Ash Wednesday 2024 - What is Lament?

Ash Wednesday is about mortality, but it is also about recognizing our need for God as limited and flawed human beings. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season, we often talk about repentance, turning away from our sins and towards God. This year, through Lent, we will focus on ”lament” (expressing our sorrow, pain, and suffering to God in prayer).   Lament invites us to face our humanity. Lament is a natural part of our faithful, loving response to a world marked by sin and brokenness. A lament is also a form of praise. It is not ”just complaining.” When we lament, we are bringing our complaints to God because of who God is. We know we cannot handle our pain on our own. God is the only one capable of changing things.  Scripture illustrates for us what this looks like.  The psalmist laments to God, knowing who God has been (steadfast in love,) and who God has promised to be (one who saves), with a spirit of trust (Psalm 51:6). The praise doesn’t cancel out the grief or vice versa.         

   When we bring our grief, sorrow, anger, and pain all to God in prayer with honesty and trust, it is proof of our relationship with God. It shows that we need God and we trust God to show up when we are in need. Some of us may have been taught that ’complaining’ to God or about God’s perceived absence is a sign of unfaithfulness. However, part of being in a relationship is being able to go to the other party when we are hurting or things aren’t right. So our honesty with God around our grief or despair about any circumstance is proof of our faithfulness. Our God is big enough for our honest perspective on things and cares more than we can imagine about everything that grieves us.

  God is in the resurrection and redemption business, so we can rest assured that our God will have the final say. And that Last word will be “Jesus.”

There can often be a connection between repentance and lament, though this is not always the case as when, for example, we are lamenting the loss of a loved one.  In Psalm 51, David is Lamenting his own sin. 

Psalm 51:1-17 THE MESSAGE

Generous in love—God, give grace!

Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record.

Scrub away my guilt,

soak out my sins in your laundry.

I know how bad I’ve been;

my sins are staring me down.

You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen

it all, seen the full extent of my evil.

You have all the facts before you;

whatever you decide about me is fair.

I’ve been out of step with you for a long time,

in the wrong since before I was born.

What you’re after is truth from the inside out.

Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,

scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.

Tune me into foot-tapping songs,

set these once-broken bones to dancing.

Don’t look too close for blemishes,

give me a clean bill of health.

God, make a fresh start in me,

shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.

Don’t throw me out with the trash,

or fail to breathe holiness in me.

Bring me back from gray exile,

put a fresh wind in my sails!

Give me a job teaching rebels your ways

so the lost can find their way home.

Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,

and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.

Unbutton my lips, dear God;

I’ll let loose with your praise.

Going through the motions doesn’t please you,

a flawless performance is nothing to you.

I learned God-worship

when my pride was shattered.

Heart-shattered lives ready for love

don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.

The Psalmist laments his own sin. He is expressing his grief and sorrow to God about the things he has done that have separate him from God (verses 1-9). The way this psalm is written is deeply personal (I, not we). Especially in the beginning of the Lenten season, we must start where we are as individuals with deep self-reflection. However, not all suffering is a result of sin, or a result of our own personal sin. With that said, the psalmist recognizes and laments his suffering but is self aware and truthful in acknowledging that at least parts of it flow from his own actions and transgressions.

In verse 5, the psalmist claims he has ”been out of step” with God and in the wrong since he was born. Though this may seem off-putting to think of a baby with sin, I wonder why David felt this, prayed this, and admitted this? Observing the broken world he/we all are born into and knowing there is something wrong that needs God’s love and forgiveness to fix it? Looking at our human state and recognizing all humanity needs mercy, love, and grace. It is that innate sense in us that there is something separating us from God. And yet, our God pursues us, desiring that we would choose to be loved, that we would choose to experience grace, that we would choose to turn from our sin sickness and that which separates us from God toward God and into relationship.

 

In lamenting his sin, the psalmist moves to repentance. It is one thing to know that something is wrong and to name it. It is another to recognize our own role in it and take the next step of inviting God to work in us and through us. Verse 17 speaks of ”a heart-shattered life” as the sacrifice acceptable to God. This broken spirit comes from being uncomfortable and dissatisfied with what is contrary to God’s way for us.

Throughout the passage, David speaks of God’s presence and what God can do in and through us as a result of repentance. On Ash Wednesday, we are invited to reflect on something that needs to change in our lives, to identify the suffering that has come from it, and to both lament, express the pain and sorrow we’ve experienced because of it to God in prayer, and repent, turn away from the sin and towards God.  Perhaps it is a deeply personal lament you bring to this season, something you are dealing with or going through. A loss or grief that is weighing you down and in that case, there is a need only to allow Jesus to carry the load with you and by the power of the Holy Spirit, take you through the valley of the shadows into the joy that comes in the morning. Maybe you lament the systems that bog down our ability for all people to live with dignity and fullness of life. The things that make food insecurity, homelessness, prisons, scarcity, and fear run rampant in society. As we “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” perhaps we begin to recognize our role in perpetuating a status quo that does not resemble the Gospel we have learned or proclaim. And so we lament, we repent, and we turn our mourning and our knowledge into a call to action that guided by the Holy, will be about bringing God’s way on earth as it is in heaven. Lament can move us to action in the face of injustice. It is our call for God to break our hearts with what breaks God’s.

As we walk through this series and this season, may we seek to root out evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves and work together toward God’s preferred vision for our congregation and community. We will do so by using the ancient disciplines this season calls us to. Observing a holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word. Whatever you choose to give up, I would invite you to fill that void with scripture from our daily reading plan, with journaling about your lament and how God is revealing to you day by day how to heal and act for the benefit of the kin-dom.

We begin the journey of this season together, grounding ourselves in the two ancient facts of Christian existence:

1 our own human failings and our mortality, symbolized in ashes

2 our Lord who has conquered sin and death, symbolized in the sign of the cross in which those ashes are applied.

 Yes, from dust we are made, and to dust we will return, AND the promise is sure, Christ died for us while we were yet sinners proving God’s love toward us, and in the moment we profess our faith in his grace and love for us, we receive pardon and the gift of eternal life with him. Mortality is certain, our days on this earth will eventually end, but right now, we are living. So live for Jesus, be guided by his teachings, and grow as his disciple so that you can be a light for others and work toward the transformation of the world into the creation God intended.

May Trinity make it so. 

Sermon Echoes - About Our Father's Business

 

Sermon Texts - Luke 2: 41-52 & Mark 1:4-11

In our texts, we have stories about Jesus' young life and start to ministry.

Luke tells of how the young Jesus was with his family on a trip to Jerusalem for a festival, and in the packing up to head back home, his parents somehow forgot…him.

 

Back before we were parents of children, we were parents to our beloved dogs. Jasper and Howie. Jasper never wandered more than 10 feet from me or 5 from Eb, unless she tossed the ball farther than that, but Howie, he was an escape artist and a traveler. When we first moved to Mt. Tirzah, Howie loved to explore the fields and the wood behind the house, so we only took him out on a leash. On a particularly Sunny afternoon, I took the boys on a nice stroll down the road next to the house and through the woods behind our yard just to let us all stretch our legs a bit. Eb would be coming in from Asheboro that evening for the weekend and I knew they would be excited to see her, so I thought a bit of exercise would keep them calm when she got home.

They were asleep when she came in the door and went right to bed as we did so I was surprised when I was woken up by my bride in a panic. “Wake up Josh, wake up now, I can’t find Howie.” Eb was worked up into a fit that I didn’t really understand having been fast asleep and suddenly woken. I said, “The door has been shut all night, how could he have escaped?”, but she was gone. So I looked under the beds, his preferred sleeping space, and in my confusion searched the house to find the pup I had watched go to sleep just a few short hours before. In a moment, Eb was back in the house in tears wondering why I was not helping her look. More cognitively aware at this point I asked how he got out and she explained that she had let him out and while she was watching Jasper, at this point “your dog”, Howie had r-u-n-n-o-f-t.

Well not really, he was just in the backyard and trying to find all of his new territory when I found him, but he had worked his mother into a real tizzy.

I can only imagine the panic Mary and Joseph must have felt when they realized their teenager had decided not to join them on their return trip to Nazareth. I have seen the panic in my own mother’s eyes when she thought she had lost me in the mall or at wal-mart, but I was just a few steps away. Mary and Joseph had traveled a day without realizing Jesus was missing, Jesus was an entire day’s journey away, then it would take another to find him, He was missing for 3 days!

If you didn't know this was scripture, if you were just reading this story in Chicken Soup for the Soul, I wager you'd say, "What terrible parents". But we know this is Luke's Gospel account of Jesus' childhood and we sit and wonder what the prayers must have been when Mary and Joseph were wandering around the city in search of Jesus, whom they knew as God's child too. "Hey God, sorry to report, we lost him! Wanna send us another messenger to tell us where he may have went?"

Russel Rathbun, in his blog “The Hardest Question”, points out “Here is the problem: We are in worship and in society and it is after Christmas. God has come into the world. Jesus the Christ has been born into our midst. God is among us, but maybe there is a little bit of a feeling that when we started to look for him, we could not find him. We anticipated his coming for four weeks and we celebrated his arrival and now we just want to see him and hold him or be held by him, but we don’t see him among our party of travelers."

Jesus has r – u – n – n – o – f – t! 

It is easy to identify with the panic that they feel searching and not finding him, but the fact is Jesus did not stay a tiny babe wrapped in cloth, time is flying as Jesus goes from infancy to twelve in just a few verses. We are no longer in Bethlehem but in Jerusalem. Jesus’ parents are not gathered around the manger in silent adoration but are vexed, frustrated and, truth be told, probably just a little bit upset at having had to journey back three days to search for their missing son only to find him in the Temple. Mary asks him why he would stay behind and leave them anxiously looking for him and the scripture says that Jesus’ answer is one they don’t really understand. Is it one that we understand? “didn’t you know I must be about my Father’s business?”

What does he mean? The Rev C. H. Spurgeon explains it this way, “ how great an interest God the Father takes in the work of salvation. It is called "his business;"… See how he stoops to become a child, subject to his mother; and mark how he stoops to become a man, subject to God his Father. He took upon himself the nature of man, and though he was the Son, equal in power with God, he "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited," and "took upon himself the form of a servant and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."”

We see in Jesus' answer a shift from his being a child, subject to his earthy parent’s rules and household, to the man he was becoming. He begins here what we see him doing all through the Gospels, answering a question with another question. To make us think, to make us wonder, and to lead us to the realization that he is indeed Emmanuel.

Unlike our Howie, who did come home some 30 minutes after he wandered off and was as stubborn as they come to his last day, Jesus goes home with his parents and is obedient to them. Scripture says he continues to grow in wisdom and favor with God, to think how much God already loved him and yet each day God’s love grew for him. And he continued to be about the Father’s business, the work and ministry of salvation, the work and ministry of grace and love for all people.

This story, in fact, all of Luke 2 I would say, is a foreshadowing to the purpose and the people Jesus came to save, indeed the business He, his Father, and the Holy Spirit are in. From the angel’s announcement to the manger, “He came into the world that was his own, but the world didn’t recognize him.” From the manger to the temple, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” From the Temple to calling the disciples, to his baptism, his teaching, and his suffering on the cross, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” From the Cross to the resurrection which serves as our promise of salvation and grace given freely to everyone who believes, “to all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God.”

 We are the children of God and Christmas is not over. It is not just a one-day or even a twelve-day event. Christmas is the beginning of something that we as Christians get to celebrate throughout our lives. What other king would give up his thrown for you and for me? What other god laid down their life for you and for me? There are none and it is our call to be about our Father’s business, it is our job to go and tell the world the good news of the stable, the good news of the cross and the empty tomb, the good news of love and grace that extends to every person, that is big enough for the entire world, that sees beyond skin color, age, and gender, that calls each of us children of the Most High.

This day will we commit to follow Jesus passionately? Will we choose to be shining stars that point others to Christ who is at work in our lives, in our homes, our church, and indeed the world so that we too may be about our Father’s business.

Sermon Echoes - A Baby Changes Everything

 

    

It may seem strange to be hearing about the Wisemen's arrival this past week. 

Christmas may seem so last year (😊)  

We are into a new year with new hopes and dreams  

But the message of Christmas –

    the message of HOPE,  PEACE, LOVE, and JOY is for all days  

As is the Good News of Salvation – 

     life abundant now and life eternal is the promise received by the incarnation of Christ.  

Pastor, Theologian, and Poet Howard Thurman says it best in his poem, The Work of Christmas  

 

THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS 

When the song of the angels is stilled,  

When the star in the sky is gone,  

When the kings and princes are home,  

When the shepherds are back with their flock,  

The work of Christmas begins: 

To find the lost, 

To heal the broken, 

To feed the hungry, 

To release the prisoner, 

To rebuild the nations, 

To bring peace among others, 

To make music in the heart. 

    The Visit of the Wisemen has significant theological meaning for all of us. The star invited visitors from far away to announce to the religious leaders and the royalty the Messiah had been born. Talk about epiphany right! The text says that Herod was terrified and all of Jerusalem with him. They had gotten used to their power, The Religious leaders used to their seat at the table, used to lining their pockets with a little of what Ceasar took. And this baby,  if word got out about this baby, a messiah being born to fulfill the scripture… this baby would change everything.

It is very True, a Baby changes everything. This baby came to bring that change. Jesus came to usher in the way of God. We have read about it as our liturgical year got underway in the declarations of the Prophets, In the Magnificant of Mary, the angel's song to the shepherds, in the way he came. 
Friends, Jesus brings the change that shows us the way of God. Jesus' teachings turned the establishment on its head and demonstrated a love that tore down barriers to allow us in, to allow all people in. Jesus first message would be a reading of Isaiah 

   The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,  because the Lord has anointed me. 

He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, 

    to proclaim release to the prisoners 

    and recovery of sight to the blind, 

    to liberate the oppressed, 

¹⁹    and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 

Jesus closed up the scroll and announced he was the fulfillment of this passage.

Jesus came to bring about change  

Change through healing and wholeness  

Change through a rearrangement of how people were treated.  

This babe in the manger 

This child the Wisemen traveled over the continent to see  

This son of God – changed everything for the world.

"A Baby Changes Everything"     Faith Hill

A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition

The Wesleyan Covenant Prayer was adapted by John Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism (along with his brother, Charles) for the renewal of the believer's covenant with God. Wesley wrote the prayer was first used in a covenant renewal service held on Monday, August 11, 1755, in London, with 1800 people present. Since then, the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer has often been used by the people called Methodists around the world in services throughout the year but especially at the start of a new year. 

I invite us to pray this and make this covenant together as an opportunity to re-commit to our work to bring about grace-filled, loving, and redeeming change to others this year.

(Contemporary Version)

I am no longer my own, but yours.

Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you,

Praised for you or criticized for you.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and fully surrender all things to your glory and service.

And now, O wonderful and holy God,

Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,

you are mine, and I am yours.

So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

Let it also be made in heaven. Amen.

You can print this prayer to keep with you throughout the year. by following the link here

Sermon Echoes: Meet People Where The Are

 

I am so thankful to my congregations for the love they have shared with me over this Pastor Appreciation month. I feel so blessed and seen by these folks. They have come to mean so much to me over our four months together and I LOVE being their pastor. 

"We Are His Offspring" Kimberly Cash

Yesterday in worship, I told a story about Tony Campolo and Agnes, It turns out the story was turned into a short film with names and places changed by rik swartzwelder films.

(synopsis) It's the same-old-same-old tonight at the local diner. Jim, the owner, hides in the kitchen while the regulars retread the old banter. But a new guy walks in and sits alone at the far end of the counter. Soon a new idea shatters the dull routine. Will it continue to be the same-old-same-old? Not tonight. Not ever again...

 I have linked it below. (PG)

"The Least of These" a rik swartzwelder film (Based on a true story by Tony Campolo)

In Acts 17, Paul shares the message that God is not a deity to whom we simply bow down and make offerings in the hopes that the odds will turn in our favor. Rather God lives within us, and we in God, and daily we have the joy and privilege of communing with God and being led by God. As we share our faith, we should be reminded that we, too, have growing and changing to do. This invites people to a community of disciples who are learning and growing together, rather than into a club where they are expected to ‘join and catch up with everyone else.’

When we think of not only ourselves but of everyone as being made in God’s image, we are invited into seeing the ways that others are trying and the way that God is active in their lives. Seeing the Imago Deo or the fingerprints of God, in someone means that we are willing to make space to hear about their experiences, to understand other contexts, to be in conversation, and growing relationships. There are so many ways that story Tony tells could have gone, But it makes me happy to think there are people who set aside all the things that could make us call a person unclean because we truly have come to understand that what God has called clean we cannot call unclean. And God has called creation good. Yes, we all sin and fall short of God’s glory, but when we set aside our personal piety to discover the created goodness in others we can see Christ emerge and can allow love to lead the way.

Disciples of Christ are called to be a witness for Christ in daily life, to surprise people around us with the good news of the gospel. We’ve acknowledged over these weeks that putting our commission into regular practice can be daunting.

Author Michael Frost, in his book, Surprise the World teaches clear and practical missional habits for being evangelism in your daily life. Frost’s BELLS Method offers five habits for disciples to practice each week:

·        Bless others

·        Eat together

·        Listen to the Spirit

·        Learn Christ

·        Understand yourself as Sent by God into others’ lives

We, as the church, have a responsibility not only to teach but also to listen. Every person who walks through our doors or who we meet out in the world will have a completely different lived experience. We can learn from Paul’s shift in approach and we can seek the example of Christ by not trying to get people to where we are, but to enter into where they are and begin the conversation there. Sometimes that bears fruit immediately, sometimes it’s just a seed planted for a long journey, sometimes it’s a cake that goes home before anyone takes a bite, sometimes we learn more about ourselves than anything, but whatever the circumstance we have the opportunity to be a positive connection to Christ by recognizing and honoring where someone is.

Sermon Echoes-Good News For Everyone

 

Good News for Everyone

Jesus is the telos or ultimate aim of the Law, and our cruciform connection to him allows his love, the greatest commandment, to be fulfilled in our own lives.
                                         

In the letter to the Philippians, Paul uses a Confession of Christ, which takes the form of a hymn known by all of the communities of faith he planted. To this community especially, to talk about having the mind of Christ.

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant

being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Now the history of the Philippian community as a Roman army base, meant that the readers of this letter had certain expectations of their gods. 1 god didn’t die. 2 gods didn’t HUMBLE THEMSELVES. 3. gods didn’t expect worshipers to change how they did things. But this God DID DIE, HE DID HUMBLE HIMSELF and we are being asked to change our minds to be like Christ. For the Philippians community, it meant letting go of the social order the community had established and someone of high class having the same place in the community of faith as someone of low or no class. For us, perhaps it is letting go of our judgments of others, or giving our own opinions a rest for the sake of a relationship. To humble ourselves as an act of service to another is what Christ did.

The second verse of the hymn continues,

Therefore God also highly exalted JESUS
and gave him that name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Church this confession is our history, it is our present and our future. Our willingness to go beyond boundaries and to understand what God has made clean we can’t call unclean is all tied up in having the same mind as Christ. We have been given life by Christ offering for us, his humble act of service to all humanity. All of this makes it our honor and privilege therefore, to have open hearts, open minds, and open doors for the glory of God the Creator, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Sermon Echoes - The Great Commission

 

 The Great Commission

October 8th was such a full day of wonderful opportunities to be church. I am so blessed to serve the communities of Pilmoor Memorial UMC in Currituck and Mt. Hermon UMC outside Elizabeth City.  The morning began with a beautiful sunrise over the Currituck sound that always has this way of centering my spirit and reminding me how small I am in the scheme of things. God shows off every morning over here in Currituck and I love seeing the paintings in the sky and all of creation coming alive.

This week, I began a sermon series called "Everybody Tell Somebody" that will take us through the month and I am very excited to be sharing these messages, calls to discipleship, and weekly bible study. If you missed out on the message you can watch it here.

"What if we were to read the text this way, 'Go, therefore, and while you are going make disciples and baptize them into Trinity and the family of faith.' Doing so causes a shift in our understanding of evangelism from being a task we are commanded to complete, to instead, being asked to live our entire lives as a witness to the Gospel, meeting others and ourselves where we are along the way.”

There is a difference between “mission” and “evangelism” even though we often use them as interchangeable words and experiences.  So often in our churches, we do great mission work but struggle to find the opportunities for evangelism or to know the difference between mission and evangelism. 

Mission - apostolḗ  - ap-os-tol-ay'

sent or sending

Evangelism - euangelion - yoo-ang-ghel'-ee-on

to announce/tell good news 

As we journey through this series it is my fervent prayer that we will make a shift from "doing evangelism" to “being evangelism”.  That could look like (e.g., making conversation with a stranger in the checkout line or the server in the restaurant you frequent; listening when a stranger, friend, or neighbor is going through something; letting others go first in a line; helping a neighbor with a project; handing out food in a food pantry) allowing our lives become shaped by the call to "euangelion" (evangelize)

Step 1:acknowledging our doubts and fears about our ability to do or be evangelism does not prevent God from using us. God's perfection does not need ours, if we allow grace to work in us and through us God can and will use us for all sorts of good.

Step 2: take a relationship from stranger to neighbor, showing love and kindness to anyone we encounter. Showing them they matter enough for us to build a relationship with them.

Step 3: do not be afraid to say that the source of that light shining within you is Jesus.

What would it look like if we, as the body of Christ, were to see our call to evangelize not as one task among many but as an overall approach, structuring our days from morning to night? Imagine being that daily witness who baptizes others into a Christ-filled life.  Our evangelism or witness becomes an announcement, a telling, not just with words, but with our actions and behaviors too.

A culture shift like this for our church begins to generate the same kind of excitement as invitations to a big celebration, where it’s not just another thing we do. The Great Commission also becomes the Great Invitation - one that all of us can rally around and help share this amazing Good News. 

-May Trinity make it So-

REMEMBER! God Loves you and So do I!

Recording Worship Bloopers

We have all been there, right? Someone asks you to read a passage, you look over it and think, "Oh yeah, I got this", until it is time to read in front of everyone and your mind blanks on that random word in verse 8... 

Sharing this memory to keep me humble. And as a reminder to us all that when we read God's word with confidence, likely no one will question our mispronunciation!

Remember: God loves you and so do I!

-josh