Deferred Maintenance

As you can see, our Sanctuary is getting a "makeover."  Over decades, water has seeped into the walls around our big stained glass window of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and turned the inside wall into a rotted out piece of junk.  There was a maroon curtain hiding all this horrible mess from us, but other messes are pretty obvious.  You can see watermarks spotted all over the celiing.  The paint is a faded ivory. 

A couple years ago, when we had a fair, we left the sanctuary open for people to see.  Many admired it, because it really is beautiful.  One guy took a look (probably an engineer) and said, "what a mess!" or "you have a lot of work ahead of you" or something like that.

He was absolutely right.  Unfortunately, we have "deferred" maintenance on our church for a long time.  Slowly but surely, things have fades away.  Small problems got larger and larger.  Now we have a great group of Trustees committed to taking care of this stuff.  The projects they have undertaken is staggering in scope, yet absolutely necessary if the church is going to stand.

I have seen it before: it happened in my "home" church in Connecticut.  Day by day, week by week, things decay, fade, rot and it happens so gradually, you don't notice it.  You come in, Sunday after Sunday and you just seem to get use to the watermark here and the crack in the wall there.  I doesn't occur to you to fix it.  Until someone can objectively take a look at it, and see how bad things are.  

This is not too far from life.  We let things decay in our lives, day by day, hour by hour and not even notice it.  We can stray far from God, far from doing the things that nourish our souls, far from taking care of our bodies, minds and souls, until the "deferred maintenance" adds up and we find ourselves either in the hospital, or given orders by our doctors to do something drastic, or else.

Some people see straying away from faith as a dramatic event, full of soul wrenching events.  But, to me, "deferred maintenance" is how we get into trouble: it's a slow, gradual decline, a decay that is hardly noticeable, until one day you wake up, and see the watermarks and cracks in your life.  If we could only have sensible Trustees to take care of our lives, like the ones taking care of our church!

Running the Race

Yesterday I preached one of my favorite passages of scripture: Hebrews chapter 11 and especially 12.  The writer talks about the great cloud of witnesses who have "run the race" of faith before us, and how faith helped them complete the race.  Now they are the "cloud of witnesses" cheering us on. 

I have this scripture on the back side of my runner's id tag.  It means a lot to me not just because of these heavenly witnesses, urging me on, but because, since I started running over 10 years ago, and participated in road races here and then, I have found more comparisons between running and faith than I care to admit.  Here are a few.

1.  Never run beyond your capacity.  I was warned time and time again, in books, running magazines.  When you run a race, don't sprint out in front at the beginning or you will use up all your energy and have nothing left for the end.  So what did I do when I ran my very first road race?  You guessed.  I got such a thrill passing others that I forgot the warning.  Then in the middle they started passing me, and I started cramping up.  I ended the race in a heap of pain and exhaustion.  Great example of the sin of pride.  Pride is such a harmful sin, not just because it exalts you at the expense of others.  It also puts you on a pedestal that you cannot maintain.  There are various reasons why professional athletes take steroids, but I think it all comes down to pride.  And pride has a price: you fall, and the greater the pride, the harder the fall.

2.  Use a heart rate monitor to make sure you are running fast enough.  This is related to #1.  Figure out your "target heart rate" for your age and keep within that target, by using the monitor.  This will make sure that #1 does not happen.  It also makes sure that you don't run too slow.  Many times while I run, my mind starts drifting off to la la land, and I slow down.  Having an objective monitor is one of the greatest helps around.  My monitor also has a calorie burning counter.  Instead of having a goal of running for a certain amount of time, or focusing on how fast I am running, I think about how many calories I want to burn.  That keeps me focused on why I am running: not necessarily to be the greatest runner in town, but to lose weight and stay healthy.

In our spiritual paths, we also need objective monitors who can honestly tell us if we are running too fast or too slow.  We also need people who can give us the encouragement that we need.   This may take the form of a good friend, a prayer partner, another parishioner, a pastor or a spiritual counselor.  They are absolutely invaluable.  They keep us focused.

This also reminds me of what humility is all about.  Humility comes from the root humus, meaning earth.  Humble people are not folks with low self esteem, ready to let everybody else and their needs be more important that they are.  Humble people are "down-to-earth."  They know who they are and what they can do.  They don't try to be more than that or less than that.  They stay within their target range.

3.  Do not think about the other runners in the race.  You are not competing against them, you are competing against yourself.  Your job is to run the best race you can that day.  The last race I did, I was getting back into shape, and was lucky if I could run a 12 minute mile.  The winner came over the line half way through my race.  Indeed, I spent most of the race running alone.  But I didn't mind.  I was doing the best I could for where I was physically.  That's what God expects of us: not to win the race, just do the best we can with what we have.  Grace takes care of the rest.

4.  If you get discouraged, think of all those people not running.  True, there might have been a hundred people finishing ahead of me, but when I got a little depressed about it, I thought, "I'm running 5 miles.  How many people can do that?  How many people do that?"  Quite a few.  The important thing is not that you are doing well in the race, it's that you're actually running it.  Same with faith.  Even when you get discouraged, just think, you are actually on the path.  There are some who don't even know what faith is - many who are living lives with something missing, an emptiness that only God can fill.  In races, as in faith, there are participants, there are onlookers, and there are those who have no idea what is going on.  Being a participant is the best.

5.  Despite being scary, even daunting or terrifying, the hills our your best friends.  The best way to increase your physical fitness is to run up hills.  Start with the smaller ones and work your way to the big ones.  Sometimes tackling the big ones are beyond your physical limits.  Sometimes they are just too intimidating to even try.  But a good road race goes over hills, that's part of the challenge.  The last race I ran went over a very steep hill at the end of Houghs Neck.  I didn't try running up it until a couple weeks before the race.  I was just too frightened.  But the reality of the race was before me, so I knew I had to try.  That hill was not only do-able, but not as bad as I thought.  Now it's part of my regular running course.  If anything is going to make me a better runner, it's that hill. 

The same thing applies to the hills that are too scary to run over in our faith life.  There comes a time when we have to give it a try.  Then hill eventually transforms from our scariest monster to our best friend.

6.  A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.  I tend to like to do things big.  I'd rather take one big trip carrying everything than two trips carrying less.  That often defeats me when I run.  If I see that I don't have a full our to run, I often give up the idea of running and do something else.  This leads to getting out of my routine, losing the good habit of running, and eventually I'm doing nothing.  I keep having to remind myself that a half hour of running is just fine.  I might not be exercising as many calories away, but I am moving forward, which is the important thing. 

Same thing with our spiritual life.  Praying for 5 minutes sounds pretty small and inconsequential, but it is something, and it matters.  A great spiritual writer once said that if your prayer was only "thank you" that would be enough.  Keeping a spiritual discipline every day can seem intimidating, especially when there are expectations in front of you: spend 20 or 30 minutes in prayer, for example.  The important thing is to do somethings.  A little something is better than a lot of nothing.

7.  Pray while you run.  Every time I run through Houghs Neck, I pass the houses of many parishioners.  I pray for each of them as I pass their house.  Then I am reminded of others who don't live close by, so I pray for them.  Then I realize that some of these houses have people who desperately need to have God in their lives, so I pray for them, too.  I also come up with the best sermon ideas while running.  Maybe its the blood rushing through my head, maybe it's the Holy Spirit getting my attention.  Maybe both.  Sometimes I just repeat a short prayer as I go along, a kind of mantra that keeps going to the rhythm of my legs going over and over again.

8.  Getting better at running takes a long time, with a lot of ordinary days where you don't feel particularly inspired or happy.  Behind every great runner is a lot of boring, ordinary time.  Grinding it out, day by day.  Finding the motivation to get through these stretches is one of the greatest challenges for any runner.  But if you want to improve you body, if you want to lose weight, it is a long, slow, ordinary process.

Same with prayer.  There are days where you would want to do anything else.  When you pray, nothing seems to be happening.  Any kind of spiritual presence left a long time ago, and you might wonder why you are moving on.  It all seems so rote, so routine.  But this is the time when you actually do strengthen your spiritual muscles. 

9.  If you miss a week due to something extraordinary that happens, just make sure you get back to your routine the next week.  Sometimes there are injuries that take time to heal.  Sometimes your sick.  Sometimes it's vacation or family comes to visit and your regular schedule is disrupted.  Sometimes I considered these weeks as roadblocks that a devil erects to get me off track.  Sometimes I freak out at the prospect of missing time, that something catastrophic will happen.  I've learned to look at these in more realistic ways.  Life happens.  Just make sure that you get back to it when the normal schedule returns.

10.  There are people cheering you on, all the time, whether you know it or not.  One of the best part about road races are the people that cheer you on.  My sermon from yesterday talks about it.  If you didn't hear it, I'm posting it below.

When It Rains....

I am preparing for the third funeral in two weeks.  This is the tip if the iceburg.  All of the sudden, this has been a season of death.  Death has touched many people in our church, colleagues, friends and beyond.  They say these things comes in threes, but that's wrong - death comes and comes and comes.  To some, it comes as an avalanche, and I am amazed at people's resilience: going to one wake after another, one funeral after another.  My parishioners teach me about endurance during these times. 

One thing that comes clear as I do multiple funerals is how different each one is.  My funeral liturgy seldom changes.  Even eulogies seem to cover the same basic things. Yet each funeral is defined by a particular person who has died, and the particular impact they made on their loved ones. 

Funerals are totally unpredictable.  They are filled with irony.  The families who don't think anyone is coming are overwhelmed by a steady stream of people coming to pay their respects.   The funerals you think will be huge end up being pretty manageable.  The people who are usually strong as a rock melt down with grief, while the emotional members of the family turn into the rock everybody holds on to.

I sometimes feel that the saddest funeral are those without tears.  Somehow, if there is no grief, something is lost.  In many ways, our tears are the best tributes we pay to the departed.  This past week, I have had the privilege of seeing family members offer eulogies, and somehow, the best ones are not the most articulate, but the most honest.  People listen for words, but they feel the tears, the emotions, the grief, and this is what touches them the most. 


I do a lot of praying before funerals.  I pray for the family and people there.  I pray that God will give me the grace to lead the service with grace, honesty and integrity.  I also pray for people coming with an emptiness in their lives.  Not necessarily an emptiness left by the death of the loved one, but something fundamentally missing in their lives.  I have talked a lot about funerals as tributes to the deceased, but underneath it all, a Christian funeral is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the promises given through him to his faithful followers.  Before the funeral, I pray that this message of Jesus Christ comes and touches someone who really needs to hear this good news.  I pray that it sink down, and send them on a journey that will lead them to a faith community, where their emptiness can be filled with God, where they can know the strength that a faithful relationship with Jesus Christ can bring.  This might be the only time in their lives that they actually hear the Good News that we all need hear.

Through prayer, I have come to realize and know in a clear way that beneath every funeral, surrounding every funeral, enveloping all the grief and sadness that is part of a funeral is the love of God.  It is there, even when the grief is hard and raw and desolate.  I know it, I feel it.  It is available right then, right there.  And it never lets us go, never leaves us, no matter what.

Christmas in July

Well, today we tried our first "Christmas in July" worship service here at church.  I've been wanting to do this for a few years, but it just hasn't worked out.  Since today is actually the 25th of July, I thought it would be a great start to a tradition.

As I was trying to put the service together, I search for resources.  I was pretty disappointed when I googled Christmas in July and found most of the hits to be about stores selling stuff.  It almost seems like Christmas in July was not a Church invention, but one where marketers try to get people to buy more stuff in a slow season.  So much for trying to get away from the commercial part of Christmas.

My sermon was a meditation on what it was like for Mary to carry Jesus in her womb for nine months.  We cram so much of the Christmas story into four weeks, without realizing how much time the actual story takes.  The angel Gabriel comes to Mary in March to let her know what God has planned for her.   This means the Christmas story starts around Lent/Easter, goes through summer and fall, and finally ends in December.

I thought I would share an audio file of the sermon.  I hope it will keep you cool in these hot summer months.

The Fly

The other night, as I was brushing my teeth, tired from a full day, there were two flies in the bathroom driving me crazy. One fly was circling around the light overhead. I put him out of his misery with the flick of a towel. The second one boggled my mind. I followed him with my eyes, and this fly did not stop flying. Usually you wait until they land somewhere, but not this guy. He buzzed around and around, dinging himself against walls and ceilings and just going on.

I have to admit, I was amazed at this fly. Why didn't he stop? Was he just crazy? Despite my exhaustion and need for sleep, I just stayed in the bathroom, hoping for him to just land somewhere. I realized I could have just "let it go" and gone to bed, letting the fly alone. I would be asleep, without having to worry about this fly.

Believe it or not, some theological reflections came to me. Could this be my life? Our life? Flying around without ceasing, despite dinging ourselves? Perhaps this is what we look like to God, but instead of trying to kill us to put us out of our misery, he just looks on, saddened by our insane buzzing around.

The second reflection is that the fly represented the busy-ness of life: the ten thousand things that fly around, distracting me from what was really important: in this instance, getting a good night sleep. This insane fly reminded me in this summer time, when I take a break from busy-ness, to try to avoid paying attention to the flies in my life. They are just not worth it.

The Hole in Our Gospel

Last Sunday, the lectionary came again to the Good Samaritan. I've preached before on it, and quite frankly, I wince when I see these stories coming around again: what else do you say about the Good Samaritan? Hasn't it been milked for all its worth?

Yet I have found something new to say about it, since reading Richard Stearn's book The Hole in our Gospel. A colleague of mine, who has done a lot of work for WorldVision (Stearn's is the president), a Christian missionary organization, kept suggesting the book, so I found a way to have our book club read it.

I found it absolutely moving. So much, that I sponsored six more children and decided to give a microloan per month through WorldVision. I never really felt any great passion for mission in my ministry, but somehow Stearns has moved my heart in a way that others haven't. I come from a "social justice" denomination, with a huge missionary and social gospel tradition, yet somehow what they said did not reach me.

What really impresses me about WorldVision is that their Christian focus is very clear. When you get your sponsorship package, the first thing they ask you to do is pray for them. They use theological language to express what your sponsorship means. They talk about how their work displays God's unconditional love for those in need.

The book is combines Stearns' story of his calling to be president of WorldVision, which is a tremendous story in itself, with his making a theological case for caring more for those in need.

Somehow, after reading Stearns' book, I really understood the Good Samaritan in a new way. In any case, I want to attach my sermon on the good Samaritan to this post. I hope you enjoy it.

Reading List

It has been a very long time since I posted something on my blog. But now, summer is here, and I'm recommitting to keeping things up. Again.

One of the best things I did last year was start a book club here at church. Pretty much like other clubs, we read a book a month, then meet and discuss it. Pretty simple. The reason I value it most is that it forced me to put reading as a priority in my ministry. I can get so bogged down with the "busy stuff" of life that reading takes a back seat. I just look at all the unread books behind me and sigh.

Over the year, I've rediscovered how a book can have a profound effect on your spiritual life. We read two books on forgiveness this past year, "Left to Tell" and "Amish Grace." Both books had their own particular way of seeing the power that forgiveness has to heal you in so many ways. It forced me to look at the people I needed to forgive in my life, how I've been holding onto grudges that have weighed down my spirit, and how the process of forgiveness has lightened my load.

Toward the end of the club, we read "The Hole in Our Gospel" by Richard Stearns, the president of WorldVision, an amazing Christian missionary organization. If you don't know about them, please visit their website: http://www.worldvision.org/. The story combines how God relentlessly called him to give up his job as president of Lenox China, and all the luxury that came with it, to take the job as president of WorldVision.

He also wakes us up about the crisis that is happening all around the world, and why concern for the poor and oppressed should be a central part of the gospel. I come from a denomination that stresses social justice and mission, yet Stearns makes the case in a way that's far more compelling than anyone I've heard or read.

As a result, we have decided to sponsor six new children who are living in the midst of the worst of conditions in this world. We have also decided to give a microloan to someone every month.

The year closed out with Anne Lamott's "Traveling Mercies" which combines her spiritual quest that miraculously led her to become a Christian, with beautiful essays reflecting her life and faith. It is real and gritty and funny all at the same time. If anyone can make a case on why a new generation should be going to church and thinking about Jesus in their life, Lamott is the person.

Right now, I am listening to "The Red Tent" on tape, in preparation for our September meeting. I think this book is very helpful for people to understand what life was like during Old Testament times. For many, there will be a lot of shocking things in here. You realize that these great Matriarchs of the Old Testament probably did worship other gods other than the Jewish and Christian God, which they cal "El." It is an eye-opener to realize that monotheism (having one God) was a strange and horrible concept early on. It took Israel a long time to understand that God was the only God and the other gods were idols. No wonder the first two commandments forbid worshiping other gods and creating idols.

Other books I have either listened to or read: "East of Eden" by Steinbeck. Watching the classic James Dean movie made me curious to read the novel. I'm so glad I did. This is a great way of understanding the first stories in the Old Testament, both the Adam and Eve story and the Cain and Abel story. I love the breadth and vision and the beautiful writing.

Right now, I'm reading "This Odd and Wondrous Calling" by Martin Copenhaver and Lillian Daniels. It's a funny and real book on what happens 'behind the scenes' in minister's lives. The two authors are successful pastors in the U.C.C. and it is nice to see such great pastors have the same struggles as the rest of us.

I'll try to keep you up to date on other books I'm reading, and I will really, really try to keep this blog going, even through the busy time of year.