Jeremiah Obadiah and Jesus

(Names and places have been changed to protect the writer. The story is true.)

The day after the election my old friend, Jeremiah Obadiah Smith, invited me for coffee at Starbucks. It had been a while since we last talked. Jeremiah started right in, “Thank God it’s over. I’m finished with it. The debates, the mudslinging, the lies . . .”

          “You mean the election?” I had always known Jeremiah to be a fierce political independent. His practice was to write in the name of his favorite politician, “ . . . the only man who could deal with such a mess,” he would say. “Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

          I often reminded him, “FDR is way dead, you know.” Jeremiah believed that even dead FDR would be the best guy in the line-up.

          Jeremiah had never been a man of the church. I knew him from my days as a mental health chaplain. When he was a child, his mom and dad had forced religion on him. He hated church. Combat experience in Vietnam had made him doubt the existence of God.  Three marriages later he was sure of it. His latest girlfriend had taken him to one those “Point” church sprouting up everywhere. “Shallow, Lee, shallow. And loud. What’s the point?” Jeremiah’s invitation to coffee had piqued my curiosity and so I asked him what was going on in his life. He told me that he had a very disturbing dream and needed help sorting it out because he didn’t like where it was taking him.

          The ancients understood that unbidden communication in the night opens sleepers to a world different from the one they manage during the day. The ancients thought that dreams were a venue in which the holy purposes of God, perplexing and unreasonable as they might be, come to us. So I told Jeremiah that sometimes dreams are from God--like with Jacob, Pharaoh, Daniel, Joseph, and the Magi in the Bible.

          “Not this time. No, it was just the Spicy Thai Basil for dinner. Or not. Listen, it was about Baby Jesus. I was a character in the Nativity story. You remember how my mom made me be an angel in that stupid Christmas play when I was like five years old? They made me sing and I couldn’t sing. It scarred me for life. In my dream I was the innkeeper. My inn was pretty low rent, like the Clermont Hotel completely furnished with bedbugs. About dark here come Joseph and Mary. She is plump with child and in a really bad mood. I had just rented my last room but did Joseph care? I asked him, ‘What part of “No Vacancy” don’t you understand?’”

          “Well, Jeremiah, that is the way the story goes.”

          “ Yes, and so I turned them away.” I said, “Listen, you can sleep in the re-cycled paper dumpster; or if you can make it downtown to the shelter, Joseph, you can go in but Mary has to go somewhere else. They don’t do couples.”

          “Jeremiah, how could you send the Holy Family to a shelter? Those places are dangerous.”

          “No, I couldn’t stay on script. I took them over to the Majestic Grill for dinner and we started to order when all of a sudden Mary got this look on her face and I knew that baby was coming and I yelled for help. Everybody in the place whipped out a cell phone and dialed 911.”

          “How did it all end up?”

          “Well, next scene in the dream is Mary sitting in my Barcalounger nursing Baby Jesus and watching Dr.Oz on my widescreen. Nasty shepherds were tromping through the house and Wise Men were kneeling on my floor and UPS delivered boxed and boxes of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

          “So what’s your big theological question? Sometimes a dream is just a dream.”

          “Lee, do you think that it was just a dream?”

          “Jeremiah, it doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think? Maybe after all these years of running from Jesus . . . “

          “Yeah, I think that I helped birth the little fellow and then he just moved right into my home.”

          “Jesus is coming soon, Jeremiah Obadiah. Soon and very soon. Merry Christmas.”

          Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

         

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Thank you, Lord for This Food and all Your Many Blessings

Thank you, Lord for This Food and all Your Many Blessings

So began my dad’s standard table blessing--one that seemed to cover it nicely. In my home, meal time was family time, talk time, and leisure time. My dad always began it with his prayer of thanks. The custom of giving thanks at meals, at home and eating out, is not as strong as it once was. Maybe we are too distracted and too busy to give God a moment. That is our loss.

In the backyard garden, rabbits are eating my second planting of lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage and there is a definite chill in the night air. We are beginning that season of Halloween and All Saint’s Sunday, charge conference, stewardship campaigns, and preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday. The Bible says that any time is a good time to give thanks for God’s blessings in life, meaning not so much money, power, or position but instead God’s love, mercy, and grace.  Garrison Keillor wrote that maybe there is only one prayer that we should pray and that is “Thank you, Lord,” for life and everything about life: the sun rising, our child at play, our favorite green shirt—because just to speak a word of thanks reminds us of God’s goodness to us all the time. So I invite you to make a list of things for which you are grateful to God. Here’s mine:

My family. Karen is God’s grace incarnate in my life and my children Daniel, Jessica, and Rachel (and now grandson Sam) have enriched my life in so many ways.

My sister-in-law, Amy, who will soon donate one of her kidneys to Daniel.

My staff at Embry Hills UMC who are dedicated, dependable, and hard working; and underpaid. We are a team.

My children-in-law: James and Katie complement Jessica and Daniel in so many ways; Our son and daughter are better people because of their spouses—God’s gifts to Jessica and Daniel (and to Karen and me).

Volunteers in the church (and too many to name them all) who clean the sanctuary, run the website,  repair the leaky roof and faulty electrical, train the acolytes, prepare communion, chair committees, stuff Snax Sax, pray with the broken hearted, usher us in and out of worship, and many other not-so-glamorous jobs that make up the holy work of God.

The Craftsmen. Need I say more?

Friends and pastors—Jimmy Moor, Richard and Elaine Puckett, John Simmons, Willis Moore, Rex Kaney—who work hard to keep me sound and sane and help me be your pastor.

The medical staff at the Emory Transplant Center who have worked to provide Daniel a more normal, productive, and healthy life; and the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville for offering Rachel an opportunity to find some healing.

I speak of being in the season of thanksgiving. Every season should be one of thanksgiving. When we count our blessings and consider the source, it is hard not to be thankful and generous ourselves and not only with our wealth but also with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. Psalm 136 says it so well: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever. O give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures for ever;”

Church at the Hospital

It’s Monday morning and the pre-op area buzzes with activity. Every bed is full. Surgeons and nurses fortify themselves with cups of coffee. It is show time. I pray with my friend and then take my seat in the waiting area.

Sitting in that room can be a study in humankind. Hospital waiting areas host worried people looking for news about loved ones’ surgery. Sometimes the news is good; sometimes not. “Same day surgery” runs the gamut from a simple hernia repair to a kidney transplant. Look around the room and you will see a Pentecost crowd of people. Most of them have a cell phone, an IPad, eReader or laptop. Pastors drop by to comfort. People keep an eye on the clock, make calls to friends and family, watch mind numbing television, and text, text, text. The waiting room is an oddly worshipful place, full of Christians, mostly, but also Jews, Muslims, and “I don’t know’s.” In the waiting area almost everybody believes in God a little bit. They gather as a congregation and offer up their own tradition’s prayers for health and healing, strength and comfort.

A daughter sits with her mother who waits on word about her husband of fifty two years. He went in for a gall bladder removal but then his heart began to “act the fool” (her description). He would spend the night in CCU. A Catholic lady next to me prayed the rosary while waiting on word about her mentally handicapped son. A chubby cheeked priest will come soon and hold her hand while they wait like a married couple until the surgeon tells her, “We were able to repair the aneurysm. He will be fine.”

In that room there is not a Bible in sight (but I did see one young woman reading scripture on her IPad). There are no hymnals from which to sing comforting hymns like “Amazing Grace” or “Precious Lord.” No one is preaching but I suspect that many are praying; negotiating with God, making deals and promises.

I watched as God’s Spirit moved among us, comforting, guiding, and “speaking for us with sighs too deep for words.” It was a wonderfully worshipful way to start my week.

One man over in the corner had been sitting quietly and reading the Wall Street Journal. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren “Polo” knit shirt, tassel loafers, and a pair of bright green slacks with yellow Izod alligators all over them—like he might be headed to the golf course. His vision wear and well styled gray hair suggested that he was of some means. The surgeon came out and reported that the cancer to remove a malignant tumor in his wife’s uterus had been totally successful. The man so previously reserved jumped out of his chair and wrapped his arms around the surgeon in a bear hug. Then he shouted, “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord! Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus!”

I didn’t really expect that from him.

From the sanctuary of Christ, aka the hospital waiting area, I said, “Amen, brother.”

Longing for Jesus

I was going through some moving boxes recently and found some old books of poetry from my days as an English Lit major. I happened on a series of poems from the poet Rumi. He lived about eight hundred years ago in Persia.  Rumi wrote frequently about longing, as in wanting, needing, mourning, lusting after, or craving something. I believe that Rumi practiced Sufism but in his verse I found some ideas Jesus had taught 1200 years earlier.  There was a lot of longing among the people in those days. Jesus’ disciples lustily and greedily argued about who would sit at his side when he came into his kingdom. Jesus had a “come to Jesus” talk with them. Thomas needed tangible proof of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus answered, “Stick your finger in my wounds.” Sick, hungry, and demon possessed people followed Jesus craving healing and restoration. Jesus answered them in spades and to several he said, “Go and sin no more.” Many of them longed for the coming of the promised Messiah; and then they mourned Jesus’ death as the end of their hopes.

Longing, Rumi wrote, comes in many forms and it is sometimes a lonely and painful pursuit. But, as Jesus taught, longing can also be redemptive and fruitful. We can learn and grow from our longing. Out of Jesus’ death and resurrection, a people of faith grew; caring and fruitful congregations sprang up feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, and fighting for justice. And the Church continues to grow and spread across the planet.

Preachers chirp on about our longing for—anticipating--the coming of Christ into our lives. We live between memory and hope; we are fed and encouraged by the memory of Christ’s coming years ago and pulled forward by the hope that he will come again, somehow, somewhere, into our life. The Christian Church is in a period of longing, a time of transition and “re-forming” that will end up in a church with more integrity, strength, and witness than it has had in a long time. In our life together as a people of faith, we see youth who long for the freedom of adulthood, middle aged adults who long for firm bodies and quick minds of youth and older adults warehoused in “facilities” who are tired and sick and long for death. Some in the church long for inclusiveness, others for an ample operating fund. Staff long for more volunteers and pretty much everybody prays for more members, peace in the world, and a rapidly improving economy. We have to remember that the kingdom of God will not come through wishful thinking (I do not see our longing as just wishful thinking). The Kingdom of God will come by way of God’s grace and we see glimpses of the kingdom coming in our ministry together. I imagine, though, that God is walking among us, listening, watching . . . and thinking, “They are learning from their mistakes, growing more patient in their waiting, more generous in their poverty, more thankful in their scarcity, their vision more focused to seeing Jesus in their midst, ears more attuned to listening to him. I like what I am seeing. Let’s see how it turns out.”

          I’m feeling it with you, God. But let’s not stretch this thing out too long. Blessings, Lee.

Jesus and James

Jesus’ embrace and endorsement of peaceful co-existence with creation and all its inhabitants never really gained a lot of traction.  And maybe he knew that it wouldn’t. Matthew, Mark, and John record Jesus’ telling his disciples that before his coming again in judgment there would be wars and rumors of wars, nation rising up against nation, famine, and earthquakes. It’s a little like he sighed deeply and said, “Guys, maybe it’s too much to ask but I’d like to see you give this living in peace thing a try.”  James and John, whom Jesus called “sons of thunder,” must have thought, “Jesus, we’re never going to pass this course.” Maybe Jesus made it too hard. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said that just being angry with a brother is enough to make you liable for judgment. That’s extreme. And there was that mention of lusting in your heart being the same as adultery. Whew! We are all in trouble plenty. And Jesus was known to fire a few shots across the bow now and then to get somebody’s attention. I am pretty sure that he gave Simon Peter a Tony Dinozzo dope slap when he stood in Jesus’ way. And he used a whip on the moneychangers. He was also quite rude to his mother Mary on several occasions. So much for a meek, mild, and respectful Jesus. But his point about peace making is well taken. We need to treat each other as children of God, whether we like each other or not. We need to love each other even as Jesus loves us. We need to keep the peace even when whacking someone with a stout stick is easier and quicker. Jesus was man enough to know how so very hard that would be for some of us. And he promised to give us the stuff to do it.

There has been so much analysis of the mass shooting in the Colorado theater. Theories abound as to why James Holmes would want to murder so many innocent people and then attempt to kill first responders when they went to search his apartment. He seemed like the average bright guy—camp counselor, brilliant student, kind of a loner. And he also appears to have been totally consumed by a murderous rage. We can be sure that he will be examined by the best forensic shrinks in the land, his background checked by law enforcement agencies at every level, and his motives, values, and goals questioned by media pundits. But even then we may never know precisely why he committed such a horrible act. At least he does not seem to have been motivated by religious zeal.

Meanwhile, people are memorializing the site of the shooting; they debate gun control laws; decry the level of violence in our culture. I have my own ideas about gun control and the interpretation of the second amendment but this is not the forum to get into that discussion. There’s not much debate about the level of violence in our culture. It’s way high. Sometimes I struggle with Jesus’ teachings about turning the other cheek and carrying the soldier’s pack a second mile. When I am feeling attacked and especially when I am forced into a corner, I sort of forget what Jesus said about peace making and instead remember what Sam Fullerton said. Sam was my dad and he carried a knife. Later in his life when he grew more afraid, he carried a handgun. He was a take no prisoners kind of guy.

As far as I know, nobody had attacked or backed James Holmes into a corner. I am guessing that his demons were fear and loathing. Or maybe he just felt powerless in the face of something larger than himself. Powerlessness, impotence, is often the flip side of rage. But then we will probably never know about what drove James Holmes to maim and kill. I imagine that when Jesus heard the semi automatic rounds explode and felt the life force leave those theater patrons, he was startled  . . . but not surprised. And even before the SWAT teams moved in to apprehend the shooter, treat the wounded and restore order, Jesus was there among the carnage, sighing deeply and shaking his head, and saying to God and to all creation, “How long, O God, how long?”

VBS 2012: Dive into the Deep Water

As I write this post, Vacation Bible School is going great guns. And it’s pretty cool. We have a holy host of volunteers, including several youth. It’s great fun watching the Terrific Tadpoles (my group) listen as Kim Blackwell teaches them the basics about reading the Bible, like which books are found in the Old Testament and New Testament; and how to pronounce “Naaman” and “Elisha.” The kids are excited and involved. They clamor to answer questions, take on responsibility, and demonstrate how much they know. The people who study religious life in the United States tell us that Christians these days are mostly illiterate or ill informed about the Bible and particularly about the teachings of Jesus. They spout Shakespeare and Poor Richard’s Almanac and call it scripture. They don’t know Old from New Testament, Jesus from John, or saint from sinner. These kids do. If half the membership of any given church were as involved and excited as the Tadpoles, the church would be a healthy and active body of Christ and the world would be a much better place. Misty Speake, appropriately attired in beach wear, a plastic inner tube, and swim fins has the challenging job of warming the kid crowd up every morning by engaging Ocho the Octopus in patter, leading songs, and teaching body movement. It is pretty funny watching a bunch of kids and adults positioning their bodies, hands over heads, to “dive into” the day. And that’s what they did. I may enlist Misty to lead our worship, especially during the Fall Stewardship campaign. She gets results. Kim was patient and firm as she listened to the Tadpoles strut their stuff and share their understandings of terms like God’s love and eternal life. The Terrific Tadpoles could teach us a lot. Cameron Carr was a natural as he dressed up in Biblical garb and talked to the children about doing what God wants us to do—diving deeply into life with God and swimming boldly in the waters of our baptism.  One day Judy Campbell shared with the children the idea of being good stewards of God’s creation. She told about a group of kids who launched a prize winning campaign to save water after they realized how much water a broken fountain in their school produced in a day. Their story was published in “National Geographic for Kids.” On Wednesday, John 3:16 day, teachers had the difficult job of interpreting one of the most mis-interpreted, much beloved and much abused pieces of scripture in the Bible, “For God so loved the world the he gave his Son . . .”  But the children got it right off the bat that Jesus was first our friend who loves us even when we mess up and that Jesus teaches us how we can work with him to help save the world. Many thanks to Susannah Bales Faulhaber, minister with children and families, for leading us; and to all her volunteers for their time, talents, food, energy, and vision. And thank you, God, for the children because you really can’t have Vacation Bible School without a Family Life Center full of kids.

Reflections on the Birth of a Grandson

Reflections on the Birth of a Grandson

Anybody who thought that I wasn't going to write about the birth of our first grandson on May 10 isn't living in the real world. Admittedly, I was not as prepared as I thought for Samuel James Ammons’ birth. I did not think that I would wait anxiously in the maternity unit of Northside Hospital for what seemed an eternity (It was only a few hours). But I was not alone. Sam’s other grandparents, Ricky and Jane, joined Karen and me. We passed the time telling birthing and baby stories. We were all a little wired.

Karen and I recalled that there was no waiting through a long period of labor for Daniel’s birth almost thirty years ago. He came a month early. Even so, I thought that I was prepared for the birth of our first child. We had his room ready for occupancy, diapers stockpiled, pediatricians interviewed. Our subscription to the “Scholastic Books for Young Children” was paid up. We were almost finished with our Lamaze childbirth class. I remember holding Daniel’s five pound five ounce frame just minutes after his premature delivery and thinking, "This has got to be a God thing. It's just too powerful, mysterious, and terrifying not to be."  It was an epiphany, an experience of the divine and we are never prepared for such a display. The tiled floor of Baptist Hospital in Columbia became holy ground for me.

Two hours after Sam's arrival, I held him in my arms and thought, "This has got to be a God thing. It's just too powerful, mysterious, and terrifying not to be."  I recalled the words of the 139th Psalm where the writer says of God, "For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." I watched Sam's tongue darting in and out looking for his mother's breast to nourish and comfort him in this strange and scary new world. And I remembered Jesus' promise that he would be our bread for any journey and our Living Water; and that he would be with us on the mountaintop and in the valley of the shadow. As I held Sam, his body swaddled in a blanket, I recalled one of the ancient names of God--Sheltering Arms--and trusted that my young grandson would claim that love and blessing that God gives every child.

I know that James and Jessica, like all loving parents, have hopes and dreams for their firstborn. But I also know that not even our wildest and most generous dreams can hold a candle to God’s dreams for us. Blessings on you, Samuel James Ammons. Welcome to a world made more beautiful by your presence and more perfect by God’s love.