Speaking of God...

This week I had my first preaching experience in Seminary. We were told that we would be doing a five minute "sermon" about a passage of our choosing and we were to just speak about what it says to us about God and what it says to our community of faith. Below is what I wrote, I am sure that what is below is not exactly like what I said, but it gives the idea.

Matthew 20:1-16

The Labourers in the Vineyard

‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. ²After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. ³When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; ⁴and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. ⁵When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. ⁶And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” ⁷They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” ⁸When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” ⁹When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. ¹⁰Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. ¹¹And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹²saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” ¹³But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? ¹⁴Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” ¹⁶So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ - scripture from oremus Bible Browser

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Upon hearing about this assignment I knew exactly what text I was going to us. My mind immediately jumped to God speaking to Job in the whirlwind, I know it’s an odd text, but it helps to keep my ego in check. But the passage I just read has been nagging me all week. It just seems to keep popping into my head. This all started when I read a sermon by Barbra Brown Taylor on this passage. I read it and thought, “oh how nice.” But I began to think about this passage and the more I thought about it the more is began to get angry. I began to sympathize with the workers who had been there all day. I began to feel like one of them, spending all day breaking my back in the sun only to get the same payment as those who worked only an hour. I began understand their frustration and anger towards the landowner. I mean, I have worked hard. I have spent my time volunteering, going on mission trips, for crying out loud I worked with middle school youth, and now I am here at seminary. I think a lot of us can relate. We are all good people; I mean we are here are we not?

We have heard this phrase, “the last will be first and first will be last” so often that we have forgotten how radically counter-cultural it is. It is not capitalism. I mean if we are going to get the same reward in the end as those who come to the vineyard in the eleventh hour, then why work all day? Why not use the system to our advantage? Only the good die young right? Is this not what this passage is saying?

Throughout the week, Matt and Anna have driven home that it is God who is to be the center of our preaching not ourselves. So looking at this passage that way, I stop looking at in the since of my understanding of what is fair, I stop looking at what I do, what have done, and what I left undone, and I stop worrying about where I am in the line, am I somewhere near the front or in the middle and the reward of others. And shockingly I begin to feel free. The things I have done that I shouldn’t have and the things I left undone begin to matter a little less, I stop comparing myself to others and what they have done or not done. For this passage has very little to do with what I have done and yet everything to do with what God has done. This radical grace that is given so freely to everyone is so great but yet so simple. This passage gives us freedom to live. It gives us freedom not worry about where we are in line, what reward others are getting and how it compares to ours, our payment dose not depend on what we do. We have been set free to live in grace that has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God. Hallelujah and Amen

Image by Habub3

Looking Back and Moving Forward

2008 has come and gone! 2008 was a wild year of change both personally and politically for our country. I have read several articles talking about what a year 2008 was for the sports world. The Celtics win the NBA title, The New York Giants beat the seemingly unbeatable New England Patriots, The 2008 Summer Olympic Games with their amazing stories, Micheal Phelps, Kansas - Memphis in the NCAA basketball Championships, Racco and Tiger at the US Open, and on and on we could go about the amazing year in sports we can go. Outside of the sports world, it was also a crazy year. We saw the US slip into a resession, Barak Obama was elected president, and on and on we could go (I am not a huge news junkie and can not remember all the things that have happened this past year).

It has been a great year of change for me as well. In the Spring of the year I left my job as a youth director to follow God's calling on my life to becoming a Minister of Word and Sacrament by attending Seminary. I relocated from East Tennessee, a place I have lived for the better part of seven years, to a place I had only visited, Atlanta. I also asked my girlfriend of two years to merry me and begin a life together. I have also survived the two semesters of seminary (summer Greek school being the most difficult). And now I look ahead to what 2009 holds.

2009 is looking to be a wonderful year of more change, more growing and being challenged, as well as the coming joy of getting married and beginning my life together with my soon to be wife!

Disney, Brick Walls, and Realizing your Childhood Dreams

For me to say that a book is revolutionary, or has the power to impact lives for the betterment of humankind is shocking. First I don't read much, other than class books, and I generally tend to read more fiction than non-fiction. But this book, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffery Zaslow kept popping up on my radar. It was mentioned in a sermon I had heard, it was all over the shelves of bookstores and it has been talked about all over the place. With a car trip to Memphis coming up, I downloaded the audio book from iTunes (I know it may be cheating but I read slow and well I was driving... not a good call to read and drive). I first must say this book and the actual lecture the book is roughly based on are wonderful. The book is a expanded version of what was covered in Pausch's "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor of Computer Science. I know I a few months late in picking this book up, I am glad I did. The book covers a great deal of topics and lessons that we all can learn from.

The book breaks down into several sections. It opens with Pausch talking about his childhood dreams and how he was able to achieve almost all of them, not becoming an NFL player being the only one. He weaves these stories together not for his own glory, but to move the theme of the book to where a majority of the writing is devoted, Helping others achieve their dreams and ideals to live by. I must admit I love stories. I love to hear people tell stories to teach lessons, and Pausch does a wonderful job of weaving his stories with lessons for life that all people can take and should apply to life.

The main lesson I took from this book was to live life. To find your passion and go after it. Pausch says we have a choice to make in life, we can either be a tigger or an eeyore (not the exact quote just the essence of it). We can not change the cards we are delt just the way was play them (again another quote from Pausch). This is something we all need to be remined of.

The Last Lecture can be found at "The Last Lecture"
A page on CMU's website - Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

A final thought, Pausch in the book talks about the movie The Natural and it's final scene. The hero, Roy Hobbs played by Robert Redford with a battered body, his magical bat shattered. Stands at the plate with the world watching and hits a final home run, winning the game, exploding the lights, crushing the dreams of the evil team owner, and walking off into the fabled sunset with the women of his dreams and their son. Pausch's book is that dream realized.

Advent Conspiracy

Here or There?

When I was little I remember watching Sesame Street. I was not the biggest fan of the show, but as I have gotten older I have grown to appreciate the show more and more. So in one of my seminary classes our professor used a lesson from Sesame Street in her lecture. The lesson was about the difference between "here" and "there." Simple enough right? Wherever you are, you are "here" and you can move towards "there" but whenever you think you have arrived there your prospective changes and you are just "here." Here and there change according to your prospective. So the lesson from Kermit and Grover about "here" and "there" surprised me when it was used to talk about the book of Ecclesiastes and it's implications for Qohelet's world and our own.
For the writer of Ecclesiastes, Qohelet (the Hebrew name), was living in a rapidly changing world. Qohelet's world was rapidly being changed by the changing economic structure of the time. The Persian's were in power and Darius was beginning to use coin money, people were being charged taxes, and the economy was shifting from a barter system to a cash system. Everything was getting a monetary value. This rapidly changing world was impacting how the people viewed the things around them. With everything having a monetary value, one can begin to move to a place where everything can be bought or sold at the right price. In this system there becomes a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Everything was changing. Into this world the writer of Ecclesiastes begins to write.

Qohelet sees his audience as anxious, fretting, hoarding, preoccupied with gaining money. However, Qohelet sees this as vanity, for when we die, which is the only thing we can be certain of, all we have worked for will be gone. It is like chasing after the wind. It is like the Sesame Stree lesson, people are always trying to go "there" but when they arrive "there" has moved further away... To this world, Qohelet urges people to enjoy what they have, for all will go away when we die.

7 Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. ⁸Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. ⁹Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. ¹⁰Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-10

For Qohelet God is so transcendent that we are unable to grasp the understanding of the mind of God. The only thing we can understand is what is here in front of us. God will provide, and we are to enjoy life at every chance we get, for nothing is guarantee. It is a gift from God that we eat drink and take pleasure in what we do. For seeking after wealth, "All was vanity and a chasing after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 2:11)

What is the Gospel?

This is a paper I turned in for an Evangelism class I am taking. I enjoyed writing it and was pretty impressed with the result...

The question of, “What is the Gospel?” is a challenging questions with no simple answer. Attempts to answer the question oversimplify and reduce the gospel, limiting the gospel’s vast mystery and possibly attempting to control the gospel to fit our cultural needs. The gospel effects people, it works in people and through people. This makes the gospel personal, giving the gospel its complexity and vastness. For each person the gospel may mean something different. For those who are oppressed the gospel is freedom, for the hurt and broken the gospel is healing and wholeness, for the lonely the gospel is comfort, for some the gospel is life, for others is it the belief that there is something bigger than themselves at work in the world. My simple definition is the gospel is God’s loving work, beginning at creation, carried through the people of Israel, shown fully in the life, teachings, death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, God’s son, now expressed by the church, Christ’s followers empowered by the Holy Spirit. This work is for the restoration of creation, the bringing in of the Kingdom of God, bringing all of creation into right relations with each other, and God our creator from the bringing of time through the ends of the ages.

My working definition of what is the gospel comes from my encounters with the gospel. Like many people of the Old Testament their encounters with God are described by God’s actions. It is easier to describe God by God’s actions. We are able to see the results of God’s actions, and can easily describe these actions. For me the gospel is much the same. For the gospel is the good news of God’s redeeming love through Jesus. It is God who created the world and all that is in it. Yet humans having been created in God’s image wanted to be like God and ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge separating us from God. God removed humanity from the Garden of Eden. However God never gave up on creation, God called Abraham and Sarah to be the beginnings of a great nation who is called to be a blessing to all peoples of the earth. God continued to work in and through these people, giving them land, an identity reminding them of their purpose, being a blessing to the world. Yet every time the people forgot, God would raise up a leader to call them back to God.

God’s love for God’s creation is fully expressed through the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. God, still loving what God created, comes in the likeness of a human being, Jesus. Jesus comes to fulfill what God has spoken through the prophets and begin to bring God’s creation back to a right relationship with their creator. Through Jesus’ life and teachings we are invited to be apart of God’s kingdom on earth; a kingdom where love abounds, where justice flows like a mighty river, where our identity comes not from what we have or what we do but from who created us. This kingdom of God is in conflict with the culture that surrounds it. Jesus’ calling for a new and better way of life lead him to be tried, convicted and executed for challenging the culture, for pushing the cultural norms. Jesus teachings went against what the world was calling for. Jesus was calling for people to love their enemies, to walk an extra mile with those who were ruling over them, challenging the status quo, and celebrating the small and lowly, calling the first to be last and last to be first. Jesus was calling for a world flipped on its head. This radical living brings healing to broken, food for the hungry, love to the unloved, communion for the outsiders, hope for the hopeless, and comfort for the afflicted. It brings peace not with the sword but with acts of love. It is not just for the downcast, afflicted, marginalized or left out but it is for all people. It is this upside down world where God has invited creation to join God and to be in communion with the Creator.

It is through the God’s ultimate expression of love, the resurrection of Jesus from death to life, that we are able to truly see and experience God. Jesus bore all that afflicted humanity, setting us free from those things that hold us down, and bringing us back to being who God created us to be. We have been set free from the bondage our self-centeredness has placed us in and our culture has reinforced in us. We are free to bring the good news to all people, to help restore creation. Following Jesus’ resurrection, his followers were called and empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus mission. This mission goes all the way back to Abraham and Sarah’s call to be a blessing to all people, and is expressed in the sharing of the good news of what God is doing in the world in and through God’s people. It is through this work of restoration and love in which believers, empowered by the Holy Spirit, become the hands and feet of Jesus, continually working to bring in God’s kingdom. It is through our fumbling and bumbling encounters with those around us, we can begin to piece together what God is doing in the world.

Part of gospel is engrafting ourselves into this story of God in the world, and continuing it, and adding our own flavor to it. The gospel is the good news that God is at work in this world. It is through God’s love of God’s creation that we are able to be freed through the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is good news that we are free to love and care for those around us because we have first been loved by our Creator.

Thanksgiving Break

This past week was Thanksgiving, which brought about several things, a long drive to Memphis and back, no school, time with the parents, and the idea that I would be able to get some work done.

When I was in college I use to love to drive. Several times I can remember spending 10 to 12 hours driving to and from school to spend roughly the same amount or less time in at home. But now I dread the drive home. Yes it is a little longer of a drive these days which makes it even harder to get motivated to drive. And also this year I was to be driving alone, since my fiancee and I had decided to do holidays separate for the last year. So looking to drive from Atlanta to Memphis was not something I was looking forward too. So I cheated and downloaded an audio book from iTunes, Blue Like Jazz. I had read this book a few years ago but needed to re-read it for myself as well for a class. (I will also write a blog post about my thoughts and reactions to this book.) So with a audio book on my ipod I was ready to tackle my 6 1/2 hour drive across the south.

With a book to listen to it was truly a nice trip. I was able to listen to the book, pause and think about what the author had said. It also gave me a bit of time to do some reflecting on the year thus far. The drive to Memphis was all in all a wonderful time. My time in Memphis was also a wonderful time. I enjoy spending time with my family, it was nice to hang out with them and talk about life.

One thing that got me thinking while I was in Memphis was cleaning out my old room at my parents house. For someone who is somewhat of a pack rat, and doesn't like to clean, this was a something I was not looking forward to. But I forced myself to go through the mounds of stuff that had accumulated in my room for the 7 years I lived there during middle and high school and the one summer spent there during college. It was funny how my room had shifted from my room to the place where my old stuff resided. It was fun to go through some of my stuff I had forgotten about and find treasures from my past. As I was cleaning I came across a box of notes from high school from various girls and friends. After looking through many of them I realized where a great deal of my time in high school was spent... reading, writing and passing notes. Also part of my job of cleaning my room was removing all the pictures I had placed on the walls. One of my walls was devoted to pictures of my friends, the places we had gone and the things we had done. It was nice to look through those pictures. It brought up so many good memories, and made me wonder where some of these people are now. Once all was cleaned and removed, I spent my last night in "my room." Yes, I know it will always be my old room, but with new paint and new furniture (my parents hope), it will have been transformed into a "new" room for me. I am reminded that there is nothing constant in this world but change.

So all in all it was a wonderful break, not to short and not to long. It was a wonderful time to reflect and look back, and make ready for the coming of a new year with all new challenges.