God is More - John 16:12-15

Yesterday, Penny and I got to spend time with our grandson, Toland.  It was so good that his parents, Josh and Leena, invited us back.  I got to spend time with my son, doing things like cleaning gutters and changing light bulbs.  I enjoyed it greatly. Penny did some things to help them inside and watch Toland while Leena got a bit of a nap.  I got to prepare a bottle and feed Toland three ounces and I got three burps.  It was great fun.  When he got hungry, he would go from one fist to the other trying to get them in his mouth.  You had to be really fast to get the bottle in his mouth in the right place at the precise second.  With coaching from my son and Toland letting me know what he liked and did not like, it was a great day. 

The intimacy of the day reminded me of the Trinity.  The relationship between God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and us is meant to be one of closeness, oneness, and love.  The word Trinity is not in the Bible anywhere but it has become one of the major doctrines of the church.

When early church struggled to understand this God in known three different ways, they turned to what they knew best, the idea God had to put us in families.  From the beginning of the Bible people have turned to family images to describe the love of God.

When family is good, each gives honor to the other, goodness and glory goes back and forth.  And teaching.  And most of all love.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY MEANS THAT GOD IS MORE THAN WE THINK

God is that loving parent.  As the book of Genesis begins: God said, let us make humankind in our image.  That was God the Creator, Christ the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit.  There are five references in the New Testament that indicate that Christ was present before creation, and was the Holy Spirit.  Christ is much more than a person who lived for 30 years, two thousand years ago.  He was a prophet and is much more.  Jesus became the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, because he showed us the heart of God.  He was God made visible, touchable, real.

GOD IS INFINITELY MORE THAN I CAN UNDERSTAND

There are just some things that are beyond words.  How could I describe the experience of being a grandpa?…I cannot put into words.  Jim Koelliker is always ready to show you his photo mug…with photos of his kids and grandkids.  I have one of those mugs and this afternoon I am going to put inside pictures of Toland and his parents.  I even showed my videos on my phone to the people in the bank this week.  When I see people starting to go the other way when I come, then I will know that I need to bring it down a notch.

Isadora Duncan, a Choreographer, once was asked to explain a dance she presented.  She said: If I could say it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.” I feel that way about my grandson.  The Trinity is a doctrine of the church that attempts to explain what God is like and how God acts toward us.  This is a very complicated dance, or doctrine…Father, Son, and Spirit or Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit.  There is no way I can explain it.  A dance would better.  The way I dance I will probably step on your toes and wander off. 

A dance would be hands up for God, hands outstretched for Jesus, and the motioning of the hands to come close for the Holy Spirit.

This is one of the least celebrated special days of the church year, maybe because it is the hardest to understand.  I could never in a sermon explain the Trinity.  There are times when I am not sure I understand it.  But there things that we can know and take a lifetime to savor, and to learn about, and most importantly to live.

TO KNOW GOD IS TO LOVE

The value of understanding the Trinity is to love and honor and serve all of God.  Theology leads us to adore God.  Before you and I were born God began gathering a people for a divine purpose.   And even before God created any living creatures, before there existed any created thing, God had with the divine being a generous, self-giving, loving relationship.  This God who is love then created the world out of the overflow of generosity. 

GOD IS TOGETHER….GOD IS MORE…GOD IS MUTUAL LOVE

GOD WANTS US TO BE TOGETHER IN LOVE, DOING LOVE

The early church found the Holy Spirit in their lives and it meant Jesus, in a way, was BACK leading to the same life Jesus lived, caring for people.  As they shared life together, they experienced God’s presence in a brand new way.  They became participants of God’s divine life. 

God’s love met them face-to-face in Jesus.  Now the Holy Spirit was bringing God’s love again.   We become like what we worship, their worship of the God who is love became full of love…a fearless love for God and a selfless love of each other.  The Trinity is the name the church gives for the love that lives in God, came to us in Jesus, known through the Holy Spirit.

Lois Johnson send me a video showing people with words describing what they have to face.  On any given Sunday, included there are some of the same things we see on the screen.  If we only knew we might say…we can know and the Holy Spirit will bring healing to us all.  That is what the church is about.

The Holy Spirit grants us peace with God, knowing that God is love.  The HS teaches us that we do not earn our salvation, God grants it.  Therefore our fears and anxiety are less.  Our behavior then is less rigid and restrictive.

For the university it means that while some are trapped in a scientific rationality, others are trapped in a rejection of it and push a faith-based dogma that is not willing to look at scientific knowledge.  Facts are good, statistics are invaluable, science is essential, research is important.  But there are so many spiritual truths that can never be proved.  The rebellion that is so strong by people of faith are just saying…leave room for mystery of God.  The existence and activity of God are breath-taking.

For me there is no split between secular and sacred.  God made heaven and God made earth.  All are parts of the other.  God is just as much present in the classroom or the business office as in church.  They are not separate in any way.  We have set up false barriers. 

I am so grateful for our global community.  The African church for example has much to teach us about life.  They bring a sense of many things that cannot be explained scientifically and they are live meaningful lives and get along just fine.

Thank God we are not in this church so rigid about behavior.  This is a place of grace.  The Holy Spirit is teaching us that love and friends are the essential parts of our life together.  Wild extravagant love is what makes the world go round.   One small Kansas Elementary School responded to the tornado damage and set up a lemonade stand outside the school….$750.

Jesus did not say the one who controls his life but one who loses his or her life receives it back.  I am for discipline, consistent discipline.  But the purpose of discipline is to give someone the stability and moral compass inside so they can have freedom.  Discipline is made for freedom…not the other way around. 

I think the real reason young people are away from the church is that so often the Church does not live the faith, hope, and love that are ours.  It means that suffering is something that does not destroy our praise. 

What we really need?

            Our sovereign God

            Salvation in Jesus Christ

            Help from the Holy Spirit: guidance and truth

            A few faith friends

            Music and Art

            Laughter and Humor

Prayer

Lord, please forgive those moments when we feel prayer is a drudgery or duty.

There are people who feel that prayer is a discipline that is just plain drudgery or duty.   May our prayers become sharing life at the deepest level with people about which we care deeply.   May our prayers expand life and not diminish it.  Give us time with you which increase our faith, hope, and love.  Come Holy Spirit and energize us and then help us to channel it to others.   May our prayers give you an entry point, letting You into the world through us.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Putting Another Leaf in the Table - John 17:20-26 - May 12, 2013

One experience many of us had as children is now fading away.   You knew something important was happening in your home when you put a leaf in the dining table.  Someone, not busy in the kitchen, would be recruited to find the extra leaf: in a closet, or under the bed, or under the table itself and get it ready.  They you unlock the handle and pull the table apart.   One or two leaves were added depending on how many extra you were expecting.  And you had to watch your fingers. It might be a holiday like Thanksgiving or Mother’s Day or Memorial Day.  It could a family reunion, a birthday, or graduation, or weddings, or an anniversary.  Or it might be for before or after a funeral when neighbors and church people started bringing in angel food cakes or green Jello salad with nuts or grated carrots on top.  Think of all the moms and dads that did extra work at these occasions.  Now we just go out to eat.  The leaf in the table was a good and special event in the life of a family.  It symbolized both… ONENESS AND THE WELCOMING OF OTHERS.

Around the table communication takes place…nurturing….listening…caring.  It is where we get fed and get fed spiritually.  TABLES GIVE GOD THE CHANCE TO FEED US SPIRITUALLY AND HELP US BECOME ONE.

JESUS IS PRAYING THAT ALL BE ONE…ALL BELIEVERS

In a way that is what we are doing as we consider a building addition.  It our belief that the Holy Spirit has worked among, in our hearts, and minds and said to us: “You are one and now it is time to add another leaf SO OTHERS CAN BE A PART OF THAT ONENESS.

I thought of this scripture as some of got to feast together last Sunday following worship.  We went to Pottorff Hall because in this building we did not have the space.   140 persons do not fit there.  I would like for us to first thank the Celebration Team headed by Carol Shanklin.  Her team members were Chris Shanklin, Becca Dale, Hannah Norsworthy, Holly Pishney, Holly’s mom, and Larry Shanklin.  At the church, Jennifer Shanklin headed up the team.  Room to Bloom – amazing music, decorations, food.  The music was great…the cupcakes…the decoration.  But the most amazing of all was the spirit of oneness and joy.  I do not know when I have been at a more joyful event.  The purpose of such a hall is for fellowship and we did have it in abundance.  And special diets were taken care of with professional finesse.

We ate together with glad and generous hearts.  The team that put that event together, did so with generous hearts and sacrifice.  If we read the book of Acts see generous as the word that describes the nature of God.  In Acts we see developing picture of a community that is taking on that characteristic of God by sharing what they have, especially food.    The disciples were taking on the ministry of feeding.  A meal together feeds us and feeds us spiritually.  Day by day the disciples who were fed by Jesus were taking their place in the divine ministry of feeding.  One clear goal of a church’s ministry is adding leaves to the table. 

If you look at the life of Jesus and the look at the whole book of Acts, you will see that a great deal of ministry and fellowship took place around the table.  Even the Last Supper, a ministry of feeding.  At the end of his ministry, he was thinking of what he had accomplished:  no book, no Ph.D., a bad reputation, no children or immediate family, no accumulated wealth, no property, and the disciples arguing about which of them was the greatest.  Jesus’ heavy duty prayer was for them and us, on the eve of his death.  He was thinking of the disciples (including us) in the middle of all his anguish of his moment.  Can you think about what he must have been thinking? 

And yet, he is stating here what God wants, knowing he will not be around to see it happen.  He sees that the most essential thing of all is unity. 

"Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there."

- Virginia Burden Tower

Jesus fed the disciples and when he rose again, they were back eating together and putting another leaf in the table.  You and I would not be here today if someone had not invited us and put another leaf in for us. 

In his book, Church: Community for the Kingdom, John Fuellenbach asserts,

“Only the community can provide the atmosphere, the concern, the mutual love, and the experience of the Christ risen and alive that will enable the disciple to live true discipleship in the world.”  Outside of the community we cannot live discipleship.”  It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a faith community and tables to raise a Christian.

It is certainly true that the world is being brought together by computers and phones…in some good ways and in some not so good ways.  We were shocked this week that a few computers could steal 45 million dollars from ATM machines.  We were shocked this week to see members of one group within a faith family screaming at another group regarding who could pray and sing about their faith.  Our Christian denominations are often no better, so obsessed with defining our church as different from another church.  The path to peace will never come when we demand there is only one way of thinking.  It is better to be together than be right all the time.  God can give us the certainty inside that gives us the strength that gives up on having to have our own way.  You can be vulnerable and can even give up the preoccupation with trying to fix your own security. 

I learned a great deal of history from the perspective Western white men.  I am so glad that I grew up in a time when I was allowed to discover Black history, Women’s History, India’s history, Islamic History, African History, Native American History, Latino History, and the history of mothers.   What holds us together in faith, hope, and love is the Holy Spirit who binds us together.   Unity is that the binding force is the work of God.  The characteristic of God we see in the Spirit is self-sacrificial love and singleness of purpose.  We see Jesus act that out on the cross. 

On the cross Jesus lived out a non-violent confrontation with the forces of evil.  The sacrificial nature of the unifying spirit which Jesus shares with God and us radically changes the world.   Jesus is God’s power shared with the earth…this is who we are.

Jesus came to enable us to establish a community of love that holds us all together.  Instead of glorifying our selves we are here to glorify God and we do that showing the world that the truest glories of life are around love….self-sacrificial love.

Do you feel in this prayer of Jesus to focus on the future.   Our “with-God” life is not yet all that God intends.  There is so much uniqueness about this church. 

Part of this certainty is a realization that life does not have to perfect to be good.  There is great joy in knowing life is good.  This does not mean that we settle for good enough in that we get lazy or complacent.  It means that we give up on being perfect and start going on to perfection, living fully.  We are always unfinished until heaven…and always growing.  And churches are places giving people room to bloom.

ALL THROUGH THE PRAYER YOU FEEL HOW MUCH JESUS CARES

Caring is the only power that never used up.  In fact it grows through practice and using it.  Caring is the only things that opens up the depth of life.  It is discovering the true meaning of life.  When we care we know this is who we were meant to be and what we were meant to do, even when it is hard or unpleasant. 

We have recently been deeply disturbed and puzzled by the depths of evil.   How two young men could so twisted in their thinking that they killed people with bombs.   How can it be that they had so much potential misguided?  God made each of us totally unique.  We really have no need to be like others.  If I tried to be like you….who would be me? 

Caring frees me to be who God made me and it requires commitment and sacrifice. 

We become who God made us to be in the reaching out to others.  A caring person is not in any race to catch up with or be ahead of anyone else.  A caring person does not base their life on the opinions of others but on the commitment to be free and responsible.

Descartes, make the statement:  “I think, therefore I am.”  Looking at Jesus, I can think of one better:  “I care, therefore I am.”  I believe that is what defines spiritual existence.   If it is trouble to care, it is much more trouble not to care.  Life is an extraordinary gift that is experienced in caring for others and with others. 

Another way to look at this is a strange math.  One + one + one = ONE.  Jesus + God + Holy Spirit = ONE.  One + one + one + one = ONE.  Jesus, God, and Holy Spirit and each of us = One.  And you can add ALL the “ones” in the world and it is always ONE.  Thanks be to God!

HEALING GARDENS ARE SO NEEDED IN THIS WORLD - May 5, 2013 – Acts 16

The encounter between Paul and Lydia took place in a garden, next to a river, just outside the ancient city of Philippi.  Paul has been guided to this garden by a vision from God to go and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to others.  The power and goodness and joy were so great that he had to share this new with-God life with others.  The new life is so important that the cultural boundaries no longer applied.  Lydia is a single woman, head of household, successful businesswoman, and a person of faith.  In this encounter Lydia’s life becomes even more full of purpose.  She opens her mind and her heart and her doors to this new life.  Did you notice that she invites them to her house?  Go Lydia.  Did you notice that she was a woman of prayer?  Go Lydia?  Did you notice that she has her whole household baptized?  Go Lydia.  Did you notice that she was a dealer of purple cloth for Kansas State?  (That is not in there?)  Did you notice that when Paul got to Europe following God’s call, the people he ran into was a group of “United Methodist Women” on a prayer retreat, in a garden, near a river, near a city?

What happened next for Lydia is even more important:  her home became a spiritual center for the church.  That space had a new expanded purpose because Lydia had a new purpose.   In the change that God worked in her heart, she because ready to open her home, her resources, her relationships to the new things God was doing through Christ.  Her baptism and the baptisms of her whole family, brought new life, not just to them, but to the whole city.  She was ready to offer what she had in a new way for work of God in Christ.   What happened as Paul talked to this women’s group?  New things happened that changed the world.  Lydia, in a garden of prayer is captured by a vision of a life where people have room to bloom spiritually even in her home.  God opened her heart.

Let’s go back to the wonder of Gardens. 

            “God said, ‘Let the earth produce every kind of living thing’….then God said,

            ‘Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take

            charge…God created humanity, in God’s own image.  God put us in charge. 

The Bible begins in a garden and ends in a garden.  The Garden of Eden is the biblical way of describing creation and its purpose and our role in it.   God created the earth and all that is in it to live in harmonious covenants.  The Bible shares story after story of how faithful God is and how much trouble human beings have being faithful.  The Garden at the end of the Bible is a city garden, the fulfillment and completion of God’s purpose.  The Book of Revelation is so misunderstood.  Its purpose was never meant to scare.  The purpose of the book was to comfort faithful people in very difficult times to remember that God is love and will triumph over evil and death. The Revelation Garden, the garden of heaven, is far more beautiful that any we have experienced on earth.

People need gardens for renewal.  In Tuesday morning Bible study we reflected on the spiritual benefits of being in Gardens.  They are a celebration of life and growth and good things.  Maybe that is why Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to make the decision to sacrifice all for us.  Just being in a garden reminds us, that no matter how tough things are, God is still making all things new.  Just recently the special populations of Manhattan got to double their space at the Community Gardens; to participate in growing things is a joy.   If you go down to our preschool classroom you will see by each window a garden.   I remember the day the men of College Avenue constructed and took to a Meadowlark Retirement Community household a raised flowerbed to allow residents the joy of growing things. 

Kansas State University was the first operational Land Grant University and before that it was a small Methodist college right near this property.  The visions that brought people to this place were to keep Kansas free of slavery and to guide the nation in research and education on how to help God feed us and the world.  This past year the university has been celebrating what grew out of that Methodist college so tied to agriculture.  Our own Chuck Marr wrote one of the histories for this celebration.   Kansas State University has advanced agriculture around the world and continues to do so. 

The world has changed and continues to do so.  We must make certain that there are places by spiritual rivers where people learn and teach about how good life is and how to care for it in a way that it benefits all people.  What we are doing here at College Avenue UMC is priceless and is worth our sacrificial giving.  We want this community of faith to be a spiritual garden of healing…and continue to do so for years and years to come. 

One of the greatest joys of our church is seeing how our children grow up and do great things in many places.  I could on for hours about youth who are doing great things.  God has been at work here through persons guiding children by faith, hope, and love.   Heather Hagstrum Caswell, who grew up in the church, is an assistant professor at Emporia teaching teachers how to get children to bloom.  Over and over children get something here that helps them grow into creative, life-giving disciples of Christ. 

The sole reason behind a new building is to expand our ability to help God grow disciples of Christ for the transformation of the world.  This means we are about the business of assisting people tend their gardens of family, work, and friends in a way that life everywhere is enhanced.  Max Lansdowne was on KMAN Radio, the InFocus Program with Cathy Dawes. Click on the Radio Website…and here what he and others had to say.

This week my thoughts were caught in how Jesus lived this amazing life of compassion and how others do the same.  On Thursday, Rev. Diana Chapel of Ogden Friendship House of Hope, presented to our Willing Workers Spring Lunch, one way she lives out the words of Jesus.  I was in prison and you visited me.  She goes into the prisons and participates in a 4 day life-changing event called Kairos.  It is the Greek word meaning special time or God’s time…not clock time, chronos.  She helps create a garden of spiritual growth in that place of bars and concrete and depression and fear.  She reminds those inside that they are still children of God and there is hope.  Roger Johnson and Carol Ott, Randi and Melvin Dale of our church do prison visitation.  How about a team?

           

What is it about Jesus that makes us want to live and love as Jesus did.  His question “When did I see you?” indicates that the writer wants us to think about a way of living that is like this…it is the way we are…it is the way we live. 

One thing I see in Jesus is a basic certainty about life that with God, all of life is held in ultimate goodness.  God is going to take care of it.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus answered the prayer, “Lord, what would you do through me?” with the trust that whatever was coming was not as powerful as the power behind him and under him.  I see in Jesus an inner gyroscope or compass which guides him no matter what.  Yes, there are moments of deep questioning…let this cup pass…have you forsaken me….but he was able in all things to look to God.  It was a relationship so strong it guided everything.   Paul had it…Lydia caught it.  May we continue to catch it.

Part of this certainty is a realization that life does not have to perfect to be good.  There is great joy in knowing life is good.  This does not mean that we settle for good enough in that we get lazy or complacent.  It means that we give up on being perfect and start going on to perfection, living fully.  We are always unfinished until heaven…and always growing.  And churches are places giving people room to bloom.

joy comes from using some talent or gift you have to meet someone’s need. 

All of the things I received in life…others did not have to give them to me.  They chose to give them.  My parents chose to sacrifice for me.  My parents gave up so much for me.  Teachers, the same.  Sunday school teachers, the same.

And nothing they did for me was something I could demand.  I appreciate how interdependent we are on each other.

Descartes, make the statement:  “I think, therefore I am.”  Looking at Jesus, I can think of one better:  “I care, therefore I am.”  I believe that is what defines spiritual existence.   If it is trouble to care, it is much more trouble not to care.  Life is an extraordinary gift that is experienced in caring for others and with others.