It Looks Like A Storm

The children's sermon yesterday had one of those rare and wonderful moments when a young person said something impressive and wise. It really touched me so I want to share it.

Of course, it is also very simple.

It was Pentecost and I had made a red spiral mobile to help tell the story.

God is in the room.


God is right with you, very close by.


When God breathes, we move... here, blow on this mobile and make it move.


When God is with us, we MOVE! Just like this mobile, we are mobile too because the Spirit moves us.

I had been holding the mobile over their heads, one at a time, and making them smile by saying, "The Spirit is with Dillon! Look! The Spirit of God is with Jeffrey! Wow, now the Spirit is with Bree!" etc.

When I had finished the story I was just holding my little art project for them to see. I had the materials all lined up next door for them to make their own during their time together.

Then Madeline looked at the mobile and shouted, "It looks like a storm!"

That really struck me. It looks like a storm.

I have been spending lots of time and energy lately trying to help the church hook up with the Spirit.

I agree. It looks like a storm.

Statement from General Conference - May 2, 2012

On Wednesday May 2nd several hundred United Methodists walked onto the floor of General Conference and spoke these words:

The General Conference has broken Wesley's General Rule by doing harm to young adults, people of color, gay and lesbian people, women and others.
Confusion has taken the place of Holy Conferencing.
Legalism has obscured love.
Fear has silenced faith.
But even though the action of General Conference, and the inaction of our other leadership, has done great harm, we will always be a part of God's church.
We are finished waiting. By waiting, more harm is done.
We are centered in the Gospel.
We are grounded in the Gospel.
We are joyful in the Gospel.
We are committed to following Jesus Christ to embody God's love and justice through the United Methodist Church.
We will work passionately for racial justice.
We will embody full inclusiveness for people of all sexual orientations.
We will celebrate people of all gender identities.
We are global, connectional, and repentant of colonialism.
We will be a people of peace.
We will proclaim the stewardship of creation joyfully.
We will strive for economic justice.
This is what it means to be United Methodist.
We are here. We will remain in this church as long as we can preach the Gospel and faithfully make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of us all.

We pray in the name of Jesus

The right petition is moving forward. The correct subcommittee has voted to make a report to the larger committee that will bring to the entire conference a report that says we need to stop the abuse against God's gay and lesbian children.

"The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." The first step in the legislative process has happened so that we can get rid of that horrible sentence, maybe the worst sentences I've ever read in my life.

But we've been here before. And for the next few hours we'll be in that place that we get to every four years where we think that maybe this time there will be a way. We can't stop ourselves from hoping and praying that, please dear God, this time it will happen.

Tonight I was with people I love, people who have come from all over the world to make this change happen. I wish you could know them and work with them and see them and meet them and feel how much love they have. I wish you could hug them and sing with them and know how much they are willing to do anything to make this happen. I wish I could share that with everyone.

But even more I wish they didn't have to go through this. I wish the church didn't do this to them. It isn't fair. It isn't right to treat people like this. It isn't right to make anyone go through what this church is doing to them.

I've been through this before. It doesn't get easier.

I had to tell people tonight, even as we clapped and cheered and gave thanks for where we are in the process, I had to tell people tonight to get ready.

I had to tell them that when this church slaps you done and leaves you wailing, they won't even care. Your friends, your mentors, your bishop, your pastor, people you've looked up to, they will just pretend it didn't happen. They will turn away. They won't even mention it.

But I also had to tell them that it will be alright. It doesn't mean you haven't done enough. It doesn't mean you aren't faithful. It doesn't mean you don't love your children. It doesn't mean you haven't been truthful. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong or that anything is wrong with you.

We're in that place we get to every four years where we think that maybe it will change. I don't know if it will. But I know I'm not just going to walk away.

I know what I believe. I know who I am.

Tomorrow we go back to continue to witness at General Conference.

The United Methodist Church has lost its mind, but not its soul

This week I heard a news story about people suffering from dementia with an uncanny ability to recall how to sing along to old songs.

This is not news to me, I'm a United Methodist.

When I was in high school I would volunteer with my sisters at a nursing homes. I remember the residents piping up to sing along with the kind person at the electronic keyboard leading them in "Has anybody seen my girl" or "Down by the old mill stream" (not the river but the stream!)

For the last ten years I have been in parish ministry in United Methodist churches which means I have been leading other songs in nursing home settings. Now it is "In The Garden", "Amazing Grace" and "How Great Thou Art". People remember how to sing these songs long after they have forgotten most everything else.

Now just to be clear, I also know plenty of people in their eighties and nineties with extremely sharp minds. My familiarity with nimbly minded elderly people was made clear to me when I saw that Dick Clark died. "Wow", I exclaimed to a friend, "I can't believe he was so young!"

"Really?", my friend said.

"Absolutely! People have been making fun of this guy for being old for so long but I can name five people like that (snap) who are older than him who I talk to every day and can really rely on too."

"REALLY?!?", his disbelief evident.

"Yup. I'm a Methodist minister."

"Oh, right.", he remembered.



I bring this up not to comment on memory loss and aging, but to comment on this denomination as a whole.

It seems that the United Methodist Church has lost its mind.

I intend no disrespect to people with mental illness. I am not referring to the age of our membership. IF ONLY we were characterized by the courage, kindness and work ethic of the seniors I know!

I use the phrase because of the very familiar fact that the denomination does not know its purpose, cannot articulate its needs, is at odds with its own interest, is confused, scared and feels all alone. You should read Bishop Goodpastor's recent sermon to the Council of Bishops for a great illustration of my point!

Thankfully, the United Methodist Church is neither in the hands of our least offensive bureaucrats or our most invested administrative officers. (Or our most offensive and outsider bloggers for that matter.) We belong to God.

And just like the residents in the nursing home, nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even our own obliviousness.

General Conference starts on Tuesday! I hope to see you there. If you are interested, I'll be blogging from here.

I have faith that the Spirit will lead us. When she does, we will remember how to sing. Thank God we don't have to wait for any person to make this happen. We can respond to God.

I love to tell the story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.
And when in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song, 'twill be the old, old story, that I have loved so long....
(I'll have you know I typed that verse from memory.)

Funeral Sermon For Our Sister In Christ

On March 10, 2012, just four days after her 80th birthday, child of God and member of the church, Mary Poor died. The following is the sermon preached at her funeral...


When I read Jesus say in the gospel reading that “the Holy Spirit… will remind you [of everything]”, I am reminded that there are some stories gathered in the church this morning. This is a time to remember everything, to remember stories. And there are some storytellers sitting in these pews. I thank God for every story that you are remembering right, - whether it is a story about Mary Poor or even a different story from another part of your life that the shadow of death is bringing to mind for you – and I thank God for the love and the breath and the time to share these stories with each other. It is time for some stories. I also pray to God that everyone will have good enough sense to know which stories are best for being shared inside the church and which can be shared later. I’m a person of faith – and proof of this is that in just a few moments I will welcome you to come to the pulpit to tell a story.
I’ve heard some stories from Mary’s family in the last week. Even after Mary wasn’t opening her eyes anymore and she couldn’t speak at all and I just held her hand as she lay in bed, when a family member would launch into one of these stories, on more then one occasion I felt her give a little squeeze on my hand. I think she was saying, “Roll this bed into the kitchen and bring me back when they’re finished.” Beautiful stories. You know this is a blessed family because every story that Mary’s family told, every story, included a little coda, a p.s., a little conclusion, every story seemed to have this one last part, a tail on the end. And this ending to each story was always about what happened when Mary found out about the story that was being told! These weren’t secrets. Part of living through a story, is getting to tell it. Sometimes the best part of getting away with something is confessing.
Of course, for me most of the stories that are freshest right now are the stories from the last few weeks. This isn’t the case for all of us. That’s because most of you had far more experiences and time with our beloved Mary than I did. But in my limited and specific relationship with Mary, as her Pastor for four years, I can say that in the last weeks of Mary’s life on earth, at the height of her illness and pain, she continued to be herself. She was deeply committed to her family. She was gentle and caring to the world. She was forgiving and she honestly struggled and shared with me about how to find peace and reconciliation where she needed it. She was humble before God. She was slightly embarrassed to receive attention. And she was so strong, solid in what she believed in, and in who she was rooting for. Despite the pain and the suffering and the certainty of death, Mary continued to be herself. It was beautiful.
But I did see a type of change in those of us who were around Mary. The laughter and the love stayed constant, but we were trying to get ready. We have been trying to prepare ourselves for life without Mary here in the body. This is even true for Mr. Rufus, her faithful Maltese dog. I even saw a change in him. Basically, as Mary became extremely ill, Rufus stopped barking and being agitated the way that little dogs are. Until the last few days, it would always crack me up that he would bark at me when I visited Mary. This little sweetie puppy yelling at me was so strange because if he wasn’t bearing his teeth, I would have thought he was a pair of slippers. But in the last few weeks, Rufus stopped barking… he even stopped barking at Brad! (Mary’s son…) Maybe it was because Rufus was sad, maybe it was because he knew that even if he did bark, he wouldn’t be able to stir Mary to give him those gentle strokes on his head he loved so much, or maybe he didn’t want to cause any discomfort or distraction for anyone.
Everyone one of us needs to thank God for hospice and their amazing work. One of the things it gives us is the chance to say goodbye, the chance to pray to God for gentle angels to take our loved ones to heaven, the chance to somehow understand that ‘it is time.’ I had such a chance to say goodbye to Mary and, more importantly, to help her family do the same. On Saturday night at 8:00pm, I was here at the church office just starting to think about what sermon I would preach the following morning, and I saw a missed call from Diane (Mary’s granddaughter) on my cell phone. So I got right in the car and drove to Central St. When I opened the door and let myself in, for the first time in weeks I heard Rufus barking from the other room to announce my entrance. I knew that Mary had died. He was barking like he used to.
As I walked down the hallway, it was almost like things were back to normal. He knew that Mary wasn’t in pain anymore. He knew that she was okay. He knew that it was okay to bark again. I have never had such emotion at hearing a little Maltese dog bark.
It will take a long time for us to even realize how much we miss Mary. Some of us here will actually continue to miss her until the day we die. Things are going to be okay, but death gives us an indescribable emptiness in our hearts. Somehow we stand between these two feelings, she is gone and yet she has eternal life. Mary continues to be held in God’s love and we continue to share love with her even though she is now dead. It is a mystery.
Death is a mystery. But so is life. The Christian faith affirms that whether we are dead or whether we are living, one thing stays the same – that one changeless thing is God’s love. Whatever the memories or details we tell today and in the days to come, that is the story we are telling. We are telling the story of love, the story of family, the story of belonging, the story of sticking together and holding each other up and keeping each other strong. That is the story of love.
Not too long ago Mary and I were talking about death. Specifically we were talking about those of us who would outlive her. I told her that the church would continue to be there for her family. I told her this was true because the church loves her. And Mary wrinkled her brow and looked at the ground and said, “I know… but I don’t know why.” Her humility and shyness touched me deeply. She didn’t understand why she was so loved.
Of course, it seems obvious to you and me. Mary was the best! But there is something more.
I think the fact that Mary didn’t understand means that it was God she was feeling. She didn’t know why she was loved because she was feeling God’s love. We don’t know why God loves us. We don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. Even though today we remember Mary as being perfect, she wasn’t. She was pretty wonderful, but she was human. And God loved her as fully and powerfully and eternally as God loves all of the saints.
We don’t know why God loves us. We don’t know why we are so blessed. When we are honest, it doesn’t make sense. It is a mystery. But it is real. We feel it. We know it. And it amazes us.
We are connected to heaven. The crying people, the barking dogs and the stories we remember all speak of the same mystery. All of these sounds tell the story of God’s love. Mary was a star in this story for so many of us. In our life she has been a lead character in the story of what it means to love. What a role model and what a friend she has been.
But there is one last part to this story, a coda, a p.s., a conclusion that the story of life wouldn’t be complete without. This one last detail that makes the story complete is that finally Mary has found out about it all. Mary knows it all now. She has found out the answers and she waits for us in heaven. God’s love is being revealed to her in a way she never could have imagined just six days ago.
And eternal life through Christ means that the story of love is not over. We are not alone. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” The Spirit is among us, reminding us that Love is real and that Mary is safe and that we will be too.
Because we know this story, this very good story, we can affirm with our friends on earth, and our friends above,
with the angels in heaven and the people in our lives who will become angels one day – even though they are not there yet –
we affirm in our pain and suffering and sorrow and stories
that we believe in the communion of saints,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.
Amen.

3rd Sunday in Lent, 2012

fear of "him"

This Sunday morning I am going to preach about fear.

Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin." Exodus 20:20

[The chief priests and the pharisees] wanted to arrest [Jesus], but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. Matthew 22:45

Two sentences about fear. The people fear God. The leaders fear the crowd.

My first postmodern impulse tells me that the leaders shouldn't have feared the crowd, they should have feared God instead! If we let God be God, and not some logical, containable, neat and tidy, domestic, sanitary, concept we can understand and explain, then perhaps there is something to fear in God. Maybe it is time to fear God raging on the mountain again!

Or maybe not.

Despite the excitement of letting God speak in the voice that God would choose (rather than the one that I approve), maybe there is enough fear in the world already. And maybe the church has been manipulatively complicit in letting fear have the last word for long enough.
I myself have certainly not offered comfort or strength to all of the people who fear "him."

And so when I preach about fear this Sunday, I have no interest in neutering God's pronoun in Exodus 20:20. I think that is was very much "him" whom the people feared: "him". Not God, but the masculine other who was trying to intimidate and control them. And it makes me think of all the women who fear "him"... whoever he is.
A boyfriend.
A boss.
A husband.
An intimate.
A pastor.
The church has taught women to fear "him" whenever we refuse to acknowledge domestic violence, sexual assault and the other crimes (and obsessions!) of our sexist society. And I have been a part of isolating in fear women who might yet be able to let their faith form a crowd.

(I mistyped the Exodus passage a moment ago and saw that I put on my screen "God has come only to TEXT you and put the fear of him upon..." No. It is not only a text. Whether he are talking about abusers texting victims or preachers exegeting a scripture text, it is not "only a text". Lives are at stake. This sort of fear is not acceptable.)

So maybe I should admire the way that the crowds were feared by their leaders. They did not need to tremble by themselves at the foot of the mountain. They did not hide behind a mediator to protect them. They knew they had access to God, in a direct personal relationship.
Faith is a force in itself and through it perhaps we can yet claim power beyond our individual lives, but still in union with the life we know.

The crowds' regard for Christ is powerful. It is a voice that God would choose.

Our faith in the prophetic office can free us from the fear of "him".