Let Go, Let God, Live Life

Acts 2:1-21

Also, Chapter 40 of We Make the Road By Walking by Brian McLaren

 “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.”  John 3:19-21

In the days after the Resurrection, Jesus tells the disciples he is going away again, but that their work in building the peaceable kingdom should continue.  He says it's better if he goes away so the Spirit can come.  If he is actually here with us, then. our focus would be on him... right there... but because he isn't, we have to focus on the Spirit of Christ within ourselves.

It reminds me of a long distance relationship.  When you are in love and living apart, your relationship is not about the time spent together. It's not about holding hands or kissing one another or gazing into each other's eyes. Because, it can't be. You are apart from the one you love.  And yet, it is sometimes those long distance relationships that are able to grow and develop into strong and lasting loves. Not because of the time spent together, but because of the love shared across the miles.  You share things in a different way when you aren't side by side, day after day.  Your loved one walks with you through life, living in your heart and soul, even though you aren't physically together.

This is what is described in the Pentecost story. Jesus is now with the disciples in spirit. And that Spirit enters into their lives in the rush of a violent wind, like a fiery tongue of flame burning over their heads.  But the Spirit didn't arrive just now, in this moment.  The Spirit has always been. From the beginning.

 The Spirit is described in many ways throughout the Bible, even before we get to these images of wind and fire. In the creation story the Spirit is breath.  In the Exodus, a cloud.  In the Baptism of Jesus by John, a dove.  And now fire and wind.  We are always one with the Spirit, but this story of the Pentecost reminds us we have to recognize it. And experience it as a faith community. 

Brian McLaren tells us in Chapter 40 of We Make the Road by Walking that becoming a people who are willing to be alive in the Spirt means that we are willing to share in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. 

In this three part process, we are first able to let go. We are able to allow our old selves to die with Christ.  We let go of what has been.  Both individually and as a community we make that decision when we decide to be a people filled with the Spirit of Christ.

Second, we are able to let be. This is a hard one because it requires so much faith and so little 'activity' in the physical sense.   We like to be busy, but letting be means we must surrender to silence, stillness, powerlessness, emptiness, and rest.  

In this quiet stillness of this space, the spirit enters, leading to our sharing of the resurrection of Christ. Step 3.  Let come.  Who knows what the Spirit will want us to do, but if we say allowed, "Let it be. Spirit come to us" we might just be amazed by what happens next.  I admit I am a control freak and this is soooo hard for me.   But we must get to that space together as a faith community, the space of letting come.

My favorite part of the Pentecost story is the inclusiveness of the Spirit. The Spirit's arrival in the room behind closed doors that day isn't a Spirit that has sights on a particular race, class, or gender. This Spirit isn't elite.  This Spirit comes to all. All at once.  Everyone gathered there shares the Spirit, and yet understands it in their own way. Pentecost, then,  is unity and diversity in harmony.

Somewhere in the struggle to let go, let be, let come... we realize that this is all about letting God guide our lives. It isn't our struggle to bear alone. It is a journey that God shares with us.  

It all sounds so easy when you say it in a blogpost or pronounce it in a sermon, but of course we all know the day-to-day practice of letting Christ live in our hearts is much more difficult. The daily practice of letting go, letting be, letting come... Often, that's too much loss of personal control.  So we decide to keep forging on the way we always have.  With an awareness of the Spirit, but being sure she stays an arm's reach away from us. Not too close.

Someone said they wondered if I was getting more conservative in my religious thinking.  That's not the right word, conservative.  Because I do think that there are many wide and varied ways to seek the Divine in your life, which make my theology quite liberal, I think. But perhaps traditional, maybe I'm becoming more traditional in my religious practice. Yes, I would say that's right.  I am finding it more helpful to look at those religious traditions that have carried us through thousands of years to get us to this point and seeing how they still point us forward into tomorrow.   Images of Fire.  And Wind. And a Dove.  Temples where people gather to praise God. Books that people open together and sing and read the word of God.  How do they connect us to the ancient people who first shared in that Pentecost and then spread the word throughout the world?  What power and strength do they still hold today to make a difference in people's lives?

What does the Spirit of Pentecost mean for us today in 2015 in this place?  How can we choose to be Alive in the Spirit (Capital A, Capital S).  What do we do to let go, let be, let come and LIVE?

Thoughts? Email me or comment below.  peverhart@niwotumc.org

"You Is Smart"

1 Tim 6:3-19  (The Message)

A devout life does bring wealth, but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God. Since we entered the world penniless and will leave it penniless, if we have bread on the table and shoes on our feet, that’s enough. 1 Tim 6:6-8

How do we best offer instruction to the next generation?  Is it by telling them to read their BIble for an hour every day? Is it by telling them to take a bunch of Advanced Placement classes in school so they can hopefully earn an academic scholarship and get into a 'good' school?  Is it by encouraging them to study a field where they can make a lot of money and be successful?  Is it by living the life we want them to see us living?

The instruction offered in 1 Timothy suggests that money is not the way to get rich in the eyes of God, but living a devout life is.  And notice in this version from Eugene Peterson's The Message (above), he suggests that devoutness isn't so much about trying to be holy as it is about being yourself before God. Being who God made you to be. That might be the best instruction possible to the next generation.

In The Help  by Kathryn Stockett, the young college-educated Skeeter decides to write a book about the lives of the African-American maids employed by all the white families she knows, including her own.  She tackles the project perhaps a little naively at first, but quickly understands the danger in crossing the racial lines of Jackson, MS and the black women who gather to tell her their stories give her a quick education in what 'real life' is like for them, rather than the secluded bubble of 'life' that Skeeter grew up with in her white world.  She sees first hand what discrimination is and, though she can't ever know exactly how they feel, she gets a sense of the ways their reality creates a finite sense of limitation, in ways that hers doesn't, even in a very gender-biased 60's world.

This letter, attributed to Paul but likely written by another person using him as a pseudonym, is written to offer instruction to the faith community still in development.  Much of Timothy is written to instruct on how to avoid false teachings.  Setting down some game rules, so to speak, to keep the next generation of Christians on the right path.   I think an important piece in the study of the letters to Timothy is in understanding the very complicated concept of 'false teaching.'  Is what is false teaching to one person automatically false teaching to another?

In the upper crust world that raised Skeeter, she was taught to see black people as persons to be pitied who were destined to a life of servitude.  We can easily see that as a false teaching today, but we would not necessarily have seen or felt that way in early 1960s Mississippi.  

We are only as knowledgable as we allow ourselves to be in any given moment. The maids grew in knowledge of the white world through Skeeter, learning that it wasn't all filled with people who couldn't see past the color of someone's skin.  Skeeter learned that she could have a college degree and still no nothing about the world she was raised in without talking to people about their own stories.  

In the end, the maids of course stay in Jackson and confront the continued racial bias, now with their stories made public, though supposedly anonymous.  Skeeter takes a job in publishing in New York and moves away. This makes her feel somewhat guilty, leaving them there in the midst of the drama she helped to create., but she is encourage to go and set her wings to flight.

 Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life. 1 Tim 6:17-19

 What makes us smart as we journey to unknown tomorrows?  Being kind and treating everyone we meet as important.  I'm reading a book The Happiness Project  and the author lists as one of her mantras "There is only love."  Great words.  If we look at the world, no matter how unknown it is, ahead of us and see only love, and act only with kindness then we are doing the smartest possible thing we can do.  And you don't have to have a college degree to know that love and kindness will carry your farther at the end of the day than any amount of money.

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.  Remember those words in all you do in the name of Christ.  See your role as a disciple as the most important thing you do.  See your role  of 'being yourself before God' as the most important task you have.  

This week we honor those graduating from high school.  Please join us as we explore more in what it means to follow God into the unknown days ahead.  And join us as we circle around our graduates and bless their beautiful journeys ahead.

Thoughts? Questions? Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment below.

"You Is Kind"

Acts 16:13-34

In this chapter of Acts, we see several incidences of kindness being shown.  Lydia takes in Paul and Silas. She says the Lord has opened her heart to the gospel message as presented by Paul and she wants to open her home to them, to be involved in their ministry by first being hospitable and welcoming to them.

Later in the chapter, Paul shows kindness by saving a slave girl who has been exploited by her owners into telling fortunes. Paul and his companion, Silas, are imprisoned after being arrested on false charges drummed up by the slave girls' owners who are mad that they can no longer exploit her.    While they are there they sing hymns to God and pray aloud,  bringing the other prisoners some comfort. Another act of kindness.

Then an earthquake hits and shakes the foundations of the prison and all the cell doors open.  The jailer comes in and draws his sword to kill himself since he knew he'd get a death sentence for not keeping the prisoners behind bars.  Paul shows a kindness the jailer never dreamed of when he calls out, 'We are all still here,"  The jailer is so surprised he falls down and says, "What must i do to be saved?"

Paul tells him to believe in Jesus and he and his household will be saved.   In turn the jailer takes them to his home and washes their wounds and feeds them at his table, repaying the kindness extended to him.

In The Help, by Kathryn Stockett the line between kindness and pity often gets blurred.  Skeeter, the white woman who is writing the stories of the maids' lives, worries that she can't really see the world the way they do and that they will never trust her because she must surely look down on them as poor colored folk, since she's white.

She hears story after story from the maids about life in a white household, some stories good, but mostly filled with pain and distress from the dismissive ways they were often treated.  Callie shares with her the story of working for Margaret for 38 years and how Margaret had written her a note before she died thanking her for taking care of her baby when she wouldn't stop crying.  She says it's good, so good, to be acknowledged when you are appreciated.  That saying thank you is very important.
Skeeter pauses in grief wondering if she ever really thanked her family's maid, Constantine, for her love and support.

The stories of the maids in The Help do not get shared without them first choosing to help one another and one of their own in a time of need. They don't get published without the outsider white girl deciding to step over the racial line that divides them in Jackson, MS.  The acts of kindness and need to overcome the lack of civility start this process rolling.

In Acts 16, the middle of a powerful biblical account of lives being saved and arrests and earthquakes, it's easy to miss the ways that kindness plays a role in spreading the gospel message. Without the small acts of kindness and courage, the gospel here doesn't get spread and the story loses its impact.  The acts of hospitality are a response in this story.  Lydia and the jailer offer their hospitality when their lives are changed.  Paul offers them kindness in sharing his message in a way that is accessible, by obeying the prison laws and not escaping,  which in turn allows them to believe in  Christ.

That three-part charge of Aibileen to little Mae Mobley, "You is kind, you is smart, you is important" is   a great mantra to building up this little girl's self-esteem.  But perhaps the greatest of these statements is You is kind.  For if you are not kind, being smart and important take on a whole other realm of existence with your neighbor that aren't so neighborly.  Kindness, then, may be the virtue here that matters most. And it may have just been the main way the gospel spread in those first days of the church.

How is the church kind to those around us?  In what ways can we improve in our kindness to one another and to our community?  Do you think that the disciples understood and lived into just how important 'kindness' is to creating a movement?  Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment below.