Perspectives: Gratitude Door

Happy Thanksgiving!

(And why, may I ask, is that picture not black and white? Although I'm thankful for the color)

Priesthood of all Believers

Whose work is ministry?  Ministry is the work of all Christians.  Read 1 Peter 2:4-5 and 9-10

⁴ As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by  God and precious to him— ⁵ you also, like living stones, are being built into a  spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable  to God through Jesus Christ.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of  darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are  the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received  mercy.

This is a passage that will be familiar to those who have participated in a Walk to Emmaus.  We are part of the priesthood of all believers.

I know I keep saying it, but all of us are called to the work of servant leadership - ministry.  God will find us where we are, will work with us to answer our doubts, and will prepare us for the work.  Given all of that, we are God's chosen people - all of us - and we are now God's people.

Notice that there isn't anything in that passage that says we have earned this calling. God hasn't examined us and found us worthy. We are not worthy, but God has called us.  This is a form of grace, of mercy, of love.  God gives us this gift of a call out of God's mercy and love for us.  God changes us so that we are now holy.  Sacred.  Called. 

How can we ignore that?

Sorry for my lack of images - for some reason, they keep loading up in black and white.  I'll have to figure that out.

Servant Leadership

As I continued to prepare my class plan for the Western District, my next question was, "What does it mean to be a servant leader?"

Matthew 20:26b-28:  …whoever wishes to be great among you must be your  servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. And to give his life a ransom for  many.

I think a good image of a servant leader, for us, the the picture of Jesus, wrapping a towel around his waist, and washing the feet of the disciples.  Servant leadership, to me, has these characteristics:

• It is centered on the first phrase of the definition of ministry from yesterday:  an expression of the mind and mission of Christ.  Servant leadership, for a Christian, begins and ends with being a person who reflects the nature and purpose of Christ.  That doesn't mean we ARE Christ - but that we are disciples of Christ, doing and being as he has taught us.Servant leadership isn't about bringing glory to oneself.  Servant leadership is about bringing glory of God.Servant leadership is about leading others by serving them.  It isn't about telling other people what to do and expecting them to service you, as a leader.It means we do a whole lot of hard work so that others can know Christ. Servant leadership involves sacrifice.  It means giving.  Of our money,  our time, our gifts, our preferences - so that God's work is done.It isn't about credit.  It's about lifting others up.
  
  

What else do you think servant leadership is about? How would you characterize it?

Ministry

Last week I wrote about call stories.  These were all part of a class I taught in the Western District about lay servant ministry, but all three stories were highlighted in my CLM training curriculum.  There are certainly other call stories in the Bible that one could examine.

As I was planning the session I was going to teach, I wondered next about ministry.  What is ministry?  According to Paragraph 126 of the Discipline, ministry “is an expression of the mind and mission of Christ by a community of Christians that demonstrates a common life of gratitude and devotion, witness, and service, celebration and discipleship.  All Christians are called through their baptism to this ministry of servanthood in the world to the glory of God and for human fulfillment.”

Let's make a list about ministry:

• An expression of the mind and mission of Christ.  So, ministry reflects who Christ is and what Christ came to do.
• By a community of Christians . Community is a good word.  By a community.  We don't do ministry in isolation.  
• It demonstrates a common life of gratitude and devotion, witness, and service, celebration and discipleship.  Without going through each one of those, I think we can agree that ministry is multifaceted.  
• All Christians are called through their baptism.  We all have a ministry to do. And that calling is associated with the sacrament of God's claim on our lives.  Also, ministry isn't something we work up to, or earn the privilege of doing.  Ministry is a part of who we are as Christians.
• Servanthood.  Ministry is wrapped up in servanthood.
• In the world to the glory of God.  We have an outside motivation and inspiration for ministry.  It is for God's glory, not our own, and not to glorify the church or the pastor.  It is for the glory of God.
• and for human fulfillment.  Does that one surprise you? I was so glad to see that phrase as  part of the definition.  Ministry is necessary for fulfillment of who we are.  Ministry is not drudgery done only because God said so.  Ministry brings fulfillment.

Perspectives: Twisted

Check out the piping on the side of the building.  How often do we twist around so much to get something done?  Could there be an easier way.

Isaiah's Call: Never Worthy

Next, let's look at the call of Isaiah found in Isaiah 6.  This is a different call than those of Abram and Moses.  This isn't a person walking through a desert.  In this passage, Isaiah is telling us about a vision he had of God.  It is majestic and other worldly.  And yet Isaiah's response is very human.  Read verse 5:  "And I said, 'Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!'"

What is God's response to this statement? A seraphim approaches him with a hot coal, and touches it to his lips. See verse 7:  "And he touched my mouth and said, 'Behold, this has touched your kips; you guilt is taken away, and your sin atones for.'"

There are a couple of things I notice here.  First, the cleansing of guilt and sin comes before Isaiah has a chance to either hear or answer a call.  He doesn't earn this 'salvation' by his actions or ascent.  God just acts.  This is grace.  This is the grace that we receive, every day.  We don't always see it; we never earn it, but it is there.

Secondly, our sin is no excuse for not responding to God.  God approaches us where we are (remember?) and God knows who we are, even to the darkest and most secret parts of us.  And yet God calls.  And God prepares us.  

We are never worthy. And yet we are called.

Moses' Call: No Excuses

Let's look next at the call of Moses - Exodus 3:1-4:7.  I imagine you know this story.  Moses is walking and sees a bush that is burning but is not being consumed.  

First of all, look at verse 3:3 - "Then Moses said, 'I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.'"  That tell us something about call.  To hear God's call, we have to be willing to turn aside from what we are doing and look.  Listen.  Participate.  One might say that Moses couldn't help but see a bush on fire that wasn't burning up, but think about how much attention you have to pay to something that is burning to notice that it is burning, but not being consumed.  This requires some attention.  It might not be obvious.  And, I daresay, our calls are not nearly as dramatic as a burning bush, most of the time.  To hear God's call, we have to turn aside, and pay attention.

So once Moses approaches, and listens, he is not as eager as Abram was.  Moses offers many excuses:

• 3:11 ButMoses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and  bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
• 3:13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The  God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his  name?’ what shall I say to them?”
• 4:1 Then Moses answered, “But suppose they do not believe me or listen to  me, but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you
• 4:10 But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent,  neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I  am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
• 4:13 But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.”

After each of these questions and excuses, God answers.  God participates in this conversation.  God does not blow out the burning bush and abandon Moses to his questions and doubts.  He answers them.  

I love Moses last, probably exasperated, comment.  "O my Lord, please send someone else."  The answer to that plea was no.  God sent Moses.

I think this tells us that call is sent in relationship.  A call is not usually a plunking down of an assignment with no interaction with God.  If you have doubts and questions, God wants to hear them, and God wants to respond.  Your doubts do not disqualify you.  

And no matter how much we want God to find someone else, we each have a call.  Even if we say no, we still have a call. Maybe it changes with circumstances, but God will not leave us alone.  We have a call to answer.  

Abram's Call: God finds us

Let's spend a few days thinking about call.  I recently taught a class in the Western district concerning lay servant ministry.  As I wrote the outline for the class, I started with a few call stories.  I think each of them can tell us something different about how God, in relationship with us, calls us to ministry.

Review Genesis 12:1-9.  This is Abraham's call (Abram at the time).  Verses 1-3:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

As a sidenote, the blessed to be a blessing concept is one of my favorites from the book of Genesis.  It is the motivation for our call.

If you read all of this passage, you'll see that God calls, and Abram goes.  He picks up what he has, and his family, and he leaves where he lives, heading out, following God.  Abram lived in a city in what is now possibly in Turkey - although there is not consensus about this.  He traveled to the land of the Canaanites - even ending up in Egypt at one point.  The Canaanites lived in what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria. No matter how you look at it, or where you place ancient cities, Abram traveled.

And yet, at each place, God found him.  At each place, God was there.  

God comes to us where we are.  Where we are geographically; where we are spiritually; where we are emotionally; where we are physically. God calls us - finds us - values us - wherever we are.  And when we say yes, when we obey, we will find that God travels with us.  God does not leave us alone in a foreign land.  

Perspectives: Light from below

Quotes and a Plan

I am seeing a lot quotes on social media like the ones that follows:

• I am not in control, but I am deeply loved by the One who is
• If it were possible for me to alter any part of his plan, I could only spoil it
• Go will only give you what you would have asked for it you knew everything he knows (Timothy Keller)

I've spoken before about what I think is a danger of quotes, especially those used on social media.  We read them, and we like the cleverness of them, and we are comforted by some part of them, so we repost - and maybe we believe, without really thinking about what the clever quote says.

Lately, I've been really seeing the ones about God's control and God's plan.  I think we are comforted by these kind of thoughts, because we know we are not in control, and we want SOMEONE to be in control.  Do you think that these comforting cliches ignore the idea that we (and everyone around us) has free will? Do you think they lead to the belief that if something horrible happens, we shouldn't question it, because it is part of God's plan that we do not understand?

I still go back to the book The Will of God by Rev. Leslie Weatherhead.  This small book that is a series of sermons preached after World War II talks about the will of God, and God's plan.  God has a plan - an ultimate plan for the good of God's creation.  Because we have free will - and that is part of how we were created, I think - we interfere with God's plan.  The ultimate plan will eventually succeed, but in the meantime, we are mistaken if we think what humanity does - or even just chance - is God's plan.

These quotes are only comforting until you actually think about them.  Then they fall apart, don't you think?

Gratitude

Still thinking about yesterday's post...

I was watching a video on Youtube; the woman speaking was wearing a t-shirt that said "Gratitude is the best attitude." Normally I would say that something short and catchy like that that rhymes couldn't possibly be true - that it boils down any truth so much that the truth boils away, leaving a sludge of rhyme and catchyness that can trick us into believing it is true when it really is only emptiness.

But I think there is truth in this phrase.

Sunday in worship Terry said, "You can't be resentful and loving at the same time." (Or something close to that.). 

Can you hold resentfulness and gratitude in your hand at the same time? Life is complicated, so I can't say anything is true all of the time, but I think most of the time, if we are resentful, we have no room left for gratitude.

And if we are grateful, then we can be loving, forgiving, and generous.  Gratitude opens us up to beauty and kindness - both seeing it and offering it.

Maybe gratitude is the best attitude.

What is the role of attitude in life?

What is the role of attitude in life? How does how we approach life change our lives?

A couple of days ago I was in a hotel at their free breakfast bar.  I picked up my coffee and spilled it.  The woman standing next to me (I had never met her before) grabbed napkins and started helping me to clean up the mess.  A couple of previously clean paper coffee cups had been splashed, so I tossed them to the trashcan and missed.  She laughed, and said, "Your day is off to a bad start."

My response: "My day has started by meeting a very nice person."  It just popped out of my mouth, unthought.  

Attitude: how we see what is in front of us.  A positive attitude doesn't change that I spilled my coffee.  It did open my eyes to the helpfulness of a stranger.  

Do we only see the negative? Or do we open our eyes among the negative to find the positive? And what difference does that make?