HEROES AND VILLAINS

Some people have the mistaken impression that the Bible is all about people who have life all figured out.  Even growing up around people who said they loved and knew the Bible, I thought the people whose stories were told in that book were different than the wonderful, loving, fearful, open-minded, prejudiced, courageous, gracious, lying, straight-talking, faithful, cheating, generous people I knew.

When you open up the Bible you discover that this account of God’s work in the world includes heroes and villains, rascals and saints. It is so shocking, in fact, that I recently read an article in Christian Century about how much of the Bible we should share with children and at what age level!

This weekend we are beginning a summer-long series of messages we are calling HEROES AND VILLAINS.
Messages will be taken out of 1^st and 2^nd Kings. We’ll step inside the story of a showdown between a prophet named Elijah and 850 prophets of other gods on the top of Mount Carmel. We’ll meet a woman who’s just trying to survive during a famine when a holy man shows up and asks for a handout. We’ll be introduced to a king who whines when he can’t have what he wants, and whose wife does his dirty work. We’ll watch a young adult who feels so inadequate he doesn’t know how he’ll carry on when his hero—his mentor—leaves. There is even a story about God that shows us God struggling with whether or not to give up on God’s people…the way one man named Hosea struggles with the decision about whether or not to leave his wife.

You’ll smile at some of the stories. You’ll shake your head in dismay now and then at the people you’ll meet. You’ll want to kick the pew or chair in front of you at the thought that God works in the middle of this kind of mess.

This weekend we are exploring the 18^th chapter of 1^st Kings. It’s a dramatic, spectacular story the director of a Hollywood action movie might envy. Join us for “Who Will Answer?” and then hold for a summer full of HEROES AND VILLAINS.

BAD WEATHER & BAD THEOLOGY

Like you, we were watching the TV several nights ago with broken hearts as the pictures from Moore, Oklahoma were broadcast around the world. The devastation was stunning.

My first response was to sit in stunned silence. Then, I found myself crying. Finally, I wanted to get in the car and start driving for Oklahoma (where, right now, I would just get in the way).

Someone on the network asks a weather person what an EF-4 or EF-5 tornado is like, and he answered, “Well, we call a storm like this the Finger of God.”

This morning I saw a survivor interviewed. He and his dog huddled in a closet as his house came apart. When asked how he made it, he shrugged and said, “The grace of God.”  (I immediately thought about the neighbors who didn’t make it. I guess the grace of God didn’t reach all the way across the street or down the next block, if you accept his understanding of God?)

First, a quick word about our response to the storm.

We are praying.

We will be giving. We’ll be receiving a special, second-mile offering for Tornado Relief this weekend and next. Every dollar you give to United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) goes directly to help people on the ground – not a dollar goes to administrative overhead because our church supports the One Great Hour of Sharing offering that covers all relief administrative costs. UMCOR is, by the way, already at work on the ground as reported by CNN.

We will be going. I am sure there will be those in our Jesus community who will be eager to get to Oklahoma (where you’ll find a lot of UM’s) to help in the clean up and rebuilding. Right now we need to wait for things to clear, and for relief officials there to plan a way forward. Is God calling you to help lead or participate in a mission team this Summer?

Second, a word about the understanding of God behind statements like saying an EF-4 or EF-5 tornado is the “Finger of God.” This view of God isn’t Christian. This view of God drives people away from God. Frankly, to casually lay things like this at the feet of God is blasphemous.

Jesus says God causes God’s rain to fall on the just and unjust. (Rain was a blessing in the Middle East…so God is gracious to all.) When Jesus is asked who sinned and caused a man to be born without sight, he says that isn’t how the universe works. The man’s blindness, he says, is an opportunity for God to work and to do good.

Human need, loss, and disaster aren’t a result of God’s intentional decision to punish one place/group and spare another. A God whose finger touches the world with an EF-4 or EF-5 tornado would be a monster.

Jesus shows us a God who responds to sin with love. Jesus shows us a God who responds to hunger with good. Jesus shows us a God who responds to illness with healing. Jesus shows us a God who responds to failure with grace.

The weather in the Midwest has been bad enough. We don’t need weather people serving up bad theology as way of explaining what they can’t explain.

You realize that your friends and neighbors and co-workers are exposed to this kind of simple, cruel, unthinking understanding of God, right? They hear it on the TV and read it on the internet or in the paper. They may even think that is a typical view of God for followers of Jesus. Would you let them know we see God in a different way?

God is in the wreckage. Looking, searching, find, holding, giving…

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

P.S. Bring your checks and/or cash this weekend or next for the UMCOR tornado relief offering or mail your gifts to the church as soon as you can. Simply make your check out to FUMCB and mark UMCOR Tornadoes on the memo line of your check or on your envelope.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

The late Fred Rogers, star of a children’s TV show on PBS a generation ago, would sing, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” I wonder if the writer of the lyrics to that song had read the exchange in John 10 between a bright, devout religious lawyer and Jesus.

The lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer and says, “What is written in the law?” The man quotes scripture that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Then, the lawyer asks, “And who is my neighbor?”

I have thought of that question as I have watched the local news cover the issue of persons without shelter and as I have sat in on conversations among community leaders and clergy. There are some people who want to do nothing to address this issue. That level of indifference is neither helpful nor Christian, it seems to me.
 
There are other well meaning people who insist that local non-profits should be able to provide a year-round, low barrier shelter for everyone in central Indiana who find their way to Bloomington. That strikes me as unrealistic and, some social workers would say, ultimately less than helpful.

What does it mean to be a neighbor to the people around us? I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said “Love Your Homeless Neighbor” but Jesus doesn’t limit it like that; the person without shelter is our neighbor, the student walking down the sidewalk is our neighbor, the business owner trying to serve the community and support their employees is our neighbor. How do we respond to the different needs of each group… these different neighbors?

FUMCB/The Open Door has been at the center of the Interfaith Winter Shelter, and we will continue to be a part of that effort. Going beyond that to be a year-round low barrier shelter site is problematic with other ministries of the church. I don’t see that happening for all sorts of reasons.

We will continue to play a role in addressing this need as we have in the past. And we need to speak up for those in our community who are seeking to address deeper issues such as addiction and mental illness.

It also seems to me that this is a community-wide issue and it will require not only downtown non-profits, but non-profits across the community, city government and IU to work together. Frankly, a few downtown churches don’t have the money or people power to do it all.

The real question isn’t “Who is my neighbor?” That can be one way of avoiding involvement with the person who is different or lives far down the road. The real question Jesus pushes us to face is “Will you be a neighbor?”   How are we doing that? How will we do that?

The story of the good Samaritan is a reminder that when people are in need, they become our neighbor.

The story of the good Samaritan is a reminder that we can’t do everything (the Samaritan didn’t take care of every traveler in trouble all the time) but that we can do something.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

GIVE AND TAKE

Giver, matcher or taker: which are you?

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant argues that the key to success is helping others. That sounds like something a preacher might say to nudge folks to help with the youth or teach a Sunday school class or serve on the Wednesday food pantry team, but Grant is a 31-year old professor at the Wharton School.

Success, he says, has far less to do with looking after our own needs and instead asking the following question as we interact with others: Is there anything I can help you with?

“Helpfulness is Grant’s credo,” an article by Susan Dominus in the New York Times Magazine reports. “Helping is not the enemy of productivity, a time-sapping diversion from the actual work at hand; it is the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity.”

It turns out that people enjoy their work—and life—more when they are oriented towards helping others… giving to others. In his new book, “Give and Take,” Grant focuses “on the contribution of our work to other people’s lives” and says that “has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves.”

Grant says there are three kinds of people in the world: givers, matchers and takers. Givers “give without expectation of immediate gain; they never seem too busy to help, share credit actively and mentor generously.

“Matchers go through life with a master chit list in mind, giving when they can see how they will get something of equal value back and to people who they think can help them.  And takers seek to come out ahead in every exchange; they manage up and are defensive about their turf.”

One key, Grant observes, is to be a giver and yet also be aware of self-care and necessary boundaries. Without self-care, givers will burn out and without an orientation towards giving and serving, we become trapped in selfishness.

So who are you: giver, matcher or taker?

Paul is speaking to the Corinthians about a mission offering in 2^nd Corinthians 9, and he says:  “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion…”

So…who are you?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark