"Ice Fishing"

Matthew 4:12-23

There's fishing... and then there's ice fishing.  One is more challenging, though both are fraught with chance and skill in ways that are amazing to those of us who don't fish very well.  But, ice fishing is complicated by the.... ice.  You have to go out there and carve out a hole in the ice and know what the best place to do that is, and ... well, it just seems harder to me.

This week's scripture is another one of those immediately following Jesus kinds of stories. In this week's story we read another account of people being drawn to Jesus.
As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.

And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people."  Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

 Inevitably, people wonder how they managed to do that. What were their lives like that they could just walk away from them and follow Jesus?  And we don't really know how or why or if that happens exactly like we imagine, but the writer of Matthew is intent on us believing they had THAT level of faith in this man they followed. And so was the writer of John in last week's reading.

Commitment, sacrifice, willingness to abandon a way of life for another... those are traits the gospel writers are suggesting disciples had and have.  Like those who brave the conditions and the circumstances to go out and carve a hole in the ice in hopes of making a great catch.  Ice fishing requires commitment, sacrifice of creature comforts and a focus on a way of life that not many are willing to join in... ice fishing as a recreational sport is not for the faint of heart or those who expect instant results.  It is methodical, takes planning and focus.

I wonder if Jesus and the early disciples viewed their ministry in that way? Even though we have these dramatic accounts of people who dropped their nets and their plans and followed Jesus, I wonder if the inner circle including Jesus wasn't more intentional about their way of life. Were they methodical in where they went, who they saw, who they expected to see them? Were they fishing for a certain kind of person, the person no one else was willing to allow into the fold?  It's really interesting food for thought.

And in John 3, the Lutheran Seminary lectionary text for this week, we read of the encompassing love of God. "For God so loved the world."  The beginning of a passage that has been so taken out of context. A passage that is not at all about condemnation of those who don't follow, but rather a passage about God's encompassing love for THE WHOLE WORLD.  If we truly follow that God of love, if Jesus truly was that LOVE incarnate on earth, then we, too, must be willing to embody and carry that love to the world.

That sort of love would make ice fishing so much easier. Because God love is warm and all encompassing and eternal.  So we would no longer have to carve through the icy hearts and minds of today's cynicism, but we would allow God to melt our ice away and catch us up in a net of compassion and goodwill and justice.

How do we 'carve' out places in our icy world to fish for people today?  How could we warm the icy waters instead?  What role do we have in becoming Methodists who offer warmed hearts instead of icy doctrines and rules?  Email me or comment below.

Weather Watch: Snowcast

Psalm 40:1-11

John 1:29-39

This is a transitional place in the gospel of John. John has just baptized Jesus and Jesus is just about to start his public ministry. In the other gospel accounts, just after Jesus is baptized he goes into the wilderness and is faced with the forty days of temptation.  Not so in John. In John, Jesus is announced in a manner of speaking by John.  

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ 

It's like Jesus' "Here's Johnny!" moment with John playing the part of Ed McMahon.  John declares "Here is the Lamb of God," and the people nearby are interested.  Interested that he is being called the Lamb of God (a lamb was a sacrifice at the altar) and interested in what this man is about.  They want to know where he is staying.  They follow him almost immediately.  It's weird, really, "The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus."  Just like that. Really?

When you hear a weather forecast for snow, do you immediately go prepare for the snow, or do you doubt for a while first?  I know that I don't often believe it the first time I hear it. The weather forecasters must tell me for days on end that snow is coming before I actually can buy into the "snow is coming" reality.  Did Jesus have such an aura about him that they immediately felt compelled to follow? Or is John portraying Jesus this way to make a point about following the lamb to sacrifice?

This Sunday is Human Relations Sunday in the UMC. It is the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr Day. It is a time to remember our call to right the injustices of the world, to align ourselves with the oppressed, to recognize that we can transform our world in little bitty ways and great big ways.

Did Martin Luther King, Jr and all those in the Civil Rights movement just go immediately? Or did they have to be in the desert for awhile to build up to the cause?  I am not sure of each inner mind's thoughts, but they did have to have a sense of 'the climate shifting,' and knew that it would only continue to shift if they got involved.  The sense of sacrifice and call to duty of MLK, Jr who gave his life fighting for freedom and respect and civil rights for African Americans is what we honor on the holiday.  

I wonder, when John announces Jesus as 'the lamb of God,' if he is fully aware of the sacrifices he has ahead of him, can he feel a climate shift?  Is Jesus able to forecast the darkness ahead? Or does he have to hear the words of the prophets over and over again before he can grab onto the reality?

What do you believe without persuasion in this faith journey? What takes time for you to believe?  Email me or comment below.

"Digging Out After the Big Snow"

Isaiah 42:1-9
Matthew 3:13-17

So baptism used to not be like it is now. It used to be you walked out into the river and got dunked under and you came up with river dirt in your hair and between your toes, and you felt whiter than snow. And in Jesus' day, it wasn't supposed to be this moment of joining the church or being brought into the Kingdom of God. It was a purity ritual  that you participated in so that you would be cleansed and purified before offering a sacrifice at the temple. You had to be washed before heading into the temple.

Somewhere along the line we brought the baptism ritual into the church and it became sanitary and nice and pretty and churchy.

It wasn't always that way.  I think baptism, even in early Christian tradition, used to be far more visceral and messy. It used to be out in the world, out in nature, not inside a fancy sanctuary.  Kind of like looking at a snowstorm out your living room window is much different than being stuck in it with your car or on foot and trying to dig out of it.  You really GET the storm when you are forced to dig your way through or out of it.

Baptism, in classic mainline Protestant terms, is usually a sacrament given to infants or children when their parents have made the decision that they are ready for the children's lives to be publicly marked by God. They are ready to commit as parents to being a Christian family and raise the children in a Christian home.  So, remembering your baptism is the visceral way many of us have of connecting to that moment in time. Some of us were baptized later and we remember well the feelings and emotions associated with that event. Either way, we have become too complacent in our celebration of this sacrament. It has become too routine.

What if we got down and dirty and were completely overtaken by the waters of Baptism?  What if we felt the sand or mud between our toes? What if we felt the rush of water pour over our heads?  Baptism is supposed to be shocking.   We are supposed to have our breath taken away by how it feels to be overtaken by the Spirit Waters.  

What if we thought, today at least, of Baptism as a big snowstorm that over takes us. That takes our sensibilities away and grabs us unexpectedly and pulls us off the road.  We have absolutely NO control over that snowstorm... it is here and it is pouring down on us fast and furious... we have to allow it to do what it does.

But then, the snow stops. The skies open up and clear (the heavens were opened up to him).  You get out and dig out your car... get it off and running again and slowly, carefully, head down the road. Ahead of you are lights, houses, people waiting for you (a dove descends).  People say, "Glad you are home, we were worried about you." (a voice from heaven speaks).

I think remembering our baptisms or being baptized should be a visceral event. It should feel like you have been overtaken by the snow, or been dunked under in the local swimming hole, or been knocked over by a wave in the ocean.  It should feel THAT dangerous, THAT crazy out of control.  And then, after that loss of equilibrium, you dig your way out...find your way out... come up for a new breath. And you are changed because of the overwhelming event that just happened.

Do you remember being overwhelmed if you were baptized as a youth or adult? Do you remember being overwhelmed when your kids were baptized as infants?  What ritual would make you feel overwhelmed by the Spirit today?  Email me or comment below.

Snow Epiphany: Starry, Starry Night

Isaiah 60:1-6   John 1: 4-13
Matthew 2:7-12

Is there any image more compelling than a fresh white, sparkling snow on a moonlit, star-filled night? It is hard to imagine finding an image more beautiful.



What is it about the white snow and the stars and the moon blanketing the night sky that draws us in? It is impossible to say why images like this make our hearts feel warm, but they always do.

It is not unlike the images we might also conjure up about the Epiphany story... the three wise men heading toward Bethlehem following the light of a distant, but brightly-shining star. I imagine they did not have to cross a snowy plain or mountainside, like the one in this image, but the image of the wise men and their entourage, heading faithfully and diligently night-after-night, searching for a Messiah newly-born is heartwarming. And the most heartwarming part of all is the part where they decide to add a 'plot twist' after seeing the toddler Jesus... they do not return to Herod, but rather, spare Jesus' life and head a different direction.

This month we begin a new sermon series called "Snow Faith: Finding Spirituality in the Snow." This week we focus on the starry night in the snow. The Snow Epiphany, if you get my 'drift.'  Sunday is Epiphany Sunday, a Sunday when we recognize the journey of the wise men, awaken to our own inner yearnings to go a different way in order to keep Jesus alive in our own hearts and lives, and move in unexpected directions into the new year.

What breath-taking moments from the past can you carry with you into this new year?  What new light can you shine on the blanket of a new year, with no tracks as of yet tread upon it?  What ways can you bow down and worship Jesus and move forward to transform your world in 2014?

Email me or comment below.

Happy New Year!  Happy Epiphany!  May the 'light' be with you.

Keeping Christmas Well

Luke 2:1-20
another version

(From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more, and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for his was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the  Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Scrooge has been through a lot with those three Spirits (Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future). He has felt the world he knew shift beneath his feet and alter his sense of what is right and what is wrong in the world. He has seen how his stinginess and uncaring, unkind spirit has created his own loneliness, his own despair, his own fate in life. But mostly he has seen how it has affected countless others around him, including children such as Tiny Tim. His heart is, to say it as Methodist founder John Wesley might, strangely warmed.  He sees the world a new way.

And so did all those in that beautiful account in Luke 2.  Mary's heart is changed when she gives birth to one who will save the world, even if she can't name yet.  Joseph's heart is changed when he is forced to put his family in an animal's stall or cave and help his wife to deliver this one who has been promised by the angel who came to him and to Mary.  The shepherds abiding in the fields... their hearts are changed when angels come down and shine all around them... they are at first terrified, and then strangely warmed by the message that a Messiah has been born in Bethlehem and they are the first to hear of it.

Christmas does that to us. It changes us. It sneaks in on us in the midst of candy canes and pine needles and makes us confront what we know is right and wrong in the world.  We, too, can see the message clearly proclaimed,  "Peace on earth, good will to all."  And we know, if only for this one night, we know very clearly that Christmas is worth doing right. It is worth keeping 'well,' as Scrooge found out.  May we always know what we must do, how we must change, who we must be to make Christmas 'well' for those around us.

Comments? Thoughts? Email me or comment below.  Merry Christmas, my beloved community!

The Crachits' Cry from the Wilderness

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  --from Isaiah 11


This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"from Matthew 3


"I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

--from Matthew 3

Charles Dickens is able to recreate such vivid images of child labor and workhouse conditions of debtors in his  novels because he survived such conditions himself. His dad was a gainfully employed man, but a man who had a debt of 40 pounds, which, in those days was the same as stealing 40 pounds.  So he had to go to debtor's prison and his son, twelve-year old Charles, had to work ten hours a day putting shoe polish in jars.

Dickens understood the injustices of life. He understood the need to pen words in protest to such a system. The fact that he did it also in his fiction works is genius.. a lasting testimony to a man whose purpose was to make life better for those around him. His works are a cry in the wilderness to those who are in power. A cry of protest from the midst of the pain. And once he was an established, praised and successful author, but one who remembered his painful past, all the better to be the voice of change.

John the Baptist is the cry from the wilderness we hear this week. He is crying out in the words of Isaiah, begging those gathered to prepare the way for one who is coming after him. One who will demand justice, who will baptize with the fire of the Spirit. One who will see to it that the weak are made strong, that even the child will be treasured, rather than discarded.

This week why not look at the ways we avoid the cry in the wilderness? The ways we drown out the cry of the needy with the LOUD CAROLS sung all around us....  How often, as we buy the sweater on sale for $17.99, do we consider that a little boy or girl much like the Cratchit children in Dickens' A Christmas Carol likely made it for pennies and by working long hours in awful conditions?

The United Nations estimates that worldwide one in six children under age fifteen works full time---around 150 million children.1 (Warren, Andrea, Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London, Houghton-Mifflin 2011, 143)

Scrooge's famous line "Are there no workhouses?" comes back to haunt him when the Ghost of Christmas Present shows him reality.   The cry from the wilderness is hard to hear when you spend all your time counting your own good fortune. It sometimes has to be forced upon us by haunting images.

Who are the Cratchits all around us? Why do we fail them so often? How can we open our hearts, minds, and doors to them not just during Advent and Christmas, but every minute of every day of the year?

Join us this Advent season as we explore the harsh and real theological beauty of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Thoughts? Email me or comment below.

"We Give Thanks for Salvation Stories"

Luke 23:33-43

Nothing says the end of the church liturgical year like this scripture reading. This visceral reminder that the world with all its frailties put Jesus to death on a cross. The mocking words of the soldiers, "He saved others, let him save himself..." and "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself."

On this Christ the King Sunday, it is almost strange to even think of earthly kings. There are very few around today and the ones we do have are often figure-heads, like the King of England, with lots of power in the tradition of the throne, but very little real power in terms of governing the people.  So, we don't even know what to make of a phrase like Christ the King.

So, it is better, perhaps, to focus on the acts that happen in this text. Jesus being nailed to a cross and mocked as a King. Jesus being ridiculed for saving people, but choosing not to save himself. What kind of King is he, if he allows himself to be crucified?

Today we give thanks for selfless acts of salvation.  Jesus who became the Christ in his selfless act of salvation, by choosing to not allow the rule of a governing body to affect his loving ministry to people in need.  And, in all of our holy and sacred everyday moments, we, too have salvation stories to share.

I have heard a few of your stories.  Stories of one who performed the Heimlich maneuver and saved a grandson's life, of a newlywed husband who saved his drowning bride, of parents who pull their adult children out of harm's way in abusive relationships, of out-of-body near death experiences where somehow, someway the body managed to save itself.  Amazing stuff. Powerful testimony of that instinct we all have to save each other and save ourselves in moments of crisis.

I have to think that Jesus, the fully human side of Jesus, wanted to save himself, and yet the loving, far-reaching visionary Jesus, wanted to save us more.  Jesus could see that giving in to the laws and rules of a short-sighted society would not lead anywhere, but choosing to pour God's love and compassion onto the world, no matter the consequences might indeed be life-saving for even him.

If it feels like Resurrection, like Easter, it is. The last day of the liturgical calendar is Easter all over again. To remind us why we will begin to wait with earnest for the baby in the manger next week. To remind us why it is important for that Child to come over and over again.  To remind us THAT salvation story begins not on a cross, but with a mother's obedient answer to God's call.

What salvation stories can you share?  Why are these important in our culture?  Email me or comment below.