Acts 1:1-14

Rev. Jim Morrow

May 16, 2010.  St. Marys United Methodist Church.

Ascension Sunday.

Mr. Gray

Verse 1: It’s as bad as it has been
For over 20 years but then
I haven’t been here all my life
And all the wells are going dry
All the bankers saying “bye-bye, Mr. Gray,
We’re glad we met
But no money yet.”

Chorus: If I show my hands
Would you watch them bleed?
Long enough to prove they are indeed in need of mercy
In need of mercy

Verse 2: Dawn always breaks the noonday high
Shade rarely offers alibi
Or decent rest for such a man. If I think, I can
Try harder some might say that I’m smarter
But only God knows
Only God knows who I am

Chorus

Bridge: I try to laugh about it
I try not to cry about it
Mamma always hates it when I cry
What will it take to convince
This is just the road to excellence
Faith before the skeptic’s eye

Chorus

Outro: I need your mercy me I need your mercy, mercy me.

Over my short time in ministry I have learned some interesting lessons about congregational change. I hope that you can be encouraged by these things as you seek to lead congregations into greater missional effectiveness.

1. You must respect the established members of the congregation. Though at first glance it may seem that they are opposing you or opposing “change,” remember that 20 years ago they were doing the exact thing you are doing now—seeking to improve the effectiveness of your church. Be careful when you slam the current state of the ministry as ineffective: you may completely devaluing the Spirit-led decisions of those who came before you.
2. Beware of the “invisible ‘them’.” “We can’t do that because “they” won’t like it.” Or “…people won’t go for that.” Discover immediately who exactly we’re talking about here. Is there even a group that is actively opposing change? Don’t be party to creating factions.
3. It is healthy to begin with the idea that at the core of most hearts, people would like the church to be effective. Often when people react negatively to an idea, a creative risk, or a change, the issue is not that they don’t want to be an effective congregation. The issue has more to do with having difficulty visualizing how their lives will be different and how they can positively live into a change.
4. A pastor (especially in the UMC) doesn’t need to be (and probably shouldn’t be) the source, executor, and evaluator of all congregational change. By this I mean that the pastor should lead the congregation into a discerning the call of God in a corporate manner instead of developing a “vision” and trying to get people on board while leaving in the dust those who will not. Remember that every person experiences God differently. Just because one or a few people have more pull than others doesn’t mean that their mode of worship/growth/service, etc need be pushed on the entire congregation. The congregation as a corporate body should respond to God’s call for how a particular church should “make disciples” in their particular community.
5. “This congregation will die if….” “This church needs….” “If we have nothing but old people, then we are gone in 15 years.” Stop saying these things. The truth of the matter is this: at this particular point in time, God has called this particular group of people, with this particular set of characteristics, to this particular place, in this particular time, for a particular purpose. A pastor is called/appointed to that location. Serve them and help them to discover how God has called them to make disciples of Jesus Christ in their community.
6. Don’t assume that you know the desires and needs of an entire generation and force things upon a congregation in the name of “attracting young people.” Every group of people is different in every different place. Seek to know the people in your area of service.
7. Procedure and stylistic changes won’t attract anyone unless there are heart changes first and foremost in the lives of your current people. After all, consuming a product is different than building relationships.
8. Avoid absolutes. Remember that what you know is conditioned by your experience. Be open to new experiences yourself and you will find that your own understandings of how “church should be done” growing and changing in inspiring ways.
9. Focus on what people are doing to effectively and celebrate that. Celebrate it a lot. Then watch as they desire to become even more effective.
10. If you are what you eat, then maybe your attitude is conditioned by the rhetoric you consume. Let the statisticians and the Chicken Little’s tell you that the denomination is dead and that mainline Christianity is a white-washed tomb. That doesn’t change the fact that you are a child of the living God, called to pastor His people who are also God’s children, called to be disciples of Christ. As a spiritual discipline, we should regularly fast from doomsday rhetoric.

Most of all ask yourself this question: does the change I desire to bring recognize that I am only one part of a larger plan that God has for this whole people in this particular community in this time for this community? If so, slow down and allow God to bring people to it.

What do you think?  What would you add?  I know there will be some issues with my outlook.  What would you change?

At times prayer becomes silent. Peaceful communion with God can do without words. “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother.” Like the satisfied child who has stopped crying and is in its mother’s arms, so can “my soul be with me” in the presence of God. Prayer then needs no words, maybe not even thoughts. –The Value of Silence, The Community.

I invite you to read the rest of the essay.

“The church is immersed, in short, in a rhetoric of crisis….  At first I joined fully in the rhetoric of crisis.  I found that it gave me entree to audiences…I began to get uneasy about my zealous viewpoint for three resons….  For one thing I found myself part of a cadre of interpreters who were touring the denomination saying things that seemed to procure more and more invitations to say more and more potent and decisive things.  I began to realize that the rhetoric of crisis is a rhetoric of power.  It gives poiwer to the speaker…the rhetoric of crisis takes power away from the laity and pastors by diminishing the significance of their work….  Second...the rhetoric of crisis profoundly serves U.S. culture’s idol of success.…   Worse, the rhetoric of crisis distracts the church from the gospel it has been entrusted with proclaiming.  It focuses on the institution instead of the messege the institution represents to the world.”

Polity, Practice, and the Mission of the United Methodist Church, 2006 Edition, Thomas Edward Frank

–Martin Luther’s Sacristy Prayer

h/t:  Fr. Frank Logue

“Jesus must love wine.” “Jesus is obviously a party animal.” “The story proves that Jesus loved to have fun.” Well…maybe.

John 2:1-11 is the story of the Wedding at Cana, the turning of the water into wine.

The text indicates that this is the “first of [Jesus's] signs,” and that Jesus “revealed his glory….” What was the miracle here?

The obvious answer would be that the water was turned into wine. However, the text begs a deeper understanding of what is miraculous here.

Jesus initially did not feel that the lack of wine at the wedding concerned him or his mother, vv. 5. In fact, he felt that his “hour [had] not yet come.” Why, then, does Jesus turn the water into wine? The reason that he does this must be the core of the miracle, possibly the very thing that the writer of the Gospel of John is attempting to communicate to us. In the text, what is in between Jesus denying his mother’s insinuation and Him commanding the servants to fill the jars with water? The statement that in this place there were “six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification….”

It seems that the difference between Jesus’ hour not being at that present time and him revealing his glory concerns the fact that he had the opportunity to almost anonymously transform the Jewish rite of purification! Jesus in a sense re-creates the rite by making the rite a common, desirable, and excellent thing that is to be taken into the body by everyone regularly. In a sense, Jesus seems to be spurned on by the opportunity or call to offer internal purification to every, even the most common, individual by his transforming power.

The steward’s comment to the bridegroom is quite ironic: “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now” (vv. 10).

What had previously come out of the jars for the rite of purification was, just as he said, “inferior” to what Jesus’ transforming power offered! Even to the drunk!

Do you know what I have to say about that? Thanks be to God!

See you all tonight at SGAUMC Annual Conference Worship at the St. Luke UMC Ministry Center @ 7:30pm.

What are your thoughts?

1. Teach youth and adults about the UMC and Living the Methodist Way.
2. Help students discern a call to ministry.

I have found no good video resources for either of these tasks.

1. There aren’t a great deal of resources for discussing the UMC or its history. Any good resource is out of date and almost unusable.

2. I have seen NO good resources (video or not) that will help students hear, discern, and live into a call to ministry in the UMC.

Would you like to help me develop some resources? I am particularly interested in developing student resources for a call to ministry in the UMC.

It includes a selection from St. John Chrysostom’s famous Easter sermon which can be found at Fr. Frank Logue‘s blog.

Let us pray:

God ALMIGHTY! In your great love for each and every person, everywhere, in all times, you sent your only begotten son so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life! He was born into a broken world and brought the hope of salvation! He preached to the world about repentance and the coming Kingdom of Heaven! He healed the sick! He cast out demons! He gave sight to the blind! And just when the world suspected him to rise to greatness—he was crucified.

The world slept that night after his death, lost and not knowing what happened to eternity. Many of us went to bed with that same confusion, God. We awaken today to the full promise that Jesus has overcome death and sin! Others went to bed last night with no thought of their souls. God, may they be surprised by the resurrection! May they see you as Mary saw you—as the disciples saw you that they might believe!

May the whole world be surprised by the resurrection and this promise of new and eternal life! May the resurrection seep into every crack and crevice of this world and overcome every evil thing! May the Risen Christ reign in every down-trodden heart, every victimized soul, every sinners being, and in all of creation!

In the words of John Chrysostom, leader in the early Greek church: O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? Christ is risen and you are abolished. Christ is risen and the demons are cast down. Christ is risen and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen and life is freed. Christ is risen and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for Christ, being risen from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who had fallen asleep. To Him be glory and power for ever and ever.

God ALMIGHTY! In your great love for each and every person, everywhere, in all times, you sent your only begotten son so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life! He was born into a broken world and brought the hope of salvation! He preached to the world about repentance and the coming Kingdom of Heaven! He healed the sick! He cast out demons! He gave sight to the blind! And just when the world suspected him to rise to greatness—he was crucified.

The world slept that night after his death, lost and not knowing what happened to eternity. Many of us went to bed with that same confusion, God. We awaken today to the full promise that Jesus has overcome death and sin! Others went to bed last night with no thought of their souls. God, may they be surprised by the resurrection! May they see you as Mary saw you—as the disciples saw you that they might believe!

May the whole world be surprised by the resurrection and this promise of new and eternal life! May the resurrection seep into every crack and crevice of this world and overcome every evil thing! May the Risen Christ reign in every down-trodden heart, every victimized soul, every sinners being, and in all of creation!

In the words of John Chrysostom, leader in the early Greek church: O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? Christ is risen and you are abolished. Christ is risen and the demons are cast down. Christ is risen and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen and life is freed. Christ is risen and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for Christ, being risen from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who had fallen asleep. To Him be glory and power for ever and ever.

AMEN.

Seeds.
John 12:19-33

Welcome to church, seeds.  Will you be just one seed or will you produce many seeds?

Hear the audio here.
Text:

Jim Morrow

St. Marys United Methodist Church

St. Marys, Georgia

March 29, 2009

Seeds

John 12:19-33

They say that confession is good for the soul.  Since Rev. Mosley is away today…I agree.

Five weeks ago, I did something that I must confess to you.  I did something that will make many of you gasp, and others of you will be sure that you never do what I am about to share with you:

A little over five weeks ago:  I visited another church…on a Wednesday afternoon!  Scandalous, no? 

If you’ve been doing the math, you may have figured out that I am talking about Ash Wednesday.  That’s right.  At noon on Ash Wednesday, I went to worship with the congregation of Christ Episcopal Church just a few blocks down the road.  I did this for 2 reasons:  1.)  Lent is my favorite season of the church year and I wanted to begin my Lenten experience before I helped lead our own Ash Wednesday service here with First Presbyterian Church; 2.)  I had to write a paper for seminary on a worship service other than our own and it was a great opportunity to visit without missing being with you all on a Sunday morning.  Now, Father Casto, the priest there, would venture to guess that there was a third reason a good, temperate Methodist was visiting an Episcopal church:  the flavor of communion, but I assure you that is not the case!

Many people had gathered for the imposition of ashes on their foreheads (just as we do here in our service).  Particularly there was a mother with a little girl who seemed to be as upset as some of you are about being in church and an elderly lady in a wheel chair—based on my conversations with others, I think she was in her 90′s.  The time came in the service for us to go to the altar so that the priest could impose ashes on our foreheads saying, “from dust you were made, from dust you shall return.”  The mother with the crying child was having a lot of trouble and was getting embarrassed—a kind woman in the congregation offered to hold her while the mother went up front.  The elderly woman in the wheelchair had a friend push her to the side so that she wouldn’t be in the way.  “From dust you were made, from dust you shall return.”  You’d figure after hearing that phrase so much, I would have given some thought to it but all I was worried about was the fact that out of the top of my line of vision, I could see a big chunk of ashes getting ready to fall on my shirt!  Until a strange thing happened:  that mother, who had received the ashes minutes ago was walking back up to the priest—with her baby girl.  The priest placed his finger in the ashes and then upon the little girl’s forehead:  “from dust you were made, from dust you shall return.”  He then turned to the 90 year old woman in the wheel chair, leaned over, placed the ashes on her forehead:  “from dust you were made, to dust you shall return.” 

That stark reminder was over 5 weeks ago and that symbol of our mortality has since washed off.  Now many people are fasting from something as a spiritual discipline: giving up something in order to reinforce their dependence on God.  Not everybody finds this valuable, and not everyone is doing this, so if you are not, don’t feel bad at all! 

Last weekend, I took our confirmands to on a Confirmation retreat.  One of our confirmands had an epiphany while we were there:  the 40 days of Lent do not include Sundays!  No sooner did the speaker for that session say that, than this young man turned and looked at me and said: “Oh man, I could have had that 4 times!  I’m having some tomorrow!”  It’s fun to have these little moments!  Its fun to hear what people decide to give up for Lent and how they’re doing!

(look at Bible)  But I think things just got serious again.  I blame Jesus.  We were walking with Jesus into Jerusalem and looking forward to that day when we can have soda and Facebook again, Easter Sunday, and we may have forgotten that Jesus was walking first towards his death. 

Things just got serious in an alarming way.  It’s like when your teenager comes home and jokes, “hey isn’t dinner ready yet,” and you’ve been working all day.  Serious.  It’s like when you are lifting something heavy and you ask a friend to give you a hand and they start clapping.  Suddenly…serious.

In our Gospel reading, something very exciting is happening—even the Pharisees are noticing.  The world is being drawn towards Jesus.  This is evident at the beginning of our passage as we read that there were some Greeks who came to Phillip saying:  “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”  This might not seem like a big deal, but it is.  The feast that causing the population of Jerusalem to overflow was the Passover—a Jewish feast.  And the Messiah, so the Jews thought, was for the Jews.  Now Greeks are seeking him?  This is a big deal.  So big a deal, in fact, that Phillip goes to get Andrew to go with him to Jesus. 

Jesus responds to them:  “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  Ok.  Strange response to some “church visitors,” Jesus, but we’ll go with it.  I mean, if your going to be glorified, that would be great for attendance.  You might even get the Greek’s children into youth group and having them tithing soon.  Good stuff, Jesus.

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”  I imagine that Phillip and Andrew were slightly alarmed. 

“The one who loves his life will lose it, while the one who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  Phillip and Andrew were just trying to get Jesus to meet some Greek people.  He was always saying things like “come to me,” and “I am the way the truth and the life,” and Jesus is talking about dying?  That is not a way to get them to serve on the evangelism committee, (sheepishly) um…sir…Lord…um…Jesus.

Things just got serious.

Why would such a simple request, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus,” bring such a response from our Lord? 

Will Willimon, United Methodist Bishop for North Alabama tells of a ruckus he caused at one of his early churches.  With good intentions, he suggested to an amateur wood carver in his congregation that he carve a cross for when the process into the church.  What Willimon had in mind was something simple and clean, something that would match the modern architecture of the church.  What they got on the first Sunday of Lent, however, was a dramatic, heavy cross, complete with a crucified Christ, blood and everything.  “What is a modern, well-budgeted Methodist church to do with a bloody cross these days,” Willimon asks.

There is something disturbing about death and often we would like to keep death far away from our Christ and far away from ourselves.  However, when Jesus responds to a simple request “can we see you,” He responds with by saying:  “I so desperately want to you to see me, to be in relationship with me, to be honored by God that I must die.”  There is no other way.  Jesus says that a seed must die in order to produce fruit and many more seeds.  In Jesus’ death, we find growing in the soil of our souls, a plant growing, filling us with Love, uniting us with God, because Jesus chose to die.  Jesus tells us of his death because it “when [he] is lifted up, [he] will draw all people to himself.” 

All people.  You.  No matter who you are, where you’ve come from, or what you’ve done.  Jesus died to draw you to himself and, therefore, into a deep relationship with God and with all believers. 

See?  Things just got serious.  We are all faced with a decision.  Jesus draws us all to himself; will we go?  Will we follow him?  It requires following Him through Jerusalem—the jubilation of Palm Sunday, to the cross where the we let go of life as we live it according to human standards of love and meet Easter as a new creation for eternity. 

Willimon finishes his story:

Alas, we would strip the body off the cross, embalm it and cover it with cosmetics, render the cross in bronze, polish it, make it triumphant and clean….We can understand that.

But then, down the carpeted aisle of my modern sanctuary,… a cross is brought in …. It is a crucifix, a visible believable body on a cross, the work of a layman’s hands, a layman who, despite what I have told him, sheds a tear and continues to be stupefied that God’s love should be made so explicit, continues to be drawn to the simple truth that “Jesus did it all for me.

Would you like to see Jesus?  He, like a kernel of wheat, died so that you and I could live together with God—to produce many seeds.  Would you like to see Jesus?  Would you like to know him?  I invite you accept His gift of life. 

Are you like Phillip and Andrew, the disciples who were present in the world bringing people to Jesus?  Who do you know that would like to see Jesus?  You are now a seed.  It is time.  Let go of the fear.  What is it that you need to die to?  It is different for each of us.  What prevents you from sowing yourselves into the lives of others?  Will you remain a single seed, or will you produce many seeds?

Things just got serious.  But they also became eternal, beautiful and hopeful. 

I want to pray with you.  I want to pray with you right now.  If you would see Jesus, I want to pray with you.  If you have decided that you will show others Jesus, I want to pray with you right now.  You can call me over to where you are, or you can pray with me at the altar as we sing of the beautiful cross of Jesus, #301.