Vision

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 15:1-17:

Whenever I get on a plane and sitting and getting settled, as I watch everyone else get to their seats and put stuff away, I think to myself, this is how every plan crash movie begins. Anyone else ever think that? No, I’m the only weirdo? And then, of course, once everyone is in their seats and getting ready the flight attendants come out to give their spiel about safety and emergency preparation, but few people actually pay any attention, right? Perhaps if it was your first flight, or maybe on a plane type you’ve never flown before, you might pay a little more attention but for the most part we ignore the information because one we’re largely familiar, and second, we don’t think it really applies to us. Afterall, all of us expect to make it to our destination, unless you know that you’re starring in a movie about a plane crash. But, as Seth Godin pointed out, if during the flight the pilot came on and said they were having some “technical problems” or something else that seems to downplay a serious issue, and then said the flight attendants were going to be giving instructions of what to do, I’m willing to bet that everyone on the plane would then be paying really close attention to what the flight attendants were about to tell us. And so, what’s the difference? The immediacy and the need to know what’s happening because our lives may depend on it. But, the airlines couldn’t do that often because if they did we’d blank them all out again because the pressing would then become routine. And so today as we conclude our series on seeking God’s visions and dreams for us as a congregation, I don’t want to say this is the middle of the flight and pay attention to what’s about to happen, because that would be overkill, but I do want to make sure we’re all paying attention because today, when we talk about our legacy, or how we want to be known, is really important.

In fact, this might have been where we could have started and built from because as with all goals, if you don’t know where you want to end up, then you’ll just wander everywhere and nowhere in particular. And so, thinking about who we want to be gives us the end point from which we can work backwards to create the steps of how we are going to get there. And one of the things that I think is important is that for the most part the things that people stated for what they wanted to be known for where largely ideas rather than concrete things, and I’ll come back to why I think that’s important in a moment. But even the more concrete things can be seen as aspirational with multiple ways of getting there. So, for example, one person said we should be known for having environmentally sustainable landscaping, and my thought was to expand that out and say we want to be known for environmental sustainability altogether, or of having a zero carbon footprint. And that would be a great goal, and great thing to be known for, and also allowing for multiple ways of getting there. Or another had that we would have a cool youth group; again, multiple ways of getting there, and multiple interpretations of what it means to be cool, and admitting that I am not the best arbiter of coolness for teenagers these days, let alone in 10 years, when shockingly we will still have a teenager in the house. But the bigger piece is about the leeway of allowing ourselves room to grow and to change.

It's About Loss, But Fear Not

Here is my message for Sunday. The text was Joshua 1:1-9:

There are some stories that I would love to have been a fly on the wall to observe them, and this story we heard this morning from Joshua would certainly be one of them as the Israelites prepare to cross the Jordan into the promised land, and I would love to be there for several reasons. I would really love to know what Joshua is thinking in this moment and how he responds to God, especially to God’s instruction for him to “be strong and courageous.” Which Joshua gets told not just once, but three times, just so that he is very clear on God’s message, if only God would sometimes be as direct with us, and then to add to it God tells Joshua “do not be frightened or dismayed.” But then I really, really want to know how Joshua deals with the Israelites, because very quick recap, as they are wandering in the wilderness the people turn on Moses and tell him to take them back to Egypt. That they would be better off as slaves then to die in the desert. And then they have to end up traveling for 40 years because they refuse to trust that God will deliver the land to them, and so the first generation have to die off before the land is delivered. But, I can’t imagine that things had actually changed all that much.

I can imagine that the people now, because they’ve been wandering so long, are worried and scared about crossing over. They don’t want to settle down, they don’t want to cross the river because everything looks just fine where they are, why do they have to do anything any different? I can’t believe that there weren’t calls for committees to study it, and to take a vote, and who gets to vote is it just the leaders or should everyone have a say? And who elevated Joshua leader anyways? Why do we have to change, Joshua? Why can’t we just keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing for 40 years? Why can’t we just keep on keeping on? Everything seems to be fine as it is, and besides, we’re not strong, we’re not courageous, and quite honestly, we are frightened and dismayed. So, let’s just stay here. You cross over if you are so interested, but we’ll just stay right where we are and just keep on wandering. Or at least that’s what I imagine them saying if I was that fly on the wall to hear it.

Moving Past the Things that Block Us

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Philippians 4:1-13:

I just finished reading about a hurricane that hit New York and New England in 1938. It had sustained winds of 150 miles an hour, and dropped nearly 14 inches of rain on Long Island in two hours and had the highest ever recorded storm surges in some locations. It also recoded the lowest barometric pressure in the Atlantic ocean by a ship’s captain who said it was the worst storm he had ever seen at sea. What made the storm particularly damaging, at least when it came to loss of life, was the fact that no one knew it was coming. The aftermath of devastation in trees downed, as well as homes washed out to sea made getting to the survivors even more difficult. They ended up having to cut in new roads into the forest to remove downed trees, many of which are still being used today. I tell that story not only because I find it interesting, and if I remember correctly Barbara Demarsh, a former member was in New England for that storm, but also because today we are thinking about and talking about the obstacles that stand in our way and how we respond to them. 

Obviously in this situation, the rescuers had an urgency to work around the obstacles anyway they can in order to be able to help people, and there are times in which the same is true for us. The urgency of the matter has us cutting through or around the obstacles that we find in our paths in order to solve the problem and get to the other side. Think of what happened here when COVID hit. A few of us had been in conversation about what it would take to put the worship service online, what we would have to do, and the obstacles in the way, but little did we know that we would make that transition and do that work in less than two weeks. Now it might not have been ideal, but we moved through quickly to make it happen, really because we had to. And it should serve as our example that we can do some pretty major things, fairly quickly when we want to or need to. But, there are other times in which the obstacles, which me may think are hugely overwhelming aren’t really anything at all, and here is great video that sort of captures that, take a look…

Building on What God Has Given Us

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Joshua 24:13-25:

This year represents the 80th anniversary of the closing of the Los Alamos Ranch School. I’ve seen different dates, one for a graduation and closure on January 23, and another on April 15, but regardless the Army’s Manhattan project with which we are so familiar took over control of the property in the spring of 1943. And so, while we have this idea, or I might better say the outside world has this idea, of the Army sort of creating Los Alamos out of nothing, there were already buildings and homes here for the project to us. Although if they had known how big the project would become, they later admitted they would not have chosen this location, and then where would we all be? But it seemed like the right place for so many reasons for a small collection of scientist to do their thing without having to create everything from scratch. And while many of those who came during the war certainly didn’t think of this being the promised land, in fact some probably said some words about it that can’t be repeated here, many came to love the place as so many of us do. But, like those who first came, we might also take for granted what we already have, or maybe even think that we had everything to do with the fruit we are harvesting now, for lack of a better metaphor. And in that, we are not any different from generations of our ancestors, including the ancient Israelites.

I think the passage we heard today is a great reminder of that. The people have long since moved into the promised land and defeated their enemies and they have been successful and apparently, they have let this all go to their heads. And even though they have made a covenant with God in the promised land, Joshua and then God have to remind the people what has actually happened. The people want to say, we did this, we built all this, and maybe even started worshipping other gods. Now its certainly possible that this is literally others gods, but perhaps its also other things that can take the form of a god, property, wealth, prestige, to name just a few. But God says to them, amongst other things, “I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.” That is God is reminding them that they may have prospered, but God is the one who gave it to them first, and they also inherited all the other things. The land was already prepared with crops, and the homes were already there, and the vineyards and orchards were in place before they arrived. This is not to say that they didn’t have to do work in order to maintain it and harvest it and keep it going, but the hardest work was already done, and it was given to them by God.