Blessings in Abundance: Turning Blessings into Praise

What’s the last big transition you went through in life? A job change? Divorce? Birth of your child? Consolidating and moving to a smaller house? Your child’s wedding? Death of a loved one? At Trinity, we’re currently going through a pretty big transition time – Pastor Shelley has retired, and Pastor Alex has yet to start. We are living patiently and a little anxiously through a liminal space, continuing to journey on, wondering what is on the other side.

Read 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 & Luke 17:11-19. 

Jesus encounters the lepers in Luke in a liminal space – the border of Samaria and Galilee. Jesus was on His way to somewhere else, until the lepers made themselves known. After their encounter with Jesus, the lepers then also start a journey to somewhere else, and, while on their way, they are healed of their isolating disease. The healing is freely given and freely received, and the lepers can be restored to their community. 

The healing story in Luke clearly mirrors our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The ten lepers did not earn their healing in any way. Out of His goodness and compassion and love for the lepers, Jesus makes them whole once more. Out of His sacrificial love and desire for reconciliation, Jesus went to the cross and was resurrected three days later, making us whole again and again. 

The healing and the saving power of Jesus Christ are freely given blessings from God, blessings in abundance. The question that both Luke and Paul present to the reader is how will you respond to these blessings? Are you the one leper, who comes back to praise Jesus, who turns his blessing of healing into praise? Are you cheerfully sharing your abundant blessings for every good work through Trinity? Or are you hedging your bets, waiting to see what’s on the other side, waiting to see if you really want to share your blessings, waiting for this liminal space to end? 

Jesus is with us at Trinity through this liminal space, on the border between pastors. Jesus continues to pour out blessings in abundance at Trinity, regardless of our hopes and fears during this time of transition. And God continues to challenge us to share all our blessings in abundance so we may share in every good work. How can you share your time, your gifts, and your money with Trinity so that we may glorify God, share Christ’s love, and make new disciples? Through our commitment and our giving, we may show the world the gratitude we feel for the blessings we have freely received. Through our commitment and our giving, we may continue our ministry to the least of these, even in the liminal spaces. 

Grace and peace, 
Pastor Kate

Be Set Free

It’s now an all-too familiar scene: people walking down the sidewalks, sitting in their cars or even pews - bent over. Sitting at the dinner table, in Bible study, at work – bent over. Crippled by the hunger to be connected 24/7, the  need to be needed, and the desire for information, these modern day bent over people are in bondage to their smart phones, their iPads/Kindles, handheld video games. When was the last time you were set free from these technology devices – when were you set free to stand up straight and get a new perspective?

by Barrie Maguire

Read Jeremiah 1:4-10 & Luke 13:10-17.

A young boy and a bent over woman – not usually the people we would think of as chosen by God. Yet young Jeremiah was claimed by God to be his messenger, and Jesus called the bent over woman close to him that she might be set free. As seems to be the biblical case, God works outside of the rules, outside of the expectations of society to do God’s work.

Imagine spending 18 years bent over. Add to that, you’re a woman in a time where you really are treated like an animal, like a piece of property. Who talks to you? Who would marry you, much less give you children? Who takes care of you? Who runs into in the street like they never even saw you? Who gets frustrated because you’re moving too slow? Being bent over, the scenery rarely changes on those dusty roads. And yet one morning, bent over, you hobble to church to hear this guy Jesus say something profound.

No one really wants to be near you at church – you’re too different, too unclean. You can’t see what’s going on, but you’re guessing it’s something special – there’s an unusual hush. Suddenly your name is called out by this Jesus! And before you know it, you have been set free and are standing up straight, getting a new perspective, taking in hundreds of shocked faces – shocked by your healing, shocked by the work on the Sabbath, shocked by the humiliated look on the synagogue leader’s face. All you can do is start praising the Lord.

If we’re honest, we’re all a little bent – maybe physically over our computers, or emotionally crippled from a hard relationship. We could all use a perspective shift – to see people more as God sees them, to look out beyond our own two feet. Maybe one reason we come to church on Sunday mornings is to hear God speak to us. Maybe we need this compassionate God to set us free once more from the ailment of internet addiction or crippling fear and doubt. Maybe we need to witness one more time someone else’s healing. Maybe we need to hear that God values life over rules, that God doesn’t care about cultural expectations.

God is calling your name, calling you for a purpose beyond being bent over. So come, be set free that you might rejoice in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and get a new perspective.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

God Holds a High Bar: Pole Vaulting with Jesus

Have you ever seen a pole vault athlete leap with great speed over an incredibly high bar? They get a good running start, plant their pole and trust that it will stay, and then they fly through the air, reaching heights of over 19 feet! It takes a lot of practice, a lot of skill, and a lot of trust in their pole. When all their practice and all their talents come together, a miracle occurs as pole vault athletes can fly!

Read 1 Kings 17:17-24 & Luke 7:11-17.

Here we have two healing and resurrection stories of two widow’s sons, separated by thousands of years but both testify to the divine power of God. Elijah had met the widow at the city gate, similar to where Jesus meets the widow at Nain. Neither widow is given a name; instead they are identified by their relationship (or lack thereof) to a man – a widow. A widow in these cultures was vulnerable, as they could not own property themselves. They were dependent either on their sons or charity to provide for them. They were left on the margins of society, put in the same class as orphans.

And yet Jesus and Elijah see these widows. Jesus is moved with compassion for this widow who had not only lost her husband but also her son – moved with compassion for her lack of security. There is no great declaration of faith, there is no teaching – Jesus is simply moved with compassion for the widow, and with a touch restores not only her son but the widow as well.

Do you believe in miracles? All too often in our lives, we pray for big miracles, for people to be physically, emotionally, mentally restored to life – and we don’t get it. We bargain in our prayers, promising to be the best Christian ever if only God just healed our father/mother/children/spouse/friend. While miraculous events occur, they seem to be too rare for our preference.
But what about the smaller miracles that DO happen? Do we see them? This August, hundreds of kids will get backpacks filled with school supplies and a pancake breakfast. Those kids will really have no idea where the pencils, the glue, the dry erase markers came from. They won’t know about our VBS Mission Project or you tossing a few folders in your grocery cart. It will simply be a miracle to them, a miracle for their family.

For when Christians put our grief-broken hearts together, that is a miracle. And what we can do together with the help of Jesus are miracles. When we as a church take off running as pole vault athletes, aiming for the high bar that God holds, Jesus is our sturdy and reliable pole, the one we can rely on, the one who will help us reach that high bar. Jesus is our Lord who sees us, who knows our brokenness and loves us through it. Jesus is our Lord who empowers us together to reach the high bar that God holds – a high bar of reaching out and seeing widows, the least, the lost, those in need right here in our own city. With Jesus as our sturdy pole, imagine what miraculous height we might reach together, and how we might be transformed in that process – miracle after miracle!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Kate

God Holds a High Bar: How High Must We Jump?

Doesn’t life seem like a series of hurdles and high jumps?  Once our child is toilet trained he/she can enter preschool.  With each grade of school we’re tested and tested before being promoted.  To prepare for college or graduate school we must master the ACT or SAT or MCAT or LSAT.  When we’re out in the world earning a living, we must jump through hoops for the promotion that will ensure that we can afford a bigger house or just the basics of insurance and a car that runs.  Even approaching retirement means we calculate if our savings are high enough or deep enough to carry us around the track.

God too holds a high bar.  But God’s bar works differently than the worldly standards that track our days.  God’s bar takes many shapes which we at Trinity will explore through our summer sermon series:  “God Holds a High Bar.”  We’ll look at God’s bar of faith, doing justice, loving others, committing ourselves to Christ, and serving the lost/lonely/last. 

In Luke 7: 1-10, a centurion – a soldier of authority in the Roman occupying force (ie. often considered and “enemy” of Israel) – sends Jewish elders to Jesus asking Jesus to come and heal one of the centurion’s servants or slaves.  First, this request is a remarkable commentary on the centurion’s compassion and care for one of his own who would be considered last in the hierarchy of society.  Second, the centurion’s faith in Jesus as a healer is also remarkable.  Third, the elders point to the centurion’s worth and love of the Jewish people as a rationale for why Jesus should heed the centurion’s request.  But the centurion contradicts such status or worth accorded to him, saying “Lord [notice his regard for Jesus’ worth], do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.”  (Luke 7: 6b) And with that, and from a distance, Jesus heals the servant/slave.

According to this healing story, the centurion, although a man of authority, is humble and modest and in response, Jesus exclaims, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (Lk 7: 9)  God’s bar of faith here does not depend on the centurion’s ability to command his troops.  God’s bar of faith here does not depend on the centurion’s accomplishments such as building a synagogue for the Jewish people.  God’s bar of faith is not a hurdle or high jump which we, like the centurion, must master.  God’s bar of faith is a response to the centurion’s faith – his trust in Jesus the person who can heal.  The centurion’s faith is a gift which he neither “deserves nor earns.”  In contrast to the worldly bars to promotion and advancement, God’s bar or standard of faith is manifested when we cling to and trust in the person of Jesus with our utmost confidence, putting our “all-in-all” into our commitment to following or running along with Jesus our Christ. 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Shelley

Mission Possible: Taste and See that the Lord is Good

"Get up.  Your faith has made you well," says Jesus to no-longer blind Bartimaeus.  What an extraordinary healing!  How did Bartimaeus make this happen?  Wrong question.  Miracles in the Bible point us to the healer - Jesus Christ.  When we focus on Jesus we see God revealed in the One who can bring us from darkness into light so that we become aware of what really matters in life and death.

Notice some details in this story in Mark 10: 46-52.  Sitting by the side of the road, Blind Bartimaeus is a blind beggar - ie. a man outside of any family support and unable to participate in any of the "normal" activities of family/town/culture.  Because he can't SEE Jesus, Bartimaeus is told that Jesus of Nazareth is walking past - ie. Jesus as identified by his home town means Jesus would be perceived as mere man, peasant of low status by virtue of his birth. But... Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus as "Son of David."  Somehow Bartimaeus knows Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed One destined to fulfill God's promise that King David's descendant would reign over Israel forever.  How does Bartimaeus know this about Jesus?  How do any of us KNOW OR SEE THIS TRUTH?

Some in the crowd urge Bartimaeus to be quiet.  I envision Archie Bunker saying to Edith in the tv show, "All in the Family":   "Stifle!"  But Bartimaeus won't be stifled or stopped.  He throws off his cloak - ie. his most treasured possession as a beggar which keeps him warm through the cold winter nights.  Just as Bartimaeus leaves his cherished treasure behind in the hope of healing, what are we willing to renounce to follow Jesus and beg for sight - for insight - for wisdom - for healing - for transformation?

Bartimaeus won't keep still as he springs to action.  Jesus stops for Bartimaeus and asks him, "What do you want me to do for you?"  Bartimaeus' response - "Let me see again" - understands that it is Jesus who has the authority and power to bring him his sight. Jesus responds to Bartimaeus' need, showing us that he, as God revealed, has the power to conquer our brokenness.  This is a testimony of hope - of trust in the ability of God to accomplish much more than all we can ask or imagine.

How do we respond to this good news?  First with praise, such as that from Psalm 34: 1-8:  "I will bless the Lord at all times.  God's praise shall continually be in my mouth...[We will] taste and see that the Lord is good."  Second, we respond with our behavior - our actions - our decisions.  In this time of being called to be good stewards of God's blessings already bestowed on us, we respond by pledging our treasured possessions, so that we too might be testimonies of hope to an unseeing world.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

Enemy or Ally of Christ?

When I was little my mother taught me to make my bed every morning.  When I asked, "Why do I have to make it when I'm just going to crawl back in tonight and mess it up again?"  Thus began a system of allowance and consequence.  Every Friday evening when I'd made my bed all week, I was handed my allowance.  Since I liked to buy candy with my allowance I learned to avoid the consequences.  As an adult the external consequence has matured into the internal satisfaction I feel when I walk into an orderly bedroom with bedspread in place and clothes hung up.  No matter the turmoil in my life, my bedroom is an intrinsic oasis of peace.

A literal or superficial reading of Mark 9: 38-50 looks as if Jesus is setting up a system of rewards and awful consequences:  offer a cup of water to those who are thirsty, or else!  Language of demons, hellfires, undying worms, and personal amputation of our limbs grabs our attention. Demons and the fires of hell are graphic descriptions that effectively describe our emotions or how we experience our situations of psychological assault or mental unrest or feeling lost, lonely, or abandoned.  But if we focus too intently on demons we give them power over us and we forget that God created all creation and called it good. Demons pose no threat to Jesus!  Remember his 40 days in the wilderness when he dismissed the power of demons and that he cast out demons from people as he healed them.

Instead I read this passage as Jesus trying to get our attention through hyperbole in order to emphasize our call to servant discipleship - to offer a cup of water to someone dying of literal thirst or the many who are parched for the presence of Jesus in their lives. There are many stumbling blocks, both internal and external, that keep us from acting as agents of healing on behalf of others.  Just one of many obstacles is our belief that we do not have the gift of healing.  WRONG!!  As Jesus might say to us, "Get behind me, Satan!"

These stumbling blocks can quench the fires of our passions to serve.  We are called to name them so that we can open our eyes to our own woundedness that equips us to be wounded healers (as Henri Nouwen points out).  We are called to cast aside those stumbling blocks that would dilute our saltiness with shame or guilt or laziness or closed hearts, so that we are useless.  Instead, Jesus says we are his agents of healing and we are to act as preservatives of peace, wellbeing, and shalom in the world.  Those deeds which we do in the name of Jesus ally us with our Savior and Lord and are thus powerful far and wide.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

God-Promises: The Promise through Brokenness

Snakes have always creeped me out. Maybe that’s why I loved living in Ireland during my college years – a wonderful guarantee of no snakes. Legend has it that Saint Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland after a forty day fast. While that story may be more symbolic than anything, It seems like that is what the people from our Numbers Scripture this week could really use right now.

Read Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21.

God’s people are not happy. They don’t have any food, and they detest this miserable food. Wait, what? They sound like the child who opens the refrigerator, stares at all the food, and declares that “We have nothing to eat!” Now, the people have been complaining for a while in the wilderness. The Israelites complain about their wilderness experience, longing for the comforts and the certainty of slavery. In the previous chapter, the people spoke against Moses and wished that they had died. In our passage this week, they not only speak against Moses, but they speak against God as well. And rather than instantly providing the solution, as God did with the provision of manna, quail, and water out of a rock, Numbers says that God sent poisonous snakes.

After hearing about the 10 Commandments last week, I would wager to guess that the people have broken the commandment to not use the Lord’s name in vain. As we have talked about God-Promises these past few weeks, we have heard that God is the promise-maker and the promise-keeper, knowing that we are the promise-breakers. And we know that God brings us back into the covenant time and time again. Yet that does not mean that there are never consequences to the breaking of promises.

Brokenness seems to be a state of being for us as individuals, as a church, and as a world. But we do not like to acknowledge it. We want to skip Good Friday and go straight to Easter, we want to skip chemo and be rid of this cancer already, we want to not apologize and just have our relationship go back to the way it was. The truth for us in the Numbers story is that we must admit our brokenness to God and to each other. The truth for us is that sometimes healing and provision is not instantaneous, but a long, hard journey through the wilderness.

But we are not on that long, hard journey through the wilderness alone - God doesn’t leave us in our broken state. God works through brokenness of the body of Jesus to bring us the antidote to sin and death. The Good News from John is that our God turns the ultimate humiliation in death on a cross into a victory over sin and death. The Good News is that Jesus came not to condemn but to save the world. The Good News is that Jesus is lifted high in the wilderness of our lives in Topeka in 2012.

Know that in our brokenness, God is working in us and through us to lead us to the path of shalom.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S. If you are feeling particularly broken, come join us at the service for healing and wholeness on Sunday at 5:00 pm.

The Healing Power of Touch

Disciple Simon told Jesus his mother in law was burning up with fever - a potentially dangerous condition in that time.  Jesus went to her, took her hand, and raised her up.  Next thing we know she is serving up the hospitality for which she is known.  Read Mark 1: 29-39 for this story of healing to wellbeing.

When was the last time someone "touched" you in some way and you experienced healing?  When was the last time you reached out to someone and she experienced a lessening of her pain, a dispelling of his fear, a decrease in her anxiety, or a sense of hope emerging out of darkness?  There are so many ways we are called to "touch" another and God uses our hands/feet/hearts/skills/caring to effect healing.  A touch on the shoulder to show we care.  A hug of comfort.  A massage of those tense shoulder muscles.  Our hands stirring nutritious chicken soup.  Our feet to serve at the soup kitchen.  Our minds to fight for justice for oppressed.  Our strength to build a home with Habitat.  Our lips to be a conversation partner at VIDA.  Our faith to plead with God in intercessory prayer.

Just as Jesus determines to heal, move on, and reach out to other villages, so we are called to move out of our places of comfort and confront the needs for healing all around us.  God uses our feeble efforts to do the impossible.  When we are weary or rationalize that we have no power for healing, prophet Isaiah reminds us (Isaiah 40: 21-31):  "Have you not known? Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  God does not faint or grow weary; God's understanding is unsearchable.  God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.  Even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

It is our Lord's power and Christ's love that enables us to enflesh the healing - the wholeness and wellbeing - the shalom - that God intends for all humankind.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Shelley