A Slice of Life

Back when I was 12 or 13 years old, I received my first subscription to Sports Illustrated. It wasn’t something I asked for or necessarily wanted, but as soon as the first issue arrived in the mail, I was hooked.

Each week, I’d impatiently wait for it to arrive. In fact, Wednesdays sort of became like a weekly mini-Christmas for me that year. I remember racing home from school, tearing open the mailbox cover, and looking expectantly inside to behold the present that had been left for me by the mailman.

But it wasn’t too many issues into that first subscription that I began to form a strange reading habit. While most magazines are meant to be read from front-to-back, I quickly learned that the best way to read Sports Illustrated was from back-to-front.

Why? Because that’s where you’d find “The Life of Reilly”—a weekly column written by Rick Reilly that served its readers a thought-provoking slice of life viewed through the lens of sports. And because I’m the kind of guy who likes to eat his dessert before his meal, open the biggest Christmas present first, and fast forward to the end of movie to get to the climax, I always found myself opening to the back page of Sports Illustrated first, because that’s where the treasure was hidden.

Recently, Mr. Reilly switched teams and moved from S.I. to ESPN the Magazine, but thankfully his column hasn't changed a bit.

I think what I find most endearing about The Life of Reilly is that it isn’t a column that peppers you with stats, opinionated rhetoric, and other sports-related information. The Life of Reilly has heart. It has feeling. It's always written in a way that helps the reader remember that there is far more to life than just sports—or anything else for that matter—and that every now and then it’s important to keep the big picture in mind.

If you’ve ever read any of his work, you know that Rick Reilly has an uncanny ability to warm your heart and tug at your soul. This week’s column was no exception. In fact, it proved to be just what I needed to read this Christmas season.

Maybe it’s what you need to read, too. That’s why I thought I’d link it here.

Enjoy!

Speechless

Yesterday I had an experience that was unlike anything I’ve encountered in my 5 years of ministry.

I was speechless.

Not speechless in the sense of being too awe-struck, dumbfounded, or emotionally choked up to be able to say anything. I wasn’t at a loss for words. I was at a loss for voice.

I guess it was sometime around Wednesday or Thursday that I woke up and discovered that I was coming down with a cold (an early Christmas present from the twins). It wasn’t until Saturday night that I entertained the thought: Will I be able preach tomorrow?

Now normally this wouldn’t pose a big problem; In a typical situation like this I could call on Sondra to pinch hit. The only problem? She had already called on me to pinch hit for her due to the fact that she was in the hospital with her daughter, Jennifer, all weekend.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and my voice will be better. Not perfect, but strong enough to preach at least.”

That was my hope going to sleep Saturday night. On Sunday morning when the human alarm clocks (aka James and Luke) went off, the sad reality was not only that my voice wasn’t better…it was actually worse!

So what do you do in this kind of predicament?

I suppose I had a couple of options:

1) I could’ve struggled through it and forced out a sermon with all the vocal grace of a muted bullfrog.
2) I could’ve surprised our Children’s minister, Andrew, by informing him during the choir anthem that as a part of his contextual education training at Candler he needed to learn how to preach on the fly. But given the amount of stress he’s under these days what with finals and all, I realized that dumping that on him at the last minute would likely cause his head to explode... which would be unfortunate because then I’d be faced with having to preach his funeral too.
3) I could’ve let the person who came up to me before the service and volunteered to preach to do so. But I’ve learned to never entrust the pulpit to anyone who volunteers to preach by saying, “Let me get up there. I’ve been wanting to give these folks a piece of my mind for years.”

I had some options.

But in the end I decided that the best thing I could do is throw up my hands in surrender and simply be content to let God be God, let the church be the church, and let worship be worship…with or without a sermon.

So in lieu of a sermon, we sang. And you know, the more I think about it, the more I realize just how appropriate that was for us to do…especially during the season of Advent.

Because after all, that’s what Mary did after she was visited by the angel. That’s what Zechariah did when his son, John the Baptist, was born. And that’s what the angels did the night Jesus was born.

They sang. And maybe that’s because, as H. Richard Niebhur once said, “There are some things so profound that they can only be said in song.”

This past Sunday the sermon was given in song. Was it a typical sermon? No. Will we likely do it again? Not unless we have to. But for me, it was one of the most holy moments I’ve ever experienced here at Briarcliff.

In fact, as we stood together as a congregation and sang the final verse of “Joy to the World,” which starts, “He rules the world with truth and grace…” I don’t know that I can describe the incredible sense of worshipfulness that I felt envelope me other than to say:

I was speechless.

The Cure for Helplessness

In my opinion, one of the worst feelings in the world is helplessness.

It’s that feeling you get when confronted with a situation or circumstance in which you want to do something, you feel compelled to do something, but you can’t. You’re helpless.

I hate that feeling.

I remember that feeling vividly from that horrific September day during my Senior year in college. I was in New Haven at the time. When the towers collapsed I recall sitting with dozens of the other residents in the Residence Hall wondering aloud: “What can we do?” We were only an hour or so away from New York City, so in a lot of ways it felt as though everything had just happened in our own backyard.

There were about six of us who wanted to actually go to New York and help. Help how? We didn’t know. But we wanted to do something—anything—to help right this unthinkable wrong. But when we tried, we were told we couldn’t. The highways and bridges were closed. Train and subway activity was suspended indefinitely. Although our efforts were appreciated, we were essentially told, “Thanks, but no thanks.” And with our heads left spinning confused, frustrated, and grief-stricken, there was only word that would adequately described how we felt: helpless.

I hate that feeling.

But it’s something that I’ve felt a lot lately. It seems like every time I turn on the TV these days there is some story or headline about the latest tragic disaster that has devastated another part of the world. Hurricanes, Tsunamis, Flooding, Wildfires. The list is practically endless.

Just a few weeks ago, I remember watching CNN as they showed live footage from the Midwest where flooding was wiping out entire neighborhoods. The most disturbing piece of footage featured a house whose foundation was perched on the upper banks of the Mississippi River. As the news anchor offered running commentary, we watched in shock as the house slowly gave way and finally plunged into the raging torrent below and was swept away.

I can hardly describe how I felt as I thought about the lifetime of memories and irreplaceable items like family photo albums and home videos that were senselessly swallowed by the rushing river. It was a heartbreaking thing to witness. And sitting there in my living room, I remember wishing there was something I could do but ultimately realizing that there wasn’t. And once again, that unfortunately familiar feeling swept over me. I felt helpless.

Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I have a hunch that you’ve felt this way before too. I know that Hurricane Katrina had this effect on a lot of people at our church, because not only did we help feed and shelter many of the New Orleans transplants that came to Atlanta for refuge, but we also took up an offering that amounted to more than $10,000 to go towards the relief efforts. For a church our size that’s a staggering number.

Why did we give so much? Let me answer that by saying, I don’t know. But if I had to guess it’s because most of us felt otherwise helpless. Most of us felt compelled to reach deep into our pockets out of a heartfelt conviction that says, “I may not be able to do much, but I can at least do this.” And so we gave. To alleviate the frustration of our helplessness, we gave. And it turned out to be the most generous outpouring of charity I’ve ever seen.

Have you ever felt helpless? I’m sure you have, in one way or another. But starting this Fall, Briarcliff UMC is going be a part of something that wants to help change that.

With the help of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, we are going to form a Disaster Response Care Ministry Team right here at our church.

What does a DRCM Team do? At its most basic level, it turns our helplessness into help. In other words, it provides spiritual and emotional care in the wake of disasters. Working with other local congregation DRCM Teams, we’ll mobilize a group of volunteers that will go and help connect survivors with the resources they need in the event of a crisis.

Of course, we won’t be expected to just show up at the scene of an emergency without knowing what to do. That’s why all of the members of the Briarcliff DRCM Team will go through a free training programming that helps explain the basics of spiritual and emotional care and theology following disasters. The training will help us understand the help and care we can provide as well as the care we can't provide.

In other words, it’s a training program that recognizes, “We may not be able to do much, but at least we can do this” and then shows us how to do it.

Interested? If so, I’m the guy you’ll want to contact. How do you contact me? Well, there are several ways. You can leave a comment right here on this blog. You can email me at Jeremy@Briarcliffumc.com. You can call the church office. Or if you prefer alternative methods, I will respond to any of the following:

Smoke Signals
Telegram
Telegraph
Morse Code
Skywriting
Vulcan Mind-meld
Message in a Bottle
And even Hieroglyphics inscribed on my office door.

But please, whatever you do, don’t send me a sheet cake or giant cookie with your information spelled out in frosting. You see, I’m trying to cut back. And my best hope for maintaining my resolve is to simply not be faced with temptation. So I don’t want to see any message-laden confections waiting for me in my office. If there are, I will be forced to throw them out. Because the truth is, my willpower is rather weak. I buckle under the weight of seduction that cupcakes and triple-fudge brownies represent. In fact, when it comes to desserts and my ability to resist temptation, some might say that I tend to feel a bit, well, helpless.

And I hate that feeling.

1st Century iPod

Recently, I bought my wife an iPod Shuffle--you know, the miniature version of Apple’s mp3 player that’s about half the size of a stick of gum?

Now I have to confess that although I truly intended this be a gift for Sharon, I’ve been getting quite a bit of use out of it. I can’t even begin to tell you how handy this little thing comes in when washing the car or mowing the lawn or drowning out the sound of crying 3-month old twins.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve really enjoyed using it while jogging. The nicest feature about the Shuffle is that it’ll clip right onto your clothes, so your hands are completely free to do whatever they please while running—you can wave at a neighbor, wipe sweat from your brow, or, if you’re like me, clutch your chest as you experience the early stages of cardiac arrest. It’s very liberating!

But, admittedly, the iPod shuffle has very little functionality. It’ll play music, it’ll shuffle your playlist, but that’s about it. No frills. No bells and whistles. I have another version of the iPod that can do much more than this little postage stamp of an mp3 player could ever hope to do.

But here’s the thing: the iPod shuffle’s appeal isn’t its endless functions or limitless features. Its popularity is in its portability. The fact that you can take it virtually anywhere and use it while doing virtually anything is what makes the iPod shuffle so great.

And I think there’s a lot to be said about the virtues of portability. Just ask the Apostle Paul. He’d tell you that the Church wouldn’t have survived without it.

You see, when Paul was appointed to be the apostle to the Gentiles, he found out very quickly that among the many tasks that were listed on his job description, traveling and preaching were at the top.

And if you travel a lot, you know how important portability is when it comes to your luggage. There’s nothing worse than having to haul a massive suitcase or bag that’s too big, too heavy, or doesn’t have wheels.

So imagine Paul’s dilemma when he’s charged with the responsibility of transporting the immeasurable freight of the Gospel--the burden of carrying on his shoulders the immense message of the love of God in Jesus Christ.

A message so huge that he said to the church in Ephesus, “I pray that you may have the power, together with the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”

It was a lot to carry. But you know what? He did it. He actually did it. And this is how: by making the Gospel portable.

Now, when I say that he made the Gospel portable, I don’t mean that Paul went around handing out pocket-size versions of the Bible or that he went from town to town passing out tracts.

What I mean is that Paul took the immensity of the Gospel message and distilled it. He boiled it down to its very essence and then framed it in a way that made it easy to carry with him.

Take Romans 10:8-10 for instance:

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,”
and believe with your heart God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with the heart that you believe and are justified,
And it’s with the mouth that you confess and are saved.

Now at first glance, it may seem like a lot to remember. But notice what he did. He created a little 4-line poem, a quatrain. The more technical term is kiasmus.

And what makes it easy to remember is the shape of the poem. It’s got an A-B-B-A form to it. It’s Mouth-Heart-Heart-Mouth.

“If you confess with your mouth…believe with your heart…it’s with the heart you believe…with the mouth you confess.” Pretty easy to remember it that way, isn’t it?

2 Corinthians 8:9 is another example:

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich."

Did you catch the pattern? Rich-Poor-Poor-Rich.

The great thing about Paul’s method is you don’t need to write it down or spend hours trying to memorize it. He makes it simple. It’s the kind of thing you can slip into the back pocket of your mind and pull it out whenever you need it.

And for Paul that was important. Because whether you’re in prison (which he was a lot) or on a mission trip or just sitting with a friend at the local coffee shop, you had with you the Word of faith. Right there at your disposal, you had the heart of the Gospel.

In a lot of ways, Paul’s Gospel message is a lot like an iPod Shuffle: it’s compact, simple to use, and easy to take with you.

In fact, the only difference between the two that I can see is that one is best used with earphones…the other is best used with a megaphone.

"Lord, have mercy..."

In preparation for our September sermon series, "If you could ask God just one question...," we've been soliciting questions from the congregation.

And not just any questions, but deep, challenging questions. We don't want any theological softballs lobbed underhand to homeplate. We want to see 100 mph heat. We want your best stuff. We're looking for the kind of questions that'll make us step out of the batter's box for a minute and wonder what we've gotten ourselves into. And after gathering our composure, widening our stance, and choking up on the bat a little, we'll do our best to swing for the fences.

Now, at the risk of giving our church a big head, I have to say that after looking over some of the questions that have been submitted, I've been impressed. Briarcliff UMC never disappoints when it comes to pushing the theological envelope.

Now granted there are some questions that we've received that are difficult to discern what exactly is being asked. There are others that are some of the most honest and penetrating questions I've ever seen.

But then there are some questions that while they are worthy of an answer, they most likely won't make it to the pulpit. The reason? They're just not meaty enough to write an entire sermon about. Good questions, to be sure--but it just won't take 20 minutes to answer them.

So what I've decided to do is use this blog as a forum to answer as many of those questions as I can.

And the first question that I want to address is one that really caught my eye. It was simple and straightforward, without any kind of explanation as to how the person wanted the question to be answered.

The exact question was written like this: "Romans 9:15- God has mercy on whom he chooses? "

Now, my best guess regarding this question is that the issue at hand is an apparent difficulty in understanding how God can be so seemingly subjective and partisan with His mercy. The verse in question says, "For [God] says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

And to be honest, I can see where one might find such a statement questionable.

Because, on the one hand we think of God as being fair and just and all-loving. And yet on the other, it's possible to read this verse and think that God is uneven and prejudicial with his distribution of mercy. Because it stands to reason that if there are some whom God chooses to have mercy on, there must be some whom God chooses not to extend His mercy to, right?

And that might be a probable conclusion if this were the only verse we had related to God and God's mercy. But thankfully--mercifully--Jesus actually had a lot to say about the subject. In fact, if we were to bring this verse from Romans to Jesus and question him about it, I'm convinced that he would look at it, smile, and say, "Every word of that is true."

And if we pressed him and said, "But Jesus, doesn't that seem a bit unfair? God has mercy on whom He wants? Isn't God being biased here? Doesn't that seem like a form of divine discrimination?"

And again, I picture Jesus smiling and saying, "It's not discriminatory when the "whom" of God's mercy includes everybody. You see, God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt. 5:45). He is kind even to the ungrateful and the wicked (Luke 6:35)."

And given the opportunity, I'm sure Paul--who penned the original verse in question in his letter to the Romans--would affirm Jesus' contention that God's mercy is universally generous.

In fact, once when he was writing to his friend, Timothy, Paul said: "Here's a word you can take to heart and depend on: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I'm proof—Public Sinner Number One—of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now he shows me off—evidence of his endless patience—to those who are right on the edge of trusting him forever. " (1 Timothy 1:15-16)

So, the bottom line is this: God does choose to have mercy on whom He has mercy. And that "whom" includes you, me, and every other unworthy soul in the world.

Therefore the real question, in my opinion, is: "In light of God's lavish mercy, how should we respond?"

And do you know what I think Jesus would say? "Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful" (Luke 6:36).

The gospel according to who?

Every time I log-in to the blogspot website and see the title of my blog staring me in the face, I can't help but wonder: "Is it sacrilegious to title my blog: The gospel according to Jeremy? Does that come across as a tad irreverent?"

I suppose it would be if I were trying to elevate my blog to the canonical status of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But, of course, that's not the case. (Not by any stretch of the imagination!)

When I hear the word gospel, I think of its literal translation: good news. In the Bible, the greek word is evangelion, which means "to bring or announce good news." It's like in Luke 2 when the angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds who were watching their flocks on the night shift. What was the angel's purpose? To bring them the gospel--or good news. He said, "I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people."

In so many ways, that angel was the first evangelist documented in the New Testament. Why? Because he was there to bring the good news of the birth of Jesus to the shepherds.

And really, if you think about it, isn't that our primary Christian task? To be bearers of the good news as we've come to know it in Jesus Christ? I would argue that it is. Which is exactly why I've named this blog "The gospel according to Jeremy."

Because if there's one thing I've learned about the gospel, it's that it's not one-dimensional. It's not something that is fixed and flat and viewable only through the lens of a single perspective. No, the gospel has a multiplicity of dimensions and it takes a multiplicity of perspectives to view it in its fullness. The gospel is complex and complicated. It has all sorts of nooks and crannies that need to be explored and investigated. And I believe that each one of us has a uniquely distinctive perspective on the gospel that God calls us to share with the world.

So this blog is my unique perspective on the good news. It is the gospel according to Jeremy.

But what I'm interested to know is: What's the gospel according to you?

The Hardest Word

Over the past few months, our two year old has become quite the little mockingbird. If you watch her close enough, you’ll see her sitting silently in the living room or kitchen absorbing the conversation going on around her like a sponge. Watching her, you can almost see the gears turning in her head. She has that look on her face that wonders, “How do I get the words that just went in my ear to land on my tongue and somehow form on my lips?” And after mulling it around in her head for a few seconds, she does her best to imitate whatever she just heard.

And you know what? She’s getting pretty good at it. She can string a 3 or 4-word sentence together with the best of them.

But despite her ever-expanding vocabulary, there are some words that prove to be too difficult for her. Try as she might, anything that starts with a “Th” or “Cr” sound are just too hard for her to pronounce.

But in time, she’ll get it. Just like we all did at some point. I can think of the various times over the years that I did battle with some serious words. Words of Kilimanjaro-size proportion. Words that, in comparison, make Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious look like “Run, Spot, run.” I remember when I was first confronted with that behemoth of a word: Antidisestablishmentarianism. What a mouthful.

But after a few slip-ups and a couple of attempts at sounding it out slowly, I finally got it. And in time I learned some others. Eschatological. Superlapsarian and infralapsarian. Even transubstantiation. Of course, these words don’t have much use. Just try using one at a dinner party sometime and see how popular you don’t become. But nevertheless, it feels good when you finally grab hold of a word and master it.

But there are some words I don’t think I’ll ever master. I can think of one particular word that no matter how many times I practice and rehearse it, it still remains, for me, the most difficult word to pronounce in the entire English language.

Do you know what it is?

It’s goodbye.

Haven’t mastered that one yet. Not by a long shot.

And yet this weekend many of my friends and colleagues around the North Georgia Annual Conference will have to do their best to say it. To their friends, to their neighbors, but most of all to their churches. By the grace of God, I won't have to say that word to our church for at least another year if not more. But like it or not, the time will come.

You see, in the United Methodist church we pastors are not hired and fired at will. We’re appointed, which basically means that if and when the Bishop deems it necessary, we are asked to move from one church and to serve another.

Sometimes we serve in a particular church for a long time—sometimes 15 or even 20 years or more. Other times, we can serve for a time as short just 12 months. But regardless of the length of one’s tenure, the reality that all United Methodist pastors and churches face is that at some time they will have to utter that fateful word: “Goodbye.”

And that’s a difficult thing to do. Especially when it means saying goodbye to people you love.

This weekend, our church will have the painful joy of saying goodbye to some of our dear friends, Jungil and Myongah. They’ve been appointed to serve in the local church in Illinois. And I know that it’s going to be extremely difficult to say goodbye, but I’ve decided that I’m going to force myself to do it.

Do you know why? Because I know that God is calling them to be exactly where He needs them most.

Truth be told, it took me a while to come to that realization. When I was first told that I had better start practicing my “goodbyes” I thought, “Surely, this is some kind of mistake. The Rhees can’t move to Illinois. They need to stay here, where they’re loved and appreciated and needed.” If I had my way, they wouldn’t be going anywhere.

But then I remembered a verse from Proverbs 19: “Many are the plans in the human heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

What an important reminder. A reminder that says, “You may think you have it all figured out. You may think you know what’s best. You may think you know where you need to be. But in the end, it’s God who is in control.”

And so I’ve come to realize that the ultimate truth is this: God knows exactly what He’s doing by moving the Rhees to Illinois. It may not be entirely clear to us why right now, but I guess that’s why that whole “trust and obey” is so important.

So, this Sunday we’ll say goodbye to the Rhees. Does that mean that I have to like it?

No.

But will I trust that God will take care of them and us as we say it?

Absolutely.

To Blog or Not to Blog...

That is the question.

The truth is, I'm not a big fan of blogs.

Not that there's anything wrong with them. For the record, I'm pro-blog. But, so often when I come across a random blog, I wonder: "Doesn't this person have something better they could be doing with their time?"

I know, I know. Blogs are supposed to be an outlet for people. So, regardless of whether the substance of the blog is worth reading, that isn't really the point. People blog because it gives them a soapbox to stand on or an outlet with which they can vent. Some blogs I've read have been informative, inspirational, and thought-provoking. But more often than not, I skim the first few paragraphs only to find myself grieving over the fact that I'll never get those 2 minutes of my life back.

The most unfortunate kind of blogs that I've run across are the kind that seem contrived and artificial. Admittedly, they're almost always church-based blogs written by pastors. When reading them I get the sense that during a weekly church staff meeting some good-intentioned soul spoke up and said: "You know, blogging is pretty popular these days. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who'd love to see what's on your mind, Pastor. Whadda ya say?"

And with good intentions in their hearts and perhaps the unspoken hope that this might draw a few more folks into the church, they create a blog...or maybe more appropriately spelled, a "blahg." And because this just becomes one more item on the pastor's "to-do" list, the substance is almost always shallow and uninteresting.

So why would I want to start a blog?

That's the question I've been struggling with over the past few weeks. And while there are quite a few reasons I can think of why I wouldn't, the one reason why I would is simple: I love to wrestle.

Not wrestle in the WWE sense of the word. You won't see pictures of me dressed in ill-fitting spandex shorts or with copious amounts of face paint on my face or even with an over-sized championship belt hoisted just above my aforementioned spandex shorts. (Although it might be kind of cool to have a ridiculous wrestling moniker embroidered on my clergy robe, like the "Sermonator.")

Rather, I mean wrestle in the theological sense of the word. Like when Jacob wrestled with God. Because I've found that it's only when we wrestle with matters of faith--when we really lock horns with the deepest and most difficult questions of life-- that we ultimately are blessed with the experience that Jacob had: He saw God face-to-face.

Now, of course, I don't mean that in the literal sense. But figuratively speaking, I don't know of any other way to truly get to know and understand the holy mystery that is God than to roll up my sleeves and grapple with this thing we call faith. Because in my experience, it's in the tussling and toiling that God reveals Himself to us.

And so, my conclusion regarding a blog was this: What better place to wrestle with the thorny issues of faith than right here in the blogosphere? A place not only where I can post my own questions and thoughts, but where others can respond, dispute, disagree, and debate.

Because, after all, the most profound truths aren't stated in a monologue; they arise out of a dialogue. And that's my ultimate hope for this blog. Not just to have a place to post my own contemplations, but more importantly to create a place where we can engage in conversation.

Do you like to wrestle? If so, grab your spandex shorts and jump in the ring. The Sermonator is waiting.