Birthday Gifts

Friday evening my friend Lisa was visiting, and we decided to take advantage of the beautiful evening by walking along the marina looking at the boats.  As we strolled, enjoying the light of the setting sun turning the water to gold, we came to a neat and trim sailboat where a large, fluffy cat stretched, surveying his kingdom with sky-blue eyes.  We stopped to talk to the owners of the beautiful cat, who were relaxing on their boat with cocktails in hand.  They were a very friendly couple who told us they live in Florida, but had spent the last five months traveling on their sailboat with Clyde, the cat.  The man explained that his wife, an attractive and fit 60 year old woman, had had a stroke, and that after that, they both had a different perspective on life.  They decided to take some time off to enjoy life and do things they wanted to do.  Thankfully the woman was doing very well, and it was clear that she had a positive attitude.  I shared that I was completing treatment for breast cancer, and we agreed that being confronted with a serious health issue changes the way you see things.  Life is too short not to savor each moment. 

Friday happened to be my 46^th birthday, and as I stood talking to this couple, I was reminded again how precious life is and how important it is not to take it for granted.  Too often we race through the days, thinking about the next thing on our to-do list, worried and stressed about things that, in the grand scheme of things, really shouldn’t rate so much of our time.  We fail to stop and appreciate the gifts in our lives. 

As I enter my 47^th year, I have a renewed appreciation for the gift of life and the people who make it special.  My hope is that I can live each day with thankfulness that doesn’t fade, but deepens with each passing year.

Remembering 9/11

The Facebook posts started a couple of days ago.  Where were you when . . . ?  Everyone has a story about where they were on 9/11, the day planes became instruments of terror, flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Sharing stories is a cathartic experience, helping us deal with the emotions we still feel from that tragic day. 

There’s something about those life-changing moments that makes us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing.  We remember odd things like the clock on the wall, or the pattern of the desk’s wood.  When I was growing up, I remember my mother talking about where she was when she heard Kennedy had been shot.  She was in a college classroom in Indiana when bells started sounding across the campus.  The professor stopped speaking as everyone looked around, wondering.  Then someone came to the classroom door to tell them the news, and everyone sat in a shocked silence.

My grandparents’ generation remembers where they were when they heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, “the date that will live in infamy,” as Roosevelt said.   Now, along with December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001 is also a date that lives in infamy. 

Like everyone else, my memories of 9/11 are vivid.  At 9:00 that morning, I was leading a Disciple Bible Study at First Presbyterian Church in Cartersville.  A few minutes after 9:00, the church office manager came to the door to tell us that some sort of attack had happened at the World Trade Center.  We were concerned, but not overly concerned, thinking that this was another incident where some crazy person attempted something, but hopefully was apprehended without too much trouble.  Little did we realize that this was much more.  A few minutes later, there was another knock at the door, with the news that the first tower had fallen. 

Another Disciple class was meeting at the same time, and we gathered around computer screens in the church office, where we watched the devastating footage of jets flying into the twin towers. 

We quickly planned a service for worship and prayer, and we divided the church directory among members of those two Disciple classes, who went home and called everyone in the church to let them know about the service. 

Church members and folks from the community came together for that service, and although it was a time of great sadness, there also was emerging that powerful unity that marked the days and months following the attack.

For awhile, we were all Americans together, bonded by our common suffering, inspired by the bravery of the first responders and the heroism of the members of Flight 93.

Around the world, expressions of support poured out, and we were reminded that the hate of the few was far outnumbered by the goodwill of the rest of humanity. 

Today, the world has continued to change, as war and acts of violence have raged.  But on the anniversary of 9/11, my hope is that we will remember that there is more that unites us than divides us.  Whatever our race, religion, or nation, we all are part of the same human family.  Terrorism is defeated when acts of light shine, for the darkness cannot defeat the light.  So to mark 9/11, I hope that we all will do something to let the light shine.  Do something kind for someone else.  Say a prayer.  Help someone in need.  Show courtesy and respect.  Make a donation to your church or favorite charity.  Write a thank you note to your local firefighters and police officers.  Make 9/11 a day when we remember not just tragedy, but unity and love, so that the world will be a better place, and good will triumph over evil.

Our Spiritual Diet: “Bizarre Food

Jesus said “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”  --John 6: 53, 54

In August I did a sermon series on “Our Spiritual Diet.” We have a fixation on food, on what we put into our bodies, but we may be neglecting our souls.  We should pay more attention to what we put into our minds and our hearts. In this series I paired the gospel lectionary texts with some food-themed television programs to see what ingredients we need to add to our spiritual diets. Today our topic is “Bizarre Foods,” and we are going to think about adding the ingredient of discipleship to our lives.

On the TV show “Bizarre Foods,” Andrew Zimmern travels the globe in search of foods that we would consider beyond exotic to downright, yes, bizarre, and often distasteful.  Zimmern has eaten everything from alligators to armadillos, organs of various animals, and even creepy crawly things like live termites. 

This is a food show that I do NOT watch; I confess that I don’t have the stomach for it.  But many viewers are fascinated by seeing Zimmern consume things that most of us would consign to the garbage can. 

In this passage, it sounds like Jesus was telling his followers to eat some bizarre foods.  When Jesus told the crowd that day that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, they were shocked!  For us, reading this passage today, our minds automatically go to communion! We are very used to the symbolic language used during the Lord’s Supper:  this is my body, broken for you.  This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.  So these words do not have the same effect on us as they did to those who heard it for the first time.

Those who heard Jesus’ words on that day took them literally.  There was no precedent in the Jewish religion for those kinds of images.  The Jewish dietary code forbade eating blood, and food was to be handled in a very particular way.  So Jesus’ words were both incomprehensible and offensive.  Although Jesus had hinted that he would give up his life, even his disciples still didn’t understand.

They thought, What bizarre idea is this?  How can we eat his flesh and drink his blood?   What does he mean?

Even today, we have to stop and ask ourselves that question.  What did Jesus really mean?  Jesus was foreshadowing his death.  In the crowd that day were both his close disciples and all those greedy people who had been fed when he multiplied the loaves and fish, those people who chased after him wanting more.  Remember, those people wanted to take him and make him king by force.  He was letting them know that his end, his goal, his purpose, was very different than what they had in mind.  Yes, he was a king, but his kingdom was not going to be what they expected.  Being his follower did not mean unending feasts, miracles performed for their entertainment, it did not mean sitting on a throne, and power, and glory and might. 

Being his follower meant going exactly where Jesus went, and that was to the cross.  The way of Christ was the way of humility and service and sacrifice.  “Can you drink the cup that I drink?” Jesus asked.  Again and again throughout the gospels he calls those who would be his followers to take up their cross and follow him.

Adding the ingredient of discipleship means choosing to follow Jesus in everything that we do.  It means choosing to be not just a church member or a church goer—someone who comes to worship, who says the right things during the service and then leaves, walks out the door of the sanctuary, and doesn’t really think about Jesus again until next Sunday.  No, being a disciple means that for every decision we make, every word we speak, every action we take, we ask the question, What would Jesus do?  As his followers, his disciples, we pattern our lives after his.

Choosing to live as a disciple may cause us to do things the world thinks are crazy.  In the program “Bizarre Foods,” many times the foods Zimmern eats are strange to us, but they are NOT bizarre to those in the countries and cultures that consume them.  Something that we would not eat is a delicacy to someone in Africa or Central America; these foods are what set those people apart, part of their tradition, a mark that identifies them.

The same is true with us in our lives as disciples.  What identifies us as disciples, what sets us apart, may seem bizarre to the rest of the world.  Again and again in the gospels Jesus tells us to live differently, to live counter-culturally, to do things that seem upside down in the eyes of the world.    Who in the world would choose to be meek or poor in spirit?  Who would choose to turn the other cheek?  When someone steals from you, is your instinct to give him something else?  Wouldn’t we all rather be served, than to serve?  And isn’t it human nature to want to protect our life, instead of laying it down for someone else?  . . . Strange!  Crazy!  Bizarre!

But these are the things that set us apart as disciples, because these are the things Jesus did, and we are called to go wherever Jesus goes.

When Jesus calls us to be his disciples, he claims our entire lives.  We can have no greater allegiance to anyone than to him.  When we follow Jesus, our lives should be radically different.  All of our choices, our decisions, our lifestyle, should reflect that we are Christians, that we live by the rule of love and grace, that we are obedient to the call of Christ and loyal to his cause. 

The person who most powerfully explained this was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.  It may be a death like that of the first disciples, who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world.  But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call . . . only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ” (Cost of Discipleship, p. 99). 

If we truly eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ, we take into ourselves Christ’s sacrifice.  If we eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ, we take into ourselves Christ’s death.  In that, said Bonhoeffer, is the “re-creation of the whole [person].  The only right and proper way,” he said, “is to quite literally go with Jesus.  The call to follow implies that there is only one way of believing on Jesus Christ, and that is by leaving all and going with the incarnate Son of God” (ibid, p. 67). 

Bonhoeffer’s entire life had been spent in following Jesus at cost to himself.  When he was a young man, Bonhoeffer had been expected to follow his father into the career of psychiatry, but he shocked his parents by deciding to study theology.  His older brother told him not to waste his life in such a “poor, feeble, boring, petty, bourgeois institution as the church” (Mark Devine, Bonhoeffer Speaks Today, p. 5).  But Bonhoeffer was convinced that God was calling him, and he did not refuse God’s call.

When the Nazis came to power in his country, Germany, in January 1933, Bonhoeffer spoke out against them.  They took over German churches and rigged elections of church leaders so that Nazi supporters were elected to positions of power within the church.  Bonhoeffer became a leader in the confessing church movement, helping to draft the Barman Declaration (in our Book of Confessions), that said that Christ, not the fuhrer was head of the church. 

Friends urged him to flee to America, where he would be safe, but Bonhoeffer believed that his place was with his countrymen, working for the good of the church.  He was arrested on April 6, 1943, but he continued to work, speaking the truth and ministering to people in prison, fellow prisoners and guards alike.  With the help of sympathetic guards, he smuggled his writing out of prison, and those documents became the book, Letters and Papers from Prison.

He had just finished leading a Sunday morning worship service in prison when he was led away to be executed.  He was executed on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before Allied forces liberated the concentration camp where he was held.

Bonhoeffer’s words on discipleship are the more powerful because he lived his discipleship to the end; he truly understood the cost of discipleship.

And yet—and yet that cost is not without reward!  Bonhoeffer also said, “To go one’s way under the sign of the cross is not misery and desperation, but peace and refreshment for the soul; it is the highest joy” (Cost of Discipleship, p. 103).

“If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command,” he said, “if we are afraid . . . all the time, it is indeed an impossible way.  But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before [us] step by step, we shall not go astray.  But if we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at him who goes before, we are already straying from the path.  For he himself is the way, the narrow way and the straight gate.  He, and he alone, is our journey’s end” (ibid, p. 212).

Keeping our eyes on Jesus and following the way in which he leads us, brings us great peace and joy.  And in the end, the way that seems bizarre to the world is the way to a whole and healthy life in this world, and the way to eternal life in the next. The things we do as disciples of Christ may seem bizarre to the world, but in the end, they are the things transform the world, and that help the kingdom of Christ to come and God’s will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven.  So let us accept the invitation of Christ to eat his flesh and drink his blood, to take into our lives, his life, his love, his sacrifice.  Let us accept his call to be his disciples, and to follow him wherever he leads.

Our Spiritual Diet: “Man vs. Food”

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  --John 6: 35

Have you ever watched the show, “Man vs. Food?”  I have to confess that even though the premise of the show seems a little bizarre, it is . . . rather addictive!  Adam Richman is the star of the show; he is the “Man” of the title, who sets himself in competition against “Food.”  Richman travels around the country to various restaurants, attempting to conquer food challenges:  everything from consuming a mammoth ice cream sundae in New England, to a five-pound steak in Texas, to Southern wings so hot, he had to wear rubber gloves to pick them up! 

We are strangely mesmerized by seeing how much food this man can cram into his body.  Psychologists say that many of us eat too much because we are trying to make up for the lack of other things in our lives.  Our lives lack meaning and purpose, so we stop by the drive-through window to pick up a Big Mac.  Our lives lack love and friendship, so we splurge on a rich chocolate shake. 

Our obsession with over-feeding ourselves has become so problematic, the mayor of New York actually proposed a ban on super-size soft drinks!  Regardless of whether or not you agree with that, what does that say about us as a society, that we consume so much junk, a city is enacting a law to try to save us from ourselves?

What we need is to fill our lives with the bread of life.  In this passage from John’s gospel, Jesus told the people that he is the bread of life.  The people began to complain, saying, how can he say that he is the bread that has come down from heaven?  We know this guy!  He’s Joseph’s son!  We know his parents!  What does he think he has that we need?

They did not see that Jesus is God himself, and that he was offering them everything they could possibly need!  Like the people Jesus was talking to that day, we—even those of us who are Christians—sometimes act like we don’t need him.

How do we treat Jesus?  Do we view him as essential to life?  Do we recognize him as God himself, the source of all life and the ground of our being?  Or do we treat him as an extra, a side dish, a condiment that we can take or leave?  Do we fill our lives with other things, existing on a diet of fast food for the mind as well as the body--mindless television programs, You Tube, Facebook--so that we have no room for what really matters?  Are we malnourished, starving for what we really need, because we have consumed so much of what we don’t?

If we fill our lives with “empty calories,” with things that don’t really matter, we will not be satisfied.  But if we fill our lives with the bread of life, we will find that we have the presence of God with us in a way that is life-giving.

So how do we remedy this?  How do we change our diet so that we are better nourished?  We need to add the ingredient of prayer. 

Sometimes we breathe a whispered prayer as we rush through the day. There is nothing wrong with that; we should be thinking of God and talking to God all day long.  But our only prayer shouldn’t be a casual comment to God in passing.  Sometime we don’t even realize what our prayer life is like, until it is reflected back to us.  Take the case of a woman who had invited some people to dinner.  At the table, she turned to her six-year-old daughter and asked, “Would you like to say the blessing?”  “I wouldn’t know what to say,” the little girl replied.  “Just say what you hear Mommy say,” the mother said.  So the little girl bowed her head and said, “Dear Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?”

Out of the mouths of babes, as they say!

Too often we talk to God only in passing, or we turn to him only when we need something from him.  Corrie Ten Boom calls that the “spare tire” kind of prayer, turning to God only in case of emergency. But she says that rather than seeing prayer as a spare tire, we should see prayer as a steering wheel.  Prayer should be the guiding force of our lives each and every day.

What is your prayer life like?  Reflect back over the past twenty-four hours.  When did you stop to pray—to really pray—to God?  Were your conversations with God “spare tire” prayers or “steering wheel” prayers?  How much time was spent with God, compared to the amount of time spent on everything else?

We sometimes think that we don’t have time to pray.  How can we stop to pray when we are so busy?!  There are mornings when I wake up and I’m immediately inundated by thoughts of all that I have to do that day.  Before my feet even hit the floor, the list of things to do starts running through my mind.  It doesn’t seem like there could possibly be enough hours in the day to accomplish all that I need to accomplish, and it is tempting to think, “I don’t have time to pray today; I’ve got to get going!”  Those are the mornings I know that I most need to pause and spend time in prayer.  Prayer is the practice that puts everything else in perspective.  When we start and end our days with God, we are centered on the right things.  We acknowledge that whatever the day brings, we are not in it alone.  Though we may face difficult situations, with God, all things are possible.

If we spend time with God in prayer, if we fill our lives with his presence, we will not have to chase after things that don’t matter.  We will not have to fill our bodies with food that does not satisfy, because we will have satisfaction for our souls.

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  How will we hear God’s word to us without spending time in prayer?  We must spend time with God: listening as well as talking, letting the Holy Spirit flow over us and fill us, receiving the nourishment we need to live whole and healthy lives. When prayer is one of the main ingredients in our spiritual diet, we will be fed with all that we need for life.  So let’s not fill our lives with things that perish, but with the bread that came down from heaven, and we will have all that we need to satisfy our souls.