Philippians 2:3-11

We “get” grades.  We “get” what we want.  We are a culture of “getters.”  We are motivated to obtain items/experiences/relationships outside of ourselves.  This is partly because what we want has a glimmer to it.  New technology or clothes look edgy and cool.  A higher social status makes us feel larger.  But even if the items are inherently appealing, our desire for them is based more upon on evaluation of ourselves.

We want, because we feel empty.  We desire more, because we feel like less.  The desire to obtain, to grasp everything from material items to grasping achievements is motivated by our belief that our status quo is not enough.  We feel like we are missing something and our souls long to fill that void with another item which will inevitably become outdated.

When we grasp, we grasp because we feel like we are internally missing something.

When we give, we give because we feel like we are internally filled with something worth sharing.

In Philippians 2, Paul describes the attitude of Jesus.  Jesus did not grasp for making his equality with God used for this advantage.  He did not feel like he was lacking and needed more.  Instead Jesus humbled himself.  Jesus gave himself.  This self-emptying action, from the Greek word kenosis, reflects Jesus’ belief that he had something to offer.

When Jesus calls us to serve, he does not call us into being busier.  His call to serve is a compliment.  When nearly every other voice we hear is telling us that we are fundamentally lacking and that we need something else, Jesus offers an alternative.  Jesus’ call to serve says “You have so much already.  You are filled with my Spirit.  Your cup overflows.  Go and share your abundance of me with others.”

The contrast between giving or grasping is not primarily about the other item you want or the other person who needs serving.  The contrast between giving and grasping relates to your overall attitude towards yourself.

Do you feel like you are fundamentally lacking and need to grasp things to make you full?

Or

Do you feel like you are fundamentally filled with good things already, (given by God), and need to respond to that feeling of abundance by giving to others.

Which one of these two versions of yourself leads to the most joy?  Which version of yourself defines you more highly?

Give, not Grasp.  Because you are full, not empty.

In Christ,

Steven Blair

Pastor of Congregational Care (M-R)

steven.blair@cor.org

As I walked home, I allowed my pace to place me yards behind the other kids.  In the relative privacy, I lived out the questions I had about prayer.  As I would walk, I would quickly flail my right arm to the side.  I would then quickly flail my left arm.  My intent?  I was trying to make a sudden movement before God knew I was going to make that move.  After each flailing of the arm, I assured myself that God must have know which arm I was going to flail regardless of whether I had known beforehand.  I tried to complicate matters by faking left, then faking right, and then flail left in hopes of fooling God. I painfully consented that God knew everything I would do and would not be fooled by my fakes.  I concluded that nothing I did mattered because either way God already knew what I was going to do.

  ….   And that was when I stopped praying.

For over a year, I continued to attend church and read the Bible, but I did not pray.  I thought “Why pray for something that God already knows will happen or not happen?”

In Luke 22, Jesus knows God’s Mission for sending him to earth and yet he prays.  He prays that God would intercede and remove the pending crucifixion that waits for him.  So, either Jesus is a fool who does not know what a 7^th Grader knew or Jesus knew that our futures are not all determined.

Somewhere during those obligatory trips to church in middle school, I caught a glimpse of praying Jesus.  I noticed that even though Jesus did not get the answer that he may have been wanting, his simple act of prayer meant that he believed in prayer.  His prayer was not futile. My prayers are not futile.  Prayer is not a waste of time regardless of whether you get what you prayed for or not.

Prayer can change things.  It can change the future, or in this scene of Jesus’ life, prayer can change us in the present.  After over 18 months of not talking to God, I learned enough of this lesson to renew my belief that God was acting in this world.

   .. And was when I started praying.

[Reflection]
1.  When was a time in your life when you stopped praying?  Why?

2.  When was a time when you did not “get what you were praying for” and still received the intimacy with God that you needed.
Steven Blair

Pastor of Congregational Care (Last Name M-R)
steven.blair@cor.org
www.stevenblair.wordpress.com  (personal blog, updated weekly)

LeBron James Made the Wrong Decision

Put More Appropriately ….

LeBron James Made His Decision Wrongly

I am making this statement based upon John Wesley’s Three Simple Rules:
1. Do No Harm
2. Do Good
3. Stay in Love with God

John Wesley started the Methodist Church. He was not trying to start a new denomination, just be faithful to Scripture, embrace Tradition, celebrate Reason and treat Salvation as something a person can personally experience which motivates them to change the world. The movement started gaining steam. When there were just a few hundred Methodists, Wesley offered these three simple rules for guiding Christian behavior.

LeBron James’ main rule for guiding behavior: Winning a Championship.

The rules we choose to guide our behaviors guide our choices. LeBron made the wrong choice because he chose the wrong rule to guide his behavior. What if LeBron’s first rule was Wesley’s first rule? What is Lebron’s first rule was to “Do No Harm?” If that was the case, there would have been no way he would have left Cleveland. Ohio has been a tough place to live and Cleveland is not a hot spot for tourism and culture. Economists estimated that LeBron’s departure would result in the city of Cleveland losing $20million in revenue per year. That is a lot of lost jobs, lost revenue. That is a lot of harm.   Then you add onto that harm any emotional harm of feeling abandoned or cheated by your hero.

But avoiding harm was not LeBron’s motivation, so it was not the result of his decision. But about us … what motivates our actions? What set of rules do we apply to making our decisions?

My suggestion (and John Wesley’s) is that we begin with the rule “Do No Harm.” If we all began with that rule, our relationships, our workplace, and even Cleveland would be a lot happier.

[Reflection]
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” quips Shakespeare in Hamlet.  “Something is rotten in God’s Garden” narrates God in the Holy Bible.  Perfect Paradise from chapters 1-3 is just a stone’s throw away.  Something … is rotten. 

The smell stems from Cain’s relationship with God.  In verse three, Cain is described to have offered God an offering from the ground while Abel’s offering to God is described as explicitly coming from the firstborn in his flock.  Firstborn meant top notch offering.  The lack of a reference to Cain’s offering being the ‘first fruits’ indicates that Cain gave something less than his best.   

Something was rotten in Cain’s relationship with God.  It led Cain to give God less than the best.  It ultimately led Cain to kill his brother.  What could have spoiled his relationship with God?  Perhaps bitterness that his work was harder than Abel’s.  Perhaps jealousy that God seemed to love Abel more than himself.  Perhaps both, or neither.  What we do know is that something was rotten inside Cain’s heart towards God and Abel (and Cain) suffered for it.

Have you noticed the same happening to you?  Have you noticed that when your relationship with God is missing out, someone else in your life gets hurt?  The Bible warns us to not grow flippant or nonchalant about our relationship with God because “sin is crouching at your door and it desires to have you.”  We all have persons who are either the first benefactors of our relationship with God or the first victims when we have stopped valuing God.  The story of Cain and Abel is a lesson in how our intimacy with God is connected to our intimacy with our “brother” or “sister.”

 [Applying to Your Life]
1)  God has an unfailing love for you.  What are the factors that cause you to drift away from God like Cain drifted away?

2)  Who are the Abel(s) who suffer first (and most) when your relationship to God is waning?

3)  How can you better nurture your relationship with God for God’s sake, yours, and all your Abels?

4) What does good fruit look like in your relationship to God and to others?

 
As always thanks for reading.  Please let me know your thoughts by leaving your comments below or telling me your blog address.

Steven Blair

Pastor of Congregational Care (Last Names M-R)

steven.blair@cor.org
913-544-0276
www.stevenblair.wordpress.com (personal blog, updated weekly)

Nicholas and A-Jon at PartyNicholas' Serene, Classy MomNicholas' Mom and I Playing "Balloon"

Nicholas' Mom and I Playing with Balloon

[Reflection]
Forgiveness is a necessity for survival.  A lifetime accumulates a massive amount of hurts and we need a good way to deal with them.  Instead, we’re given the advice that we must “forgive and forget.”    

That’s horrible advice!  I don’t know about you, but that advice just piled more pain on me.  First, someone hurts me and now I am somehow less of a Christian because I can’t forget it.  There has to be a good word out there somewhere to help us deal with forgiveness. 

Sitting in an Illinois Burger King, I found that “good word.”  It has made all the difference.

“Forgiving presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting not in the natural way we forget yesterday’s weather, but in the way of the great “in spite of” that says: I forget although I remember.  Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily. (Paul Tillich (1886-1965), German-born U.S. theologian. “Forgetting and Being Forgotten,” The Eternal Now, Scribner (1963).)

Forgiveness is not about forgetting a person’s wrong like you would forget what you wore 37 days ago.  That is not realistic or authentic to who we are as humans.  Forgiveness is about saying, “I don’t forget.  In fact, I think about what you did all the time.  But even though I remember, I choose to forget.  I choose to view you in light of your identity as a child of God rather than in light of your mistake.”

When God forgives us, I do not believe that God suddenly loses an awareness of a whole set of events that happened.  Instead, when God forgives, God stares right into the wrong that was done and chooses to view us in light of His grace rather than our sin.  This is what it means to “forgive as the Lord forgave you (Colossians 3:13).”

Tillich then offers a good word about whether we need to make a formal statement of that forgiveness.

“I don’t refer to a solemn act of asking for and offering forgiveness. Such rituals as sometimes occur between parents and children, or friends, or man and wife, are often acts of moral arrogance on the one part and enforced humiliation on the other. But I speak of the lasting willingness to accept him who has hurt us.”

There are times that a face-to-face forgiveness is necessary.  Usually those are the times when the other person is wrestling with guilt over the offense.  But most times, forgiveness is something that can be done by yourself which can reduce the urge to hurt the other person by recanting the mistake. 

Thinking about forgiveness in this way is more natural, and more Divine.  It is also more doable.

[Application]
1.  Have you struggled with the “forgive and forget” advice? 
2.  Which wrongs are you being called to forget, even though you remember?
3.  How would your heart be different if you forgive in this way?  Your actions?

As always thanks for reading.  Please add comments or share your blog address so that I can hear your thoughts.

Last weekend, I preached at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection on Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, a Rabbi, and Nuns with Beads.
Rather than reading a blog about it on Ash Wednesday, you can watch it at www.cor.org by clicking on “The Easiness of Following Jesus” screen.
 The sermon is roughly 28 minutes and can be played in the background as you work.

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[Reflection]
I asked Rabbi Vered Harris to help me and other American Christians who have an especially hard time thinking about death and mourning.  I believe that the source of our struggle is our lack of meaningful, comfort-bringing rituals around Death.  I want to share what Rabbi Harris shared with me and then share a few brief thoughts.

Death and Mourning
1.  At the time of death, a prayer is made.
2.  The body of the deceased is immediately taken to be prepared for burial.  Jewish funerals usually occur with 24 hours of the person’s passing.  This is because a) Their high respect of the body does not allow them to have a body waiting and b) The Mourning Process cannot begin until the body is buried.
3.  The body is prepared by someone of the same gender.  While the body is being prepared, the whole body is to be covered except for the small section of the body that is being washed.  These acts continue to honor the person’s sacred nudity, even in death. 
4.  After preparation, the body of the deceased must be accompanied at all times.  In Judaism, the act of leaving a body in a funeral home room alone overnight would be considered dishonorable.
5.  For the funeral, the body is not dressed in their best suit or dress.  The deceased instead is buried in a common burial shroud.  Rabbi Harris taught that this signifies “that in death, we are all equal.”  Furthermore, a person is forbidden to be buried with pockets because “you can’t take anything with you.”  I was struck by how powerful an impact these two rules of burial can be for a community.
6. The body of the deceased is buried with the “mourners,” each using a shovel to begin covering the casket with dirt.  (“Mourners” refers to first degree family members to the deceased: mom, dad, husband, wife, brother, sister, daughter and son). The rest of the people at the gravesite join along with
with each person literally taking a shovel until the body is completely buried.  This painful, participatory process enforces the finality of the death. Another cool point, no one is allowed to visit the graveside until 30 days after the burial.  This protects the family from seeing the gravesite until there is new life sprouting up in the form of grass and flowers.  How cool is that?!?
7.  Everyone heads to the house of the primary mourner for food.  At the house, everyone is to remain silent unless a Mourner talks to them first.  Joke-telling and joyous remembering are not allowed unless a Mourner initiates it.  I love the way the Mourners are given precedence and given the freedom to create a mood at the dinner that meets their needs for mourning.

At this point, the rest of the Mourning Process can begin which is one of the most brilliantly beautiful things I have heard in a long time.  I will share the rest of the process in my next blog post.

Looking into these characteristics of Death and Mourning have revealed just how incomplete and awkward are rituals around Death can be.  I am personally struck by the holiness around every detail of the Death and Mourning process in Judaism.   It brings me to the following questions.

[Application]
1.  What is the most beautiful element you learned about the Death and Mourning process?
2.  How can you see any of these elements help you during a future time of Death and Mourning?
3.  Which one thing do you wish churches would apply who are looking to improve how they care for people during a time of death?  (Please share this answer with me)

As always, thanks for reading. Please leave your thoughts and blog post so that I can learn from you.

[Introduction]
On January 28^th, I spoke with Rabbi Vered Harris from Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, Kansas.  The conversation was so full, so eye-opening that I wanted to share it with all of you in a series of blog posts.  The series of blog posts will cover Rabbi Harris’ words regarding Sexuality and Death.

[Reflection]
The Hebrew word for holy is “kadosh.”  The Hebrew word for marriage is “kiddushim,” which denotes that a marital relationship is designed as a holy relationship.  In marriage, the couple is set apart as a unique relationship.  In marriage, the wife is set apart for the husband and the husband for his wife.  All other women are not set apart for this husband.  They are set apart for another mate, a truth that has a profound impact on why a person should flee from adultery and pornography. 

Rabbi Harris explained that Judaism is about boundaries, there are behaviors that are off limits (ie. eating non-kosher foods, working on Sabbath) and other behaviors are permitted.  She shared that one of her favorite teachings regarding Judaism is “we are held accountable for not taking pleasure in what is permitted.”  She continued: Sex is to be celebrated and we will be held accountable for whether or not we took pleasure in what God permits within a marital relationship.  Rabbi Harris claimed that sex has been treated as animalistic and casual which has reduced the holiness it was intended for. She then cited two ways of restoring the holiness.

1.  A Time for Sex and a Time Not for Sex. Rabbi Harris claimed that Jewish spouses are instructed to not engage in sexual relations from the beginning of the wife’s menstrual cycle until seven days following the end of the cycle.  Following the end of the cycle, Orthodox Jewish women would bathe in a mikvah  to be purified and to begin the seven day cleansing.  Reformed Jews observe this pattern, but often without the use of a mikvah.  This time frame where sex is forbidden could last 10-14 days and should simultaneously focus on other, non-sexualized acts of affection.  Following this time where sex is forbidden, sex becomes permitted and it is highly encouraged that sex be enjoyed often by the married couple as God’s gift.

2.  No Casual Nakedness with Spouse.  Rabbi Harris cited Shmuley Boteach and his book “Kosher Sex.”  http://www.amazon.com/Kosher-Sex-Recipe-Passion-Intimacy/dp/0385494661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264773414&sr=1-1  Shmuley Boteach argues that walking around the house naked, or letting your spouse see you naked as you are showering or getting dressed can hurt your sexual relationship.  Attaching nakedness to these casual encounters increases the chances for a couple to view sex as casual rather than sacred.   The unveiling of our bodies for the other should be treated as a holy event , which it was created to be.

My head is still spinning after my conversation with Rabbi Harris.  I believe that our views of Sex, Marriage, and Death are very shallow and miss out on God’s greater meaning for us.  Learning from our Jewish sister and brothers offer us a Godly view of our lives which will add a much needed new perspective.  Our faith must go deeper.  My upcoming reflections will unpack Rabbi Harris; words regarding Marriage, Death and Mourning.  I cannot wait to share them with you.

[Application]
1.  What is one new idea you learned today?
2.  What is one thing you can do to respond these teachings?

As always, thanks for reading.  Please leave your thoughts or your blog post below so that I can hear what you have to say.

[Reflection]
The Kingdom of God makes you healthy.  The Kingdom of Rome makes you sick.Last week, Pastor Adam Hamilton did a great job unpacking three aspects to Jesus’ identity as a healer.  I want to add a fourth dimension about Jesus’ healing power that couldn’t fit the time constraints by pursuing the question “Why were there so many sick people?”

In Warren Carter’s book “Matthew in the Margins,” Carter explains that the conditions of the Roman Empire made people sick.  Some cities like Antioch had a higher population density than modern day Calcutta.  Ineffective sanitation among the poor (which made up 80-95% of Roman Empire) led to widespread disease.  Sickness developed from a lack of clean drinking water, poor nutrition, and an inability to take a “day off” because most people lived and to mouth. 

Understanding this context, we can see an added dimension to Jesus’ healings.  Simply put; The Kingdom of God makes you healthy while The Kingdom of Rome makes you sick. Jesus feeds the 5000, because Rome left them hungry.  Jesus cured the diseases caused by Rome ignoring the needs of the poor. 

When we reflect on Jesus’ healing, let us reflect also on the ways that Rome makes us sick.  Rome can be synonymous with the forces in this world that kill, steal and destroy us.  On a social level, if Rome creates laws that help keep poor people poor, Jesus’ healing can look like advocacy.  On a vocational level, if Rome demands that you work 85 hours a week and it is making you sick, Jesus heals by commanding that you observe the Sabbath.  On a emotional level, if Rome says you are less than because of your body type or income level and it is making you sick, then Jesus’ healing looks like finding your worth as God’s child.  And so on …

Jesus and The Kingdom of God makes you healthy.  The Kingdom of Rome makes you sick.  Allow Jesus to heal you today.  Let Jesus work through you to heal others tomorrow.

[Application]
1.  What is one way that Rome has made you sick?  How do you see Jesus healing you?
2.  As an exercise, list 2-3 ways that Rome’s ways have led to sickness in the the lives of others around you.

As always, thanks for reading. Please leave your thoughts or your blog address so that I can hear your thoughts.