Carry Out Kindness

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were James 1:17-27 and Luke 6:27-38:

After last week’s message on practicing praise, I had a lot of people coming up to me to give me thanks, and so then I had to decide whether it was just everyone working on practicing praise, especially the injunction not to let people assume you are appreciated, but to tell them, or if there were lots of people who decided to practice the kindness challenge on me. But, since one of the things we are working on is assuming the best of intentions for others, I am going to go with the first answer. Today we conclude in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based off a book by the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn, and so a quick recap of the three rules of the kindness challenge. The first rule is to nix the negativity, that is we are not to say anything negative to the person we are doing the kindness challenge for, not to say anything negative about them to someone else. The second rule is practice praise, that is as we start to stop focusing on the negative we instead look for positives and to give one piece of praise or affirmation about someone else every day, and tell someone else what you praised them for. If you missed either of those messages, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them, which then leads us into the final rule, which we cover today, and that is to carry out kindness, or to do a small act of kindness or generosity for the person you are doing the kindness challenge for every day, and to do all three of these steps for 30 days, although you don’t have to stop there.

Additionally, while the kindness challenge asks you to do each of these things every day for 30 days, and really you can practice these for anyone and at any time. And the truth is if we want the world to be a kinder place, then it has to start with us. If we want people to be kinder, then we need to be kinder. And what’s more we shouldn’t be doing any of these actions with the expectation that we will get anything in return. We do them simply because they are the right things to be doing, the way that we should be living. And we of course hear that quite a bit in scripture. As we heard in James today, he says that we are to be doers of the world, not just hearers, which is a preview of him saying that faith without works is dead.

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.

Nix the Negative

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:21-24 and James 3:1-12:

When Charles Darwin was originally formulating his idea of evolution, he said that one of the things that almost undid it for him was the idea of kindness and altruism, let alone sacrifice. After all, if it’s about the survival of the fittest and making sure that your genes survive for future generations, taking care of your own makes sense, but why would you ever want to help others, especially strangers. But later on, according to Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor at UC Berkeley, he says that Darwin actually came to believe that our need to be social and caring may actually be stronger than our desire for self-preservation, and it’s ingrained not socially learned. Indeed, Dr. Keltner says, “evolution [has] crafted a species—us—with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution—survival, gene replication and smooth functioning groups.” That is, kindness is ingrained in us, and we can see this even from the earliest age.

In a study done with six-month-olds, they were shown a round piece of wood that had eyes glued onto it and it was struggling to climb up a felt mountain. After seeing the circle struggling, a triangle piece of wood, also with eyes glued on it, came along and tried to help push the circle to the top. But then along comes a square piece of wood, with eyes, that tries to push the triangle and the circle down so they can’t make it to the top. What experimenters wanted to know was how the infants would respond, and while they couldn’t verbalize how they felt about the pieces of wood, they could express it by which blocks they played with, and which do you think they refused to play with? The square. The block that wasn’t kind. They even introduced a neutral observer block who did nothing to hinder or help, and the children still preferred the triangle to the others. So, even before we know what’s happening, we have a natural preference for those who help and are kind over those who are unkind. And what scans of the brain have also found is that when we participate in acts of kindness that the pleasure centers of our brain are activated, and so kindness in and of itself can be its own reward. And so with that we continue in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based upon a book of the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn.

Be Kind to One Another

Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture passage was Ephesians 4:25-5:2:

If it seems like flying the friendly skies is a little less friendly these days, you’d be right. The FAA began keeping records of referrals made to them of unruly passengers on planes in 1995.  A few weeks ago they released statistics on those unruly passengers on planes so far in 2021. In less than six months this year, there have been more reports than in any full year since they began keeping those records. This has included a Southwest flight attendant being punched in the face, losing two teeth. A Delta flight being diverted to Albuquerque after a passenger threatened to bring the plane down and tried to get into the cockpit. There have been multiple incidents of passengers fighting with each other. Southwest and American have delayed bringing back alcohol sales, and United only sells beer and wine, and then only on long flights, to try and eliminate alcohol exacerbating the already high tensions. Long time flight attendants have said it’s worse than they can ever remember it. And then we could talk about increasing altercations in grocery and big box stores, which are also on the rise. It seems like we’ve just forgotten how to get along with others.

And so with all of that in mind, today we begin a new worship series entitled The Kindness Challenge, which is based upon a book of the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn. I initially read the book a number of years ago, and even did a series on it at my last church, but with our current climate and situation I decided to dust it off and do it over again. I was going to do it later in the year, but decided to move it up now because I think it’s necessary for us as Christians to be showing a different way of living. As was said in the introduction to the passage from Ephesians today, when we put on the clothes of Christ, something we’ve heard a lot of in the past few months, then we are to put away the ways of the world, and to live like Christ, to imitate Christ, and one of the ways we do that Paul says is by practicing kindness.

That's a Mistake. It's a Perfect Ten.

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:43-48:

Just a week short of a year ago, as we made our way through Genesis, our passage was God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, whom he loved. And I said that when we dealt with that story that we had to deal with the reality that we sacrifice our children for many, many lesser reasons. And I quoted Russell Baker writing in the New York Times who said, “Parents who make their children's lives hell in order to make the parents proud of themselves are a commonplace of American life.” Especially when it comes to sports and then I also reminded us that we also see our children sacrificed as victims of sexual and physical violence, neglect and homelessness, child labor and poverty. And I don’t think we can actually talk about the Olympics without naming those realities, especially as we look at the film Nadia, which came out in 1984 as a made for TV movie about Nadia Comaneci. While some of you may have seen it at the time, I doubt that it touched many of you with its cinematic brilliance. There is actually a Facebook page for fans of the movie and it has a whole 128 people who like it, so not at the top of the Olympic movie pyramid.

But, I choose it for several reasons. The first is that I wanted a film that featured a female athlete, and there just aren’t a lot of them out there. The second was that I thought Nadia’s achievement of perfection in the 1976 Olympics could provide us a good perspective to talk about perfecting our faith, as hear in the gospel passage we have for today. And third, it could also provide us some perspective on Olympic achievements and their aftermath, which are not always pretty, nor is the path to get there. Although today’s message is going to be very different than what I had thought it would be because of the events of this week in women’s gymnastics especially as they surround Simone Biles. If Biles is not the greatest female gymnast of all time, she and Nadia Comaneci are certainly in the conversation. And it turns out that they actually have a lot in common.

Feel the Rhythm! Feel the Rhyme! Get On Up, It's Bobsled Time!

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 32-49:

In preparation for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, Nike put up a billboard that said “You don’t win the silver, you lose the gold.” According to Nike, it was supposed to be inspiring, but for US wrestler Townsend Saunders, an Arizona State alum, when he walked out of the arena wearing a silver medal, he said those words stung. “It’s not terrible for everyone else to read” he said, “It’s just terrible for every silver medalist.” He went home depressed thinking he should have given more effort and won gold. “It was an honor to represent my country,” he said, “but to have come so close.” Eventual he came to terms with his loss and realized that not very many people have a silver medal either.[i] And really, the billboard seemed to be in opposition to many of the things the Olympics represent.  Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, said “The important thing in the Olympic Games in not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” And that, I think, is one of the things that make the Olympics great. Because while there are certainly those who win, who mark themselves as great, that we celebrate, people like Jesse Owens or Simone Biles or Michael Phelps, we are often just as amazed by those who give everything even know that they have little chance of winning. The Olympics are just as much, or maybe even more about those athletes. And so perhaps with that idea it’s appropriate that today’s film is Cool Runnings about the Jamaican Bobsled team who first participated in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.

In trying to find films for this series, I was looking for a film about someone who was expected to win and didn’t, but there aren’t a lot of them out there. And so the next best option was films that celebrate the mere act of competing and there are some good films that do that, and this is one of the best. But, we do have to be honest and say that it says that this is based on a true story, and that is true. There was a bobsled team from Jamaica, and there are a couple of other things that are true from the story, but most of the rest of it is made up for entertainment purposes, and so that does mark this story as different from other Olympic films. It’s still very entertaining, but don’t take this as what actually happened, and in it also has a bigger connecting to the story of David and Goliath.

You Can Run. You Can Jump. But, Can You Win?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:

Last week as we began our worship series on the gospel message to be found in movies about the Olympics we looked at the movie Miracle, about the 1980 US hockey team who won gold. To help them prepare for that, their coach told them they were going to work harder than they had ever worked before, and wanted to know that they were actually going to be dedicated enough to actually get it done? That is often the difference between success and failure not just in sports, but in most aspects of life. How much are you willing to put into it? Are you willing to put in everything you have, and even more, or do you want to just do enough to get by? And more importantly in our faith lives, what are we willing to do? Paul really asks the Corinthian community, are you putting everything you have in to win the race of faith, or is your desire and wants somewhere else?

And so today we look at the movie Race, which is about Jesse Owens who is arguably one of, if not the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, having won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, and I hope that didn’t ruin the surprise for anyone. There is so much we could talk about this film including that the movie’s title has sort of a double meaning to it, not only being about the races that Owens won as a track star, but also about the realities of being a black man in America and in Hitler’s Olympic games. But today we are going to focus on the fact no one gets to the Olympics by just talent alone. Talent will get you only so far on its own, but it takes more than just talent to be your best and especially the best in the world. And so Owens, whose family moved to Ohio from Alabama when he was a boy, goes to Ohio State University to run on their track team, at a time in which their football team was still another 7 years away from being integrated. And when he gets there, his coach, Larry Snyder, wonders what he has. Take a look…

The Name on the Front of the Jersey is More Important Than the Name on the Back

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Galatians 3:23-29:

Since the summer Olympics are set to start in less than two weeks, a year late and many billions of dollars over budget, and unlike any Olympics we’ve ever seen before. I thought now would be a great time to begin a new worship series which will go for the next four weeks looking at the gospel message, or the Christian message, we can find in films about the Olympics. And please notice that this is not the gospel according to the Olympics, as we have only four gospels we use, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but the gospel in Olympic films. That is seeing Christian stories or themes, or finding them, in areas in which we might not ordinarily think to look. We start with one of the best, and more recent Olympic films, and that is the film Miracle, about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team who, against all odds and expectations, and 40-year-old spoiler alert, defeated the Soviet hockey team, probably one of the greatest hockey teams ever to play, having won gold at the last four Olympics. And while the film certainly tells the story of that game, and does it extraordinarily well in my opinion, it’s the story of how they got to that point that makes the difference and leads us to what we are going to explore today.

Herb Brooks, played by Kurt Russell, was the coach of the University of Minnesota hockey team and was hired in 1979 to coach the Olympic team after several others had turned it down because they didn’t think they could compete, certainly with the soviets, but Brooks had a different idea, and a different way of constructing his team. He wasn’t necessarily going to take the best players, as he said “All-star teams fail because they rely solely on the individual's talent. The Soviets win because they take that talent and use it inside a system that's designed for the betterment of the team.” The only way they could beat the soviets, he said, was to play the best team hockey they could, not just having the best players they could get. And so rather than having tryouts as normal, Brooks instead handpicked all the players for the team. But that didn’t mean it was easy going because these were guys that had played against each other at the highest levels of college hockey for national championships, and so there was some bad blood existing. Take a look…

In-Person and Digital Worship

Several months ago we cut the cord on our cable (or actually our satellite dish). We had been talking about it and looking at all the different options and when the price was going up, and the company offered to upgrade me to a more expensive package, but not cut the price, we decided to bite the bullet and do it, and we haven’t really looked back. And we are not alone.

There were an estimated 25 million people who had stopped using cable or satellite by 2017. This year that number is supposed to reach 50 million, with another 5 million added next year, and still growing beyond that. Netflix now has more subscribers in the US than cable and satellite combined. Additionally cable viewership of those between 18-49 is down more than 27% in the past two years, even with people being locked up at home. This is the reality of the world in which we live, and it will only continue.

We live in an on-demand world. Other than for sports, or very special shows, people don’t want to have to wait until a specific time to watch a show, and then not be able to catch it again until much later. They want to be able to see it when they want to watch not when someone else says they can watch it. And then there is the whole issue of binging a whole series or season at once. Some entertainment companies have recognized this reality and embraced it, others are working towards it, and others who resist will simply disappear.  

This is not true just for TV, but for many other things that used to demand everyone to be in one place at the same time. While I do still “attend” workshops and trainings that are at a particular time and day, most of the things I attend or see offered that I might be interested in are on demand. I do the work when it’s convenient for me and interact with others who are doing the same thing at the same time. There may be time limitations, that is the class is only happening during a period of dates, but it still works on my schedule. Just look at what universities are doing in online classes and you’ll see how true this is becoming.

Now until the past year most churches have been anything but doing that. We offered worship at a particular time and if you couldn’t make that, then you were out of luck. And other than perhaps watching or listening to the sermon later, which even then was a rarity in most churches, there was no way to catch up. That is not conducive to a culture that wants things differently, and wants them when they want them. McDonalds now offers breakfast all day for a reason.

Now all this does not mean you can’t still offer things at a particular time, but unless you are really special, again think sports, people want other ways to interact when they want. Our streaming allows us to do this because you can now access our worship service any time after it happens, as well as to just watch the message if you want. I haven’t heard of anyone bingeing an entire worship series at one time yet, but I do know many people who are watching the worship service at a time that works better for them for many reasons.

Now one of the things that people get stuck in is either/or thinking, rather than both/and. It’s not that we are going to preference those in the sanctuary over online, or vice versa. Both are constituents of the congregation. As Phillip Ortega keeps saying, which I encourage, “we need to meet people where they are.”

You cannot make people do what you want them to do, but that they don’t want to do. If you are a parent or own cats you know is true. It’s about thinking of ways of being church in new ways in order to reach new people. We have people worshipping with us online on a regular basis, and sometimes just once, who don’t even live in New Mexico, let alone Los Alamos. Our possibility of growth online also becomes exponential over what we can do here.

In-person worship and gatherings are not going away, but neither is the digital, and both can inform and build on each other, as well as increase engagement, and as one person I recently read said, if we don’t embrace the digital, “your church will probably continue to function like a mall in the age of Amazon.” Malls are dying and to quote a book title, I refuse to lead a dying church.

But that’s just a start, and I’ll expand more in the next few weeks. So I want to know from you, where do you see opportunities for us in the digital world that we are not currently using, what are your concerns, and how do you think you might be able to assist?

With Liberty and Justice for All

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were Deuteronomy 10:12-13, 17-21, John 8:31-36 and Galatians 5:1, 13-25:

Today is the day we, as a nation, celebrate our independence, or achieving our liberty, from Great Britain. Although technically I agree with John Adams, that we should probably celebrate on July 2 because that was the day that the continental congress actually passed the resolution declaring independence. They then spent the next two days debating the wording of the declaration, which was then adopted on July 4, although it’s possible some signed it on July 4th, most didn’t start signing it until nearly a month later, and several never signed it at all. But as I was thinking of today and what I might talk about, I was thinking about the last line of the pledge of allegiance, “with liberty and justice for all.” And those are terms that have a particular meaning for us as Christians, that may be, and probably are different than those that we think of as a country and a culture, even though the writer of the pledge, Francis Belamy, was a Baptist minister. He was also a socialist and was removed from his church after denouncing the evils of capitalism. But what makes the story even more interesting is the fact that the first place that really published and pushed the pledge was a publication entitled The Youth’s Companion, but their motive was to encourage schools to buy flags for all of their classrooms, and of course who was selling those flags? The Youth’s Companion. I’m telling you you can’t make this up.

But anyways, we hear much in the Bible about justice, and in particular about God’s justice, which is part of that passage we heard from Deuteronomy, and the prophets have a lot more to say about it, because often the reason that Israel is being punished is because they are not upholding God’s justice. And what God also makes clear is that because Israel is God’s chosen nation and people, that they are held to a higher standard. That because they know of God’s justice that their acts of justice, or how they live out justice, must follow the same standard of that of the divine. And what is that? Well we don’t have time to go into that in detail, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it today was for me to begin thinking about it in greater detail for a possible worship series on God’s justice, and what that might look like and entail. And so Moses tells the people, sort of summarizing the law, or at least how it’s lived out, that God is impartial and takes no bribes, the sort of basics of what we might think of what justice in the world looks like, especially amongst judges, the police, prosecutors and politicians, those who carry out human justice, after all we say that justice is blind right? That she is blind so that everyone gets a fair shot, even if we might not actually live into that, that’s the ideal. Which is also being set out here.