16th Sunday after Pentecost - Can you relate?

Jeremiah 18:1-11, Philemon 1-21

Today's passage involves the potter and the clay and how the potter sculpts, smashes and reshapes. The Philemon passage talks about Paul's advocacy for the returning of the slave Onesimus to his owner, Philemon. I use the analogy of Handel's Messiah, when the aria talks about Smashing the Clay into pieces. Sometimes in life we need to be smashed into pieces, so to speak. God is the potter and we need to be the moldable clay. When we follow Christ and the example of Paul, we become this reshapen pieces, taken apart and putting back together. Through activism and acknowledging others as equals in Christ, we create an environment of inclusivity and love. Can you relate?

All in a day's work

I remember when I was in 8th grade. We were required to read a certain amount of time during our Language Arts classes each week. Readers' Digest was my continued favorite. There was a section called "All in a day's work." So, I suppose I should talk about mine. Today I had 3 interviews - one with a supervisory role, one with a chaplain and one with an extension minister. They all seemed to be impressed with my questions. For the DS and campus minister, both are United Methodists. For many years one was single and to my knowledge the other has always been single. I like being single at least now but the question will always come up, especially when I am older, "So why aren't you married." One conjecture is that because I am a male, I will have a harder time. Congregants will be apt to try to set me up with someone, probably true. But appropriate responses are, "Marriage is a calling that I don't have." Or, depending on the context, a question could be, "Why do you ask?" I also asked what constitutes clergy effectiveness. I was deeply impressed and grateful for the focus on the Gospel. Making disciples, garnering faith and edifying faith of others should be a primary focus but also to develop leaders. I further talked with the chaplain who is ordained in a Baptist tradition. How can one be faithful to the Gospel and not able to proclaim it? In many cases, it's witnessing through actions and presence. A course in pastoral care yielded a deeper interest in calling. There are also interfaith components that I think I would struggle with. They're much rewarding food for thought!

Our Baptismal Covenant

I'll soon be preaching again - July 25. The object of my sermon is to focus on baptism as something communal. My scripture focus that day is a passage on Colossians that Paul writes to the Church at Colossae but a further passage from Genesis about the command to move on and not look back at the foreboding Sodom and Gomorrah. Paul outlines misbehavior and implies a moving on. Through our baptism we are raised with Christ. Through this coinciding resurrection, Christ's cosmic act becomes real and we're called to life anew and told not to look back. Paul's words weren't finger pointing at individuals: it was to a group. It's the promise and goals to those people that we're called to share as Christians - it's our baptismal covenant.

Holy Fellowship

I've moved to Crozet for the summer to intern at a church, about which I am very excited! I was on my way back from Norfolk earlier this week and stopped at the Cokesbury store in Glen Allen. I came across small scriptural/devotional journals. At Annual Conference last week I acquired a UMC Book of Worship. On page #581, there is a "litany" for a Love Feast. The Love Feast or Agape Meal if you want to be technical is a centuries-old tradition. John Wesley himself experienced it when he was in the company Moravian Christians. They introduced him to the concept of a Love Feast, that is to say, a meal of fellowship modeled after the Disciples' meal time together. A suggested scripture is from Luke, it describes the Dinner miracle. A few weeks ago I was watching yet another sermon from Duke Chapel in which Sam Wells talks about a time when he met an elderly Anglican priest, whom he described as "the wisest person he'd ever known." The priest told Wells to set up a table and anytime he ate from it or did work, he should think of it as a sacrifice. More specifically, mealtime was a time of Eucharist. As Jesus commanded the Disciples, "Do this as often as you meet." In following this example, anytime that Christians fellowship together should be a "Eucharistic meal." In the company of others, when we celebrate our faith in Christ and use our time together as a witness to others. Maybe in those circumstances we can have a dinner miracle as the early Jews and Gentiles did, before "Christian" developed, and they experienced a miracle by Jesus. By celebrating this love feast, I am able to have a Discipleship experience through Christ and an honorarium to my heritage as United Methodist but also as an appreciate for my denominational Moravian friends. For modern a modern Moravian, coffee and sticky buns are used right in the middle of worship service. What a better time to celebrate this occasion we call a Love Feast!

Holy Conferencing

I've traveled to Norfolk, VA today for the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. The first night is always a Eucharistic service in memory of ministers and their spouses who have died in the past year. I learned that a minister acquaintance-friend of mine passed away in February. A time of remembering is very important. Grief isn't evil, even though it can be quite difficult. When I think about the remembrance that we give Christ when we celebrate the Last Supper, what grief did the Disciples feel? Maybe grieving and honoring the fallen saints is very Christ-like. Didn't Christ visit the fallen saints and bring them into the Kingdom? As painful as mourning and grief are, they're natural human emotions. Expressing them is difficult and I had a rather difficult time holding myself together. Maybe such is to be expected? I don't know. What I will say is that in the midst of the rewards and frustrations of Annual Conference, remembrance is always first - when we remember the life and purpose of Jesus and the commands and virtues of the Holy Spirit that we are given. As I attend the somewhat grueling meeting at The Scope, could be a time to "scope out" a memorial of the Wesleyan Heritage that shapes me as a Christian and what's important to me in my life as a Christian. After all, when we as Christians - specifically United Methodists - gather together, Holy Conferencing is meant to occur.

Back to Lynchburg

I was at Chestnut Hill UMC in Lynchburg today (Year C - Trinity Sunday). It's Memorial Sunday so part of the service as an ode to the United States and veterans; which, as someone who has military in the family as well as countless ancestors, can appreciate. My grandmother came. She has a habit of counting things I learned: 22 veterans came up front for recognition, there were 12 in the choir and 9 children for time with children. The attendance was much bigger than what I am accustomed to. I was told ahead of time that some introductions would be made: one of which was for a Vietnamese family that the church had sponsored and invited into its life. The husband talked about how glad he was to be at church today. He said that he and his wife/family were able to escape Saigon 2 hours before it was ceased. My sermon today went longer than I realized but no one minded and many people want me to come back. I was able to define the Trinity as "the Fullness of God," wisdom that the Holy Spirit I am assuming gave me because I had to explain the Trinity somehow. It's not the easiest Doctrine.


I was thinking a bit later though about the purpose of the Holy Spirit. As for the couple who missed the Fall of Saigon in 1975 by two hours - just in the nick of time. I think that's the Holy Spirit works. In the toughest times, as John says in his Gospel, the Holy Spirit leads to truth. He guides and comforts and advocates. I'm not saying that for the people who didn't escape Saigon that for some reason the Holy Spirit didn't "guide them too." In the case of the couple, there is a mystery as to why they got out and others didn't. I'll never know why. But what I will say, as someone who wants and hopes to witness more to others, that even in the midst of hell and chaos, there's a guide that always wants to be step ahead in the process. And, for the record, I'm speaking more generically than John Wesley's "prevenient grace."

My sermon topic was the fullness of God via the Trinity. How Proverbs uses "she" for the antecedent Wisdom. God speaks through the voice of a woman. Images are used of birth pangs and the use of words like womb and virgin. These are all feminine terms that describe elements of God. We experience the fullness of God when we remember all of those attributes and the terms that are used in the Old and New Testaments: Elohim, Abba, Almighty God for the fatherhood role. We should think of Father, Son and Holy Ghost as being umbrella terms that encompass so many other things. All of these things fit under the Doctrine of the Trinity; the completion of which makes for the fullness of God.

Editorial: Pentecostal courage

Editorial: Pentecostal courage