Tag Archives: theology

Rediscovering Baptism

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RESPONSIVE READING: Psalm 29

Leader: Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
People: Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name; worship the Lord in holy splendor.
Leader: The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over mighty waters.
People: The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
Men: The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.  He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.
Women: The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
Choir: The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
Leader: The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
All: May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!

 SCRIPTURES: Isaiah 42:1-9 & Matthew 3:13-17

REFLECTIONS

Baptism marks the beginning of our Christian journey, and most clearly symbolizes the transformation from our old life to the new. By remembering the baptism of Jesus, and recalling our own, we have the opportunity to rediscover our first enthusiasm for the call of God on our lives.

Paul teaches us that baptism represents our participation by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. (Romans 6) The transition from not-yet-believer to faithful follower of Jesus is so distinct, so all encompassing, as to parallel the experience of passing from this life to the next through death. If our before-faith and with-faith lives are identical, then something is missing.


Baptism also connects us to the church. Paul likens baptism to circumcision, by which Jewish boys are marked as members of the community of faith and people of God. (Colossians 2:8-15) Baptism is actually our outward enacting of what God alone can do – break down the dividing walls and bridge the chasms that separate humans from one another, from their own lives, from the created world and from a deep and intimate experience of the divine.

The incarnation itself emphasizes that we are physical beings in need of a physical experience that grounds our spiritual reality. What happens to us in the physical world affects us spiritually, and visa versa. There is a reason we gather together for worship and don’t simply stay at home or wherever else we might be and imagine that we are connected spiritually. We need physical connection – both proximity and touch. Baptism roots our spirituality in our embodied experience of the world.

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These are initial planning notes and reflections for my sermon on 1/8/17 at Central Christian Church of Dallas.

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Image credit Sermon Central

Grace & Faith

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GFaith &Grace.pngrace is the overflowing and ever-flowing stream of God’s love, and faith is one of the things that enables us to experience that love more fully. Sometimes that experience comes at God’s initiation even without faith, as in moments of great crisis.

It’s important to distinguish between belief and faith –

  • I believe that a parachute can hold me and take me safely to the ground.
  • I don’t have faith enough in that belief to actually trust my life to it and jump out of the plane.

We can think similarly about belief and faith in relation to God –

  •  many people believe that God exists
  •  a different (smaller?) set of people act on that belief with their faith
  •  some people even have faith without much belief (content, doctrine) behind it
  •  If you have to choose between belief and faith, I think faith will take you further into peace and joy

Some people confuse faith & belief with fully understanding everything – “I won’t / can’t have faith because I don’t understand xyz about God, life, the universe” this often happens when people can’t reconcile ideas – such as the relationship between science and religion (which are compatible) or when bad things happen to good people, or when “believers” behave badly.

For Christians (and Jews and Muslims) faith is the active living of the relationship with the God in whom we have come to believe through our religious tradition (scripture, teaching, practices, etc). Followers of Jesus have the added blessing that our faith is rooted in Jesus, the Christ, who we believe to have been the full embodiment of God on earth, and also fully human. He is therefore at the same time (1) our object of faith, (2) our source of grace, and (3) our model for how humanity lives in faith and receives grace. One could say that Grace is God’s way of showing us love, and active faith is our way of showing our love to God. Yet even faith itself is a gift of God’s grace “so that no one can boast.” and we have received this gift of faith by grace because “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2)

 

A brief word study from the New Testament (using www.BibleStudyTools.com)

Faith 

One of the translation difficulties lies in the fact that the Greek word “pistis” is sometimes translated “faith” and other times translated “belief”. Either way, in the biblical usage it is always to be understood as an active verb – as something one acts upon, or upon which one stands. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 1:1)

  • Galatians 2:20   20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Grace

Grace is the intentional and relational sharing of love that takes action and produces results in the recipient’s life. Divine Grace is God reaching out to us to bless us. Grace is sometimes defined as “unmerited favor – the giving of an undeserved gift” whereas mercy is “unmerited leniency – the withholding of a deserved punishment”.

Grace and Faith together

On the relationship between the two – Faith is one of the gifts that comes through God’s grace, and it only comes as a gift of grace.

  • Romans 1:5 NIV  5 Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.
  • Romans 4:16 NIV  16 Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.
  • Romans 5:2 NIV  2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
  •  Romans 12:3 NIV  3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
  •  2 Corinthians 8:7 NIV  7 But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you —see that you also excel in this grace of giving.
  • Ephesians 2:8 NIV  8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
  • 1 Timothy 1:14 NIV  14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

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Grace & Faith

 

What do you most want to do? What will you do?

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My goal in life is to read and write – and through these activities to make a difference. And along side this WORK, to be near or on the water, with my beloveds.

I think I’m wired the way I am for a reason – all pathology aside. My personality and my gifts and my strengths and my abilities and my experiences and my education and my connections and my unique point of view all somehow work together to make me who I am. (perhaps there’s other stuff in there too…)

A colleague and friend asked me several years ago, “What do you most want to do?”
My answer: “Sit on the porch overlooking the water and write.”
“Well,” he asked after a pregnant pause, “What do you need to do in order to do that?”

What indeed.

I also recognize that the VAST MAJORITY of the world’s population have, do, and probably always will work at things to feed and shelter their families that are in no way connected to their passions and dreams and personality. They do what needs to be done. Perhaps it is expressly western privilege that leads me to think I can and should do otherwise.

And, there is plenty of other meaningful work that I find very rewarding. I LOVE congregational ministry. Sermon preparation and delivery, worship planning and leadership, leadership development, teaching, strategic planning, community engagement, pastoral visitation, EVEN MEETINGS. I find meaning and purpose in all of it. The casual conversations at a Thursday morning men’s breakfast coffee klatch at McDonalds are enjoyable and important. This week I led 16 octogenarians and above in a brief service of Eucharist and Ashes. I could tell by their expressions that this was incredibly important to them, and thus an immensely important way for me to spend an hour of my time.

I don’t want to be one of those people who delays the pursuit of life’s passions for retirement, only to drop dead of a heart attack the next week. My ow grandfather died at age 59 on the dais during the hymn of preparation for the sermon on the Monday of Holy Week. I never knew him, but by all accounts he lived a rich and full life and did the things he found important, worthwhile and meaningful. That’s what matters. Whether he had unfulfilled hopes and dreams for himself and others, I don’t know. That’ll be a good conversation with my own father and uncle soon. A neighbor of mine lost his wife of 50+ years 6 months after moving into the first home they ever owned together – he was career military so they’d always lived in base or government owned housing. He’s going on to live a rich full life, but I wonder if they’d have done something differently had they known. I’ve seen so many clergy suffer severe health problems within 1 year of retiring, as if their body said, “Finally, I can rest long enough to be sick because you’re not dragging me around every which way.”

The most important impact I make is in the lives of my wife and two children. That is completely clear for me. There is no argument that can prevail against it.

AND, I think I have something to contribute to the larger world, to the church, and to the conversation about how leaders in ministry can flourish and thrive in the coming decades. This matters, because communities’ health and well-being is greatly impacted by the organizations and institutions within them. Individual and grassroots resilience can overcome immense dysfunction in local institutions. Even so, everyone benefits when local congregations, nonprofits, education, government and businesses are healthy.

And organizations can not be healthy if their leaders are not healthy.

And it is incredibly difficult to be a healthy leader in the midst of a dis-eased institution.

Thus, supporting leaders in today’s institutions matters. It creates direct impact in the real lives of individuals and households throughout our communities, regardless of population size or demographic diversity.

If I could find a way to impact that system from my study, I would. At present, I don’t know how to do that other than by pastoring a local congregation, serving in nonprofit leadership, offering coaching and consulting, and showing up in local communities. If you or someone you know wants to pay me to research and write perhaps in an international think tank on leadership impact, please let me know.

Until then, I look forward to seeing you in church, in a coworking space, or at the local coffee shop.

Wake up and dream

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These aren’t day dreams. These are life dreams.
These are kingdom dreams, God-sized dreams.

Sleeping dreams are weird – like a trip with Alice down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass. They are the result of a swirling mix of your subconscious mind, your anxieties, and whatever you had for dinner. Like I said, WEIRD. They may be scary, or fun, sad, heartwarming or erotic. More often than not, they seem completely detached from reality.

And yet how often do we let them control our reality? How often do we shy away from a challenge because of some nightmare of the danger or risks involved? How often do we pursue a path of unhealthy self-gratification or self-glorification that originated in a dream state? We consume stories in prose and poetry, songs, TV and movies – some of which create a very literal interpretation of these dreamlike experiences – I’m thinking of The Matrix series and Inception. You may know of others that like an MC Escher print fold dimensions inside each other as though each of us were a series of interlocking Mobius strips.

The 2013 holiday release of the new Kristen Wiig and Ben Stiller movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” – a remake of the 1947 film starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo – is based on the James Grover Thurber (1894-1961) story from The New Yorker magazine. Mitty is a character who lives in his imagination, with his real life bearing no resemblance to his dreams. Eventually he awakes to this situation, and makes a conscious decision to go and do something else, to Wake up and dream.

Thurber is reported to have said, “Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” So many of our dreams have us looking in anger or fear.

God’s dreams for us begin with our waking to what is real, right here and now, in our very midst. God with us, Emmanuel. God here in the sorrow and struggle, the laughter and love. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God’s thoughts toward God’s people are of blessing, and a future with hope. (Jer 29:11) God’s dream is to restore that which has been lost, or that which we only glimpse “as through a veil dimly.”  (1Cor 13:12)

The first and last scenes of the Bible are of a beautiful garden in which human beings are in harmony with one another, they undertake meaningful creative work caring for the world as a central feature of their blessed state, and they are in communion with God who dwells and walks among them. Their home is God’s home. This is the vision, the dream which God is continually dreaming for us and working with us to unfold in and through us.

“And they called him Emmanuel, God with us.”

Most often the Bible uses the word wake with reference to calling people to pay attention to what is happening around them, to shake off the stupor of their sinful and slothful ways. Shake off the haze of the culture which invites you to deny the reality of God and the spiritual world, and even your own spirit. Shake off the sleep that lulls you into believing either that you are the only thing that matters, or that you do not matter at all.

The sojourners from the east came, wise and wealthy – and thereby powerful – yet they humbled themselves before the child Jesus. Shepherds, the least and lowest, the most despised among Jewish society, found themselves with personal engraved invitations to the party of the ages. The “reality” in both situations would have told them to stay away – one because they were too good, and the other because they were not good enough. Yet through dreams and visions they all came to realize that the invitation was for them, and for everyone – “Peace on earth, good will to all.”

What will your dreams reveal, when you begin to let yourself dream them? What is God longing to show you? What is being prepared for you to be and do in the world so that others might experience Emmanuel? Whether you’re a shepherd, a wiseman, an innkeeper, a carpenter, or a young and innocent woman, you have a role to play in the unfolding drama of God’s dream. Will you open to it?

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These reflections were written in preparation for a sermon on 12/29/2013, first Sunday after Christmas. The sermon scriptures were:
Isaiah 52:7-10  ~  Psalm 98  ~  Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12)  ~  John 1:1-14

Exploring the bounds of truth

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May God give us strength…

“There is no class of people upon earth who can less afford to let the development of truth run ahead of them than you. You cannot wrap yourselves in professional mystery…you cannot go back and become apostles of the dead past, driveling after ceremonies, and letting the world do the thinking and studying. There must be a new spirit infused into the ministry….We must be more industrious in investigation, more honest in dedication, and more willing to take the truth in its new fullness.” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Yale, 1871. (Niebuhr, Williams, Ahlstrom 1980, 257-8)

Interesting how the arguments of our own day often mirror those of earlier ages – in this case the period between 1860 and 1900. This debate is nothing new. One could argue that a similar struggle existed between the Sadducees and Pharisees who believed that the cannon of truth was tightly proscribed (in the case of the Sadducees) and more open to continuing revelation (in the case of the Pharisees). Of course, even the Pharisees wanted to place a limit on that revelation that found Jesus’ own teachings distinctly on the outside.

The challenge becomes, as it has always been, how to hold to and honor truths of the past while also remaining open to new and continually unfolding insights and receptions of revelation from beyond human intellect and creativity. And for clergy and congregational leaders, how to stand in the midst of that tension, with it also existing internally in the heart and mind of the individual leader, and facilitate a process of dialogue, mutual appreciation and growth in maturity toward wholeness. May God give us strength.