Jesus the Healer

The Choir's anthem at 11:00 worship was Fanny Crosby's wonderful hymn Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. The lyrics are below.

As you read the lyrics, I encourage you to imagine yourself as one of the lepers that Jesus healed (Luke 17:11-19). What would you do after the healing? How do you respond in real life when you sense God working for good in your life? Then imagine one of the "untouchables" in your life as the one crying out to Jesus. Remember that as Jesus reached out to the lepers, Jesus wants us to reach out to all people.

 

Pass me not, O gentle Savior,
Hear my humble cry;
While on others Thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.

 

Refrain:
Savior, Savior,
Hear my humble cry,
While on others Thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.

 

Let me at Thy throne of mercy
Find a sweet relief;
Kneeling there in deep contrition,
Help my unbelief.

Trusting only in Thy merit,
Would I seek Thy face;
Heal my wounded, broken spirit,
Save me by Thy grace.

Thou the spring of all my comfort,
More than life to me,
Whom have I on earth beside Thee,
Whom in Heav’n but Thee.

Jesus the Lawbreaker

I spent some extra time this week reading about the Pharisees. Honestly, I didn't know as much about them as I thought I did. One of my primary resources was a great Bible Dictionary I own called the New Interpreters' Bible Dictionary. At $80 for the whole set it's really a good deal. Even more interesting is to read up on the history of the Sabbath. Like much of early Jewish history, the concept of sabbath has roots in the Near Eastern world that the early Jews lived in.  What made the Jewish people different was the way they interpreted sabbath in the context of their religious faith. This specific example of taking a cultural artifact and giving it new meaning was new to me, but there are lots of examples throughout history. Celebrating Christmas on December 25 is one good example. There's also nothing wrong with it. We can readily acknowledge that God gives truth to the world in a whole variety of ways. God's presence and grace is everywhere, after all.

Back on the subject at hand, though, here's the challenge from this week. What social norms (rules, laws) do you follow that God would want you to break? I'm sure there's at least one. Feel free to share some in the comments.

In the World vs. Set Apart

Like with the previous two weeks, today I set a contrast between two choices. Of course those aren't really the only two choices for how the Church functions in relation to the world. But it was either that or spend a whole afternoon preaching! If you want to look at a range of views, the classic book on the subject is Reinhold Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. It's pretty academic, but really is well written.

I'm not really into art (Some quick St. Paul's staff trivia - Sandra was an art history major. Don't tell her I'm not  an art fan!) but I love Scott Mutter's work. There's an online exhibition of his work here. Extraordinary stuff.

You may have noticed I used two words, hermit and anchorite, as synonyms. Techncially they're not the same. Anchorite is a broader term that can refer to monks in monasteries as well as hermits. An anchorite is anyone who is seeking refuge from the world for a lifetime. Hermits are those who live entirely on their own and, as much as physically possible, do not come into contact with others. As I was writing the sermon the word hermit cracked me up, so I decided to use anchorite instead. Bottom line is the intent of both is to escape the world. For the purposes of the sermon the distinction between the two was irrelevant.

Panic Attacks

Looking back on it, I can now identify that I had my first panic attack when I was a Senior in high school but I didn't have a second one until several years later. The causes, triggers, and symptoms of panic attacks can vary dramatically for different people. Check this site for several good resources to learn more.

For me, the strangest part of the experience is knowing intellectually that there is nothing wrong at all but feeling in imminent danger. I knew it was not real...but it seemed so real. I tell people that if I had not experienced this myself I would think it was entirely in a sufferer's head. Pretend. Make believe. There is a real physical reaction to the trigger, neurons start firing, and, at least in my experience, no matter how sure you are that everything is fine your body just doesn't believe it.

The most helpful thing for me was to know that my wife Tracy believed me when I said it was real. It didn't make the attacks stop, but it helped me know that I wasn't losing my mind. Having a supportive spouse made a huge difference. If you know someone who has panic attacks, please start to help by simply believing it's real.

The second most helpful thing for me was medicine. It doesn't work for everyone, but for me a very low does of an anxiety medicine has done the trick. It has been years since I've had a signficant attack.

Finally, it's important to be able to talk about it. Panic attacks can be very debilitating. I'm really fortunate that even at their worst my panic attacks were better than what many others have experienced. Regardless of the severity, panic attacks are like any other medical condition. They can be treated and in many cases cured or completely managed. They are also more common than most people know and absolutely not something that should have a stigma associated with them. Hopefully my sharing will help you or someone you know feel a little less "anxious" about anxiety issues like panic attacks.

They Know If You've Been Naughty...

Generally when pastors make the news it's not a good thing. That was the case this week when Pastor Alois Bell from St. Louis made the news for stiffing a waitress at Applebee's. Pastor Bell says it was a lapse in judgment, that her privacy was violated, and reportedly asked for the waitress to be fired.

Some lessons for all of us:
1. If you say something stupid you should assume everyone is going to hear about it. The waitress should not have posted a picture of the receipt, but she also shouldn't have been stiffed by a pastor. It shouldn't surprise Pastor Bell that the picture was posted and it shouldn't surprise the waitress that she was fired. This is all really pretty predictable stuff in the era of social media and camera phones.

2. Pastor Bell is correct when she says, "I've brought embarrassment to my church and ministry." It's pretty tough to preach about Jesus loving "the least of these" when you won't even give a waitress a tip that's well within societal norms. I would say she's embarrased Christians everywhere. In his book They Like Jesus but Not the Church, Dan Kimball shares his conversation with a waitress who says she hates working on Sunday mornings because when all the Christians get out of church and come to the coffee shop and are rude and don't tip well. So this latest experience is really just one of many being experienced across the country. I'm embarrased for our faith. Not that I'm any better. I've had plenty to apologize for in my life (and apparently Pastor Bell has at least sorta-kinda apologized). We all mess up. But,

3. We need to remember that when we mess up people are watching. They're watching when we don't mess up too, but they're more likely to notice when we mess up. Once upon a time "practice what you preach" was a nice phrase to use in a sermon as a reminder to the congregation to behave. Now "practice what you preach" is a necessity in ministry. If we don't practice it, people don't believe us. I'm not saying this to pastors only, but to all Christians. If we don't practice love why should people believe God is love? If we don't practice compassion why should people believe that God is compassionate? If we don't practice forgiveness (like forgiving Pastor Bell for messing up this one time?) then why should people believe in a God who forgives?

I feel sorry for Alois Bell. Hopefully she's learned an important lesson. Hopefully all of us have.

Scripture as Timeless Truth

This post is a supplement for my sermon on January 27th, Timeless Truth vs. Changing Times. You should be able to access the sermon here. If you were there you heard me say that the passage from 2 Timothy  used so often to prove the inerrancy of Scripture (Every scripture is inspired by God [or God-breathed] and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.[CEB]) is actually misused to make that point. Here's some of the reasons why:

1. When 2 Timothy references "scripture" it isn't talking about what you and I know as scripture. The Bible as we know it wasn't canonized (made "official" scripture) until the 4th century. Between the time of Jesus and then a strong consensus emerged about what writings should be considered sacred, but they would not have been called scripture. Instead, for the author of 2 Timothy scripture referred to what we call the Old Testament (more or less - that's a whole other story). So at most we're now talking about only the Old Testament being infallible.

2. We have only translations from copies of original manuscripts. Most people today who say all of scripture is inerrant will say that it is infallible in the original manuscripts. This shows an understanding that there is always something lost in translation (i.e. from Greek to English or Hebrew to English) and that even the documents we have in the original language read differently. A good example is the Gospel of Mark, where some manuscripts have a short ending, some have a long ending, and others have both the short and long ending. Which one is the God inspired one? The original one - whichever that one was. The problem is we don't know which one that was. It doesn't help us to know that the original manuscript was inerrant if we don't know exactly what the original manuscript was.

3. 2 Timothy doesn't actually say that even the Old Testament is inerrant. To say "inspired by God" or "God-breathed" is close to the same thing as inerrant, but not quite. More importantly, note what the next part of the passage says. Scripture is "useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character..." It is inspired by God for these purposes. It is not inspired by God for teaching biology, astronomy, or history. Those topics that sometimes we want the Bible to be most authoritative about are topics that 2 Timothy says are not what it is really about.

With all that said, I truly believe in the Bible. If you heard the message on the 27th I hope that was clear. We just need to be honest about what it means to say we believe in the Bible.

Kansas and United Methodist Politics

“I anticipated we were going to have a grueling debate..., but it’s been far worse than I even thought it could have been. I think it truly has poisoned the ability...to deal with other major issues on the table.”

Could be a quote from General Conference, couldn't it? Instead it was from Kansas House Minority Leader Paul Davis from Lawrence. He was talking about the debate in the Kansas Legislature over redistricting, the process where new voting boundaries are drawn. After a 99 day session (that was only supposed to be 90 days long) the Senate and House never agreed to a plan and now the courts will decide the boundaries. This was such a mess it made the budget process (which included sending two budget bills to the Governor's desk including one widely expected to result in a deficit in the billions by 2018) reasonable.

Such is the state of Kansas politics, where "conservative" Republicans and "moderate" Republicans fight for dominance and Democrats are mostly irrelevant. If you're not from Kansas you may not know that this traditional Republican stronghold has not historically been run by what we think of as today's Republican party. Kansans get along. Kansans believe in reasonably conservative fiscal constraint and somewhat libertarian social norms. Kansas has been on the right side of history in a large number of movements. It's a great place that now is being torn apart by extremes that have now "poisoned the ability" to deal with the real issues of governance.

Sound familiar? The "think and let think" state is no longer acting like itself. Just like the "think and let think" denomination that I'm pretty sure is the largest protestant group in the state. As I said in my last post, the United Methodist Church has indeed given in to the culture. We have become just as combative, polarized, and intolerant of different beliefs as the Kansas State Legislature.