Oh, the Places You WILL Go!

Or Listen Here after reading the scripture.
Mt. 10:16-23

Mt 28:16-20

The Great Commission

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ And when they saw him they worshiped him, and doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore, as you go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

                Our own Chuck Sparks this week returned from a mission trip and related a quote from his brother… “The people of the Way need to GO away sometimes.”    And indeed we do.  This morning, we read the words of the Great Commission… My seminary professor and New Testament scholar, Francis Taylor-Gench helped us translate this passage one day.  The grammar rules are tricky, but most Bibles translate this badly in her opinion, and I agree.  They often translate the verb GO as the command.  However, GO is the assumption.  Make disciples and baptize are the commands.  It’s best translated as I read it… Therefore, AS YOU GO, make disciples of all nations.  There is no IF.  It’s a WHEN.  It’s a foregone conclusion.  And so is the title of this book by Dr. Seuss.  The title is not, “Oh, the Places You Could Go,”  “Oh, the Places You Should Go,” or “All, the Things that Could Happen to You.”  The title is, “Oh, the Places You WILL Go.”

                Seuss is sending this “kid,” as he calls ‘im into the world… just as Christ sent the disciples, and sends us.  Jesus turns to his disciples and he does not say, “build a church here, advertise, promote, start amazing outreach and Christian education, a great youth program and be super friendly and hospitable to everyone who walks in the door.”  Not that those are bad things, and I’ve been asked to tell you not to cancel your pledge this year.  But Jesus doesn’t indicate that some of them have “gifts for evangelism” or “talents for reaching the unloved and forgotten.”  He says to ALL of them, “Therefore, AS YOU GO…”

                And folks, this is a great challenge for us.  It means that we can’t just be Christians here in these walls or even just here in Denver.  Who here has sung “This Little Light of Mine?”  Raise your hand.  And what do we do with this light?  Do we hide it under a bushel?  NO!  We put it on a stand.  But having that light, shining that light, being that light is more than just setting a fine example.  It requires a kind of proactive approach.  It requires us to ask God for opportunities, to seek needs, to be wise enough to spot them and courageous enough to act.  Oh the places, you’ll go.

                If you’re the person at work or in your school who is kind to everyone you meet and a good spirit, always doing what is right, you’re someone deserving of much respect.  Truly.  But Jesus came to challenge us to more.  At Highlands Camp this summer, the kids are learning about parables.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells parables of lost sheep, lost coins and the lost prodigal son.  He tells us that his mission here on earth is to seek and save the lost.  This is our mission.  In our places of work, in our schools, in our homes, our communities and churches, we are called to look for those in need, to seek and save the lost.

                Sometimes I challenge the children or youth with who I work to spend all day or all week looking for someone in their life who is lost, lonely or excluded.  This is the person who needs them to reach out to them.  Maybe they are sitting next to you right now.  Who is that person for you?  Who is the person who makes your life most difficult?  Is that the person you pray for the most?  Should it be?  These are the lost.  These are the ones in need.  We are called to find and welcome those in our midst.  And we are called to go and be in the midst of those in need.

                Oh, the Places We’ll Go!  For we are called into this world… into the midst of all need.  As I began reading this book again, something new hit me.  Seuss illustrates the “wide open air” with the little kid wandering out down streets that crisscross bare open patches of grass and earth.  This is exactly what it looked like in Joplin, Missouri as we drove through the neighborhoods demolished by the tornado, streets that crisscrossed bare patches of yards where houses once stood.

                And Seuss tells us we’ll come to places where the streets are not marked, that “some windows are lighted, but mostly they’re darked.”  In Joplin, once the debris was cleared, they had to spray paint the names of streets on the pavement because life-long residents could not tell where they were in town.  Landmarks had been erased.  So many homes still standing were abandoned, and “darked.”  He follows this with the questions of self-doubt… do you go in, stay out, how do you approach such a problem, how do you help?  So, we “mind-maker-uppers” end up… in the waiting place.

                So the question we must face is… Is our church a Waiting Place?  Is our church, as indicated by the banner above our children’s education hallway downstairs… A Church on the Move?  Or is our church a place where we wait for needs to manifest, for committees to report the needs out there so that we can react, a place where overwhelming need paralyzes us into inaction?  What does Seuss say?  And I quote, “NO! That’s not for you!”  You see, we have places to go.

                And the wisdom we learn from Seuss is no different than the many warnings of scripture we get from Jesus.  It’s not all boom bands.  “Behold, I send you as sheep amidst the wolves!”  Splendid.  We’ll meet up with things that “scare you right out of your pants.”  Things “down the road between hither and yon that will scare you so much you won’t want to go on.”  And brothers and sisters, there is no shortage of such scary things in this world.  The road between Hither and Yon is as close as Shoreline Boulevard.  Our community was once again rocked by violence, something so scary that no one could be blamed for not wanting to go on.

                Oh, the places you’ll go.  The wolves that lurk, the Hakken-Kraks of Denver and Aurora and all the places we call home where our “enemies prowl,” they scare us out of our pants.  And neither “brains in our head and feet in our shoes,” nor belief in the God who seeks and saves us, is a guarantee that we won’t have to face these scary people or terrifying and heartbreaking circumstances.   But Jesus never sends the disciples out alone.  He sends them in pairs.  He sends them as a community to “love one another” as he loved us.  And he sends them with the gift of his presence and help and comfort… the Holy Spirit.

                In life and death, we belong to Jesus Christ.  And though we’ll hike far, “we’ll face up to our problems whatever they are.”  Because, as believers, we are promised that we are never alone, that Christ is with us, “even to the end of the age.”  In fact, we’re told in capital letters, “KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!”  For if we have the faith of a mustard seed, we will say to a mountain, “move,” and it’ll toss itself in the sea.  And it’s no coincidence that Jesus calls us all children of God and that Seuss writes a book for children AND adults and the protagonist is merely called, “Kid.”

                Dr. Seuss doesn’t tell us that Hakken-Kraks aren’t real.  He says we can still go on.  G.K. Chesterson once said that, “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be defeated.”  We do not read God’s word to learn how hard this world will be to face each day.  We know.  We read scripture and we teach our children God’s Word because God’s promise is that we will never face anything alone.  We are called by God to go into the world in the same breath as the promise that we do not ever walk alone.  And that is good news when the darkest times come, when we face tragedy, when we face evil.  God sends us to be the arms of comfort in mourning.  He sends us to be the voice of reason spoken to anger and hatred.  He sends us as the voice of inclusion and help when people are so anguished that they seek to hurt others.  And he does not send us… alone.

                Oh, the places you’ll go.  Jesus calls us to respond, not just to comfort those who mourn, but to seek those who are in pain before they do desperate things.  I do not know if Jesus had a public policy plan that included laws to prevent bullying and violence or medical care to lepers and the possessed or taxes for the wealthy and the tax collectors to help the poorest and the downtrodden.  I don’t know.  But I do know he exemplified a life of kindness, mercy, generosity, and servanthood, loving all and ignoring none.  And we cannot be content to leave that responsibility to anyone else.  We are called to that life and called now.  We are called to move mountains and told that we can.

                Oh, the places we’ll go.  Anyone who has ever been to the Holy Land has done some sort of “walking in the footsteps of Jesus” tour.  His ministry was a journey.  Early believers were not called Christians right away, but were called followers of “The Way.”  The early founders of the Church were not called ministers, priests, rulers or Jedis – much to my disappointment.  They were called Apostles, a word that comes from the Greek for one who is sent.  Jesus begins his ministry after his baptism being driven into the desert, calls his disciples to leave their lives, and sends them out in the great commission.  We are not students of Rabbi Jesus, studiers of the Prophet of Nazareth or students of the school of the Nazarene.  We are followers of Christ.  And the places he calls us to, the places he sends us, those are the places we will go.

                The places we’ll go may be around the world to Haiti or Russia, across the country Joplin or Galveston, across town to New Genesis or across the room to the person sitting alone.  The places we’ll go may be hospitals or shelters, schools or prisons, to homes or to the homeless.  They may be in these walls, but they will probably be to the person you didn’t notice until God tugged on your sleeve or on your heart and dragged you outside your comfort zone and into someone else’s pain, loneliness or problems.

I’m going to suggest something radical and maybe uncomfortable.  I’m going to suggestion that there is great opportunity this week and in the weeks to come.  I’m going to challenge you to consider that we need to do more than comfort those affected by the tragedy in Aurora.  I’m going to challenge you to seek and to reach out to the lost.  I think it’s incredibly likely that each of you has someone in your life in deeper pain than you know, or someone with bigger struggles than anyone knows, or someone who just needs to know they aren’t alone, that help is there.  I’m going to tell you that God can and will show you those people, if you ask.  I’m going to tell you that you can help, that you can love, that you can save lives and change this world.  And I’m going to implore you to trust God to move in your life this way.

Oh, the places you’ll go… they might not look or feel like any of the places you’ve been.  They may be scary.  They may be monumentally challenging.  The problems we face are quite scary and large, and to fix them we must listen to the big guy in charge.  He has sent us his Spirit while he is away, so let’s move our mountain and get on our way.  Amen.

More on Bullying: Things You May Not Know

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Here in Joplin

We've had two great work days in Joplin thus far. Spotty wifi at the church has made posting pictures nearly impossible, but I can blog a little from my phone. Our group of 45 youth is sharing a church basement with a church almost as big. Both of our groups then join the groups staying at another church for worship each night. These groups are working at nine worksites with our group comprising two of those. One group, led by the Rogers, Jenni Salisbury and Rachel Wildrick is working to build a shed and dig foundations. The other, led by the Petersons, Brian Lays, Kelly Watts and myself, is building a shed and repairing a roof. Monday was a slow start with rain delays most of the morning. Today was much more productive on both sites. Pictures will be posted on Facebook. Our kids are working very hard and representing our church and the greater church well to the people in need here in Joplin. I will continue to update you and post pics soon.

We've arrived in Joplin. We're going to see some of the storm damage and a monument and then go to our church home for the week. We had a safe journey. Blessings!

We're headed to Joplin!

This Blog will serve as a means to update everyone back home about our safe arrival in Joplin, some pictures from the ground there amidst the work and a progress report of our journey home so you can know when to pick kids up from church on Saturday, June 16th.  Stay tuned!

Reasonable Doubt

Mark 9:14-29

JOHN 20:24-29

Long before I considered ministry, I considered several other careers. Among the leading contenders when I left for college was Law. All the top colleges in my search had pre-law programs and law schools. My mom and I spent hours when I was in high school watching JAG, the TV drama about US Navy and Marine lawyers who fought for justice in and out of the courtroom. It’s not really a surprise that many former lawyers and law enforcement types eventually become ministers. In fact, lawyers make up the largest percentage of second career students in most mainline seminaries. The same strong inclinations that lead people to want to serve others and help the oppressed, to stand on the side of right, lead people to both careers.

After my freshmen year at Chapel Hill, I served in the District Attorney’s office in my hometown for part of the summer. The woman who served as DA, and still does, is one of the toughest and most fair-minded people I’ve ever known, as well as one of the strongest advocates for abused women and children. Under her leadership and prosecution, DUIs in our county were reduced significantly and became a model for other counties in our state. I learned much from her and the ADAs in her office in that summer. And while I learned I did not want the law for a career, I also learned a deep appreciation for both conviction… and doubt.

During this time, my love for law, for reason and for films that explored these concepts, grew exponentially. In particular, I grew to love the film 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda. The film takes place in its entirety in a small jury room. It’s the story of 12 men deliberating on a trial, the jury for a young immigrant boy accused of murdering his father. It’s a blistering summer day, many years before air-conditioning would be installed in criminal courts buildings. Many members of the jury are eager to convict immediately and leave the stifling room. Henry Fonda is at first the lone voice that challenges them to reconsider all the evidence and discrepancies. Has the prosecution truly met their burden of proof? Can all their reasonable doubts be laid to rest?

Among the many wonderful lessons I learned in the District Attorney’s office was that doubt was not merely the enemy of the prosecutor, that force to be defeated, but it was and is that force which can set free an innocent person. In our everyday lives, one’s reasonable doubt can prevent making a bad decision or from trusting an incompetent or dangerous person with an important task. And in court, that same reasonable doubt can save someone’s life. A doubt born of prejudice, distrust, sentiment or whim can be quite harmful or toxic. Seeds of doubt can grow. It is that kind of doubt we fear and rail against. It’s what gives doubt a bad name.

In the recent film Inception, the main protagonist plants a seed of doubt in his wife’s dreams in an attempt to pull her back to reality. This doubt grows so strong, that she eventually believes it completely, at the cost of her own life. Doubt can indeed be powerful. It can be a powerful enemy or a powerful ally. And so we must always consider whether it is reasonable or unreasonable, lest we write that doubt off as baseless, or write ourselves or others off as faithless. We do that with Thomas, don’t we? Thomas is the doubter, right? Surely none of the other disciples. Even Peter gets a chance at redemption in our story.

But is Thomas really the bad guy? We know from history and tradition that he went on to have a highly successful ministry. But was he the only doubter? I don’t believe so. We’re all fairly familiar with the story of the Great Commission in Matthew. Therefore as you go, make disciples of all nations and baptize them! But that passage starts… in doubt. Look at the picture for a moment. You’ll see this passage as we usually find it translated in our English Bibles… And when they saw him they worshiped him but some doubted.

Many scholars, my seminary professor Francis Taylor Gench among them, suggest this is not just a poor translation, but perhaps an incorrect one. I’ll throw the original Greek up there with it. I’m sure you notice the lack of the word (meh-ree-koi). No?

For the non-Greek speakers in the room, meh-ree-koi is the Greek word for SOME. You see, the first translators assumed that SOME of the disciples were worshiping Jesus… and SOME were doubting. But there’s a problem here. The word SOME isn’t even there! When you read this verse without it, as it was originally written, suddenly you have disciples who are worshiping AND doubting at the same time! In other words… And when they saw him they worshiped him AND doubted! I don’t know about you, but I take DEEP comfort in that. Here is a group of followers, the men and women who knew Jesus… who were witnessing him raised from the dead… who witnessed him eat with them… who witnessed Thomas (who was JUST… LIKE… THEM) put his hands in the wounds… the people who had more reason to believe in the resurrection than anyone else in history… and these people… still… had doubts. And these people… worshiped anyways… and we… can… too.

These followers, these disciples had far less reason to doubt than us! They were eyewitnesses. They were THERE. They saw him die and saw him alive again. Spoke to him, touched him, ate with him. And yet they had reasonable doubts. Up until that moment, they’d not had a whole heck of a lot of experience with insurrections and executions, with messiahs and resurrections. One’s first experience with such a miracle is, I’m guessing, hard to get one’s head around. And don’t we too have reasonable doubts?

Here now, two thousand years later, many generations removed from the eyewitnesses, separated by language and culture, historical evidence, archaeology and a host of other influences, we have a boatload of reasonable doubt arriving in our hearts and minds every day. But the story of the disciples is not of their doubt, reasonable or otherwise, but about what they do in spite of it, or perhaps because of it, strengthened by it. They doubt AND worship. They go forth and do make disciples of all nations. They are our brothers and sisters and our ancestors of faith. We are their legacy in the Holy Spirit.

They were not people without flaw. We see them screw up over and over in scripture. They were not people of permanent resolve. They abandoned Jesus in his hour of greatest need. And even in the face of the Easter Christ, the messiah raised from the dead, they still had doubt. A believer is not someone devoid of all doubt, but a person whose reasonable doubts guide them to deeper faith, to continually question and to relate to those who waver or those who do not yet believe.

In our Mark passage, we read of the man whose son is ill. This man believes. He is not a faithless man. He is a man with doubts. His is not a story of conversion or coming to faith. His is a story of faith that is challenged, faith on the rocks, faith that is shaken or strained by years of his son’s torment. This is a faith many of us relate to. He does not ask Jesus to help his belief… but to help his unbelief. And Jesus does.

The story of the Good News in which we believe and the Good News we share is not that we move from doubt to faith or that doubt is the opposite of faith or that faith removes ALL doubt. It is that faith can exist in spite of doubt and alongside reasonable doubt. The Good News is that reasonable doubt can lead to even deeper faith. Think for a moment about your own doubts, your own questions. Do you think that any of them are new or unique? Do you think that any of them is not shared by someone else? The basis of any support group is that those who face the same struggles share the same fears, the same worries… the same doubts.

A church is not just a group of people who share the same beliefs, but a community of people who share the same doubts. Faith communities gather not just to do the same things God calls us to do, but because of our shared failings and sins. We gather to strengthen our beliefs as we ask God and one another to help our un-belief. As Christians, we don’t just gather to learn, but to grow. Here in faith community, we don’t just gather for Christian Education, but for Spiritual Formation. We face not only our ignorance, but our doubts. Ignorance is lack of knowledge, not the enemy of it. You cannot learn until you know what knowledge you lack. You cannot grow in your faith until you know what you doubt.

I challenge each of you to consider your doubts and to consider that maybe some of them are quite reasonable. I challenge you to consider that maybe you could grow in your faith if you truly face these doubts. Maybe you doubt the biggies like the resurrection or the creation. Maybe you doubt God loves you or that God loves your enemies. Maybe you doubt your salvation or the authority of scripture. Whatever it is, I challenge you to really face it, to embrace it, to wrestle with it. And I encourage you that you need not face it alone. Someone else has faced this doubt. Someone else currently does. Pray, question God, question others… call John or Pattie here at the church or at home ;-). And then… listen. Because just like understanding, faith cannot grow if you do not listen. How foolish would a student be who yearned to learn about medicine and went to school with questions and curiosity, but never read a book or listened to a professor or fellow student? And so we are equally foolish if we do not seek the voice of God in prayer, in scripture, in our faith community.

So consider your reasonable doubts. Face them. Embrace them. And grow. Adam walked each day in the Garden with God, listening to his instruction. And what does our God require… but to do justice and love kindness… by walking humbly with our God… listening.

Let us pray…

Bullying

A new movie is out this week. If you haven't seen promos or news stories about it's MMPA rating, take a moment to check out the main website for Bully and a few of the video news stories. The film is a portrayal of the real life stories of bullied kids. It's being lauded by conservatives and liberals alike for taking on this serious issue in a way that illuminates the massive problem bullying has become in this country.

One problem is that the MMPA, which rates movies, originally gave this film an R for the use of the F-word, as none of this film is scripted, but real interviews. There's been a groundswell to change the rating to PG-13 so it can be shown to kids and in schools and it looks like they've succeeded thanks to many famous personalities, including Ellen. The other problem that's addressed in the following interview is if the word 'bullying' is too antiquated to really express how bad this form of torment has become. For instance, our own youth group rated bullying as a 6 on a scale from 1 to 10 of how 'wrong' it is, slightly worse than profanity, cheating on a driver's test or ignoring lonely people, but several levels below sexism, racism and hardcore drug use. Whereas 'being cruel' got a 7. Perhaps, we do need new language to describe this sort of harassment. As believers, we're called to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves.

Kony 2012 - The Warlord who opresses the Invisible Children of Uganda

I cannot do justice to introducing this video. It's over 20 minutes, so don't watch unless you have enough time. I can say that it's important and that it's not just a worthy cause, but an urgent one. At least make yourself an informed citizen and believer. This is a bi-partisan, multi-faith cause. By all means, support the cause, but at least watch this video on how you can help the Invisible Children of Uganda.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

White Flour: Teaching Kids to Confront Racism with Non-Violence

I've posted a long time ago of David Lamotte reciting his original poem based on real life events. He has embarked on a journey to give this poem new life in the form of a children's book, illustrated by Jenn Hales. Please enjoy this video and visit the site.




An excerpt from the site...

A book for youth (and post-youth!) by David LaMotte, Illustrations by Jenn Hales

White Flour tells the true story of a whimsical and effective response by counter-protesters to a group of white supremacists who came to Knoxville, Tennessee for a march in 2007. The Coup Clutz Clowns, a group of local anti-racism activists, used humor and non-violence to reveal the silliness of the marchers' actions, defusing their hatred with laughter.

The clown demonstrators slightly altered the supremacists' chants to make them a bit... better. As the hooded marchers shouted "white power!" the clowns joined right in, shouting "white flour!" and pulling out bags of the stuff they had brought from home for a flour fight. They walked a bit farther and decided they had heard wrong, and that the klansmen must be shouting "white flowers!" so they shouted that, and passed flowers out to the crowd ...and it gets better from there! The point is that rather than shouting down the shouters, meeting rage with rage, they simply refused to take such foolishness seriously. Humor, it turns out, beats hatred. At least it did on that day.