Monday Morning After

My backyard neighbor is a retired Lutheran minister and a great gardener. Come to think it, most of my neighbors’ properties look better than mine. That may explain why Saturday afternoon I felt like raking something instead of doing what I needed to do. Before long, we ministers were “talking church” over the fence and the topic turned to Advent. He was remembering that when he started in ministry, Advent was about the Second Coming of Christ rather than preparation for Christmas.

Christ’s return is one of those fundamental doctrines of our faith that we don’t talk about much. Jesus clearly said he would return at the end of the age. The topic is referred to in the last verse of nearly every hymn we sing. Jesus’ vague details have never stopped us from speculating on a specific date or certain clues to the end times.

I can still remember sitting in my elementary school cafeteria, watching the clock with some buddies, because we had heard a religious group was hiding in a cave prepared for the end of the world at noon that day. The relief we felt when 12:10 recess arrived was dampened when one of my nerdy 5^th grade pals pointed out there was a time difference between the east and west coast. It was one of the first times I thought about that classic question: If I only had [fill in number here] many days to live, what would I do?

The end of the world is also the topic of a new movie, “2012”, about a Mayan prophecy that allegedly claims that 2012 is the date. Their ancient calendar ends. They apparently thought 2012 was as far as they wanted to plan into the future. That would give you 2 years. What would you do?

Of course, Christianity teaches that Jesus could come at anytime, basically when you least expect it, so be ready, always ready. “Keep watch, because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back…If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping.” (Mark 13:35, 36) It’s a heavy question to think about as this festive season of Thanksgiving is upon us, unless there is something you should be saying to the people you love this week, because who knows how much time we have.  

On Sunday morning, the choir was in full force, complete with Sue on the French horn and Doug on the violin. It was glorious. We sang the traditional Thanksgiving hymns and the offering plates were overflowing with “21 Days of Thanks” cards. I read the story of Thanksgiving at the Tappletons for the kids and we started the sermon with a radio drama about a couple whose lives were built on owing people stuff. The lesson was on God’s Grace – We cannot earn God’s favor. It is a gift from God, not based on what we have done but what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Youth group met after church and there was a Community Thanksgiving Service at James St. Methodist that included combined choirs, my message on the human body, and Pastor Baum’s invitation for people to share a testimony of thanks. Maybe a dozen people shared spontaneously. You had to be there!

Monday Morning After

On Saturday, I was at the Holiday Inn for the annual New York State ABY Convention (American Baptist Youth). It was a great event. I did find it curious that to walk from the rooms to the convention center, you had to pass the Psychic Festival. It inspired a lot of bad humor. (Q: Can you tell me where the pool is? A: If you were psychic, you would already know.) I did the adult sessions. One of the studies we discussed was some research done on the religious beliefs of teens. Christian Smith and Melinda Denton concluded that teens are religious thinkers, but most have developed a generic set of beliefs that the authors labeled

MTD – Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Smith & Denton, 2005.

What most disturbed the authors was the lack of definition. You can see parts of Christianity there: God created, standards of behavior, evidence of eternity, etc. But is the main goal of life to be happy and feel good? Should the only time you connect with God be when you have a problem? How do you reconcile the cross and the “good people”? I had the group try to identify their own beliefs.

Along the way one person made a most disturbing observation. She said MTD may be what youth believe, but it is also what church youth see in us. Too often, MTD is how we practice our faith. We may say words like Jesus, cross, grace, salvation, but what teens see is what they believe. (They still haven’t figured out that “Do what I say, not what I do” thing we parents kept telling them.) Unfortunately, they see us living with a nondescript god who wants us to be happy and hopes we’ll be nice to others most of the time. They see us living as if God does not exist until there is a problem and then we act as if our lives depended on prayer or church attendance or some other religious practice. Jesus once asked his disciples: “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and don’t do the things that I tell you?” Ouch!

On Sunday, we tackled the topic of financial giving with 3 short skits and a gigantic offering plate. The lesson from Corinthians is that we should give till it feels good. I had all the children jump in the plate for Children’s Story, because the Bible says we are to give ourselves first to the Lord. We dedicated the Operation Christmas Child boxes and for one of the anthem pieces, Michael set the buttons on the organ to play a piece that sounded just like a choir. Cool. You had to be there.

Monday Morning After

In May, the Kellogg Company hit grocery store shelves with boxes of Cocoa Krispies that claimed to contain not only the usual vitamins and daily requirements, but now promoted “Immunity”, presumably from the H1N1 virus. Listen! The day you think Cocoa Krispies is a health food, no matter what they put in it, is the day you need to get your head examined. Needless to say, Kellogg took the immunity claim off their boxes this month. How do you know what to believe anymore? The wife of Miyuki Hatoyama, the new prime minister of Japan, claims to have traveled to Venus and was once abducted by aliens. She seems sincere. Should we believe her? Who can you believe? You can’t trust Wall Street. We learned that the hard way. You never could trust television ads, especially during election time. Sadly, now, you can’t trust that you will be safe on a military base. Mistrust is so high in our society that we are even unsure about vaccines.

I think I was the last living believer in Richard Nixon. I had his books. I wore his buttons. In junior high school, even! But when I heard him swear on the tapes, that was it. I finally began to mistrust my government. There is an Apple computer ad that compares Macs to PCs. It allegedly promotes the new Microsoft version 7.0, promising there will be no bugs in it. He keeps asking us to trust him…this time.

Sometimes life seems like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and the gang come to the end of the yellow brick road. When they enter the castle, there appears a great powerful wizard who can give them whatever they ask. When it is accidentally discovered to be only a man hiding and pulling levers, the powerful voice says, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Is faith believing what you know isn’t true?

In a world of suspicion and doubt, the practice of our faith as disciples of Jesus Christ is bound to be suspect as well. There can be no guarantee that will satisfy us all. Some will be convinced by experience, some by historical records and events, some by making a choice to believe in a God who created us, loves us, came to our world in person, died for our sins, rose from the dead, and whose Spirit lives among us today. That’s a lot to swallow. It always has been. The Bible tells about a man who brought his son to Jesus to be healed. Jesus tells the man, “Everything is possible for him who believes.” And the man, seemingly ashamed, says, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”. You have to start somewhere. Everyone believes something. You build from there. Trust me!

On Sunday, we finished the MARKS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH with Prayer. The early church loved to pray and found power in prayer. So should we, whether it is conversational prayers or the ritual prayers of the temple courts. They all have a purpose. We also reminded folks to keep working on the 21 Days of Thanks! The Operation Christmas Child Boxes are piled up front. Thank you! And we prayed for our new Nursery Supervisor as she was surrounded by a bunch of kids who have gone through that room over the years. Oh, we carefully introduced the 2010 proposed budget after church. A lot of work has gone into it. You had to be there!

MONDAY MORNING AFTER

On Saturday, we visited “Turner to Cezanne” at the Everson Museum. The traveling exhibit from Wales covers the impressionistic period and the story of 2 Calvinistic Methodist sisters who collected the paintings is equally as interesting. Of course, it happened again. Every time I go to a museum I get “spoken to”. A couple of times, I have lingered in a room too long during a guided tour. In Williamsburg, I was caught leaning against a wall and had to stand in the middle of the group for the rest of the tour. This time, a very nice guard came over to me and said, “Could I talk to you for a minute?”. My first thought was maybe he needed help moving a painting or something. No, he wanted me to not lean so close to the paintings. (There was a Van Gogh with thick brush strokes and another that seemed to have a brown wash over it, making it mysterious. I just wanted to see how it was done, really. My hands were behind my back, I swear.)

 I was also intrigued with the advertising campaign for the show quoting Claude Monet:

“My life has been nothing but a failure”.

Everyone has felt like making such a diary entry at one time or another. A moment of unimaginable disappointment becomes the lens for life time. I didn’t get an explanation for Monet, but it still intrigues me how one of the most accomplished artists in history could conclude such a thing.

Failure is a tricky issue for Christians. There will always be very public preachers who are proponents of success through faith. If you believe this or practice that or buy a product from me, you will receive a blessing from God that usually involves cash or the perfect mate or feelings of pleasure. There are godly people in my life who appear to be successful in each of those areas, but each person might also echo Monet’s words about failure at one time or another. Jesus taught us that to be great, we need to be a servant. (Mark 10:43) It’s kind of upside down if your focus is on trying to impress others. It’s right on target if you are trying to please God. The Apostle Paul writes the Corinthians about some of his failures and concludes that in weakness, Christ gives him strength. A “Monet moment” is the time when we give up running things our way and open ourselves to God’s way.  (2 Corinthians 12).

On Sunday, we remembered many friends and family who died this past year by lighting candles on the communion table for Remembrance Sunday. And people brought in a pile of left over Halloween candy we will be processing this week for the college students. The morning message was about another Mark of the Christian Church: Fellowship (Acceptance, Belonging, and Caring), but the sobering fact was that it just doesn’t happen. The early Christians had to be “devoted” to the task. You had to be there!

Hebrews 13:8

Dear Friends,

As I write this, we have just finished the 2 weeks of “Yesterday and Tomorrow” meetings. I started out each session confessing that it is tempting for a new pastor to think that there is a blank slate ahead and that everything is new in the church just because the pastor is new. Of course, that’s not true. Each person has a history and the church, as a whole, has a history. The good news is:

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever! Hebrews 13:8

The previous verse asks us to “remember..” because the same Jesus who led the church in the past is here today. The same Jesus who inspired a group of Baptists to meet in the Palace Theatre, then buy a mansion on James St, and then expand into a new building, new programs, with new members is that same Jesus who is with us today!

So I asked two questions. First, how did you come to Eastwood Baptist? For most, the answer involved another person. Some were carried in by their parents and some were invited by a friend. For those who came on their own, they often found a new or renewed friend and it soon became home. I was amazed at how many walked to church or lived in Eastwood, at least in the beginning. (It may be that we should once again try to find ways to meet neighbors. We are certainly surrounded by people.) Many were looking for a Baptist church specifically and others came from various Christian backgrounds. Some came to a worship service, but not all. Some were invited to an event or a Wednesday night service or a women’s meeting. And some were searching for a church with certain qualities and found it at Eastwood Baptist.

Second, I told the story of the spyglass and how the king and his people looked at their kingdom and saw what might be or could be. We passed the spyglass and I asked what each person would see if they looked at Eastwood Baptist. Most saw more people. Many saw younger people and remembered youth experiences from the past. But other images came into focus, as well. Some saw various generations mixed together and others saw programs for separate groups. Some saw ministry in the community, music, small groups, caring groups, wider involvement among men, children, and youth. A few saw men in the choir. (Guess who?) More than one saw “parties”. One saw educational events for the community. Financial stability and improvements to the building appeared in some people’s vision. Some saw different styles of worship and some saw just what is happening now.

Thank you for joining me on this journey to yesterday and tomorrow. With God’s help, we will make some of the things in the spyglass come true. We must not lose a focus on the future. I’ll keep the spyglass on the top shelf. But most importantly, we must remember the teachings of our faith are constant. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever! Alleluia!

Pastor Paul

MONDAY MORNING AFTER

I’m having trouble deciding what to wear for the nursery school’s Halloween parties. I have a mask of President Carter, but I know they wouldn’t recognize him. (For that matter, neither would my college students.) In the public school, I always went as Bill Nye the Science Guy until one of the 5^th grade girls fainted during his video program on the heart. For 5 seconds, it showed an open heart operation. Down she went. The sight of a lab coat created a panic after that. In the Adam cartoon today, he recalls the Halloween he went as a blind ghost. His mother wouldn’t let him cut holes in the sheet. I remember those days.

Debating Halloween is a Christian tradition. I am sympathetic to those who find only evil and the occult in the day.  From video games that vicariously allow the players to commit acts of violence to ever more brutal movies that inevitably lead to copy cat behaviors, we don’t need another day to inspire even more mayhem. Some blame Halloween and its devilish behavior on Irish immigrants who brought to America. However it arrived, good ole American ingenuity has turned it into a multimillion dollar economic force. I grew up in the 60’s. By then, we were just in it for the candy. Some of my peers claimed to have filled a grocery bag with candy in one night. Those were the stories that danced in our heads. Oh yes, we had heard other stories from the adults about putting outhouses on roofs, etc. Most of us didn’t know what an outhouse was and those who did could not imagine wanting to do anything with it, let alone picking up one for fun.

It was the Christian church that “took over” the pagan holiday that celebrated the last wiles of the dead before alleged departure one last time. Christians transformed the day  into “All Saints Day” or “All Hallows’ Day”, “a holy day to commemorate the lives of all the saints of the church who have no special calendar day of their own, and to recognize the individual Christians within every congregation who have joined the Church Eternal in the last year”, according to Timothy Merrill, editor of Homiletics.

Maybe we should take a few moments this Saturday night, before turning our clocks back, and remember those family and friends who have demonstrated the Christian life to us and have died, not to haunt us, but to inspire us, to honor the Christ of heaven and earth.  “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” (Hebrews 12:1)

Phyllis and I worshiped at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia on Sunday, the church we attended while finishing college. It brought back many wonderful memories. Damon Gagnier brought the message on Sunday at Eastwood and Fall Fun Day followed. You had to be there. I missed it, myself.

Monday Morning After

When I was a boy, we played a board game called Careers. The key to winning was putting together a “Success Formula” at the beginning of the game. You decided what combination of Fame, Happiness, and Money it would take for you to win. Each category had points and everyone’s “Success Formula” had to add up to the same number. As you rolled the dice and moved your piece on the board, you gained points. This week the Heene family in Colorado put all their points in the Fame column when they allegedly tried to pull off a publicity stunt to jump start their family’s fading reality TV career. (The family had been on the ABC network show “Wife Swap” twice. One swap wasn’t enough, apparently.) They sent up a large gas filled balloon and claimed their son was inside, setting off all kinds of air control alarms. In fact, he was hiding in their attic just the way the family planned it. Fame. They have it now.

Two years ago, the Pew Research Center asked young adults (ages 18-25) what was their generation’s top goal in life. The top answer was to be rich, but it was the second answer that got all the attention. More than half said their generation’s goal was to be famous. You Tube, Facebook, reality TV make it all possible. It taps into our need to matter. The theme from the musical Fame says: “I’m gonna live forever, baby remember my name.”

But before we blame those young people for their mixed up priorities, it is true that, according to human development researchers, the last stages of life are a time when we all asked ourselves: “Did my life matter? Will anyone remember me?”

What is your success formula? Is there a combination of fame, happiness, and money that works for you? My bet is that it has changed over the years, and may change again. Jesus once said,

“What good is it for [someone] to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can [someone] give in exchange for his soul?” “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it…” (Mark 8:35-37)

Is their any amount of fame, happiness, and money that will satisfy? And if not, how do you preserve your soul in a world preoccupied with gaining the whole world? It is at that point that Jesus says follow me.

Sunday focused on the role worship played in the life of the early church, one more Mark of the Christian Church. Their worship included: Time dedicated to God; Place because place carry meaning; and Actions where people are drawn into the living presence of God. I challenged the children to tithe their Halloween candy this year and bring it on November 1^st. We’ll send it to our college students. (On the way out of church they put the pennies I gave them in the penny pipe. Cool.) Also, Darlene sang a song that carried us into the presence of God. We still need people who would be willing to be greeters and lay leaders in worship, but I also opened the discussion of greeting time on Sunday and the need to respect the current health issues that we are facing today. Prepare yourself for some creative greeting suggestions in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, let’s remember to be respectful, especially until this influenza season is over. We had a great group (who sang, too) go to the Karen worship service Sunday afternoon. You had to be there!

Morning After…

Today is Columbus Day. I was taught to revere him, but as so many things in life, over time you begin to re-evaluate. Now, I just feel bad. Columbus Day seems like one of those days that if the government ever decides to downgrade a holiday, this will be the one. We wouldn’t drop it. It would just fall into the category of Halloween or Valentines Day or St. Patrick’s Day. It is interesting how holidays take on alternative meanings, too. Everyone knows that in the North, Memorial Day is the day you open up the camps and Columbus Day is the weekend you close them up. We’d lose our bearings without Columbus Day.

Actually, that’s the other thing I think about on Columbus Day: “loosing bearings”. Columbus was a very tall man. He had red hair that turned very white, a big nose, and rugged skin. He claimed to be a master at navigating the known Atlantic Ocean. The famous first trip was a journey into the unknown. Historians say that he intentionally planned the trip to avoid any familiar landmarks, to “go where no one has gone before”. Or at least, the way no one had gone. They had sailed a month without seeing land. At one point the rudder broke requiring immediate repair. After leaving the last familiar land, Canary Islands, they discovered their compass was not working correctly. They finally began to see birds and floating vegetation, a sign of hope. They spied land in the darkness (2am). In the end, Columbus realized he had miscalculated his trip by over 1000 miles.

In the Bible, Abraham was asked by God to take a “Columbus Trip”.  “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12) It must have been a “Columbus Moment”. He trusted God. Hebrews says: “By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went….even though he did not know where he was going.” (There’s more in Hebrews 11).

So when I think of Columbus Day, I think of those times in life when my compass is broken, my plans are all wrong, and I’ve been drifting way too long. It is in those times that I wait for floating sticks in the dark. They do come.

On Sunday, we welcomed new members, passed out Christmas Child Boxes, and had a breakfast feast to benefit our Compassion Children. The theme was servanthood because the early church was a serving church. To be a servant, you need a servant’s heart, hands, and head. I read The Giving Tree to the children and the music was a joy. You had to be there!

Morning After…

People keep giving me disturbing books. Recently, a dear friend suggested I read The Gift of Years, by Joan Chittister. I was intrigued until I reached the subtitle: “Growing Old Gracefully”. I was reminded of the time that whippersnapper at the movie theatre counter asked me if I wanted the senior discount. It was only after I corrected his analysis of my age that I awakened to the fact that I could have saved a few bucks by simply saying yes. (Actually, the chapter on regrets is bound to be used in a future sermon.)

This summer, a group of friends told me to read some Parker Palmer. In his book, Let Your Life Speak, he talks about me in his section on “functional atheism”. I’ve never thought of myself as an atheist, but I think he is on to something. Functional atheism is “the belief that the ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us”.  When I say I trust God, but act like nothing will happen unless I do it, am I really trusting God?  Over the years, I have accepted the fact that I can be controlling at times. I mean, it wasn’t an accident that one of my former parishioners coined the phrase, “God loves you and Pastor Paul has a wonderful plan for your life”.  Palmer writes that functional atheism is the, “unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen around here, we are the ones who must make it happen”.  Trusting God means recognizing that, at times, God does give more than we can bear. If we could always handle it ourselves, why bother with God?
(Is this too heavy for a blog? If so, skip down to the bottom – J)

It’s just that I was reminded of Parker Palmer’s indictment when I read a comment by another writer, Margaret Feinberg. When asked about her impressions of the church in America, she said that more than anything we looked very tired.

“In that place of exhaustion, we don’t need the latest program or initiative as much as we need people who are falling in love with God and the scriptures.”

I know I have that functional atheist streak in me and I know I get spiritually tired when I don’t “Let go and let God”. I need to keep singing, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God… and all these things will be added unto to you.” (Matthew 6:33) How about you?

It was a triple WOW Sunday, and that’s not just because we went way over time, which we did. Nine people were baptized, 3 different people groups from around the world (American, Chin, Karen). We shared communion and the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian and sign language. Chung Hee Lee sang a solo and Sue accompanied the choir on the French horn. For the children’s story, we laid hands on the globe for World Communion Sunday and prayed. So many new and old friends gathered for worship. You had to be there!

But it wasn’t foolish to God

Dear Friends,

For me, each October my thoughts turn to world mission and with World Communion Sunday coming and a missionary visit with Kristy Engel coming the month, I thought I would share this reflection I wrote when I realized that our American Baptist Churches in Central New York would be forever intertwined with the Burmese. It is the story of how that connection began nearly 200 years ago.

“…Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? …For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” Corinthians 1:20, 25

It was foolish for Adoniram Judson living outside Boston in the early 1800’s to become convinced that God wanted him to bring the gospel to a “foreign” land; because many fine, outstanding Christians in the early 1800’s believed that if God had wanted “those people” to hear about Christ, God would have gone himself. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

It was foolish for Judson to leave the comfort of his home outside of Boston, let alone ask a wife to join him, because it was clear that they might never return to see family again in this world. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

It was foolish for many Baptists in American to raise $3000 to help the Congregationalists send their missionary, Adoniram Judson, because Judson was NOT a Baptist. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

It was not foolish for Adoniram to study his Bible on the long journey, but it was foolish for him to become convinced that he should change his life long Christian belief in infant baptism and in the midst of an oceanic journey decide to change beliefs and become a Baptist because he would be disappointing many people. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

And it was foolish for Judson to write back to the Congregationalists who sent and supported him and tell them he was no longer a Congregationalist, because he would be without support and could be accused of misrepresenting himself as one thing and now another. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

And it was foolish for the Baptists to form a missionary society to support Judson, a missionary already on the field, because everyone knows that these things need to be planned and prepared way in advance and who knows; maybe he would change again, into something else after this. What kind of man was he? But it wasn’t foolish to God.

It was foolish for Adoniram to stop off in India to visit British Missionary William Carey because England and America were in conflict and the British East India Company stiffly opposed missionary work at the time and Judson would have to leave quickly. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

It was foolish for Judson, while in India, to make a huge decision about his future ministry based on the fact that he was in danger, had to leave India quickly, and the only ship available was going to Burma because everyone knows it is not wise to make big decisions in a crisis and besides, more than one attempt at mission work there had failed. But it wasn’t foolish to God.

It was foolish for Judson to serve as a missionary for 6 years before gaining one convert to Christianity, but it was the foolishness of God that allowed him to lead many more to Christ after that in addition to writing the first English-Burmese Dictionary and translating the Bible into Burmese. And as thousands of Burmese (Karen, Chin, Kachin, etc.) became Christians, it was foolish for the Karen to include in their national anthem a phrase the envisioned a time when they would be able to send missionaries around the world just as missionaries came to their country, but it was the foolishness of God to fulfill that dream by arranging for thousands of Burmese Christians to be sent around the world as refugees.

Today, it is foolish to think that God would choose Syracuse as an ideal place for refugees who have lived their entire lives in tropical climates to live, but it is the foolishness of God that is wiser than man’s wisdom. And it may be foolish to get involved or it just maybe the foolishness of God

Pastor Paul Bailey