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This week we are going to be focusing on the “water” that nurtures our faith journeys. I’ll be focusing pretty heavily on our regular interactions with Scripture. We as Presbyterians do not have a very good reputation (sadly, but honestly) for knowing our Bibles very well. Rather than analyzing what has been, its vital to think about how we can change that fact. How do we do it? Simple…read. Yes, its pretty simple to type what we should do, but it is harder to consistently find the time necessary to really get into God’s Word on a regular basis. There are many demands on schedules regardless of our age or situation in life, but if we are serious about the centrality of Jesus in our lives, we need to get into God’s Word regularly. This Sunday, we’ll be talking more about this and I’ll be sharing some ways to help you start, pick back up, or continue your practice of reading God’s Word. In the meantime, feel free to share your experiences of what you do to stay consistent or about the struggles you sometimes have in reading the Bible on a regular basis.

As we read in Psalm 119, “God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.”

Jesus the boy

Thinking about the Lectionary Gospel passage for Sunday got me thinking about what it means to us that Jesus was a little boy, what it means that Jesus was fully human as well as being fully God.  It matters that Jesus lived what we lived.  Felt what we felt.  Experienced the blessed wonderfulness of life as well as the deep heartbreaks that often come.  The Gospels don’t say a whole lot about Jesus between when he was an infant and when he was an adult, except for this one story in Luke.   This one story shows a side of Jesus that reflects both of his natures – his divine nature where he was the “whiz kid” in the temple blowing the priests, etc away with his questions and answers – and his human nature as the child who took off from his parents without them knowing.  The story reminded me of this wonderful song by Rich Mullins called “Boy Like Me, Man Like You”

Click here to listen

What does it mean to you that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  What difference does it make in your life?

Good Great All

Good Great All

Three words that I think capture the essence of the message from the angels to the shepherds in the fields so many years ago.  The story is recorded in Luke 2:8-20.

Good Great All captures so much for me what the coming of Jesus means in our lives – Good News of a Great Joy for All People.  Below is the sermon I preached on Christmas Eve this year.

(note that this manuscript is a guide for what I actually say, so grammar, etc is not the best here).

Art above is by Daniel Bonnell.  Click the image for more of his amazing work.

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Its late at night.  Many of us have had very full days.  We have had family over.  Made Christmas Eve dinner.  Maybe this is not the first worship service we have attended.  Maybe you are sitting there thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow morning.

How early will the kids wake up?

I wonder what Santa will bring?

When are the relatives coming again?

I hope I took the meat out of the freezer for tomorrow’s dinner.

We all have a lot going through our minds tonight, so I want to give you something simple this evening.  I am going to be speaking up here for about the next ten minutes, but if you remember nothing else of what I say in that time, I would like you to remember these three words.  Three words.  All I ask you to remember.

Good.

Great.

All.

Good.

Great.

All.

Those three words are at the core of the message the shepherds heard that night so long ago.  Imagine yourself in their position.  Quiet night.  Watching sheep.  Watching sheep.  Taking a bit of a nap.  Hearing a few noises.  Watching sheep.  Dozing off again.  And then all of a sudden – BANG!  The sky lights up with one angel which was probably enough to blow them away and that angel delivers a message about the birth of a child who would fulfill all the hopes and dreams they all had heard about for so long.

And as those words are starting to move from short term memory into the deeper places of their brains, the sky suddenly lights up with “a multitude” of angels.  Night is turned into day.  The sky erupts in a chorus of singing.  Maybe some sheep get scared and start to run off.  Shepherds are caught in the midst of this holy and incredible moment and everything else in their lives.

We take leave of the shepherds after their visit to the child and never hear about them further.

Good.

Great.

All.

We are left with the message from the angels that night

Good News

Of a

Great Joy

For

All People.

Good news of a great joy for you shepherds.  For you.

Good news of a great joy for the wealthy people who are already asleep in their beds.  For them.

Good news of a great joy for your family and friends hoping you are ok out in the fields.  For them too.

Good news of a great joy for the priests and leaders of the temple.  For them.

Good news of a great joy for the Roman soliders who patrol your streets.  Yes, for them too.

Good news of a great joy for the beggar who asked you for money earlier today.  Yes for them.

Good news of a great joy for the person who swindled you out of money.  Yes, for them too.

Good news of a great joy for all people.  You, me, them, everybody.

Good

Great

All

This may have been said to shepherds in a field outside a tiny town thousands of miles away thousands of years ago, but the “all people” isn’t just for those who were alive at that time.  We are part of that “all people.”  The message is for us today too.

This message is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.  We live in a time that we need Good News.  We need Great Joy.  And we need to remember that its about All People.

Good News – That phrase almost always snaps us to attention.  When someone comes to us saying “Hey, I’ve got some good news to share!”…how many of us keep typing away on our blackberries or iPhones or don’t look up from the book we are reading.  When we hear that phrase, we almost always stop what we are doing and lock in to what is being shared.  Good news – I want to hear this.

Good news for people who have grown far too accustomed to the bad news that we hear far too often.  Bad news about the future.  Bad news from the doctor.  Bad news from a teacher.  Bad news.  We need good news that reminds us that God is still at work.  God is still present.  God is still moving and God is still changing lives.

We need Great Joy.  The statistics are staggering.  The most wealthy nation in the history of the world.  Homes bigger than anyone else in the world.  More wealth compared to anyone else in history.  Yet, more people in the United States say they are unhappy with their lives and struggle to find joy and things to celebrate in life.  Maybe its that we are finding our meaning and our hope in accomplishments, possessions, and other things that ultimately disappoint.

The great Joy for a Christian is not in those things, but instead in the reality of God at work in the world in and in our lives.  St Paul wrote in one of his letters,

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then make my joy complete: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand

Which leads to the final word for tonigt…ALL…

We need to remember its about All People.  Its not just about those who have it all together.  Its not just for those who are “in”.  Its not just for those who can “pay for it.”  Its not just for those who are of a certain status.  Jesus, after all, said that he came not for the “healthy, but for the sick.”  Jesus came for those who were broken and wounded.

Now you might say that if Jesus came just for the broken or the wounded, well, then Jesus didn’t come for all people?  Actually…if we were truly honest with ourselves, we would realize that we are all pretty broken.  We have all been wounded.  We are all “sick.”  We are all in need of redemption and new beginnings.

And that is the Good News of a Great Joy for All People.  God saw the brokenness of our lives and in the life, death, and resurrection of the person this little baby eventually became, brought us that new beginning.  A new beginning of our relationship with God, a new beginning of our relationship with others.  Are you in need of that new beginning tonight?  Are you longing for Good News?  Its here.  Are you aching for Great Joy?  Its here.  Are you feeling like you are left out or unwanted?  This news is for you.

Its Good News of a Great Joy for all People.  Good Great All.

So, you might be thinking again about when the kids will wake up in the morning.  You might be thinking about what you are going to make for dinner.  You might be thinking about what might be under the tree.  You might be thinking about the place at the table that will be empty for the first time this year.  You might be thinking that the base of the tree seems a bit emptier than in past years.  You might be thinking of all of those things and about 100 other things.  But the message is there for you tonight.

Good.

Great.

All.

Amen.

A touch of irony re The King of Pop and Massanetta

Last Wednesday night, I was at the Massanetta Middle School Conference with about 300 middle school students.  We arrived Tuesday afternoon, had been in our encounter groups, had worshipped together several times, had tons of fun, had met many new friends, and had already seen several clear examples of God at work in our midst. Wednesday night, we were going to spend part of the evening working with an organization called Stop Hunger Now as all of us were going to prepare meals for the hungry in the world.  Now, we weren’t going to just prepare a few meals, we were going to make over 10,000 meals that evening.  If you visit SHN’s website (linked above), you will see the process we used to make the meals. It was an incredible experience as we packaged those 10,000 meals in approximately 20 minutes.  As I caught the freshly sealed packages of food, I prayed for each of them as I could that they would be used to not only stem the hunger pangs that people were feeling, but would truly be like the loaves and fishes and be multiplied in ways beyond anything I could ask or imagine.

It was ironic, then, that the next night, we stood outside the same building where we packaged those meals that we started hearing the rumor pass around that Michael Jackson died.  Some said that they heard from someone that he had died, some said that it was just a rumor, and we started talking about whether this was like Elvis’ death to a new generation.  It didn’t really hit me until now (nearly a week after that amazing experience of the meals and since Jackson’s death) the sad irony at work.  Stories about Michael Jackson’s death have dominated the media since last Thursday night.  CNN.com has continued to feature stories about his death at the top of their page, retrospectives of his life have been run seemingly non-stop, and I am sure this will continue for weeks ahead.  There were even stories of how people searching for info about him crashed many major news websites the night of his death.

The sad irony is how accustomed we have become to the daily injustices and horrors taking place moment-by-moment in the world to the point that we don’t think of them at all, but instead focus on one “story” after another and miss so much of the reality of the world we live in.  I write this as one who falls into this trap time after time, whether its obsessing over one of my sports teams, a fantasy football draft, the latest tech news, what will happen on Lost, and so forth.  I throw as many stones at my glass house as anyone else’s.  And I also empathize with the family of Michael Jackson – children who have lost a father, parents who have lost a son, and siblings who have lost a brother.  Yet, in the 5 days since Michael Jackson’s death…

• An estimated 125,000 people have died of hunger related diseases
• Approximately 72,000 of those people are children

I don’t write this simply to guilt people, but as a reminder to me (and to us all) of the call that we have as followers of Jesus to care for the “least among us” and to remember the words of Jesus that we will have served Jesus when we serve those who are hungry, sick, naked, and imprisoned.  Yes, the story of Michael Jackson’s death (and parts of his life) are tragic and give the media a lot to talk about for a short period of time.  And I, like millions of others, loved much of his music (I wore out my LP of Thriller).  But…may we never forget that there are people each day who are desperately striving for the absolute basic necessities of life while we watch the saga unfold around his death.

During the last worship service of the conference, we were led into our prayer of confession by the song Share the Well by Caedmon’s Call…

Share the well
Share with your brother
Share the well, my friend
It takes a deeper well
To love one another
Share the well, my friend

Je ra, ji ra, de ji ra, de ji, ji, ji

Do you think the water knows
Flowing down to the mountain thaw
Finally to find repose
For any soul who cares to draw
Some kindred keepers of this earth
On their way to join the flow
Are cast aside and left to thirst
Tell me now it is not so

All God’s creatures share the water hole
The blessed day the monsoon comes
And in His image we are woven
Every likeness every one
From Kashmir to Karala
Under every banyan tree
Mothers for their children cry
With empty jar and bended knee

Je ra, ji ra, ji ra, de ji ra, de ji, ji, ji

You know I’ve heard good people say
There’s nothing I can do
That’s half a world away
Well maybe you’ve got money
Maybe you’ve got time
Maybe you’ve got the Living Well
That ain’t ever running dry

Je ra, ji ra, ji ra, de ji ra, de ji, ji, ji

And in the time that it took to read this post and listen to the song, approximately 40 children died of hunger somewhere in the world…