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.

"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.