"You Is Important"

A very special thank you to our children for leading us in worship April 26.  Your Magic Kingdom message was wonderful and I love each of you for who and what you are. Thank you so much!

 Acts 2:41-47

1 Cor 14:26-31

In the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which was made into a major motion picture, we glimpse a  view of Southern life that is filled with class distinctions and racism, yet also profoundly tells the story of just how important 'the help' (the African-American maids who work for white folks) are to just about every facet of life for a Southern white family in the mid part of the last century.

African-American girls and women were employed by middle and upper class white families to not only dust and mop and do laundry, but also cook their meals and raise their children. One maid might stay with a family for generations. The children often felt much closer to the maids than they did their own mothers, who were off working on charity work for the Junior League while their children were home being tended to by these kind and caring maids.

One particular maid in the book, Aibileen,  is trying to instill in the little girl under her care, Mae Mobley, a sense of self-esteem, something her mother seems unable or unwilling to instill in her daughter.  The maid keeps reminding the little girl of her worth by saying the phrase over and over again, "You is kind, you is smart, you is important."  Mae Mobley repeats it back to her. Their relationship is endearing, at one point Mae Mobley telling Aibileen, "You're my real mama, Abi."

The next few weeks, we are looking at the uprising that continues in the days following Jesus crucifixion and resurrection. The rumblings and yearnings of the first disciples and the first apostles, those who decided to keep the movement of Jesus alive and moving and growing.  Values that they all shared were a common sense of humanity, the need to encourage one another and their neighbors, the need to life one another up.  These early stories reminded me of the encouraging and nurturing relationships developed between maid Aibileen and the sweet Mae Mobley.  And that echoing phrase, "You is kind, you is smart, you is important."

Today we focus on the encouragement "You is important."  In 1 Corinthains 14 we read
What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.  

This scripture and the scripture in Acts 2 that suggests that everyone did what was best for the community stress the strong desire of the early faith communities to value the importance of every single person. The realization that every single person had a profoundly important role to play in the development of the faith community and that each one of them depended on the gifts of the other members to bring out their own.  Each person had a very important role to play and everything they did individually was to be done for the building up of the community. Acts tells us that the movement grew by the thousands in those early days.  Enormous exponential growth.  You have to wonder if that growth was because of this value they all shared.  The need and desire to put one another first, to value the importance of one another and the realization that each person was important to the whole.

Mae Mobley feels at her best when she is around her loving caregiver maid Aibileen.  She feels buoyed and encouraged by that phrase, "you is kind, you is smart, you is important."  She understands that valuing her own self as important is not self-congratulatory but a way of understanding that she is important to others and they are important to her.

This Sunday as we come forward to receive the holy sacrament, we too are reminded of how very important we are to God, to the Living Christ, and to one another.  The body of Christ does not exist here without each of us breathing it into life.  One wonderful way we do that here at NUMC is by sharing our gifts with those in need.  So, as always,  please bring your non-perishable food items for the OUR Center as you come forward to receive Holy Communion.

An Uprising in the Works

John 21:1-15

 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord.  Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.  This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Resurrection meals occur on more than once instance and in more than one gospel in the days after the empty tomb story.  In Luke, the road to Emmaus story ends with Jesus being recognized in the breaking of bread around a supper table.  Then, in the gospel of John, we have this story of a man standing on the seashore, calling to the disciples after an unsuccessful night of fishing.  He calls to them and tells them to cast their nets on the other side... and an abundance of fish suddenly fill their nets.  After this, the disciples come ashore and share a breakfast of grilled fish with the man, whom John and Peter have already recognized as the Risen Christ, but whom now all those gathered finally recognize... again in the sharing of a meal.

What these stories say to us is that in the post-resurrection journey we are on with Jesus, we find him in the ordinary events of life.  That he has a way of infusing himself into the routine and regular meals of our lives and nourishing us for our own walk of faith. As Eugene Peterson puts it, "We're formed in the routines." (Living the Resurrection, Navpress, 2006, p. 70)

During that breakfast on the seashore, Jesus encourages Peter to "feed my lambs," an initiation into this new world of being disciples who embody a Christ within, rather than following a man among them.  We are also called to that same level of discipleship.  A recognition that being a disciple doesn't mean admiring a man, but embodying his example in the world today. A recognition that being a disciple is more about bringing Christ's love into the ordinary and routine aspects of our lives... cleaning, shopping, walking the dogs, caring for our families and friends... than it is about being some sort of inaccessible and perfect "Christian."

Feed my lambs.  All of us are called to do just that.  In the most ordinary of ways.  How can you be a true disciple of the Risen Christ in your own daily life? In your context?  Do you have ideas about how NUMC can embody the Risen Christ in this community and in the world? Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment below.

He is risen, therefore We are risen. Indeed.

"Easter's Breadbasket"

Luke 24:1-34

This version of the resurrection in Luke is fascinating.  First, the women come to the tomb to anoint the body of the crucified Jesus with spices.  And the body is GONE!   And the linens that wrapped the body are laid neatly to the side.

Next, two men "in dazzling clothes" stand beside the tomb and report that this was what Jesus said would happen all along. That on the third day he would rise. The men say, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."

Next, the women go tell the disciples and "all the rest," and they are soundly dismissed as reporting an 'idle tale.'  Until, of course, Peter goes to check it out for himself and finds the tomb indeed empty.

Later that same day, two of them were walking back toward their village of Emmaus, talking about the dramatic events of the last few days, including this bizarre turn of events today.  A stranger joins them on the road and proceeds to tell them that this all makes sense. Just like the men in dazzling clothes, he says, "Oh how foolish you are and how slow to believe the words of the prophets! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"

Next, when the two and the stranger arrive at the village, they invite the stranger in for the evening as it has gotten dark.  And, as they are sitting around the table, he breaks the bread, blesses it, and in that moment they see that he is the Risen Christ, come to them. All at once, though, he was gone...  The scripture says, "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight."

What a crazy chain of events. Like the twists and turns of an unbelievable play that leaves the audience wondering what's next.   And indeed that is part of the mystery of being children of the Resurrection, those who believe in the living Christ.

Part of believing in what Jesus' message brings to us is recognizing that Jesus is with us in the everyday journey of life. That all those fascinating moments when we think Jesus is might be with us, but then we aren't so sure after all, are just the Divine's way of telling us that we must embody him in the ordinary events of life.  That Jesus is only with us from within... if we recognize it.

It has been suggested that crucifixion is the slow, excruciating, public separation of body and blood.  Perhaps then, the resurrection is a reuniting of those elements of life into the corporate body of Christ we call the church.  Brian McLaren says "could our remembering him actually re-member and resurrect him in our hearts, our bodies, our lives? ... Is that why we saw him and then didn't see him--because the place he wants to be seen is in our bodies, among us, in us?"

When the women come to the tomb, they see a vision... and are dismissed. It is 'just" a vision.  But maybe a vision is the intuit into the truth.  Have you ever had an intuition that something will come to pass and then it does? Or you just have a feeling about something?  That's what visions are too.  As McLaren states, "Maybe a vision means seeing into what's more real than anything else."

What did those first Resurrection visions really mean?  We don't know exactly what happened, but we do know what the gospels shared.  That women were told the news first as they came to complete the ordinary ritual of burial anointing with spices. That they were dismissed as wrong. That Jesus appears vividly again in the breaking of the bread and the giving thanks.  And then as soon as the bread is handed to those gathered, and he is recognized,  he disappears.

Is he giving them the reigns in this moment?  Remember the Last Supper. This is my body. Given for you.  Jesus is Master giving the Truth to the students.  We are now tasked with sharing the body.. giving the gift of bread... to those who come alongside and after us.

The bounty is ours to share.  In the midst of a chaotic story, we find the ordinary sharing of a meal is where the Risen Christ can fully appear.  Are we tasked, then, with creating Resurrection not in the high places of worship and knowledge, but around the pub tables and picnic tables and kitchen tables of our lives?  It sure sounds like it.

Please join us for Holy Thursday, 7 pm on April 2 and again on Sunday, April 5 for Easter; Sunday School at 9, Worship at 10:20, Easter Egg Hunt and Brunch following worship.

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

Peace March

Luke 19:29-48
(You might also want to take a look at Psalm 122 and Zechariah 9:9-10
and Chapter 32 from We Make the Road by Walking by Brian McLaren.)

So, while we all LOVE Palm Sunday and the waving of the branches during the procession and the uplifting way it makes us feel (It's my favorite day of worship of this Lenten/Easter season, to be honest), it is often not exposed for what it really is.  We mistake it for a good time. For a time to worship Jesus, triumphantly riding into Jerusalem, recognized at last by the crowd as the King who comes in the name of the Lord.

But it's not like that. It's not really a parade like the kind we might see on the Fourth of July in Niwot. The Niwot Fourth of July parade is a fun and celebratory parade, a touch of true Americana. Beginning with pancakes and kicking off a day of fireworks and barbecues, it's just delightful!  And this Palm Parade is just not that kind of parade, though we do make it feel that way.

Instead, it's more like a march... Brian McLaren calls it a Peace March.  It's a protest parade in the eyes of Jesus.  Sure, the people on the sides of the road place their coats over the road to form a regal path and wave palm branches as if greeting royalty, but Jesus has a different mission in mind than celebration.  He is headed to confront the gross injustices that have run rampant.  He isn't smiling, instead he is crying! He says "if you had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."He is crying for Jerusalem and the ways that they have let the  corrupt caesars ruin the way of peace.

And in this gospel, the gospel of Luke, Jesus doesn't stop there. He goes into the temple and turns over all the moneychanger tables and animal sale stalls and declares it to be a den of robbers instead of a house of prayer.  He alludes to Psalm 122 that suggests the temple is a place to come for prayer. He suggests that it has instead become a place to hide for those who have completed acts of violence against the poor. A place to pretend they care.

When we consider what the Palm Sunday parade actually symbolizes, it does sound less like a parade and more of a peace march, like perhaps the March on Selma fifty years ago, or the student protests during the Vietnam War, or the protests surrounding the Iraq wars, or the protests that have bubbled up related to police and race relations.  This march of Jesus is a march that demands peace and right relations, rather than violence and manhandling. A protest that ruffles the feathers of those who are meting out the violence and seeking to stay in control.  And, of course, it is a threat to the established corrupt order and they will mete out even more violence to continue their reign... we are all well aware what happens to Jesus, after all, at the end of this week.

What does it mean to take a celebration and turn it into a time to contend for those who need our voices supporting them?  How could we turn our eyes, and hands and hearts, toward seeking justice and peace, rather than just accepting the status quo?  What could we make the Palm Parade mean in today's context?

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

"Shine With the Flavor of Love" (preacher this week, Katie Warren)

Matthew 5:13-16

Katie Warren is our preacher this week.  She is preaching on the passage from the Sermon on the Mount that encourages us to be salt of the earth and lights shining on a hill for all to see.

Here's what Brian McLaren says about this passage in We Make the Road by Walking.

"Like salt that brings out the best flavors in food, we will bring out the best in our community and society. Also like salt, we will have a preservative function--opposing corruption and decay. Like light that penetrates and eradicates darkness, we will radiate health, goodness, and well-being to warm and enlighten those around us. Simply by being who we are--living boldly and freely in this new identity as salt and light--we will make a difference as long as we don't lose our 'saltiness' or try to hide our light... 'Wow,' people will say, 'when I see the goodness and kindness of your lives, I can believe there's a good and kind God out there, too."

I look forward to hearing what Katie has to say on this scripture passage.  She is already such a beacon of light for all of us, so hearing from her on this passage will be a wonderful addition to our Lenten journey this year.

“Misery Loves Company”

Mathew 7:1-12
also, Chapter 30 of We Make the Road by Walking by Brian McLaren

The status quo says we should be interested in money. Striving for wealth and creature comforts. This alternative way of living suggested by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is quite the opposite. Not worrying about the material goods of life, but being intently interested in relationships.   This section addresses the importance of relationships to provide support and focus in a world that is frightened by this alternative path. But relationship building does not mean complaining and whining about the other, looking at the grass on the other side, or trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Chapter 7 addresses the very real and human tendency we have in times of heightened stress and anxiety to judge one another.  To compare ourselves to others and in an attempt to make ourselves feel better and stronger, we judge and condemn anyone else’s way. We want to make sure everyone else feels as miserable as we do about ourselves and so we point the finger at one another. The famous line about taking the log out of your own eye before you pluck the speck out of your neighbor’s eye appears here.  Jesus suggests here that it doesn’t mean that a person’s wrongdoings be ignored, but that we not fully and wholly condemn someone. Rather, he suggests a sort of compassionate correction rather than condemnation.  He says what is merciful is self examination and correction, rather than condemnation.  If you are miserable, seek out the answers why within yourself, rather than poking around in your neighbor’s eye.

The famous lines about ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find and knock and the door shall be opened to you are also in the passage.  I have always heard this passage described in ways that are more about acquisition than spiritual disciplines, but that is far from what Jesus is getting at here.  Jesus suggests that we seek God first. We ask, seek and knock means we PRAY in a daily practice, we actively seek God’s presence in our lives and we invite God to be part of our journey.  It isn’t about GETTING something from God, it’s about giving yourself fully to God’s purpose.  It’s a compliment to the passage last week about developing spiritual practices.  Implied here is the notion that if we give into the release that spiritual practices offer, we are able to let go of the miserable stronghold the ‘everyday world’ holds over us.

We end this week’s reading with the Golden Rule, which is not unique to Jesus, to the Christian faith, but goes across most cultures and religions. Almost every culture on earth has what we call the Golden Rule as it’s foundational moral compass, but here it is used by the gospel writer to summarize Jesus’ teachings (and it does so VERY well) and to emphasize Jesus’ plea that we show indiscriminate love for all because in doing that we will be mirroring God’s love.

Lots going on here, but not really any new ideas to share than in previous weeks. Bottom line: Love your neighbor with a deep and profound love.  Care for one another. Dig within your own heart and discover what work you need to do internally.  Ask God to be with you internally that you might live as a disciple externally.

This is all so much.  Can we do it?  With God’s help, the door will be opened to us.  What are your thoughts? Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment below.

"I Don't WANNA Practice"

Matthew 6:1-18
Also, from Chapter 29 of the book, We Make the Road by Walking by Brian McLaren

Jesus continues his teaching to the disciples by encouraging them to practice some key spiritual disciplines, but most importantly to NOT make a show of the practice. To practice them in private, alone.  Brian McLaren says “If you want to see change in the outside world, the first step is to withdraw into your inner world. Connect with God in secret, and the results will occur  “openly.”

I get the importance of spiritual disciplines. And I think that almost none of us are as dedicated to the serious practice time required in these disciplines to make us the sort of disciples Jesus is calling.  

And probably the part we all struggle with the most is the ‘secret life’ of the disciplines that Jesus is suggesting here.  Perhaps for most of us,  prayer and giving and fasting (and other disciplines like Bible study or singing hymns) comes in being with a group of people like our faith community. Even in our worship service, we have times of public prayer and public giving.  We might decide to fast as a community or to give something up for Lent as a community.

So for Jesus to suggest that the way we truly become agents for change is by withdrawing from the world as we practice prayer and fasting and giving… well, that is counter-intuitive for many of us.

I think part of what we can focus on this week in this passage is the importance of our self-reflection and our inner work on becoming a true disciple.  Choosing a spiritual discipline to follow and then intentionally practicing it, day after day, with deep connection with God being your focus, your purpose.  After all, you don’t immediately run a 10K without training for it. So think of these spiritual disciplines as practicing. And practicing regularly creates in us a habit and a way to reach our goals.  Many of you know that once you start, for example, an exercise routine, you REALLY miss it when you don’t get to do it.

How can we make the practices of giving, or fasting, or praying (or you add your own practice) lifelong habits that help us become better disciples?  How can we start to devote our own private time to following God, instead of just the activities we are involved in with others at the church or in our volunteer work?

When I was in seminary, we had to work on some sort of self-improvement goals and many of us went to counseling sessions as a way to work on these goals.  I chose to work on spiritual disciplines. It changed my life. But, I let ‘the real world’ crowd in on me once again, and I lost touch with many of my practices.  How can we avoid starting these practices and then not continuing  them through the long haul?

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