What could happen if…

10.66 billion dollars. BILLION!!! That’s how much shoppers spent yesterday, black friday, according to NPR. What could happen if we spent 10.66 billion dollars feeding hungry people? What could happen if we spent 10.66 billion dollars making sure educators had all they needed to meet standards outlined in the last US administration? What could happen if we spent 10.66 billion dollars in making sure all persons had access to affordable health care? What could happen if we spent 10.66 billion dollars helping “rogue” nations develop clean/renewable energy sources so that they could abandon oil drilling and nuclear proliferation?

What could happen if this Christmas, we spent more on the things Jesus called our attention to than on ourselves?

What could happen if we took Matthew 25 seriously?

What could happen?

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Advent thoughts on Psalm 127

As I continue along in my seminary class, Praying the Psalms: A Shared Journey, albeit haggardly and with fits and starts, I am amazed at how the psalms keep meeting me where I am. This ancient language confronts me in the middle of my life, and connects me to God and the faithful cloud of witnesses in ways I have not known before.  Last night, I began once again, where I had left off last week, at Psalm 127. I had had a conversation with a friend about this psalm not too long ago, about how it could be misused and hurtful, especially the second half. We live in a time when not all persons choose to have children, and not all persons are able to have children. God instructed the ancients, “be fruitful and multiply, fill the face of the earth.” We have done so. At the time of this posting, we are rapidly approaching 6.8 Billion people in the world. We have filled the earth.

There is a ecological concept known as carrying capacity. This is the threshold of number of individuals that is sustainable for an ecological system to maintain equilibrium. If this threshold is exceeded, the population crashes and is devastated, or becomes extinct. While it might be difficult for those of us in rural areas like South Dakota to imagine that overpopulation is a real thing, clearly we have more to consider than the ancients when we hear the command, “be fruitful and multiply.”

But it wasn’t the second half of this psalm that really struck a chord in me last night. It was the first half. I had just finished my first FULL day off from work/school in weeks, and I was catching up on some reading, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer, by Eugene Peterson. As my eyelids began to slip to half-mast, and my mind wandered from the text on the page, I decided perhaps it was time to retire for the evening. I opened the NRSV to pray Psalm 127 before bed. I read the words aloud, remembering the conversation with my friend about verses three, four, and five. I did my best to release that conversation, and read the psalm again. And again. And…again. Slower, more deliberately. And the words began to become my own language, answering God’s grace already present and at work in my life, and all creation around me:

1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
the guard keeps watch in vain.

I like to pretend that ministry hinges on my actions, my decisions. I like to pretend that I have the power to push a gospel agenda through by my own logic, my own planning, my own devising. Unless God is behind the plan, unless God has already gone before to lay the groundwork, unless God’s prevenient grace is present, my efforts are nothing but vanity. And Koheleth’s words began to echo in my head:

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?

We work, and we push, and we labor, and we toil. One more assignment to squeeze in. One more deadline to meet. One more task to complete. All of this toil, all of this busyness is for naught! In the long lens of life, will we remember slogging through the point of exhaustion to get one more tiny feat accomplished? And then I return to verse two of the psalm…

2 It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Staying up late to finish homework so I don’t have to take incompletes in three weeks (pride! you seductress!). Squeezing in work emails or texts or phone calls when I should be with my family. It is in VAIN that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. Yes! Yes! Anxious! My life has been filled with anxiety for months! I have not had a non-anxious moment in as long as I can remember. Always more to do… Must remember to call so and so. Must remind myself to email youth and parents. Can’t forget to…  BUT. “He gives sleep to his beloved.”

He gives sleep to his beloved.

It is here I notice a footnote on this line. My eyes wander to the notes, and I find: “Or – for he provides for his beloved during sleep.”

*dumbfounded look of shock on my face, no doubt*

I quickly pull up my Hebrew-English reverse interlinear. No help. I pull up the Hebrew itself. I try, and I try to make it say that, and yet I’m not convinced that footnote is an adequate rendering, and yet… what if it is? What if, once again, all my labor in trying to discover the nuance of the text is in vain. What if I just closed the book in praise and thanksgiving and WENT TO SLEEP for the night, accepting the gracious gift of sleep God gives OR God’s provision during sleep. WHO CARES!?!?  Receive the gift and sleep, Andy!

Of course, the irony is, I did go to bed. Brushed, flossed, rinsed, climbed under the covers with my beloved. And the phone rings at 11:15pm. Hospital. Someone has passed. Will I come?

Of course. Of course,  I will come. The moments of a human life passing are those rare moments when I get to practice the presence of God, embodying the non-anxious presence of grace, forsaking agenda and toil to simply sit and be with the family. No toil. No anxiety. Only grief, and pain, and tears, but through it all – hope.

Hours later I returned to my bed, my beloved as warm as an electric blanket. I snuggled in and drifted away instantly. I awoke, barely, a few hours later to find another presence, a two-year old snuggled up to mom and dad, sleeping peacefully between us. A gift of love from God, a provision during sleep to be sure. And I drifted off again. Hours later I again just barely breached the surface tension of consciousness to find a fourth figure in bed with us, our four year old snuggled down and chattering happily, and off I drifted again…

I rose a little later than normal this morning, refusing to rise early. I sat in the armchair, sipping a cup of coffee, munching a slice of breadsmith bread leftover from Thanksgiving, watching the resurrected white lights twinkle on the Advent/Christmas tree. Eventually I picked up Peterson’s book again to continue where I had left off almost twelve hours before, and lo and behold I find the conversation with God from the night before continues:

Peterson is expounding on a different Psalm, Psalm 4, but it matters not. He writes, “It is first evening prayer, then morning prayer. The order is not reversible Evening prayer is succeeded, after several hours of unconsciousness, by morning prayer. The sequence is not Hebrew perversity but grace embedded in the earth’s rotation.” (pg 61)

“Evening prayer is a deliberate act of spirit that cultivates willingly what our bodies force on us finally.” (pg 63)

“What is wrong with the world is God’s business. It is a business in which you have a part, come morning when you get your assignment. Meanwhile God is giving help at a far deeper level than any of your meddling will ever reach.” (pg 63-4)

“You have had all day, now let God have all night.” (pg 64)

“Low tide. We sleep.” (pg 64)

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It is in vain that you rise up early     It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,                          and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;       eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives sleep to his beloved.      for he provides for his beloved during sleep.

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Either way, God is a God of provision. We are not called to work ourselves into oblivion, but to receive the grace and blessing that comes as a gift in times of Shabbat, of rest.

8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.    ~Exodus 20:8-11

It is time once again to remember that God finds us in the times of quiet, and relaxation, and rest, the times of Shabbat, and rarely in the midst of busyness and vain toil. Advent begins tomorrow, and with it, the new cycle of waiting upon the Lord. Hope will rise as we wait upon the Lord. May we all make space and room and time for the Christ child to enter, once again.

All grace and peace and good,

~ajb

Thanksgiving

A sermon on Psalm 126 (note to the reader or listener – I believe that not all sermons should be deductive and linear, hence this sermon. This is my attempt to be a bit more artful in my proclamation on this Reign of Christ/Christ the King Sunday. Instead of using a linear progression, I use a circular progression. Instead of using didactic reasoning, I attempt to invoke images in the minds of the listeners, or perhaps in this case, readers. It is my prayer that God is able to speak to you through my imperfect words. Christ’s peace, ajb)

What are you afraid of? Really, what do you fear the most? I want you to take just a moment and get that image in your head. If the worst case scenario could happen in your life right now, what would it be. Have you got it?

For me, it is the fear of not being able to provide for or protect my family. I am deathly afraid that I will not be able to keep my family safe from harm, and with the recent murder of Jasmine in our community, and the shootings at Ft. Hood, that fear is only exacerbated.

I’m also afraid of not being able to provide all that my family needs. Walking into Shop-ko or any other store this time of year doesn’t help matters. We are bombarded with the hyper-consumerism that has come to characterize Christmas in this country. Buy, buy, buy, spend, spend, spend! You won’t be happy until you own this, or your life is not complete without that. It is a full time job to be vigilant against such temptations and to be faithful to the simpler way of following Christ, forsaking the consumerism that is (or at least should be) the antithesis of Christianity.

So I ask you again, what are you afraid of? If you too are afraid of not being able to provide for your family, perhaps you’ve come to church this week, the Sunday after consecration Sunday thinking to yourself, “what did I do last week? We can’t afford what I wrote on that card! We can’t give all that money away and still be able to buy all the stuff for all the people who already own way too much this Christmas. What was I thinking!?!?

What are YOU afraid of? (pause)

Have you got it? Have you? Good. Imagine… it just happened. What you fear the most has occurred, and here you sit before God, in this community, your worst fears have been realized. Let Psalm 126 become your prayer to God, in response to this living nightmare that has come upon you. REMEMBER what life was like before your life fell apart…

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dream.

2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,

and our tongue with shouts of joy;

then it was said among the nations,

“The Lord has done great things for them.”

3 The Lord has done great things for us,

and we rejoiced.

When we have hit the wall, when our life as we know it threatens to crumble around us, we are forced to remember those times when the Lord has provided in the past, those times when we knew how to laugh… those times when we could remember how to shout with joy. Oh how others were jealous of our good fortune, how others wished they were me

But not any longer. “O God, restore our fortunes like the watercourses in the Negev.” For modern day Americans to really understand this petition, for it to become our own, we need a little bit of geography. The Negev is in the southern portion of present day Israel. It is characterized as a rocky desert. For most of the land, it is dry, arid, supporting very little vegetation, as you can see. In this image, you can see what is known as a wadi, that is the dry stream bed, winding through the desert hills. For most of the year, the landscape looks like this, but when the rains come, this dry stream bed roars to life, with water rushing down its courses, often flooding and overflowing the banks, bringing hydration and nourishment to the land, allowing new life to sprout forward.

This image highlights for us that when our worst fears are realized, our cry to God can be: Oh God! Our lives are dry and lifeless like the wadis in the desert! Pour forth your life-giving water that Jesus has promised us! Nourish us and heal us by your Holy Spirit. Pour forth your life upon us until we are flooding over with life once again!

The final two verses of Psalm 126, likewise are difficult for modern, or even post-modern Americans to comprehend, even those of us intimately familiar with farming here in the midwest.

5 May those who sow in tears

reap with shouts of joy.

6 Those who go out weeping,

bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy,

carrying their sheaves.

How many of you are farmers, have ever been farmers, or might still someday become a farmer, raise your hands. Typically in the spring, when you are planting your seeds, are you crying while you’re doing it? I’m not talking about when you’re writing the check for your inputs, but when you are actually putting the seeds in the ground, are you typically weeping?

No! Of course not. Planting comes for us as a time of hopefulness, of anticipation. We look forward to the 200 bushel crop our corn will SURELY yield this year! We look forward to the celebration of the harvest we will have as we gather around the table on Thanksgiving with family and friends, celebrating our abundance by eating ourselves into an oblivion of obesity!

And here, we are not alone. Agricultural communities for as far back as we have any record have celebrated the harvest by eating in abundance! But we, in this country, have become so far removed from this biblical reading that it is hard for us to imagine. Let me recount a story told by my professor and friend, the Rev. Dr. Jay Moon, a United Methodist missionary who served in the bush of Africa with his family for a decade.

Imagine if you will, a farming culture with no combines, no tractors, no plows, no horses, only hand tools. Imagine a world with no Monsanto, and so it isn’t a crime to save some of your harvest to plant for next year’s crop. You carefully take this seed and wrap it safely in a cloth pouch, and place it on the ground with a prayer of provision for next year. As the crop is harvested, and shelled and husked, the grain is piled on top of the pouch, until the pile grows taller, and wider, surpassing the height of the tallest man in the village, and when the harvest is complete, a party ensues. Thanksgiving is heaped upon thanksgiving for the blessing of provision from God. People eat, and they drum, and they eat, and they dance, and they eat, and they sing, and did I mention the eating?

The rainy season has gone by, the grain is safe from moisture just piled up on the ground. And as the months go by, the family slowly goes from eating three meals a day, to just two meals. And when the pile drops below half its original height, the family weans themselves from two meals a day, to just one meal a day. The month of planting is coming, but is still some weeks off, and the edges of that pouch so prayerfully handled months ago, begins to show from underneath the quickly dwindling pile, and the family begins to eat only every other day. And finally the day comes when the pile is gone, and all that is left is the grain in the pouch. The children are crying because their bellies are empty, pleading their parents for just a scrap of food.

Imagine you are the parent. Your children are crying out to you in their hunger, and in your hands you hold food that can quiet their cries for another day. Maybe two, but instead of feeding your children, you choose instead to walk into the field with a stick, poking holes in the ground, dropping your children’s food into dirt, and burying it, with the cries of your children reverberating through your mind.

“May those who sow in tears, reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.”

My sisters and brothers, fear not, for our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a God of provision. My friends, may our Thanksgiving give rise to the sharing of our abundance, not just among ourselves this Thursday, but with all the world. May Christ’s Kingdom Come. May Christ’s will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Amen and Amen.

Enough

Sermon on Mark 12:38-44

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Can I just say… I don’t like today’s Gospel passage very much. “Why?” you ask? Jesus said, “Beware of religious leaders, who like to walk around in long robes…” Any passage that begins this way just can’t be good news for me as I stand before you in my lengthy, flowing alb… Preachers have enough problems with credibility during stewardship sermons without Jesus jumping all over us!

Jesus just got finished agreeing with a scribe about the greatest commandments, telling him, “YES, you get it! You’re not far from the Kingdom of God!” But in the next breath, he warns the gathered crowd against scribes in general: “Look out for those religious types. They tend to show off what they have. They like to be reputable, and command a high degree of respect in the community. They want the best seats at church (which interestingly enough, is translated literally as the first seats, or the front seats. What pews does everyone fight for nowadays? Right! the BACK seats. So today Jesus might say, watch out for those religious types, you know, the scoffers who vie for the BACK pews… I’m not taking ALL the heat today.)

Jesus is relentless, he says, “for the sake of appearance they say long prayers!” Ouch! You want to hit a preacher below the belt, tell him he prays too long. Ok, so maybe we do… but there’s one part that hurts more than just about all the rest combined: “They devour widows’ houses…” Jesus is laying the responsibility for the broken systems that lead to systemic poverty at the feet of the religious. Jesus is saying, not only is it the church’s responsibility, it’s the church’s fault. Double ouch.

To drive the point home, the author of Mark immediately¹ recounts Jesus’ teaching at the offering plates:

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd throwing money into the plates. Many rich people threw in large sums, but a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth almost nothing.

Now here we lose something in the translation from the Greek. A widow, a POOR widow, came. Now, the word for poor here is πτωχός. Try saying that with me. Πτωχός. Now to say it right you have to spit it out of your mouth, Πτωχός. It means more than just poor, or beggarly. It means of little value, maybe not even worth the effort to spit the word out of your mouth. Πτωχός. This woman whom society has forgotten, whom society has forsaken approaches the offering plates to make her contribution. She has lost all sense of self worth, because everywhere she goes, she’s considered a nothing. No husband = no identity. No income = no worth. (spitting the word to the side) Πτωχός.

And the coins she brings are worth perhaps less than she is. The coins are called λεπτὰ, which literally means peeled, or shaved, or husked. Coins had value based on how big they were, how much gold or silver, or how much copper they contained. Imagine shaving a penny, like you’d peel potatos, down to just the nubbins, and that’s what she threw in the plate. TWO of them, combined they might be worth a fourth of a penny. But why two? Why not keep one for herself so maybe she could buy a crust of bread for supper, giving her just enough sustenance to prolong her existance for perhaps one more evening. Why two? Because she was SO generous that she gave up all she had? No, because, the religious leaders had a rule forbidding the offering of a single coin. “smallest of brass coins, significant of deep poverty; two given, of a willing mind.”²

Just because Jesus lifts this woman up as an example of generous giving, does NOT mean as Pheme Perkins says, that Jesus approves of the social conditions that created her poverty.³ I think Jesus is teaching at least two major lessons at once here. First, this woman’s poverty, both monetarily and self-worth, are a result of the religious organizations, both then and today, focusing more on themselves, than on the destitute Jesus calls us to serve.

But just as importantly, Jesus is teaching the disciples, Jesus is teaching us, that giving, “Real giving must be sacrificial.” William Barclay writes, “The amount of the gift never matters so much as its cost to the giver, not the size of the gift, but the sacrifice.” “Real giving has a certain recklessness to it.”⁴ The poor widow gave out of sacrifice. The poor widow’s gift was recklessness.

As we prepare to present our pledge cards, our proposed gifts to God through the church, let us ask ourselves, “Am I giving sacrificially? Am I giving anything up in order to afford this gift? Or am I giving out of my leftovers?”

We all do a pretty good job of fooling ourselves into what we need vs. what we can sacrifice. How much is enough? How much house is enough? 3,000 square feet? 4,000? How many vehicles are enough for two licensed drivers? Two? Three? Boat? Camper? Two freezers of food for one household? How much is enough?

I don’t give so that the church will have enough to scrape by. I don’t give because the church NEEDS me or my money. The church is the bride of Christ, and God is all sufficient. God’s ultimate will is not dependent upon you nor I. I give because Christ has called me into obedience.

We give, because this is where our heart is, this is where our treasure is. We give because we want to see people fed nutritious food and clean water. We give because we want to see our young people’s lives transformed and shaped by the Good News that Jesus Christ IS the way and the truth and the life. We give because we believe that the church is God’s chosen vehicle to show forth the Kingdom here and now, until the Kingdom comes in it’s fullness at Christ’s return.

We give out of our joyful abundance, forsaking the notion of worldly scarcity.

Craig Blomberg, a distinguished New Testament seminary professor at Denver Seminary contributed to a book entitled Revolution in Generosity in which he writes, “If every American Christian simply tithed, the additional amount of money that would be raised above and beyond current giving levels, would be enough to eradicate world poverty in our lifetime.”

Let me say that one more time, “If every American Christian simply tithed, the additional amount of money that would be raised above and beyond current giving levels, would be enough to eradicate world poverty in our lifetime.”

Jesus is laying the responsibility for the broken systems that lead to systemic poverty at the feet of the church. Jesus is saying, not only is the church’s responsibility, it’s the church’s fault that poverty still exists today.

So how do we respond? Do we fall back in fear and anger that the preacher has the nerve to preach Christ’s call to financial obedience, or do we submit ourselves to Christ’s care, trusting not in ourselves, but in the promises that God will never leave us nor forsake us, believing Jesus’ words, “Do not worry, indeed your heavenly Father knows what you need. But strive first for the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be provided for you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has it’s own worries. Think about today instead.” As you fill out and and offer up your pledge cards, ask yourself, how much is enough? Amen and Amen.

1 Immediately – hermeneutical joke for my Markan-geek friends

2Kenneth S. Wuest, Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament : For the English Reader, ( Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, c1984), Mk 12:42.

3Pheme Perkins, New Interpreter’s Bible: Mark, (Nashville: Abingdon).

4William Barclay, the Gospel of Mark: the daily study Bible series, revised edition, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 302.

Blessed to Be a Blessing

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Andy:

Three men were talking one day about how much money they gave to God. They all knew they were supposed to give, but they had different ways of figuring out how much. The first one said, “I’ll tell you what I do. I take all my money and put it in my pocket. Then I stand up and draw a circle around me about two feet in diameter. Next, I take all the money in my pocket and throw it up in the air. When it comes down, what lands in the circle is God’s, and what lands outside of it is mine.”

The second one said, “Hey, that’s what I do, only what lands outside the circle is God’s and what lands inside is mine.” They looked at the third fellow, and one of them asked, “What about you? What do you do to determine how much money to give back to God?”

The third man said, “I do the same thing. I draw a circle. Then I get inside it and throw all the money up and say, ‘God, whatever you want you just keep up there,’ and then whatever comes down, I know he wants me to have.”

Money. It is perhaps the most uncomfortable topic a preacher has to talk about. Like these three men, we all have different ways of deciding how much money we are going to give back to God for the Kingdom, and so today, we want to share a little bit about OUR family’s faith journey and giving.

Kate:

In 2007, Andy and I, for the first time in our lives, started paying a full tithe. We’ve always been givers, but we always struggled to make it to 10%. Some years we said we would, but different “emergencies” would crop up over the course of the year, and we wouldn’t make it. It’s no secret what Andy makes, so I am going to use OUR finances as an example. I’m a stay at home mom and you pay Andy a salary of $36,000 a year, before taxes and health insurance premiums. Every month Andy and I give at least $300 to our church. $300 x 12 months = $3,600 per year. 10%. Ten percent is our baseline. We give more money on the Six Special Sundays (World Communion, One Great Hour of Sharing, and others) or when there are other opportunities to give. Ten percent is not the ceiling, as the Rev. Adam Hamilton says, but the floor. Our rationale for giving in this manner is simple, if Andy’s the pastor, our family needs to lead by example. He cannot ask you, his parishioners to give 10% if we’re not willing to do the same, so we give this church at least $300, every month.

It wasn’t an easy decision to commit to giving at that level. You see, four years ago we left Alaska to come to South Dakota. In Alaska, Andy was making close to $50K a year, I was going to school and making about $15K/year, and he was about to accept a promotion as the Director of Environmental Health and Safety at the University of Alaska that would put him closer to $70K a year. Our son James was about to be born, and child care in Alaska would cost us about $675/month if I went back to work full time. We had a house payment, a car payment, another car that kept breaking down, and credit card bills. Andy commuted 60 miles each way to work; I commuted 45 miles each way, and the gas prices just kept going up and up. No matter how we did the math, we were not going to be able to financially make ends meet. There was no way. So Andy began looking for safety jobs in South Dakota and Minnesota, mostly to be closer to my family, but also to have a lower cost of living.

Andy:

I applied for safety job after job after job. I was certainly qualified for each position I applied for, but I couldn’t get anyone to call me back. I was getting frustrated, even depressed. Then I saw a job in the most unlikely of places. Kate and I, at one time, had lived onsite as manager’s assistants at Birchwood Camp, the UM camp in southcentral Alaska. Because of that we were on Kevin Witt’s email list serve out of the General Board of Discipleship for church camps around the country. One day I saw a job posting for a campus ministry job in Brookings. It was really strange and out of place! This was a camp list not campus ministry, and then it hit me. “Oh no, God not NOW.” You see, I knew that God had been calling me to the ministry for about 5 years at that point, and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to obey. It became apparent to me, God was saying, “Yup, it’s time. No more running away.” So I applied, and in very short order, got the job. We sold our house and paid off our revolving credit with the equity. When we obeyed, all the roadblocks seem to disappear, and the way forward seemed to be paved smooth.

Kate:

Now, money had always been a PAINFULLY stressful topic of conversation in our marriage, and, at the time, one we preferred to just avoid. We hadn’t done a good job of communicating about money, how we spent, how we saved, what we gave, what our goals were. We were feeling called to give more, but how could we? We had just moved across the country with a 6 week old baby. When we got to Brookings, Andy worked ¾ time at the campus ministry and also ¾ time at Hyvee during the graveyard shift so that our family would have health insurance, about 70-80 hours of work every week. We were stressed.

Andy:

Now once we were in Brookings I was okay with doing campus ministry, actually, I loved it, it was the best job I had ever had, but I made it clear to God, that was as far as I was going to go. I’m not going to seminary, and I’m not going to be a pastor of a church. (Well, you can see where THAT got me…) Things seemed to get better and better. We bought another house in Brookings, and I signed a full time contract with First UMC in Brookings so I could finally quit my other job at Hyvee, but the very day after my last day at the supermarket, I was told that the church couldn’t honor the full time contract, there had been some confusion about funding sources, and I was now without a job. I had a 1 year old son, a house payment, a car payment, and classes set to begin in one month. What were we going to do?

What we did was call on God in prayer. “I’m done running God. I’ll do whatever you want if you get us out of this mess. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. I fully surrender all that I have and all that I am to you.” One month later, we were in Wakonda, our house in Brookings sold. We lost some money, but not as much as we could have. We had a roof over our heads, a steady paycheck, plenty of food, and an amazing, loving new church family, actually THREE new church families. God provided, and abundantly.

Kate:

All of this was VERY fresh in our minds, only a couple of months old actually, when we decided we would tithe. We knew we would have Andy’s tuition and books to pay for. We knew we would have more expenses, like MORE diapers for baby #2 (Angus was on the way), but we also knew that God would provide. We placed ourselves in God’s care, trusting that God would fulfill the promises that Jesus tells us about in the Gospel message today. We knew that centuries ago these words were written for us, “Kate and Andy, you can not serve two masters. You can not serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Andy:

And here we are nearly four years later, and still tithing. We took a financial management class together, Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, which changed our lives, taught us how to budget and strengthened our marriage. Now we don’t have a car payment, we no longer have credit card debt, I will graduate from seminary at the end of this semester, God willing, with ZERO additional debt from graduate school. And we now have an emergency fund.

Most recently we had some unexpected expenses for that emergency fund. Hospital bills for Kate, travel expenses for my step-mother’s funeral, a few thousand dollars that we hadn’t planned on, but strangely enough, we were not worried about finances. We knew that we would continue to tithe, and that the bills would be paid, that God would provide. And through the generosity of some amazingly faithful people, provision came.

Kate:

Our family has been blessed in ways we could never have imagined. Even when we’ve faced times of strife, when we’ve begun to ask “What is going on here, God? We can’t take much more of this.” God’s presence is made known to us in amazing ways; our fears are alleviated, bills are paid, new opportunities are open to us. That’s how it works. When we are faithful, when we give God the first ten percent, the blessings come. We don’t give to God so that we WILL be blessed, but rather we recognize that BECAUSE we are blessed, God wants US to be a blessing unto others. We are blessed to be a blessing.

Andy:

Our lives have changed, we were really worried that first year about how we would tithe, and here as we enter our fourth year of tithing, when faced with financial adversity, we didn’t even give it a second thought, of COURSE we would pay our tithe. Our lives have changed, but it all started with a change in perception. We stopped seeing ourselves as broke, and we started to view ourselves as richly blessed, in times of abundance and scarcity. We began to believe the words, “All that we have, and all that we are, is a gift from God.” We began to understand that we were richly blessed so that we might be a blessing unto others.

Friends, I hope that our story can serve as an encouragement to you, that our God is a God of provision, as you gather together as families this week and decide on what your giving will be this coming year. If you haven’t already started, I invite you to begin praying together as a family, adults, teenagers, children, and discuss what your financial gift back to God’s Kingdom will be this coming year.

In the mail this week you will receive a pledge card. My prayer for each of you as you fill it out, is that you will see just how richly blessed you truly are, and that you might view that blessedness as a gift from God so that you might in turn bless others. You are blessed to be a blessing. Amen and Amen.

Thoughts on praying Psalm 89

Psalm 89

Praying this Psalm on the heels of All Saints Day (celebrated on an actual Sunday no less!) has me thinking about this psalm in a few different ways.

First, the opening two verses make a wonderful Call to Worship, or even an Act of Praise: I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

Then in verses three and four come the real crux of the psalm, which is spoken, but left, seemingly innocuous, until it is picked up again at the very end of this lengthy psalm: You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David: ‘I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations.’”

Then verses 5-18 extol God’s mighty saving acts throughout the history of the people Israel. These verses would fit beautifully into a Great Thanksgiving when celebrating Holy Communion: “It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies… For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel. And so with your people on earth and all the company of heaven we praise your name and join their unending hymn:”

I LOVE when I find liturgy in Scripture! (Yes, I know that places me a in a particularly nerdy set of preachers…)

In the next section, vv 19-37, the psalmist seems to be innocently recounting God’s raising up of David. Considering it’s juxtaposition with the previous verses, at first blush it appears to just be a continuance of praise of God’s power and might, but the scope zooms down from the macroscopic to the microscopic, from all of Creation to King David. Notice, I said “appears.”

Only in verses 38-45 does it become clear as to what the psalmist is doing. The tone changes from joyful celebration and remembrance, to anguished recounting: But now you have spurned and rejected him; You have renounced the covenant; You have broken through all his walls, You have exalted the right hand of his foes, You have turned back the edge of his sword, You have removed the scepter from his hand, you have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with shame!

And here we begin to hear the echo of lament from Psalm 13, How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? The psalmist is reminding God of the covenant promise, the promise which cannot be broken. This isn’t a contract, it’s a covenant. No one is released from the binding details for unfaithfulness. The cords of love cannot be broken, even by disobedience.

The psalmist reminds God how short our time on earth is and asks God to honor the covenant of steadfast love, asking God to hear the taunts and the insults hurled upon God’s first born, the people Israel. And just as abruptly, the psalmist ends: “Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and Amen.”

No more is necessary. The Lord knows the covenant. A simple reminder will do. There is no need to belabor or bludgeon the point.

I think we (me) as western Christians too often forget that it’s okay to question God and to call God back to covenant faithfulness. I think we too often hear God’s words of reprimand to Job and think it is not our place to question God’s action or inaction, that such questioning equates to questioning God’s sovereignty. As is clear in this psalm, and throughout Scripture, such is not the case.

We are built, hard-wired, to question, to challenge, to wrestle like Jacob at the Jabok, and by such wrestling we are blessed. We are forever changed, perhaps with a limp to show for our struggle, but nonetheless, blessed on account of the struggle.

I think it is only after praying words like this, calling God back to the covenant promise that we are able to find that perhaps it was us, and not God, who wandered from the covenant in the first place. Only in reminding God to be God, do we adequately remind ourselves to be God’s covenant peoples, steadfast in love and faithfulness.

Blessed be the Lord forever.

Amen and Amen.

Ecclesiastes 3

As I try to unbury from my seminary backload I am a bit short on theologically rich and insightful things to write about here, so instead I point you to the OTHER Andy B’s blog to read the sheer brilliance he has posted there about the change of seasons and the church. A prophetic word we all need to hear:

http://entertherainbow.blogspot.com/2009/11/seasons.html

Our Children’s Children

All Saints Day sermon Isaiah 25:6-9

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As many of you now know, my father’s wife Sue passed away last week at the age of 58. She had battled bile duct cancer for over five years. Through many surgeries and chemo treatments, she maintained high spirits and a positive attitude despite the shroud of darkness that cancer casts as its shadow.

My guess is there is not a one of us gathered here today who has not been affected by the evil that is cancer, there is likely not a person here who has not been under that shroud of darkness. That’s the image that keeps coming back to me, that keeps haunting me, the shroud of darkness. And despite the despair and fear that image brings, our Old Testament lesson today offers us a word of hope in the shadows:

“And God will destroy, on this mountain, the shroud of darkness that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; God will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people God will take away from the earth.” And this promise that death is not the end is echoed in our New Testament reading as well: “See the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell WITH them, as their God; they will be God’s peoples, and The Lord, God’s self, will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

Today is All Saints Day. The day that we remember those who have gone before us, and have entered the blessed rest of glory. We remember those who gave their lives to and for the church, the canonized saints, just as we remember our loved ones; family members who have led us in the way that leads to life. Today is the day we remember and celebrate the promise of new life in Christ. Today is the day we remember, in the words of Bob Dylan: “Death is not the end.”

And as we remember, we recount the blessings that these saints have handed down to us. That is what TRADITION is. From the Latin word traditio which literally means to “hand over.” Those who have gone before us have handed over blessings immeasurable to us. The forms of our worship have been handed over to us from generations before. Our hymns, our liturgy, all a gift from those saints in days gone by.

Let us pause for one moment and look around this beautiful sanctuary. Look at the stained glass. The beautiful wood grain of the pews. Look at the ceiling décor, and the organ pipes, and the brass rail, and musical instruments. Pause for just a moment and absorb how much has been handed over to us from faithful members of this church, faithful saints, who have already gone on to glory. (pause)

When we stop and think about how richly we have been blessed by those who have gone before us, we recognize that such gifts can only come by sacrifice, by extravagant generosity with which they have blessed us. Past members of this church who postponed vacations, who bought smaller houses, who mended and repaired, rather than discarding and buying new, who spent less so they could give more, who put us first, people they didn’t even know, before their own wants and desires. These past members have given us all of this and SO much more out of love and self-sacrifice.

What are we doing to ensure that we too can give these kinds of extravagant gifts to future generations? What are we doing to make sure that our children’s children are as richly blessed as we have been? What are we doing to ensure that this body of Christ will be able to reach out in love and mission to all corners of the world, giving them a sense of Kingdom-abundance rather than the fear of worldly-scarcity?

Friends, we have been richly blessed. On this All Saints Day we are reminded as we come forward to receive Holy Communion, a foretaste of the Glory Divine, that we too will one day join the saints at the heavenly feast: Isaiah declares, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” Friends, we too will leave this mortal coil behind, and with it, all the houses, and cars, and flat screen tvs, and X-boxes, and vacation homes, and boats, and campers… We can’t take it with us.

Jesus told Peter in no uncertain terms, “To those whom much has been given, much will be required.” My sisters and my brothers, let us, on this day of All Saints, consider our giving. As we prayerfully prepare to fill out our pledge cards for the coming year, let us remember those who have gone before us, and how richly they have blessed us with their giving. Let us ensure that we are doing the same, for the sake of our children’s children. Amen and Amen.

The only problem I have with these mysteries is they’re so mysterious…

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you, when my heart is faint.” ~Psalm 61:1-2, NRSV.

These words have been the very thoughts of my mind, the very emotions of my heart, the very fear of my guts. The past few months have not gone as I had planned. I entered this new phase of ministry in Mitchell, SD with grandiose plans of what I had hoped to do. I had visions of my family settling in to a bigger community, of our shared ministry exploding from the starting blocks when the gunshot of July 1, the new appointment date, rang forth.

The past few months have not gone as I had planned.

We’ve had some bumps and jostles together along the way as we get used to one another (to be expected with any new relationship for sure!) But then my wife became terribly ill, and I missed a week of work to try and take care of her and our boys, but despite my best efforts over the course of that week, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fulfill my obligations at work. I couldn’t fulfill my obligations at school, and I barely fulfilled all the needs at home, and yet, it wasn’t enough. Kate still got sicker, and had to go to the hospital.

Grace poured forth from this community of faith. Love and forgiveness and FOOD were lavished upon us. The seminary community of which I am a part bathed us with prayer, and good will, and (thank goodness) deadline extensions for my homework.

Thanks be to God and the wonderful folks at Avera Queen of Peace for Kate’s recovery. Her strength slowly returned, and she was able to resume her normal schedule and rigorous tasks (have you ever tried keeping up with a two and four-year-old!?)

God had answered prayer, and abundantly! I was exhausted, but determined. I had two weeks of school to catch up on. I had receipts from the In-gathering I still needed to tabulate. I was determined. I told Short I would have those receipts done. I told my professors I would catch up over the reading week (a reprieve of classes that allow for such catching up, a brilliant idea in curriculum scheduling if ever there were one!) Despite my tiredness, despite my weariness, I was determined to press hard, working to catch up.

Then a funeral for a beloved parishioner arose, and the phone call from home that my dad’s wife, my step-mother, had finally succumbed to her battle with bile duct cancer. Once again, things were not going as I planned. Plans were scrapped in order to attend to more urgent things: celebrating the life and memory of Garvin Bertsch, and traveling to New Hampshire to console my father in the passing of his wife.

So here I sit, on a Sunday evening, in a hotel room somewhere in Illinois, writing this wondering how I will ever catch up. How will I make up for lost time at work? How will I make up four weeks of overdue assignments in my LAST semester of seminary!?!? It’s close to impossible to keep up week to week, but buried in four weeks of homework on top of church and family commitments?

Then it came. A beloved song from my past finally came up on my iPod playlist as we barreled along I80/I90 this afternoon: Shifting Sand by Caedmon’s Call. “I hear it all depends on my faith, so I’m feeling precarious. The only problem I have with these mysteries, is they’re SO mysterious!”

Afterall, doesn’t Jesus promise the disciples that all things would be possible, even moving mountains if they could just have faith the size of the mustard seed? Doesn’t Paul admonish the Church at Phillipi that all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us? Doesn’t the American work ethic teach us that if we just pull up our own boot-straps, we can accomplish anything?

Trouble is, this kind of thinking only leads us down the path of no return. When we believe we can do it all by ourselves, manage our family, and our work, and our school – it is then that we fall victim to the ways of the world. We’ve been so programmed by our consumerist culture that we think if we can just acquire a bit more faith, we’ll have it made, we can conquer the world! This misses the mark of the Kingdom of God completely.

The bridge and final chorus of the song captures the sentiment of my life these past few months: “Waters rose as my doubts reigned. Sand castle faith, it slipped away. I found myself standing on Your Grace. It had been there all the time. My faith is like shifting sand, changed by every wave. My faith is like shifting sand so I stand on Grace.”

My friends, we cannot make it in this life on our own, by our own efforts. We live by grace. Grace poured out in 9×13 inch casserole dishes. Grace poured out in senior pastors picking up the slack. Grace poured out in professors extending deadlines. Grace poured out by family members subjecting themselves to 3500 miles of driving in 9 days time. Grace poured out by God Almighty, lowering himself to become one of us, to go willingly, and self-lessly to the cross on our behalf.

Sisters and brothers, if we stand on our own efforts, the crashing waves of life’s storms will disintegrate our footing. If we stand upon God’s Grace, we may be storm-tossed and battered, but we will always be upon solid ground, even “when our hearts are faint.”

Thanks be to God for Grace. Amen, and Amen.

Connexional

Associate Minster’s Musings:

The United Methodist Church is different from most other protestant denominations in that we are a connectional church, that is, we see ourselves as a part of something much larger than just our own local congregation. We see this in our itinerant appointment system, where our bishop makes sure that every church has a pastor, and that every pastor has an appointment. We also see our connectional nature in the work of UMCOR, the U.nited M.ethodist C.ommittee O.n R.elief, the mission arm of our church. Quite often, UMCOR is one of the very first relief organizations to respond to crises and natural disasters. As the saying goes, “When the earth rocks, UMCOR rolls…”

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of our connectional system is our apportionment system. Apportionments are the share each annual conference or local church pays to support international, national, and regional mission work. Apportionments are not a “franchise fee,” but rather a means of partnering with thousands of other congregations to perform mission work that none of us could do alone. In the Dakotas, we often say, “we do ministry better when we do it together.”

The cost of our Christ-centered global ministry is significant, but it is only a tiny portion of our local church budget. Of every $1,000 given in offering:

• $845 stays in the local church;

• $124 goes to jurisdictions, annual conferences, and districts;

• $22 goes to general apportionments;

• $9 goes to other general funds, including United Methodist Women.

To help us more fully understand what this means in terms of real numbers, let us consider our spending as denomination in the United States in 2007:

• we gave $5.1 billion for local church expenditures

• we gave $758 million for jurisdictional, area, annual conference and district clergy support, administration and benevolences

• we gave $137 million for general apportioned benevolences, clergy support and administration, including $69 million for World Service, the basic program and benevolence fund

• we donated an additional $46 million to other general benevolences including the Advance, World Service Specials and United Methodist Women

To see what this looks like graphically, the lion’s share of our Sunday offering stays right here in our own church, while a tiny sliver of our offerings are used for mission beyond our local church.

Apportionments, while not a large part of our budget, make a tremendous difference when added to the apportionments of other congregations as we seek to embrace “all the world as our parish” as John Wesley has taught us.

We, as United Methodists, are connectional. We know that when we each give our tithe, 10% of our increase, we can count on our apportionment dollars being combined with the offerings of millions of United Methodists to bring ministry, peace, justice, and the love of Christ to corners of the world we could not reach by ourselves.

Together, United Methodists and the Church Universal, we are the body of Christ, working together, to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Indeed, we do ministry better, when we do it together.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Andy

*figures and content adapted from The United Methodist Handbook, 2009-2012 published by United Methodist Communications. For more information about connectional giving visit: www.umcgiving.org