Psalm 73 Duet

Melissa and I were reading Psalm 73 a few days ago. As we were reading, it struck me that it was speaking to us both, in different ways.

Melissa: “But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.”

Aaron: “For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man.”

Melissa: “Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning… When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God.”

Aaron: “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.”

Melissa: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

I guess we all know that the Scriptures speak to us, and we understand that at different times we might seek this or that Scripture, or perhaps we discover that a Scripture we knew well speaks to us in a different way. Somehow, I was aware of that in a really heightened way as we read psalm 73. Melissa and I have talked before about how we may have both been touched by the same Scripture independent of each other. But it was truly awesome to be reading the same Scripture and find different parts speaking to us.

My Gay Church

You never know what someone is going to say at The Rock La Roca. The Board of Ordained Ministry came to visit the church back in November, to expose the future pastors and deacons to our madness. We are a “cautionary tale” of what happens when you jump out and trust God…

Anyhoo, they wanted some of our staff and members to talk about their perspectives on the Church. One of the lay people was Mona, a dedicated worker in evangelism and mission. Mona came to the church with a lot of baggage in her life; mental illness and chemical dependency. And she really came to the church in a strange way. She was in a gay bible study. She told the Board of Ordained Ministry that she had struggled with homosexuality for a while. The object of the Bible Study was to justify the homosexual lifestyle by re-interpreting Scripture. Mona said the best thing about the Bible study was that the teachers really took the Bible seriously, except at its condemnation of homosexuality. Mona felt that she could not accept one part and deny another, so she was really mixed up.

She had an experience with God’s grace—that is, that all people are sinners, but God has made His salvation available to all who repent and trust Jesus. Mona gives an excellent testimony to overcoming sin. So much so that she wanted God more than she wanted what the world says you ought to have. She wanted to sell out to God, and she let go of believing that her lifestyle was “ok.” Now that is costly discipleship indeed!

One of the fundamental problems facing churches today is an inability to say anything meaningful about homosexuality. Some churches don’t have the guts to come out and say they are in favor of homosexuality, and so what happens if a gay person who believes it to be sinful comes along, looking for help? They can’t get any help, because the church doesn’t believe it is a sin, but the struggler doesn’t know that because the church doesn’t have the guts to say what it believes, and there’s no help or worse, they get led astray by those who want to teach that a sin is ok.

Or other churches come out in favor of homosexuality and therefore go against God, and what future is there in that?

And then, other churches come out with nothing but judgment and condemnation, and therefore go against God, and what future is there in that?

Why not do what the Rock has done (and this was done before I came, I merely carry on this most Scriptural tradition), and declare that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian discipleship, but that all are welcome in God’s house to hear the saving message of transformation of hearts and lives?

A sad part of our problem to address homosexuality from the biblical point of view, independent of the culture and politics, is that we miss out on the experience of many who are struggling with sin. On the one hand, “liberal” churches don’t think there is a sin involved, and so there is no relief for those who know they need to change. And “conservative” churches can’t see that in people being transformed, the Gospel is realized.

A few weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation in the house of a gay man I happened to visit. He asked me point-blank, what did I (not the church) think about his lifestyle. I told him that I didn’t suspect there was enough time between us for him to be able to hear me with goodwill. I said that I believed that the Scriptures were clear, homosexuality is not acceptable to God. But at the same time, sin is the very reason Jesus came. Christ came to us while we were powerless to do anything. No one comes to God with anything to offer, He freely transforms us, if we let Him. There was some silence and the fellow said, “I have never heard that before. Thank you.” How is it possible that he never heard that, growing up in church? Is what I said not the plain gospel? Are his choices to be condemned or to have a preacher, God forbid, tell him homosexuality is ok? As odd as it may seem, the Rock La Roca has quite a few gay worshippers. One church asked me if we were gay-friendly, looking for advice on how to be so. I think they were asking how to “condone” the lifestyle. I had to explain what I said above, that we welcome all who want to hear the word of salvation, but that we will not say that any sin is ok. Somehow, gay folks hear the word of grace and come. They know we love them, and because God has loved and saved us, we hope that He will save all who can hear (and bear) the message.

A few Sundays ago, one of our members, Christy, got up and talked about a conference she was going to be part of at UK. It was going to present the Scriptural standards that homosexuality is not an acceptable Christian lifestyle, but also that we try to reach out with the love and transforming power of Jesus. It’s not going to be easy, because a state college campus is not friendly to groups that will say homosexuality is wrong.

I was very proud of her, because I know how hard it was for her to get up and share her own transformation, and then also because she wanted to make sure that she would not back off the truth. She did a great job, and 9/10 of it was because when you give people straight talk, they can hear it. It’s when you start shucking and jiving that people smoke you out.

Fasting Mark 2

After I posted the piece on prayer and fasting, I went out into the hall to read some Scripture. Melissa has given me two Bibles—one I use at home, and the other is my office/pulpit Bible. There’s something about having either one, and knowing she got it for me. Anyway, my “traveling” Bible is falling apart after 12 years of rough riding in my back pocket. So I have the one from home with me. It’s one that I have used to do my “slow read” of the gospels—anywhere from 2-6 verses a day. So I was back doing that in Mark (having set aside Luke for some reason) and was in Mark 2 where Jesus is questioned about why His disciples aren’t fasting like the disciples of John and the Pharisees were.

Jesus’ answer: “How can the friends of the bridegroom fast while He is with them? When he is taken from them, then they will fast.” How wonderful it was that this was the Scripture passage for me to read! And so, indeed, we fast because we do not have His presence, but then we fast also to find His presence.

p/g,

Aaron

Prayer and Fasting

In his sermon on fasting, John Wesley points out that fasting comes naturally. That is, at various times we fast, perhaps without knowing it. If we are heavily burdened, depressed, grieving, anxious, we may go without eating, as things are or seem to be more important than eating. Our concentration is focused somewhere besides eating. We may not know, however, to commit ourselves to fasting on purpose when we find ourselves heavily burdened, depressed, grieving, or anxious. We may not know to practice fasting in a disciplined way, so that we can go straight to it, in its spiritual dimensions, when tough times come. And we definitely do not recognize it as a powerful kind of celebration whereby we announce that a consecrated time to God is more important than “the necessities of life.”

Prayer is much the same. Or perhaps I should say, something of the posture of prayer is as unconscious in us as fasting sometimes is. Here I am the UL hospital, 4 in the morning. I was awakened at 2 and can’t get back to sleep. There are any number of family members here, on the bone marrow transplant unit and in the various ICUs. What are they doing? They could sleep at home. There’s not much they can do here, other than be here. Something about this is “natural.”

They are keeping a vigil, meaning to or not. They are doing the very thing that they would do if they knew to pray—staying close to the loved one, looking for some way to communicate presence and express hope for healing. But how much deeper prayer goes. Prayer is presence with the one prayed for. And it expresses more than hope; it is communication with God, the ardent expression of desire.

While the posture of prayer—staying close and hoping, and the ways that shows up in hanging out at the hospital—come naturally, the substance of prayer does not. That is, we might be able to quickly ask God for something in time of need, but the discipline to turn a “natural” inclination into focused prayer comes only with practice.

Prayer and fasting are inextricably linked because fasting leads to prayer. Prayer sustains fasting, but fasting opens the time and space for focused praying. If you spent in prayer the time it takes you to go to, prepare, and/or eat 4 meals a week (fasting 2 days), you will carve out a significant chunk of time for prayer. And so when the need or desire for much praying comes upon you, you will be ready.

The “natural” fast usually comes with negative connotations. It comes from stress or sadness. The spiritual fast can be a response to negative emotions or situations, but is more often a positive response of desiring to spend serious, powerful time with God in a way He has naturally ordained. The “naturalness” of various kinds of vigils also come from negative situations and emotions. But if prayer is the substance of the day for you, there will be more balance in how you “feel.”

So, you already know that you will fast and keep vigil. Why not be prepared? Jesus teaches that prayer and fasting are of vital importance. And more than being prepared for the hard times, what about making prayer and fasting a part of those times when nothing is going on? It will be as simple as breathing to you. And then, to be really blessed, what if prayer and fasting move beyond the “natural forms” and are actually a part of the good times you experience? What if focused prayer was full of the desire and language of praise? What if fasting became primarily a time when you experienced God’s provision through the Word and prayer? You could turn the “natural” upside down: instead of reacting to hardship unconsciously, the “natural,” exhausting responses of not eating and keeping vigil become the times of sustaining. When hard times hit and you know to pray and fast, you would be ushered into a time that, because you have known it constantly and in all seasons, is a comfortable place, the right place to be, a pleasant place even in the midst of trial. If God became present to you that way, just on the surface reaction of turning to fasting and prayer, how much moreso will He be present in the praying and fasting?

It’s not just that this makes sense or is scriptural, countless Christians over the centuries testify that it is their experience.

Close Encounters

I had a meeting a few days ago with some guys I have been trying to make contact with. One of the cool things about ministry on the edges is that there aren’t as many blocks to weird ideas. So far, no one has said to me, “that’s crazy.” And believe me, I have proposed some far-out stuff. So, these contacts are about brain-storming, about doing ministry in ways that are different not because they are so much new, but because they have been forgotten.

One of the guys, Ryan Koch, is a counselor and is looking for ways to bring counseling to some people who need it but can’t afford it—the very kind of people in our neighborhood. We are setting the groundwork for having a “counseling bank” where people can come, maybe on our mission night, and also receive some counseling. Hopefully that can take off, and make some use of the counseling students at the seminary.

The other fellow, Will Samson, is writing an interesting book on living a life of justice in the burbs. When I can remember the title, I’ll pass it on. It’s big stuff. Anyway, he and I have been in contact because in a totally random way we found we have a passion in common: getting good, nutritious food to the hungry and poor. In another blog entry I’ll tell you how I got into that (because it is an important lesson in the HOW of ministry with marginalized people), but for right now, it’ll set me off on an episode and I’ll get confused and this will make less sense than it does! Will is part of a sociology project that looked at food access in North Lexington. He has some great detail about what we already know on a general level: if you are poor, your access to food is not good, and what food you do get is more expensive. The simple fact is if you walk to the neighborhood grocery, you will pay a premium on goods you could get cheaper if you had a car. In addition, none of the grocery stores in our area had any fresh vegetables, and the only cheese they had was processed cheese product.

So a few months ago we started hatching plans to have a farmer’s market at The Rock La Roca. It will be a long process to get going, but I am hopeful it can work, because there are a lot of Africans on the North Side, a lot of Hispanics, and as I am finding, most of the Anglos have Eastern KY roots, and “garden food” is always a favorite. But it’s not going to happen this summer.

But here’s what is going to happen: we are going to garden and bring some fresh produce into our mission night so that we can add the good nutrition to what we offer. I think I have a lot of gardeners in the church. We’re going to have some cooking and nutrition classes. And I have initial permission from the elementary school principal (he is an awesome dude) to use the property behind the school as a garden.

Then, yesterday (Feb 7), Will, Ryan, and I got to talking about some guys who are doing what is called Community Supported Agriculture. That is an idea where a small farm sells “shares,” and once a week brings in the produce to people who have bought the shares. So one fellow, for example, sells a share for $400, and that gets you one bushel basket of picked-that-day produce once a week for twenty consecutive weeks. The basic idea is that a community would be related to a particular small farm. Some of you who have read Wendell Berry’s stuff are familiar with this idea of connecting an urban area to a farm, so that the connection between food, eater, and farmer is a close one. It’s clear as day: it would be awesome if we could connect our community with a farm—connecting families to good food, how to prepare it, connecting urban kids to a farm (because a lot of the farmers love to have people come out and work).

So anyway, I’ll write more about how and why I got into this, why I know it works, and how some of y’all can get involved if you want to.

We met on a day when I was fasting (and there we were talking about food!). After they left, it was time to break the fast, so I sat down with some Scriptures. I usually read Psalm 6 in breaking a fast. And then I’ll just read whatever else comes to mind. Well, yesterday it was Psalm 65, “Praise awaits you, O God, in Zion.” The verses just jumped out at me: “Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causeth to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house” (65:4). I began to think of a great banquet in God’s house, where every one is sitting around, not just eating, but being together, totally satisfied with the all-encompassing goodness of God.

But at the same time, I was having a hard time feeling that; I was wondering, “what does this mean for Melissa?” We talked about it a little bit, and it was one of those moments where you realize you’ve been having the same thoughts about the same Scripture, but we were led there in different ways. The Scripture was Job 13:15. I got there because I was wondering about being drawn near to God’s courts and thinking it really wasn’t happening. Melissa got there because, well, she likes Job. We spent some time rejoicing that the Lord had given us the same Scripture.

And then, these words, a wonderful poem of God’s amazing, bountiful, simple provision:

You care for the land and water it;
You enrich it abundantly
The streams of God are filled with water
To provide the people with grain
For so you have ordained it
You drench its furrows and level its ridges,
You soften it with showers
And bless it crops (Psalm 65:9-10)

So indeed, how foolish is it that there is earth and sun and rain but right next door, some are hungry, lacking good food? That one’s on us, I’m afraid.

p/g,

Aaron

In the Name of Jesus

Ok, so I don’t think I can rehearse the reasons why ministry to the poor really has to be ministry with the poor (or go too much into the difference), but I will tell you how I got there. I had good teachers: John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople in the late 4th century. And there was Bob Lyon at Asbury. I thought I was taking Greek, but it turned out we were digging hard into the meat of the New Testament, and what grace and discipleship will look like. And then there were the best teachers I had on this, the ones who made the point as Scripture came to life: Calvin and Arvilla Mynhier.

Calvin and Arvilla and their family were my first converts as a pastor. They had grown up under a very harsh fundamentalist faith. So when I stood with them in the pig-pen talking about grace, about Jesus dying for us precisely while and because we were sinners, and providing us grace even after we placed our faith in him, they were just shocked. They felt like they had to be good enough, and since they were poor (they are the most marginalized people I have ever met; their poverty is precisely the range of poverty defined by the New Testament—not necessarily economic, but one that infiltrates the social and personal aspects of life as well), God was not on their side. Or maybe some days they might think that “This is what it means when He said, ‘blessed are the poor.’”

The way I met them was classic. I was maybe two months into my first church. My mentor, Howard Willen, always emphasized visitation, and so as I didn’t know anything else to do, I started visiting, and if no one was home, I would leave a small card telling who I was and where the church was. Long story short, I had shown up at the Mynhier’s trailer and left a card. So anyhoo, one day I am at Fox’s store and this woman stops me and says, “Aren’t you that new Methodist preacher?” which is one of those questions you aren’t sure you should answer. But I was ready. Infant baptism? Free will? I was ready to answer any controversy a Baptist might start with me.

Well, all she really wanted to tell me was that she had a huge garden and could I see that the food got to the hungry? I didn’t know how it was going to get to the hungry, but if you’re Bob Lyon’s student and you don’t answer with a resounding “Yes!” to such an opportunity, well, you might know how to identify the perfect tense of a middle voice verb, but you weren’t paying any attention. So I said sure I would.

Now, back up. When we were moving into the parsonage, Pablo Shafer (a friend from Lexington who was helping us move) says in passing that the high ground behind the parsonage would make a good garden. Next morning, Robert Curtis is out there with a single-bottom plow and bam I have a 1000 sq. ft. garden. So as the summer went along, I had been taking vegetables with me on my visits, leaving them as a gift from the church. Everybody loved it, even atheists would open the door for me when they saw corn, beans, and tomatoes.

Well, Arvilla and Calvin were as good as their word and next thing I know, twice a week the parsonage porch looked like Kroger. Various kinds of tomatoes, lots of beans, all kinds of peppers, cukes, zucchini, corn. I realized pretty quickly that I was not going to be able to get it all out. So I took what I was not using up to the community service center, and it ran out of there, people were so happy to have the fresh produce.

That’s how it worked that summer. The next summer, we got a little more ambitious. There was an article in the paper that said at some point during the year, 20% of the children in Clark County were hungry. Well heck, I knew some of them, and I was pretty hot because the numbers say there are about 1000 Methodists in Clark County, and I said no way. If there were that many Methodists, no one would be hungry (see, in those days, I still thought that if someone had the guts to call themselves a Methodist, not only were they saved and sanctified, they were hard after ministering to the needs of people. I know, I know, I’m naïve.) Surely 1000 Methodists would have fasted until there was enough to eat (because Methodists are supposed to fast two times a week) and surely they would have opened their cupboards. But no. In my own church, some leaders said, “the poor are poor because they deserve to be.” The most decisive thing I ever heard Bob Lyon say was that the idea that the poor are poor because it’s their fault or they deserve to be “comes from the Evil One.” So, the battle lines were drawn, and the honeymoon was over, all because a poor family wanted to make sure no one went hungry.

One year, Calvin raised rabbits and pheasants, rigging up an incubator for pheasant eggs. “There won’t be no going hungry no more,” he said. And his tithes were pheasants and rabbits. Good eatin’.

So anyway. We realize we can do a lot more than a little gardening here and there. So we get a story in the paper about giving produce to the Community Service Center, about how we’ll come pick it if we need to, plant a row for the hungry, etc. Then we got organized into something we called the Food Security Coalition. Arvilla was there with us from the beginning. We got hooked up with other agencies, and pretty soon we were doing more than getting “garden food” to people. Sure, we had all kinds of people bringing food in (and I think I made the Community Service Center people a little frustrated with the bulk of stuff coming), but we were also showing people how to garden, doing nutrition classes, and then two women at the church (Frankie and Cynthia) started a food pantry so we had the whole range of good food to give people. Man, were we praising God for all He was doing through us. Over about three years, we did some good work.

But the powerful thing, the powerful lesson was not what we did, but how. See, in our initial phase of discipleship, we do ministry “to” the poor. That is, we have some program where we show up to volunteer, they show up to get something and bam we’re done. That’s ok, and indeed it has to be done. But where the Jesus life gets real is when you start to form a transforming relationship with the people you serve. And as you witness to them about faith in Jesus, and you call them to be disciples (that is, you don’t want them to just keep coming to you for help unless, God forbid, you like it that way), then they should be finding their own ministries, using their gifts for the glory of God.

Think about it. This work was Arvilla’s work. Maybe we were like Moses and Aaron, and I did all the talking, the up-front work. But it took her giving from her abundance, her desire to see the food spread out to the poor and hungry. How different would it be if I had thought, “their family is poor. I must minister to them because that will make me a good boy,” rather than the way God worked through it: He placed it in her to undertake this ministry, the hard work of planting and weeding and harvesting, and wondering what could happen if…

And now, here I am at The Rock La Roca UMC, looking to do the ministry that Arvilla and Calvin taught me, knowing it works, knowing that feeding the hungry is a process, a plan, a lifestyle in some way, a ministry that is a direction for a church, not a program among others.

In the end, there is no one who knows what ministry to the poor and hungry should look like except the poor and hungry themselves. Set them free in Jesus’ name and watch and learn.

p/g,

Aaron

It's All How You Look At It

When I take Melissa to the clinic, I try to read some, and because it is a scientific place, there’s usually some science magazines around. One of them had an article on Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of autism where the person can function, but has limited social skills. The article I read said something about kids with Asperger’s being able to judge as well as the general population a person’s trustworthiness by looking at their face. (Generally speaking it is assumed that part of the problem of Asperger’s Syndrome is the inability to read social clues in faces). And then it made some comment about how kids with Asperger’s Syndrome can see fine details in a picture, but will miss the whole. The example was that if you show someone with Asperger’s a large “S” that is made of nothing but small h’s, they will quickly perceive the h’s but not the larger picture they are making, “S.”

So, as things turn out, one of the boys I work with at the school has Asperger’s. Let’s call him Eddy. He’s a fun kid. I work with him on learning French, and he has an amazing ability to hear and repeat, even getting the accent right. Of course, you never know what he’ll ask you to teach him to say, like when he asked me how to say, “Farewell, my alien brethren…”

One day we got to talking about his science fair project—determining if body language can give a clue to whether or not someone is telling the truth. Interesting—people with asperger’s can still gauge trustworthiness and perhaps are more keyed in to details like aspects of body language that a person without Asperger’s might lose in seeing the “big picture.” It’ll be neat to see how it works out.

And then, we’re going down the hall and we pass some artwork. One class had put up construction paper with cut-out shapes glued on. Neat stuff, lots of colors. And then we saw why—there was a big poster of one of Matisse’s paper cut-outs. I was tying it back to our French lesson and remarking that the work is about 10 ft tall and 5 ft wide when Eddy says, “Look! Fish! A Seahorse! Jellyfish! Eels!” Now, if you have ever seen a Matisse cut-out, you know it’s fairly abstract. (A friend of mine gave me a print of Matisse’s “Winepress,” and it took me awhile to figure out why it was called that.) I look at the bottom to see the title. “Beasts of the Sea.” I asked Eddy if he had read that. “No,” he said, “but it’s a good title…”

p/g,

Aaron

Meditations in the midst

I have lots of stuff to put on the blog, but I have not had access to internet for my laptop, so... And since I don't feel like typing much, I guess I'll have to wait until I get around to putting stuff up.

On Wed Feb 7, Melissa and I had a moment where we realized that we had been thinking about the same Scripture: Job 13:15, "Even though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him." There was a time in my life where I thought something like this, "I am still going to place my faith in God even if it seems like He is not treating me so well." That's kind of ham-handed, but what it amounted to was a kind fo stubbornness, some way of thinking that said, "I have no one else but God." And in the end, we find that what seemed like a curse from God was really not, more likely it was a burden being lifted.

It goes back to what Melissa has talked about, being yoked with God and knowing that when it seems the hardest and roughest, He is carrying, as He always has, the most part of the load.

And then there was yesterday when we talked about the story in Mark 2 of the paralyzed man, where his friends lower his mat thru the roof so he can get to Jesus. Jesus forgives him his sins, and only heals him later. Melissa and I were both thinking, "well, there it is, the one thing you really need, forgiveness of sins." I can't tell you how hard that hit me, to hear her, of all people, say that. If there were a choice, would I not take the healing?

Maybe Hauerwas and Willimon are right. Maybe justice is a bad idea. maybe, as Melissa pointed out from Mark 2, God's promise in Jesus is GRACE, not justice. Justice is nice, but don't look for it from men. Take God's grace and live it. I wonder: if we lived lives of grace, how much more just would our justice be?