Resolve for Spiritual Health

Most of us think of New Year's resolutions for physical health:  lose weight, eat better, move more, drink water etc.

Spiritual health is just as important as physical health.  In fact they are interconnected.  Our physical bodies and spiritual bodies are a part of each other.  We can exercise  and eat right but if we don't take care of our spirit/soul then we are still missing a piece of optimum health.

So what does spiritual health look like?  This is a good question.  I googled spiritual health and came up with 99% pictures of people doing yoga.  And I have to laugh because yoga is good, I love it, but its not the only way to be spiritually healthy.  Its just the biggest fad, and it new to our culture so it is easy to point out.  Prayer, compared to yoga, seems boring.  Worship, compared to yoga, is so unhip.
hmmmmmm.    So many seekers try yoga and drift to Buddism, without trying some of the spiritual practices of Christian tradition.

Over the past 2,000 years Christianity has produced many spiritual masters such as Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Benedict, more recently there have been CS Lewis, Thomas Merton, and Barbara Brown Taylor.   These are only a few.  They have produced masses of books, poems, songs, prayers, meditations and philosophies for us to learn about spiritual health.   Pick a person, read about them and their spiritual practices.  And then practice.

The most important thing about spiritual health, like physical health, is not what you know  but whether you practice.  Practice prayer.  No one is perfect in prayer.  We practice it.  Practice meditation.  Practice worship.  Practice giving your worries and struggles to God.  Practice your faith.

Resolve for spiritual health in 2015 by resolving to practice a way to draw nearer to God and more in balance with body-mind-spirit.

Hear an audio introduction to Christian Meditation here by Laurence Freeman, an Benedictine monk who has made his life practice to teach meditation.

Happy Hanukkah!

Hanukkah, or the Festival of the Dedication, is a Jewish holiday that remembers how God was with the people during a time of great struggle.  The Greek Emperor Antiochus persecuted the Jews and wished to make them give up their identity, their God and their temple worship.  His troops swept into Jerusalem and took over the temple,  bringing in statues of the Greek gods and making an offering of pigs -- heretical to the Jews.  The people revolted, and took back the temple.  In order to rededicate the temple to the One God, they needed oil to relight the eternal flame.  But in the sacking of Jerusalem they could only find enough oil for one day.  God made the oil last 8 days, when supplies came to refill the oil.  Therefore, during Hanukkah we light candles for 8 days and eat oily foods to celebrate God's miracle of keeping the holy light going.

Jesus was a faithful Jew, who celebrated the Jewish festivals.  

He would not have celebrated Christmas, or his own birthday,

 but celebrated Hanukkah.

Hanukkah is mentioned in our Gospels, in John 10:22 Jesus is walking in the temple during the festival of the Dedication.   There is a nasty confrontation with some of the leaders, and Jesus has to flee their wrath.  But clearly, Jesus is at the temple during the festival and assumedly participating in the spiritual life of the Hanukkah holiday.

So what?

Well, here is another opportunity to celebrate God at work during this holy-days season.  Take some time to look up Hanukkah traditions, light a candle tonight and eat some oily fried foods (remember, its all about God making the oil last!)  Remember that we are brothers and sisters with our Jewish neighbors and that our God is their God.

Hanukkah is more Biblical than Rudolph, Frosty or even (gasp!) Santa - so go ahead and light some candles and praise the God of light!

All Saints (& Sinners)

I've been reading Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber, an ELCA pastor in Denver, CO.

Nadia is an awesome pastor, and person of faith who has taken the long journey away and back to Jesus.  I love how her story takes us, who have grown up in the church and never strayed,  behind the scenes to how the people God loves live in our world.  She takes us into a Wiccan ceremony, "drug house",  AA meetings and into the mind of someone who looked at Christianity and said "yuck!"

This is indeed where Jesus invites us to go too.  Into the lives of people who are different from us, and yet so much loved by our God.  So many of us are afraid.  I'll admit it, I'm afraid of being in places I've never been before and talking with people who are different from me.  While I have had a lot of experiences typical Iowans don't have, like living in Africa and being in an interracial relationship, there are many places of socio-economic difference that I have not experienced.  Nadia's book is a personal challenge to me to be a pastor after Jesus' own example - eating and drinking with sinners, to bring healing and new life.  God help us all to follow Him!

As we prepare to celebrate All Saint's Day this weekend and remember the whole company of those people who have left us to enter God's heavenly realm, lets not sugar-coat their lives.  They were all saints, and all sinners - just like us.  All were beautiful children of God, with brokenness as well.  If we were not broken, we would not need Jesus to save us, heal us, make us whole.   Praise Jesus, the Great Physician, who heals all of us, taking sinners and making saints.

For another great blog about Nadia's work read the Biker Bishop here

Do not be an "Indian" for Halloween

Halloween is coming, and after that Thanksgiving.  But first Columbus Day.

What do all of these have in common?  Unfortunately each has a lot of terrible mis-representations of history and mis-appropriation of Native American culture.

Columbus Day in a nutshell:

 Columbus came to the islands south of Florida. (400 years after Lief Erickson was the first European to set foot in the Americas)   Found a gentle and kind people living there and made them slaves starting a 400+ year history of abuse of Native American peoples.   He personally whipped, chained and set dogs on native people before taking 300+ back in his ships to sell in Spain.  This is not a holiday or a person we should be celebrating.  Instead we should mourn for the sins that European-Americans have committed against Native American people.

Thanksgiving in a nutshell:

Europeans come to America, claim land that already is occupied.  Nearly starving their first winter they are then are fed by native peoples.  Once they are strong again, the Europeans go back to killing native peoples and taking their land.    The Thanksgiving dinner is a celebration of a moment of peace in the midst of a history that is violent.   While I don't suggest canceling Thanksgiving.  I do suggest that we remember the whole story, good and bad.   And while we give thanks for all that God has given us, we also ask for forgiveness for racism.

Halloween - what does it have in common with these other two?  Well, all to often in all three we see kids (and adults) dressing in native costumes.  DON'T dress like an Indian!  Don't have a "Pow-Wow".  Its very disrespectful to this group of people who have already been trampled and hurt enough.  Headdresses have a very specific meaning in native culture.  Only people who have earned them, can wear feathers.  When we dress our kids in fake feather headdresses and they do little dances it is making fun of people.

This LOOKS cute and harmless.  But what it is teaching kids is that the native culture is something we can play with, it is not serious, native peoples can be used without regard to their feelings.
Native peoples have proud traditions and beliefs.  They don't want to be made fun of, they don't want people to dress up like them.  They don't want their traditional clothing that is special and meaningful mocked by children begging for candy.  Just don't do it.  Be a fireman, cop or Batman instead.

Don't want to just believe me?  heres a great article written by a native american woman on the topic.

Was Jesus a friend to all sinners?

This past weekend we talked about Mark 2: 13+ where Jesus comes and calls Levi to follow and then goes to Levi's house where Jesus eats with Levi's friends.  Jesus annoys the Pharisees by doing this - they ask, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"  

Some suggest that Jesus didn't really just hang out with "sinners".   Perhaps he was only hanging out with those who had decided to change or were in some way in the midst of changing their lives because of the invitation to the gospel.  The Pharisees were wrong, these were not sinners but repentant sinners.

My belief is the opposite.  That Jesus did really just go hang out with "unsavory" people.  That he did not put conditions on he presence with them but simply wanted to be in relationship with people.   They did not have to acknowledge they were wrong, or ask for forgiveness or change.  Jesus was with them as they were.  This does not mean that Jesus approved of everything that every person did.  Rather, it means that Jesus prioritized relationships over conduct.  In other words, it is more important to just get to know people as they are, then to worry if they are doing something wrong that you should help them change.

This is really the key to Calvary UMC and my call as your pastor.  When we proclaim our mission, "Accepting all through the Unconditional Love of God",  we proclaim that caring for people and being in relationship with each other is more important than defining actions as right/wrong.

This image is one I fell in love with on the web. I can't find who made it, so if you are a good google digger please help me find the artist who did this.  I love it because it translates the image of Jesus eating with Levi and his friends into today's world.  How else would it look for Jesus to eat with sinners?  Scandalous, yes, but thats who Jesus was -- God help us to find ourselves in pictures like this.

Here's another guy's perspective on this topic, a very well written and well researched piece.

God loves Michael & Trayvon

Our children are our future, they are our hope and they hold our hearts in their little hands.  When they grow up, they are still our children and we still want to protect them.  If there is one basic human feeling that we should all understand in guts its the common human desire to protect our children and their future.  No matter what culture, language, race or nationality we all seek the good of our children and would do anything for them. 

We have this common basic desire and yet, how we struggle to see this in each other.  We see the differences between us and get scared rather than have compassion.

In Ferguson, Missouri a community is grieving because one of their children (yes, 18 year olds are big kids, but still kids)  was murdered with his hands up in a sign of surrender by someone who had sworn to serve and protect.  Would any of us be calm if our 18 year old was killed in such a way?  Would our community?  And the man who shot him was not arrested, but is protected.  The reputation of the victim has been smeared.  The community stands in protest of this injustice and the police takes the stance of a militaristic, oppressive force.   Who will say that this is not OK?

Psalm 82:2:

How long will you judge unjustly
    

and show partiality to the wicked?

Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
    

maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.

Rescue the weak and the needy;
    

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

God says its not ok to treat  people as if they are nothing.  God says we have to give justice, especially to the weak, the lowly, the poor and the needy.  God will judge us if we do not stand up for the Michael Browns, the Trayvon Martins, the children who study in broken down schools, the children with not enough to eat, the children judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

Everyday we have an opportunity to stand for others, on the side of God.  With our words, actions and attitude we can make a difference and fight racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and injustice wherever we find it.  We can say to each other that it is not OK to judge people by skin color, religion, or nationality.  We can say "no" to those who would have one group be better or more powerful than any other.  We can say "no" to the swastika, the Confederate flag, and to hateful speech that belittles and demeans.  We can stand up for all children.  God help us make the world a safe place for every child. God help us all.

Symbols of Jesus Vote

Chi Rho - Christ Reigns, After Emperor Constantine's wife encouraged him to turn to Jesus, he had a dream when Jesus told him to put this symbol on the shields of his soldiers and he would win the battle.  They did, and they won the war and Constantine then made Christianity an official religion of Rome.  The symbol was very popular, being on Roman coins and on rings that people would wear.  Christ Reigns over us, He is above all earthly powers, greater than any country or president or king.  

The Lion and the Lamb -- When Isaac was blessing his 12 sons he gave a prophesy that a descendant from his son Judah would be a lion to rule over Israel.  From then on, the Lion of Judah was a term for the Messiah to come.  In Revelation, the voice of God says "here is the Lion" and the people look and it is the Lamb - God who died for us as a sacrifice for our sin.  Jesus is the Lion, but also the Lamb who came to die for us giving himself willingly.

The Anchor -- Anchor's hold the boat with enough line (enough grace) to move but solidly connected to the sea floor below - where there is peace, calm and firm.  Jesus is our Anchor, tying us with grace to the peace, calm and solid rock of God's love for us.  

Which of these Three speaks to you the most and why?  

Please write me in the comment section below - thanks!!