Blessing

        At the conclusion of communion in an Episcopal church service the priest blesses the people. There are many blessings given. Our Christ Church Cathedral 6 p.m. “Sanctuary” service is a quiet service that is contemplative and filled with both silence and the gentle music of piano, flute, hammer dulcimer, violin and guitar. Our blessing at the conclusion of Sanctuary is:

May the nourishment of the earth be yours.

May the clarity of the Light be yours.

May the fluency of the sea be yours.

And may a slow wind work these words of love around you,

Like an invisible cloak to mind your life;

And may the blessing of God Almighty,

Eternal Majesty, Incarnate Word, and Abiding Spirit

Be with you now and forever.

I find this very comforting. It comforts me that I have a blessing to take with me as I am about to emerge from the holiness of worship and the hallowed ground of the church. I get to take the blessing of that holiness into the world that doesn’t necessarily have my best interests in mind. The blessing accompanies me when I go into circumstances that are uncertain and where the outcome may be questionable. The blessing envelopes me as I travel through thick and through thin during the week.

            But it is not just a priest or minister that has the ability to bless. We all have this gift. We are all able to bless and to be a blessing. As we work, go to the grocery store, care for our children, play, exercise, drive to appointments, call on friends, and travel through our lives with each other and in the world, we can choose to bless and to be a blessing. How and to whom will you be a blessing this week?

Gaining a Confidence that Lasts

I am priceless to God.

If you’ve got it in you, I challenge you to repeat it out loud right now. That’s not some “forward-this-if-you-really-love-God” challenge, mind you. However, the degree to which you can say that and mean it, or say it and rest in that reality, is a great indicator of how far that truth has penetrated into the foundations of your heart and mind.

I watch people all the time who attempt to substitute different things into their foundation. Sooner or later, life has it’s way — circumstances change, people prove unreliable, storms of life come — and the result is inevitably the same: leaning. Like the builders of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (now a shocking 18 ft off of center at the top!), people have underestimated the softness of the ground they are building on. It’s only a matter of time before it all comes tumbling down — and in the case of people, that means profound self-doubt, deepening insecurities and, often times, blaming God.

However, there are always two roads.

Take a look in John 11 at one of the most famous resurrection stories of all time – the raising of Lazarus. After failing to “come through” on the request to come heal a sick Lazarus, Laz’s two sisters, Mary and Martha, are distraught when he dies. They seemed to have pin their hopes on Jesus and He failed. The ground under their feet seemed to be eroding with every passing moment.

But when Jesus shows up, you see two very different responses:

1. Martha: Despite feeling the sorrow of her brother’s death, she made a crucial decision to continue exercising faith in Jesus. Even in her shock and sadness, she doesn’t risk her heart on the external circumstances staring her in the face. She let God define her circumstances instead of letting her circumstances define God.

2. Mary: Despite an almost identical response to Martha, Mary takes another road — one that opts out of faith in Jesus. She has let the tragedy rob her of faith. Instead of listening to the same voice that appealed to Martha’s heart to have faith, Mary chooses the voice of self-pity — and insecurity rules the day.

Our lives haven’t always gone the way we’d prefer. Sometimes, the unexpected has been devastating. But in the end, life comes down to who you choose to listen to, and who you choose to believe. We can choose to play the old tapes (oftentimes internalized into our own voice) that tell us why we are worthless, why life never goes our way, why God has forgotten about you… why our lack of security is valid.

Or, like a stonecold dead Lazarus, we can respond to the voice of Jesus, shouting out to us in the tomb. It only took 3 words from Jesus to overpower the death that had Lazarus in its grip.

What is He shouting to you today? What Truth does He offer that has the power to dislodge the deep-seated lies sown into your heart? No matter what road you’re walking right now, you can choose the Martha road — you can choose to listen to what Jesus says and believe Him — and experience a Lazarus resurrection!

3 words from Jesus raised Lazarus to life that day.

So what could 5 do to your confidence?

I am priceless to God.

Pastor Pete Hise, Quest Community Church, Lexington KY

28 May 2013

A Tribute for the Brother to a Dragonfly

Today one of the most poignant and outspoken voices of Christianity in the last 50 years was silenced.  The Rev. Will Davis Campbell died today at the age of 88.  He was a “maverick minister,” as the Huffington Post called him this morning; in fact, during the 1950s and 1960s Will was among the most conspicuous white Southerners to speak out for social justice in the era of the civil rights movement, a decision that made him not-so-popular with his Baptist constituents.  Eventually, Will found himself preaching tolerance and love to those who needed to hear it most, by serving as chaplain to the Ku Klux Klan. When it came to people, Will was fond of saying, “If you’re gonna love one, you gotta love ‘em all!” In so many ways he embodied the Gospel of our Lord, and the world is a sadder place with him gone. 

Today I paused to reflect on Will’s life by picking up one of my favorites of his books, Soul Among Lions:  Musings of a Bootleg Preacher.  The book is an especially short read—you could breeze through it in an hour—yet it is full of profound insights.  So for this meditation I've chosen to pick one such insight and sit and meditate on God’s grace and love with you, and with The Rev. Will Campbell.

In the eighteenth musing of the book, Will ponders a question that so many of us are asked more times than we can count:  “What do you do?”  Will says that if he is in a frivolous mood he responds, “What do I do about what?”

What the question means, of course, is what does a person do for money?  What is their area of work?  Will says simply that this isn't important.  Scripture, after all, takes a pretty dim view of money, and Jesus himself calls the stuff filthy.  And speaking of Jesus, he never asked people what they did for money, Will points out.  Jesus’ concern was always, “How do you justify yourself?”  The real question, in Will words, is:  “At the end of a day, or at the end of your life, what have you done to leave the world a little better place than the one you entered?”

This seems an appropriate musing on which to reflect this day, as Will no doubt asked himself that question as he departed this world.  We live in a time that puts so much emphasis on material things:  the job we have, the money we make, the car we drive, the school we attend.  How many of us fret and worry because we don’t make enough money or don’t have an adequate answer for the person who asks, “So what do you do?”  Every single one of us is guilty of this, of placing our hope, our value, and even our own self-worth in those temporal objects.

The truth is, brothers and sisters, we can’t take any of that stuff with us.  Our cars, homes, or toy collections won’t follow us, and Jesus isn't going to be concerned whether we cleaned toilets for a living or were the heads of Fortune 500 companies.  Jesus will only care about how much love we showed for this world that was entrusted to us and how much love we had for the people in it.  At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. 

So today, as the bootleg preacher takes his seat at the heavenly banquet, may we also pause to reflect on what really matters in our lives.  May we take the time to take stock of WHO we are, not WHAT we are, of what we’re doing for the greater good, not what we’re doing for our paycheck.  And may blessed Will Campbell pray for us.