You Are What You Eat

I believe Jesus could have been a Weight Watchers fan.  With their slogan "Believe Because It Works" Jesus could promote the power of losing weight while being able to eat from unlimited power foods.  Jesus could be our faith pantry for life.  For the male disciples, Jesus could preach "Lose Like a Man" by eating anything - no special or required foods, and no forbidden ones either, through making smarter choices.  Quoting Charles Barkley, Jesus can encourage men to eat the food they like & "Lose like a guy who hates losing."  For their city-to-city treks through the Palestinian countryside, there's even a Weight Watchers exercise plan to build up the disciples' strength.  Because Jesus primarily preached to peasants, Jesus could promote budget-friendly meals.  For the Marthas of the world, Jesus could encourage quick meals or snacking-on-the-go, so that ALL could sit at his feet and absorb his life changing words of wisdom. (quotes and slogans from WeightWatchers.com - official website)

But for so many of us today, dieting is about withholding the pizza, doughnuts, and pasta.  So Jesus' encouragement to eat and chew on the bread of life - his flesh and blood - feels countercultural.  And cannibalistic!  In John 6: 51-58, Jesus proclaims "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man (Jesus) and drink his blood, you have no life in you." (John 6: 53b)  The entire pericope is graphic, repugnant to our sensibilities, shockingly hard to stomach and even harder to live out.  For Jesus wants to have ALL of us - nothing withheld from our participation in and our intimate relationship with the wholly human and wholly divine Son of God.

What do you hold back from giving your all to Jesus?  Would you rather consume the temptation to work so hard that your career credentials shine?  Would you choose the power to shop as a conspicuous consumptionist?  Would you choose the freedom of staying up late or sleeping in with online entertainment 24/7?  Are you tied up in knots with your obsession to diet off those last few pounds?  Are your savings accumulating for that perfect vacation or the perfect car?  Would you prefer to study the latest scholarship on Jesus or keep him as your spiritual, otherworldly, uncontaminated-by-the-world kind of God?  None of these alienate you from Jesus unless they have become your idols, so that Jesus shifts into 2nd, 3rd, or 10th place in your priorities.  How are we drawn to that which does not bring life?  What do we withhold from our relationship with Jesus?  How do we keep Jesus at a distance?

If we are what we eat, consider that Jesus wants us to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood as the path to eternal life.  I believe Jesus means the eternal life that we can experience here and now in our earthly experiences as Christ followers, as well as the eternal life with Jesus that follows death.  Jesus wants to assuage our hungers with his body, his blood, his everything, until we are filled with life.  How hungry do we have to be to allow Jesus into the innermost recesses of our veins and arteries that our hearts may be nourished?

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

Transformation Through Teardrops

You shalt not:  sin - as in don't lie (even little white ones), don't steal, don't speak slander, don't be bitter, ......  Not very encouraging words from Paul, the possible author of Ephesians 4:25 -5:2 are they?  This passage feels like the Ten Commandments of the New Testament if we focus on the "shalt nots".  Instead, let's come at them from the perspective of the Trinity - God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit - and see what they've already done in our lives.  Through the waters of baptism, we're already incorporated into one another (verse 25). So sinning through word or action hurts our family - hurts our very selves.  Through the waters of baptism, we've been marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit for our day of redemption(verse 30).  In other words, we have the equipping power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to resist the temptations listed in the "shalt nots". God in Christ has already forgiven us (verse 32).  Having already been forgiven (and we alone know how much we need this forgiveness), we can respond to our own forgiveness by forgiving others.  God's forgiveness is our model for kindness and compassion toward others.  Out of our relationship to God as God's children, flow the behaviors that are characteristic of our God.  By imitating God behaviors (5:1) we practice what we are becoming.  "We live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (5:2)

Each Sunday we watch the baptismal waters wash up into the light and spray down upon our upturned faces to remind us of all that God has already done for us.  When we cry in frustration of yet another time of criticizing others, acting out our bitterness, or letting our anger dictate our response, let our teardrops of sorrow wash us clean from such choices.  Instead let us welcome the wash of water down our cheeks remind us of the refreshment of God's grace, just as a cold shower in response to a hot summer day renews our energy for better choices.

May we continue to be watered with God's steadfast loving kindness.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

Soul Food

What is your “soul food?” I’m not necessarily talking fried chicken or grits or any traditional Southern cuisine. It’s food that somehow, no matter how bad you feel, makes you feel just the tiniest better – tells you that it’s going to be okay. Many of you know some of my favorites – pizza, macaroni ‘n cheese, or those two together. Maybe your soul food that takes you back to a happy time, surrounded by people who love you, or to special occasions – my grandmother’s chocolate cake, my mom’s blonde brownies. It’s food that does more than providing nourishment to your body – it’s food that lifts up your heart and your soul.

Read Psalm 51:1-12 and John 6:24-35.

I see Psalm 51 as begging God for some soul food – help right our souls again, make our hearts clean. And Jesus offers us the bread of life – Himself – that would feed our soul forever. The crowds want a simple recipe for the bread – what should they do for the works of God? What sign will he give them? Will it be as good as Moses giving the people manna? Just tell us exactly what to do, give us black and white answers without any complexity.

Jesus instead offers them a more nourishing meal, with a seemingly simple recipe: believe in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. While the crowds were concerned with their stomachs and today, Jesus makes a proclamation for their hearts, souls, minds, and bodies, one that is everlasting.

So come, hear the stories about how the “soul food” the youth ate last week on their mission trip in South Dakota. Come, hear about Jesus unexpectedly showing up. Come, hear how Jesus is patient through our incomprehension. Come and dine on the music, the prayer, the Word, and the fellowship. Come, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Kate

Life in God's Sandbox

Recent sightings in my life of ministry which give meaning to my balance of work and play:  While studying in my "mom cave" I watch robins and bluejays partaking of the cool refreshment of my 3 birdbaths.  They perch on the edge to drink their fill in this staggering heat.  They look around and then plop their whole bodies down into the water, wriggling and shaking with delight.  Then back up onto the ledge to clean and preen.  Or - watching our Little Explorers lined up along the playground fence watching our lawnmowers or our roofers or our men cleaning out window wells and asking with fascination, "Whatcha doin?"  Or - sitting in my daughter's backyard watching 2 year old Adrianna dance in and out of the sprinkler squealing with delight.  I can really resonate with Jesus in Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56 when he calls the disciples away to a deserted place to rest awhile.  We all need to find respite from our work, whatever work means to us.
But what does it say about my quality of "play" that I'm merely a spectator in these delights?  These observations may be a metaphor for how we worship God.  In Ephesians 2: 11-22 Paul describes a world of conflict and sin.  We can identify with this as we read of heinous crimes, the elderly dying in the heat, children hungry because they don't have access to free school lunches in the summer, incredible mass killings in Syria, and battleships heading to the Persian Gulf.
Then, Paul switches to the past tense as he describes what Jesus has ALREADY done: broken down dividing walls of hostility, created a new humanity with access to the Holy Spirit, and built us into a holy temple as a dwelling place for God.  Really??  Where??
Although I fully believe God is anywhere and everywhere, on most Sunday mornings we enter a specific sanctuary to worship our God who has done all this in Christ.  Are we spectators in our worship as we praise God, not fully trusting this picture of peace and reconciliation with the realities outside worship?  Using Cindy Rigby's ideas on the theology of play, I suggest that we learn to play and participate more fully in worship - IF play is re-defined from frivolous downtime into "engaging in the work of the sovereign God in such a way that the world is transformed" (Rev Cindy Rigby, "Living the Kingdom:  A Theology of Play," Kansas Pastors Conference, Newton, KS, January, 2010).  Cindy professes that worship is not only a time to practice for the kingdom, but a time of actively participating in the kingdom as described in the second half of our Ephesians passage.  "We must create space for play in worship so that we can begin to imagine and participate in the kingdom - a place where we're free to create through God's grace" (ibid).  In worship we can splash and play in the baptismal waters of God's grace, and then having been fed, go out into the world - where we play as mutual partners with sisters and brothers with no dividing walls between us.  In play, both in worship and in the world, we can imagine and discover that equality that Christ has already begun in the apostles and saints who have gone before us in God's sandbox of love, where God's love so amazing, so divine demands our all.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

Dirty Dancing

American author Erma Bombeck wrote “Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.” We are all too familiar with guilt in our world today – guilt over things done, things undone; guilt over failing our boss or our children or our parents or our teachers. We are reminded in every commercial, in conversations, in emails of the burden of guilt.

In our Scriptures today, King Herod’s guilt is overwhelming. Read Mark 6:14-29 and Ephesians 1:3-14.

This story, used in the context of discerning the identity of Jesus, is a flashback caused by Herod’s guilt over killing John the Baptizer. It is a story of seduction, power, lust, tragedy, and vengeance – no wonder it has been extended into a play and a famous opera. In the face of power, John continued to speak the truth – John continued to follow God’s call unto his death.

It seems that we are often more like Herod than John, capitulating to what is easy and what pleases the people around us instead of following God’s call on our lives. It is easier to give into the whims of the world around us, to give into the dirty dancing that calls us to consumerism, materialism, gossip, and posturing, away from the Other-centered existence, away from reaching out to the least of these.

The story ends with a sad, foreshadowing moment, as the disciples retrieve the dead body of the religious leader who was not afraid to speak truth to power, to follow God. Yet we know that this story takes place within the larger Story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are secure in the knowledge, as we read in Ephesians, that redemption, forgiveness, and grace are freely offered to us and are destined to be in God’s family. Even in our Herod moments, when we are weak and hear the Word but are too perplexed, we are presented with a deep hope that this is not the end – that redemption is possible. Rest in the assurance that Herod and his kingdom were temporary, while the kingdom of God will reign forever.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate