Water on my brain ...

Summertime always means “water” to me.  I was blessed to grow up along a wide branch of the Elizabeth River in Tidewater Virginia.  June meant getting the boat & motor ready and launching it for the summer.  All summer I skied with friends, explored new inlets, crabbed a little, met girls, and skied some more. Summertime also meant sailing, the beach, the local pool, cool showers, water balloon fights, on and on.

Water is on my mind as we approach this first June weekend. I hope you won’t miss Cruise Ship:  The Musical, Burke’s annual musical variety show.  It premieres this Saturday evening at 7:00 pm. The encore performance is Sunday, June 2, at 3:00 pm. It’s funny, it’s upbeat, it’s musical as all get-out – and there’s a great blend of familiar faces and some Hollywood stars too!  We promise it’ll be safe, clean, smooth sailing – and we’ll definitely dock on time!

To fit with the chancel / stage setting, I’m going to talk about Jesus stilling the storm (Mark 4:35-41). You can join us at the 5:00 LifeSign, just prior to the Saturday Cruise Ship premiere, or on Sunday morning. We see in that story how the joyful elements of summer (light breezes, peaceful water) can turn into metaphors for the testing times in life:  heavy winds, roaring seas, dangerous waves.  How can Jesus help us through those anxious moments?  How can we not be overwhelmed?   We’ll find clues in the story – and in our hymns for this weekend, “Stand By Me” and a BUMC favorite, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”

Later this month our confirmation class will confirm the vows that were spoken at the baptisms. Confirmation Sunday is always a moving service, as we witness a new generation of young people saying Yes to Jesus Christ.  These 8^th graders say Yes to the One born through the birth waters of Mary, the One baptized in the river waters of the Jordan.  They say Yes to the water poured on their own fuzzy heads long ago.  They say Yes to the One who’ll see them through their own storms of life, now and forever.

Can you say Yes to the waters this month?  Yes to the waters that gave you birth?  Yes to the baptism that brought you into God’s fold?   Yes to the path that leads “beside still waters”? Even Yes to the path that leads through stormy seas?  Hear the Word of God:  “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you!” (Isaiah 43:2)

All water can carry us closer to the heart of God. This summer and always – let Jesus Christ be your Yes.

            Pastor Larry

Wishing You a Noisy Pentecost

This coming Sunday (May 19) is Pentecost Sunday.  One of the three great festivals of the Christian church (along with Christmas and Easter), it celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit to the gathered followers of Jesus.  It may be because it’s a celebration of a disembodied God – we can more easily envision a newborn infant or a battered man than an invisible spirit – that Pentecost doesn’t have the traction of Christmas and Easter.

Yet Pentecost is the event that establishes the church as an eternal and worldwide fellowship. Christmas and Easter require participants to be “on site.” An embodied God has to be in a singular location in space and time; if Jesus is “there,” he can’t be “here” – at least not until after Pentecost.

Pentecost is, in a sense, the celebration of God’s radical availability to us.  Pentecost shifts us from being observers to participants.

Maybe that’s why Pentecost is the noisy celebration.  The others are quiet.  We get the impression that observing Christmas, for example, is like being a spectator at a golf match.  “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.” “Silent night, holy night, call is calm, all is bright.” Sshh.

Easter also evokes our awe.  Easter stories include dumbstruck disciples, personal conversations, baffled guards, and maybe the sound of running feet. Eventually we get our religious response ordered into an well-planned concert, with a brass quartet, massed choirs, choreographed dance and harmonized Hallelujahs. All in orchestrated order.

But Pentecost is noisy! What a racket.  All heaven breaks loose – a violent wind, different languages “spreading out like fire,” Galileans babbling in a multitude of languages, widespread bafflement and confusion. “They’re all drunk,” the bystanders jeered. Even the participants who knew better asked “What on earth is going on?”

Isn’t it odd that the public and visible expression of God – the “Word,” Jesus Christ – arrives in silence?  And that what we so often claim to be inward and private – the Spirit of God – breaks forth in such a public and cacophonous way?  God again turns our expectations upside down.

This Sunday we invite you to join the excitement of the Spirited, worldwide fellowship of the church. You will hear languages spoken you have never heard before! You’ll meet new members, and you’ll celebrate the Spirit in fresh ways.  We ask you to wear something RED – the color of fire and energy and passion.

For that matter, join us also the day before. This Saturday morning  (May 18) we will literally Change the World.  We invite you to wear anything Burke UMC-related that you have:  any BUMC T-shirt, nametag, buttons or hats.  We’re welcoming our neighbors from 10 am – 1 pm to “Drop In and Do Good.” Together we’ll package meals, plant a community garden, prepare school and medical kits, sort relief items – and enjoy free food and music too!

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:14)  A Burke shirt on Saturday, something RED on Sunday.  God’s love can be raucous and spirited!  Let’s prove it!

Pastor Larry

Mothers Work for Peace

Last week I mentioned that one of the most moving memories of my trip to Israel was our visit to Kfar Aza kibbutz.  Kfar Aza is a neighborhood of about 700 people just a few miles east of the Gaza strip. The residents live under the constant anxiety of bomb shells being lobbed in from Gaza.  When the public address system intones “Code Red, Code Red,” they have 12-15 seconds to find shelter.  Unsurprisingly it’s the younger residents who feel most helpless and angry. 

The mother who spoke with us said, “It’s just very hard to raise a 13-year old son.  It’s even harder to raise a 13-year old son without a heart full of hate.” 

Most of us aren’t living in situations that dire, but we parents often face similar challenges with our kids. It may be guiding them through the horrific news of bombs in Boston or kidnapping in Cleveland. It may be helping them survive the taunts of their peers, the fickleness of their friends, or the hurts of a broken heart.  

God bless you moms especially, those of you who know that faith in a loving God is so critical in challenges like this. God knows and loves your child, and nothing the world does or says has the ultimate power to define them. They are defined only by their infinite worth as God’s children. 

God has set in their hearts a life purpose to be discovered and gifts to be utilized. God helps us not to automatically return evil for evil; Jesus can free us from the cycle of violence and help us to forgive. The Body of Christ at its best shapes us as a loving community of grace, and teaches us how to show grace in a frightening world.

Mother’s Day has its roots in Julia Ward Howe’s attempt to establish a “Mother’s Day for Peace” in the years following the Civil War.  It took hold in the U.S. in the years leading up to World War I.  At the heart of Mother’s Day is the simple passion for peace.

I want to bless all of you mothers who work day by day for peace at home, peace at work, peace at school, and peace in the hearts of your children. There’s no task more important than raising children with hearts that can love.

Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Pastor Larry

Jesus in Color

I want to thank you again for your prayers for me as I spent the last week in Israel. We spent as much or more time looking at 21st Century Israel as we did at 1st Century Israel. We went to Jerusalem and Galilee and the Dead Sea. We also went to the Knesset, a kibbutz near Gaza, and the Red Cross station on the border of Syria. Both were powerful perspectives for me, and I look forward to sharing my insights in the weeks to come.

One thing about 1st Century Israel that struck me was the opportunity to put places and colors to the locations we only read about in the Bible. When I read in Matthew 13, "That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea," my vision of that event remains vague and colorless in my mind.

But when I was actually in the land, I realized how concrete these events were. I understood that the fuller story would say, "One Wednesday morning in the spring, about 8:30, the sky was a glorious blue, the sun was hot, and the breezes off the Sea of Galilee caressed the faces of the disciples. Jesus went out of his house in Capernaum, walked through the town and down to the grassy bank of the Sea of Galilee, and sat on the ridge by the intersection."

His days were like ours - blue and green, grey or brown, rainy or cool. Seeing the land itself (which is so important is Israel's life, then and now) - its roads and ridges and overlooks - helped bring His story to life.

The other thing about 1st Century Israel that struck me was the proximity of one place to another. When I experienced how close Capernaum is to the Mount of the Beatitudes, and to the beach where the disciples ate fish with their Risen Lord, then the concrete reality of His life struck more forcefully. I experienced the geography of Jesus's life and could easily apply it to our geography.

That is, a parallel to his ministry there would be to say, "Jesus taught in the Rolling Valley Mall parking lot. Then he walked down Old Keene Mill Rd to the intersection, where he called his disciples. Later he gathered with them at Burke Lake Park. The next day he walked to Chipotle. "

I could visit the places that this man actually lived. Just as it rooted the reality of His life in a particular geography, it also rooted Jesus' life more closely in the geography of my heart.

I did errands around our community today, with the vision that Jesus could be that young man jogging down Burke Centre Parkway. He could be in that group of teenagers in Chipotle. He drives down our roads on a beautiful blue and green May morning, just as surely as He walked in Galilee.

 

Pastor Larry

A Whole New World

Happy Easter!  You know, I’ve really come to love Easter more and more in recent years.  It may not match up well to the emotional buildup and quiet holiness of Christmas, but I’m learning that its meaning is far more revolutionary than I’d ever realized.

For years I thought that the Resurrection was mainly a symbol that life goes on, that God gives us a second chance. If something comes to life that once was dead, it must be sharing that “Jesus-spark” that keeps hope alive when everything looks dead.  (Never a big fan of peeps and chicks, but certainly dormant flowers that bloom in the spring made a fine symbol of Easter.)  And Resurrection must be the proof of an afterlife, that there’s more to existence than this earthly plane.

And although I am one of those people that believes in the bodily resurrection, I didn’t quite know how to respond to the assertion that “Life just doesn’t work that way; resurrection is scientifically impossible.”  So Easter mostly had a “Don’t give up hope” encouragement to it, and I mined that as deeply as I could.

Well, that’s not deep enough, not by a long shot.  It may be all of the above (except maybe the afterlife proof), but it’s so much more.

Now I see, for example, that science is the study of repeatable events. History, on the other hand, is the study of non-repeatable events. History is the accumulation of events that happen that we don’t insist on being subject to scientific examination.  We use different means of verifying their having happened. Scripture, tradition, reason and experience can all bear witness to the likelihood of a bodily Resurrection. So I believe that resurrection may or may not qualify as a scientific event, but it definitely qualifies as a historical one.

Now I’ve come to see the resurrection of Jesus as the in-breaking of God’s New Creation.  It’s the inaugural weekend of a new and unprecedented reality.  We have been in a fundamentally different order of creation since that Sunday ages ago.  “Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.” (Watchman Nee)

Our world is qualitatively different now.

Now I see that we live in “a new world order, [one which] has opened up in the midst of the present one. God’s future has arrived in the present in the person of the risen Jesus, summoning everybody to become people of the future.” (N. T. Wright) God’s future is one in which the dead are raised. It is the future in which sin and death lose their power. In God’s future our battered planet is renewed, justice becomes the norm, all reconciliations are accomplished, our human bodies are remade, and the knowledge of God is rewritten on every human heart. 

God’s future is the one consistently proclaimed throughout the Bible.  And it’s a future that happens here – not in heaven, but on earth as it is in heaven.

The reality of the resurrection removes this ideal from “Wouldn’t it be nice…?” and places it squarely in the realm of “This will be.”  That’s why it summons every one of us to become “people of the future.”  This is what’s before us, so why not start living it now?  Why play by the rules of a losing contest? 

If you want to live a life that endures and counts for something, remember:  “The entire plan for the future,” said Billy Graham, “has its key in the resurrection.” That key will open more doors than we ever realized before.

Pastor Larry

What is "Bearing Your Cross"?

On one of the episodes of the old TV show MASH, Radar O’Reilly is trying to locate medical supplies for his Army surgical unit.  He calls every clinic and supply center he can think of, but he just can’t find any.  Hawkeye and the others will have to do without.  Radar sighs as he explains this to Hawkeye, “That’s just another bear we’ll have to cross.”

However mangled the phrase comes out, it’s one we recognize from the gospels, especially from Holy Week.  “We all have our crosses to bear,” we say, not always fully grasping what that means. 

What does it mean? 

For Jesus, bearing the cross was his experience of enduring unavoidable suffering.  I call it unavoidable because it was the natural consequence of following his call, of living his life with integrity as it unfolded. Could he have avoided the cross?  Could he have run away? Not if he were to be true to himself.

“Bearing the cross” in your life would also be the experience of enduring unavoidable suffering.  The suffering of the MASH unit lacking supplies was unavoidable. Living with a chronic illness or birth defect may be unavoidable.  Assisting another person with the same thing could be bearing the cross as well; the suffering may be avoidable – you could leave your ill husband or turn your back on your child – but when your integrity won’t allow you to do that, it’s not really avoidable.

Actually, “enduring” may not be the best word.  The power of Jesus Christ is such that He can help us embrace the unavoidable suffering.  In that sense, we‘re not just gritting our teeth and enduring something; we dare to accept it.  Our suffering is lessened when Christ helps us shoulder our particular circumstances because they are hidden gifts.

By the grace of the Lord, a broken heart can become a source of compassion. Caretaking can become an opportunity to show deeper tenderness.  Doing without can awaken our creativity or inspire our gratitude for what we do have. Losing strength can help us reframe our identity with God.

Pope Benedict’s recent resignation reminded me of the final days of his predecessor, John Paul II, in 2005. I’m old enough to remember when John Paul began his papacy in 1978.  He was striking for being a very athletic Pope, a barrel-chested man who loved skiing and hiking and being outdoors. But by 2005 his health had certainly deteriorated, and Parkinson’s had weakened him terribly.  Many urged him to abdicate so that the world could have another strong, vigorous Pope. 

But where once he could emulate for the world a strong, vigorous Jesus, at that time he chose to emulate instead the weakened and dying Savior.  Like Jesus, John Paul II embraced God’s “power made perfect in weakness.” He embraced his deterioration as an offering to his Lord and a bearing witness to God’s faithfulness.

As of Sunday we enter Holy Week.  I hope that the experience of Jesus’ cross-bearing can lead you to choose what may have seemed unavoidable. In every hardship God can bring you unexpected blessings and joyful gifts.

Pastor Larry

Traditions Old & New

One of the privileges of my role as spiritual leader of a congregation is to invite you into deeper experiences of the Holy Spirit. Often there are rich traditions of the church’s worship that have been forgotten, rejected, or co-opted by one ‘side’ or another.  Yet millions of people find themselves enriched by reclaiming the old and making it new again.

Old practices can bless us in fresh ways.

The use of ashes on Ash Wednesday is a key example. Once practiced solely by the Roman Catholic Church, making the sign of the cross with ashes has been reclaimed by the universal church as a powerful witness to the enduring love of God.

Here are several new/old practices we’re including in observing Holy Week, the final week in Jesus’ life. They’ll be offered on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday (March 28-30).

• Footwashing is Jesus’ command to his followers in John 13. In John’s gospel it receives far more attention than the Last Supper itself.  Often practiced by the “low church” denominations (Anabaptists, Baptists, Mennonites, Brethren, etc.), footwashing is a powerful experience of devotion to Christ and loving servanthood before others. We will offer this option again (as we did last year) in our 7:30 pm. service.
• The Stations of the Cross have been long embraced by the more “high church” wing of Christianity (Roman Catholics, Anglicans, etc.). In our Protestant version it becomes a way for you to walk Jesus’ Good Friday journey in a thoughtful, contemplative way, and at your own pace. Our sanctuary will be open for your personal meditation from 9 am – 7 pm Friday, March 29.
• Tenebrae is Latin for “shadows.” It has its roots in twelfth-century Christianity as a reflection of the meaning of Jesus’ death on a cross. It incorporates music and word, sound and silence, light and darkness into a profound retelling of the crucifixion journey. It will form the foundation of the Good Friday service, also at 7:30 pm.
• A relatively new tradition, worship in the style of the Taizé community in France will anchor our Holy Saturday service.  It is a contemplative service of quiet singing, Scripture reading and prayer, all in candlelight.  This Taizé worship begins at 5:00 on March 30. 
• A Psalms Vigil will follow from 6 pm – midnight. We will read meditatively all 150 psalms. You are welcome to come and go – or remain – as you can.

The barriers between “low church” and “high church” are coming down!  What’s old is new again, especially if it brings us a powerful experience of Jesus Christ. I hope you’ll find these a nudge beyond your comfort zone. Try something new and old at the same time.  I hope these worshipful opportunities will be especially meaningful to you in your faith journey.

Pastor Larry