Dancing in Relationship

This is my message from Sunday. The text was John 17:6-13:

I want you to close your eyes and be still for a moment…. Now I want you to think about a time, or times, in which you were truly seen. Not in someone actually seeing you in order to walk around you, or avoid you, but when someone saw into the depths of your soul, for lack of a better term. Perhaps they saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself, some gift or talent. Or they pushed you beyond what you ever thought possible yourself to help you achieve something. Or they were they for you when it mattered the most, doing something for you that few other people could or would do. Have you thought about that moment? Now, how did it make you feel? Not intellectually but emotionally. I’m guessing that some of those feelings might be about belonging, or valued or appreciated, perhaps honored or respected, and perhaps you felt happy or flattered or even cherished and treasured. And all of those things have some connection with love, not as the feeling per se, but as the sense of someone wanting the best for you. And all of those are connected to the sense of relationship, which is what we are tackling today. And since today is Mother’s Day, I would also be willing to bet that for a significant number of us, the people who have truly seen us have tended to be women, perhaps our mothers, but perhaps not, but maybe an aunt, grandmother, neighbor, teacher or someone at church, someone whose eyes bore into us in a special way and with whom we therefore had a deeper relationship than normal.

Now every relationship does not mean that we are seen in that sense, but when we are seen it makes a difference and connects us in a different way, and it changes us and it can even change the world. (SLIDE 2)  In his national book award winning novel, The Invisible Man, widely considered one of the best and most important novels of the last Century, Ralph Ellison begins his tale of a black man in American society by saying “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me…. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality…. you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds…. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.” And that sense of invisibility, and striking out, also plays a significant role of what is happening in the world as we think about relationship.

Dancing in Praise

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Psalm 98:

During the 2019 special called general conference, which is the world-wide gathering of the United Methodist Church, where the official decisions for the church are made, when they passed the traditionalist plan by a very narrow margin, which is a terrible way to make decisions, and they made the church’s position on homosexuality even tighter, I started crying. The vote happened just before I was going to see my counselor for my regular appointment and I started crying in his office over it because I didn’t know what was going to happen, and the push at that time was that centrists and progressives would be pushed out of the denomination. How things have changed in the past five years. This past week in the final days of General Conference, which is actually the 2020 postponed conference, not only are many of the conservative churches gone but they also overwhelmingly removed what has been known as the restrictive language around homosexuality and the ban on clergy being ordained if they were members of the LGBTQ community. And I cried again for a very different reason, and I praised God that we had finally overcome. 

And I say that not only as clergy, who have seen what this has done to the church and to clergy, and I can guarantee there are lots of gay clergy, and I know them, and now they can be who they are. And I also celebrate as the father of a gay daughter, although that was not what changed my opinion on this. And I celebrate for the future of the church and what this represents for our future. And I also recognize that this does not make everyone happy, and there are many reasons for that. But I can say with some pride that when my last church became the first openly welcoming and affirming congregation in this conference around this issue that those who voted against that decision were still members when I was appointed here because as you’ve heard me say that we are better when we are at the table together. And the truth is that for this congregation nothing different will happen; we get to keep on being who we are, and loving as we do, and living into our value that we are inclusive and we love Christ. And so today I come before you in praise for the Lord has done marvelous things, as we just heard in the 98th Psalm, and that is appropriate as we think about what it means to dance with God in praise.

Dancing with Guidance

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Acts 8:26-40:

Just by a show of hands, who has ever taken dance lessons, and not or like ballet, but like dancing with a partner? And did anyone try to take lessons by themselves, that is not with an instructor there with you, but maybe with like the footprints you put on the floor to try and do it yourself? I’m guessing that the second way probably wasn’t very effective. Linda and I took dance lessons in preparation for our wedding and our wedding dance, which was to Frank Sinatra’s It Had to Be you, and included a dip at the end. And we did it at an Arthur Miller Dance Studio, which has you in private lessons and then in group lessons because it’s one thing to dance by yourself, but it’s entirely different to do it with lots of other people dancing too, that’s a whole other level of dancing of trying to pay attention and watch others and move as needed in order to keep going. And I can tell you that that requires instruction, as well as a partner to help you to learn how to do it, and to do it well. And what it also takes is learning how to let go to be in sync and make changes as they come, and that’s for everyone. And so, when you are dancing, it is not about submission, for either party, the one leading or the one following, but about learning to partner together in the movements, to be in tune with each other, to know what the other is doing, and as you get better, to begin to anticipate what might happen to be ready for it, to be prepared for it in order to respond properly. 

I began this series on dancing with God by telling a story about a colleague who was learning to dance being called out by her instructor for not being able to follow guidance, and wanting to be in control, and being told he thought she wouldn’t have any problems with this since she was clergy and was used to following God’s lead. And that’s why I think this metaphor of dancing with God is a good one because it’s not just about God saying do this, and us doing it, but about working together, moving together with God, in order to do the work, to do the dance that we are called to do. And so that leads us to today’s dance, which is dancing with guidance, although I might have also called it dancing with the Spirit, which certainly sounds better, but might not be direct enough. I got that idea of guidance from that passage that we just heard from Acts involving Philip, an Ethiopian eunuch and the Spirit.

Dancing with Joy

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 24:36b-48:

When my 9-year-old nephew died ten years ago from a blood clotting disorder, his parents made the decision to donate his organs, which also included taking skin grafts to be used for burn victims. As it turned out, another member of our church had a close family friend living on the Navajo Nation whose grandson received critical burns on the same weekend and who was flown to UNM hospital where he ended up receiving skin grafts in treatment. Now we don’t think that he received any grafts from Wyatt, but for her it brought some potential joy, and I don’t use that word advisedly, out of a terrible situation for both families. That in the midst of tragedy and trauma, perhaps a little good could come out of. That there could be a little glimmer of light, hope and yes, even joy, in the midst of darkness. And that’s the thing about joy, that perhaps it might not be what we tend to think of it at all, and that is what we deal with today as we think about learning to dance with God in joy.

Now last week, after we talked about dancing in peace, and I said that we were doing joy today, someone asked if we were going to do all of the themes for Advent, which are hope, peace, joy and love. I responded that we weren’t because we weren’t going to do hope, although we might have been able to do so, but that it didn’t really come up in the lectionary readings for the Sunday’s after Easter, which is what I was using to find the themes. And I hadn’t really even thought about them being related to the themes of Advent, but there are, but I hadn’t really thought about them also being fruit of the Spirit, which they also are. So, I can’t say if it’s just coincidence, or the movement of the Spirit, or simply the thoughts swirling in my head, that led me to them. But they are connected, and they also connect with hope, joy especially, but joy itself stands out from those advent themes in particular. If you remember the candles that we light at Advent, there are four of them. Three are purple and one is pink. It is the pink candle that represents joy. And that stands out against the purple candles, a color which represents royalty, and also repentance. It gets those traditions from the much older traditions of the season of Lent, which ends with the celebration of Easter. Lent too is a time of preparation and repentance, although Advent has lost many of those characteristics, but the fourth Sunday in Lent is known as Laetare Sunday, which comes from the traditional Latin introduction to the mass from Isaiah which says Rejoice, O Jerusalem! The word rejoice is an imperative, a command, so comes with an exclamation point. And so, the temperament of Lent, changes in that service, and the color changes from purple to pink, or more technically, rose, which is why it is also sometimes called rose Sunday.

Dancing with Peace

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 20:19-31. 

Some of you I think have heard this story before, but my best friend from seminary, in her first appointment she was contacted to ask if she would like to participate in a sort of dancing with the stars as a fundraiser for several non-profits in the town. They were asking community leaders to participate who would be partners to professional dancers. She said yes, thinking she’d just show up do her thing to be supportive and be known in town, and then move on. So, she was a little surprised a few weeks later when she was contacted by a dance studio asking when she wanted to start her lessons in preparation. Obviously, this was going to be more serious than she thought, and so she made her appointment and went for her first dance lesson. Now what you have to know about Katherine was that before the ministry she was a counselor working with people who were having mental health crisis, and so she was used to be in charge, or taking charge of situations, because her life literally depended upon it at times. And so, she started up and let’s just say that the lesson wasn’t going great, and so they stopped and her instructed said, “You have to let go and let me lead if this is going to be effective and helpful,” and so Katherine responded that he obviously didn’t know who she was, that she is used to being in charge.” To which he responded, “You’re a minister. I thought this would be easy for you because I thought you would be used to turning your life and direction over to someone else to guide.” As you might guess, that left her a little aback, and changed not just her approach to dancing, but also as a refocusing of ministry.

And so that story is sort of around which this series, Dancing with God, will be based, although also taken from an idea by Marcia McFee of dancing after darkness, because while we often talk about having to follow God, or to put it in scriptural terms, to be a servant or slave to God, in fact a better way of understanding our journey with God is as a dance. Of turning our lives over to God as the lead, which requires us to follow that, to learn new things, occasionally to improvise in our steps, and when we get lost or confused to remember that sometimes we have to stop to return to the old familiar steps. And the dance we look at today is the dance of peace.

Easter: Life and Death; Death and Life

This was my Easter message. The text was Mark 16:1-8:

It was five years ago now that Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire and nearly burned to the ground on the Monday of Holy Week. You may have seen in the news recently that they have just reinstalled the spiral that collapsed and also finished framing out the roof, using 800-year-old construction techniques, with the plan of reopening the cathedral later this year. But, after it burned there were many commentators who said that there couldn’t have been a worse time for the cathedral to burn since they had just celebrated Palm Sunday the day before and had been planning to celebrate Easter the following week, but now wouldn’t be able to. But, I thought that while there is never a good time for one of the architectural wonders, and one of the most famous buildings in the world, to catch on fire and nearly be entirely destroyed. But, if it is going to happen, Holy Week might actually be the best time for it to happen, because it’s sort of a reminder, a symbol, of this time. It’s after the celebration of Palm Sunday which then leads into the darkness of the week, of betrayal and denial and abandonment, and then the cross and the tomb; the reality of death and suffering and pain and grief and all the other things that get brought up this week, which then leads to the story of the resurrection.

But you can’t get to that part, you can’t get to the Easter story without the dark parts. We don’t have Easter because everything is hunky dory, we have Easter, we need Easter, because of the reality of death and pain and suffering and sorrow, we need Easter because of the tomb. You can’t just skip from Palm Sunday to Easter, from celebration to celebration, and have that make any sense. You have to have the other parts in between because you can’t have resurrection unless there I something to be resurrected, something that had withered, or something that has died, to be resurrected. And so, when the parishioners gathered outside Notre Dame, with the ashes still smoldering and the smell of burned wood still in the air, that call to resurrection and desire and hope for resurrection it was the perfect time to celebrate Easter, and I’m guessing that message, that reality, rang even more true, more meaningfully in that moment then maybe it ever had before. The same as this congregation hosting the memorial service yesterday for a longtime member of this congregation, also had a meaning and significance that was more alive because of today.

Maundy Thursday: Hope Springs Eternal

 This was my message for Maundy Thursday:

Today, in addition to being Maundy Thursday, is also opening day for Major League Baseball. Normally I take the day off to watch baseball, which I could only do partially today. And I normally go to opening day for the Albuquerque Isotopes, but that’s tomorrow, and so that’s not happening either. I know your hearts cry out for me. I’ve always thought that opening day should be a national holiday, for many reasons besides just my fandom. And one of those reasons is that it represents the sort of official beginning of spring, they even call the preparation for opening day, spring training. Training for spring, or maybe waiting for spring. Now it doesn’t mean that spring will necessarily be here for those first games. Just as the last few weeks have shown us with continual snow storms, we may be done with winter, but it is not done with us. And there have been plenty of opening day games played in the snow. I even remember one Easter when I was in college getting up to go to church and looking out the window to see blizzard like conditions, and so I went back to sleep, but that was in Minnesota, so not totally unexpected. 

And yet we know that spring is right around the corner; the promise is there. And so, it is with opening day, it is the day that hope springs eternal because on this day every team is currently tied for first place. Every team has a winning record, or at least they don’t have a losing record. Every team, and every fan base, can say “this is our year,” even if they know it’s not true. For many, they know that their seasons will end more in ignominy than in victory, and perhaps its too many fanbases for which that is true, although that’s a different message for a different space. But regardless, hope spring eternal on this day; and the promise of spring springs eternal as well. New life, new possibilities, new realities, not being cooped up in the house, being able to open the windows, being able to take those long hikes without freezing, doing all those things that make where we live so spectacular, and I can say all of that as someone whose favorite season is winter. But even with that, the change to spring is still a lovely and wonderful surprise and time. And yet, perhaps none of those ideas really match the reality of today.

Baptism: Will You Accept the Grace God Gives You....

Here is my message from yesterday. The text was Ephesians 4:1-6 and John 15:1-17:

As part of programming night, which is our Sunday evening classes and meal, we have temporarily combined our adult and youth classes as part of our confirmation class in teaching everyone, or reminding everyone, about the basics of the faith. Last week I was teaching on the sacraments, which in the Protestant tradition are two, baptism and communion, because they are the two in which Jesus not only participated but also commanded the church to participate in. But only one of those is repeatable, which is communion. And so, someone wisely asked why we don’t baptize people more than once, or why we don’t practice rebaptism, especially since it seems like many churches do. And that’s a great question, and the reason is faithfulness. Baptism is a covenantal agreement, as we say in the communion liturgy that Jesus created a new covenant by water and the spirit. Another word for covenant is agreement, or contract. A contract is something entered into be two parties, and it calls for things for both parties to uphold, and to do for each other. And it can also be broken by either party, either through agreement or because one party violates it. 

But, when it comes to the baptismal covenant one of those parties is God, and the other party is us. And so, the question is, does God violate God’s side of the agreement. No, because God is forever faithful; God is ever loving. And so, while we can go astray, we can wander away, we can violate the covenant. While we can be like the prodigal son, God is always faithful, and God is always waiting for us to return, to come back home, to come back to abide in God’s love as God’s love always abides in us. And so, we don’t rebaptize because God is always there, but we can reaffirm our baptismal vows, to make whole the relationship, to heal what has been broken, by coming back from our part, but because one side has always been faithful. And so that leads us then into the final question we ask in preparation for baptism and that is “According to the grace given to you, will you remain faithful members of Christ's holy Church and serve as Christ's representatives in the world?”

Baptism: Will You Nurture These Persons

Here is my message from yesterday. The text was 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24:

Once when I was across the street at the high school talking to a class about Christianity, along with several other Christian ministers, one of the students asked me what I would do if my children didn’t want to be a part of the church when they were adults. It turned out that she was a PK, or preacher’s kid, so had some idea of what she was talking about. And I said, not knowing she was a PK, that the tendency is for PK’s either to become preachers themselves or to reject the church entirely. That’s not universal, but it’s a pretty good general rule, which includes my best friend from seminary whose daughter is currently in seminary and whose son is not, shall we say. And so, my response was that I didn’t want either of those things for my children, but what I would miss the most for them, and what I would want the most for them if they were not in a local church, was to find a community that the church can provide. A group of people who care for you and want to walk the journey of life with you through the good times, very important, and through the worst times, even more important. And so, I wouldn’t be necessarily be upsetting if they weren’t in the church, although I certainly want them to be, but they get to make their own decisions as adults, but I would be sad if they didn’t have a church like community in their lives. And that is where the question we that we ask in preparation for baptism leads us to today. The first three questions are about sort of individual things that we pledge to do, including accepting Jesus and participating in the church, which is the question we looked at last week. But then today’s question in a larger one about those activities as a community. And that question is “Will you nurture these persons in Christ's holy Church, that by your teaching and example they may be guided to accept God's grace for themselves, to profess their faith openly, and to lead a Christian life?”

Now this question comes in this section of the liturgy and is, as stipulated in the hymnal, directed to parents and other sponsors for those who cannot answer for themselves. And yet I think it’s actually much broader than that. Later there is a question specifically for the congregation in which we ask if you will nurture one another and include those to be baptized in that care. And so, I believe that this question is certainly also directed to the church, to the community of Christ into which people are baptized, and I am certainly going to treat it as such. Because one of the things that we have to understand is that baptism is not an individual activity, it’s communal. While we might conduct an individual private baptism in an emergency, such as in a hospital for someone who is dying, that is really the exception. And even then, I would try and get other people to be present for it to be witnesses to it and on behalf of the person being baptized. Baptism outside of the community simply doesn’t make sense. I have even refused to do a baptism for someone based on that. I was contacted by their friend, which was sort of the first red flag asking if I could come to the house to baptize them, and my first question was “are they going to start worshipping with us, or attending another church?” and I was told no, that they just wanted to be baptized. And I said that didn’t match theologically and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t do it. I would be more than happy to talk with them, and talk about the why, and that it is the initiation right into the church. That, as the question last week said, we accept Jesus Christ as our savior in union with the church. These two things go together. And since baptism and community go together, not only does that mean there has to be community, but it also means that the community is doing something for those who are being baptized, those being welcomed into both the church universal and the local congregation that is doing the baptizing. Which is where you all then come into play.

Baptism: Do You Confess Jesus Christ...

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were Romans 4:13-25 and Mark 8:27-38:

When we talk about the membership vows to join the United Methodist Church, which are prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness, I always mention the fact that the order is important, at least for the first ones. Prayer isn’t just accidentally first, but it’s there because of its priority. And then presence is important because we need to be in and around and with the body of Christ, not to just be a part of it, but also in order to get from and give to the church what we need to grow and mature in our faith. And so, as we look at the baptismal vows through Lent in preparation for celebrating Easter which will include baptizing people into the church and doing a reaffirmation of baptismal vows, I wonder about the placement of the questions, or why they are asked in the order in which they are asked. So far we’ve looked at the first two question, and they are, and remember I ask them on behalf of the whole church, “do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness and reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?” and so that question has to deal with turning from the brokenness of the world, which is not just in ourselves but also in the culture and societies in which we live. And the second question is somewhat similar, but also different and that is “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?” Which means not only recognizing that evil, injustice and oppression are in the world, that brokenness of the first question, but also accepting God’s assistance to actually do something about it. First, we renounce it and then we say we’ll work against it to do God’s will in the world. But do you notice anything about those questions and Jesus? They actually don’t say anything about Jesus or even the church at all? It’s not until the third question, which we look at today, and that question is “Do you confess Jesus Christ as your savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations and races?” This is the first time we ask about Jesus, who seems kinda important right? So, is this the right place for it?

When the Methodist movement began to spread and grow quite rapidly in England, someone wrote to John Wesley and asked him what it was the Methodist’s were supposed to do. That is what are the marks of a Methodist, or more directly, what are the rules of Methodism. And so, he created what were called the general rules, and there were three. The first is to do no harm, the second is to do good and the third was, he said, to attend upon all the ordinances of God, which got shorted much later to stay in love with God. And so, if we look at those rule, the whole Jesus things also comes last. And you can certainly do no harm and do good without believing in God right? But, I will be bold enough to say, you can’t love God without also doing the first two. And so, is that order correct then, a call to living out the faith which could then lead people to faith? Or do we need to make the profession first to understand what comes out of it? And one more piece to throw into this conversation is that Jesus does not begin his ministry by saying believe in me, make a profession of faith first, instead he begins it by saying “repent, for the Kingdom of God has come near.” For him the first action is repentance, which is also the first question. And so perhaps the order makes complete sense, renounce evil and repent, then seek to resist evil, injustice and oppression, and then make a profession of faith.