The Sweetness of Home, both old and new. May 29, 2008

First, on this warm Tuesday morning I want to thank you as a church for some wonderful time off last week.  Wednesday and Thursday I camped out at Camp Buckner and had some much needed time of spiritual retreat and sermon preparation for the summer.  Friday I took the day off and Kelley and I went home to Kenedy for my cousin Gina’s wedding.  She was a beautiful bride and it was a beautiful wedding.  I was honored to be a part of it.  Thank you for the time off.  Thank you Ken Flowers for filling in Wednesday evening and Thank you Don Barber for preaching Sunday morning. 

Sunday morning I was able to worship with FBC Kenedy.  It was the first time I have worshipped there in quite a while, and I always enjoy it.  It is always encouraging to see how much has changed and also how much has stayed the same.  I sat with a friend of mine who I grew up with and was actually born on the exact same day as me.  We commented on how many new faces and families were there that weren’t 10 years ago.  So many children, babies, and young families.  In a town that is 75% (app) Hispanic, it was good to see diversity in the congregation.  It was good to see this fresh infusion of energy and faith into this wonderful longstanding church. 

At the same time, much of what I love about FBC Kenedy is still the same.  My grandparents sitting just to the left of me in their same pew, intently reading their Bibles as the sermon began.  Truett Hunt, a life long member of FBC praying in his eloquent ways, “O Lord of our long strewn battle lines, watch over us sinners,” and then ending his prayer with a doxology of praise.  One of my best friend’s dad (as a kid we used to time is prayers because they were so long) praying his long, but incredibly heartfelt prayer.  Rachel and I, feeling the glares of our fathers, as we whispered and laughed during the children’s sermon.  Some things always stay the same! 

As a kid, Mr. Hunt’s prayers seemed antiquated and contrived.  Weldon’s prayers seemed severely long and boring, and my parents’ stares seemed condemning.  As a young pastor returning home for just one weekend, both all that has stayed the same and all that has changed were the very words of God filling my soul as I saw this family in new light; I think, in a truer, more revealing light. 

But, I missed Rick leading music and Kim and Mandi singing and playing the piano (we are SO blessed to have them).  I missed hearing my family of faith pray, sing, and worship.  I missed preaching and looking out on all of your faces as you respond to God working in you.  I missed visiting with you all before Church and hugging you all after Church.  I even missed that high school auditorium (and I very much longed for that worship space on the hill!) 

It was wonderful to worship with the people that used to be my family of faith.  This Sunday, it will be even more wonderful to worship with you all who are now my family of faith.   With love in my heart, I will see you Sunday. 

In Light of Eternity…Practice Hospitality May 20, 2008

Sunday I finished a sermon series on 1 Peter.  This Sunday was the culmination sermon where Peter summarizes much of what he has said.  The book is written with persecution looming just over the horizon for the churches in Asia Minor.  This passage focuses on the examination to come for all at the end of all things, and how in light of this, our call is to live for God today.  Peter outlines 4 lifestyles we are to live out, Prayer, Love, Hospitality, and the use of our Gifts. 

It was one of those sermons that really preached to me.  Especially my investigation into what hospitality really is.  Here is an excerpt from my sermon on hospitality:

“The third lifestyle we are to live in light of eternity is to practice hospitality, and to do so ungrudgingly and without complaining. 

The word hospitality literally means, “love of strangers.”  This hospitality echoes the teaching of Jesus, who spoke of the necessity of giving and receiving hospitality.  He sent the disciples out with nothing, ordering them to rely on the hospitality and generosity of others. 

Even before Jesus, in the Old Testament, Numbers says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” 

In other words, “Israel, as you travel around, as you are in the desert and then as you settle in the land, if strangers come among you, treat them as you would other members of your tribe and family.  Welcome them in and meet their needs because remember, once you were aliens in Egypt and were not treated so well.” (personal paraphrase) 

Take a minute and think about how radical this teaching was in its time and in our own as well.  This remarkable expectation of the people of God which is expected of us as well. 

In most all cultures, one would expect the recollection of one’s own 400 year enslavement and the recollection of one’s own painful past to motivate getting revenge, getting even, or passing on unwittingly to the next generation one’s own history of abuse, manipulaton, and neglect.  Isn’t this the way in works in society, marriages, and families? 

Not among God’s people.  The memory of their own experience was to generate empathy essential to genuine hospitality.  Our own sufferings, our own slights, motivate not revenge, but the empathy and compassion necessary to make sure others don’t feel and suffer as we did. 

So hospitality is not just having friends over for dinner.  It is the welcoming of strangers.  It is the meeting of needs of those in need.   It informs how we greet those who visit us on Sunday mornings as well as how we view and minister to the homeless and those living in poverty, and victims of abuse.  It seeks that no one be left out, left behind, or standing alone in the corner. 

The call to hospitality is as much a lifestyle as is prayer and love.  Hospitality is an outflow of this constant, deep, and mutual love we have for one another and our God and that God has for us.  Hospitality is grounded in love, love is grounded in prayer, prayer is grounded in God. 

So church, in light of eternity and the examination to come, practice hospitality now, and do so freely and joyously.  Invite one another into your home.  Welcome the strangers who cross paths with your life and even take the path of your live off-road to deliberately encounter the disenfranchised strangers in our world.  Ensure that every stranger who walks in these doors walks out a friend and a part of the body. 

In light of eternity, practice hospitality freely and gladly.”

      I feel I have begun an adventure of figuring out what it means to live a truly hospitable life.  It goes so much deeper than I ever suspected.  It encompasses love, missional living, preaching, social justice and so much more.  We have hosted friends in our home the past two nights, and I have experienced much of the joy that comes even with giving hospitality (and this at its easiest, lightest level).  It is a miraculous thing for the preacher to be preached to through his own preaching.  Often we who say the most hear the least. 

These words have resounded in my life this week.  Thanks be to God.    

 

For Amy May 14, 2008

My sister-in-law, Amy, got on to me a couple weeks ago for not posting more youtube clips on my blog.  This is for Amy…it is also hilarious and for all of you. 

MTV ran a “America’s Next Top Model” marathon last Saturday.  I believe my wife watched it most of the day as she worked and did some things around the house.  I have to admit that I sat and watched portions of a couple episodes and found myself laughing outloud at one point when these models made fun of Beauty Pageant contestants and claimed they were fake and not real.  At first I thought it was the height of irony for these models to be saying this about the others. Now I see maybe they have a point. 

Watch and enjoy.  Your welcome Amy. 

Approaching a Theology of Hugs May 8, 2008

A funny thing happened when I first came to interview for the position of Pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Marble Falls.  Instead of taking me to the deacons, a committee chair, or a trustee, I was taken to a place called Sweetberry Farm (an awesome place you must visit if you come to Marble Falls) to meet a man named Max Copeland.  Max had been the pastor of a church here in Marble Falls for over 40 years, and although retired, still was a minister and icon to the community. 

We visited for over and hour and had a great visit.  We had a lot in common and seemed to really share a kindred spirit for ministry.  Max gets around in a motorized scooter and was sitting behind a counter the whole tim we visited, but when it was time to leave, he painstakingly stood up, made his way around the counter and hugged me.  It wasn’t a perfunctory side hug.  It wasn’t a manly aggressive chest bump hug.  It was a hug of hugs.  Arms open wide and wrapped tight around one another.  Fully vulnerable, no room for pride, no room for jokes or self-defenses.  It was a real hug, enough of one that it really took me off guard.  It was a hug of intimacy and we had just met. 

Since then I have learned that it is one of Max’s trademarks and just one of the many ways in which he has communicated and enacted his love of Marble Falls. 

I am not a natural hugger.  My family are not huggers.  Not on either side.  Brief hugs hello and goodbye.  Handshakes if possible.  It is not that we are cold or unloving, we just traditionally haven’t expressed love through hugs.  Kelley’s family is a hugging family and although it freaked me out at first, I am warming up to the practice. 

But, taking my cue from Bro. Max, the past couple of months I have been approaching a theology of hugs. 

The past few weeks I have been preaching out of 1 Peter on the purpose of the church and how we are to relate to one another in the Church.  It sums up like this:  The purpose of the Church is to praise God and glorify God through all we do.  At its simplest, that’a what it boils down to.  All our service, missions, worship, and committee meetings are to this end.  Anything whose goal is not praise of God is not motivated appropriately.  In our relations with each other we are to seek harmony above all else.  Not simply peace and a lack of conflict, but a cooperation amidst our diversity that works toward the goal of praising God together.  We seek harmony by cultivating the traits of sympathy, love, compassion, and humility.  When these are cultivated through Christ we are empowered to respond to each other and to the world at large with words and actions of blessing, even in the midst of persecution. 

My sermons have really spoken to me, if no one else, and I have truly worked at cultivating these traits in my life.  Sympathy (empahty might be a better modern day translation), love (agape), compassion, humility.  For the sake of harmony.  It is an ideal, but a beautiful ideal and one worth working and sacrificing for. 

It has led me toward a theology of hugs.  How does one day in day out, week in week out communicate to 200 people these traits?  Much less everyone else one encounters outside of church during each day?  To individuals in need it is easy.  Through a sermon it is possible.  When there is time for good conversation it can be done. 

But in coming and going, how is it done?  I am coming to realize that a true hug communicates all of these.  Without needing good words to say it.  A true hug breaks through the BS of most of our interactions and speaks to the soul.  When you open yourself up to receive another who has opened themselves up you have chosen to embrace (which is a picture of harmony, the embodiment of empathy, love, compassion, and humility) and chosen not to exclude.  It is in part a symbolic act of the connection that exists and in part a very real enaction of the empathy, love, compassion, and humility with which you seek to treat each other. 

On a Sunday morning or a Wednesday night or even in a given month or week, I can’t speak to or meet every need of every member and visitor of Fellowship.  But I know many of their needs.  I know even more that have needs that I don’t know.  So I can bless them each time I encounter them with a true embrace. 

So I’ve become a hugger.  Not superficially so, but deeply, theologically, pastorally so.  It is awkward, it is difficult, and I don’t do it all the time, but I’ve learned from Max and others the power of an open embrace.  A theology of hugs. 

 

 

 

The beauty and richness of the Body of Christ May 2, 2008

So I haven’t blogged in a while and before yesterday I hadn’t even logged on to the blog in a couple of weeks.  I was amazed to see about the same number of people have been stopping by the blog each day, even though I haven’t been writing.  I’m not sure the message this sends.  I know I do appreciate those of you who think enough of this venture to stop by occassionally. 

I have been busier the past couple of weeks, especially this week, than possibly I have ever been.  Lots of different projects at the Church are really coming to a head all at once it seems.  It is an exciting time, but it is wearing on me physically, spiritually, emotionally. 

To misuse a wonderfully overused spiritual metaphor, the overflow of my cup simply hasn’t been bountiful enough to run into this blog recently. 

I am getting ready to head to yet another Facilities Committee meeting, but for the past hour or so this morning I have been working on my sermon for Sunday.  It is odd to go about the terribly demanding, grueling, awful, wonderful process of writing a sermon in between frequent meetings, phone calls, interruptions, and emails.  It is distracting.  It stifles the flow of the creative Spirit and its process.  Mysteriously, it also adds flavor to the sermon.  It gives perspective and sometimes adds depth and even illustration.  It brings to mind the needs of those who will hear it and the groanings and praises of this body of believers.  It is stressful and frustrating to an extreme, but also contains a bit of bliss. 

I wrote this for my sermon Sunday and thought I would share this excerpt with you this morning.  Grace and peace to each of you as you finish out your work week and hope for a bit of rest for your Sabbath. 

     The Church, the body of Christ, at times can be a place of absolute beauty.  In the body of Christ we find acceptance like no where else.  A place where we can truly and deeply open ourselves up.  After constructing walls and defenses, carefully developed as a result of sometimes years and decades of hurt and pain, when we truly find a Church, we find a place we can drop these walls and defenses, where we can share our pain, our hurt, our elations, our joys, our dreams with our fellow brothers and sisters of Christ.  Church can be the place we find comfort in times of sorrow, where we find the friend to sing praises with in times of joy.  Where we find relationships that go deeper than relationships found anywhere else in life because they aren’t simply based on having things in common, on living in the same town, of being the same age, of working in the same place, of having kids in the same activities, they are based on something eternal.  They are based on a mutual, given-quantity of love for each other and for our God, so much beyond ourselves.  When relationships like this are found, the Church is beautiful.  IT is just relationships based in our eternal hope, like this, that draw people to Church, that, outside of salvation, are the most compelling reason to come to Christ. 

     Sadly, and for many reasons, often times churches aren’t this beautiful interconnection of love-based, mutually supportive, relationships.  People are hurt by the Church.  People put up walls and defenses specifically designed for the Church and Church people and consequently disable themselves from being able to experience the richness that comes with true community.  We hesitate to truly open ourselves up.  We hesitate to want people to open up because we hesitate to truly love others, even those sitting right next to us in worship, as God loves them and as God loves us. We hesitate to live with each other, and treat each other, and be in relationship with one another, as God desires, as Peter teaches, and we cheat ourselves, and we cheat our brothers of the beauty and the richness of Church.  And the world sees, and its taste and appetite for Christ sours and diminishes.