Word of the Day: Mistake

I had an appointment this morning and instead of taking a book, I took my latest knitting project. This is a new thing for me - I've been crocheting for almost 15 years, but knitting only since last November. I'd like to think I'm getting better, but then something catastrophic happened... I dropped a stitch. I was talking with the nice receptionist and I didn't feel it slide off the end of my needle and within a couple of minutes, I saw it drop down two more rows.

In crochet, if you make a mistake, you just pull the yarn out back to the place you need to correct, find your place in the pattern, and keep going. In knitting, it's just not that simple. A mistake often means knitting backward, stitch by stitch, until you get to the place where your mistake is. When you drop a stitch, you either have to fix it right away or anchor it so that it doesn't get away from you. I usually use a crochet hook to pull the stitch back into place - no crochet hook today - or use to stitch marker or safety pin to hold it in place - nope, didn't have that either.

So by the time I got home, it was a real mess. I started tinking (knitting backward) for realized that it would take several hours, so I did the almost unimaginable, I pulled out 11 rows of stitches and gingerly rethreaded my project on my needles to start the color change again.

This was a great reminder of why knitting is still an emotional chore for me. The price of making a mistake is high, and it takes a crazy amount of time to fix it. In fact, if I didn't love this yarn so much, I might have stuffed it in a bag to come back to another time.

But I couldn't give up, so I came home, settled into my comfortable chair, and did the work necessary to get back on the right track. And in the future, I won't get over the end of my skis... my friends may be able to knit without seeming to look, but I am a long way from being about to do that myself.

So why am I sharing this? Because it made me mindful of how hard it is to admit making a mistake. We know that when we acknowledge it, we'll have to go back and do a lot of hard work to make things right. Recognizing our mistakes often means admitting wrongdoing or ignorance, owning the mistake, apologizing and going about the long and arduous task of making things right. Even then, big mistakes are not something that we ever really forget. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to show you where my scarf went off the rails... even though you would never be able to tell.

As a Christian pastor, part of my job is to claim the prophetic mantle, as uncomfortable as it is most days. I am absolutely positive that I have made many mistakes that I have never recognized, confessed or corrected... bad on me. Sometimes it takes a true friend to say to me, "Deb, I think you have some work to do here." But when I have messed things up, I hope that it's been my practice to make things right, the best I can. And if I haven't always done it well, I hope I've learned important lessons to help me in the future.

We live in perilous times, and I have been thinking lately that I should turn off the news, stop reading and only think of happy things. But my faith requires me to stay connected and to speak out when I see a place where Jesus' teachings and Christian traditions can help us stay true to our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ.

I will often post articles, book suggestions, photos, and memes which reflect my experience of a faithful response. Trust me, I weigh very carefully what I share. And even if we disagree, I hope that we continue our friendship in love, acknowledging that none of us can ever have the whole picture alone.

It's just another way I am reminded that being a pastor is not just a job - it's a way of life.

Here's my advice for the day: Be gentle with one another. Let us own our mistakes and work to make things right. And let us do it all in a spirit of love.

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, June 19, 2018

Sermon - How does your garden grow? (Pentecost 4B)

4^th Sunday After Pentecost                                                       June 17, 2018

Mark 4:26-34, 2 Corinthians 5:6-17                            Panzer Liturgical Service

I do love Spring. We have a garden in our backyard. In previous summers we have planted small seedlings from the garden center. But this year, everything we planted came from seeds. Before Easter, Shawn planted little dirt disks with 2 kinds of tomatoes, butternut squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, brussels sprouts, and sunflowers. Every day he would look under the clear plastic dome to see if there was any action.

It didn’t take long for something happen. The tiny seeds sprouted, breaking through the dirt and soon, small pairs of leaves were leaning toward the light. A month later, we transplanted our little seedlings to bigger containers and started acclimating them to the outside weather. One month ago, we planted them in our garden. The tomatoes and squash are doing best, growing visibly every day. In a couple of months, we will hopefully have a good harvest. And each plant came from just one seed.

How does this happen? A seed gets planted in the ground and sooner or later, a crop is ready to be harvested. Oh, we do a little – make sure there is good soil, take away the weeds, give water and sometimes shelter them from an unexpected cold. But the process of growing is really out of our hands unless we kill our crop from benign neglect. What a miracle to watch fruits and vegetable and grains come into their full potential all around us. All we have to do is sow and get ready for the harvest.

When you heard the lesson for today, I’ll bet you said, “OK, today’s lesson is the one about the mustard seed, I know this one.” In fact, the mustard seed is the star of parables in all three synoptic gospels.  In Matthew & Luke, it’s a simple message – the mustard seed is small, but grows into a big tree. It’s a metaphor for faith – faith, even if it’s small, is big enough to uproot the largest tree.

But in Mark, Jesus prefaces the mustard seed parable with another about sowing seed. It addresses the joint nature of the harvest. The sower plants the seeds, maybe carefully, maybe just throwing them to the wind to fall down where they may. But everything is not in the sower’s control. Yes, the sower or farmer can make conditions optimal for growth, but the power for the seed to sprout and make fruit is the hands of God and his creation alone.

So how does this relate to a life of faith? We are quick to put all kinds of conditions on what it means to be a person of faith. Did you say the right prayer? Where you baptized by the right person in the right church by the right means? Are you attending the right church or right denomination? How do you interpret scripture? Do you follow the right rules?

But in this passage, it feels like Jesus is questioning this premise. In the first parable we hear that “the kingdom is like scattering seed.”  The sower/farmer doesn’t know exactly how it happens, but has confidence that as the seed grows, the harvest will come. It sounds like Jesus is saying that the Kingdom of God will come, often in spite of us. Apparently, both Matthew and Luke are uncomfortable with this world as well; they omit this first parable and all this talk of secrets. And for a long time, this made me uneasy, too. What remains clear is that the kingdom is a marvelous thing, a gift from God and not totally under our control. Small beginnings bring large outcomes, even if our good intentions get in the way. [i] 

I don’t know if you have ever read through Mark’s gospel in one sitting. You should try it. It’s only a little over 600 verses and reads like a superhero story, with Jesus in the staring role. Only he isn’t very hero-like, and his sidekicks, the disciples, are clearly clueless most of the time. This first parable actually gives us some hope that if we just keep at it – working for the Kingdom – we won’t mess it up too much if we remember that God is the master gardener. It is the nature of God’s reign to manifest itself. That’s what it does.[ii]

And that’s the easy part of the lesson. But there is a more difficult message embedded in this second parable… difficult if you like your Kingdom of God neat and orderly and the way it’s always been. If you ask any farmer in the Middle East about the mustard tree or shrub, he will tell you that once it gets in your garden you may never get rid of it, sort of like dandelions, but bigger.

So maybe one of the first questions a person in Jesus’ audience would ask is, “Why would you intentionally plant mustard seeds in your garden?” Not only is it an ugly weed, but when it grows large enough for birds to come and roost in its branches, those birds are going to do a lot of damage. Roosting birds in a garden will wake you up early, eat your crop, and leave little presents behind … it’s hard to imagine a world where you invite them to come to make a home with you.

But that’s exactly what Jesus did. He invited everyone to come and follow him. The passage that we read from 2 Corinthians is pretty complicated and convoluted, but it ends with a declarative statement. Paul writes:

For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died… So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 2 Corinthians 5:14,17 (NRSV)

Paul said a lot of things that we as the church declare as definitive – absolute must-follows for faith. Well, I think we need to add this one to the list. Here Paul echoes the message of the parable. Jesus came and died for everyone… for you, for me, for the person next door, for the guy who parks at the end of your driveway blocking you in, for the parents and children seeking asylum, for those who want to turn them away, for those who haven’t even heard of him yet, even for those who don’t yet believe.  And when people do commit themselves to Jesus, they are a part of our family, whether we like it or not.

But do we really believe this? Do we believe that every person who has walked on this earth has value simply because “Christ died for all”? Do we believe that just because Jesus was willing to die for everyone, that gives their lives intrinsic value? Even at my most optimistic, I would have to say, No, we don’t. 

Author and pastor Dawn Chesser put it this way:

Paul says that each person’s value has already been established through Christ’s death… We don’t need to know whether or not a person has confessed Christ as his or her personal Lord and Savior before we decide to treat him or her with dignity and respect… We don’t need to know anything about the person, because we already know all we need to know: he or she is valuable because Christ died FOR him or her, just as for us.[iii] 

It’s easy to get caught up in a “them vs us” mentality. In our worlds of education, position, income and status, we forget that 

the original followers of Jesus were, in the eyes of the culture, all pretty much losers – lowly fishermen, despised tax collectors, prostitutes and criminals, lowlifes loathed by the religious establishment. [But] maybe that’s the way the followers of Jesus have always looked to the rest of the world – those people desperate enough, lowly enough, to find hope in Jesus’ message.[iv]

So where is our hope? When we are struggling, experience loss, or just can’t find our footing - when we wonder what the future holds and if this Jesus-life is really for us, Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God comes of its own…and it comes for us. There is room for everyone in this kingdom. Jesus’ parables tell us that all things are possible because our God is great.  We think the work of faith is difficult, but when we recognize our own needs and the needs of others are the same, everything is possible through the love and power of God.

Someone asked me the other day what I do for a living and I answered, “I read.” I read books, I read articles, I listen to podcasts [which is like reading with your ears], and then I look up resources on the stuff that I’ve already read. I also subscribe to a bunch of faith-related newsletters from a variety of sources. I guess that 40-50% of these newsletters address the topic of boosting church attendance. Now I’m all for having more people in church, but I am more convinced than ever that this will not solve the institutional church’s problems.

Church is not just the building or the people who have gathered inside. Church is just not about how we ourselves come to faith in Jesus or the strategies we will employ to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. The growth of our religious institutions is not the measuring stick which will determine our faithfulness. Instead, we are called to see our place in the biblical story, and in the process, hear Jesus’ call to live our lives in the shadow and protection of God’s greatest gift – love.

Today’s readings inspire us to see God in unexpected people and places. We are called to look beyond the obvious to discover God everywhere, in everyone. And while the life unfolding around us often feels precarious and unimportant – and our role infinitesimal – a great harvest and great possibilities are on the horizon for those who see from a God’s eye view, through the eyes of faith. Great things do come from small beginnings.[v]

I originally intended to end with the story of Johnny Appleseed.[vi]  It’s a wonderful tale in it’s simplest form and gives a good snapshot of a person who dedicated his whole life to the love of God, neighbor, and nature. But the events of the week could not be chased from my mind or heart as so often happens these days. And when I was looking through my library for a book I own about a village in France that operated an underground railroad for Jews during World War II[vii], I found something even better.

I encountered writer Ina Hughs through a book on a bargain sale table at a brick and morter bookstore. It is a collection of columns she wrote for the Knoxville News Sentinel in the early 1990’s, mostly about children and divided into three sections: Yours, Mine and Ours. These essays are about children she knows and ones she never met. Some are laugh-out-loud funny and others will bring a tear to your eye. In the front of the books is a poem – a prayer for children. I’m going to end the sermon with this poem, this prayer today. 

Link to A Prayer for Children – Ina Hughs (1995)

These are the children Jesus invites to the Kingdom of God. This is who we are called to love.[viii]

Amen.

Peace, Deb

---

[i] James Boyce, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2469

[ii] Matt Skinner, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3676

[iii] Dawn Chesser, http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship/lectionary-calendar/third-sunday-after-pentecost5

[iv] David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2015/06/pentecost-3-b-preach-the-truth-slant/

[v] Bruce Epperly, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2015/06/the-adventurous-lectionary-the-third-sunday-after-pentecost-june-14-2015/

[vi] Wikipedia, Johnny Appleseed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed

[vii] Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, Harper Perennial, 1994.

[viii] Ina Hughs, A Prayer for Children, William Morrow Publishers, 1995.

Book Review - Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

In 2012, we were moving from Washington DC to Washington State and we had a 5-day, 2-vehicle journey before us. I had several books on my reading list and decided to join Audible.com and download them for easy listening for the journey. One of the books I bought was Rachel's first book, originally titled "Evolving in Monkey Town" and renamed "Faith Unraveled" in it's revised printing a few years later. It was her faith story - growing up in Cleveland, TN, home of the famous trial about evolution in the 1920's, she was raised in a conservative Christian tradition and has the Bible battle trophies to prove her biblical knowledge. But eventually, she had questions, ones that her church repeatedly told her to stop asking. And as her faith assumptions unraveled, she expanded her understanding of the biblical story and what it means to be a Christian... she became an Episcopalian.

Since then she has written three other books - "A Year of Biblical Womanhood," which looks at the role of women in the Bible and religion, and "Searching for Sunday," about her journey to find a new faith community and richly framed through the lens of the sacraments.

Her fourth book is being released next week, June 12, 2018. It is "Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again," In early May, I happened to see a post on her Facebook page asking for people to read advanced copies and write honest reviews. I jumped at the change and entered my name. Within a day, I had been selected and forwarded a digital copy of the book.

I've taken over a month to read it, even though I could have finished it in a couple of days. I downloaded a new PDF program that allowed me to highlight, underline and write in the margins. After 2 chapters, I ordered my own paper copy, so that I can transfer my current notes and make more. And I convinced the women's ministry in my current location to choose this as one of our offerings for the Fall semester.

I have many words to describe it:
Relatable
Conversational
Well-researched and scholarly
Storytelling at its best within the Grand Story

In a new twist, Rachel breaks the biblical text into different kinds of stories - Origin, Deliverance, War, Wisdom, Resistance, Gospel, Fish, & Church... they are the kinds of delineations that I had not thought of before, but they work. As someone who usually studies to teach or preach, it gave me a fresh look at the ways that God has interacted with people, from the beginning to the end, from Genesis to Revelation.

Each of the chapters is prefaced with a signature story - The Temple, The Well, The Wall, The Debate, The Beast, The Water, The Sea, The Letter. Some of the tellings seem ancient - some very modern. Each one drives home the understanding that the Bibles stories are also our stories. It was a great reminder of the Bible as the God's story, kept alive not just through the transcribed and printed word, but before that, as our oral tradition and the personal history of those who came before us. Like sharing dinner with family, these stories are told over and over because they tell us something true about who God is and who we are created to be.

For some, it will provide an "ah-ha" experience. For others, it will challenge many of the assumptions brought to reading and studying the Bible. For me, as a seminary-trained, 25-year ordained United Methodist clergyperson, it's exactly the kind of book that can spark essential conversations about how to read the Bible and where we fit into the grand story it tells.

For many, this may be the first foray into historical, contextual and literary biblical criticism. The variety of scholars, preachers, and teachers contributing to this work is really wonderful, and the Footnote appendix provides a great starter library for anyone who wants to explore these topics further. Even my wishlist got a lot longer!

The chapters War Stories and Resistance Stories effected me significantly. Some may feel that a few of the examples are quite contemporary to the current religious and political climate in the United States. But I think they will age well, and translate across international borders. For me, they are the testimony of someone who struggles and wrestles with the Word ti live an authentic Christian life in the midst of difficult times. I think it's also significant that Rachel had two children as bookends to the beginning and end of this book-birthing process. A lot of the work she asks us to do feels like labor - hard and intense, but totally worth it in the end.

In a nutshell, I loved it. I'll read it over and over, mark the pages with highlighting and underlines, and pull out little post-it note tabs to mark my favorite passages, for personal consumption and in preparation for teaching and preaching. I look forward to reading it with a group, because I think our varied stories will enhance even more our understanding of what Rachel is trying to teach us. And I'll recommend it to many. It's a great read for all - for those who know and love the Scriptures but want to engage in a new way, and for anyone who isn't sure what the big deal is all about.

I feel so blessed to have been a part of this launching process, and am so grateful for my Advance Reader Copy from the publisher.

My recommendation: 5 stars... Go buy the book!

#InspiredBook

Peace, Deb

Sermon - Jesus - Troublemaker-in-Chief (Pentecost 2B)

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST, YEAR B                         June 3, 2018

Mark 2:23‑3:6,  1 Samuel 3:1-20                   Panzer Liturgical Service, Stuttgart, DE

Doing What Needs to Be Done or

Jesus – Troublemaker in Chief

So, one Sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field of wheat. Theirs is a semi-nomadic life, receiving shelter and food offered by followers and friends. Hungry, they pulled a few wheat stalks and placed the head of a stalk between their palms, rolled it back and forth until the casing and chaff fall off, leaving seven or eight wheat berries, which they chewed like gum until they dissolved in their mouths.

The Pharisees who witnessed this blatant disregard of the Law were irate: You must observe the Sabbath – that’s the law. As far as they were concerned, this disregard placed the security of the nation in jeopardy. But Jesus wasn’t finished offending them. Later that same day, he cures the withered hand of a man in the synagogue. When Jesus confronts the Pharisees about whether it is better to do good or harm on the Sabbath, they are silent. After all, a rule is a rule is a rule, and this rule defines them. “We are people who keep the sabbath... we are people who play by the rules.”

The problem comes when the rules take on a life of their own… when following the rules becomes more important than the spirit of the rules, which define what it means to love God and neighbor. The Jewish people have a long history. They have been slaves, they have been wanderers, ruled by wise kings, then conquered, killed and taken into exile, slaves again. And now, during Jesus’ life, they are back in their homeland, but not in control of their own existence.

Living under Roman occupation was like being in exile, but home – a kind of house arrest. The Pharisees knew that they were no match against the Roman army. They tried to straddle a line between the rules of the Roman authorities and the rules of their religion. Surely, their only hope was the power and protection of God. They could not afford to get on God's bad side. Strict adherence to the Law seemed to be the only way. Seeing his actions, this day, it was clear that Jesus represented a real threat to their leadership and to the status quo.

Jesus answered their concern with a question, "Don't you remember when David and his men were fleeing the wrath of King Saul, and coming upon the priests who tended the tent and ark of the covenant, asked them to share the ritual bread, reserved only for the priests, with his tried and hungry men?"

There is more to Jesus' response than, "Rules are meant to be broken." The response tests the Pharisees’ priorities. Jesus reaches back into the history of Israel to set up an important parallel. David and Jesus both represent the ways of a loving, caring, compassionate God, a God of justice and a God of mercy. Their ways are higher than the ways of Law or Temple than the ways of kings and emperors. If people are hungry ‑ they must be fed, Sabbath or not. If people are diseased or disable ‑ ­they must be healed, Sabbath or not. If people are oppressed ‑ they must be liberated, Caesar or not.

How many times do we look to the rules as the thing that will save us? Have you ever been in a church committee meeting and heard one of these phrases: "We've always done it this way," or "we've never done it that way before." Jesus knew that the most important thing was to take care of people. The Law had provisions for this. It allowed hungry people to pick that grain and eat it as long as they didn't carry any of it with them. It allowed for someone's life to be saved, even on the Sabbath. Jesus just understood the concept of being "saved" in a little different light.

How many times do we hold to a position, not just because we want to follow the letter of the law, but because we are afraid of the unknown? Jesus isn’t asking people to abandon the Law willy-nilly. But he does want us to be present in the moment and meet the needs of people.

Jesus is challenging the values and priorities of the Pharisees. He knows that their eagerness in following the Law was not in the service of God's people, not in compassionate response to the hungry, the sick, the oppressed, or the imprisoned, not for holiness but rather, as a strategy to keep the Jewish people in line, and Caesar and his forces ‑­military and economic ‑‑ in check. Jesus favors neither the ways of Caesar, not the ways of the Pharisees. He carefully avoids being drawn into that struggle. Instead, he seeks to demonstrate that the reign of God is near.

I love today’s reading from 1 Samuel. Children often hear God’s voice calling them, but as adults, we are quick to misunderstand what they are hearing. It took several times for Eli to realize that the voice that Samuel was hearing was God’s voice. And it was a hard word… it caused a hardship to Eli, but even he realized this word was necessary for Israel to get back on the right track… sometimes the word of the Lord makes our ears tingle…

I served as an associate pastor at a Methodist Church in Oklahoma. I wasn’t really looking for work, but the church hired me and the bishop appointed me, all before I could say, “No, thank you.” My first year there, some members realized that kids needed school supplies, so they started a drive to collect for kids and schools and really got a lot of interest generated to help out. Then we started a gift drive for Christmas – DHS funding had been cut and in less than 5 days we raised $15,000, shopped for gifts and provided wrapping for the parents, who were able to choose gifts for their kids, not just take what was given to them. Project Noel was born.

The next February, our church council meeting was infiltrated or inundated (their words, not mine) by members of our church youth group. They told stories of their friends who sometimes did not have a warm meal between when they ate free lunch at school on Friday to when they had free breakfast on Monday morning. The community had a back-pack ministry, where non-perishable foods were sent home on Friday to help kids have something to eat over the weekend, but most of those kids didn’t get a hot meal in between.

The youth had this idea that our congregation could host a monthly meal and invite all of these backpack families to come and share in a free, hot meal together. And they wanted to go all out… table linens, real plates and silverware, decorations, music, and people would sit at the table and talk to them, not for the purpose of recruiting them for church, but just to build friendships and let them know they were important. The Council said, “No.” Liability, return on investment, never done it before… the reasons were legend.

So, the next month they showed up again. And again in April. And then we realized they weren’t going away. So, in conjunction with our school supply drive that August, we planned a spaghetti dinner, and we looked out after a couple of hours and every table was full and people of different races and socioeconomic groups, speaking English and Spanish, were having a great time together. Within a year, other churches had picked up on the idea and eventually there was someplace to get a free, hot meal every Saturday, year-round. And it started with a group of youth who heard the voice of God and would not take no for an answer.

The ultimate affirmation came one day when I was shopping at Walmart in my Project Noel t-shirt and the cashier asked, “Do you go to that church?” “I do, have you heard about us?” She replied, “Oh, yes, we know all about you-you're the church that loves people.”

We have to get past the idea that strong faith journeys are all about doing the big thing. Grand gestures are wonderful and following rules and guidelines make for orderly organized institutions, but underneath it all, individual followers of Jesus, young and old alike, are called to do the small thing in a spirit of love every day. This week alone I saw some of those acts of kindness, videos of an 8-year old boy who got his mom to stop so he could help a lady with a walker safely get up some terraced sidewalk steps and a class of kindergarteners who great each other individually with a handshake or hug and a wish for a good day of learning. It’s this kind of thing that gives me great hope for our church and our world.

There is a lot of hurt around us these days – so much that it is easy to be paralyzed – struck with an inability to figure out what needs we can attend to. Some people don’t want church to be political, but the needs of the world have a political dimension, and sometimes the most effective solutions can be best addressed by speaking in a political forum. Jesus did just that. It makes us uncomfortable, but it’s something we have to deal with.

The Son of Man, a biblical figure often associated with the coming of the reign of God, is Lord, even of the Sabbath. He reminds us that the Sabbath was made for us, to help us focus on what’s important, not to keep us in line or protect the institutions of the world. Our real duty – our challenge – is to love people and meet their needs. Jesus grieves when we allow our hearts to be hardened and when we worry more about protecting the status quo than we do meeting the needs we see around us. We are never too young or too old to be a force for good in the world. What does that look like for you? I don’t know, but I do think you’ll recognize the opportunity when you see it. Train your brain and your heart … do good, not harm.

This is our call: Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Visit the lonely. Liberate the oppressed. Do it whenever there is a need because you may not get another chance. The reign of God is very near. We are called to do what needs to be done. And we have a great role model… Jesus – Troublemaker in Chief.

Amen.

Peace, Deb

No direct quotes this week, but influenced by listening to Pulpit Fiction Podcast (Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler [https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper4b]) and reading Preach This Week (Matt Skinner, [http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3667]).