Back from the frozen tundra...

For now. I know I haven't updated in forever, probably because I'm not as inspired to write fiction as I used to be. Since I originally intended this place to be a poetry/fiction dump, I guess I haven't felt the need to updated it as much. Well, I guess since I'm going back to school soon, I might update it more than once every few months. Or not. It depends.

All that being said, I preached on Sunday, July 12. Pretty much everyone liked it. How about you guys? (apologies to Will and Brian for using the hallelujah thing, but I liked it.)

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Sermon Title: Worship With the Heart

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set for in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”

Hallelujah! What a word. People say it all the time (at least some people do.) Well, I love saying it anyway. It is an exclamation of joy, is it not? Of course you wouldn’t say it just any old time. We say it when something great, miraculous, or astounding happens. We say it when a friend comes out of the hospital in good health. We say it when we are successful at work. We say it when we make a major accomplishment. Some people even say it if their team wins a game, although that’s not the best way to use it. Whatever the case may be, it is used as a joyful exclamation.

A friend of mine, who has an interest in the Hebrew language, explained it to me this way. The word comes from two Hebrew words, Hallelu, or “Praise ye,” and “Jah,” a shortened version of YHWH, the LORD. All together, it means “Praise ye the Lord,” or in more modern English, “Praise the Lord.” However, it’s not the words in and of themselves that convey the meaning of the word “Hallelujah” or “Alleluia,” but how it is said. Hallelujah is not meant to convey merely “Praise the Lord.” It is meant to convey “PRAISE THE LORD,” in all caps, italics, underlined and bold. It is the highest, loudest, and most exuberant phrase we can use to praise God. So repeat after me. HALLELUJAH! PRAISE THE LORD! Good. Glad to know you are all listening.

So why do I bring up the word today, aside from trying to get you guys engaged? I bring it up because it relates to this passage today. It brings up the questions that haunt churches even today: “Why do we worship? What does it mean worship?” And then there’s the big one: “How do we worship?”

Well, let me just go through this passage a little bit, and the Why will become self evident. Paul starts out with a declarative statement: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The rest of the passage is his reasoning. 11 verses of reasoning, of poetry, for saying Praise the Lord. The next time someone asks you why you go to church, go to this passage, because it says it all right here.

He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love. The operative word here is “in love.” He planned for us to be holy and blameless, but we can’t get there on our own. It is impossible for us to be holy and blameless without God. That’s okay. Remember that in Christ, we go on to perfection. Every day we spend in Christ, we become more perfect than we were the day before.

He destined us for adoption as his children. We belong to God. We are his children. Remember how Dr. Harrelson keeps saying God has no grandchildren? It’s true. We are all God’s children, every single person.

In his Son Jesus, we have redemption, and we have an inheritance of grace. When we heard the good news and accepted it into our hearts, we were marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. This is why we praise God.

You know what it all adds up to? We were made to worship God. It’s our purpose. It’s what we are designed to do. Everything about us can be used to glorify God. Everything we do can be a song to the glory of God, no matter what our calling. That is why we worship. That is why we wake up early on Sunday mornings.

So that’s the theological “why” of worship. Wonderful. Now to the second part of this line of questioning is a bit more difficult, and that is “What does it mean to worship?” What is our purpose here, this morning, in Crosby United Methodist Church?

Believe it or not, you are currently at what is commonly called a “worship service.” Big shocker, I know. I’ll let that sink in for a minute. A worship service. A service is something you do for someone, and in this case, that something is worship, and that someone SHOULD be God. I say SHOULD, because there is a troubling trend in the way that Christianity as a whole thinks about worship.

Let me illustrate. Can I get a show of hands here? How many of you would describe this as your church? Okay, how many of you would describe it as God’s church? When we forget that worship is about God, it becomes about us. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase “Well I just didn’t get anything out of church today.” To that I have to say, “Well of course you didn’t.” Worship is not a service for us, but the other way around. Worship is our service to God. It’s the “I didn’t get anything out of church” mentality, the consumer mentality that truly distracts us on Sunday mornings.

You don’t get something for nothing. What you reap, so shall you sew. When you put your whole heart into worshipping God, you get the whole heart of God in return. When you put nothing into worship, don’t complain at that results. Who knows, you might still get something, but that something is so much more substantial when you truly worship God. When you worship with the heart, you are truly fulfilling the purpose that God gave us, and in so doing, we are filled with the Spirit of the living God. This Spirit is what compels us to live out our lives for the glory of God, to go out into the world, to show love, and kindness, and justice, and everything that is asked of us in the Bible. Remember, we cannot be holy or blameless without God.

So really, what we get out of worship is merely a side-effect of our actions relating to God. I think that’s actually a pretty sweet deal. So sweet a deal, in fact, that I think it’s a real injustice that we relegate worship to one hour a week on Sundays, when we can worship God in all aspects of our lives. Paul himself said in 1 Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. God wants to keep an open line of communication with us so that we may know him better, and so that we might do His will. Sometimes, one hour a week is all anyone thinks about God, if even for that long. That is a tragedy. People have a difficult time thinking outside of themselves, outside of their experience and their immediate circumstances. It’s difficult to see life on God’s terms for the simple fact that we allow our lives to become so overfilled with other things that get in the way.

It is this notion that brings me to third part of the question: How do we worship? How are we supposed to worship? I believe the Psalmist had something to say about this in Psalm 150:

Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! ^*2Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness! ³Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! ⁴Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! ⁵Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! ⁶Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Now I’ve been to a few worship services where there was a little too much clanging cymbals, if you know what I mean. Actually, as a drummer, I’ve been the one clanging the cymbals as well, so I can’t complain too much. But what the psalmist is trying to get at is the fact that worshipping God isn’t meant to be some kind of burden. That is the last thing worship is.

There are innumerable styles of worship. Some are more classical music oriented, some are contemporary, some are blended, and some are filled with old style gospel music. Something I’ve found out first hand is that more often than not, the way we worship is a reflection of who we are as Christians, and no two churches, even within the same denomination, are ever just the same. A by-product of our consumer culture is the endless variety and choices in worship we can participate in. What we need to keep in mind though is that no one style is any better or worse than the others when God is at the center of the worship.

Now then, my personal preference skews classical. I love classical music. I love Handel, Bach, or anything with an organ, really. I love that type of stuff. I also have a special place in my heart for contemporary worship music, considering it’s the only worship music I can actually play. All that being said, I can honestly say I’ve been to some really bad traditional services, and some really bad contemporary services.

You see, style of music is no real indicator of how passionately a church worships God, because you can always tell when a church is just going through the motions, just as much as you can tell when a church is really worshipping God with their whole hearts. When a church worships with its whole heart, it’s a moving experience. It’s uplifting and exhilarating. It’s thought-provoking, and sometimes you get a chill up your spine. Sometimes, worship can even bring you to tears. Worship can be somber, it can be quiet. Worship can be loud and joyful too. Worship can be any number of things. Worship is never just one thing.

When you worship with the heart, God is at our center. True worship is a reflection of the Cross: two arms out-stretched, reaching out to the community, yet it is always pointed toward heaven. Everything we do in worship is for God and God alone. It’s easy to get caught up in a good worship service, to love God and to show it.

There was a story I read about once about the Italian poet Dante Alighieri[1]. For those whom the name doesn’t quite ring a bell, he’s the Dante of Dante’s Inferno. Anyways, as the story goes, he was in a state of deep meditation during a church service once, so deep that he didn’t notice what was going around him and he missed a cue to kneel. Now then, Dante had a few enemies in the church, and they were looking for an excuse to get him kicked out of the Catholic Church. These people saw this minor infraction as an opportunity to get him, and went all the way to the bishop and accused him of sacrilege. When questioned, he defended himself with this statement: "If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing."

When was the last time you were so lost in worship that you failed to notice everything else in the world? More often than not, it’s the other way around. We’re so caught up with what’s going on around us that we neglect what’s going on between us and God.

The thing that I want you guys to take with you this morning is very simple. This church is our church, this is true. Some of you have been here all of your lives, and I can only envy that. But first and foremost, this church is God’s church. As members of God’s church, we don’t have to worship. We get to worship. It is our joy to worship God, not our burden. Since God destined us in love to be his children, we praise him for it. We praise God because God’s love is so life changing, so powerful, that we can’t help but praise him for this gracious gift of love that he gave us on the Cross. It makes me want to say Hallelujah, and really mean it. Amen.

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[1] Today in the Word, March 10, 1993. http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/w/worship.htm

Mary Ann Brown

*Note: This was written as eulogy for a fictional person.

Words of Remembrance: Mary Ann Brown (Mark II)

Mary Ann Brown was born on January 1^st, 1914, which means she was alive for ninety five years. A lot can happen in that span of time. They were ninety five years of laughter and joy. Ninety five years of life’s little heartaches, pains and sorrows. Ninety five years of graciousness and caring. Mary Ann Brown was given ninety five years, and I can assure you she lived those years to the fullest.

She was born in the small town of Rogers, Texas, just outside of Temple, to Joseph and Florence Parker. That small town girl was raised in a big family and completed high school at a time when school ended at tenth grade. She married her high school sweetheart and raised a family of their own in Waco. This was around the middle of the Great Depression and times were tough. Her husband, Edward, worked on both their farm and at the Coca Cola Bottling Plant just to make ends meet. They endured, however, and raised a great family. Their three sons, Bill, Ed, and Sam, and their daughters, Elizabeth and Penelope, are here today and can testify to the loving home they had in Waco. When Edward retired in 1979, they moved to Crosby to be closer to their children. Here they found a new family in Crosby United Methodist Church, one that provided an outlet for their faith and graciousness. When Edward died in 1981, Mary Ann was grief stricken, but persevered and continued on in the way she always did.

If there is anything you can take out of her life, it was that she was a Christian in every way, and was thoroughly committed to the ideals of Christian love. In many ways, her faith defined her and her actions. She was a lifelong Methodist, baptized at birth, and utterly devoted to living by her faith. This faith was obviously transmitted to her children, considering not one but TWO of her sons became Methodist ministers. She raised her children with compassion and kindness, but also instilled in them a good work ethic. Every penny counted, and while she was generous, she also knew how to survive on very little. You would be hard pressed to stop Mary Ann from volunteering and helping others. She was the head of the Hospitality committee here at Crosby UMC. She was the first one here and the last one to leave more times than I can remember. If you needed something done, Mary Ann could do it or find the right person to do it. If nothing else, she could feed you. They say an army runs on its stomach, and if Mary Ann’s cooking, I tell you that army could sprint a marathon.

Her graciousness and compassion were in a league of their own, as was her determination. We like to remember the good times in life, but it’s the hard times that define us. Mary Ann had her fair share of hard times. One day around Easter, back when Mary Ann and Edward were raising their family, Edward walked in the kitchen with a tense look on his face. He gathered around the family around the table and announced that, after a long dry season, the crops had been scorched by the sun. Most of it was beyond salvaging. They would have to “tighten the belt a bit tighter” that year. Mary Ann, however, had courage. “We’ll make it,” she replied. “With God’s help, we’ll make it out.” She then proceeded to serve the children their breakfast, unable to know the future, but determined to survive. Naturally, they made it out, but it was certainly in no small part due to the faith Mary Ann had and practiced.

She reminds me of the story in the book of 1 Kings 17: 8-16. God told the prophet Elijah to go to Zarephath. There he would meet a widow to feed him. Sure enough, there was a widow, but she was at the end of her rope. Elijah told her to give her food, but she said she only had enough to feed herself and her son one more time, and then they would die. Nonetheless, Elijah assured her there would be enough if she fed him first. I can pretty much guess that she was confused, and perhaps a little sad, probably angry, but she did as she was told. And sure enough, there was enough food. Not only that, there was enough food for days and days, until the next rainfall when more food could be gathered. For you see, it is as the Lord said: the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail, if you give your trust to the Lord.

Mary Ann trusted in the Lord. She had the kind of trust that was totally and completely given, far more complete than anyone else. She knew that God would protect her, and it was the very least she could do to spread his protection to as many people as she could find, be it inside or outside the church. Mary Ann’s personal philosophy was that we are just passing through this world, and we need to make the best of it while we are around, because there is something much greater just around the bend. No matter what we do, we give all we can and be grateful for what we can do.

We gather here today to honor the life of Mary Ann Brown, because there is much to remember. We remember the good things, in spite of the sorrow of the past few weeks. A battle with cancer is a battle fought in the face of fear and uncertainty, but Mary Ann was a tough old girl. Some describe her as determined. Others say she’s just downright stubborn. Sometimes, however, the battle goes the wrong way.

We mourn the loss of Mary Ann Brown. We are saddened, because it doesn’t seem fair. But this isn’t the way Mary Ann would have wanted us to be, because she believed in the resurrection and the life God would provide. I can assure you, she has gone back home as she knew she would. As it says in Revelation 21, “See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away… See, I am making all things new… I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

You see, Mary Ann knew what she was doing. Her life was testament to the Kingdom of God. She brought a little bit of heaven to earth to make things better. She saw the glory of God, now she is crowned with that glory in heaven. We miss her, this is true. We wonder why it happened this way, and we question why it happened to her. But we can rest assured that God has taken care of her, and God will take care of us as well.

I’ll leave you with one more scripture passage. Psalm 91 was her favorite, and it seems like a fitting personal credo for anyone who knew Mary Ann Brown. The last three verses say: “Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” Amen and Amen.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive!

Here is my Sermon that I gave Sunday. Enjoy!

Title: Jesus the Transformer

Scripture: Mark 9: 2-9

“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwelling, one for you , one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had see, until after the Son of Man had risen from the Dead.”

Have you ever seen something incredible? I don’t mean “Oh look that kid just jumped over four barrels on a skateboard” incredible, or, “I got an incredible deal on my car insurance!” incredible. I don’t even mean “Dr. Bruce Banner just turned into the Incredible Hulk!” No. That is not the kind of incredible I am talking about.

We have a habit in our culture of overusing strong words, like awesome, ridiculous, or incredible, to the point where they all mean basically the same thing. By incredible, I don’t mean “really cool.” Incredible means “I just saw something that if I told anyone what I saw, they would think me a liar.” You would no longer be a credible source. If an event can do that to you, it is therefore, incredible.

Christians are not strangers to incredible events. Christ himself did many incredible things. He did things so incredible, that people today still have a problem believing that he actually did them. The more incredible the act, however, the more it drew people to him. The stranger the event, the closer he came to revealing his true nature, to revealing the fully divine aspect of a fully human messiah. Jesus did, in fact, reveal this nature fully to just a few disciples. This act was described in today’s scripture, and it is most commonly referred to as “The Transfiguration of Christ.”

Jesus was in the business of transformation. Every person he met, he changed in some way. Jesus was famous for his ability to physically change things that no other person could change until he came. But that wasn’t the reason he came. That wasn’t his mission. These actions were merely tools. His objective was to start a fire in the human heart. His mission was to change the physical conditions of human life by changing the spiritual conditions of the human soul, and bring about the Kingdom of God through his death and resurrection. But we humans have this materialistic streak that continues on into this day. If Jesus did not provide proof that he was the Son of God, his message would not be fully received. So what did he do?

He started small. Jesus took three of his disciples with him to a very tall mountain. The very act of taking a small group somewhere else for a powerful experience is an old tradition. In fact we still do it today. Call it a church camp, choir camp, UM ARMY, Big House, Walk to Emmaus, Women’s Retreat, Men’s Retreat, it all amounts to the same thing. We go other places to find God because we sometimes lose God where we live. I’ve got hundreds of examples of this. When I lived in Seabrook, I was about forty minutes from Galveston beach. Occasionally, I would drive down there to sort of clear my head. I was always a lot more at peace on the beach. The wind in my face, the smell of the salty air, the sound of the ocean. It all got me a little bit closer to God, honestly. I’ve always felt a bit more holy apart from everybody, surrounded by nature. I’m talking about a “mountain top” experience. They don’t have to be at a mountain, necessarily, but at a place where your spirit is refilled.

I like nature and solitude. Others like different types of experiences. I have a friend named David. He had a life changing experience at the Passion conference in Dallas a while back. For those who don’t know, Passion is a stadium filling worship experience geared towards college students, designed to ignite the Holy Spirit in a new generation. Thousands of students at a time are called to Christ at these events. David said that being there in the midst of all those people, he felt God’s presence in a way he had never though possible, and because of it he rededicated his life to Christ, spreading his message through new and exciting missions. I wish I could have been there.

Mountaintop experiences come in all varieties. They go back to Moses on Mount Sinai. Generations of prophets in the Old Testament speak of mountains often in their works. Jesus was no different. He chose to take those three disciples because he wanted to give them an incredible experience. He knew exactly what he was doing when he did that and he gave them the mother of all mountaintop experiences.

The gospel goes right into it. “He was transfigured before them,” or transformed. What exactly does that mean? The only description of this transformation that Mark gives us is that his clothes are dazzling white. What we are meant to believe here is that Jesus finally revealed to humans his truly divine nature. We know that Jesus was wholly human and wholly divine, but this event is his proof to the disciples. As things unfolded, two of the most important figures in Jewish history appeared to them: Moses and Elijah. Mark says that Jesus spoke to them, but he doesn’t say what. But truly this is an incredible event. Not everyday do two legendary figures in Jewish history appear, but they begin to talk to a man, who only moments ago seemed fairly average.

Now the three disciples Jesus took with him were part of his inner circle, the core of their group, and among them was the most famous disciple, Peter. Six days before this event, Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was. Peter opened his big mouth and blurted out “You are the Messiah!” Peter had a habit of being rather impulsive, which a lot of us can relate to. Jesus explained to his disciples what his being Messiah meant that he would suffer, be scorned, whipped, tortured, and dies the death of a criminal. He also said that he would be coming back from the dead three days later, but the disciples were shocked from the prediction of his trials. Again, Peter stuck his foot in his mouth. He did what anyone in his shoes would have done when given the news that someone he loved was going to die. He said, “Nah, you’re not going to die. You’re messing with us. Surely, God would not do this to you?” Jesus set him straight, but this is but a precursor to what would happen on the mountain.

Peter was moved by this new vision, this epiphany, this revelation of the true nature of Jesus, and he was terrified. “Rabbi!” he says (which proves to us that he had NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON, because he just SAW Jesus transform into a heavenly being he Peter just calls him “Teacher.” Not Messiah, not, Holy One, or Son of God, TEACHER.) “This is amazing! This is unbelievable! We got to do something about this! I know, we can build three little churches here: one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah…” Peter can’t process this. Peter knows this is amazing, but he appreciates it in all the wrong ways. This is not such a foreign concept. We see signs of God all of the time, but interpreting them is always tricky. What Peter was attempting to do was separate the event into understandable chunks. To Peter, Moses represented the Law, Elijah represented the prophecy, Jesus represented salvation. God then felt this needed clarification.

Mark says that a great cloud came over the group just then, and he says to them—interrupting Peter in his misguided excitement—“This is my son, the Beloved; listen to him!” First off, whoa. God doesn’t speak up like this often. Adding terror to an already terrified group, God Spoke and confirmed that Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God. This was God confirming that Jesus was not separate from Moses and Elijah, separate from Jewish history, but the culmination of Jewish history, the culmination of the Law, the culmination of prophecy. Jesus was the one we are to listen to. And the Disciples were terrified. I can’t even imagine what the voice of God would sound like. Most often we hear it as the still quiet whisper in our souls. I’m sure if I was there, I would have some trouble standing up. This is a scary event.

To make things scarier, as soon as the voice of God stopped, the Moses and Elijah were gone. Jesus had returned to his fully human state. Everything was just as it was from the start of it, as if nothing had happened. The experience was over. The incredible had occurred. The mundane had returned.

Every time I have a mountaintop experience, I want to tell people about it. I want to shout it from the rooftops and make a joyful noise for the Lord! I can’t contain myself! Nobody I have met that has gone on a mission trip can shut up about the wonderful experience they had, the great things they have done, the incredible nature of an incredible experience they endured. We want to proclaim to everyone what we have witnessed. And so did the disciples. If they could not build a monument to their experience on the mountain, they sure as heck were going to talk about it.

So we are surprised to see that Jesus tells them: “No.” Jesus wants them to keep quiet about it. Keep the secret of this incredible event until he has undergone all of his trials and risen from the dead, proving that he is the Messiah. From then, they can say all they want. Because of the very nature of the incredible event. He knew nobody would believe them. He needed to show them his true nature so they could be prepared for his trials. But that didn’t stop Peter from denying Christ. That didn’t stop the disciples from hiding while their Savior was whipped, beaten, and crucified. We say sometimes “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Those three disciples saw it, but they didn’t believe it. Not fully. Not until Jesus came back. Not until God conquered death.

We still, to this day, want proof. We need to know. We need to understand. But don’t you see? Jesus already did that. Jesus proved to his disciples who he was. Jesus proved that he was God and God was in him, and we are saved because of it.

Now here’s what I hope you can take out of this. Jesus wanted his disciples to take their mountaintops with them. Live with it. Live by it. Let others know it. Don’t leave your mountaintops at the mountaintop. Don’t build a tabernacle at the top of the mountain and leave it there—Take it with you! By transforming himself, Jesus transformed the disciples. Our mission is to make Disciples of Christ, but how can we do that if we have not been transformed?

I will leave you with this. People will not want to listen to you, because the story of Jesus is incredible. It defies our preconceived notions of what life is supposed to be. But this is precisely the point of his message, and it is precisely why we are who we are. Jesus rescued us so that we may rescue others. It is his incredible love that makes us, in turn, incredible. And so, it is our task to make his unbelievable, incredible love a reality for those who don’t believe so that we can bring about the Kingdom of God. Amen and Amen.