‘Tis the Season

"May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else."
(1 Thessalonians 3:12, NIV)

Last night we held our Annual Church Conference and spent a lot of time celebrating the mission and ministry of our church. We also talked about our Strategic Plan and how we want to implement it as we prepare to enter a new year. As I write this article, we are still planning for Thanksgiving and the Advent Season; we are finalizing details for many special services that lead us to Christmas. The thought of all this activity reminds me of how busy we tend to be at this time of year and how we are often torn between our Christianity and our humanity as we face the holiday season and all of its conflicting messages. I am also looking to the future to see ways that Paul's words to the Thessalonians challenge us to be God's people. I came across an article this morning written by Enuma Okoro who works as a spiritual formation director at Duke Divinity School. She writes: "Regardless of where we live, we share this one reality as Christians: the coming of Christ doesn't bring immediate peace. It brings conflict between two ways of life."

When Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica he was writing to a group of Christians who were faced with trying to live the gospel in the midst of a culture that was hostile to their message and their way of life. His words echo across the centuries to us…living in the midst of a culture of consumerism, selfishness, and greed. We once again come to the season of love, the season of giving, with long wish lists from our children and grandchildren, a blitzkrieg of television ads, and messages from your pastor urging materialistic restraint and charitable generosity. What's a Christian to do?

First of all, listen to Paul's words to the Thessalonians. In fact, take a few minutes to read both of Paul's letters to this church; they only fill about eight pages and offer a lot of encouragement to struggling Christians. Paul tries very hard to help these people live their lives to please God, not to please this world. Much of his message centers on their need to keep doing God's work in the face of temptation, persecution, and their longing for Christ's return. Paul's message is the same for us today; no matter what, we have work to do for God's kingdom on earth.

This Christmas season seems like the perfect time to finalize the implantation of our Strategic Plan: "We will give Wednesdays back to God, for the sake of better homes, better families, a better Mangum, and a better world."

Each Wednesday evening we will offer a meal, free of charge, to anyone who comes to the church. Following the meal, there will be a variety of activities from which to choose. These will include: free childcare to enable adults to participate in other activities; children and youth games, music, and teaching; Bible study groups; life-skills training opportunities; choir practice; work on mission projects; and others, as needs and resources develop. In other words, we will allow "the Lord to make our love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else."

Now is the time to step up and be the person God created you to be; to accept God's call and the challenge to do the work that needs to be done. We need people to cook, to clean, to drive, to teach, and to share. We need you to commit your time, your talent, and your prayers to make this vision a reality that shines the Light of Christ all over this community. We simply cannot sit around and wait for Christ to come again; Christ is waiting for us to prepare a way in this wilderness that is our 21^st Century culture. There is nothing more important in our lives than doing this work; everything else will wait.

Sunday evening we gathered for dinner and a movie in Fellowship Hall. The meal was simple and delicious; it was prepared by several people so nobody was over-burdened. People sat at tables with people they didn't normally "hang-out" with; the conversation was interesting and the fellowship was a blessing. This event proves to me that our church is ready to spend more time together and willing to do whatever it takes to connect to one another and to our community. Let's keep this momentum going! Please volunteer to help; sign up at church; call the office; do whatever it takes to let us know how you want to be involved. I promise that we will be there with you as we all give Wednesdays back to God.

God bless,
Pastor Don

Time Together

Last night 46 members of our church gathered together for food, fellowship, and film. It was "Dinner and a Movie Night" at Mangum First United Methodist Church. There were people of all ages in the room and the conversation was lively and pleasant. People who don't normally "hang out" together shared a table for dinner. People who don't normally come out at night for church socials showed up this time. It was really great! The party was hosted by one Sunday school class and the whole church was invited. I think 46 people was awesome for this first effort.

The movie we watched was "Amazing Grace," the story of William Wilburforce and his efforts to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain in the last half of the 18th Century. It is a wonderful film, well-acted and well-produced; it is definitely worth two hours of your time to watch how many people are transformed in the process - clearly by the work of God in the midst of this horrific situation. Tears and applause at the end of the film are a great testimony.

I hope this will encourage other churches to try an event like this and plan to make it a regular feature. This is such a great time to share with church members, to enjoy good fellowship, and present a teachable moment through the many great Christian films that are available in the marketplace. Film is a powerful medium and we can do a lot with it in terms of enhancing our ministry in the local church.

Go forth and serve, my friends, in the name of Jesus Christ!
Pastor Don

Thanking God, No Matter What

Earlier this month we began looking at The Book of Job…

We started by talking about what it means to seek God when we are in pain…

That feeling of "Why me?' that sometimes overwhelms us…

Then we saw how we can encounter God only when we recognize that
we are not the center of Creation – God is…

We heard the story of Job as one of transformation; a story of relationship with God who does not abandon us even when we abandon God…

Today we begin to understand what it means to be truly thankful to God, no matter what is going on in our lives…

Let us pray:

Loving God, I thank you for the blessing of those who have taught me how to worship, trust, and be grateful. Help us, even when we are hurting or have lost everything, help us to hold on to the deep mystery of your love. Prepare our hearts now to hear your words. Amen.

Throughout the story of Job, conventional theology has called for Job to repent of the sins that caused him to be punished by God…

But, as we have discussed previously in this series, the story of Job challenges this Divine Retribution view of God…The idea that God rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked is blown apart in this story….

We know too many instances where the good suffer and the wicked prosper….

By the end of the story, Job does indeed repent…

The thing we need to notice is that Job doesn't repent of supposed sins that caused his misfortune…

He repents of his attitude toward God…

He asks God to forgive his arrogance and acknowledges God's great power and sovereignty.

Listen to our own sin when we speak in anger to God: "If you are in control, if you are so mighty and powerful, how could you let this happen to me?"

Therein lies the real sin…Blaming God for our misfortune…

God does not cause us to be in pain;
God does not take people away from us;
God does not punish us by making bad things happen to us.

However, when these things do happen in our lives, God can find ways to help us get through them and to learn valuable lessons from them…

It's not that God deliberately tests us or teaches us a lesson by these circumstances…

It's that God can take any situation and use it for our good; even when it is painful and we don't understand what's happening….

The lesson of Job is that we must give God sovereignty over our lives and trust that God knows best how things are going to work out…

This is the true nature of being thankful – trusting that God will work everything out according to God's plan and thanking God that we get to be part of what God is doing in the world.

Remember Paul's letter to the Thessalonians…

[1 Thessalonians 5:16-18]

No matter what happens, God wants us to be thankful for Jesus Christ who suffered more than we can ever imagine…

There are a lot of things in life that we do not understand…

But, we can understand these words from Paul:

It's not that God is so insecure that he needs to hear our constant thanks;

The point is – when bad things happen to us, it doesn't do any good to gripe or complain or feel sorry for ourselves, does it?

No. That only makes things worse.

When bad things happen we need to realize that there is an enemy out there who wants to steal our faith, our peace, and our joy…hasatán

Scripture tells us to resist this enemy and remain steadfast in our faith…

Giving thanks, no matter what, is a powerful way to resist the powers of evil
that come against us.

Even when we don't feel particularly thankful for the circumstances of our lives,
we can always be thankful for the love of God and
what God did for us through Jesus Christ.

Job was a person of faith who lost everything and wound up finding God more mysterious, intimate, and deep than ever before.

That was Job's miracle.

In the end, God restored Job's blessings two-fold.

There are times in our life simply to give thanks to God for God's deliverance
and the blessings on loan to us.

I read a story this week about a missionary who has spent a lot of time among impoverished people in Central America.

What's remarkable is their ability to worship and give thanks to God even in the midst of their poverty and hunger.

These people share their sorrows and their praise of God.

This missionary gives thanks because the people have allowed her to be transformed by their hospitality and worship.

What we learn from Job, and from these poor people in Central America, is that we should give less of our energy to the stresses of life, and more energy to celebrating God's goodness.

We all have times of pain and suffering; yet, these times are more tolerable when we are already in the habit of thanking God and praising God for everything we have.

Even Job began this story praising God in the midst of his misfortune; it wasn't until he began to listen to his friends' bad advice that he fell into the pit of total despair by crying out against God.

When we face devastation, we discover that all we have is God; and God is all we need.

What has come before is no more, but God endures.

And God will help us endure.

We know that one day God will heal us and restore us.

Until then, let us embrace the gift of discovering new, deeper meaning under the rubble of what we have lost.

Jennifer Graves, Duke Divinity School student

 

No matter what?
I'm supposed to seek God, no matter what
I'm supposed to find God, no matter what
I'm supposed to thank God, no matter what
It's difficult to see in the midst of what
GODISNOWHERE
seeing the forest of hope through the trees of what
hearing the voice of love through the din of hate
tasting the breath of life in the stew of death
GOD IS NOW HERE
No matter what!

 

No matter what happens, always be thankful to God.

Culture Re-defined

Jesus spent his life re-defining culture in God's image. This has always been a hard lesson for humanity to learn. When we are truly servant leaders, our convenience is not the priority. We do not cash-in on a promise to live a comfortable life when we begin to follow Jesus. Rather, we agree to put ourselves out so that others might be comforted.

Psalm 139 reminds us that God knows everything about us...better than even we do...particularly the desires of our heart. The psalmist also asks God to search our hearts and test our devotion to God. Life isn't about us; it's about what we do as children of God to be faithful to God's image in us.

When we honor God first in all that we do, we are assured of our ability to do what God wants for us. If we seek to honor ourselves, we will always fail.

Amen.

It's Friday...

Let's state the obvious - Today is Friday. What an astute observation. Coming at the end of this particular week, however, it is a welcome revelation of the obvious. The week is coming to a better end than it began. Spirits are higher, work is completed, and plans are being made. There will even be a relatively calm weekend.

Today I will finish my Sunday school lesson and rehearse Sunday's sermon - not terribly taxing. Then, this afternoon, we will attend a memorial service for a local gentleman who passed suddenly this week. Saturday is a planned day in and away from the world. We will cook and clean. We will read and relax. We will be ready for Sunday and will begin the new week refreshed.

I hope everyone enjoys such a day this week and that you are also refreshed and re-energized for whatever you encounter next week. May God bless you mightily.

And so it goes...

I just finished the first semon in my series on the Book of Job: "Seeking God, No Matter What." I am happy with it, though I know that God will have the final word on what I actually say come Sunday morning. I am seeking God in this process because I believe we have so much to learn from Job. It's about faithfulness, hope, and integrity. It's about God's passionate love for us; God is so passionate that we are never alone in the midst of our suffering - God is with us. We may not have the whirlwind visitation that Job sees, but we are visted...no matter what. For what it's worth, here is the manuscript version of this sermon. Obviously, the actual spoken word will be somewhat different and it will be posted next week. Pray for me that I hear God's message in my heart and that I faithfully preach God's Word.

MANUSCRIPT:

“Seeking God, No Matter What
No matter what? - #1
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
World Communion Sunday

During the month of October the Lectionary offers us the opportunity to confront a difficult text.
The Book of Job…
A challenging book of prose and poetry that cries out in the midst of human struggle, pain, and grief…
It challenges us to examine our image of God and our relationship with God, no matter what.
It is a text that ultimately leads us to an image of God that demonstrates faithfulness, hope, and integrity.

I have struggled this week over whether to embrace this opportunity and find a way to preach this text
with care, or to simply avoid it and move on to the Gospel readings.
I confess that I am tempted to take the second, simpler option.
God has a different plan and so we will explore the timeless story of Job in a series of three sermons
that ask the question – No matter what?

Let us pray:
O God, we come today seeking your face; we come seeking your hope and grace in the midst of an ungracious world. Faithful God, give us a higher degree of faith that will remove doubt and fear. Bring us to your message today and allow me to faithfully speak what you place in my heart. In Jesus’ holy name we pray. Amen.

[Set the stage by story-telling Job 1:1 – 2:10]

The story of Job truly is about the presence of God in the midst of unimaginable pain, suffering, and injustice…
It isn’t really about why bad things happen to good people, though…
That is one of many common misunderstandings of this Book

Hebrew word: hasatán = “the satan,” not “Satan”; this is not a proper name, it is an office;
this is not the Devil of the New Testament
Not the story of the battle between good and evil; it is about God’s relationship with humanity.
If we focus only on the “why do bad things happen to good people” theme, we miss the more important question: “What is the nature of faith – how are we supposed to relate to God?”

The prevailing ancient theology centered on “divine retribution” – if you do good, God will bless you; if you sin, God will punish you.

That is far too simple for Job and so he struggles to figure how to approach God; how to seek and encounter God.

Job seeks to reach a faith that will discover God in the midst of fear and chaos.

We must remember that our world is far removed from the world of Job’s story.

The “heavenly court” doesn’t fit with our image of heaven;
The epic catastrophes that strike Job seem exaggerated to us;

We must read this story with one eye on our own world…we must see Job’s story through the lens of our pain and the pain of those we lovewe must try to hear Job’s troubles in the chaos of our own lives we must ask ourselves if the words Job speaks have ever come from our mouths

The catastrophic events of Job’s life could just as easily be seen in our own lives when we change the words to be: unemployment, debt, depression, betrayal, illness, and death

From within our reality, Job cries out, wanting to know: “Where is God and how may I approach him?”

The story of Job challenges us with three basic questions:

1. Can God lose control and be influenced by hasatán?
   
2. Does God allow intense suffering, just to settle a bet?
   
3. How does this square with our belief in a compassionate, just God?
   

• We must remember that the story of Job is not taken from Israelite tradition; it comes from ancient Near Eastern folklore that does not share the Hebrew faith. The poet has appropriated the story to make a point of faith to the Jews in exile – suffering the loss of everything; living in the ghetto and forced labor.
• The original folktale comes from a multi-god culture where the strongest god ruled in a heavenly court surrounded by lesser gods. For the Israelites, these lesser gods become God’s messengers – angels – and hasatán is a sort-of prosecuting attorney who acts on God’s behalf…for “the state”…this is not God’s nemesis; it is his advocate…the District Attorney.
  

Job is a pre-Mosaic character who lives in an area outside of Palestine – Uz, possibly Edom.
Though a non-Jew, Job is portrayed as being faithful to Yahweh, the God of Israel. This is not unheard of in the Old Testament – hear Caleb, Rahab, and others.

At the end of this part of the story, Job does not understand his calamity, yet he accepts it. In his exchange with his wife he is clear that we must take the good with the bad…This is the nature of faith.

It isn’t until later in the story, when his friends begin to give him bad advice that Job starts to wonder and seek God for answers. This is where we hear the “divine retribution” theology that was common for the Israelites and debunked by Job’s evidence of a blameless life.

[Job 23:3-4, 8-9]

Often, when we find ourselves struggling, in pain, facing catastrophe, or navigating grief – we ask: “Is there some purpose behind my pain?”

We assume that our pain is part of God’s benevolent plan – to teach us something, to make us stronger, to accomplish a greater good…

The first two chapters of Job explode this kind of thinking…

Because Job suffers as the result of a silly, cosmic wager – We hear the poet saying: “Don’t look for any reason behind your pain; it just is! It can’t be understood.”

And in the midst of this suffering we hear a word of hope…God says to hasatán: “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on earth?”

God passionately loves Job and talks about him as any proud parent would…
God passionately loves us too, and sees us as a proud parent would…
Only a God who loves us so completely can speak to us in our pain…
Only a God who parents us, forgives us, and knows us so well, can wipe away our tears

The Lord’s love for Job ultimately produces a whirlwind visitation – pretty remarkable considering the curses Job hurls at God from the ash heap…

Then, of course, we see God’s passion for us produced the greatest visitation of all – the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ…

In spite of the insults and curses we have thrown at God, he loved us so much that he sent his only Son – you know the rest.

Job is being led to a spiritual cross and his cries of despair strike deep into God’s heart…
God will not leave Job, nor will God leave us hanging there alone.

[Jeremiah 29:11-13]

Sermons on Job

I am working on a sermon series called, "No Matter What?" that follows the lectionary readings in the Book of Job. The messages are: "Seeking God, No Matter What," "Encountering God, No Matter What," and "Thanking God, No Matter What."

This text can be challenging to engage and it is doubly so given the current state of our world and the recent news that brings grief to our congregation. I covet prayer as I prepare to preach God's great good news in the midst of suffering.

No matter what?
I'm supposed to seek God, no matter what
I'm supposed to find God, no matter what
I'm supposed to thank God, no matter what
It's difficult to see in the midst of what
GODISNOWHERE
seeing the forest of hope through the trees of what
hearing the voice of love through the din of hate
tasting the breath of life in the stew of death
GOD IS NOW HERE
No matter what!