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Weekly Memo: Saying 'Death' and remembering 'Love'

4/27/2017

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If you’re not up to hearing a reflection on how fragile life can be for your Thursday memo break… maybe take a break from the memo today.
 
Life can change so quickly.  In one moment we are in a great mood…we’ve got things sort of under control… life is good.  And then the phone rings… the car swerves…the blood vessel bursts, and our notion of control and happiness evaporates. This happens all the time…every day… and on some days it’s our family.  This week it happened in our church family…twice. 
 
On Sunday evening, which is like my Friday night because I take Monday’s off, Katie and I were watching a movie at home. Within an hour my phone rang ...twice.  First it was Pat Nash telling me that Peter had just died suddenly while visiting friends in Arizona.  And then having just said goodbye to Pat, the phone rang and it was Lillian Bowlby’s daughter telling me Lillian had died that same afternoon…suddenly and surrounded by her family. 
 
There is a certain depth to the voice that must without preparation or warning say the word “death” to describe someone they love.  That depth is most often described as being “in disbelief” or “in shock.”  As I’ve listened to people over the years, I would add…“intense.” These voices are intense because the word “death” changes our lives so radically…. We have no idea what is to become of that one we must now say “has died….” We have to think about what we are saying before we even utter the word. And when the word “death” comes out, it is from a place far deeper inside us than most of us have ever known.
 
Today there is a certain depth to all my conversations because I’ve heard the words, “My mother… my husband… has died.” Today I’m remembering that life is fragile; the security, the success, the happiness, the hopes we all desire do not last forever.   They can indeed evaporate before our eyes. Recognizing that not just for my own life, but for all those I love and care for and at least for today, most anyone I talk to, causes me to pause for just a moment before other words are spoken. 
 
When the fragileness of life is for the short time we can handle it…within the scope of our daily awareness….I believe we experience what Jesus was talking about in John Chapter 14.  There on the last night of his life, when he is talking about his coming death, the voice of Jesus grows more intense with each passing minute and then he says…Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another.
 
Today, Jesus’ words remind me of the short novel, “The Bridge at San Luis Rey.” In this novel Thornton Wilder writes about the tragedy of a bridge collapsing.  The story line is about the characters who are on the bridge when it collapses…Wilder tells the story as if we could be any one of these characters or as I read it, any of the characters could have been someone I loved. On the very last page the narrator says….
 
We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” 
 
This quote has haunted me since I first read it over 20 years ago.  And although to some it is an alternative to the presence of God… I have always experienced the profound …the intense nature of these words as… “of God.”  You see, I do believe that, as I said last week, “God Never, Ever Leaves Us Alone.” 
 
As Pat and her family, as Lillian’s family…  must say, from depths we did not know existed, the word “death” this week… may the word that forever accompanies it be  “love.”
 
Keep the Faith,
 
Pastor Dan
 

 
 
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Weekly Memo: A faith Statement in Six words

4/20/2017

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Last week I stumbled upon the idea of creating a story in six words.  Not five words, not seven words, but six.  Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway started the idea with the sad story:  “For sale:  baby shoes, never worn.” 
 
I looked it up and sure enough, this is a thing.  Before you all go to check out the website, here are some I found.  There are the odd ones… “Fortune cookie reads, that wasn’t chicken.” “I love you she lied.” I liked the inspirational ones: “Three years after birth, he hears.”  “My dads met at Bible camp.”  And my favorite so far…”Wind blows. Sails full.  Journey begins.”
 
In many ways this last “story,” describes our experience lately here at Eden Prairie UMC. The Wind of God blows… Our sails are filling up… our faith journey begins.  I know that is more than six words, but you get the point.
 
I was thinking about this six-word story thing last night at confirmation.  It was “pull the questions out of the hat night.” This is when I ask the confirmation gang to each write down a couple of questions… any question they want to ask me. We put the questions in a hat and then pull them out one by one.  They agree to keep things I say in the room, but to let me use their questions in public. 
 
A few questions stood out this year: These two seemed a bit more academic but important. “Do you think the crusades were justified, excluding the fourth?“  “Are gospel books rejected from the official bible when it was created as the canon, words of God?” There were a few that were a bit current…“How do our beliefs tie into our society?” “What do you think is so special about this year in church compared to other years?” And the question I get every year… “Why do we have to be confirmed?” A couple were in the category of you have to be there to know why they are asked:  “Why do we have dumb dumbs in confirmation?” and  “Why the bell thing?” 
 
And then there was “If you were to write a thesis statement about faith, what would you want people to know about your understanding of God? When they read me that question, my mind immediately went back to the idea of a story in six words.  You see the thing I try to do in confirmation is not to get across a lot of information.  I try my best to communicate a few things that just might stick. This year they are…”There is nothing you can do to make God love you less.”  And “Heaven is not a place but is God’s kind of time.” I thought this question gave me an opportunity to add one more.
 
So it was quiet for a few moments… really it was… this time is fantastic… and I said, "God never ever leaves us alone."  I believe that!

​I went on to explain that my understanding of a relationship with God means a lot of things, but what it comes down to is that I believe…. When everyone and everything else has either eluded us or run as far away from us as they can get… (and at some time in every lifetime, they will do just that)….God will stand beside us….believing in God means I will never, not even after I die, be alone.
 
What might your faith boil down to in six words?  It might be a good thing to try out.  Or maybe today you could start by throwing your questions in God’s hat and listen to what happens.
 
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
 
 
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Weekly Memo: Living into the mysteries of Good Friday and Easter

4/13/2017

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There are a lot of names for today (Thursday, April 13) in our Christian tradition. Some people call it  Great or Holy Thursday or Covenant. Most of the time, we here at EPUMC call it  Maundy Thursday. On Thursday of the last week of his life as we know it, Jesus offers what he calls a new commandment, “That we should love one another.” In Latin, which was one of the first translations of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew, this translates as, “Novum Mandatum.”   So Maundy…Mandate… Commandment… If you ask me, it would make a lot more sense to call it “Loving Thursday,” but nobody has really asked me.
 
Tomorrow in our Christian tradition is called, “Good Friday.” It is the day in which Jesus is crucified… I have to admit I don’t understand calling the day anyone dies, much less the day Jesus is executed, “Good.” Forgive me if it sounds too cute, but Good Friday is “good” for us and “bad” for Jesus. We should really be calling it “sacrifice” or “commitment” or “martyrdom of Jesus Friday,” but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it. This year I’ve been reflecting about the good in the bad of Good Friday and that it has a lot more to do with how it is God is willing to stand beside us. This year we will have a service to recognize that at 7 p.m.
 
Saturday, in our faith tradition is an in-between day… unless you are Roman Catholic or follow a strict faith-based calendar. We sort of get a head start on Easter day here at Eden Prairie UMC by having an Easter Festival… Our Easter Festival is loads of fun with lots of things for kids to do.
 
Sunday is Easter Day; we’ll have three different services at 6:30, 8:30 and 10:00 a.m.  Easter Day is both wonderful and challenging. It’s wonderful because there is something in the air we breathe in together that day. The anticipation of people being together, the thrill of a special day, the beauty of the music and the flowers. Easter day is challenging, because at some point each one of us is wondering, what is that something else that seems so real, so palatable, so tactile, that we cannot see or touch or smell or quite grasp in order to name. 
 
This Easter we will use the image of the breath of God…the wind of God, the Holy Spirit of God and the relationship with Jesus Christ that comes with it to try to talk about what that something else is. Like all relationships, this relationship can be complicated, filled with questions and disagreements and most of all, mysteries.   On Easter day whatever our relationship with Jesus has become, we celebrate the mystery of it all… And like all real mysteries the challenging or exhilarating thing about a relationship with Jesus is not so much explaining it or clarifying it but that we get to live into it.  This living into the mystery of a relationship with Jesus is, if you ask me, what makes Easter so very real…and so very wonderful.
 
 Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
  

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Weekly Memo: Sharing Faith - ambush  is not a good tactic

4/6/2017

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If “Opening Ourselves to the Holy Spirit,” opens us to the needs of others…. then it follows that the needs of others would be our only agenda.  ​
Last Sunday I skipped the after church nap and instead of riding my bike, I decided to do a lighter work out at the community center.
 
I go into this little room for some privacy to do stretching… There is one other person in there and she begins to talk about what workout I am doing. And then she asks how am I feeling.  And then she asks, I’m not kidding, she asks, just after she told me the benefits of stretching at our age, she asks… “How’s Your Spiritual Life?…Do you ever think about your spiritual life?”
 
All I wanted to do was stretch my aching quads and hamstrings and back… and so, I said,  “I’m a United Methodist pastor, I think about my spiritual life often.”
 
The woman went into what sounded like a rehearsed speech, something about how she had never smoked or drank or used a bad word and how great she felt. And then she talked about how great it is to serve the Lord each day and every hour.   She was about to tell me about the church she was at, when I finished my squats and said, “Nice to meet you; I’ll see you later.”
 
Ambushing people like this is not what I have in mind when at the end of a sermon I say something about “sharing our faith.”  Excluding the thought from Don Prestly that it is a good excuse now not to go to the gym… here are three thoughts I’m inspired by this experience to share.
 
First….  I do not believe that God needs to force anyone into a relationship… if it feels forced, it probably is forced.  If “Opening Ourselves to the Holy Spirit,” opens us to the needs of others…. then it follows that the needs of others would be our only agenda. At the gym it is a bit odd to strike up a conversation about stretching… so why complicate it by bringing Jesus into it…The truth is, the thing I was complaining to God about in that moment was getting this thing they call “the cobra pose” right.
 
This is not about how many people we invite or have in church.  It’s not about correct beliefs… it’s about relationships that are deepened and enriched. The Message of the life of Jesus is that God works in this world in and through relationships.  When the Holy Spirit invites us to recognize the needs of others, it also invites us to stand in solidarity with them. The relationship someone out there might need the most right now is the one they share with you…
 
Finally for today…. The time for sharing something as deep and meaningful as faith is not something you choose.   It’s not like you wake up and say today at the gym… “I’m going to do this.” No, the time that is not forced…. the time in which you are needed… that time chooses you.  Like the neighbor saying…”I have no idea what to do on Easter Sunday for worship” and you pull out the bottom of the bulletin you tore off and kept in your pocket….  
 
Keep (and share) the Faith,
 
Pastor Dan

 
 
 
 
 
 
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