Tag Archives: death

Rejecting the Gospel

15 Tuesday May 2018

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Why do people reject the Gospel? Do people reject the Gospel?

I think there are people who do.  Some reject the Gospel knowing full well what they are rejecting.  Some reject it because what they thought was the Gospel is different from what they are hearing for the first time.

What is the Gospel?

The easiest way to describe it is that the Gospel is the best news in the history of creation – that there is nothing that you can do to earn God’s love or earn your way to spending eternity with God.  Why?  Because we are broken and don’t know what a right relationship with God looks like – how could we, we are broken.  We’ve never seen it the way it should be.  Instead, God reaches out to us, sets things right, and invites us to participate in relationship with God.

So why would anyone reject this?

Fear, control, knowing.  Many people are afraid of letting go of control – or the idea that we are in control.  Many people are afraid of not being in control of their life.  Many people are afraid of not knowing what God’s plans are for our lives and where God might send us and have us do.

Many people would rather be in control of their lives – or think they are in control of their lives.

But Jesus calls us to death – death of self, death of being in control, death of knowing.  These are scary things if you have never faced death or had a crush with death.

Following the Gospel means that we aren’t in control and really, if we are honest with ourselves, it means we recognize that we never were in control, ever.

Following the Gospel means having the lies we are told and tell ourselves about ourselves ripped from our hands as we grasp onto them like a security blanket.  In their place, we are invited into a journey – not when we are ready, but when we are called.  We’ll be equipped with what we need as we go – that’s how God works.

Are you willing to be out of control?

Proclaiming the Gospel in the midst of other gospels

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Church, Theology

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Lately I’ve noticed many articles, interviews, programs, and media that focus on death, division, destruction, scoring political points at the expense of opponents, keeping people out, conflict, stress, anxiety, theft, cheating, infidelity, and more.

That’s a heavy load to carry.  This is the gospel message of the world and our culture.  A message of sin and death.  A message that says there is no escape from these things – that you are going to drown in a message that will bring you down and destroy you – unless you are strong enough to swim.  The bad news is that you aren’t.  That’s why we are also bombarded by messages that tell us that we aren’t good enough, but no worries – have we got just the right product, service, politicians, treatment, pill, move, job, significant other, car, house, etc for you!

And it’s a lie.

Being exposed to these messages is sad.  It is even more sad when Christians spread these same messages through social media posts, articles, conversations, and more.

What gospel are we proclaiming?  Do we willingly proclaim a gospel of hopelessness and death by what we post and share, by insisting that we are right about everything, by pointing or giving the finger to those who we identify as enemies or worse?  Where is the Gospel in this?

What Gospel are we proclaiming in our daily lives, in our social media posts, in our conversations, in the ways we live our lives, in how we see other and refer to them and label them, in who we pray for and what we pray about?  What Gospel are we proclaiming in the leaders we choose to represent us in religious and secular matters?  What Gospel are we proclaiming when we proclaim that the nation’s salvation can only come through this political party or that one and only with this leader or that one?  What Gospel are we proclaiming when we set our standards so low that even a serpent couldn’t get under the bar that is set so low.

I wonder what gospel we Christians proclaim – is it a Gospel that talks about the reality of the world, but also proclaims the promise of resurrected and transformed life?  Or is it a gospel that proclaims hopelessness, dystopia, and where death has the final say and the ultimate victory?

What would happen if we asked ourselves what Gospel we are proclaiming before we post, before we speak, before we act, before we judge, before we forgive, before we do or say anything.  I wonder what the world would look like?  Maybe it would look like the unfolding of the Gospel in our midst.

The Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday talks about the necessity of a grain of wheat to die in order for new life to blossom.  What needs to die in our life?  What needs to die in our congregations?  What needs to die in our work? What needs to die in our social media?  And what about us needs to die, so that resurrection and new life can take hold?

Alternative gospels that declare hopelessness, death, destruction, and power need to die – that’s what.

Are we willing to take these things off of the life support that we are maintaining?  Or are we afraid of this death?  Or are we afraid of what resurrection will be and how it will be different and out of our control?

The Gospel is waiting for us – seeking us out in our daily lives.  God will continue to hound us and hunt us down, pushing forward no matter how many times we bat it and God away from us.  God is relentless like that.  And that’s a good thing.  It’s what guarantees that the Gospel that is proclaimed and lived out is the Gospel of hope, peace, resurrection.  A Gospel of unbelievable love.  A Gospel that many find hard to believe.  But a Gospel that gives life.

Resurrection

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Theology

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Yesterday I wrote about death.  Yesterday was a draining day.  I presided at a graveside funeral, planned two other funerals with grieving families, and scheduled when I’ll be doing funeral planning with a fourth family.

But it was also a day full of promise.  So often we don’t want to deal with the reality of death.  We’d rather avoid it altogether.  We’d rather put on a happy face.  But death is here and it is real.  It walks among us.  It touches our lives.

And I think we need to experience the fullness of death in order to really understand and appreciate resurrection.

How can someone really grasp what resurrection means if they don’t really know what death is?  Without truly knowing death, resurrection is just a nice sounding idea with nothing deeper.  It’s something we’ll think about later.  It’s boring.  It’s something that sounds good in theory.

But it is so much more.  When we consider that without resurrection death is the end.  Death is annihilation – complete non-existence.  Death is hell.  Death has power and control over all of creation.  That’s death without resurrection.  Without resurrection, death leaves us hopeless and purposeless.  What’s the point if we all just end up dead.

But resurrection is good news – the best news in the history of creation.  It’s the news the church gets to proclaim.  It proclaims this news in the midst and in the face of death.  It shouts right in death’s face saying “you lose!”

Resurrection isn’t just some idea that is nice.  It’s about transformed and renewed life.  Life we will experience.  Resurrection is a message of hope.  Resurrection is a message of purpose.  Resurrection is a message of life.

The people who recently died are dead.  But they have been promised resurrection.  And so have we.

But death is more than just physical death.  People experience death in many ways – death of a relationship, a job, physical abilities, meaning for their life, purpose, etc.  We experience death of organizations and causes.  Death is not the ridiculous way it is presented in entertainment. That isn’t death at all.  It’s over the top and beyond being able to relate to it.  It is fake and false.

And when we experience death, it is only then that we are ready to experience resurrection – new life, transformed life.  New opportunities and adventures.

But we only really understand and appreciate resurrection when we have gone through death.

Death

05 Monday Mar 2018

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Death is rearing its ugly head.  Over the course of the day I will have presided at a funeral and talked with three other families about three different funeral arrangements.

And I will be exhausted.  Death has a way of sucking the life out of people.

In seminary, I took a preaching class on funerals and weddings.  We covered funerals first.  Each of the students got to pick the circumstances and then preach a funeral sermon.   There were 27.  We listened to them all in one day.  That’s a lot of funeral sermons.

And we were overachievers too.  Of the 27, eight were suicide sermons, one mass shooting, and a bunch other odd funerals.  There were a few “normal” funerals too.  They were actually a pleasant reprieve from the heaviness of us overachievers that wanted to challenge ourselves.

Listening to 27 funerals was a challenge.  By the end of the day, we were exhausted and drained.  But at the same time, we heard the promise of God over and over again.  It was undeniable.

I feel that at the end of the day today, the same will be true.  Death sucks, but it is not the end of the story.  It is not the end of our story.  It is the time in which we get to hear about God’s promises for us.  We get to hear the reality of death in our midst and the hoped for promise of resurrection.

These messages are important.  We shouldn’t ignore death or pretend that death hasn’t struck.  Instead, we need to acknowledge that death is in our presence.  But death doesn’t have the final say.  Jesus made sure of that.  And that means that there is more to this day than just sadness.  We mourn because the person we cared for and love is no longer alive and walking with us daily.  But we hope for a promised future in which death will be no more.  A future when pain will be more.  A future where God has transformed and renewed not just us, but all of creation, and come down out of heaven to dwell with us forevermore.

When I conduct funerals, I love to use the passage from Revelation 21 that speaks to this. It is one of the most hopeful passages of Scripture.  It paints a picture of what eternal life will be about – timelessness with the full presence of God.  And God doing what God has always done – God coming to creation yet again.  We don’t escape creation.  We are transformed and renewed with creation and dwell with God forever.

Death sucks, but the promise of resurrection gives us hope.  That doesn’t take away the pain and mourning.  Death means there is separation between loved one.  But in resurrection we look forward to a time when we will be reunited.  Thank God for this.

What’s really important in life…

26 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Church, Health, Society

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We spend an inordinate amount of time on things that ultimately carry very little importance.

Want to determine what’s really important?  Think about the end of your life.

Will you say “I wish I had towed the party line more?”  How about “Gosh, I wish I had watched more TV or YouTube?”  Or even “If only I had spent more time online?”

I don’t think so.  That’s because when it comes down to it, they don’t matter.  It’s not our loyalty to a political party or the sports team.  It’s not the favorite TV shows we dedicated hours of our lives to, or who said what to whom.

At the end of our lives, very few things matter – the people we love and loved us, and our relationship with God.  Everything else is dust in the wind.

So why do we spend so much of our time on these things as if they mattered?

Guns

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Humanity, Society, Theology

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Guns.  The mere mention of this topics causes a rise in anxiety level for many people.  Many others automatically start thinking of one-liners, defenses, attacks, and more – they know there is going to be a fight.  Still others are so attached to these issues that they become a part of their very identity and used as part of how they describe who they are – any discussion whatsoever on these topics is considered a questioning or an attack of the person.  Isn’t it interesting that something that can be used for violence creates anxiety, fear, and anger at the mere mention of the word?

And still others, although a much smaller minority, if I had to guess, hang their head in sadness over the intense division that we face in the United States.  How exactly are we “united?”  What exactly are we united about?  I don’t see it.

Two days ago there was another shooting in a school.  The next day there is debate about guns.  There is debate about whether it is appropriate to have a debate about guns.  There are some who call for “common sense” or “reasonable” gun control.  I don’t like those terms.  I think they do more damage than are helpful.  Image being on the other side of any issue and you hear your opponent talking about “common sense” or “reasonable” legislation on your hot button issue.  How do you like just being called unreasonable or without common sense because you don’t agree with your opponent?  How does that advance us any closer to a solution?

There are others who will raise the standard of the Second Amendment and claim that the way to deal with shootings is to arm more people in the schools.  The argument is that since many schools are gun free zones, all it means is that they are sitting ducks.  Is arming more people the answer?  Is increasing the potential or the means for more violence a way to deal with the threat of violence?  Is becoming more militarized a good direction for our culture?  What are the unintended consequences of such an action?

We are completely missing the issue at hand.  We seem to think that material solutions solve all of our problems.  We seem to believe that if we just pass this one piece of legislation, then people will stop doing evil things.  If we just arm everyone, then there will be enough deterrents to make it stop.

And we miss something deeper.

That the material solutions – legislation, guns, or anything else, are only one small part of the equation.  They will remain small as long as we continue to turn a blind eye on the non-material – the spiritual.  That doesn’t mean we should just sit around and wait for the next tragedy that is coming.  That doesn’t mean we just express “thoughts and prayers” as though that’s all that needs to be said.  Prayer isn’t some passive thing that we do, something that gets us off the hook from a responsible response. Prayer is supposed to cause us to get up and do something.  Otherwise, it is just empty words, from empty faith.  What’s the point of having a faith that doesn’t cause us to be so uncomfortable and inconvenienced to do something?  What is the point of having a faith that doesn’t afflict us in our comfort?  It’s worthless and it isn’t faith at all.

Our culture is a culture of sin, brokenness, and mistrust. I don’t mean this in the traditional, conservative, religious-political way.  I’m not arguing that we are sinful because we engage in this or that activity.

Rather, we are sinful.  Period.  As a result things happen because of that brokenness.  Sin is ultimately about broken relationships.  I think there are four broken relationships that impact everything else – our broken relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the rest of creation.

If we think we can mend these broken relationships by using only material things, we are mistaken – fatally.  Sin always ends in death.  Death of a relationship, death of a life, death of hope, death of meaning.

I don’t know the answer to problem we face regarding gun violence.  I do know that it goes beyond a piece of legislation though.  And it does involve legislation too.

But, if all we do is pass another gun law, we are fooling ourselves if we think that will stop the violence that happens in our nation.

We have a culture that doesn’t value life – gun violence is a symptom of this.  It’s just one symptom though.  And treating the symptom doesn’t result in a cure.

We willingly consume food that is detrimental to our health and our bodies.  We do it because they cost less money – our money is more valuable than our bodies and our health.

We willingly consume entertainment that glorifies violent death and destruction of people and creation.  We consume this same entertainment that sees others as pawns in a game and useful agents meant to offer us pleasure.  We do it because we need a way to relax.

We willingly make abortion an option for women who, for whatever reason, feel that terminating a pregnancy is the best option for them.  We do it because paying someone to get rid of the problem is easier and cheaper than surrounding a woman and her family with the resources and care she needs to bring new life into the world.  That would take a lot of work, and require a change in our culture.  Besides, it’s fun to get caught up in arguing about the exceptions.  We don’t have the time or energy to talk about how to create an environment where better options exist.

We willingly create and participate in a “health” care system that is really more focused on sick care rather than health care. We do it because focusing on health takes more effort, requires us to be vulnerable, and has upfront costs.  And it would require us to change.

We willingly fight about “issues” in the abstract because if we really thought about the impact of those issues on real people, it would be too much to bear.  It’s so much easier to fight about issues, than deal with people’s lives.  We might feel guilty or shameful for what we support and oppose.

We willingly fight about immigration and foreigners in this country and what laws should be in place and how many of “them” should be allowed in.  Is it 5,000,000, is it 1,000,000, is it 0?  Does it matter?  Those are just numbers on a screen – not actual lives.  It’s easier to keep things in the abstract.  It’s easier to build an expensive wall so that we don’t have to even look at our neighbors – we can feel safer, even if the wall does more to trap us in our own yard than keep others out.  But gosh, we need to feel safe because we are fragile and live in fear apparently.

We willingly fight about race – a human construct that on the surface is ridiculous, sinful, and screams brokenness into our culture.  We aren’t willing to hear from those who have been oppressed because our experience has been just fine, thank you very much – so what are they possibly talking about?  It’s easier to fight about race, than to listen.  Listening would mean we would have to be open to change and then actually change.

I could go on.  But I don’t have to.  In each of these “issues” we, our culture, are oriented towards sin and brokenness.  We are oriented towards death.  We devalue and dehumanize our opponents and make them enemies because we have made being right and being comfortable an idol that we worship.  We fear change because of what it will cost us.  We don’t want to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced.  We would rather talk.  We’d rather scapegoat and blame others for the problems we face.  We’d rather be lazy and take the easy way out of the responsibility that is right in front of us.

Two days ago was Ash Wednesday.  I love Ash Wednesday.  It is a day in which I am reminded of the prevalence of death.  Death is smashed right in my face, on my forehead.  It’s not just ashes of something that was alive that is now dead.  It’s not just the reminder that I too will someday come face to face with death.  It is the recognition that we live in a world that is oriented towards death – it is besieging us constantly.  It is in our face, on our screens, in the words we choose to use, in our digestive systems, in our skin, in our relationships, and our money.

It is in the idols that we worship.

But Ash Wednesday is more than just a reminder of how prevalent death is – it is also the declaration of something else.  It is the declaration that we cannot over come death on our own.  No matter what we do or how hard we try, we will not defeat death. There is one only who has defeated death – Jesus.

Jesus brings a promise – a powerful promise.  A promise of resurrection.  But in order to experience resurrection, we have to experience death.  That could mean literal death of our bodies.  But it also means death in other ways – death of organizations, relationships, jobs, etc.  And death of things that we hold really close to us – our identities with human made constructs and ideas, our passionate desires to be right and to be recognized as being right while others are wrong, our focus on separating people in to those who are with us and those who are against us.  These need to die before we can experience resurrection.

I pray we have the openness to kill these things that need to die.  Yes, kill them, before they kill us.

The Good News of Jesus is that death does not have the final say.  It is merely a stop on the way.  We fear death because we think it is an ending – a permanent ending.  Yet, Jesus says no.  Jesus promises resurrection – renewed, restored, and transformed life.  Better life.  Better than we could ever imagine.

Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him.  We know what our crosses are – the things that we are clutching so dearly.  The things that will ultimately kill us.  The cross is an instrument of death.  Are we bold enough to allow it to do its job?  Are we bold enough to actually trust Jesus’ words and promises?  We we bold enough to allow these things that we clutch to die?

Or do we fear resurrection?  Do we fear what transformed life would be like?  Do we fear not being in control?

A promise has been made to us.  Do we trust it?  If so, how do we respond today?  How will you respond today?  I start with prayer and it pushes me out of my comfort zone to go and see the humanity, the very essence of life, that is around me.  It pushes me out with open eyes in uncomfortable ways in inconvenient times to see what is around me and to respond.  To bring life, hope, grace, and forgiveness because these have been given to me.  It is my prayer that you become so afflicted by violence, tragedy, homelessness, drug addiction, prostitution, human trafficking, porn addiction, alcohol abuse, racism, sexism, nationalism, and other sins that besiege us that you respond.  It is my prayer that you are made so uncomfortable and inconvenienced by these things that the only option you have is to respond to eliminate these things in your context.  It is my hope that your thoughts and prayers are not empty, but that they pour salt in your open wounds and cause you to get up and go.

What is the fascination with dystopia?

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Humanity, Society

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Dystopia – “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.”  (This is the definition I got off of Google.)

What is fascination with dystopian societies?  Seriously?  Why do we seem so hell-bent on moving towards a dystopian society?

Who thinks this is a good idea?

Most of our “entertainment” is oriented towards dystopia and death and degrading.  It’s not entertaining.  It’s deadly.

But I’m not one to blame the entertainment industry.  They are just feeding us what we as humans want, and making a solid profit off of it.

A dystopian society is a society that has lost hope.  It has lost the will to live.  It sees death and destruction as a better alternative than life.  In a sense, it’s no different from suicide.  I don’t say that lightly either or in jest.  I’m being serious.

But the question is why?  Why is our society so fixated on moving towards death and destruction?

Is it a lack of vision?  We’ve have many times in the past where there was a lack of vision.

Is it lack of leadership?  We’ve certainly had many times in our nation’s short history in which we seriously lacked leadership.

Is it lack of purpose? Maybe?

Is it just a natural part of the cycle of civilization?  Who knows.

It seems right now that the best we are offered is maintenance and survival.  That’s not good.  Humans need to be oriented towards thriving and growth and forward progress, or else they wither and die.  Just go in to many nursing homes and see the effect of what it means to survive each day.  It’s not pretty.

But put these same people in an environment where there are children, animals, and plants to take care of and there is radical improvement in the lives of these people.

It’s the difference between waiting to die and striving to live to make life better for others.

Our society seems to be waiting to die.  It lacks vision.  It lacks competent leadership.  It lacks purpose.

Maybe part of the issue is that we have put too much faith, hope, and trust into something that can’t provided what we need most.

Maybe we are slouching towards dystopia because of a combination of many things.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Our future isn’t set in stone.  Our future isn’t fixed.  It can change in an instant.  And it starts with you.  Yes, you dear reader.

Will you accept that life is about survival or that life is more than just survival?

Will you accept crappy leadership that seems to go no where – whether in government, religion, education, etc.?  Or will you step up to the plate?

Will you accept “entertainment” that thrives on death and destruction and violence and call it normal?  Or will you engage in entertainment that is actually life-giving?

Will you paint a picture in your mind of a world that becomes darker and more violent?  Or will you be a light on a lamp stand that proclaims Good News?

If you wait for someone else to do these things, you are choosing dystopia.  You are waiting for someone else to take responsibility.  You are rejecting the call of God to respond to God’s Good News.

It’s time to put your money where your mouth is.  It’s time to put up or shut up.  It’s time to get moving.  Baby steps.  One step at a time.  The first step is the hardest.  It’s the decision to stop accepting the direction we are heading.  It’s the decision that says there is something more, something better.  It’s the decision that says that now is the time to get moving.  Life awaits.  It’s time to share that life with others.

Before the next Las Vegas

03 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Church, Society

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Before the next Las Vegas happens, and it will, can we be honest with each other for just a moment or possibly longer?

I’m going to take that as a yes.

I’m sickened by these shootings.  I’m also sickened by all the distractions that we pay attention to and claim are important, but really aren’t.  Are you?

I’m tired of responding.  If all we ever do is respond, we’ll never lead and offer an alternative.  We’ll be too busy responding to each violent action that happens.  And it will never change.

I refuse to be afraid.  Afraid of death, afraid of ridicule, afraid of having someone being upset with me over something I say or write.

This is the time for the church to be church.  To stop being a social club and to start living out the mission that Jesus sent us out on.

The culture has stopped giving preference to the church.  And that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.  We don’t end up with cheap membership that way – a whole bunch of people who come to church, but refuse to be church.

What does it mean to be church, especially in the age of mass shootings and terror?  It means that we tell the truth – that many humans are violent and destructive when left to their own device.  It means we offer confession and forgiveness.  We can’t shy away from sin.  It is real, just like evil.  Sin is a broken relationship, or rather many broken relationships.  And these breaks aren’t just metaphorical – they are real.  They rear their ugly head in yelling and screaming, in abuse, in violence, in manipulation, in addiction, and in death.  These are very real in our society and in the world.

To be church doesn’t mean we go around pointing the finger of blame.  It means that we offer the gift of forgiveness and a changing life and world.

Being church doesn’t mean we focus our effort on making the bad good, but rather on showing how Jesus brings the dead to life.  If Jesus is just a nice guy who had nice things to say, then he’s no different from any other guru who walked the face of the earth and hawks a book on self-help.  But that’s not who Jesus is and it’s not who the church worships.

The church is a beacon of light in the midst of darkness.  The church offers a message of hope in a hopeless world that would rather point the finger of blame, throw money or legislation at the problem as the sole solution, and then distract people from the pain they are experiencing.  There’s another Tweet or celebrity break up or sporting event to talk about don’t you know.

Here’s something else – the church exists to point out the reality of pain and suffering, not change the subject.  Forcing us to deal with the pain and suffering and death is a gift that this society doesn’t appreciate, but people desperately need.

We see this in every funeral.  As a pastor, part of what I am called to do is point out the reality of death in our midst.  The body is right there in front of us – either in a coffin or in an urn.  The person hasn’t been whisked away to a magical place.  No, they are right there in front of us.  Death is real.  It’s painful for those who are looking at it in the face.  It sucks.  And we shouldn’t distract ourselves from that either.  We should look at death in the face and be uncomfortable by it.

Because it is in being really uncomfortable that we finally let the walls that protect us from reality down – the walls we build around our hearts and ears.  We are finally ready to hear that death is there and that at some point death is coming for us and will get us.  It’s at this point that we can admit that death scares many of us.  It feels so final.

It’s when we are most uncomfortable, most hurting, most suffering in life that we know the reality of death.  And that’s not the end of the story.  God is the end of the story.  God’s promise of resurrection is the rest of the story.  The amazing power of God isn’t the miracles we experience throughout our lives – although they are amazing.  No, rather, I argue that the most amazing thing is resurrection – bringing the dead back to life.  Not just picking up where we left off, but rather in a renewed life where death will be no more because death does not have the final say.

The church has a message that is truly transformative – that an encounter with Jesus changes lives.  That an encounter with Jesus means the dead will be brought to life.  That an encounter with Jesus means that the status quo isn’t satisfactory any more – Jesus presents an alternative.

Church, now is the time, if ever there was a time, for us to be church.  To claim the mantle of sinner and saint.  To live lives of confession and forgiveness.  To proclaim the reality around us and the alternative that God is unfolding before us.  To do all this in the midst of the chaos of sin and death.

God is changing our lives as we speak.  Are we going to respond in doubt because we can’t see it and so we don’t live out this faith that is given to us because we just aren’t sure?  Are we going to respond in doubt because God isn’t doing it the way we would prefer and because God is messing up our comfortable lives?  Or are we going to respond in trust, not knowing what the path forward will look like, but knowing full well that God’s unfolding reality is far better than the alternative that this world offers?

Are we going to respond by trying to be safe?  Or are we going to risk it all?  The safe choice leads to more of the same.  It leads to certain death.  The risky response means we recognize we aren’t in control.  That God has a mission for us.  And that it is costly.  We’ll experience death – death of control, death of certainty, death of egotism, death of safety, death of more.  But in those deaths, Jesus will bring new life – life so much better than anything we try to hold onto.  Life in the Spirit, life in love, life in community, life in forgiveness, life in mercy, life in grace, life in care, life in peace.  Life.

God promised life.  God invites us to participate in that life.  How will you respond?

Death

06 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Church, Humanity, Theology

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It’s a subject most people don’t like to talk about.  We live in a culture that has a difficult time even saying the word.  We’d rather avoid it and say “passed away” or “fell asleep.”  Yet, it is the one thing in life we’ll all face.

Death is inevitable.  Yet, we don’t know the day or the time.

Our culture has a weird relationship with death.  When we see death in entertainment, we don’t shudder or fear it.  Is that because in entertainment, we know it is fake?  The actor will just get up and go on with life?  I wonder what kind of effect this has on how we deal with death.  Does it cheapen death or push the reality of death even farther away from us?

Yet death is inevitable.

But it doesn’t have the final say.  God has made sure of that and made a promise to us that death does not have the final say.

On Sunday I spoke about why we say the creed.  There are many reasons to say the creed in worship, but I focused on one reason.  During a funeral, you have a body – a dead body or the ashes of a dead body present.  Death is there – very present.  The people who show up to pay their respects have to deal with death.  There is no escape, there is no way to distract from the reality of death.  And it is at this very moment when the promises of the creed become very relevant – the promise of the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.  We say the creed in church in preparation for times when it might be difficult to belief what we claim.  Yet, the promise is there.

Death is inevitable, but the promise of God is sacred.  And God doesn’t ever fall back on God’s word.  That is a certainty.

We may not know the time or the means, but we have the promise.  The promise that we will not be forgotten.  The promise that death will not have the final say.  The promise that God will resurrect and restore life and all of creation.  The promise that God wins.

 

We are so removed from violence

18 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Humanity, Society, Theology

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So for Holy Thursday, last week, I made a last minute decision to add in a specific prayer of intercession for the victims of violence, terror, and war.  I came across a website (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_April_2017) which lists terrorist incidents in the world.  It lists them by day, with the number of victims, and the location.  If you want, you can go to the bottom of the page and see incidents for a specific year or month.

During the prayers, I only read off the locations for incidents that happened between Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday.  There were 25 incidents in those 5 days.  25.  Let that sink in for a moment.

In the US we are so far removed from violence and terrorism.  Yes, there are incidents here and there, but they are pretty rare compared to places like Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan which seems to dominate the list.

25 incidents across the world.  And that’s just related to terrorism.  That’s not counting war or war-acts, like when we bombed “militants” in Syria and killed 36 militants.  Or other wars – either declared or happening anyway.

And that’s not counting other acts of violence that happen in the world each day.  Violence against women and children, violence in the form of crime, violence because of gangs.  Those are traditionally thought of as violence.  Some would throw in violence against nature in that mix along with violence against animals.  There’s plenty of that to go around as well.

Death and destruction seem to have a hold on the planet and humanity in particular.

Yet here we are post-Easter.  We are told that Jesus has conquered death.  But sometimes it’s hard to believe it when we see violent acts continuing.  Sometimes even in God’s name.

But Jesus never said there would be no more death or violence.  Just that death has been conquered.  That means that death does not have the final say.  Death is not the end of the story.  Ultimately, God has the final say.  And while we may not like the fact that violence continues to stubbornly exist along with death, we have been promised that these things will come to an end.  It’s just not on our time.  It’s a reminder that time didn’t start when we were born and it doesn’t end when we die.  God looks at time far different than we do.

For the month of April, 2017, there have been 78 incidents as of this writing.  There were too many dead and injured to count up.  Death keeps rearing it’s head – in the name of God, in the name of country, in the name of ideology, in the name of theology, in the name of whatever.  Yet, regardless of whose name it happens, or rather it is claimed in, we should remember this – just because something is claimed in the name of God or country, doesn’t mean God or the country agrees with it.  I imagine God is looking upon humanity and saying – “here we go again…When will they ever learn…I don’t desire conformity of belief, but rather love.”  And God will continue to live out that love in creation.