Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM WW
February 5, 2009

“Mary-ed Martha or Martha-ed Mary”

I was recently graced by a new perspective on Martha and Mary that I hadn’t even thought about. (Sub-point: I’m amazed and blessed when someone brings a new picture to something I’ve only been able to see a certain way.)
Martha usually gets a “bad rap” for her attention to the work at hand and displeasure at her sister Mary’s “unconcern about the work”. Luke 10:38-42 gives us the story. It’s a mixture of sibling rivalry, jealous feelings, and conflicting views on what is most important at that moment.
Many of us have been there! We have experienced the feelings of injustice as we work our hands to the bone while our sibling sits in the recliner with the foot rest up. Or how many of us guys have been sprawled out on the couch while our wives have been perspiring over a hot stove? In our house “clanging and banging pots and pans” was a warning signal, not an accident!
Luke 10:40 is like a verbal red flare. “But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made…”
Had to be made!
There’s a sense of urgency! Dinner doesn’t just magically appear. Someone or… someones have to prepare it!
Verse 40 comes on the heels of a description of what Mary is doing. “Mary…sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.” She was living in the moment. Martha is overwhelmed by the moment. Martha asks Jesus “Don’t you care…?”
Here it comes. Jesus replies “Martha, Martha! You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
What was the better thing? To sit at the feet of Jesus? For Mary…yes! For Martha…not necessarily!
There are times to be about the work, and there are times to sit, listen, and learn. Mary was at that sit, listen, and learn stage. Martha was at the serve point.
In churches there are people that we rush into ministry who are really still at the sit, listen, and learn stage. We have a bad habit of fast-tracking new believers, or spiritually immature believers, into “working for the Lord”.
Scripture speaks to growing in our walk with the Lord. We’re to be moving towards being Martha’s.
On the other side, there are many…many…many Christians who could be characterized as “life sitters”. They’ve been sitting at the feet of Jesus for so long their legs have gone numb. “What is better” isn’t continuous sitting. Even movie theatres have an intermission when the film is extra long.
“What is better” is different for each believer. The constant is a seeking after God.
Mary progresses. John 12 has her serving at the feet of Jesus by pouring expensive perfume on them and wiping them dry with her hair. Her sitting in worship progressed to serving in worship. That John 12 story also mentions Martha. She was serving!
Each one of us has to be asking ourselves whether or not we’re in a “sit and listen” time or “serving” time. We are probably called to bounce back and forth between the two, instead of being regimented in a certain way. Answering “what is better” is a question that needs to be asked each day.

WORDS FROM W.W.
January 23, 2009
“The Little Church That Could” (part 3)

“We’ve been set free to be!”
One of the members of the little church expressed that one Sunday morning. It was a call of affirmation and exhilaration. It expressed the new hope that was a part of this little group of God’s people. Each Sunday when they would gather to worship there would be the sharing of stories. For a long, long time the stories of changed lives and ministry had always come from some distant land through a missionary that the church supported financially. Or the stories would come from someone who had read something in the newspaper about someone in some other place.
Now the stories were close, heart-wrenching, and personal. The people believed that God still was using people in different places and distant places in ministry, but now the church was seeing the validity of their own faith and calling. God was calling on them to take a look around them, and they were experiencing the freedom, the unchaining of their spirits, to be who they were called to be.
Freedom is not just being allowed to do what others have not allowed one to do. Freedom is being who one has kept himself or herself from being because of a deafness to the voice of God. Freedom is being given permission to see the possibilities that one’s life can have.
There was a lady from the church who made pot holders out of old socks. For years she had given them to her friends as Christmas gifts. She had always had a hampering of any thought that came to her that she has a purpose in God’s plan.
And then someone asked her if she would consider making pot holders to be given as “We Love You” gifts for Valentine’s Day to the neighbors who lived around the church. She reacted with an expression of uncertainty, and then asked “You want me to…to help?” When the answer was “yes” there was a sudden change. Like rainwater seeping into the ground after a hard shower, “The Pot Holder Lady” realized in the depths of her spirit that God gave value to her craft and handiwork. There was an unbinding of her diminished spirit. Pot holders were new additions to almost everyone of the kitchens within blocks of the church. “The Pot Holder Lady” worked night and day to make sure all the neighbors received this simple expression of love.
She had been set free to be!
The gospel encourages one’s potential instead of keeping it hidden.
A paradoxical statement: Surrender releases freedom.
The little church became the little church that could. As God led there was the freedom to go! In going out, there was a gradual unbinding of the community. The spirits of oppression, hatred, poverty, and defeat were rooted out as people put in miles and miles of prayer walking up and down the streets.
No one knew when hope moved in as the new landlord replacing hopelessness, but it happened. Brightness replaced the dismal. Relationships became evident instead of divided people. Walls crumbled as evil foundations disappeared.
By the power of God, people were changed, and it began when His people were seeking to be who He had called them to be.

Going back to the first church, the fences got higher for protection. It resembled an aging fortress instead of a church. Hopelessness took up residency. Pastors came and went, until they stopped coming.
And the second church, the little church that could, began praying for the first church- that first church that had once been the place of prominence, where people went to be seen. The earnestness and authenticity of the second church’s prayers were heard by the Lord, and a long time later things began to change.
But that’s a different story for a different day.

WORDS FROM WW
January 15, 2009
“The Little Church That Could (Part 2)”

(If you haven’t read it yet, read the first part of this two-parter before continuing with part two.)

There was a second little church. They had always been small in size, but big in heart. A long time ago a core group of people from the church had prayed about what God’s desire was for them.
They prayed for a long time. Days became weeks, and weeks became months…and they were still praying.
And then one day an older woman who was wearing the results of a long hard life, void of glamour and glee, came to a Sunday worship gathering. She sat in the back, even though several people invited her to sit with them. In the midst of the gathering she suddenly stood up and started shedding tears of sorrow. People listened. A couple of women came and put their arms around her. Their was an expectation that she was going to share about a family member who was sick, or about someone close to her who had died, but when she spoke she simply said, “Excuse my tears, but they are tears of sorrow and frustration because no one loves this community.” With that she sat down. There were a few moments of silent anxiety amongst the people. At the end of the service the pastor closed in prayer.
The visitor was gone by the time the “Amen” was voiced.
The next Sunday the worship gathering took a detour from the plan for the day. Someone stood up and talked about how the core group had been praying for God’s leading and what His desire was for their church. The person then went on to say that he believed the previous Sunday’s visitor had given them the message: “Love our community!”
There were affirming head nods and “Amens”, and the church set about being the body of Christ in their community.
It was a community with many hurts and wounded people that needed healing. To the people of the city it was an area that was known as “transitional.” People moved in and out of the on a frequent basis. Some came on the way from escaping something else, and others came with intentions of escaping as soon as they could.
The little church left the building…and went into the community. One Sunday they gathered for prayer and then walked down the streets around them and prayed for the people that lived there. The next week they gathered for worship and then went through the streets picking up trash. The third week they intentionally went door to door and asked people (the ones who weren’t too afraid to open their doors) if there was anything they could pray about for them. The fourth week some of them saw a new family moving into one of the “worn-out” houses and asked the mother if they could bring them a meal as a way of saying welcome to the neighborhood. She nervously agreed to it.
It started to become a habit!
The little church would walk and pray as they traveled down the sidewalks that were almost all in disrepair. They prayed that God would break their hearts out of love for the people that lived around them.
Like objects that rise to the surface of water and float on it, the painful situations of the community began to become more and more apparent to the little church.
A 19 year old who was pregnant was seen more and more. Her family had kicked her out of their home and now she was renting an efficiency apartment in a building that looked ready to fall down. Her minimum wage job left her worn out at the end of the day, but the bigger problem was that making ends meet often meant going a couple of days during the month where she couldn’t eat because there was no money left for groceries. She knew it was not good for the baby growing inside her, but she didn’t know what else to do. An older woman from the church found out about the situation and took a meal to the young woman. The next week the older woman invited the expectant mom to her home not too far away for dinner one night. That time together resulted in an invitation for dinner the next week on the same night. The older woman listened, because there was no one else to listen.
There was a man who lived in the neighborhood who was an alcoholic. People avoided him, and with every sip of his whiskey he became increasingly bitter about life. Someone from the church knocked on his door and asked him if there was anything that he could pray about for the man. The drunk chased him off his front step with a string of profanities and the threat of violence.
But the man from the church came back the next week. This time he asked the man if he could give him a freshly-baked loaf of bread. The man who had been violent the week before didn’t know how to respond. He took the bread and closed the door.
The man from the church came back the next week, and the next week, and the next week, and the alcoholic slowly lost his thirst for the whiskey and gained a hunger for the bread.
And there were others, but that will need to wait until next week.

WORDS FROM WW
January 9, 2009
“The Little Church That Could”

Once…multiplied by a billion times there were two little churches.
The first church had been around since Adam. It had once been a large prominent congregation in the midst of the city. Many of the influential personalities in town were members of the church. There was a large endowment fund that the church kept adding in to. And when the church had a need- like softer, fluffier pew cushions- a grand event like a formal catered dinner would be organized and the money would be raised in an evening’s time.
No one was quite sure when the problems of the first church started. Many of the long-time members would point to the changing neighborhood around them being the slow fuse of destruction for the once prominent congregation. Others pointed to a particular pastor who stayed too long or not long enough. Still others focused on the deaths of some of the most influential people.
What was indisputable, however, was that the church was not what it used to be. From time to time a new resident in the neighborhood would show up for worship. Once in a while the person would even come back a second time. When one of the new neighbors showed up time and time again, and then offered to head up a project of remodeling the nursery that had simply been used for storage for a few years, there was a heightened sense of anxiety in the small congregation. They had never had someone offer to help. People had always been appointed, elected, pigeon-holed, or even voted in when they were away on vacation.
The “crisis” was taken care of by the elderly head of the Trustees Board. He informed the new person that they appreciated the offer, but were going to decline it. “After all,” he said, “as far as we can figure, the nursery hasn’t been used for five years. We don’t see the value in putting money into something that isn’t being used.”
Within a few weeks of that conversation, the boiler of the building’s heating system needed to be replaced at substantial cost. Perhaps it was all the attention of that situation that resulted in no one noticing that the new person gradually disappeared from view.
The church kept decreasing in size as more of its long-time members passed away.
The number of crimes in the area increased. The church built a high security fence around the property as a precaution to deter break-ins.
A new young pastor who didn’t know any better came to the church and suggested that the congregation reach out to the neighborhood.
It wasn’t received well.
People excused his idea as just being “a sign of his youth and pastoral inexperience.” Some told him that they were a small congregation that had too many problems on the inside of the building to worry about helping people outside the building. When he suggested that they sell the building and put part of the money into community ministry, calls were placed to some important officials in the denomination and the new young pastor soon became the young former pastor.
As the months and years clicked by the once prominent congregation became more and more invisible. There was growing resentment in the little group of people about the fact that they were no longer living in the glory days of their church.
It affected their relationship with God individually and corporately. Some even blamed God for taking away the gold, glitter, and glamour that they once had.
Their building became a fortress to guard against an enemy that they had a hard time identifying.
Years removed from their golden era, the few that were left would begin their description of the church, and excuse for avoiding the initiation of any new idea, with the phrase “We’re just a little church…”
There was a second church…but that story will have to wait until next week!

WORDS FROM WW

                                                                                                          December 31, 2008

                                                       “Valuable Virtues”

     Bernie Madoff!

      Just putting the name in front of people causes extreme reactions. Numerous celebrities have hit on hard times because of the money that was lost in the multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

      But worse then that is the billions that have been lost to charitable causes. Some of those causes directly assisted people who have been living below the poverty level.

      How does one look himself in the mirror knowing that his schemes will have a direct adverse effect on hundreds of thousands of people?

      I’ve been pondering that, not that I’m sinless. In fact, this whole Bernie Madoff situation has made me think about how many people have been affected by my schemes and selfishness.

     As persons of Jesus, what guides us towards “goodwill”? What detours me towards “my will”?

     As I study the person of Jesus I notice that his values flowed out of his virtues. He was just, hope-filled, loving, faithful, disciplined, among others. He knew who he was, what he believed, what his purpose was, and what his purpose wasn’t. He knew what he needed to do to be “on-mission”.

     How Jesus related to people, religious and irreligious, what he communicated, how he structured his time, what he saw as most important, all flowed out of his valuable virtues.

     What would you say Bernie Madoff’s virtues are?

     What would you say your virtues are? One of the definitions of “virtue” is “a worthy practice or ideal”. What would you say are your worthy practices and ideals? Put another way, “what do you practice that you also preach?”

     As we end a tumultuous year, it’s a question that needs to be front and face-to-face center for each one of us. If we are virtue-less, something else will fill in the space. Greed, lust, hatred, and jealousy have taken a number and are all waiting in line, like 5AM Black Friday shoppers at Wal-mart.

     It’s disturbing to know how Christians in general are viewed by the world, and characterized by the media. If you’re looking to do a composite drawing, mix in judgmental, mean, homophobic, condemning, and hysterical and you’ll come out with what “the picture” is. (This afternoon as I was driving home I got behind a pick-up truck that had this bumper sticker on the back window: “Bitter, gun-totin’, religious freak”. I kept a safe distance behind him.)

     I know…I know…it’s unfair, and yet in many cases accurate.

     How far removed from the worthy practices and ideals of Jesus!

     As a new year begins perhaps a personal deep look into the mirror of our soul needs to take place. Maybe a long gaze, looking for the ideals we reflect.

     Bernie Madoff is just another in a long procession of people and principalities whose roots had been planted in sandy soil. As the parable tells us, when our lives grow out of a shaky and shifting foundation something is bound to happen…and it usually isn’t for the common good!

WORDS FROM W.W.

“TIPPING GOD”

At a gathering of our neighborhood pastors recently one of the pastors mentioned that one of his neighbors works in a restaurant waiting tables. This woman has shared openly with my pastor friend that she has a certain contempt for Christians, even though she relates to him in a positive neighborly manner. Her contempt is linked to her job experiences. She works almost every Sunday and involuntarily cringes as she talks about all the people who come into the restaurant after attending church Sunday morning. What her experience has hammered into her heart as fact is that Christians- more accurately “Sunday morning church people”- are the worst tippers and biggest complainers (“I caught myself. I almost said whiners!”) They demand the most and give the least.
One of the other pastors at our gathering, Keith Hedstrom from Ascension Lutheran, made the cynical, but on-target, comment at that point. He said, “We shouldn’t be surprised! A lot of our church attenders just left a tip for God right before that.”
In case you’re wondering, this is not a reflection on giving the tithe. It’s a pondering on the relationship. We tip the server at the restaurant we’re dining in because he has given us great service, been there with the drink refills, taken our steak back for an extra few seconds of flame, cleaned up our spills, brought the extra side of honey mustard salad dressing, made sure the bread basket never stayed empty for long, and with great care put the uneaten food that we plan on making another meal out of into a take-out container.
Do you see it? It’s all about me! That’s the proper visual of a good server- making the dining customer feel special, a little pampering for a few minutes.
As Keith humorously revealed, however, sometimes “church people” put God in the position of server. Our lives, our beliefs, and our attitudes reveal that we think we’re sitting at the banquet table and God is running around filling our water glasses. And if he serves us well we leave him a decent tip that week…or maybe not.
Some might reply, “Yes, but Jesus washed the disciples’ feet at that last meal gathering in the Upper Room.” That is scripturally accurate, but it’s one of those biblical stories that makes me very uneasy. He concluded that foot-washing experience by saying to his disciples, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14)
In other words he was willing to serve them, even though everything in the culture at that time said the students should all be serving him. As I read and picture that story happening, however, I still have a feeling that the disciples, those closest to Jesus, must have felt pretty uncomfortable about what was taking place. Jesus was giving them a view of the role he was willingly taking…and that they must be willing to take.
Back to God the Father! Sometimes I realize that I have placed myself at the table and I’m looking for God to pamper me. My degree of satisfaction is elevated or plummeted by how he answers my wants and whims.
Tipping the Almighty. To quote a phrase one of the young people I know uses, “That’s messed up!”

A good friend of mine used to tell me that if the rapture happened I could have his lawnmower. I don’t want to get into a discussion about pre-millennial, post-millennial, non-millennial, super-sized millennial, vegetarian millennial (A belief that Jesus will come back and save people from having to eat any more Brussels sprouts.), “Cubs-millenial” (A belief that Jesus won’t come again before the Cubs win the World Series. Which might as well be a thousand years!)
Regardless of your position on the second coming, I pondered it this Advent season quite often. Usually it was as I passed in front of a nativity scene in our church building, because Mary has been missing! If she was raptured it means that figurines are getting ahead of humans in the “exit lane”.
The interesting thing for our church is that very few people noticed. The mother of Jesus comes up missing and the scene still looks the same to people. Granted this nativity set was on the floor, below eye level, but not even any of the children noticed.
It gives a different bent to “single-parenthood”. Joseph’s figurine suddenly looks a little bewildered, a little dazed.
Of course, there has been numerous attempts in recent years to kidnap Mary out of Christmas anyway. She doesn’t fit well in the “happy holidays” push. Store employees are a little awkward about saying “Happy holidays and how about that Mary?”
This year I heard that a group of people were trying so hard to get Christmas out of the vocabulary of the season that they re-did the lyrics to some songs. It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Thursday didn’t really catch on like they hoped. The Twelve Days of Winter was a little slow also.
A city in Washington renamed their parade for this month to the “Twinkle Light Parade”. I’m assuming that Mary didn’t show up on a float there either.
Back to us! Mary’s missing! There’s a space in the floor-covered hay. Next year it could spread to the shepherds.
This is not a plea to rescue Christmas. There’s been no ransom demand of any substance so far. God doesn’t need Christmas rescued, or even Mary (especially if she’s already been raptured).
It’s more of a call to see, to think about, to live out, and to proclaim the story of the incarnate God. It’s to notice when things start coming up missing in the season. It’s just too easy to let the miracle in the midst of the humanity disappear. It’s too easy to lose track of the details- like men on camels traveling long, long distances to see Jesus… or angels appearing to “average Joe” shepherds… or Zechariah going mute for nine months as a sign that God had appeared to him…or…should I go on?
For our church “Missing Mary” is a humorous little side story that is raising our awareness of how easy it is to lose the essence of the event. As word has spread about the missing mother of Jesus it’s raised our Christmas consciousness. Perhaps we’re even a little more sensitized to the elements of this season as a result of it.
Oh…and by the way! If anyone has seen Mary, please let us know. Sorry, no monetary reward, but alleviating the bewildered and dazed look on Joseph’s face will assuredly bring some gratification to you.

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