when they serve others side by side. It’s universal. You’re hard pressed to find a decent debate over politics or religion or sex among people digging for survivors in the rubble of a natural disaster. Show me a church that spends all its time serving others and I’ll show you a church that doesn’t have time or inclination to schism over small theological differences. The young people with whom I travel find ways to bond that surpasses any disagreement they may hold.

Mission trips are not a strategy for group building or self-improvement. Mission trips are designed to be a way to go meet the greatest needs in our world. But if you doubt the very real impact those trips can have on the people go to serve, you underestimate what impact travel has on the soul. We hope you’ll be going with us to Joplin this summer, or supporting us financially and in prayer.

What Happened to Joplin?

2012-01-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

This summer, Wellshire's youth group will head to Joplin, Missouri to work alongside TeamEffort in the rebuilding work after last year's devastating tornado. It's hard to imagine the destruction without some context and a first-hand account. This is where God is calling Wellshire's young people this summer.

The following are excerpts from Seth Fletcher’s article in this month’s Popular Science magazine*. A native of Joplin, Missouri, Fletcher recounts his experiences in hearing the news and going home to witness it first-hand…

On May 22, 2011… Just after 5 p.m., two storm chasers driving toward the western edge of Joplin, Missouri, spotted a translucent set of tendrils reaching down from the storm’s low black thunderhead… A dark blob half a mile wide congealed and dropped from the clouds. As it touched the ground, it filled with sparks from ruptured power lines, like a jar of fireflies. At 5:41, the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri, issued this alert: NUMEROUS REPORTS OF TORNADO ON THE GROUND WEST OF JOPLIN AND POWER FLASHES.

By the time it reached the city limits [of Joplin], where 49,000 people lived, it had evolved into an EF-5, the most destructive type of tornado on the Enhance Fujita scale... An EF-4 is powerful enough to scrape civilization off the planet in a matter of minutes. And EF-5 is more powerful still.

When the storm hit Joplin, the winds inside the funnel were spinning faster than 200 mph – yet the whole column was crawling forward at less than 10 mph, giving it time to wood-chip everything beneath it. The tornado produced a good deal of incredible, EF-5-worthy damage in the office park that surrounded St. John’s Hospital, one of the region’s major medical centers. In 45 seconds, it shifted the nine-story structure four inches off its foundation.

By then, the tornado was three quarters of a mile wide… the tornado hit Joplin High School… Security cameras intended to monitor lunch-hour skippers now recorded surges of water that rendered the parking lot indistinguishable from a harbor in a hurricane…

The tornado churned on to the east, tagging its path with bizarre signatures – wood piercing asphalt, rubber piercing wood… It continued toward the main thoroughfare, Range Line Road, and destroyed a Home Depot, an Academy Sports & Outdoors, a Wal-Mart and a Pizza Hut, shotgunning shoppers with glass and metal and wood, burying some beneath cinder blocks, and needling others with blades of grass…

[Watching the news, that night]

At first we thought the [news] crew was filming outside the town, in the country. A couple of houses down? Not so bad for late May in Missouri. Then the camera turned and landed on St. John’s Hospital. Windows blasted out, every surrounding structure demolished, it looked like the backdrop from a high-budget zombie movie… On camera, Bettes [a network on-camera meteorologist] choked up, turned his head, and broke into tears. That’s when [my wife and I] freaked out…

No phone calls were getting through… it wasn’t until morning that we realized that the damage reports that had been streaming in over Facebook weren’t isolated. One continuous stream of demolition connected them all. The tornado destroyed 20 percent of the property in Joplin, killed 161 people, and injured 1,150 more, all in a town with just 49,000 residents. [Other tornado events have led to higher death tolls, but this was prior to modern warning systems and the result of multiple tornadoes in one system.] The Joplin tornado is the deadliest single tornado on record…

[A higher percentage than normally reported deaths occurred in large retail stores.] Home Depot said that its Joplin store, which was demolished in the storm, was built properly and that no building could have survived the tornado – but it also said the company will be adding an underground storm shelter to its new store…

[On arrival in Joplin the next day]

Debarked trees, blond like treated lumber, splintered the horizon… the terrain was too disfigured to trigger many memories.

The town was so unrecognizable that one of the first tasks workers undertook, after clearing the streets of rubble, was painting street names onto the pavement at every intersection. The signs were gone, as were the landmarks, and even lifetime residents were finding it difficult to navigate…

Search-and-rescue crews had spray-painted the sides of houses with tic-tac-toe-looking code that indicated that a house had been checked for bodies. Many were marked with a final message: “OK to Doze.”

[The tornado] destroyed 6,954 homes and caused at least $3 billion in damage… Dump trucks would cart away some 1.5 million cubic yards of rubble… Elderly couples who hadn’t moved in 50 years were buying new homes sight unseen. Houses in Joplin are generally cheap and abundant, but now there weren’t enough to go around…

The [weather warning] system gave the people of Joplin 24 minutes of warning – enough notice to qualify the Joplin storm as well warned…

[In the following days]

One night at my dad’s, a neighbor who had spent the evening of the tornado volunteering in an emergency room described an array of horrors: an elderly woman, fully conscious, whose scalp was peeled back, exposing her skull… Still-living victims who emergency workers decided to black-tag, leaving them to their death so they could devote their limited time and resources to helping people who had a chance of surviving…

This is where the youth are headed to help in the rebuilding and healing of a community. If you’d like to read more accounts or stories about Joplin, go here:

ABC News Article & Video

Video from Inside the Twister

*February 2012 www.popsci.com

Green Day

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

Our Swooping Spirit (Preached at St Paul's)

2012-01-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

There won't be an audio version as this was not preached at Wellshire.

Scriptures: Genesis 1:1-5 and Mark 1:1-12

Jesus was a Jew. If that statement is not a shock to you, perhaps it should be. You see, most of the Gospel accounts and the entirety of the Old Testament were written for Jews, both religious and cultural. Even the Gospel accounts written for Gentiles were written for Gentiles who were very familiar with Jewish culture due largely to their geographic proximity and intermarriage. Most of what you read in your Bible, and certainly what we read today, wasn’t written for you.

Now, before you go telling Stan or Tom Sheffield that Brian came in here and told you the Bible isn’t for you, let me explain a little more. Stick with me, my story gets better. I want to be very clear that I am not saying that Jesus wasn’t talking to ALL of us, Jews and Gentiles. And I’m not saying the Old Testament is intended solely for the Jews or has nothing to offer us. On the contrary, it has just as much to offer us. However, for most of us, what is our first step in reading the Bible? We pick up an ENGLISH copy and begin reading. Beyond that, many, if not most of us will pick up a modern, American English translation.

With each new baby born at the church, they bring a care bag and in it is an illustrated children’s Bible. The assumption that my congregation thankfully makes is that as new parents begin to read the Bible to their little ones, it will be some time before even their favorite versions of it will be accessible to them. They need a version they understand.

I think we can all agree that none of us would go about assuming we could understand scripture without first understanding at least the language in which it is written. We either pick up a translation we know, or we seek to learn the language in which it was written. Can we all agree that this is common and necessary first step? Great! But this is a very bare minimum.

Next, we need a cultural understanding. Now, for many of us, we think of a difference in culture as being between different countries, or maybe even regions. But every group of people has a culture. Just think of the difference between grownup and kid culture. Think of the words you use now that cannot be defined in a few short sentences in a Webster-like fashion for a grade-schooler. We have this difficulty every year in the church when we try to retell the Christmas story. As an adult, you have cultural context for the story. For a child, any trip is a magical journey where your parents make all the arrangements, pack the bags and take you somewhere fun where you’ll be safe and happy. A trip is always a vacation and always all-inclusive. Why worry? For a child, a virgin is a young girl. There are no social implications. For a child, swaddling clothes are fancy garments for newborns, not magical cloth that soothes a baby in a way nothing else can. And a manger is a crib, not a trough. For a child, there’s not much difference between a shepherd and a Wiseman. They both wear a bathrobe and beard. They just get different hats and props.

And let’s be honest, for most of us as adults, we prefer to remain blissfully content in this version of the story most Christmases too. Why muddy the waters?

1 My son, if you receive my words

and treasure up my commandments with you,

2 making your ear attentive to wisdom

and inclining your heart to understanding;

3 yes, if you call out for insight

and raise your voice for understanding,

4 if you seek it like silver

and search for it as for hidden treasures,

5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD

and find the knowledge of God.

6 For the LORD gives wisdom;

from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

We, as believers, are seekers of wisdom. It is a basic tenant of our faith, and emphasized with great enthusiasm in the Presbyterian tradition. And so, we approach scripture not as self-evident and obvious, but as wisdom from God in need of understanding and interpretation by the Holy Spirit, our help and guide. As Christians in the second millennium A.D., we must first acknowledge the deep chasm between us and the Jews from thousands of years ago. To read these passages without that first step is foolish at best and arrogant at worst. Too often, we read the New Testament without the benefit of the Old Testament. It’s like watching a third movie in a series having missed the first two. We don’t have the proper context.

Going back to the Christmas story, without the lineage and stories from the Old Testament, who cares about Joseph’s family tree? Without the prophecies of Isaiah, who cares if Mary is a virgin or in what town Jesus is born? Context matters. For Jews, these details provide authority and familiarity which we take for granted. The New York Times recently ran an article about a new book I picked up this week, The Jewish Annotated New Testament. It’s unique in that it’s compiled by Jewish scholars for Christian readers. They provide the cultural context of Jesus and his early followers for us today. This approach is vital to today’s story of the baptism of Jesus. Our lectionary schedule was carefully chosen by a group of ministers and scholars. It gives us some of the context we need. It’s no accident that we read the Genesis account today.

We read these two passages in chronological order today. A Jew in the time of Christ would have grown up hearing the creation account in worship over and over again. When they heard these words from Mark, they very likely heard it with Genesis ringing in their ears. They might have heard it like this…

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God

To begin with, God created the heavens and the earth.

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

who will prepare your way…” AND ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight,’

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

In days long before TV and movies, when art was not commonplace, the visuals in the minds of the Jewish people would be recollections from stories told in Temple and around the hearth at home. To hear about God’s spirit descending like a dove as Jesus came out of the waters would have recalled the doves sent out by Noah as the waters receded… and God’s spirit breathed into Adam, the first human being. And even the phrase Holy Spirit may have recalled specific passages for them. That phrase is only found in the Hebrew scripture three times, twice in the same passage of Isaiah, the prophet who attests to the coming of a Messiah most often.

Turn with me for a minute in your pew Bible to Isaiah. Psalms is in the middle, followed by Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and then Isaiah. No rush. I’m not timing you to report back to Presbytery on how quickly y’all find it. Isaiah 63, about verse 7 through 13 or so. Spoiler alert. If you’ve never read any of the Gospels, this is gonna give it away for you, so just cover your ears and your neighbor can nudge you when it’s over.

I will recount the steadfast love of the LORD,

according to all that the LORD has granted us,

and the great goodness to the house of Israel

that he has granted them according to his compassion,

according to the abundance of his steadfast love…

Surely they are my people…

And he became their Savior.

In all their affliction he was afflicted,

and the angel of his presence saved them;

in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;

he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

But they rebelled

and grieved his Holy Spirit;

The prophet goes on to speak about God as… “the shepherd of his flock,” who, “put in the midst of them his Holy Spirit…” and concludes talking about the “horse in the desert” whom God guards and keeps safe. And of course, where does Jesus go after his baptism? (Wait for answer) That’s right, the desert. The author of Mark was familiar with these scriptures. He was writing to people who were familiar with them too. When we read this passage in Mark with the words of Genesis and Isaiah ringing in our ears and the images of creation and prophecy flashing in our minds, we read the story of baptism afresh. May I read it again?

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

who will prepare your way,

3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight,’”

4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins... 7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I... 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the desert.

Is that maybe just a little bit different? You’re practically a first century Jew! Now we can start to get it like those early readers of Mark. You see, the last time God sent his swooping Spirit into the world, he was creating the world. It hovered over the waters. It was a part of the creative effort, the new thing God was doing. And now here comes the Holy Spirit… skydiving right into the middle of this baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. For Mark’s first readers and now for us, we know it’s time to buckle our seat belts, to prepare for something big. When the Spirit swoops, when the Spirit flies, when the Spirit descends, God is rolling up his sleeves. He’s about to get creative and it could get messy. The last time God did this, we got the cosmos and produce and sea monsters. Everything changed.

And sure enough, the Spirit swoops in, descends on Jesus, and everything changes again. Jesus challenges those in power, speaks for the voiceless, frees the oppressed, loves the lowly and… calls us to the same. And for many of us, we jump ahead! When does the Holy Spirit show up again? When does it rush in, ushering in change once again? At Pentecost. At Pentecost, we get the message that all this stuff, the message of God moving in the world through all of history, and of the life, death and resurrection of his son with whom he is well pleased… that’s for ALL the world. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Here, this week, we are in the midst of an exciting new time. We have been witness to this new thing God is doing, sending his son into the world. As you encounter the lectionary in the coming weeks, you will be witnessing the ministry of Jesus Christ, his life, his teachings, his example. The original readers of Mark had no birth narrative. This baptism is the beginning of his story. What they did have was the story of God moving in the Old Testament… in creation… in prophecy. As you hear the stories of Jesus this year each Sunday, hear them anew. Listen to them as the believers of the Early Church. Read them with context of the Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures. Try to understand them in a new cultural context. Ask Stan. Try a book like this Jewish Annotated New Testament or Rabbi Jesus about the Jewish life and teachings of Christ. Try to feel the excitement and wonder and familiarity of a people infused with the tradition and history of a God moving in history.

This Sunday, prepare your hearts and minds for the story ahead. Prepare your imagination and your heart for the story God wants to tell you this year. Prepare a highway into yourself and be ready for the Holy Spirit to swoop right in. Hallelujah, Amen.

Green Day

2011-12-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

God's Big Bang

2011-10-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-14T13:51:00.001-07:00

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

Spiritual but Not Religious

2011-09-14T08:51:00.001-07:00

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...

2011-09-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-07-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-18T08:49:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Now in:
413 S Lakeside Dr
Amarillo‎ Texas‎ 79118

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

Where are we now?

2011-06-18T04:59:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

Just stopped at:
2311 Jacksboro Hwy
Wichita Falls‎ Texas‎ 76301

ETA

2011-06-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Just a few more pictures here.

Mission Update

2011-06-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

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

Arrived!

2011-06-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

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

MISSION TRIP

2011-06-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

...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

2011-04-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-04-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-09T13:10:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

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...

Confession Time

2011-03-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

We (as a denomination, the PC(USA)) are in the process of considering the addition of a new confession to our Book of Confessions. This, of course, is a difficult process and one which opens the doors to many questions... Why do we need more than twelve good solid confessions? Why do we have twelve already? Do we need confessions in language we can understand? Should we add confessions if they don't say anything new? What if they do say something new? Should we measure them against the Bible? Against the old confessions? Should we include or exclude confessions written for a specific time and place? Is there such a thing as a confession NOT written for a certain time and place? Does that matter, if it still teaches?

Many of these questions and more have been asked recently about the new Confession of Belhar. It's certainly not "new" except in being decades newer than our last addition, as Belhar was written in 1986. It was certainly written for a specific time and place (Apartheid in South Africa), though so was every other confession, the Declaration of Independence and the book of Isaiah. It is modern language and would be the first confession in our book not to come out of a very European and very pale background. Though none of those are reasons in and of themselves to add this confession, what is most important and convicting is that it does say something new.

Rather than being measured against our world, the Church and our denomination with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, this Confession seems to be largely measured against the Confession of 1967. So let's start there. Someone at our Presbytery meeting said that we don't need Belhar because '67 already says racism and discrimination are evil and sinful. So who needs more? We do. Belhar goes farther. Belhar says that mere separation is sinful and not the full body of Christ. You see, in our denomination (and many others in America), we aren't practicing outright discrimination and racism. We don't have laws or rules or regulations saying that if you're of a certain skin color or ethnic background you cannot join us for worship, we just do it because it's comfortable. The studies say over 90% of our PC(USA) churches are more than 90% one race. So we have white churches, black churches and Latino churches and Asian churches... but hardly any "mixed" churches. Our sin isn't racism, it's separation.

Another colleague quoted II Corinthians. When Paul was asked for his brothers and sisters in Corinth for a letter of recommendation, he responded... "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone." My colleague said that we are the letter and therefore we don't need a new confession. However, if we truly were that letter, we wouldn't look like the church these studies see. 11am on Sunday morning wouldn't be the most segregated hour in America. We do need to be that letter. And I believe the Confession of Belhar points us there.

I would encourage you to go and check it out here. If you've never read the other confessions, give them a whack too. If you find them hard to read or confusing, don't worry, everyone does. The Denver Presbytery voted in favor last night, but it was close. It has to pass in 2/3rds of our Presbyteries before it can be voted on at General Assembly this year. If you'd like to talk more about it, drop me a line.

Why we go off the deep end

2011-02-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

The following excerpts are from an article by David McRaney on the concept of deindivduation, or the concept of doing anonymously in a group what you would ordinarily not even consider. After recent events in the news, it seemed like a good time to discuss how we think about riotous behavior and how closely related it is to problems here at home…

The Misconception: People who riot and loot are scum who were just looking for an excuse to steal and be violent.

The Truth: You are prone to losing your individuality and becoming absorbed into a hivemind under the right conditions.

In San Francisco, in 2010, a man stepped onto the ledge of his apartment window and contemplated dropping from the building. A crowd gathered below and soon started yelling for him to jump. They even tweeted about it. He died on impact fifteen minutes later…

…Police and firefighters are well aware of this tendency for crowds to gather and taunt, and this is why they tape off potential suicide scenes and get the crowd out of shouting distance. The risk of a spontaneous cheering section goading a person into killing themselves is high when people in a group feel anonymous and are annoyed or angry. It only takes one person to get the crowd going. Those are the three ingredients – anonymity, group size and arousal. If you lose your sense of self, feel the power of a crowd and then get slammed by a powerful cue from the environment – your individuality may evaporate…

…Halloween is a fantastic playground for cultural norms to clash and crack. Costumes and candy, parents and children, the revelry and irreverence directed toward evil and death and hauntings – it is a day to pull back from standards, the rules of proper and normal behavior, and experiment with surrogate selves…

…Still, it’s always fun to role-play and hit reset, and Halloween is one of the few widely accepted times you get to do this in front of everyone you know. In many ways, it is a holiday celebrating anonymity through experimentation with individuality.

It was this muted sense of self which, in the late 1970s, led a group of psychologists to turn Halloween into a controlled study of the human mind.

Arthur Beaman, Edward Diener and Soren Svanum travelled to a nice neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, and picked out 27 homes which would become makeshift laboratories. The researchers wanted to see if the anonymity of Halloween costumes would affect the behavior of children as they gallivanted from secret lab to secret lab.

The researchers placed inside the entrance to each home a bowl of candy, a mirror and a festive Halloween decoration in which a scientist watched through a peephole as children arrived throughout the night…

…A woman greeted children throughout the night, and when the tykes presented their trick-or-treat bargains she told them each could have only one piece of candy. She then walked away, leaving them to sort out their tiny moral codes. Half of the time the woman at the door asked the children to say their names and where they lived before leaving them. If the children arrived with adults, they were omitted from the results. The psychologists wondered if the kids would take only one piece thinking there were no adults around to exact punishment or express disappointment in their gluttony. Would they react differently when alone or in groups? Would saying their names remind them of the people behind the masks? Once the kids were primed to remember their identity, or if they saw their reflection in the mirrors, would it remind them of who they were?

In the end, the mirror wasn’t the determining factor. What made the most difference was whether or not they had said their names and whether or not they were alone or in a group…

The results*: Children who were…
Alone and had to say their name… less than 10% disobeyed the rules (took more candy)
In a group and had to say their name… about 20% disobeyed the rules
Alone and anonymous… a little more than 20% disobeyed
In a group and anonymous… nearly 60% disobeyed

…The results suggested the power of their anonymity was magnified in the presence of others. Left unmasked, the cheating rose a bit in a group. With the masks on, it was turbocharged. The kids who felt most anonymous and the most protected by the shared anonymity of the group were also the most likely to break the rules and take more candy. With anonymity set to maximum, many kids tried to take all the candy they could.

This study is one of many which shows your identity can spring a leak in the presence of others, and the more others there are, the more you dissolve into the collective will of the group. Looting, rioting, lynchings, beating, war, chasing a monster with torches – the switch is always there, and it doesn’t take much to flip it.

Psychologists call this phenomenon deindividuation, it’s fun to say and one of the more straightforward terms in the scientific lexicon. In certain situations, you can expect to be de-individualized. Unlike conformity, in which you adopt the ideas and behaviors of others for acceptance and inclusion, deindividuation is mostly unconscious and more likely to lead to mischief. As psychologist David G. Myers said, it is “doing together what you would not do alone.”

*I compiled the chart of results based on the article. You may see the full article here.

Escaping Reality

2011-02-10T09:57:00.001-08:00

A new report from the UK is showing some interesting (perhaps alarming) statistics about young people. In studying a group of several thousand teenagers, they discovered that fully 45% were sometimes happier in their online lives than in real life. Some teens reported they only felt comfortable revealing that they were gay in anonymous chat rooms.

The study found that among those who spoke to strangers online 60% lied about their age, and 40% lied about personal relationships. And just as telling, 47% of all the teens said they behaved differently online than in real life. One teen said, "You can say anything online. You can talk to people that you don’t normally speak to and you can edit your pictures so you look better. It is as if you are a completely different person."

Psychotherapist Peter Bradley was quoted as saying: "These findings suggest that children see cyberspace as detachable from the real world and a place where they explore parts of their behaviour and personality that they possibly would not show in real life. We can’t allow cyberworlds to be happier places than our real communities, otherwise we are creating a generation of young people not functioning adequately in our society." To say nothing of the conserns in a community of faith.

But teens aren't the only ones checking out. Many adults feel more comfortable in the virtual world than in the real world, interacting with real people. Released this past week... The Confessions App. This new iPhone App allows you to plug in all your info about age and when you last confessed, allows you to make your confession and even recommends up to 7 acts of contrition. At $1.99, it's not quite an indulgence, but it has been blessed officially by the Catholic church. One has to wonder if it's better to be tempted by a shiny apple or a shiny Apple device...

It's Just a Word

2011-01-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

“It’s just a word.” I heard that this week, not for the first time. In fact, I hear it often. There are few statements with which I could possibly disagree more. Words have power. Words represent ideas and ideas have shaped the world and changed the course of history. A story like Beowulf could not survive over a millennia, if words did not have the power to move people.

If you doubt the power of a single word, you’ve never seen an angry young black woman call a white man a “cracker” or an infuriated white country boy call an old man the n-word. The fact that I can call it the n-word and you know what I mean is proof by itself. It could even be argued that the central issue of the last election was one word for many people, though maybe a different word for some than others, hope or race or change.

In recent months, one of the f-words, repeated often enough and with enough vitriol has been responsible for many tragic young suicides. And the word homophobe has stifled at least as much dialog as has been started by those deaths. If you doubt the power of words, ask the mother of a young college boy if she believes in the power of words.

Maybe the n-word doesn’t phase you. Maybe you don’t find the f-word offensive. Maybe you would call someone a homophobe without a second’s hesitation. But I guarantee you those words mean something very deep and powerful to someone else. I believe the context in which I heard, “It’s just a word,” this week was about obscene language and its harmlessness. I’d have to disagree. A word may not offend you. It may not offend me. It may not offend anyone in earshot. But if you do not believe that words, even a single word has power, you’re utterly mistaken.

It is no accident that our creation story is that of a God who speaks the world into existence. Everything that exists was spoken into our reality by our creator. In fact, our scriptures tell us that everything that exists was made by and through Jesus, who again by no accident, the Gospel writer calls, The Word. Words have great power and convey so much more than the sound they produce or the recognition they display. They carry meaning. They carry ideas. My prayer would be that your words convey love and hope and may you know the depth and the breadth of them for all those with whom you speak.

Green Day

2010-12-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

It's Green Day again. Today, I'd simply like to relay a fascinating link. The Breathing Earth simulation... "This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates." In real time, you can see an aproximation of how the world changes as you look at it.

"Please remember that this is just a simulation. Although the CO2 emission, birth rate and death rate data used in Breathing Earth comes from reputable sources, data that measures things on such a massive scale can never be 100% accurate. Please note however that the CO2 emission levels shown here are much more likely to be too low than they are to be too high."

Of note: While the image of a changing earth is fascinating, I disagree with some of what this website has to say. For instance, it claims polution is mostly a problem of "The West" despite the large contributions of Russia and China and that while countries like Luxemburg and Australia have huge "per capita" pollution problems, they aren't as serious because they have smaller populations. It also claims that when developing countries are high polluters, they are simply emulating the West. However, many researchers point out that these countries have adopted these practices for economic reasons and will never make an attempt to be more green so long as they can pollute the earth more cheaply than helping it. We can all hope for and work towards cheaper solutions to protecting the earth and working together as a global community to be better stewards of creation.

The Man in the Big Red Suit

2010-12-22T13:49:00.000-08:00

My good friend Pattie mentioned the other day how she'd like to reclaim St Nicholas as opposed to either the over-commercialized version of Santa or the aversion to all things other than Jesus. I think there's a lot to be said for that. I just read a wonderful post by Jonathan Acuff over at Stuff Christians Like that ran the gauntlet of modern Christian views on this topic. I'd like to share an excerpt because it touches on something my sister mentioned in her blog about the relationship between believing in the big guy and believing in the big guy upstairs...

One caller said something I have heard often from Christians when it comes to the man in red. She said, “We’re not telling our kids about Santa, because when they find out he’s not real, they won’t believe that God is real when we tell them about him.”

Have you ever heard that? I’m not sure if it’s a Baptist thing or a Bible Belt thing but this show was out of New York and Canada so maybe that theory is national at this point. Regardless of its popularity though, I think there are two flaws with it.

The first is that in no other aspect of imagination do we put the same constraint. For instance, for a solid year, I’m pretty sure my kids thought the Wiggles and the Doodlebops were real. They watched their shows, they sang their songs, they loved those brightly colored/oddly terrifying characters. And not once did my wife and I say, “When they find out Captain FeatherSword isn’t real, they probably won’t believe in an all powerful God later on in life.” Sure, the Wiggles are different than Santa and we imbue a lot of “belief” language around him, but we only talk about him for six weeks a year. We wiggled for a solid year and discussed the Wiggles far more than we do Santa in an average Christmas season.

Kids are imaginative, that’s what they do. If I play along with their American Girl Dolls or take my oldest daughter to a Narnia film and she really believes it, I’m not afraid that I’ve effectively prevented her from believing in God. We’d never say, “I’m not taking my son to see Lord of the Rings, because if he ever finds out Gandalf is not real, he won’t believe in God.” We might rail against Harry Potter, but even that is not because we’re afraid if they find out Harry Potter is not real our kids won’t believe in God.

The bigger issue though with the Santa problem is that I’m not sure it really ever comes to fruition. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people tell me that they have a hard time seeing God as a loving father because their own father was not loving. They feel stuck and trapped with a broken filter of their own father that they apply to God. I completely believe that happens and have heard it a lot. Do you know what I’ve never heard? I’ve never had a friend tell me:

“I want to believe in God, I do, but I can’t get beyond my Santa Claus issues. I have ‘Kris Kringle complex.’ When I found out Santa wasn’t real as a 7 year old, I swore off God that day with a kind of a Charlton Heston final scene of Planet of the Apes anger.”

No one says that. And we’re also not seeing the damage of a generation who grew up believing Santa was real only to learn he’s not. By that I mean there aren’t any books for adults designed to help you get over your Santa problems. Zondervan hasn’t published “Get the man in red out of your head.” Thomas Nelson has not published “Empty stocking, full heart.” Lifeway is not doing a ladies conference called “Deeper Still Than Santa.” There’s not an industry to support the thousands and thousands of 30 year olds struggling with Santa Claus, because there are not thousands and thousands out there who do.

Now clearly this will be the moment I hear from the 17 people on the planet who have in fact confessed to a Christian counselor that Santa Claus shotblocked God for them, but I still think we’ve blown the problem with Santa out of proportion. I think most folks will say that the Santa vs. God thing isn’t an issue, but instead that they don’t want to “lie” to their kids. I understand that point and know that some kids have said “you lied to me mom and dad,” but we also have to be careful that we don’t miss out on the word “pretend.” I’d never say to my kids, “I don’t want to create a house of lies. I need to be honest with you and confess that My Little Pony is simply a lump of hard plastic not a real pony, when I did that magic trick and took your nose, I really didn’t take it, and I always know the end of your knock knock jokes but have been living a lie by acting like I didn’t all these years. To be perfectly honest with you, ‘Knock, knock, who’s there, a tornado of spanking’ is not that funny. I fake laughed. I hate to say that, but I refuse to lie to you kids.”

I think every parent needs to be deliberate and smart about how they handle Santa and Christmas in general, but lets not throw him under the God bus. Don’t talk about him for a million other reasons, but I’m not sure the God reason is the best one.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2010-12-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

I was wondering what to write this year for Christmas. This year I was really moved by what my little sister had to say in her blog. The following was written by her on her own blog and reposted with her permission...

I've been giving Christmas a bit of extra thought this year. Every year I hear people trying to remind everyone about the true meaning of Christmas and berating the world for its consumerism and greediness. I guess I've never really felt that at Christmas. See, in general, I think Christians are a bit too hard on themselves and the rest of society. I hear Christians with young children trying to make sense out of the best way to communicate Christmas to their kids, sometimes giving different types of presents or questioning the introduction of Santa.

The thing is, I think it's totally awesome that the population at large participates in Christmas. We frequently remind our fellow Christians of "the reason for the season" and we know that's why we celebrate, but others do too. And basically, that's an open door for us. How great an opportunity that our holiday so central to our faith is publicized and promoted. Maybe instead of lamenting the loss of the religious aspect of Christmas to the secular world, we should rejoice in the opportunity it gives us to evangelize our fellow man.

Christians express frustration that they are unable to focus their faith during the season and parents stress about raising their children to understand Christmas properly. Well, let me share...

I grew up giving and receiving gifts on Christmas day. I grew up expecting Santa Claus on Christmas eve and watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I also grew up reading an advent calendar daily during the month of December, attending a candelight service on Christmas eve, and finding at least one way to give to someone in the name of Christ each year. For anyone who wonders if you can meld the secular and religious traditions of Christmas, you can. My parents and family did, and they ended up with a minister and an ever-more faithful daughter.

I give gifts every year and not out of obligation, but a desire to give my family and friends something I carefully crafted, worked hard to find, or carefully chose. One year, I gave everyone a gift of a donation to a charity I selected specifically as something that person supported. The same feeling that went with that year is the same for more traditional gifts--a sense of thoughtfulness. Gift-giving does not have to be something you feel forced to do by the shopping industry. If it is for you, then don't do it. It's not for me.

Santa is also not the worst concept. I think the best defense I heard was on an old episode of 7th Heaven where Simon prayed for his younger sister Ruthie to have some way to believe in Santa Claus that year. He said she needs to believe in Santa, it's how she works her way up to the big stuff, like you. Include Santa or don't, but have a little faith in yourself that your child's belief in Santa will not be their downfall when you consider everything else you'll teach them.

While all of my ideas are good for me, I have come to realize in the past couple of years that maybe it's easier for me. You see, I think I finally understand that I have an above-average love of Christmas. And while it may just be coincidence, I say it's because I was born around Christmas. I really think there is something to this.

I have assumed my entire life that others love Christmas just as much as me. But the older I get, the more I realize that many people see it as simply an annual time of stress or disgust at the world, as mentioned above. But to me, it's such a time of renewal.

Winter has always been my season. For most of my life, I have preferred the cold. I love snow, I love sweaters, hats, gloves, hot chocolate. I think an extra-special thing about Christmas is that it is during a time of cold. The fact that we create such warmth and joy in the midst of all the cold and bleakness is a paradox that is quite beautiful to me.And Christmas carols--oh, how I love. I have a deep love for singing the most traditional songs. The words seem more simple and the praises more authentic. They fill me with hope, graciousness, and love. The First Noel regularly makes me teary-eyed, along with flawless renditions of O Holy Night (I refuse to sing this one personally since I do not have the voice to do it justice).

And finally, there is my Christmas "miracle". Every year, there is something, a moment, a person, an action, a statement overheard, that once again centers me in this "true meaning of Christmas".

I think more of us get it than we realize.

Foresight and Hindsight

2010-12-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

When I was choosing a college, I was in a unique position in many ways. Most of my church and high school friends were not even considering out of city or state. In fact, many from my high school weren’t considering college at all. It was weird to be traveling to VA and DC and SC and NY to see colleges. It was even stranger, having grown up in NC to have Yankee parents who didn’t really know a thing about NC schools.
Although, like many young people, my college prerequisites had little to do with tuition, strength of reputation, campus ministry groups, class size and professors and so on. And unlike many young people, I didn’t know or care about the sports or majors offered, etc. I do recall being impressed by the dining halls at a few places and the ratio of women to men at the liberal arts schools. I was as unimpressed by the schools surrounded by cow fields as those squeezed into big city areas. I guess growing up in the burbs made me appreciate being near cities without being in the midst of one.
I knew my parents had some idea about what made for a good school. I knew they knew more than I did. And I knew that was highly colored by the price tag (rightly so). My goals were finding a school far away and preferably one that was fun and had a good shot at getting me into the FBI. I was under a vague impression that this school should “have the right feel” as I walked around campus. Until it came down to decision time, it had not even occurred to me to either take my spiritual needs into account or to pray about the decision. But somewhere in the back of my mind, being so stressed about the biggest decision I had faced yet in my young life, was the impression I should.
I had the presence of mind to call and ask for prayer from several close friends and my youth minister. Again, I think that was more God’s leading than my brilliance. I went to bed that night sure of one thing and woke up sure of something completely different. My college choice had nothing to do with my best visit, best feeling on campus, best programs or professors or even money. I made a decision based on prayer. That was good foresight. In hindsight, I never would have had the campus ministry group or internships I ended up having at churches if I’d gone to my first choice. I probably would have a different career path and an entirely different relationship path.
I feel very fortunate and very blessed that I was guided this way. I had a lot of guidance when it came to choosing a college and the merits and pitfalls, the things to look for and what to avoid and how to get in to whichever I wanted. What I didn’t get much guidance about was how to pray about it and seek God’s guidance. I didn’t get much encouragement to find a place that could be a spiritual home. Growing up Presbyterian, education, career advancement and opportunity were highly valued and encouraged, but the step by steps of discernment were not well laid out. The idea of following God’s leading for where to go to school and to what career God might call me were novel concepts until college.
I continue to believe in the importance of time and energy set aside leading our young people in discernment and self-reflection. By the grace of God, I have had experiences that have led me to my call more quickly than I could have planned on my own. I do believe that the Church, our denomination especially, pastors and educators and the most important educators of all… parents, need to provide this time and energy and space and allow young people to explore their calling. Discernment is most important in times of transition and there are few transitions as big as from high school to college and vocation.
Aside from my work in youth groups, my most rewarding experiences have been working with the program and alum from a project that is targeted at immersing young people in discernment and call. If you want to learn more about it, you can click here. My hope would be to see more programs like this and more churches involved in this and more families encouraging this. I just don’t see how we can encourage our young people to be who God calls them to be without encouraging them to spend time with God to discover what that is and supporting to the best of our abilities what they find for themselves.
As you or young person comes up on their college decisions and college searches, I hope you’ll find ways and people and programs that do just that. College is not just a destination or a step toward a career, but a transition that requires some deep discernment. And if you have the opportunity to deeply discern your path and God’s hope for you in early decisions in life, will you not be more prepared for the other decisions, maybe bigger decisions later on?

Rejoice in the Lord

2010-12-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

The scripture:

Luke 1:46-55 (English Standard Version)

Mary’s Song of Praise: The Magnificat 46And Mary said,

"My soul magnifies the Lord,

47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

48for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

49for he who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

50And his mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

51 He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

53he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

54He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

55 as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his offspring forever."

My sermon this week:

When John told me I’d be preaching this week, I was overjoyed. Because I was going to get to preach… and because this week, I only have to preach one time. At this week’s 11:00 service, the choir is performing the Magnificat, the musical arrangement of this morning’s Gospel reading from Luke. Magnificat is simply the Latin for magnify, extol or praise, and in the Latin Vulgate, that is the first word in Mary’s song here, her soul “magnifies the Lord.” In fact, her song is not the only one in chapter 1. Zechariah sings to the Lord as well after the birth of John the Baptist. Francis Taylor-Gench, Biblical scholar and professor, says, “you can practically hum the first chapter of Luke.” And hum along we do…

The Christmas story is so familiar that we often don’t sense just how unlikely it really was or how absurd to those who were a part of it. Our feelings at Christmas are colored by fond memories, traditions, presents, decorating, copious food and merriment, topped with melancholy and loneliness for those absent and a twinge of guilt for the less fortunate and overspending… and… that copious food and merriment.

With so much celebrating, with so many festivities… happiness can be found on every corner… but Joy… can be elusive.

In our culture, joy has come to mean much the same thing as happiness. However, happiness is merely an emotion, temporary at best, however wonderful it may be. Joy… requires our participation.

Just as love does not merely mean fondness or affection, joy is not just feeling happy. If love were merely fondness or affection, then Christ’s command to love one another would be fully lived out simply by spending time with people we like the most and continuing to think highly of them and feel comfortable around them… choosing new people to spend time with as we grow weary of the old ones. It would not require us to be good to one another or kind or supportive or patient or humble or share all we have.

As Jason spoke about just last week, hope… is not merely optimism. Hope is not just feeling positive or wishing for the best. Hope takes work, it takes community, it takes… God with us.
And this is from where Mary’s joy comes as she sings her psalm of praise, magnifying, extolling, praising God for what he has done for her and for his people. Her joy is born out of a love for her God, a hope for her people and the peace her son will bring to her world. It’s a great deal about which to be joyful indeed.

Stan Toler tells a story of his good friend, a brilliant public speaker who was asked to recall his most difficult speaking assignment. “That’s easy,” he answered. “It was an address I gave to the National Conference of Undertakers. The topic they gave me was, ‘How to look sad at a cheap funeral.’” Stan went on to say that certainly this must have been a tough speech, but that it would be far more difficult to give one on “How to be miserable” to the early Church. He says, it would be impossible, for they had an uncontainable joy. In other words, the early Church couldn’t help it!

Mary, Joseph, the Wiseman, the shepherds and angels… none of them could keep from being joyful! But there’s more going on here than a gut emotional reaction. They all got up and went somewhere! Some of them sang, some of them brought presents for the new baby. Even Mary and Joseph crossed the desert and delivered their first child in a barn. From each of them, there was an intentional response.

Paul tells us, “Rejoice in the Lord always and again, I say, ‘Rejoice.’” When I was being installed at this church, Paul Neshangwe of Zimbabwe who works for our Presbytery office and has preached here before, charged me with these very words. His point was that though life and ministry may bring challenges and hard times, God calls us to rejoice. Joy takes work. He told me I would need reminding…

Here I spoke about this sign that hangs in my office. I gave a yellow square of construction paper to every member of our staff and asked them to make a specific letter. One of them went to a youth and one to a young adult as well. I put them together to make this...

You can guess which staff members made which letter.

It’s hard to remember in the midst of the day to day grind and this is my reminder. We all need things and people to remind us. Joy is not just the happy feeling we get when things go our way. It is our reaction, a decision to seek God. Joy requires our participation. Joy can be celebrating with others when things go well for them or coming through for others when you feel stretched thin… and doing so in good spirits. Joy can be as simple as having a bad day… and not taking it out on anyone else.

Joy is choosing to be thankful and relying on God when it’s too hard to do on your own. Joy is acting out confident exuberance in the face of darkness, logic and reason. Do you suppose for the young girl Mary that it was easy to receive the news that she was about to be a mother? Much less a mother out of wedlock? Do you suppose it was easy for to approach her parents, to approach Joseph with this news, knowing the consequences? Do you suppose it was easy for Joseph to get the news? It always bothered my mother that this young coupled traveled to their “home town” and had no one with whom to stay. “Didn’t they have relatives?” Perhaps not everyone in their family was quite as convinced of Mary and Joseph’s story of impregnation by Holy Spirit. The trip they took, the barn in which they delivered their baby, the early years of fleeing to Egypt and raising Jesus could not have been what either of them dreamed.

And yet… they were joyful. Not just happy… joyful. That takes work, brothers and sisters, that takes participation… an intentional response. It’s difficult for us to fathom. It’s hard for us as observers, so far removed. It takes a retelling of the story. Joy requires our participation.
Some of you may well remember the book, and the TV adaptation of The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever. It’s a favorite of mine, and a favorite of my mother’s, a life-long teacher who had had many Herdmens of her own. The story recounts the tale of a Sunday school teacher who takes on the traditional Christmas play. It has always been the stereotypical parade of young boys in their fathers’ bath robes and fake beards, girls in choir gowns and the two most responsible older children playing Mary and Joseph.

Well, of course, being her first year, this teacher botches the entire production. She infuriates all the parents, breaks every precedent and even alienates her own children. Most of this is due to including one particularly troublesome family in the play… the Herdmens. And a herd they are. They are all of the worst sort. They are a veritable clan of misfits and criminals. They have no morals, no patience and no self-restraint. They are bullies and thieves and they have no idea what the Christmas story is all about.

This teacher does her best to teach them about the story and because of their bullying, they end up with all the leading roles… to the chagrin of all the other children and parents. But of course, this eventually brings the Christmas story home for all of them. In a touching moment the night of the play, the teacher peeks into the dressing room to see Emma-Jean Herdmen, easily the wildest, toughest and most heinous of the bunch… cradling the baby Jesus doll. As she imagines what it truly would have been like to be 14 and having just given birth to a baby… a baby who would be the savior of our world, she cries quietly. For all her toughness, for all her bullying and posturing and antics… Emma-Jean comes to know joy in a way many of us can only glimpse in those rare moments. Emma-Jean participates in the story of our God with us. This unlikely girl enters the unlikely story of God’s love for all of us. In the face of all she’s experienced… abandonment, marginalization and hopelessness, she steps out of her experiences and into joy.

I don’t know what joy looks like for you. I don’t know if it’s deciding to spend more time with family and less at the mall or in long lines. I don’t know if it’s spending your money on Operation Christmas Child or your Saturday morning and afternoon in the Fellowship halls packing boxes with Hunger Task Force. Perhaps it’s raising your voice in song here in church, all through your neighborhood or in your kitchen as you teach your siblings and children and grandchildren about the Christmas story… our story. Perhaps it’s a new appreciation for all you are blessed with. I do know joy can be hard work. And I know we can get too busy to rejoice. But I encourage each of you right now to allow God to give you great joy this advent and for each of you to respond to it. Because joy requires your participation. Rejoice in the Lord always and again, I say… rejoice.

Green Day

2010-11-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

When a little kid makes breakfast for his mom in bed and the eggs are too runny and the pancakes are made with sugar instead of flower, we say, “Well, his heart was in the right place.” And this is acceptable for children and even adults when we make errors in judgment in our attempt to do the right thing.

However, this line of thinking hinders the progress of one of the most important movements in the modern day… the Green movement or Environmentalism. Too often we pursue ideas or fund technologies that only make us feel good and don’t do anything worthwhile for this effort.
It’s especially in vogue to be environmentally friendly (popular among members of the Sierra Club, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for decades longer). The last thing I would want is for hurting the environment to be in vogue, but more than environmentally friendly, we need people to be environmentally conscious. What’s the difference?

Months ago, I blogged about the Green Lantern who writes columns comparing various choices to be made and their environmental impact (hand washing dishes v. dish washer, bottles v. cans, etc.). There’s more to a decision than many people realize. For instance, taking the totality of a bag’s impact on the environment, plastic grocery bags tend to be better than paper. Why? Paper is heavier and more costly to ship because of the fuel expense. More fossil fuels are burned in transporting them then are used in making plastic bags. In addition, plastic bags do not cut into our forests and take up less room in landfills. It’s counter-intuitive, but an important process to think about. Of course, the best thing you can do is bring your own reusable plastic or canvas bags.

The last thing God’s good creation needs is our meager good intentions. God gave us brains, intuition and imagination. It is our responsibility to think through all the consequences and possible environmental impacts of our efforts to be green. The big national story recently has been the debacle of bio-diesel. It was so promising, very few people wanted to admit that while it had a great impact on our farmers, it was hurting the environment. The energy cost that went into it was far higher than what it yielded.

"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. (See: non-existent or harmful) It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going." – Al Gore

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president." – Al Gore

In his zeal to find ways to save the planet, Al Gore backed technologies that did it more harm than good. I would encourage everyone to look at the best research available when making decisions that have long term consequences for God's green earth.

Green Day

2010-11-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

Today in the news is an exciting release by Puma. I am not endorsing Puma, but I am excited about their strides toward lowering their environmental impact. The video is really neat. Enjoy...

Green Day

2010-10-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

This week, I'm going to redirect you to NPR. There's a man who travels the world photographing... bark. Yup, bark. His shots are beautiful. Please enjoy his work...

Green Day

2010-10-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

And we're back! After a long hiatus, the blog is back. Last week, Wellshire hosted its yearly Blessing of the Animals. To my knowledge, we're the only church in Denver who does this inside. We had canines and felines, ophidians (snakes) and even a dwarf hampster. There are some pictures below.

This week, John went to the Dumb Friends League to bless their animals. They took wonderful pictures of this event and I highly encourage you to go visit their link: Photos at The Dumb Friends League.

Sleep & Eat

2010-09-07T07:59:00.001-07:00

For the parents: Studies released this week show what has been touted for years (children need 10+ hours of sleep per night and toddlers and infants even more) for entirely new reasons: children who do NOT receive this amount per night are TWICE as likely to become overweight or obese, TWICE. They also found that nap time has no effect whatsoever on decreasing this likelihood. There is no substitute for the at-night sleep children need.

This could be for some of the same reasons that adults gain more weight when they do not sleep enough. Adults seem to produce improper amounts of the hormones they need, causing them to crave junk/snack food over healthy food. Lack of sleep actually changes your cravings. Another no-brainer? Lack of sleep at night contributes to lack of energy during the day. Adults and especially children are less likely to engage in physical activity which would keep them in shape when they don't have the energy for them.

NPR released data a few months ago on the need for teenagers to get at least 10 hours of sleep per night. Since most teens would have to be in bed by 8pm for this to happen, it's unlikely. The only solutions proferred were later school start times and sleeping in on weekends. I share this news because of how few adults are willing to try either solution. I, myself, do not ever recall being allowed to sleep past 9am on weekends until I left for college. Duke University made headlines when I was in school for eliminating classes that start before 9am in response to these studies.

The result of teens not getting enough sleep? Teens lose the ability to concentrate, learn and remember what they study, and this effect is cumulative and long term. So, scientific advice for children? Get them on a schedule. For teens? Continue the schedule when possible and let them sleep.

Tony Campolo - PYT 2010

2010-09-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Tony Campolo delivered the final closing sermon at Presbyterian Youth Triennium 2010 this summer. It's the best sermon I've ever heard...

Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo - July 24, 2010 from Presbyterian Youth on Vimeo.

How to Learn

2010-08-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

Read this for the 100th time today: Listen... no one ever learned anything by talking.

I'd have to disagree. Should more people do more listening and less talking? Almost certainly. However, therapy would be useless and friends would be unnecessary, if nothing were learned by talking. Much can be learned by talking. Talking to a friend, a pastor, a mentor or a counselor, or even to yourself puts ideas and feelings into words that can then be explored, analyzed, contradicted or understood. I tend to believe that exploration, analysis, contradiction and understanding are powerful tools for learning.

Ever learned anything powerful about the world, someone else or yourself by talking?

Just the Stats, Ma’am

2010-08-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

It’s been said that statistics are like swimwear, they’re revealing but what they don’t reveal is what’s most important. The natural reason for statistics is to draw conclusions about the world around us. As a person who is fascinated by stats, whether in sports or society, it pains me to see people muck up the interpretation of what studies conclude.

Many people (people who get paid enough to know better) confuse “correlation” with “causation.” A good example of the difference would be to look at people who eat salad every day for lunch verses those who do not. If your results showed that people who eat salad every day for lunch are healthier than those who do not, you could say one of two things. You could say salad makes you healthy (causation) OR you could say that people who eat salad every day for lunch are more likely to be committed to a healthy lifestyle and are noticeably healthier because they’re more likely to eat right at other meals and exercise (correlation). In other words, salad isn’t the only contributing factor to their health.

A recent joint study by the University of California and the University of Minnesota revealed that high school teens who have casual sex are likely to have lower GPA’s than average, while there is no noticeable difference between those who are sexually active in “committed relationships” (a not-clearly defined term) and those who abstain entirely. One of the conclusions drawn by the folks who ran the study was that this “hooking up” resulted in lower grades, while a “committed relationship” protected teens from the damaging effects of sex.

They didn’t seem to consider the idea that those with lower GPA’s might include kids who had an all-around disinterest in academics and an interest in things like delinquent behavior, drug use or casual sex. These might be the same kids who were more likely to TP houses or spray paint overpasses, but it seems unlikely to me that a study would conclude that those students who buy more spray paint and toilet paper are risking a hit to their report card.

In other words, the conclusion seems to be that casual sex leads to bad grades while a string of monogamous sexual relationships early in life does not. No one seems concerned with the values and morals modeled in families of origin that might include casual attitudes about school, work, drugs, crime and sex. A strong correlation between casual sex and bad grades is not surprising, but causation is a harder case to prove.

More importantly, the findings indicated to many people that the solution for teens is to teach them the importance of relationships. Apparently, the only negative or important consequence to sex is bad grades. Who knew? You know what I think about that, if you read my previous post on the social justice implications of that mindset in middle class America.

What conclusions do you draw from this study?

I Know What I Hope

2010-08-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

I preached this week's sermon mainly on Revelation 7:9-17, and touched on Acts 6...

John told me I didn’t have to start writing his till this morning. After all, if the end of the world were to have happened mid-week, I’d be off the hook. Though, it’s been pointed out that after this summer I may now be a bit of an expert on those left behind. And who better to talk about Armageddon and calamity and the end of the world than the youth pastor?

But what I want to focus on today first are maybe some of the things we dwell on a bit too much… and misconceptions we may have. What do you think of when you hear the term “Armageddon?” Do you think of fire and brimstone? Skies as dark as sackcloth and the moon as red as blood? Maybe the four horsemen of the apocalypse? Or even the 1990’s box office hit that was filmed at a time when oil drillers could play the team of unlikely protagonists saving the world from an asteroid?

John of Patmos relates a fairly intense and highly descriptive vision as recorded in the book of Revelation. It’s full of wildly popular imagery of death and destruction and animals and beasts and bowls and horns. Interestingly… the term “Armageddon” appears only once in the entirety of John’s book and there is great debate over what it even means. Some scholars think it’s a mountain, while others think it comes from ancient Hebrew words for “attack” or a “destroying mountain” referenced in other parts of the Old Testament. Regardless, both this word, Armageddon and the other vocabulary seem to play only a small part in his vision and yet so many of us know it. Armageddon, tribulation, rapture. There’s even a company, run by atheists, who provide a post-rapture pet care service so that you are insured someone will care for fluffy and spot when you are taken.

The vocabulary is all about our experience and familiarity as we glean from pop-culture. When I was a little kid, on rare special occasions, my father would drag his guitar out of the attic and play it. There were only a few songs he knew how to play that held any interest for me and my sister at our young age. At the age of four I walked by his guitar once in the hallway, saw it and remarked to myself in hearing range of my mother, “oh, Puff the Magic Dragon.” To me, that’s what a guitar was. It was an instrument that played a sad song about a dragon… not unlike the limited view many of us have of the book of Revelation.

I could just as easily have said the guitar was an octopus’s garden or secret agent man, as my father played those as well, but the point is that my understanding of a guitar and my understanding my father was limited by the experiences with which I was most familiar and had heard repeated the most. The artwork, the sermons, the book series and so forth about the book of Revelation all tend to focus on the sensational and gory parts of John’s revelation. The end times, the tribulation, the woes, the destruction, the Antichrist, and so on. But so much of what is contained in this book is different, and so much of it contains a vision of unity and peace and of hope.

Our passage today might not strike fear into your heart, but it should be incredibly inspiring and hopeful. I’d like to focus on three things in this passage that stand out. Firstly, how many believers stood before the throne… secondly, who was there… and lastly, what they are promised. How many? Who? What were they promised? To begin with… how many? The passage indicates that there were too many to count. For a man who could keep up with and write down that many sevens and could count at least as high as 144,000, it seems unlikely that here, early on in the vision, John is merely getting lazy with his arithmetic. This crowd is literally innumerable. Standing in their white robes… a symbol of victory… is a crowd he cannot count… Some scholars think this may be a reference to fulfilling the promise to Abraham that his descendants, his people would number like the stars.

It’s a common and well-loved idea that only a select few make it to the end or get into heaven and stand before the throne. If nothing else, humans love their exclusivity. A church of 144 people or a denomination of 144,000 righteous people is certainly easier for us to manage, but it’s simply non-biblical to think of so few people getting to stand before the throne… as the world ends. John makes it clear that a much larger number of people gain this privilege.
But who is present in John’s vision. Who is standing before the throne of the lamb here at the end of time? John says: Those from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. This phrase is present in John’s Revelation five other times. This is not a General Assembly gathering of PC(USA) folk or an AME Zion conference or a lone mega church from Seattle or Korea. This is a gathering of every possible people, nation state and language group. This is a multitude that has no other commonality amongst them all but a belief in Jesus Christ as Lord.

I worked for a non-profit organization last summer in Richmond, Virginia that endeavored every day to bring about racial reconciliation in their community. My mentor pointed out to me that there’s one big reason many non-church-goers are unimpressed with Christianity. We, for the most part, gather on Sunday morning in groups of people like ourselves… the same racial backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, socio-economic backgrounds… and languages, worship God separately and apart and go about our lives unchanged. The most segregated hour in America is 11am on Sunday each week.

Who would be impressed by this as an outsider? Anyone can do that. You can do that at a country club or a community center. In the early Church, as recorded in Acts 6, they had the same problems with ethnicity and cultural groups. The Greeks, who were a Gentile minority group among the first Christians, came to the disciples, concerned that their people were being shorted when it came to distributing food. The disciples talked and prayed about it, knowing that these concerns were legitimate and that they would never be able to lead the Church if they had to constantly settle logistical concerns. They decided they would choose leaders to distribute the food. What I’d never realized until recently is how important were the names of those leaders listed. Reading it in English and out of their historical setting, it’s easy to miss the importance of those names. From Philip to Nicolaus, every name on the list is Greek. Every single person was a minority.

Now, while it is not uncommon in the book of Acts to end a successful event with a phrase about how God added to their numbers daily, and in this case, God did add to their numbers, what IS unusual is that this is the only time that priests were also converted. This evidence of unity, of true racial and cultural reconciliation was the greatest evangelistic effort imaginable. It was evident to them that true worship… that authenticity of the message of God for all people… was best conveyed when all of God’s people worshipped together. And here in Revelation, it truly is a gathering of all people, true and awe-inspiring worship.

Here, all of God’s people can worship together before the throne of the Lamb. Those many differences have become unimportant to all who believe and worship Christ. When the end comes, all becomes as God intended and all is reconciled. They are there before God, serving only God day and night and so they are promised that God will: shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

It’s easy for us in this day and age in a big city like Denver to be isolated from those who are truly hungry. At the most, if we don’t go seek them out, we may see them on a street corner with a cardboard sign. But there are hundreds of hungry and malnourished children in Denver alone. And it’s even less likely any of us will come across someone who has no access to water or even clean water, but if you’ve ever gone on a mission trip or with Greg on a Healing Waters trip, you know just what a real concern that is to so many millions of people today… the suffering that causes. It’s incredibly humbling to know just how great that suffering is, but perhaps even more incredible will be the day of hope when absolutely no one will hunger or thirst as they stand before the throne. The day when all physical suffering is gone… and we are protected… and not one child suffers from hunger or thirst… this will be the end of time of which John speaks.

But it is also the emotional pain that will cease on that day. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. In no way are any of us isolated from the emotional pain that illicit tears. Each of us experience loss, tragedy and pain. So this verse is perhaps among the most powerful parts of that promise for each of us. My Hebrew professor in seminary once told us of a student in his class at a university. Her name was Jessie. In talking with her mother on the phone about her progress at the midterm, he suggested some study skills and that attending class regularly would benefit her the most. As their conversation ended, Jessie’s mother asked if he was the same Carson who signed the VA Benefits forms for students who had lost a parent in the line of duty. In fact, he was.

Jessie’s father had been a pilot, she explained and while she knew almost nothing of how he died, she took comfort in knowing it had apparently been quick. Her last memory of all of them together was in the park, Jessie being carried high on her father’s shoulders under a cloudless sky. Well, Jessie’s attendance improved after the break but soon returned to its original pattern. When she did come, she would take notes for a few minutes and then rest her head, seemingly very tired. It was clear that she was not well-liked by her classmates.
Just before exam time, they had their final class. The topic of the lecture was this passage in Revelation. Jessie, never having asked a question all semester raised her hand, and did not wait for my professor to call on her. “The verse,” she asked, looking around nervously at her peers. “That verse about God drying every tear… Does that mean every tear from that time on… or that God will go back into all of time and find every tear and dry all of them, too?”

A very bright and popular student on the front row rolled her eyes, checked her watch and hunkered down into her seat frowning. The rest of the class lapsed into murmurs and chortles. My professor racked his brain, considering historical context and the resistance to apocalyptic literature to linear interpretation and so on. Then he thought about that conversation with Jessie’s mother. My professor fumbled for an answer that he was sure was nothing more than the most polite way to address her and conclude class quickly. However, the next week, he put Jessie’s question on the final exam as extra credit, augmented by technical terms and literary and historical mumbo jumbo. Only two students attempted to answer it.

Jessie wrote the following: I called my mom and told her my religion professor didn’t really answer the only question I had all semester. I told her it was more like you talked about what you hoped the answer would be. My mom said that for some kinds of questions in life it might count more what you hope the answer is than if you have it all figured out. Do you think she is right?

She went on to talk about her father and her last memory with him in the park, flying high on his shoulders, much as her mother had told it. Then she said: I don’t know the answer to this question, professor. I really don’t. But I know what I hope the answer is. I know what I hope. Is that worth any points? …I think I really need this extra credit to pass this course. I’m transferring home next semester. I need as many classes as possible to transfer.

The only other person to answer this question was the bright popular girl on the front row. She of course wrote a brilliant exposition… literary and historical context… syntax and grammar and genre. She said that these texts “seem to be dipped in a special coating that makes them resistant to simple answers…” referring to Jessie, and that, “These writings deal not in the currency of verifiable fact, but in the currency of hope.” A currency of hope.

As she concluded her essay, she wrote: I know my answer is a good one… You know I don’t need any extra credit… please consider giving my credit to the student in the back row, the one who slept most of the time and who kept us late that day she asked this question that seemed to shake you so badly. I bet she needs it. I want her to have it. I think maybe so do you. I think I saw what you thought when a lot of us laughed.”

My professor told us that he didn’t know what became of either student or what caused this bright popular girl to descend from obscenity to compassion… but he did know… what he hoped. I myself don’t know whether you should be pre-trib or post-trib, how or if the rapture will occur. I don’t know if all the creatures and beasts and horns and plagues are literal or figurative. I don’t know what Armageddon means for sure. I don’t know how the end of the world will unfold, and I don’t believe anyone else does either. I do know who will be there at the end though, and that all peoples of all nations will be there and that we are promised God’s protection, and that there will be no more hunger, no more thirst and God will wipe every tear. And I know what I hope.

Let us pray…

Greenday

2010-08-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

As a boy, I sat glued to the TV for a week for... Turtle Week. Yup, Reading Rainbow had a week on sea turtles and I... was... fascinated. This story really moved me this week.

CNN reports: Playalinda Beach, Titusville, Florida (CNN) -- One-day-old loggerhead turtles were set free adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center overnight, scurrying down a beach in the cover of darkness to begin their lives.

The baby turtles were hatched at a space center facility after being transferred from the beaches in the Florida Panhandle and Alabama.
Biologists believed 700 to 800 turtle nests were in jeopardy of perishing, with BP's oil lurking offshore.

"We would have 100 percent mortality if the hatchlings were not able to be translocated," said Jeff Trandahl of the Fish and Wildlife Foundation. "We are looking at relocating 70,000 to 80,000 turtle eggs."

So far, 13,000 eggs have arrived and more each day. Turtle power! You can see them scurrying across the night sands in this video...

Movie Review: Inception

2010-07-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

In a word: INCREDIBLE. Though I'm still restling with the concepts and the questions, this film is probably the best I've ever seen. If you know me and movies, this is no small statement. A good movie is hard to come by, a great film even harder. It takes a lot to make it on my top 100, and must rank fairly highly in a number of categories including the music, the cast, the chemistry of that cast, the performances, the story, the ending and its ability to inspire, challenge and emotionally connect. Inception did ALL of that.

For many people, the Matrix delivered in many of those aspects. It did for me. Everyone left the theater looking up and around at the people with them, wondering if they were really awake or trapped in the Matrix. It was fascinating. It brought up that one question: what is real? But of all the questions or concepts raised in the Matrix, it all revolved around that. Powerful, but limited. Inception opened an entire Pandora's Box of concepts about reality, dreams, creativity, inspiration, hope and ideas. "What is the most resilient entity in the world? Is it a virus? An intestinal worm? No. It's an idea. Once planted, an idea can grow and spread and survive almost anything." This is just one of the many concepts into which Dicaprio and crew delve in the movie.

In the Matrix, when Neo asks if he can dodge bullets, Mopheus tells him that when he's ready he won't even have to dodge them. The concept of this changed and changeable reality is fascinating, but it's in a computer essentially. In Inception, it goes farther. It's all in dreams. Not only can you alter that reality. You can construct absolutely anything you want. Creativity is limitless. Time is no different. As in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it's very different inside this other realm. Just 10 minutes of dreaming seems like an hour in the dream and it's multiplied if you go into a dream from within the dream.

As with Avatar and the Matrix before it, this movie delivers on absolutely new and unique visuals that blew me away. The cast is all-star. Dicaprio delivers a performance between his ingenuity in Catch me if you Can and his madness in the Aviator, with a bite of something new that is insired by Chris Nolan's Batman and the grittier aspects of Bond. Chris Nolan chose Han Zimmer for the score (incredible) and 3 of his best actors from the first Batman movie (Ken Watanabe, Michael Kane and Cillian Murphy), besides rising star Ellen Page and a fast-maturing Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, 10 Things I hate about You, Brick) and old school Tom Berenger. The evil Picard clone from Star Trek: Nemesis even joins the team.

The movie is hard-hitting, deep, thoughtful, confusing (without being impossible) and absoluting stunning in every way. They filmed it in six countries. I don't recommend it for anyone who clings too tightly to reality or takes heavy anti-psychotic medication, but to anyone with imagination and curiosity, it could easily be the best film you see this decade.

Triennium Recap

2010-07-27T08:09:00.001-07:00

If you've never been to a Presbyterian Youth Triennium, find a way to go! As a youth, I attended in 2001, and it was one of those most amazing experiences of my life. The attendance has dwindled in recent years from over 7,000 Presbyterian youth (many presby variations) from all over the country AND internationally to a mere 5,000. These high school youth descend on Purdue's campus in West Lafyette, IN every 3 years and it's mayhem.

I went again in 2007 as a small group leader. The experience was also awesome, though the drama and music at the worship services was confusing and distinctly subpar. This year... not so. Again, I went as a small group leader and every aspect was incredible. The lesson plans were great, the training was more streamlined. The worship was PHENOMENAL. The band was fantastically talented and the drama flowed well, illuminating the small group scriptures (the story of Esther) each day. Best of all, the preaching absolutely rocked the house. Bruce Reyes-Chow opened the week and really delivered. There were several more great sermons and messages from international attendees, including an earthquake survivor from Haiti with his story of child servitutde and rescue.

The week culminated in the final worship with Tony Campolo preaching. Easily the most inspiring and moving sermon I've ever heard. I laughed hard, I cried, I was so moved I was ready to go sleep on the streets with the homeless and proclaim the word in prison and congress. It was wonderful. If I'm able, I'm going to repost his sermon here.

Triennium is a wonderful experience. If you're an incoming freshman in high school through graduating senior the summer of Triennium, you can go as a youth participant. If you're 21 or older, you can go as a group chaperone from your home delegation as sent by your presbytery or as a small group leader. If you're between high school and 21, you can still go on work team. This is incredibly hard work, setting up events and equipment, etc, but very rewarding. The next Triennium will be in 2013. Get in touch with me or your presbytery office for more info.

It’s Who You Know

2010-07-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

I worked for an urban non-profit in Richmond, VA, that among other goals, was striving for racial reconciliation. One day, a friend of mine, who is black, was explaining to a group of interns what it really means to have black friends. He said, “It’s not enough to have one black friend. You have to have two black friends… and they have to not like each other.”

He brought up a valid point. For many Christians, racial harmony is idealized personal hope of ours, but we make token personal daily efforts towards the realization of that goal (i.e.: I sometimes vote for black political candidates; I once went on a mission trip somewhere they don’t speak English; I occasionally listen to Gospel music; I play tennis with the Korean kid in my gym class; I had a crush on the Swedish foreign exchange guy in Western Civ.). While these are certainly steps in the right direction (mostly), it’s often much easier to just not make the effort.

In Acts, chapter 6, they were having disputes between the Jewish Christians and the new Gentile members (a minority at the time). They were worried about food distribution and equality. What was their solution? They appointed leaders to be fair distributors (administrators). What’s interesting is the list of names of these new admins: Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolaus. Now if your Greek and Hebrew is as rusty as mine, it may take you a minute. None of those names are Hebrew. They’re Greek. Yup, every single one of the people the Apostles chose to be one of the new administrators of policy (after much prayer) was a minority. The fascinating thing is that for all the times in Acts that "many were added to their numbers," this is the only place that even priests were converted. Racial reconciliation can have powerful consequences.

What does this mean for you? For your church? Maybe it means that to gain a real perspective on things, you need to go put yourself in places where you are the minority. Maybe it means you need to visit a place where you’re the one with the strange accent and funny way of dressing, and I don’t just mean leaving Nashville for Newark for the weekend. Maybe your church needs to appoint leaders on session who represent your smaller groups (youth, children, elderly, handicap, single people, people who read the newspaper or this blog). Or perhaps, just inviting people from the neighborhood next to your church or holding your worship service at the soup kitchen once a month. The answer could very well be right under your nose.

A recent video from Improv Everywhere shows a humorous way one man tried to broaden his experience and those in a small town in my own state:

What are you doing to bring this part of the Gospel to life in your own church?

B@d W*rds W# S@y

2010-07-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

I recently read a very interesting blog post on Taking the Lord's name in vain specifically, but also more generally on the bad things we say, including cursing or shouting substitutes for explatives. The author bemoaned both those who are ultrasensative to such phrases, as well as the silliness of those phrases. The most interesting part was on what it truly means to take the Lord's name in vain...

Christians take God’s name in vain the most

When people say “Oh my God,” they don’t even think about it. Sure, it’s rude. But what does it really mean to take God’s name in vain? I think God gets way more P.O.ed (cuss word ititials are dumb too) from Christians who sincerely take his name in vain. How do we do it? By showing up to church and praising him while we curse our neighbors. By sincerely asking God to do things that He has said he won’t do. By creating a false idol and calling it “God.” By worshipping God so He’ll give us more stuff. By calling ourselves “Christians,” which has the name of God in it, and not acting like we follow Christ. And God’s up there saying, “Holy shrimpcakes, you’ve got to be kidding.”

When it comes to cussing, maybe it’s not the words that come out of a man’s mouth that’s wrong, but the cause of it in his heart. If I can get so mad at the ATM that I let out a string of curse words at it, something is wrong with my emotions, and my mouth is just a symptom.

But instead of doing the hard thing by not asking God for stupid crap that’s bad for us, or getting our emotions under control, we do the easy thing and tell some new Christian that now that he’s a Christian he’ll need to stop swearing and “talk nice” so he doesn’t offend the delicate sensibilities of other Christians. We get riled up about non-Christians using the word “God.” But when you realize that Christians are the biggest abusers of God’s name, you know that we should really shut the smurf up because we don’t have any place being offended.

Great graham crackers.

SHY in the Rink

2010-07-14T21:24:00.001-07:00

This week, the High School youth headed to University of Denver to go skating since it's been over 95 for a few days. Hopefully when it's cooled back down a bit in two weeks, we'll head back to Eisenhower for SHY in the Park. We had 15 youth come out tonight. Here are 14 of them and Terri!

Greenday

2010-07-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Brought to you by: The WellGrounded Life

On this Greenday, I thought I'd a little levity with a word on nutrition from another blogger. I've made the point before that food choices should be made primarily for reasons of faith and stewardship of the earth. Here's some news on choosing foods according to what will or will not give you a heart attack (all in good fun, but also true)...

Below is “The Last Word on Nutrition,” which combines the results of many independent scientific studies.

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.

The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.

The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.

The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats, and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.

The Ukrainians drink a lot of vodka, eat a lot of perogies and cabbage rolls and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Word on the Street

2010-07-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is SHY in the RINK! All high school youth, come on out to Joy Burns Arena at University of Denver. The public rink is downstairs from the hockey rink. We'll meet at 6:30pm, Wed, July 14th and skate until around 8pm. Bring $5 (and skates if you have them) AND any friends you wanna see fall on the ice.

The Rise of The Christian Left

2010-07-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, a professor of mine in seminary in a class on Evangelism in the Congregation made an interesting point… Many ultra-conservatives in America are concerned about two problems: the rising secularization of their nation AND the immigration problem (specifically from across our southern border). He made the case that perhaps the best way for them to stop worrying about “problem” A was to stop seeing “problem” B as a problem at all. He made the observation that so many of our illegal immigrants are highly religious in their background and culture that they may in fact be the basis for a resurgence of faith in America.

So when The New York Times published an article recently addressing the surprising religious fervor in the Democratic party, it was less surprising than it should have been, but it raised some new questions about those implications on our two-party system.

The author of this new article in the Times posed the question, “Which political party’s members are most likely to believe that Jesus will definitely return to earth before midcentury?” You might have guessed Republicans, but you’d be wrong. Here’s what Charles M. Blow had to say…

“On the surface it may seem surprising, but, in fact, it’s quite logical. Blacks and Hispanics, two highly religious groups, are a growing part of the Democratic Party. A June 2009 Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics constituted 30 percent of the party…

According to a Gallup report issued last Friday, church attendance among blacks is exactly the same as among conservatives and among Republicans. Hispanics closely follow. Furthermore, a February Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics, respectively, were the most likely to say that religion was an important part of their daily lives. In fact, on the Jesus question, nonwhite Democrats were roughly twice as likely as white Democrats to believe that He would return to earth by 2050…

Welcome to the Religious Left, which will continue to grow as the percentage of minorities in the country and in the party grows.

People often ask whether the Republican Party will have to move to the left to remain viable. However, the question rarely asked is whether the growing religiosity on the left will push the Democrats toward the right…

For the most part, it seems to have made its peace with the mishmash of morality under the Democratic umbrella, rallying instead around some core Democratic tenets: protection of, and equality for, the disenfranchised and providing greater opportunity and assistance for the poor.

The unanswerable questions are whether these highly religious, socially conservative Democrats will remain loyal to a liberal agenda as they become the majority of the party and their financial and social standing improves. Or whether Republicans will finally make headway in recruiting them.”

Then again, as Blow points out, this could all be a moot point, if those in either party are right about the return of Christ being so soon…

YouthToob

2010-07-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

If you haven't checked it out yet, there's a great new site up... YouthToob. It's got funny videos for youth groups. It's content appropriate to high schoolers and relevant to teens, college-age and young adults. It's a great way to segue between activities, lead off a discussion or simply waste time. There are goofy Jesus-dubbed movies, inspirational clips, comedians and more. Some are funny, some are moving and some really make you think. If you have video suggestions, send them my way and I'll get them added...

Eres Todo Poderoso

2010-07-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

This is the youth singing Eres Todo Poderoso (You are all-powerful) on the roof of our hotel in Antigua at the end of our mission trip to Guatemala this summer...

Thanks to Greg for filming this.

Feed my Sheep

2010-07-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

Just as in the days when Jesus was trotting around in his robe and sandals, as a faith, Christians love to focus on the "DO NOTs" of Scripture. Do not kill, do not steal, do not dress inappropriately and do not watch The View (that one really should be in there, if it's not). The Do Nots can be very hard to interpret sometimes. However, I like the "DO's" of Scripture. DO justice, LOVE kindness and WALK humbly with your God. FEED the hungry, CLOTHE the naked and VISIT the sick and in prison. Yup, I love those.

Two weeks ago, the Youth of Wellshire got back from BUILDING homes for the homeless. And last night, our YAX (Young Adult Christians) went to New Genesis downtown to FEED the hungry men at the shelter. Several young adults came to help prepare the caseroles on Sunday after church and then we took those casseroles, salad and desserts down to the shelter. Nine of us served dinner and ate with the men at New Genesis, sharing our stories and our food. We hope to go back again some time.

If you or a young adult you know would like to get involved with the ministry oppertunities for service, mission, fellowship and fun, contact Brian, Associate Pastor of Youth & Young Adults at: bdaoust@wpcdenver.org or search for YAX (Young Adult Christians) on Facebook.

Not so "SHY" in the Park...

2010-06-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

We had our first SHY in the Park last night to kick off the summer. Our high schoolers, most of whom freshly back from Guatemala gobbled up burgers and dogs in Eisenhower Park, just across the Street from Wellshire. We had over 20 folks take over the small park there for food and then Ultimate Frisbee. We will hold these every other week or so all summer, usually meeting in the park, but with the possibility of a few other events and service opportunities. They will typically be Wednesday at 7pm on selected weeks and notices will go out ahead of time on here, in the e-mail and via Facebook, so stay tuned!

Also, if there is interest, we may add some Bible Study time before or after these evenings.

Oh, and i would walk 500 miles...

2010-06-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

And i would fly a thousand more...

We're finally ALL safe and sound back in Denver. With the exception of myself and two young freshmen boys, everyone arrived back on Sunday evening and we were back by 9:30am, Monday morning. The best updates of the trip, ala play-by-play can be found on Greg's blog and much fun to be found on our other trip sponsor, Jenni's blog. Below are links to blog posts in chronological order...

Jenni's Blog - Great Map of Guatemala

Greg's First Post - Recap of travel and first day in Guatemala

Jenni's First Post - First Day

Jenni's Second Post - Traveling to Salama

Greg's Second Post - Reaching & settling into Salama

Greg's Third Post - Getting to work: On the Habitat Site

Jenni's Third Post - Intro to Team Jenni Salisbury/ Ashley Daoust

Greg's Fourth Post - More work and a little Soccer (futbol)

Jenni's Fourth Post - Work & Play (great soccer pics)

Greg's Fifth Post - Last 2 days of work and they're still smiling

i'll post more of our best pics here as i collect them from the kids and sponsors, so be sure to check back.

ALSO: This Sunday, we will be bringing a full report on our trip and leading worship at the 8:35 service time. As there are too many pictures and stories to share in a small time slot, we cannot share again at the 10:00 and all of the pastors and staff are encouraging people to attend BOTH services this Sunday.

Take me out to the ball game!

2010-06-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last night, our new leadership crew of seniors (class of 2011) went to the ball park to see our Rockies take on the Huston Astros! We won 5 to nothing and ate more junk food than most NFL players keep on hand in their pantries. Here are a few shots...

"Keep your pants on, boy."

2010-05-21T00:01:00.001-07:00

As a boy, i don't recall ever getting the sex talk from my folks. i do recall an awkward afternoon at Disney World watching the Miracle of Life with them. Afterwards, they asked, "Any questions?" To which i responded, "Can we go see the Indiana Jones Stunt Show?" And that was that.

My friend Brandon told us that his sex talk consisted of his father telling him, "Brandon, keeps your pants on boy." How parents handle the sex talk is interesting. How Christians handle the topic is equally intriguing. When Christian discuss sex, it's usually in regards to how to convince their kids to never ever do it until they are at least 50 (at which point they figure it's about as exciting as the Miracle of Life).

i've heard (and used many) all the arguments from scriptural deterents to pragmatic warnings about emotional damage, pregnancy and STI's. But i heard a new one today... "Do it for the poor." What? No, seriously, keep your pants on, if you care about the poor. Whether you're a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Hulu or a humanist, do it for the poor.

In a fascinating article by Jennifer Morse, she calls for any and all people who care about Social Justice (the kind of equality Jesus called for and not just the catch phrase given a bad name these days) to think about the consequences of their flippant attitudes about early, teen nd unwed sex. It's destructive to the poor. This is perhaps one of the best arguments i've heard or read for avoiding premarital sex and among the most likely to be influential to today's young generations.

As she says, "This one policy area has the potential to increase black wealth, education and power. This major cultural course correction could reduce drug use, delinquency and violence, especially black on black crime. I am speaking of course, of marriage as a social justice issue...

...A recent publication by the Boston-based Seymour Institute, “God's Gift: A Christian Vision of Marriage and the Black Family”, spells out the case for marriage as the most important next step for the future of black America. The report cites the fact that married families in the black community have twice as much income as unmarried black families...

[John] McWhorter observes that the high proportion of single parent families among blacks is a relatively new development, and not something that can be attributed to some amorphous “legacy of slavery.” 'In poor black areas of Chicago during the 1920s, it was considered a problem that 15 percent of births were out of wedlock. Once the Depression hit, that number went down to under 10 percent.'

...Among black children living with two parents, poverty rates plunged from 61% in 1959 to just 13% in 1995, marking incredible progress. By that time, most black families were no longer living below the poverty line. Yet that same year, the poverty rate among black kids being raised by single women was fully 62%...

...Elite opinion that celebrates diverse family forms is actively destructive of social justice. Our culture glamorizes early sexual activity, unmarried sexual activity, and unmarried childbearing. But these cultural influences have very different implications for poorly educated, low-income women of color, than for the elite opinion-makers who graduate from exclusive universities.

Upper class people have created a norm of years of unmarried, sterile sex before settling down to marry and raise a couple of children. But as these ideas cascade down the socio-economic ladder, they produce unmarried sexual activity with quite different consequences.

Young people are often the most idealistic and zealous proponents of new social movements. So, I offer this challenge especially to the young: if you want to do something to help the poor, quit idealizing unmarried sexual activity. Some sexual lifestyle decisions you can get away with. But those very same choices would be a disaster for the poor.

So I challenge college students and young adults to ask yourself this question when you are making your decisions about sex: If a high-school drop-out did this, would it be good for her or not? If the answer is no, don't do it! Or at least, have the decency to keep your mouth shut about social justice."

Word on the Street...

2010-05-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

The 20-somethings young adult group at Wellshire has a name! This group is now: the Young Adult Christians (YAX). We're using the old Greek letter Chi (X) instead of a C, as the early Christians used that symbol and the Chi Rho (pictured here) as an early symbol long before the cross. The first letter in Christ and in Christian is Chi in Greek. Stay tuned for more news and events.

Oh the places THEY'LL go...

2010-05-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

Many Presbyterians with whom i talk are surprised to learn that there are more Presbyterians in Korea than in the US. If "decent and in order" are among the battle-cries/(softly spoken heartfelt themes) of the Presbyterian Church, are we really surprised that our incredibly ordered and decent Korean brothers and sisters are so fond of this denomination?

Likewise, many people are surprised to discover where the most religious fervor and highest numbers of Christians are located. Sub-Saharan Africa. Yup. Religion is "very important" to over 3/4 of the people in 17 of 19 countries in the region. The world's most religious industrialized nation... the USA, where only 57% of of folks make the same claim.

Take Senegal... 98% of respondents say reliong is "very important" and 93% in Mali. Botswana comes in last with a paltry 69% (still well above the US and far above most other industrialized nations). I'm looking forward to our first missionaries from Senegal and Mali.

Did you know?

2010-05-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

If you didn't know what scary (aka: sad and terrifying) groups were in your back yard, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has compiled a list, complete with a map of the US to find your local hate groups. Here's what's in Colorado.

It's good to be aware. Just like poverty, racism and hatred is fairly hard to address or battle when you don't know where it is, or it goes on under your nose. If you thought the KKK only existed in the South, or Neo-Nazi's were based mostly out of LA or NYC, boy are you in for a shock.

The SPLC has info on how to get involved in promoting peace-making efforts.

Word on the Street...

2010-05-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

The 20-somethings at Wellshire will be participating in a race on October 30th in Manitou Springs. If you are a 20-something in search of more info, contact Brian. You can participate in many capacities... creativity/design, building/construction, costume/decoration, athletic/racing or refreshments/spectating/cheering your face off.

Possible themes for the 20-something team:

MASH

Grey's Anatomy

Ghostbusters

Little Miss Sunshine

Star Wars/Trek

Batman

Harry Potter

Scooby Doo

Super Heroes

Why we're moving to Wesbite, Facebook and Mass Texting...

2010-05-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

Greenday

2010-05-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

That's right, it's Greenday and it's time for another creative way to be a good steward of God's creation. There's a great DIY (do it yourself) website that constantly gives great life hacks that can save time, money and/or energy and resources. This week, they came out with plans to save water in the bathroom. Many companies sell an expensive version of this (toystoreinc.com sells a version for a mere $129 in porcelain, pictured below), but you can build your own for much less. The one they show is the cheapest version of this, but you can replace particle board with porcelain or plastic or tile pretty easily.

Would you rather...

2010-04-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Reasons I’d rather be a saint than a reverend:

10) People admire saints

9) Saint has a shorter abbreviation

8) Saints get to go by their first names

7) People remember how saints die

6) Better to be canonized than cannon fodder

5) The stigmata is more fun than being stigmatized

4) You get a cause or a profession to look after instead of a nebulous portion of a congregation

3) Becoming a saint only requires the approval of the Holy See, while becoming a reverend requires the approval of the CPM (Committee on Preparation for Ministry)

2) Becoming a saint requires only one miracle, while becoming a reverend requires dozens

1) Santa Claus is a saint, seminary professors are reverends

Purpleday

2010-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

i know that Wednesday is typically Greenday for environmental issues. However, as you know, i strongly believe that, as God's creation, we are inextricably linked to that enironment. May is Lupus Awareness month and Lupus Awareness is Purple, like Pink for breast cancer.

In May, we often think of Mother's Day and of Graduations. Lupus occurs most frequently in women, approximately 90% of all cases and in child-bearing years, it's 10-15 times more likely in women. 1 in 185 people suffer from Lupus, so chances are, a young man, or especially a young woman battling Lupus as they attempt to go to school and graduate, or for a mother to go attend this graduation is someone you know.

My sister was diagnosed with Lupus when she was in college, and it was one of many challenges she faced to graduate and become a nurse. She has become a strong advocate for Lupus patients and awareness. i highly recommend reading this article to understand how many with Lupus and other auto-immune diseases cope with the daily demands of life: But You Don't Look Sick

Greenday

2010-04-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

Today's post is a link to a CNN story. Sometimes it's nice to be able to just pass along really good news, and this segment is related to both the environment and faith...

Chilly tonight, Chili tomorrow...

2010-04-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

The 20-Something ministry at Wellshire is getting under way. If you or someone you know needs to get plugged in, drop me a line. We kicked things off this weekend with back to back fun. Eight of us took in the weekend Rockies opener on Saturday night. Although we took the lead early, we lost it in the FOURTEENTH inning. That's right, 14 innings. The temperature dropped pretty low by the end of the game and most of the fans were bundled up in stadium blankets and buying sweatshirts.

Several of us showed up on Sunday to represent the group in Wellshire's first annual Chili Challenge! Our team, the 20-somethin' Flavors competed with seven other teams and won a prize pack of hot chili sauces for our Texas chili, which was almost unanimously voted the spiciest and one of the yummiest among some excellent competition. Almost every other team referred to us as an "excellent second place chili!" (and all of them were voting for their own as first, so we took that as a peer vote for best)

We look forward to more events together and hopefully more food!

Can i get a Witness?

2010-04-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long hiatus. Holy Week was very busy. i'm gonna pull a John Bell and make up for a long lull with the text from this week's sermon. However, more new posts are forthcoming...

This week's Lectionary passage: Acts 2: 14a, 22-32, which is a portion of Peter's speech to the crowd after they speak in tongues at Pentecost and not long after Jesus ascends into heaven in chapter 1...

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them:

"Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him,

"'I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;

therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

my flesh also will dwell in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One see corruption.

You have made known to me the paths of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.'

"Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses."

Can I get a Witness?
Sunday After Easter (April 11, 2010)

We all are witnesses…

As a boy, my favorite TV show was MacGyver. He was my hero. Despite all the mockery of Saturday Night Live, this was an admirable man of good character and morals, something hard to find in Hollywood for the past 30 years or more. He was honest, smart and daring, sort of a Jack Bower with a clear conscience. He could solve any problem with the tools on hand, a paperclip and of course… his trusty Swiss Army knife. To his day, I still carry a Swiss Army knife and paperclip everywhere I go.

In one of my favorite episodes of MacGyver, he is drawn into a jury trial. He is the lone pillar of justice, unconvinced of the guilt of the young troubled man accused of the crime. In his search for the truth, he finds a witness to the crime, a witness with good news, a witness who can save the young man’s life. However, this witness comes in an unusual form. In the apartment overlooking the crime scene lives a little old woman… with her bird, Arlo. The woman claims to have only heard the crime, but that it is Arlo who saw the perpetrator. The older woman acts as an interpreter, giving an accurate description of the crime and the criminal.

The judge recognizes that the woman lives in a rough neighborhood and only feels safe in conveying her account through the bird and allows her to testify. She is not afraid to bear witness and give important, life-giving testimony to set this young man free, but she is afraid to be the witness. She is afraid of harm, of ridicule, of disbelief, and rightly so. The real dangerous criminal is still at large.

But this woman has good news. This woman has news that can set a man free, without which, he could die. She recognizes the paramount importance of what she has witnessed and cannot keep silent. As Peter tells the crowd at Pentecost here in this passage, Jesus was a man who God attested to through signs and miracles, a prophet and teacher. “We are all witnesses,” he says. And when you bear witness to events that can save someone else’s life, you must testify.
Hundreds, if not thousands, saw Jesus beaten and killed. Far fewer witnessed him after the resurrection, but he did appear to many. Here, Peter not only emphasizes the life-giving testimony those gathered must share with the world through their personal accounts of his death, but of his life and ministry too.

In the story of the Last Samurai, a haunted American war hero and veteran befriends a great general and Samurai in Japan in the late 1800’s. Samurai, actually best translates as “servant,” and this servant of the emperor fights to keep Japan from becoming corrupt. He dies in battle defending his country. When his American friend comes before the Emperor, who is only a boy, a friend and student of the fallen Samurai, they kneel together on the floor. The young Emperor says softly to the soldier, “Tell me… how he died.” To which the American says through tears, “I will tell you… how he lived.”

I do not wish to say that the death of Jesus is unimportant, and neither does Peter here. How a man dies and for what he dies are supremely important, for no man more than Jesus Christ, but Peter wants those gathered to bear full witness to all they have seen, to tell the truth, the whole truth. This truth, this whole truth, is more difficult to convey. As John mentioned last week, it is probably more difficult to convince you of the truth about what Jesus taught of being blessed or happy than it is to convince you that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

If it’s that hard to convince you of the truth of what Jesus taught about happiness to you, a church-attending, salt of the earth Presbyterian… imagine how hard it is to convince you or a non-believer of what Jesus taught about how to handle your finances and free time, what vocation to choose and what temptations to avoid or how to love your neighbors and your enemies.

“We all are witnesses.”

As believers, you have all read the Good News and have been taught the Good News by other believers. You’ve lived in a community of believers, been members of this church and born witness firsthand to the Good News, the life, ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the grace and forgiveness he died for and the hope we extend in the name of our resurrected Lord. Do any of these sound familiar?

‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (Mt. 25:35, 36, 40b)

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Mt. 5:5, 7, 9)

“What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8b)

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Mt. 5:39)

“Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” (Mk. 10:14)

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn. 13:34, 35)

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt. 5:44b)

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Lk. 10:27)

Do any of these sound familiar? Do all of them sound familiar? If you’ve heard all this before, you have already been a witness to the things God has said and done and asked of you. And if this is your first time hearing all of that… (snarky) made ya witness.

These prophetic words echo from the prophets in the words and deeds of Jesus all throughout his life. Those gathered before Peter had seen and heard these things, just as we have. “We are all witnesses,” he says, as he calls us all to share the good news of the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.It’s been said that every man dies but only some men really live. I would say that a man who walks on water, heals deadly diseases, brings a message of hope and peace and equality to all people and then recovers from being dead has truly lived, wouldn’t you?

“We are all witnesses.” Peter speaks these words on the day of Pentecost, not long after Jesus ascends into heaven in the chapter before. In his parting words, Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” This is a pretty big responsibility, and like the Great Commission, you can bet Jesus is talking to us too here. Jesus calls us to be witnesses and Peter is reminding us here of that call.

So what will being a witness require of us? Being a witness, in the legal sense of the word, which is what is being employed here in the passage is just as familiar in our time as it was in theirs. We cannot be hearers of the word only, but doers. We cannot merely see and read and hear about the good news, about the message of hope and of peace and of love for one another. We must act, we must tell others, we must show it in our daily lives. Because to be a witness for Christ means not only to take the stand, but to take a stand.

For many of us, this is very hard. We want someone else to do the talking, someone else to point to. We wanna say, “Read John Bell’s blog, he’s really on target,” or, “look at Holly, she’s really pious person.” Just like the bird lady who witnessed the crime, we want to stand back and point to someone else with a better voice or a better life and not risk getting hurt, even if what we’ve witnessed could change or save someone’s life. I’m fond, as a Presbyterian, of that part of the Micah verse that says, “walk humbly with your God.” That seems to let me off the hook for doing anything courageous. But loving kindness and doing justice can be very hard work indeed.

And walking humbly with God may not be doing anything meek in this world. It may mean confronting injustices in the our immigration policies or boycotting stores with unfair employment policies or quitting a job at a company that treats its workers unfairly or considering wild ideas that might allow you to expand your church’s ministry like international mission trips, new buildings or chili cook-offs.

In Acts, it’s clear that Jesus and Peter believe that a witness must testify. A witness has an obligation to tell other people what they have seen and heard. There’s more to that verse I read you from Acts 1 when Jesus tells them to be witnesses. Jesus gives them a promise and that promise is for us too. This is the beginning of that verse: “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Jesus is not asking us to go out alone. Jesus sends his witnesses with back up, just like the little old bird woman. She was still laughed at, still ridiculed, but she was listened to and her message was heard and she was safe.

“We are all witnesses.” We have been taught how to live with one another, how to love one another and how to be God’s children in this world. We must share that good news with others. We cannot keep news that good, that important, that life-giving to ourselves. Jesus is calling, “Can I get a witness?”

Greenday

2010-03-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

MY Big backyard...

As a kid, i got the Ranger Rick Magazine and my little sister got a similar nature magazine for kids called My Big Backyard. It was a great magazine for teaching kids about the wonders of the natural world. However, for adults, this phrase often means something very different. "Right in my own backyard," or, "not in my backyard." Even amongst enironmentalists, it is not always the world that is their backyard, but their little section of it.

In an uncharacteristic move, the Sierra Club has started backing Natural Gas. The President of the Sierra Club said recently on NPR that members have gorwn accustom to the club merely standing against all things that impact the environment. They aren't used to the club making any suggestions for alternatives or supporting efforts that have a low environmental impact. In otherwords, the members are comfortable with the Sierra Club taking a stance against anything that hurts the outdoors, but have not traditionally been involved in helping provide positive practical solutions in order to ensure the protection of the environment. This is a new strategy.

Who is upset? Well, coal is a much more harmful energy source than natural gas, but if you live in an area where no coal is mined, what do you care? Natural gas can be found in many parts of the country, while the vast majority of coal comes from the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. Natural gas is a mush cleaner alternative and has a much lower physical impact on the land, but it moves the extraction from West Virginians' backyards to everyone else's. A woman interviewed in the Finger Lakes region is upset that natural gas extraction will ruin the vista in the areas she likes to hike and ski. She says she "weeps for the mountains of West Virginia, but she doesn't want it in her backyard." Interesting. She's not willing to stop using energy, and as a member of the Sierra Club, she wants to reduce environmental impact, but she's unwilling to spoil her view to achieve her lofty goals.

How many of us make similar choices? How many of us would rather a powerplant go up elsewhere? How many of us want solar energy, but don't want our roof or yard cluttered with pannels? How many of us want housing for the homeless, as long as it's not in our guest bedroom or camping in our backyard? i know i make those decisions every day. Let us pray this week for God to show us all how to live with open hearts and open minds so that we might make the right choices, even when they are hard.

A Leap of Faith

2010-03-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

Last night, the confirmation class discussed why one should be a Christian, what it means to believe and what faith is exactly. We watched this clip and discussed what it means to believe in something you cannot see...

ACTS of Prayer

2010-03-01T07:24:00.001-08:00

Last night at youth group, the middle school students learned about prayer, specifically praying in public, as they might be asked to do at church or on a retreat or at some big game or gathering. They learned the acronym ACTS for helping them outline the things they should include.

A - Adoration, or praising God

C - Confession, or admitting wrong doing

T - Thanksgiving, or being greatful to God

S - Supplication, or asking God for something

After watching a few prayers from movies (Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving and Cool Runnins) we broke up into groups of two and each group was given a scenario in which they would pray in public. The prayers were wonderful. Some were funny. Some were very sincere and most were both. On group of boys was given the scenario, "praying at a wedding or funeral." We all expected these quirky, off the wall boys to choose funeral and worried at the outcome. They didn't. They chose a wedding. While i will wager maybe no middle school boy has ever been asked to pray at a wedding, in this case, it would have been mistake to pass these boys over. Here is their prayer, honest and sincere...

Dear God, thank you for this great day for the wedding.

I'm sorry our Grandpa couldn't stay awake during the wedding.

Thanks you for the great wedding cake.

Please help the couple to stay together and happy for the rest of their lives.

Amen.

Is Jesus your friend?

2010-02-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

Don't get scared. i'm not going to ask you if you died tomorrow where you'd spend eternity. i'm just asking how you view your relationship with Jesus. Is Jesus your home boy? Is Jesus a fairly cool uncle you visit now and then but don't have much time for? Is Jesus a demanding boss or a lofty religious figure you can't bother? Well, this week i want you to consider who Jesus is and how you see your relationship. Hopefully Jesus isn't this guy for you...

Did God paint you?

2010-02-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Homily at Lenten Worship last night...

My hero growing up, from the time I could walk… was Robin Hood. I loved the character, I loved the stories. In one of my favorite film renditions, Robin Hood is played by Kevin Costner and his faithful companion who saves his life, is played by the impeccable Morgan Freeman, a Moorish Muslim who follows him home from the Holy Land. Safe to say, no one there in England’s Sherwood Forest has ever seen a black man.

At one point, a little girl approaches Morgan Freeman’s character, Azim, and asks him, “Did got paint you?” He smiles and replies, “For certain.” Still curious, she asks, “Why?” Smiling more broadly, Azim tells her, “Because Ah-lah loves wondrous variety.”

(PAUSE)

You need only look around the world to see that this must certainly be true. The sheer variety of plants and animals and people bear out God’s magnificent pallet. God is a masterful painter and has painted the whole of creation with wondrous variety. From the small grey squirrels native to our land to the magnificently tall bespeckled giraffes of Africa, from the purple of our majestic Rocky Mountains to the purple of the Zimbabwean fabrics.

Did God paint you? For certain. Each of us is painted by God, the same God who has painted all of creation, the heavens and the earth. God did not only paint his chosen people in Israel, nor only North America or the United States. God does not only paint in red, white and blue. When Satan takes Jesus up to the summit, he does not show him only the nation of Israel, but all the nations. Our God is not a God of one people, but all people

The people of all nations were painted by our one true God. The people of the United States, the people of Uganda (point to Emily). The shirt I am wearing tonight was painted by the people of Zimbabwe, made by the hands of our brother in Christ, Paul Newshangwe, who has visited us several times. He told me that in speaking to African immigrants in Denver about church, he heard interesting responses. The hospitality our Presbytery sought to provide included seeking the desires of the immigrant community, to see if they would like a church plant, an African worshipping community. This confused the immigrants. They said, “When you visit us in our home country, we welcome you into our church. We would not ask you to build your own. It would not even occur to us that you would want to worship apart.”

Did God paint you? For certain. God painted the people of North America and the people of Africa. We have a view in this country that we must keep those shades and colors separate, neatly defined. In many ways, we are not one canvas, but many color samples, incomplete and unfinished, yearning to paint a bigger, brighter picture. Perhaps the lesson we can learn from our friends from across the ocean is that the one God who has painted us all can unite us, not just in spite of our differences, but because of them. Maybe, instead of finding a place where we fit or sending others to the places where they fit, we can begin to see that in God’s canvas, no color clashes, but all complement one another, and all paint a fuller, brighter picture of God’s kingdom.

Did God paint you? For Certain. Because our God loves wondrous variety. Amen.

Greenday

2010-02-24T00:27:00.000-08:00

This week, in Lent, we're focusing on Africa, specifically Uganda tonight at Wednesday Worship. To read a quick summary of the environmental struggles there, take a look at this site.

In other news...

This year, for the first time, the Olympic medals are being made from recycled materials. Read more here.