Landlord gets a job rather than evict tenants
This is the kind of news we need more often. It takes courage and creativity to make the world a better place, and Ed Peirce is a great example of both.
Props to Andrew Dys of the Rock Hill Herald for an excellent article. Send him some love at adys@heraldonline.com
Was Blind but Now I See
Text: Mark 10:46-52
Author’s Note: In preparation for this sermon, I asked the congregation to wear blindfolds for the first half of the service. Before they put them on, I asked them to take the most valuable object in their wallet, maybe a $100 bill, maybe a credit card, maybe a picture of their child, whatever in their wallet is most valuable to them. Take it out and set it somewhere within arms reach. They listened to the rest of the service not being able to see the thing they value most.
It's amazing how different a service sounds when you can't see
You’re probably getting tired of these blindfolds. Well, good. That’s the point. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do, and I understand.” This is your chance to do something, to step inside the experience of someone whose life is radically different from your own. His name was Bartimaeus, and he was blind. It’s most likely that he was not born blind, but lost his sight to injury or sickness. I want you to walk a moment in his shoes. Actually, he probably didn’t have shoes, so I want you to imagine yourself sitting on a mat.
It’s the same mat you always sit on, in the same place you usually sit, begging for hand-outs from the passersby. The twisted rag over your eyes serves a double purpose. You learned long ago that people find your eyes disturbing, so you cover them. The frayed and dirty rag lets people see your need from far away and helps them get close enough to drop a few coins on the mat. You’ve begged from this spot for years, so it’s all familiar: the cool stone wall at your back that gives shade through the worst of the day, the taste of the dirt kicked up by the people, the smell of animals and sweat, the half-heard conversations.
It’s all familiar, until the crowd starts to close in. Their voices rise in pitch and volume. You pull your feet in close so that no one steps on you. You try to ask what’s going on, but no one answers. So you do what you do best. You listen. Suddenly, you hear a word that ties your stomach in knots. Jesus. Jesus is coming. Here! Right down this road. You try to catch your breath as your mind whirls.
You’ve been hearing about him for months now. People wondered about him as they walked home alone. They argued about him with their friends. It’s amazing what you overhear because no one notices you’re there. And you had begun to piece together something about this man, that he was a prophet, a man of God, a healer, perhaps even the messiah. You’ve heard so much about him, and now his name stirs hope within you, a hope so deep that you dared not even admit it to yourself.
Now the crowd is pressing close, and the hum increases again. He’s here. He’s close. So you do what you do best. You do what you’ve been trained to do by years of people trying desperately to ignore you. You grab their attention. You make them look you in the eye. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on me!” Again and again you call out, and the people in front of you tell you to be quiet so they can hear, but you shout all the louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Have mercy on me! Have mercy. Mercy…”
But it’s too late. He’s gone. And you start to cry. Someone reaches down and touches your shoulder but you push them away. Then another hand grabs yours and now you hear their words, “Be happy. Stand up! He’s calling you.” You may be blind, but your legs work fine, so you jump to your feet, throw off your cloak, and push through the crowd as gentle hands guide you. Then two hands grab yours and don’t let go. The crowd goes silent.
“What do you want me to do for you?” What do you ask? How do you say it? “Do I ask for my sight? What if he says no? Is that all I really want? I don’t want to be a beggar any more. I want to follow him, to learn from him. But what if he laughs? What if they all laugh? Who do I think I am? Who do I think he is?”
It’s so quiet you can hear your own heart race. So you do what you do best. You swallow your pride and you ask. “Rabbi, I want to see.” A murmur runs through the crowd, and a few do laugh. They scoff at the presumption. Then they all go silent, listening for his reply. “Go,” he says, “Your faith has healed you.”
Your hand shakes as you reach up to pull the rag from your eyes. (Go ahead. Remove your blindfold.) And you see the colors: blue sky, yellow sand, brown wood, grey stone, green leaves, and those eyes. You see his smiling eyes for just a second, and then the crowd erupts. They want to touch you. They want to see you. They want to know if it’s true. “Were you really blind? Was it all a stunt? Did he really heal you? What did it feel like? What did he say to you?” They push and pull you and you lose sight of him in the crowd, but then you see him again and you push forward. The world is beautiful, but he is more. The attention is intoxicating, but he is more. You’re not going to lose him. He’s your teacher and you are going to follow. (pause)
Some folks hear that story, and say, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” And that’s true as far as it goes. Do you imagine Bartimaeus was the only person in that crowd who needed healing? Of course not. But he was the one who was healed because he made noise. So it is true, but there’s more to it than that. Bartimaeus didn’t let his limitations define him. Sure he was blind, but his voice worked. His legs worked. He didn’t let the years of people calling him a cripple trick him into thinking he was helpless. But it’s even more than that.
There were people in that crowd who needed healing, but they didn’t have what Bartemaeus had. They didn’t have his experience. He was blind, so he learned to listen. He was ignored, so he learned to grab people’s attention. Most people said no, so he learned to be relentless. He had to beg, so he learned to swallow his pride. So when that day finally came, everyone else stood by the side of the road and watched their messiah walk on by. They watched their healing walk on by. But he shouted. He would not be silenced. He jumped up. He stepped forward, and he asked. But there’s more.
There’s something here that can’t be explained by his experience. In fact, you would expect the exact opposite from someone who had been through what he had. Bartimaeus had hope. He lost his sight, forced to beg, mistreated and ignored. He had every reason to hate God. He had every reason to believe that there was no God. But when the day came, he heard people talking about Jesus, and something in their words gave him hope. He had faith enough to speak up and step out in front of all those people. He was brave enough to hope for help from someone he’d never met, on the chance that the words he’d heard about him might be true. You could say it was just desperation, but that doesn’t explain why he called Jesus Rabbi.
We have many other healing stories in the Bible, but normally, the person get’s healed and goes home. Sometimes they go shouting the news, sometimes they don’t even bother to say thanks. But Bartimaeus follows Jesus down the road. He had hope, he had faith, and in spite of everything he had gone through, he believed. Personally, I think that’s why Jesus draws attention to it. He says, “Go. Your faith has healed you.” Your faith has healed you.
It was a tiny faith, like an ember at the top of a candle. If he had bold faith, he would have stood in the middle of the road to meet Jesus. If he’d had great faith, he would have left his mat long before and gone to seek Jesus. It was just a little faith, but it was real. In spite of all he’d endured, that tiny flicker of hope still burned, and Jesus turned that tiny ember into a flame.
So Bartimaeus didn’t get a miracle because he made the most noise. He made the most noise because he didn’t let his handicap define him. He made the most noise because his limitations didn’t crush him. They sharpened him. He made the most noise because in spite of everything he had endured, a flicker of faith still stirred in his heart. He was blind, but that day he was the only one in the crowd who could see. All Jesus did was make his outside match his inside.
Author’s Note: If you’re wondering why I asked them to put their most valuable object somewhere within arms reach, trust me, so were they. They found out when we got to the offering, which I introduced as follows:
I’d like you to close your eyes again. Last time, I promise. As you close your eyes, I have a question for you. How much of your church can you still see? I bet most of you, without opening your eyes, could point your finger at the cross. (Many nodded.) If you have a friend who always sits in the same spot, I bet most of you could turn in your seat right now and point your nose at that person so that when you opened your eyes their face would be the very first thing you would see. (A few actually did, causing chuckles) But very few of you could reach out your hand right now and grab a pencil on your first try. (Grumbles. A couple frowns.) What I’d like you to do is this. Get your hand ready. Now grab that most important thing from your wallet. If you got it on your first try, hold it up in the air. (95% of the congregation raised their hands) Go ahead and open your eyes.
We are bombarded every day with a practically infinite amount of sensory information. The reason we are not overwhelmed by the humming in the lights or the feel of fabric on our skin is called a Reticular Activating System. It’s a filter that only passes information that’s relevant to us. Relevant means something close to us in time or space, carrying emotional content, or our intentional focus. This is why so few could grab the pencil, but everyone could grab their most valuable object. Was the pencil any further away? (No.) It just wasn’t relevant.
So back to our original question, how much of our church can you still see after you close your eyes? I can guarantee you there are a few here today who can see things you can’t because they were here yesterday for all church work day. Amy can see the top of the choir cabinets downstairs because she climbed on top of them to paint. Merlyn can see the bottom of that back pew because she climbed underneath it to clean. Bev can see that hymnal rack because she emptied it, cleaned it, and put everything back organized. There’s a spot right up here I can see that I bet no one else in this room can, because I spent five minutes trying to scrape the gunk off it.
If you want to see more, give. Give your time. Give your talent. Give your treasure. God doesn’t need our gifts. We need to give because in the words of our Moderator, Jon, “Involvement cements your faith.”
Was Blind but Now I See by Rev. R.J. Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
The Opposite of Love isn’t Hate
Text: Job 23
Quote: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill
So, let me tell you about my week. I’ve been here one week, and this is what I’ve seen: a life threatening illness, a financial cry for help, widows and widowers smiling through the pain of their recent loss, families struggling to put the pieces back together after a divorce, homebound elders in need of care, and friends grieving over formerly active members who just aren’t involved any more. One week!
Some of you are feeling a little anxious right now. “Is he feeling overwhelmed already? Is he going to leave?” No way. This week was awesome! You know why? Because you’re still talking. You’re still here. You’re just as messed up as the rest of the world, but you’re talking about it with each other instead of hiding. You’re here working on it, instead of sleeping it off. You are a wonderful church!
Look at our reading today, from the 23rd chapter of Job. You all know Job, right? The story goes that Devil challenged God to a bet. The Devil claimed that the only reason Job loved God was because God had blessed him with wealth. So God gave permission to take Job’s wealth away. The Devil took everything, even Job’s children, but Job didn’t crack. He grieved, but he didn’t turn against God. That wasn’t enough for the Devil. He claimed that the only reason Job loved God was because God had protected his health. So God gave permission to take Job’s health away. But Job still didn’t crack.
He sat on a pile of ash, scraping at the sores that covered his body, and didn’t say a word. Even when his wife left him, he said nothing. Finally, after 7 days of silence, he opens his mouth, and what comes out is something between a complaint and an argument. He starts by wishing he had never been born, and then uses that as the foundation for his argument. Why does God allow suffering? If life is so horrible, if the pain is so great that you just want to die, why would God force us to keep living?
Up until this point, Job’s friends have been amazing. They hear the news right away, which means they keep in touch. They all arrive together, so that caring for Job doesn’t become a burden. They sit in the dust with him, get right down at his level. They set aside their pride and their comfort for the sake of their friend. And they don’t say anything. For seven days they don’t say a word. When Job is finally ready to speak, they listen. They let him get it all out, and they don’t interrupt. Job’s friends are amazing! And then they ruin it.
Brothers and sisters, when someone’s life is such a broken mess that they ask, “Why won’t God just let me die?” They don’t want answers. They want less pain. You don’t just wake up one day and say, “Hey, how about I commit suicide!” Suicide is what happens when the amount of pain in your life exceeds your ability to cope. In religious circles, we call it despair, and it is the root of half the pain we see on TV every night. When one of your friends cries out in despair, they don’t want simplistic answers.
“I feel horrible about my life, but when I eat I don’t feel so bad. When I’m drunk I can’t think about it. When I have sex, I feel good, at least for a little while.” It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. I’ve known guys who use hunting as an escape, or their boat, or exercise, or reading a book. In all of these situations, the one thing they don’t want is a lecture. The behavior is just a symptom of the deeper problem. “I hate myself. I hate my life.” But far too often we ignore the problem, because it’s too hard, and it hits way too close to home. So we give easy answers instead instead. That’s what Job’s friends did. They let him have his say, and then they opened their mouths.
What follows is 20 chapters of back and forth, a biblical argument that could serve as a template for every useless theological discussion in the history of the world. They start out friendly, then get superior, then resort to sarcasm. They use straw man arguments and personal attacks. They blame the victim. But by far their favorite tactic is to say exactly what they said before just using more words and more volume. Sound familiar?
Finally, God has to interrupt and shout them all down. But God doesn’t address the friends. He yells at Job. That hardly seems fair. Job’s the victim here. God made a bet, so Job has to suffer, and he can’t even know why? Well, Job isn’t exactly faultless. Let’s go back and hear his words again.
“Even today my complaint is bitter; God’s hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. If only I knew where to find him. If only I could go to his dwelling! I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say.”
Do you hear the touch of arrogance there? Job has been arguing for 20 chapters so far, and he’s getting heated. His friends just keep pushing him and pushing him until he’s saying, “I wish I could go knock on God’s door. I’d tell him, and he’d answer me.” In the course of 20 chapters, we’ve gone from despair to pride. It’s interesting to me that those two are never far apart. They’re two sides of the same coin. Despair rejects God’s act of creation. I hate myself. I hate my life. I wish I had never been born. But pride rejects our place in creation. If I were in charge, things would be different. Things would be better. They’re both ultimately a rejection of God.
Job’s only faults are despair and pride, but they are enough to divide him from God. That’s what the Devil really wanted all along. God and Job loved each other, and so he came up with a bet, a trick, a lie. Do you think the Devil cares about the theological conundrum of suffering? He just saw a relationship and wanted to break it. And it almost worked. First Job falls into despair, and then into pride. Toward the end of the argument, he’s not really talking to God any more. He’s yelling at a caricature of God that he’s created in his mind. The relationship is nearly gone, when God does the one thing no one expected he would ever do.
God speaks. Up until this point in the story, God has been in heaven and Job has been on earth and only the Devil has walked in both places. But now God breaks through into Job’s world and his voice rings out a challenge. “Who is this that questions my wisdom? Brace yourself, and answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And so begins a pounding torrent of questions. “Have you ever called the morning? Can you hold back the stars?” Question after question. You see, God has to break the pride before he can heal the despair.
You can hear it in Job’s reply, “I am nothing. How could I ever find the answers?” You hear that? That’s despair speaking. Pride was just the symptom, masking the real problem. Once again God speaks from the whirlwind. But this time he points toward the two greatest beasts of creation, behemoth and leviathan. Job has rejected creation, so God holds creation in front of his eyes in all its might and beauty.
And Job replies, “You ask, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with ignorance?’ It is I. And I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me.” Did you hear that? “It is I.” “Things far too wonderful for me.” He’s back. He’s still sad. He’s still confused. But he doesn’t hate himself and he doesn’t hate God. And then at the very end comes the verse, so small that for years I missed it, chapter 42 verse 7. “After the Lord had finished speaking to Job…”
Did you get that? After Job replies and the relationship is restored, God speaks again to Job, and this time we don’t have any record of the words, because they’re not for us. Those words are only for God and Job. Who knows? Maybe Job got his answers. Maybe he didn’t. But he got his faith back. He got his life back. Because God did the one thing no one ever expected. God entered the story.
Christians, we are so blessed. Because what Job longed for, we see clearly. Because once again, God entered the story. When we look at Jesus, we see God as God truly is. Vulnerable. Despised and rejected. Hung on a cross where he cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is God. God is not the puppet master, portioning out pain according to some secret purpose. God is not our enemy. To those trapped in despair, God says, “Look, I suffer too. I’m on your side.” To those trapped in pride he says, “Look at me, I’m no threat to you.”
Maybe you’re hurting today. Then follow Job’s example and complain to God. Maybe you’re angry. Then yell at God. Even an argument is still communication. How many of you have seen Fiddler on the Roof? Remember Tevya? Talked to God, complained to God, laughed with God, and when his whole life fell apart and he didn’t have words to describe his pain, what did he do? He turned his eyes toward God and asked, “Why? Why? Why?” Even that is a prayer. And he didn’t ask those questions alone. Just like Job, he asked his questions in the middle of a community.
Look around you. This is your community. These are your friends. This is the place where it’s safe to ask the questions no one can really answer. I’ve only been here a week, and I already see it in you. When it’s time to pass the peace, we have to start signing a hymn to get you to sit back down. When it’s time to share joys and concerns, you make yourselves vulnerable to each other. Even when it’s hard, you don’t give up, and you don’t walk alone.
My friend the counselor tells me that the single greatest success factor for those who are trying to put their lives back together is their support network. No surprise, there. We are made in the image of God, and the heart of God is a triune community of freely given love. We were made for relationship, with God and with each other.
It’s ok to argue with someone you love, as long as you make up afterward. It’s even ok to argue in front of children as long as they see you resolve the conflict positively. Tears can be honest. Complaints can be honest. Even rage can be honest. A relationship can survive those things, because the opposite of love isn’t anger, or even hate. The opposite of love is indifference.
Benediction: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Did you catch that word? Through. I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Not set a tent and camp out there. Not lay down and die there. Walk through, and out the other side. With God in our hearts and our friends at our side, we can do all things through God who strengthens us.
The Opposite of Love isn’t Hate by Rev. R.J. Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Welcome to Saugatuck!
Check out the boardwalk, and the fall colors! Photo by Caribb shared under a Creative Commons license.
Wow, what an amazing week. Kinda crazy seeing your name in three local papers in the same week. Either I’m famous, or folks around here are really bored! Actually, that’s not true. I’ve only been here in Saugatuck a week or so, but I’m already getting the feeling that these people care about each other. It’s a tight-knit town, where people actually read the paper.
Here’s the link to my favorite of the three articles, by the Local Observer.
Someone even recognized me when I was out for supper! (The Commercial Record sent out a photographer, but they didn’t post the story online.) It’s been a joy getting to know the staff here at the church. We laugh a lot and still manage to get stuff done. Quite a few church members have invited me out for dinners too, a great way to get to know people and learn some more of these new names. Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful first week.
Want to lead? Learn to serve.
Text: Proverbs 31:10-31, Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-4:8a
Author’s Note: No audio or video for this one, maybe I’ll be able to talk them into an upgrade. :)
Our world is hurting for heroes, longing for leaders. Just look at our TV shows. According to TV Guide’s top ten list, 3 of the top ten are “reality” shows, 3 are dramas, and 3 are mysteries.
Right. That only makes 9. The last one is about vampires.
Let’s sum up. Three shows about beautiful people scheming and manipulating their way to victory. Three more about beautiful people falling in and out of love. Three about beautiful people saving the day. And one about mythical creatures of deadly beauty and power. Anyone sensing a pattern?
We are hurting for leaders, and our natural human response is to follow the famous and the powerful. That’s the world’s criteria for leadership: fame and power. If that were not true, half our media wouldn’t even exist! Entertainment Tonight? It is gossip packaged as a news show! Tabloids? Gossip packaged as a newspaper! They make millions off of us because we cannot help ourselves. We are drawn to celebrity like moths to a flame.
Sociologist call it the Halo effect. It’s a form of cognitive bias we’ve been scientifically documenting since the 1920’s. It means we tend to see people as all one way or another. If we see one trait that we like, we assume the rest of their traits must be good too. In real life, that means we give huge bias toward beautiful people because the first trait we can evaluate is looks. Hence, Paris Hilton is worthy of her own TV show.
By show of hands, how many of you have ever seen VH1’s Behind the Music? For those of you who haven’t, let me fill you in. Every single episode follows the same pattern. Act 1, a group of scrappy musicians united by a little talent and a love of music plays back yards and bars for free. They get their big break through a combination of luck, talent, and drive. Commercial break. Act 2, they make it big, playing for stadiums of screaming fans, hot and cold running women, and drugs. Commercial break with a teaser that includes the phrases, “spins horribly out of control.” Act 3, the band falls apart and at least one member winds up in rehab or dead. Commercial break. A four minute snippet of hope, where the musicians pull their lives together and get back to the music, playing tiny venues for little money, and loving every second of it.
Ever wonder why rock stars always seem to get caught in sex and drugs? Because everyone around them gives them what they ask for. They keep pushing the boundaries, keep finding there aren’t any, and they go a bit insane. Some part of us always recognizes fake adoration for what it is, and it leaves us feeling empty. And here’s the twisted part, after we put celebrities on the pedestal, following them for no other reason than their fame, we laugh at them when they finally crack under the strain.
God’s criteria for leadership are totally opposite. Instead of fame, Scripture lifts up the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31. Let’s review that picture for a moment. What exactly does she do? The short answer is she devotes herself to serving her family with every once of her ability.
She runs a profitable cottage industry, but she’s not too proud to get her hands dirty. She’s wealthy, but not from an inheritance, and not because of her husband. She’s earned her wealth, and yet she’s still generous. She gives instructions to the children and the servants. She is aware of everything that goes on in her house, but her words are wise and gentle. Her husband is known in the city gates, but she isn’t. Her work is recognized, but nowhere in here does it say she gets any credit, except from her husband and her kids.
What’s missing from this description? That’s right, there’s absolutely nothing in there about her looks. If this were written today it might sound like this:
“A perfect wife, who can find? She has rock hard abs and buns of steel. She can sing. She can act. She can dunk basketball. Her dress is Dolce and her shoes are by Prada. She has more sex appeal than Angelina, more talent than Beyonce, and more power than Hillary. She’s the ultimate triple threat. Her boyfriend is both the most admired and most hated man on the planet, at least until she finds a new one.”
Are you getting the picture here? The world lifts up celebrity. The world admires beauty. The world follows charisma, but God’s priorities are different.
But wait a second. If worldly leaders are beautiful, how do you explain Donald Trump? No way that guy’s making US Weekly’s top ten sexiest of ‘09 list. And yet he’s clearly a leader.
This is the world’s second great criterion for leadership: power. Power comes in many forms, but ultimately it comes down to control, the ability to make other people do what you want. I can pay you, persuade you, or threaten you. It doesn’t matter. If I can get you to do what I want, people will see me as a person of power, and they will follow.
Ever wonder why people with limited options keep committing crimes even though they know they’ll probably wind up in jail? It may be the only control they ever feel, the only time people treat them with respect. This person, who has been ignored and sidelined since birth, [gun] now has your complete attention.
Unfortunately, power is just as destructive as celebrity. We follow the rich. We fear the strong. We admire the powerful, but always from afar. Power is just as isolating as fame. Imagine the psychological toll it would take to be constantly surrounded by yes-men, never having a real discussion, always watching your back.
The world worships power, but Jesus lifts up a child. “The one who wants to be first must be the servant of all. Anyone who welcomes a child, welcomes me, and the Father who sent me.” In his culture, the only one less powerful than a woman, was a child.
What exactly does this kid do that’s so great? What does this little boy or girl do that’s so worthy of our attention?
Nothing! Absolutely nothing!
Jesus says, “Come here.” And the child comes.
That’s it? That’s it.
If this story were written about a modern-day adult, it would go something like this:
Jesus says, “Come here.”
“Why? What do you want? What’s in it for me?”
Jesus says, “Please come here. I need to teach something.”
“I probably could learn it anyway. I’m stupid like that.”
We would talk for hours, and you know what we’d never actually get around to doing? Coming here! This is what makes the child so mighty in God’s kingdom. The child comes when called, without fear or attitude, without arrogance or self-hatred. Jesus says, “Come.” And she says, “Ok.”
James says we have not because we ask not. We don’t bother to ask, because we’re self-centered. We don’t include God in the daily stuff of life. Or we ask, but we do not receive because we ask selfishly. We have not followed the example of the virtuous wife or the reckless child. They looked outside of themselves, and in the moment they forgot themselves they became worthy of honor. They became leaders worth following.
And here’s the wonderful part, just as worldly leaders self-destruct over time, godly leaders get better with age. Look around you and you will see wisdom in some of those wrinkled eyes. This world is hurting for leaders. We have some right here in this congregation, and you can be one too, if you look outside yourself. Want to lead? Learn to serve.
Want to lead? Learn to serve. by Rev. R.J. Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at revsmilez.com.
Want to lower the number of naked people your kid accidentally sees online?
Screencap used with permission of the KidRex team
Your kid has an assignment. Your innocent little one, pure as driven snow, is under orders to go online and research a topic. Their well-meaning teacher has filled their head with visions of endless knowledge available at the touch of a button. But you know the truth. Whatever it is your kids are searching for, there is porn of it. And if there isn’t yet, there will be.
So what do you do? Forbid them to use the net? Might as well forbid them to ever drive a car. Send them to KidRex. It’s a kid-safe search built around the Google search engine. Here’s how they define themselves.
KidRex is a fun and safe search for kids, by kids! KidRex searches emphasize kid-related webpages from across the entire web and are powered by Google Custom Search and use Google SafeSearch technology… No filter is 100 percent accurate, but SafeSearch should eliminate most inappropriate material.
No, I do not work for them. No, I do not get a referral bonus if you click through to their page.
But I do have one request. If your child manages to write a book report about Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” without having to see anything normally covered by a bikini, please come back here and leave a comment trumpeting your success as a tech savvy parent.
Everybody wants to got to heaven, but nobody wants to die
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Author’s Note: No audio or video for this one, as I was a guest preacher.
It’s an honor and a joy to fill the pulpit of 2nd Congregational Church again. Thank you for inviting us to be a part of your 150th anniversary celebrations. It does my heart good to see so many familiar faces, signs of stability and strength. But even more, I’m excited by the many faces I don’t know, signs of growth and vitality in a church that is no longer our home but is never far from our hearts.
Almost a decade ago, I graduated from Minnesota Bible College. I had a major in Biblical Studies and Theology, another major in Pastoral Leadership, and a minor in Biblical and Classical languages. So, I did the obvious thing and got a job as a carpenter.
I wasn’t just any carpenter, mind you. I was the world’s worst carpenter. I showed up on that first day with a measuring tape that didn’t measure right, the wrong kind of hammer, no pencil, no speed square, and a hand-me-down tool belt that was so old that we couldn’t decide if it was made out of leather or mastodon hide.
My boss paired me up with an experienced carpenter who started showing me the tricks of the trade. I learned to mark distances with an arrowhead instead of a line, to cut on the outside of the line so that the board isn’t short the width of a saw blade, and most importantly I learned to measure twice, cut once.
At the end of two weeks, I was really getting the hang of things, when I noticed something. A lot of my friends were wearing carpenter cut jeans. You know the kind, with the extra pockets on the side and the little loop of denim. I go into work the next day and I start joking around with my trainer. “Hey, you see all those stupid kids running around with carpenter pants? What’s with that? Do they expect that tiny little loop to actually hold a hammer? Ha ha ha, stupid kids.” And my trainer smiled and kind of chuckled, and said, “Yeah that sure is funny.”
It wasn’t until about three months later, when I quit carpentry to serve under Dick Adair, (who incidentally, was very impressed that I was a carpenter. I conveniently forgot to mention how awful I was.) Anyway, it wasn’t until three months later that I realized that my trainer wasn’t laughing with me. He was laughing at me. The joke wasn’t those kids out there who got hooked on a fashion trend. The joke was me standing there with my framer’s hammer, my speed square, and my brand new measuring tape hanging off my leather work belt, thinking I was a carpenter.
I was talking to a man who, if you gave him supplies and a slab of concrete could build an entire house, floor to rafters. And when he was done it would stand square, plumb, and level. You know how many people can do that? I Googled it. 0.3% of the American populace, that’s three out of a thousand.
He was an expert and I was sophomore. In Greek, it means wise fool, as in someone who knows just enough to be arrogant, and not enough to be useful. Look back over your own experience, and you tell me if it’s true. The ones who know the most are the ones who realize how much they don’t know. Humility is the hallmark of greatness.
Now don’t misunderstand that word. People hear humility and they think humiliation. They hear humble and they think doormat. That’s not it. Jesus was humble, but he was no doormat. No one stole anything from him. He gave it away. No one forced him into a corner. He chose his path. He knew who he was and what he was here to do, and it really didn’t matter what anyone else thought. That’s humility.
When you understand humility, then the twin problems of self-hatred and arrogance become clear. They’re just two sides of the same coin, failing to recognize yourself for who you are. This explains why someone who constantly puts themselves down is just as annoying as someone who constantly brags. It also explains how we can be arrogant and hate ourselves at the same time. We don’t know ourselves.
We don’t know who we are and so we are constantly being swayed. Someone says good job, and I feel like the king of the world. Someone gets critical and I feel like a fool. And it’s not just external. My subconscious feeds me memories. My body feels strong or weak. My emotions are running high or low and I’m flapping back and forth like a flag in the wind, the object of every passing breeze.
This is where the Bible becomes so practical. This isn’t a modern-day problem. This is a human problem. We don’t know who we are. We were made in the image of God, but we’ve lost the likeness. The ancients used to say that we’re like a painting that has been smudged and faded over time so you can’t recognize the face anymore. You just see a figure on the canvas, with no definition.
But then Christ comes along and wipes the filth away and the likeness underneath begins to shine through, and we feel joy. We lose the burden of our shame and feel the lightness of new life. It’s as if we are caught up into the third heaven, and God is speaking words so true that we dare not repeat them aloud.
We call it a mountaintop experience. But you know what comes next right? You have to come back down into the real world, and it’s so easy to get cocky. As if this mountaintop experience were all about you, as if the whole world would be a better place if they would just get with the program like you did.
It’s just as easy to get depressed when you have to go back to the daily grind and you can’t feel God’s hand anymore. That closeness and sweetness is just a memory and you begin to wonder if it was ever real at all. Or you slip back into a habit you thought was in the past, and you feel like your hope is gone, like you’ll never be free. Either way, the root is the same. You’ve forgotten who you are.
So does God take you back up to the mountaintop? Does he pat you on the head and say, “There, there, it’ll be ok.” Nope. The old bluesman Albert King had it right, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants to laugh, but nobody wants to cry. Everybody wants to hear the truth, but still they all wanna tell a lie. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” God doesn’t send comfort. He sends a thorn.
Paul says, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Here’s the strange part. No one knows what Paul’s thorn really was. Did he have a stitch in his side, like what you get from running too much? Was his eyesight failing? Did he walk with a limp? No one knows, and at least one theologian believes that it might not be physical at all. Maybe the thorn in Paul’s flesh was another person. Maybe we’re not meant to know, so that we can put our own problems into the story. What wonderful theologian would come possibly come up with such an interesting and helpful idea? Her name starts with C and it rhymes with Arol Taylor.
When Paul uses the word flesh, he means that part of us that fights against God’s renewing work in our lives. The flesh doesn’t want new life, because that means giving up the old. The flesh doesn’t want freedom because freedom means responsibility, and responsibility is hard. The flesh much prefers slavery to selfishness and addiction because then you can do whatever you want to do and it’s still not your fault!
Once upon a time, a young Cherokee asked an elder, “What must I do to become a wise? And the elder replied, “There are two wolves fighting within you. One fights for evil, the other for good. Every day one of them wins.” The child asked, “Which one wins?” And the elder responded, “Whichever one you feed.”
The only problem with that story is what happens on the first day that the good dog wins? Suppose you’re stuck in an old habit you hate, and through a combination of good luck and hard work, you manage to go an entire day without doing it, or maybe even a week. What happens next? You start to forget that the only reason you beat this thing was good luck and hard work, which is really just another way of saying God working around and within you.
So God hands you one tiny little victory. One day. One week. And what happens? Suddenly, you’re Alexander the Great. Ready to take on the world. Suddenly you’re giving people advice and looking down on people who aren’t quite as together as you. And in that instant, in that very moment of our success, we fail. We might fail low and fall back into old habits, or we might fail high and become religious. Doesn’t matter. We’re not growing closer to God, we’re slowly killing ourselves, and we’re making everyone else around us miserable. We’re right back where we started.
Now do you understand why that thorn is so important? That thorn is your best friend, because it reminds you of who you are. You are a child of the king, chosen, forgiven, and loved by God. You have a hope and a future. God created you, God redeemed you, and God is perfecting you, every day in every way. There is enough pride in that to lift the head of the lowest peasant, and enough shame in it to bow the head of the highest king.
So do not boast in yourself. Boast only in your weakness, and let your actions speak for themselves. Then your friends and coworkers will come to know you and trust you for who you are, not who your words convince them to expect. When they indulge in arrogance or self-hatred, your simple self-awareness will shine all the more brightly by comparison, and people will seek you out to find out more. When they do, your thorn, that thing you begged God with tears three times to remove, your thorn will give you words to speak, words they will tremble to repeat, words that lift them up to heaven.
Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven… by Rev. R.J. Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Is the church a failure? (Matthew 16:18)
“If by means of its ministrations, the community round about the church is steadily becoming more Christian;
if kindness, sympathy, purity, justice, good-will, are increasing in their power over the lives of men;
if business methods are becoming less rapacious;
if employers and employed are more and more inclined to be friends rather than foes;
if politicians are growing conscientious and unselfish;
if the enemies of society are in retreat before the forces of decency and order;
if amusements are becoming purer and more rational;
if polite society is getting to be simpler in its tastes and less ostentatious in its manners and less extravagant in its expenditures;
if poverty and crime are diminishing;
if parents are becoming more wise and firm in the administration of their sacred trust, and children more loyal and affectionate to their parents,
–if such fruits as these are visible on every side, then there is reason to believe that the church knows its business and is prosecuting it with efficiency.
If none of these effects are seen in the life of the community, the evidence is clear that the church is neglecting its business, and that failure must be written across its record.
From “The Church and Modern Life”
by Washington Gladden, 1836-1918
What say you? Is Gladden’s measure a useful one? If so, how is the church measuring up? If not, how would you measure and rate the church’s effectiveness?
St. Peter: Closet Communist?
Date: April 19, 2009
Texts: Acts 4:32-35, I John 1:1-2:2
Video Here
And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Pastor Rob stands in the pulpit of first church and calls Peter a secret communist. Right? Of course not. That’s just silly. Peter wasn’t a secret communist because it wasn’t a secret at all. He kept it right out there in the open. It says right there in the text. “No one considered their property their own” and “They laid it all at the disciples feet.” Peter was a red commie.
You teenagers out there don’t realize what a big deal this is. When you hear “Russia” all you think of is gangsters, Vladimir Putin, Chechnya, but that’s about it. Kids, that’s nothing. I remember driving out to get ice cream and seeing a sign in one of my neighbors’ windows that said, “Kill a Commie for Mommy.” I remember reading Popular Mechanics, and it didn’t have flying cars or supercomputers, it had instructions on how to build your own fallout shelter. We didn’t call it Russia; it was the Red Menace, and they weren’t interested in tiny Chechnya. They were going to take over the world… or blow it to radioactive cinders. Either way, they were bad, scary bad. So you see, it’s really important if Peter was a communist, because it undermines Christianity. If Peter was a communist, maybe I shouldn’t be a Christian.
Of course you and I both know that Peter wasn’t a communist. Communism hadn’t even been invented yet. Calling Peter a communist is about as anachronistic as calling Caesar a Republican. Sure, they both favor a strong military and conservative domestic policy, but we’re ignoring 2000 years of history here. You can’t just take an idea from today, drop it on some ancient person, and call it close enough. Meaning is about context. In this case the context is Lenin and Marx. If you showed them this text, they never would have claimed it as their own, because it’s grounded on faith and love instead of force and fear.
The text reveals no proletariat uprising. There are no rich men hanging from trees. The dialectic says these common workers should be rising in revolt, reclaiming the fruit of their labor. But the text shows just the opposite. The working classes are still being oppressed. Only now, they’re volunteering for it. They are willingly selling their goods and sharing the proceeds out of some misguided religious sense of brotherhood.
This is the opiate of the masses at work. They should be angry, and instead they’re listening to Peter and James talk about love, and forgiveness, and heaven. To a communist, Peter is at best a deluded hypocrite, and at worst he’s a con artist colluding with the powerful to keep the people complacent. “Must be nice to only work one day a week. Even then, all you have to do is talk, and people line up to throw money at your feet.” Marx would’ve hated Peter.
So he’s not a communist, and he’s obviously not a capitalist, so what is he? Here’s a radical suggestion. What if he’s a Christian? What if following Jesus actually meant following his example instead of just mentally agreeing that he is the Son of God? What if we were known for our faithfulness? What if our ministers were known for their wisdom? What if joining a church meant that you would never starve, and your children would never be orphans? How do we get there from here?
I’m not sure, but I’m certain it doesn’t involve inserting our politics into a 2000 year old text. We have so conflated politics and religion in this country that it is now practically impossible to have an honest conversation, because two honest human beings will eventually have a difference of opinion. Only now, it’s not a difference of opinion. It’s a moral deficiency. You say you’re not convinced about global warming. I say you’re raping the earth and killing your own grandchildren. You say you like this new president, and I say you’re socialist and you’re killing your own grandchildren. Then we go to church and we wind up having arguments over whether or not St. Peter was commie.
You have your opinions. I have mine. That lady over there has some to. But we were not brought here today because of our common fiscal policy. We’re here today because we need some hope. We need some peace. We need some joy. Because the world is messed up. And we’re messed up. And we don’t know what to do about it. We like what this Jesus guy had to say, and we want to know more. I want to know more. So I went to school, and learned Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew. We’ll, I tried to learn Hebrew. I learned history, and philosophy, and theology. And you know it all comes down to?
God is not angry at you… Can we just stop for a second and hear that?
God is not angry at you.
So stop trying so hard. You cannot earn God’s love. God already loves you without limit, without condition. So stop trying so hard. Remember that children’s story I like to tell at baptisms? Here’s this little baby getting baptized with her family standing all around her, and the question I have to ask is, what in the world did that baby do to earn so much affection? Fill a diaper?
God’s love outshines those parents the way the sun outshines the moon, and for exactly the same reason. A parent’s love is a pale reflection of God’s love. Why? Because parents are human, and sooner or later we start setting conditions. Sooner or later, we start with the rules.
Remember that time I asked the kids not to think about pink elephants? That’s where rules get you. Rules tell you what not to do, make you want to do it more, and then makes you feel guilty about it afterward. Forget the rules, and focus on the relationship. What does God really want from us? For us to obey all the rules? Of course not. If all he wanted were obedience, we could have made a bunch of wind up toys. You wind them up. They go where you point them. Perfect obedience. That’s not what God is after.
He wants the same thing any parent wants. He wants his kids to grow up and not be psycho. He wants to spend time with us. He wants a relationship. He doesn’t care about rules. The rules only exist to protect the relationship. We have rules about theft because we need to trust our neighbors. We have rules about football because we want play the game. We have rules about cars because we don’t want to kill each other. That’s why Jesus said you take all the rules, add them up, and you wind up with love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
There are no rules. There is only (1) relationship… and (2) stupid things that get in the way of relationship. Seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. You think the church just pulled them out of a hat? They are sins specifically and only because they break relationships.
Suppose you offended your best friend. And I don’t mean something small, I mean something stupid and selfish. You got a picture in your head? Ok, you know what you did. What do you do now? It depends on two things. Do you love your friend, and does your friend love you? If you minimize it and explain it away, if you’re too ashamed to even ask forgiveness, then you don’t really love your friend. True love can’t stay away. If you’re afraid to apologize, if they forgive you and you keep apologizing, then you don’t really believe they love you. Because real love is unconditional. Real love gets back to the business of living. It doesn’t keep score, and it doesn’t care about rules. It’s cares about relationship.
Your best friend doesn’t want your apology. Your best friend wants to hang out. If an apology clears the air after you did something stupid and selfish, then great. But the apology is not the point. The relationship is the point. Your best friend doesn’t want you to feel guilty. If guilt motivates you to stop being a jerk, then great. But feeling guilty is not the point. The relationship is the point.
We came here today looking for a little hope, a little joy, a little peace. Here’s my hope. In the cross we see a God who has every right to be angry, but who chooses to love instead. Here’s my joy, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Here’s my peace. That I don’t have to earn God’s love, it was already given. And I can’t scare him away. He’s already seen it. All I can do is the only thing he ever wanted me to do.
Love.
St. Peter: Closet Communist? by Rev. RJ Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at revsmilez.com.
