Worship and Healing

Worship was unusual for me today. I did not speak at all during our worship services. Really! I just sat in a pew and participated with everyone else. This just doesn't happen very often. Since my ordination in 1987 I've either had a hand in leading the service or preaching. It was nice just being in worship and having nothing to do except worship God. It was just what I needed this weekend. I needed to be fed by a good word from the pulpit. I needed to receive communion with everyone else. I needed to sing as a participant and not a leader encouraging others to sing. Sometimes it's easy for the worship leader to forget to worship. This morning I was able to go to worship in a church that I love and would join even if I was not the minister. I hope you know that not every minister could say that about the church they serve. There was one place in the service when I just stopped singing and closed my eyes. I just listened to the voices of the people around me. I felt God's love wash over me and could sense that healing is taking place in my body even as bad as I felt today. I am so thankful that God loves me and believes in me, even when I do not believe in myself. God is grace. Later this evening I was able to share our beliefs and values at a dinner for newcomers. I never get tired of sharing what God is doing with us and through us. I pray that I never take our wonderful church, or God for granted. I realize that I have not said to much with this blog. But maybe just lifting up the need for worship and the healing that takes place when we do is enough.

Don't Waste Your Pain

In January I established a set of goals and priories for the year. None of them included the diagnosis of lymphoma. Overnight everything changed when the oral surgeon said "cancer." Suddenly my list of goals changed. Often it’s those things that are not planned where our most significant spiritual growth occurs.

This experience has been a life changer and a real gift for me. Sure I feel bad. Sure it's been scary. Sure I'm bald. But the past 90 days have been an intense and concentrated period of learning and deepening. What's ironic is that the very thing that could possibly kill you can also be the very thing that saves you. God is using my cancer to redeem me.

I have been humbled. I have learned what it means to have people pray for you. I have learned what simple gestures like a meal prepared by a friend or a card can mean. I have learned that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. I heard a preacher say once, "don't waste your pain." Now I know what he meant, because pain is our greatest teacher.

I had my third treatment this week. That means that I'm entering into what I call the chemo fog. It's like setting off one of those bug foggers that you set off inside your house to kill bugs, only they set one off inside your body. It's like waking up one morning with a hangover that doesn't go away for about 10 to 12 days. Dry mouth, nauseated, jumbled thinking, flu-like symptoms. Yuck! But then one morning you wake up and it's as if the sun comes out for the first time in months and you feel good again and can think clearly.

There’s a song by Bob Dylan that I've listened to over and over again that kind of describes the experience for me ...Stuck in Mobile. He sings “I'm stuck in Mobile with the Memphis blues again.” I take it to describe being in place that you don't want to be. Like in a chemo fog.

I've received some good news since my last post. MY fears about radiation and its impact on my voice have been relieved. The radiologist assured me that the level of dosage and where will be applied will have no permanent impact on my voice. Also my doctor informed me that there is a possibility that I may not have to have all six chemos. I have a CAT scan and PET scan in two weeks and we will reevaluate from there. There is a possibility that I may have only one more chemo treatment and then radiation. I'm paying that they will discover with these tests that the cancer gone. This is my prayer, along with praying that I will continue to learn from this and be patient with myself.

I want everyone to know how deeply grateful I am for all of your support and encouragement and love during this time. I want to give out special love to my good Texas friend Judy Chandler who did the all-night Relay for Life and raised a lot of money for cancer research in my honor. Judy is one of the finest elders I have served with. I also want to just tell the world how much I love my wife. She's awesome!

Kingdom Now,
David

Brothers, Blueberry Muffins, and Redemption

I preached a sermon on redemption two weeks ago. The message is still rolling around in my head. I'm mulling over a greeting that Jesus gave the Disciples that was unexpected and certainly undeserved in Matthew’s account of the resurrection. He calls them his “brothers.” Every time I read it I shake my head and wonder how he can call them brothers. Cowards is more fitting. Failure is the proper description. Backstabber is not to harsh. They denied him and abandoned him. But still he calls them “brothers.” Jesus is doing something here that the elder brother would not do in the parable of The Prodigal Son. Remember how he refused to join the party when the wayward son returned home. What wonderful words of redemption -"brothers".

Then soon afterwards he gives them the great commission “to go and to make disciples of all nations and baptize them.” He tells them that he will be with them until the end of the age. In spite of what they have been through and in spite of what they have done he still entrusts them with the work of the kingdom of God. They are his "brothers". Still they have a hard time accepting his grace and his mission. Immediately they go back to their old lives. They pick up their nets and go back to their fishing. It’s not hard to imagine why, or how they must have felt about themselves. Jesus has forgiven them. But it appears they were just unable to live with themselves. The guilt and shame must have been profound. But then the one who called them “brothers” shows up on the shore of the lake where they were fishing and cooks them breakfast - food for their souls - food for their redemption - after a betrayal and failure of the most anguishing kind. Jesus just will not give up on his "brothers". It's meaningful that he did not teach them or scold them, but did something as ordinary as cook them breakfast. He shows up on the shore and cooks them breakfast.

Maybe there is a word for us there about what it means to involve ourselves in the redemption of others. Maybe that redemption process begins with just the simple ordinary tasks of caring for someone’s basic needs, like cooking blueberry muffins, or inviting them over to dinner.

God specializes in redemption. He takes broken people and redeems them. We see it many times in the Gospels, people who are in a state of disarray are redeemed - a leper - a tax collector - a woman caught in adultery - a woman with an issue of blood - a demoniac – a paralyzed man. People others had given up on as lost causes as too hopelessly broken to be redeemed he touches. Jesus touches their lives with his love and puts them on the pathway of redemption. This reveals something of the very heart of who God is. God is a God of infinite patience and persistence. He never gives up on us even when we have given up on ourselves. He never stops looking for us when everyone else has stopped looking.

I am so glad that God is like this. I’m glad because I’m in need of redemption. I stumble and fall. I disappoint others and God. But God does not throw me away. He meets me at the place of my failure and calls me his "brother". He turns my failure into a call. He redeems my struggles for his purpose.

One more thing is clear to me. Our redemption does not end with the touch of God. It requires taking steps ourselves. I'm reminded that after God intervened in the lives of the Israelites and set them free from their Egyptian Slavery and parted the Red Sea there was still a desert waiting for them on the other side. Redemption requires that we wander with God in the wilderness of our lives where we are tested and God uses those testing moments of life to shape us and molds us into the people that we are to become. God redeems but we must join him in the work of our redemption. It's no different with the 12 step program in AA. The first three steps are about giving your life to God. The last 9 steps are the steps we have to take, such as making amends to those we have wounded. God needs our help in our redemption. We have to participate.

God is good. As I write this I want to stand in the middle of the busiest street and tell all who will listen about our redeemer God. I want to tell everyone what God will do in their life if he will let them. I love Jesus! He calls me "brother".

Does Easter Change Everything?

We have attached this line to the promo material for Easter: THE RESURRECTION CHANGES EVERYTHING! But to be honest after preaching Easter for 20 years or more I'm wondering if this is true. When you look at Easter Sunday you might think it does. But on the Sunday after Easter makes it appear as if nothing has changed. Like the Disciples who went back to their old lives as fisherman we go back to our old lives and old churches too.

So my challenge to you is to answer these questions: Does the resurrection change everything? If it does - how does it change everything? Is this tag line a case of a preacher who is more given to hyperbole than reality?

Reality may be that Easter changes nothing because we've preached the wrong message that - "Easter is an event that you believe in" - "it's good news about what happens when we die" - that "Jesus is in heaven with God." Those messages change nothing. We hear them and we nod our heads and go back to life as it is. We need an earthquake this Easter to roll away the stone so that people can see that Jesus has not been entombed by our theology and that he is not trapped in a building or by our anemic preaching.

Jesus is not in heaven and he's not in a creed to be believed. And today it's not Roman soldiers who kill Jesus. It is preachers and churches. But the Jesus who was bloodied is now among those who are bloodied everyday by life. What if we found out that Jesus is loose among us. The Jesus who said that he was anointed to preach good news to the poor and set the captives free is among us - that he has gone on to Galilee where the sick need to be healed ... and is now wondering what we are doing wandering around in a graveyard looking for a corpse. Yes, maybe we need an earthquake this Easter and a little fear - the fear of an alive Jesus who will get bloody again and wants us to get bloody too. That the one who gives sight to the blind is giving sight to the blind now. The one who unstops deaf ears and wants to unstop ours too. The one who makes the lame walk and who wants to lay his hands on a lame church so that it can walk to Galilee. That's what had the soldiers shaking in their boots and had the two Mary's so afraid. A dead Jesus is not scary - A Jesus in heaven is not scary either - a Jesus in a building is not scary - but an ALIVE JESUS is enough to scare us - make us want to clutch our hymnbooks and run back to the safety of our theology that distances us from the darkness of the hell that people endure every day. Like Mary and the soldiers we are comfortable with death - we know death.

So this Easter, does the resurrection really change everything, or better yet does the resurrection change us (that's the real question)? After preaching Easter for 20 years, I'm wondering if it changes everything. And just maybe it's not the people who fill our pews that are the issue. They show up and they sing. Maybe it’s the anemic preaching that does them in. But they come back every year hoping to hear the message that truly changes everything. Preaching 4 days after pumping chemo through my veins makes me want to be direct and get to the message that should scare us with the knowledge of what we can become.

So I challenge you to answer these questions:
Does the resurrection really change everything? If so what does it change? Much of what I have heard and honestly preached before does not seem to have changed anything. My prayer maybe should be that if Easter does not change everything at least if should change me. Does it change me? I’m feeling much like having an unconventional Easter.

Groceries and the Kingdom

A woman in her 60’s works the checkout lane at Wal-Mart where my family buys groceries. It does not appear she ever takes a day off. She is always working when Teresa sends me on a late night grocery run for something we need for the next day. Honestly, I’ve never really paid much attention to her. I’m either in too big a hurry, or too preoccupied to notice her. She has checked me out dozens of times or more, but I’ve never bothered to even learn her name. But then one day I called her by the name on her name tag and mentioned that she is working every time I’m buying groceries. She sighed and said that she was supporting 7 people on her income and works as many shifts as she can get. Here was this amazing person in front of me carrying a huge burden and I was completely missing it. Now those late night runs are more than just a business transaction where I give her money and she gives me milk and eggs. I know her name.

Answering the call to be the Kingdom means bringing the Kingdom where we work and where we buy groceries. We are representatives of the Kingdom to our neighbors and our families. Sometimes we think that being the Kingdom means doing the big things like …working in a soup kitchen …installing water purifiers in Haiti …becoming a minister. Sure those big things are Kingdom work. But actually it’s the small things we do every day that bring the Kingdom of God to our world NOW. It’s learning the name of the person that bags your groceries or rotates your tires. It’s shoveling the snow off of a neighbor’s porch or buying a cup of coffee for a stranger at Starbucks. We’re often guilty of thinking that its religious professionals that advance the Kingdom. Everyone else just sits on the bench and cheers the professionals. But that’s not God’s plan. You are God’s plan. There is no other plan. And the best thing that you can do be the Kingdom is to invest in relationships. Get to really know people. Learn their names. Show them you care. Just listen to them.

The Rank-Link Imbalance

David Brooks has written an interesting piece in the New York Times called The Rank-Link Imbalance.

Brooks writes: "Every society produces its own distinct brand of social misfits, I suppose, but our social structure seems to produce significant numbers of people with rank-link imbalances. That is to say, they have all of the social skills required to improve their social rank, but none of the social skills that lead to genuine bonding. They are good at vertical relationships with mentors and bosses, but bad at horizontal relationships with friends and lovers."

Brooks is essentially talking about powerful men who rise to the top and then make catastrophic personal decisions. He must have had in mind the latest cast of men who have humiliated their wives with their shameful behavior.

• Eliot Spitzer
• John Edwards
• Tiger Woods
• Mark Sanford

Brooks contends these men discover what it takes to build a successful career. They stand head and shoulders above all others. But they fail to develop the skills necessary for building close and intimate relationships. They climb the greasy poll to the top, but soon discover that something is missing when they get there.

Brooks writes: "But then, gradually, some cruel cosmic joke gets played on them. They realize in middle age that their grandeur is not enough and that they are lonely. The ordinariness of their intimate lives is made more painful by the exhilaration of their public success. If they were used to limits in public life, maybe it would be easier to accept the everydayness of middle-aged passion. But, of course, they are not."

I'm reminded of something that Jesus said, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?" I suppose it could also be translated as, "What good is it if you learn how to climb to the top, but don't learn how to love the people around you."

One of the lessons we must learn in life is where a meaningful life is found. It's not success and the trophies that come with it, nor fame and the celebrity attached to it. Real life, the good life, is found in our relationships. We were made for relationships. What good is a vertical climb to the top without the horizontal part of life that make it worth living.

Every funeral I conduct it's the same thing. It's family that make the arrangements and is present to say "goodbye." Many people realize before it's too late that what they are looking for is at home. I read this somewhere, "A man who is a success in buisness but fails his family is a failure."

Step Out on Nothing

Bryon Pitts is an award-winning 60 Minutes correspondent. He recently published a book about his life titled Step Out on Nothing. Pitt's life began under the most difficult of circumstances.

When he began his freshman year at Wesleyan University, he had a limited vocabulary and stuttered when flustered. A professor told him, "You’re not college material, you should leave.”

Pitts was reduced to tears and was considering leaving. But a stranger noticed his tears and asked if she could help. That stranger was a professor who then mentored him throughout college.

As a young boy growing up in Baltimore, Pitts lived with a shameful secret. He could not read. Labeled functionally illiterate in the fifth grade Pitts was relegated to the basement of his school for remedial classes. He once overheard two adults in the hallway: "Today the basement, tomorrow prison".

Pitts escaped that fate because of the help of a professor and the love and support of his mother. Pitts' mom wrote him his freshman year:

“Son you know your momma loves you. I believe in you. I pray for you. I know you better than you know yourself. And I know a God who is able. You’re not coming home. You’re not going to give up. You are not going to fail. You are going to endure.”

Pitts writes: "There are the right people and the wrong people placed in every person’s path. You must survive one and cling to the other.”

Pitt's story reminds us that we all need people in our lives who will call out the best in us and who will remind us of who we really are - the Beloved of God.

I really connect with Pitt's story. I wasn't college material either. But thankfully a professor took notice of me and saw in me what others could not see, what I could not see in myself.

May we be the kind of church that counteracts the negative voices that tell people what they can't do. May we be the kind of church that calls out the best in people, that sees in people what they may not even see in themselves.

My professor's name was Ken Lawrence. He was the chairman of the religion department at TCU and was a gifted teacher. His life was cut short soon after his retirement. But he is still reaching people through my ministry and the ministry of countless others who were encouraged by him.