Dear Friend of Burke UMC,

 The calendar is pulling us into February already, and the season of Lent is just around the corner.  During Lent I plan to preach on the events that led to Jesus’ death on the cross for us.  So I took a book to lunch today and began reading.

The book was titled The Last Week. It helps us grasp what happened to Jesus on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, to understand more clearly the quick turnaround between the triumph of Palm Sunday and the tragedy of Good Friday. I’ll draw on this for our Lenten sermon series. 

As a fortunate parallel, we’ll begin a discussion of The Last Week this coming Sunday.  Audrey Romasco will host a group read-and-discuss beginning Sunday, February 3, at 10:30 am.  This is an opportunity I hope you won’t miss.

The authors refer to the traditional meaning of the word “passion” as speaking about the suffering of Jesus. Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ focused on the agony Jesus endured for us.  “Passion” is from the Latin noun passio, which means “suffering.”

But we also use the word “passion” to mean a high degree of interest or energy for something.  “His passion is gardening.”  “She speaks with great passion.” Jesus had a passion in his sense, too.  His passion was the Kingdom of God.

This is what Jesus was most passionate about – living for God’s justice, God’s rule, God’s determination to put the world right.  He dedicated his life to speaking and teaching and embodying the realm of love and justice God was shaping.  You could say that his passion for the Kingdom led to his passion on the cross. His commitment to God’s world put him into inevitable conflict with the world around him.

Already I’m pondering over my Diet Coke where my passion lies.  Am I dedicated to the vision of God’s Kingdom?  Am I energized by living God’s way?  Am I as passionate about the Kingdom as I am about maintaining my beliefs – or my political views – or my team’s success on Sunday – or my family?   What do I yearn for the most intensely?

Before I’m finished the Preface I’m asking big questions.  Lent is a time for doing that – for asking big questions and listening for big answers.

But relax – there’s still a Super Bowl between now and then. Audrey’s class is a couple of days away. There’s another Diet Coke in the frig.  That big stuff can wait.

Then again, some big questions just don’t wait.

 

 

Pastor Larry

Burden or Blessing? Both.

Sometimes a burden can be a blessing.  Sometimes a blessing can be a burden.  Often the two are one and the same.

There is an indigent jobless man who comes by the church frequently.  When I first met Joseph, I confess that I considered him a burden.  He interrupted my work; he always needed something; he was very persistent; and, being a large man, he was somewhat intimidating.  I learned from clergy colleagues that several had told him to leave the church and never come back.

But somehow, only by the sheer grace of God, I began discovering that I liked him. Joseph has a nice sense of humor and a very interesting story.  I’ve learned what it’s like to survive in his world as he does, and I find I’ve become less judgmental.  He’s persistent, yes, but gentle.  I sort of enjoy his company, and I think what he needs more than food or money is … well, someone who enjoys his company.

I’m beginning to claim burdensome Joseph as a blessing from God.

Some of these thoughts were stirred up by a conversation at our Wednesday prayer group.  We heard these words from the Psalms:  I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law.  This blessing has fallen to me, for I have kept your precepts.  (Ps. 119:55-56)

In Christian faith we’re taught that the law was a burden to people.  “God has all these rules,” we’re taught, “and people tried in vain to keep them all, and they couldn’t, and the law of God was a liability in their relationship with God.”  But Jews didn’t share that belief at all.  They saw it differently.

The law – the Torah, the teaching – was a gift from a loving God.  It was a source of inspiration, a source of guidance, ethics, and praise.  Obedience to it was a blessing, as the Psalmist states above.  Just a few verses earlier the same writer says, I find my delight in your commandments, because I love them.  God’s Word was clearly a blessing.

Yet the early Christians weren’t entirely wrong, either.  The law could and often did become an obstacle on the path to holiness.  Its words judged and convicted people; it set standards that were impossible to achieve; it prevented many Jews from experiencing God’s blessing because of its high demands and expectations.

It was both burden and blessing.

And so it is with much of life.  We’re burdened by a chronically ill child or an aged parent.  We have a medical condition that persists. We’re in a job that wasn’t what we dreamed of, but it’s too late to change now.  Many situations that feel like burdens are really opportunities to know God’s blessing. And we can grow inwardly because of the illness, or the caretaking, or the lost dream. 

We can instead reframe our sense of affliction.  We can name the gifts it has brought us, even against our wills.  We may have more patience, more compassion, more love than we would otherwise. We find unique inspiration. We can begin to see how God has led us by unconventional paths to a harder-won and more valuable wisdom. 

I hope you’ll ponder and pray over your burdens.  Some of them may need to be lifted and given to Jesus, nailed to his cross.  (Remember that he said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”)  But some burdens become lighter when we see them “from the back side” and recognize them as gifts from God. 

Then we can say gratefully with the Psalmist, This blessing has fallen to me.

 

Pastor Larry

 

It Was Mostly an Ordinary Christmas

 

Before I get too far into a New Year and the tree comes down, I usually spend some time reflecting on the Christmas past. This year I've finally admitted what I've been afraid to admit for so long.

Christmas is not "the most wonderful time of the year." Not for me, anyway.

It's hard to admit. I don't want to sound like a Scrooge, muttering "Bah, humbug" under my breath, then feeling guilty about being unsentimental. I understand the sadness that so many feel when a loved one has died or a marriage has ended; it certainly wasn't a Merry Christmas for the residents of Newtown. But even as an ordinary month, I just can't find and maintain some unique joy every single day.

It's too much work.

For far too many years I've tried to recapture, even if just for a moment, the magic excitement of my childhood Christmases. The lights seemed prettier then, the trees taller, the gifts more enticing, the anticipation more palpable. We counted down the days - "T minus 8!" - and found it hard to sleep. I know that's a typical childhood experience of Christmas, and as I got older it began to slip away.

So I looked up old childhood LPs on CD. I re-started some traditions that I'd forgotten. I tried to gather small groups for caroling and even rang the bell for the Salvation Army (which I did as a Kiwanis kid). I wanted scenes around the fireplace with my closest friends, passing around the coffee and the pumpkin pie. When our boys were in that "sweet spot" of childhood it came back vicariously. Now it's a season where again my emotional expectations have become - well, burdensome.

What I have found is that, in the midst of a month that's always more demanding than the other eleven, there are moments of light that break through with a special holiness. The Burke Family Christmas was one of those this year: the families, the children, the music, the sheer grace of the Praise Hula Dancers fed my soul powerfully in those post-Newtown days. An evening with my sons was another. The Christmas Eve services - especially the children's pageant and "O Holy Night" - were another. Most everything else seemed just ordinary - which in the Christmas hype is blasphemous.

But when I go back to Scripture, maybe that's the way it's supposed to be! Maybe the evening of Jesus' birth really was that glorious - with light and angels and awestruck shepherds and a heavenly chorus. But inside the stable I think it was anything but.

The straw - damp and ordinary. The animals - loud and ordinary. The atmosphere - smelly and ordinary. The baby - wet, colicky, cold, fragile - a lot of work. The whole month leading up to that night wasn't clean and holy and glorious by a long shot. That's not the Christmas message.

The message is that the light shines out through the darkness - in the midst of the ordinary - and that light will never be totally swallowed up by it. The message I hear in a fresh way now is that the monthly work of Christmas - buying and wrapping, cooking and decorating, planning and preparing, writing and mailing - is often burdensome. (Joseph and Mary's month before wasn't all that magical and giddy either! ) But the flicker and flash of that light - the glimpse of grace in church, the moment at the table, the laugh in the car, the smile through the sadness - that's what we celebrate.

If I get this and live it, I can put fewer burdens on the entire month and what I wish it could be again. I could set my expectations aside and welcome instead what God does give. And I think what God will give is just the flicker, just the glimpse.

Next year there may only be two or three of those in the whole month. But I want that to be enough to remind me of the heart of Christmas. Ordinary darkness is not vanquished. But "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." That's what I will wait for.

Now May & June - that's the most wonderful time of the year!

I think.

Pastor Larry

Guns & Jesus Part II

(This is a followup to my late December posting down below.  It was on Facebook in several places but was inadvertently omitted from this blog.              -- Larry) 

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I confess.  I confess, as time has passed, that my earlier Tidings posting about Jesus and Guns was in some ways over the top – or painted with too broad a brush. Hyperbole has its place, but only for a time.  For me, I think it was a cry of outrage over what’s happening in this country now. 

But our critics often force us to re-think what we want to say more clearly. They also teach us.  I have been both encouraged and taught.  Thank you. And while I have no illusions that the world is eagerly waiting for more of Larry Buxton’s opinions, here is a brief and more nuanced credo-in-progress:

1.      I believe that one can be a Christian and use guns in wartime. 

2.      I believe that one can be a Christian and own guns for hunting and marksmanship.

3.      I believe that one can be a Christian and own a handgun for personal protection.

4.      I believe that one can be a Christian and a police officer.

5.      I believe that the arms our Founding Fathers intended in their amendment (e.g., a single shot flintlock powered by black powder) should be clearly legal constitutionally. Everything else is up for debate.

6.      I believe that not all gun-owners support the official position of the NRA.

7.      I believe that the “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” mantra is offensive.  Why don’t we say “Cars don’t kill people” or “Nuclear weapons don’t kill people” or “Drugs don’t kill people”? It’s elementary to acknowledge that an inert object can be safe.  But any number of inert things can become excessively deadly when used wrongly by people. That’s why we regulate them, restrict them, and act to restrain their use.

8.      I believe that the NRA’s position on guns, as articulated by Wayne LaPierre, is obscene.

9.      I believe there is no justification whatsoever for assault or semi-assault type weapons to be available to anyone off the battlefield.

10.  I believe that one thing that can stop a good person with a weapon is a bad person with a weapon. Weapons are not the solution.

11.  I believe that for our nation to survive the 21^st Century, we must let go of some of our “rights.” Our responsibilities must trump our rights. The welfare of the nation must trump what’s good for me. Compromise is not a bad word. We’re all in this together.

12. I believe the truth of the story about the Boston cab driver who told his passenger that he was a Democrat. His daddy was a Democrat, all his uncles were Democrats, and all his brothers and sisters were Democrats too.  “So,” said the passenger, “I assume you’re voting for the Democrats this year?” “Heck no,” said the cabbie.  “Sometimes you’ve got to put aside your principles and do the right thing.”

The Man at the Gate of the Year

One of the Buxton family traditions I’ve adopted over the years is a brief quote with an interesting history.  My Dad used to say it at dinner every New Year’s Day.  All throughout my ministry – or at least for as long as I can remember – I’ve used it as a benediction on the Sundays closest to January 1.

It’s a snippet from a longer poem by the little-known British poet Minnie Haskins.  Published in 1908, it came to public attention when King George VI (father of the current Queen Elizabeth) quoted it in his 1939 Christmas address to the British Empire on the eve of World War II. 

I recently learned that when the Queen Mother was buried in 2002, the words of this poem were read at her state funeral.

The quote I learned is:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

       “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied: “Go forth into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

       That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

What has spoken to me over the years is this assertion:  that going forward into the unknown, accompanied by God, is safer than going into the known without God. God alone makes the journey into unknown territory better than following a well-lit path.

Our prayer is so often for certainty. “If I could only see what’s ahead! If I only knew!”  But that’s more dangerous than we realize.  A false sense of security breeds inattention, which trips us up time and again. 

But here’s fresh wisdom:  Go by the way of not-knowing – hand in hand with God.  Walking in companionship with the Lord is safer than traveling a well-lit path by ourselves.

May you walk closely with God into the new beginning we call 2013.

 

Pastor Larry