Coming Up Sunday, March 1

On Sunday, our Lenten series on prayer continues as we consider the example of prayer that Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew 6). Most Christians learn "The Lord's Prayer" when they are young and can recite it from memory, often without even thinking about any of the words.

We are going to see what we can learn about prayer by thinking through the Lord's Prayer. What are we supposed to pray for? How are we to pray? On the other hand, are there things that we should not do when we pray?

A cursory reading of the prayer implies that one of the most common parts of our prayers -- asking God to do things for us, especially to heal other people -- should only be a small part of our prayers. In fact, given that God knows our needs, Jesus suggests that we pray simply, "Give us this day our daily bread."

However, the prayer subtly suggests that God has expectations for us when we pray. Not merely whether we say certain things or not, but that God's response will rely on how we live, not how we pray. "Forgive us our debts, as we [also] forgive our debtors." Will God forgive us if we don't forgive other people? Interesting question, and one we'll consider on Sunday.

The Why of Prayer: Just Because

"Pray without ceasing," the apostle Paul writes (more than once). Christians have often taken this direction to represent the overwhelming of number of things we need to pray for; that is, there's so much suffering, so much pain, so much sin that we need to pray all the time to have any chance of praying for all those things.

But it seems more likely that Paul was speaking about our need to be actively engaged with God all the time -- not because we need God to do so many things for us (heal the sick, end war, get my boss off my back), but because it is good for us to be speaking with and listening to God, as much as possible.

One way to do this is to pray at specific times during the day. When the moment comes, you stop whatever you're doing and pray. This allows you to pray different prayers than you usually do because you're not praying for a need in front of your face (thank you God for this food, for example). The more you pray in different ways, the more open you can be to God when God has something to tell you.

Today's Prayer Prompt: Pick a random time to pray later today. (Set the alarm on your watch or phone if you need a reminder.) When the time comes, set aside what you're doing and pray.

The Why of Prayer: Things We Want and Need

There are things in life that we want to see happen, either to us or to others, but many of them are beyond our direct control. We see people suffering and in pain, and we want that to change. We see sickness, and we wish for healing. We see grief, and we wish for consolation.

We live in a fragmented, dangerous world where too often people treat others with violence instead of love. We can work to change that, but the problem is bigger than us. We live in a broken world where too often people fall through the cracks. We can work to change that, but the problem is bigger than us. Sickness. Poverty. Ecological destruction. Road rage. Stupidity.

Sometimes we are the problem. Sometimes the problem directly threatens us. Sometimes those close to us face tough times. Sometimes we just wish for a better world for our children and grandchildren. So we reach out to God, and we pray for miracles.

We pray for healing for the sick and food for the hungry. We pray safety for the victim of war and compassion for the natural world. We pray this for ourselves, for our families, our friends, our communities, and our world. We pray for God to act in ways we can see. We pray for miracles.

Today's Prayer Prompt: When you pray today, offer at least one prayer of each of the following types: prayers for yourself, prayers for your family, prayers for your friends, prayers for your church, prayers for your community, prayers for your country, and prayers for your world.

The Why of Prayer: Thanksgiving

Every day, good things happen to us and for us -- even on the darkest days of our lives. We are blessed with relative comfort, even if it comes with a lot of stress. We are blessed with many loving relationships, even if those people sometimes make us want to pull our hair out. We are blessed to know the truth about God's love for us and expectations for us, even if some believe argue that ignorance is bliss.

Every day, we should take time out to thank God for the many good things in our life -- the people, the opportunities, and the pleasures that we enjoy. God is the maker of heaven and earth, and so ultimately the creator of all these things. It is healthy for us to say "thank you" to God, counting our blessings.

Today's Prayer Prompt: Take five minutes and make a list of things for which you are thankful. Start your prayer thanking God for these things.

The Why of Prayer: Confession

As we begin our Lenten study of the mechanics of prayer, our first question is "Why?" Why do we pray? Why should we pray?

There are some basic answers to this "Why?" question. There is strong evidence that God wants us to pray, which might render other reasons superfluous. All of the great exemplars of faith in the Bible prayed. Jesus prayed a lot, we read in the gospels; sometimes he prayed with crowds, sometimes with the disciples, sometimes by himself. We even read that Jesus prayed while he was on the cross. More than that, Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, offering them a model -- which we know as The Lord's Prayer -- and suggestions how not to pray. As Christians, we are expected to follow this teaching.

If we set God's expectations aside momentarily, we can also see that there are personal reasons why we pray apart from any obligation of faith. Something deep inside us instinctively reaches out to God. Our souls yearn for God, writes the Psalmist several times. The catch, though, is that sometimes we want to avoid God, especially when we know that we've done something wrong. We hide, not wanting God to find us out and punish us.

The sad fact is that we are broken people, having sinned and fallen far short of our potential. We want a positive relationship with God, but we know we don't deserve it. We don't want to be punished by God, but we know we do deserve that. This brokenness creates a rift in our relationship with God -- a separation between God and us.

Prayer is one way that God bridges this separation with us; over time, prayer even serves to mend the rift and lessen the separation. We share our lives openly with God -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- and God shares grace and understanding and transformation on us.

On this Ash Wednesday, it is good to recognize the first reason why we pray -- we've fallen short and we need to confess our mistakes to God. Confession is not always easy; often we are terrified of the consequences we may face for taking responsibility for our previous bad actions. But it is a necessary first step in healing our relationship with God, just as it is often a necessary first step in healing our broken relationships with other people that we've hurt.

When you pray, don't sugar-coat your confession: God already knows what you did, so you'll only be deceiving yourself. Be sincere: confess those things you truly regret. If there are things you think you should regret, but don't, ask yourself why you feel that way. They ask God the same question.

Today's Prayer Prompt: Think of at least one thing you've done wrong that you haven't confessed to God. Start your confession with that and go from there.

A Reflection on Believing in Jesus

As you probably know, I take my reading very seriously during the week, setting aside time every day for study and relaxation. (I'm always surprised by pastors who tell me they don't have time to read. I find it difficult to imagine how they do certain parts of their job effectively.) This week, I came across an interesting passage about what it means to "believe in Jesus" at the end of Marcus J. Borg's book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995):

For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was important. For me, what that phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my early adulthood, was "believing things about Jesus." To believe in Jesus meant to believe what the gospels and the church said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child, and became more and more difficult as I grew older.

But I now see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean something very different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word believe. Believe did not originally mean believing in a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean "to give one's heart to." The "heart" is the self at its deepest level. Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one's mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level on one's self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one's heart, one's self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit. (136-137)

This is as good a concise explanation of this that I have ever read or heard. Borg shows the progression that most of us grow through as our faith deepens. Early on, it seems that we need to "learn" certain religious facts like we learn things in school: we learn specific vocabulary and we learn how to use it to think about certain things. When we grow old enough -- whether through a confirmation process in some denominations or baptism in ours -- we decide that we believe what we have been taught. If we think it's true, then we believe.

But as we grow in faith, we discover that faith is much richer than that. Believing is not merely an intellectual action, but something more all-encompassing. It is about a developing relationship; it is about a way of life. Sometimes the language trips us up. "Do you believe in Jesus?" we ask. "Yes." Case closed. The bags are packed and another person's place in heaven is secured. But if it's just an intellectual act, believing in Jesus is just like believing a mathematical theorem, like believing (-1) x (-1) = 1.

"Yes, I believe in Jesus. I know he's the son of God. I know he died on a cross and was resurrected. I know he's in heaven, and I'll get to go there too if I believe. So I'm all set. Please get out of my way so I don't have to hurt you while I'm robbing this bank."

Clearly spoken by a Christian -- after all, he politely said, "please." If belief is just an intellectual activity, then what we think of as right and wrong is irrelevant. Believe the right things and how you live doesn't matter. But deep down, we know that's not true. We know that this Christianity thing, what little we understand of it, is supposed to change how we live, not just how we think. Learning is a part of that, but so is acting and being. So is caring and concern. So is love and hope. "To give one's heart to," Borg writes. Or as I know I sometimes say, in a slightly different context: "to give the best of ourselves -- our time, our talents, our treasure."

Random Notes for This Week

I'm back from Midwinter Youth Retreat. I had a great time. Several people have asked how it went -- I think it was a very successful weekend. For starters, no one got injured, which is always a good thing. But more generally, the retreat featured speakers -- college and slightly past college age -- who spoke about their experiences on recent mission trips to New Orleans and Jamaica. Lots of the activities, including small group discussions and Sunday morning worship planning, were led high school juniors and seniors. It was good to watch the young period inspire and learn from each other. It could have been a perfect weekend, except for the fact that my middle school boys decided to loudly get up at 5:30 Saturday morning...but as I said before, no one got injured.

Sunday there's a dinner after worship to recognize our new members from the past few months/years (frankly, I'm not entirely clear what the specific time-frame is). I do hope that you're planning on coming and enjoying some hearty fellowship and good food. Knowing Central Christian, both will be abundant. Please come, and, if you like, bring a friend.

Sunday is also the second week that we collect our first special offering for the year, supporting Week of Compassion. Many of you heard some things about that from our regional moderator, Dorothy Brownlee, who spoke in my absence last Sunday. Please support this very worthy ministry.

Also don't forget that Lent begins next Wednesday -- our Ash Wednesday worship, with a short meditation (place your bets now for how long I'll talk -- I'm joking, but I suppose that could be a new 50/50 church fund-raiser from service to service), communion by intinction, and the imposition of ashes. Joking aside, it is a solemn occasion and a good way to enter the Lenten season.

Speaking of the Lenten season, I've been working on our series on prayer especially hard this week. I think it will be a spiritually rich experience, leading us into Easter. There will be several components, including some prayer services and a special daily blog feature. I'll write a more extensive post about the series this weekend, and I'll talk about it Sunday morning.

Short Video on Disciples History

While I was searching for a couple of videos last week, I stumbled across this video about the history of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It is combined with a history of a specific congregation in the outer suburbs of Chicago.

The denominational history is straightforward and clear and lasts just over 6 minutes. Evidently it was some sort of school (seminary?) project.

Week of Compassion Special Offering

This Sunday and next we will collect the first special offering of the year for the broader church. This offering benefits Week of Compassion, the disaster relief ministry of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). [I know, it's a terrible name, implying that we only care about disasters one week out of 52. I didn't come up with it. Eventually, I trust that it will change.]

The theme for this year's offering is "Where is Your Treasure?" The theme is based on two senses of treasure: 1) money/wealth and 2) the inherent value of every person. Recognizing that every person is a child of God, and thus deserving of respect, it asks where we invest our treasure, our money. If you want a better explanation, here is a letter from Amy Goff, the executive director of Week of Compassion, about this year's theme.

If that's a little to philosophical for you (and I have to admit, it seems too theoretical to me), here's a link to something much more practical. This is the list of places that have received emergency support in the past week, and since the beginning of the year. The needs are great, and the support offered is very real.

DisciplesWorld: January/February 2009

I finished the most recent issue of DisciplesWorld earlier this week. It was sad, but probably inevitable, to read in the editor's note about some of the cutbacks the magazine has made in the current economic climate, essentially shortening the print magazine and expanding some online offerings.

The current issue focuses on the "Global Food Crisis," an implicit tie-in to the February special offering for Week of Compassion, the Disciples' emergency outreach ministry. The pieces are mostly thoughtful, if a little proto-hippie, left-leaning (or, as I would most naturally write in slang, crunchy). After the cover story, there's a story about fair trade and another about the global benefits of vegetarianism.

I'm no social activist, for a variety of reasons. Partially, I'm as yet unconvinced that the implicit critique of first-world plenty -- read, excess consumption -- directly causing starvation elsewhere. My unscientific hunch is that if someone were to do a historical study, hunger and poverty have steadily decreased over human history, especially over the past two centuries. Is it still a major problem? Yes. Are current economic conditions, and agricultural practices, leading to a spike in food prices that we should be concerned about? Yes. Are you and I the cause of people going hungry? Probably not, despite the embarrassing amount of food that we consume and waste.

But the articles are thought-provoking, even if some of those thoughts are frustrations. Case in point: the cover story features an interview with the new director of Week of Compassion, Amy Gopp, which in charity I'm going to ascribe to enthusiasm. She points to joint relief efforts between faith agencies and the United Nations and says, "For once the kingdom of the world and the Kingdom of God can be aligned." Historically speaking, some of the worst atrocities occurred when the goals of the church and the political powers aligned. Augustine makes this clear -- even before many atrocities occurred -- in his classic exploration of this in City of God.

Also in this issue, the magazine begins a new regular feature called "Lean Times," which is appropriate enough. The first installment looks at economic conditions in the small town of Wilmington, Ohio. Interestingly, the approach of this story is to chronicle challenges and then suggest how a couple of people see a beneficial opportunity -- in this case, to see that any industry which replaces the shuttered plants is ecologically friendly. I don't know if this optimism is prophetic hope or pie-in-the-sky wishing.

This month's issues (and previous issues) are available on the shelf in the Narthex. Browse them when you're at church or borrow one and take it home.

Reflections on Lincoln Sunday

What can I say about Sunday? I enjoyed the service, which I thought fit really well together. We sang some of my favorite hymns, including "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." (In fact, I'm almost willing to say that "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" can make any worship service great, regardless of anything else that happens.) The weather didn't hurt either.

My focus on Lincoln Sunday, though, is always on the sermon. I find the Lincoln sermon very challenging. Part of that is because of my rather extravagant goals for the sermon -- that it push my knowledge of Lincoln and theology, that it be a reflection of that knowledge, and that it be accessible. I enjoy the process, but it takes a long time to write that sermon. From my brainstorming in the summer and fall, to my book list around December and January, I spend lots of scattered moments thinking about the sermon. But this pales in comparison to the amount of time I actually spend writing it. By length, it's the equivalent of writing a fifteen-page research paper.

Needless to say, I'm a little tired this week, recovering from last week's push. (Though, with lots of Lincoln-related things this week, I've not had lots of spare time to rest.) A part of me is just happy that it's over (like a student who's excited that final exams are past). But I also am relatively pleased with Sunday's sermon. I think it is honest and has important things to say about the sometimes very human nature of our faith. It was a little heavier on Lincoln than on God, which gives me pause, but I think that was because it was focused more on how we represent God to one another than what God truly is.

I also realized Sunday, when I was listening to the sermon, that it was intellectually challenging for me. When I was writing the sermon last week, I thought I might be letting myself off easy, and not asking myself tough questions. However, I realized that Sunday's sermon is an extension of some of my previous research on preaching after a tragedy. As I hope to continue researching that topic, with Lincoln in mind, but have done little serious thinking about it in the past year, I was pleased that subconsciously I'm still working on these questions.

That's what I meant when I said that the Lincoln sermon, more than any other all year, is really something I preach for myself. I don't think I shirk my duty to explore the gospel and the nature of our faith collectively, and I try hard to make the sermon clear to others. But I am pleased that so many people seem to enjoy the Lincoln sermon, even as I don't quite understand how that is. It is rewarding to have others praise something that you put lots of time and effort into -- certainly it's better than most of the alternatives. But I also think that it's a reminder for me of something I always try to remind others of -- God asks us to give the best of ourselves in his name; when we do that, we live faithfully. On Lincoln Sunday, I felt a little selfish, preaching a sermon focused so fully on my personal interests (and, even though I know better, I always feel the need to apologize for that); it's good to remember (again) that God often takes our idiosyncrasies, our unique interests and talents -- our gifts -- and uses them to benefit many other people.

Coming Up Sunday, February 8

Sunday we will celebrate Lincoln Sunday, the Sunday preceding Lincoln's birthday. 75 years ago, this was a fairly common celebration for American churches -- and, on their sabbath, in Jewish synagogues. At that time, Lincoln's birthday was a federal holiday and his religious aspects -- often imagined, rather than based on reality -- seemed obvious to churchgoers and preachers.

Lincoln's religion is the subject of much debate, and I hesitate to speculate much upon it. If he lived in the present age, I think that Lincoln would identify himself not as a Christian, but in the popular nebulous "Spiritual, but not Religious" category. He was clearly a student of the Bible, and he was well-versed in the common theological language of the day. Sometimes when he speaks religiously he seems more political, than theological; often, and at surprising times, he seems much more theological than political when he speaks religiously. Depending on my mood, I can argue that the Second Inaugural Address -- which scholars almost universally put into the latter category -- can fall in either category. (Then again, I would generally argue that the end of the 1862 Message to Congress is much more theological than political, which would stupefy most scholars.)

Regardless, given my interest in Lincoln, preaching about Lincoln within the context of the church is a natural fit for me. When I was reminded of Lincoln sermons a few years back (in a book by a Disciples minister published 60 years ago), I looked for an opportunity to preach my own. Since then, I've preached one somewhere every year. It's challenging -- I usually have a lot to say; but more than that, I really try to push myself into new questions and possibilities when I prepare this sermon.

As I write this, I've finished a draft of the sermon. I'm not yet happy with it, and (for different reasons) you aren't either. I think it's still muddled -- the internal structure is less obvious than I like. You'll think it's too long -- right now, about 45 minutes. I'll be working to improve both before Sunday.

The length is not a surprise for me. Given that Lincoln sermons were commonly preached in the 1920s and 1930s, they tended to be as long as sermons of that time period. That length of sermon, similar to the length of a modern lecture, is a good length to dig deeply. The modern sermon, less than half that length, has very different goals. So the challenge of time -- always a challenge for me -- is heightened when I prepare a Lincoln sermon.

That aside, I am looking forward to this bicentennial Lincoln sermon, which will consider the meaning of Lincoln's birthplace cabin, which is enshrined outside of Hodgenville, Kentucky, on the piece of land where Lincoln was born. I will compare this American relic with some Christian relics -- notably the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Holy Land -- and with a Jewish relic -- the twelve stones that commemorated the miraculous crossing of the Jordan by the Hebrews when they arrived in the Promised Land.

Why do these places affect us? What are we really doing when we visit them? And what are these places, really? These are the questions that we'll explore on Sunday.

New Lincoln Blog

It's February, and that can only mean one thing -- it's Lincoln time. (What? You thought I was going to write something sappy about Valentine's Day?) Next Sunday, we will celebrate Lincoln Sunday, and I will offer this year's Lincoln Sermon, which I hope many of you are looking forward to.

In the meantime, let me give you something to tide you over. For a couple of years, some of my friends have encouraged me to start a Lincoln blog. During that time, I have decided not to, partially because I didn't know if I was up to it, but mostly because there already is one outstanding Lincoln blog (Brian Dirck's excellent A. Lincoln Blog) among lots of other Lincoln blogs and sites (which run the gamut from really good to not).

With the approach of the bicentennial celebration, though, I just couldn't resist any longer. I reserved the address months ago and started developing some search strategies to look for interesting current stories to cover. I also carefully considered the look and content of the blog. While I'm still tinkering a little, I've started posting and invite you to the grand opening of my Lincoln blog: http://lincolniana.blogspot.com. (Lest you think that this is some combination of Lincoln and Indiana, you should know that Lincolniana is a technical term in the Lincoln field.)

If you're interested, stop by for a visit. If you know others who might be interested, pass the link information along.