Practice Praise

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Thessalonians 5:12-23 and Luke 17:11-19:

Two weeks ago when we began talking about the kindness challenge, I said that I had originally planned on doing this series later, but felt called that we needed to be doing it now. That decision has been reinforced not just by those of you who have commented on the need to have this, and the arguments you all are having about kindness, which maybe sort of kind of defeating the point. But it was also reinforced by an email we got from the principal of the middle school this past week telling parents that one of their key emphasis to students was to be kind to one another, and then a meeting with the athletic director for the school district who said that she has a hard time retaining coaches because of the grief that they receive from some parents. And what she then basically said, although she didn’t know the language that we are using was to nix the negative, stop criticizing everything they do, give them a break, and instead start practicing praise and supporting them, and so that covers the first of the two rules of what we are being challenged to do in practicing the Kindness Challenge.

And so as a quick reminder this comes from a book of the same name written by Shaunti Feldhahn, and while the ultimate goal is to practice kindness in all areas of our lives, the challenge is to pick one relationship which you would like to improve, it could one that is only hanging on by a thread, or maybe one that’s going okay, but could be better, and then for 30 days to do three things. The first is not to say anything negative to them or about them to anyone else, and a reminder because someone asked me this week, that also includes all the non-verbal ways we express negativity or our displeasure. And there is a supplement, or another option for that rule that is really for men who are doing the challenge for their spouse, and you can hear about that or the other ways to avoid negativity by listening to last week’s message, which is available on our website and our Facebook and YouTube pages. The second rule, which is what we are talking about today, is to practice praise which is to find one positive thing that you can sincerely praise or affirm about the person you are doing the challenge for and to tell them and tell one other person, and do that every day for 30 days. And then the third rule, which we’ll conclude with next week is to do a small act of kindness or generosity every day for your person. And so while removing the negative comments is important, practicing praise, having to look for and talk about positive things in order to give praise is the catalyst to kindness because it then causes you to have to change what it is you are focusing on and paying attention to.

Traveling the Prayer Paths: At the Table

Here is my sermon for Sunday. The text was Luke 22:14-23:

Today’s passage of Luke’s account of Jesus’ last meal might be a great scripture for today, or perhaps it’s even a terrible one for today, given where we are as a community, a state, a nation and a world in dealing with the coronavirus. Perhaps it’s good because it sort of encapsulates the darkness of that night and the unknown future, at least for the disciples. And perhaps it’s not good because Jesus seems to indicate that he knew how things would turn out. But regardless of which it is, it is an important piece of scripture because it is part of what we still practice liturgically in communion as part of worship even today, although there were lots of conversations going on in the wider church this week about whether to serve communion or not and how to serve it because of fears of touch and contamination and the unknown. I truly wish there were some easy answers to these questions, because it would make this job a lot easier, but there are not, and what we are really focusing on for today is not communion itself, or at least not all of it, but the prayer that Jesus gives, as part of our series in traveling the prayer paths of Jesus, and looking at where, when and how Jesus prays.

But before that a quick recap and correction. We began with the idea and need of going off to a quiet place to pray by ourselves, just as Jesus did, in order to reconnect with God and recharge ourselves spiritually and even physically in order to do the ministry in the world that we are called to do. This time can be a short period of time or even days, depending on what’s happening and what we have to dedicate to this time. Then last week we moved onto the prayers that we offer as part of our ordinary life, and it’s here that I want to add a correction. As I was thinking about the message, which was based on Jesus’ healing of a boy with what appears to be epilepsy, and he said that the reason the disciples couldn’t heal the boy was because it could only be done through prayer. And so I talked about the necessity of prayer for the impossible things in our lives. And that could have given the impression to some that bad things in our lives could, or perhaps did happen simply because we didn’t pray, or didn’t say the right words, or that we might not have prayed hard enough. And if only you had done that, then the outcome would have been different. And that was not what I intended at all, or what I meant to say, and so I apologize for that potential misunderstanding. This is a message for a different day, and perhaps as part of next week, but I don’t believe that prayer works that way, or that God works that way. Instead, my point was about the need for prayer in our lives and that we should be praying for others, and that those could be just short burst prayers or arrow prayers, short prayers given to others, like those trapped in endless lines at Smith’s, and especially for the employees. But that we also need to be praying for God’s help in all situations, especially those that we think are impossible. That should be part of our prayer practice.