This Sunday is All Saints Day. All Saints Day is the day in which we celebrate the saints who have gone on before us. As the writer to the Hebrews said, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” I often think of those people who made the church so great in the past and who surround us now as we take the church they entrusted to us into the future. They have passed a legacy onto us and it is our responsibility to ensure the church is as vital as when they passed it forward.
The danger is to assume the church will be the same as it was in our ancestor’s time – and that is the problem with a lot of churches today. To preserve “what was” is to ensure the death of the church. What is interesting to me is the fact that the church of my youth was vastly different than the church of my parents and even of my grandparents. Both my parents and grandparents changed the church – but some members of this generation are unwilling to change. For example, my grandparents would have thrown a fit over having Bingo in the church; yet my parents and my generation think nothing of it. To take it a step further, I remember the first time I saw an electric guitar used in church. I was fine with it, but I know a lot of people are not fine. It will change. So the race is on. Will the church change to become a welcome place for the younger generations or will the church refuse to change and die out? Time will tell. My fear is I will get to heaven only to face the previous generations and have to answer the question, “Why didn’t you change in order to preserve what we left you?” Remember the parable of the Ten Talents? (Look at Matthew 25:14-30.) I have been asked many times, “Why would you leave a lucrative career for ministry?” It’s an interesting question. Why would I give up a six figure job to go into ministry? Almost everyone can agree, ministry is not where the money’s at. The issue as I saw it was that the money I was making wasn’t making my life any better. It was hollow and meaningless for me. Sure, the money was good. But I was just going to work to go to work. Nothing more. No real enjoyment.
After I got into seminary and began to serve in churches, Angela sat down beside me and said, “You should have done this years ago. I’ve never seen you happier.” It was true. I had finally found a calling that really spoke me – I was now fulfilled and having the time of my life. Money is one thing, but happiness and feeling a sense of calling is quite another. No amount of money can make me feel as good as I feel today. In the book of Jeremiah, he talks to God and says, “If I say, ‘I will not mention God, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot.” I have felt that fire and I have found the perfect outlet in the ministry to which I’m called. Is there a burning fire within you? If so, go do it! It’s got to be the calling of God. I am often amused by the way people act around me when I’m at some location other than church. Once they find out I’m a minister, their language cleans up, their complaints about others suddenly become very understanding and the references to violence cease. It’s as if a switch has been flipped. What amuses me about this is I know they’re not being real. It’s a show put on for my benefit. What’s sad about this is it separates me from the real person. There suddenly becomes a void between us that neither can reach across.
There is a branch of theology which claims God is separated from the world, that there is a void between God and the world. This void cannot be reached across except through Jesus Christ. This distant God exists somewhere “out there”, out of touch with human beings (with the exception of messages brought to him by a divine emissary.) I believe this is a sad way to view God. I also think it’s a sad way to view your minister. I believe that God is in constant contact with us; deeply and truly connected to each one of us. God desires to be in contact with you – the real you – because God is deeply and truly in love with you. So be yourself (even around your minister) and you’ll find out you’re accepted no matter what. Because you are truly loved. Growing up I had a friend named Robert. Robert was always on the short end of life. It seemed like no matter how or what, Robert ended up losing. His mother passed away when Robert was in the sixth grade, his sister ran away from home the next year. Robert was intelligent, got good grades at school and (in return) was bullied every day. He ended up dying of cancer alone in his apartment. At his funeral only I, his sister and two co-workers attended. He was a good man and a good friend.
A question has always nagged me about Robert, “How can such bad things keep happening to a good person?” He never harmed anyone, never had a bad word to say about anyone and never broke a single rule. He was so quiet that if you were sitting with him, you could hear an ant crawl across the floor. Yet if something bad were to happen, you could count on it happening to Robert. I’ve never seen such a thing. Some people would say all the things that happened to Robert were a result of evil at work. Others say that’s just the way things go, some people are just unlucky. Still others say he must have done something wrong, so God was punishing him for it. I don’t believe in any of these answers. I believe God loves Robert and felt terrible about everything that went wrong. I don’t believe in a God that continually punishes a person for an infraction of any sort. I also don’t believe that anyone is that unlucky. So this leaves me with evil – but even evil doesn’t account for everything. It just raises more questions, “Why him, and more to the point, why him constantly? What’s the purpose of it, what’s there to gain?” So I guess the bottom line is I don’t have an answer, just more questions. I still struggle with the mystery of it all – probably just like you. And that’s just one more reason we’re church together. |
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This blog consists of reflections written by the minister each week for the Sunday bulletin. We hope that you enjoy the musings! Archives
January 2020
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