Monthly Archives: March 2011

“A New Way of Thinking”

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This is the message that I gave on the 2nd Sunday of Lent (28 February 1999) at the Neon (KY) United Methodist Church.  The Scriptures for this Sunday were Genesis 12: 1 –4; Romans 4: 1 – 5, 13 – 17; and John 3: 1 – 17.

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Can you remember what it was like when you learned something new? Now, I am not talking about when you did something like passing your driver’s test but rather when you mastered a new idea. Perhaps it was in math class when the teacher was trying to teach you how to multiply fractions? Or it could have been when you were trying to cook something from scratch and you finally got the ingredients just right. When this happened, there was a sense of exhilaration that you finally learned something.

When we try to learn something new, often times we encounter difficulties because we try to fit this new learning into what we already know. As long as we do this, as long as we try to learn something new based on our old ways, we have a hard time learning new things. Often times we can get real frustrated about learning. That’s why when we do finally learn the new point, there is a feeling of exhilaration. We have overcome the barriers that we were faced with and things become easier. Then when we look at that problem again, it seems so simple.

The old way of thinking was what Paul was writing about in his letter to the Romans. What Paul was talking about was two different ways of living. In the old way, admittance to heaven was granted through your adherence to the law, by the manner of your works. But God’s Grace is a gift, given to us because, as it was written in John 3: 16,

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

And if God’s grace is a gift to us, how then can anything we do get us into heaven? This is an interesting question; it is a question that can cause us long sleepless nights. What can we do to get into heaven?

Nicodemus was faced with such a dilemma. He came to Jesus seeking to find out how it was that Jesus could be doing what He was doing. As Jesus told him, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

To my mind, this is one of the most important statements in the whole New Testament. Unless we are born again, we cannot see the kingdom of God. This statement was very hard for Nicodemus to understand because he was listening to it with his old way of thinking. As Nicodemus replied, “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

Nicodemus still thought that the way to heaven was through strict adherence to the law. Yet the law was often times contradictory and you could find yourself easily violating one point of the law while upholding another one. That is true even today. In our secular society, we seek to meet the requirements for success that are imposed on us by our culture and our society, often times to find that when we reach success, we find our lives lacking something or that the definition of success has changed.

As Jesus told Nicodemus, “ we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” This means that as long as we continue to believe in terms of the law, in believing that what you do is our key to heaven, then there was no way that we can ever understand the message Jesus was telling.

The period of Lent is a period of preparation. It is a journey that begins when we accept Christ into our lives. But we must first change our way of thinking. We must go beyond the old way of thinking, of trying to live within the boundaries of society and its laws. It is a journey based on faith and understanding what Christ expects from us. Faith is something that we cannot learn. God spoke to Abraham

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land that I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram left, as the Lord has told him;

And without hesitation, Abraham left for the Promised Land. And each time that Jesus called one of his disciples to follow him, they did so without hesitation.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him. (Luke 5: 10b – 11)

Later, Jesus called the last two disciples, Phillip and Nathanael, Nathanael first expressed disbelief about Jesus. He said, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” because it was a popular belief that no one from that town was any good. Yet Jesus knew who Nathanael was,

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.”

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”

Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.” He then added, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 47 – 51)

The promise that God made to Abraham, the promise that Jesus made to his disciples, came only through the faith that they, Abraham and the disciples, put in God and Jesus. As Paul wrote, “the promise comes by faith, so that it may be grace”

Jesus challenged Nicodemus to change his way of thinking, to go beyond simply living the law and to have faith that God did love him. It was not necessary to return to his mother’s womb because as Nicodemus knew, that was physically impossible. But Nicodemus could let the Spirit of the Lord come into his live and he could then be born again.

The invitation that Christ gave to Nicodemus is also given to us. It is an invitation to see God as a gracious and womb-like, offering the sanctuary of shelter that we often need. This is in contrast to a view of God through the law where He would be the source and enforcer of requirements, boundaries and divisions. Christ’s invitation to be born again, to accept the presence of the Holy Spirit, is an invitation to take a different path for the rest of our live.

The path that He gives us is a much more difficult one, but only if we view it with our old way of thinking. If we take this new path, we find a life that is more and more centered in God and one in which we have a deepening relationship with the Spirit of God.

Just like Nicodemus had a hard time accepting the invitation, so too is it hard for us. After all, our old way of thinking does not confirm the reality of the Holy Spirit; the only reality that we can be certain is the visible world of our ordinary experience. And in this view, the only means of obtaining satisfaction is through the material world. We live our lives, measuring our self-worth and level of satisfaction based on how well we measure up to what the material world defines as success. Not only is this burdensome and often times unreachable, but when we do reach success, we finds the results, the rewards unsatisfying.

Jesus’ invitation, to Nicodemus to be born again, for the disciples to follow him, challenges and changes our way of thinking. It shows us that the Holy Spirit is real and that God is real. Consider what happened to Job. At the end of the Book of Job, after Job has experienced a dramatic self-disclosure of God, he exclaimed, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye beholds thee.” (Job 42: 5)

When we view the world with our old way of thinking, we cannot envision a God who would give up his only son; we cannot envision Christ dying on the cross for our sins. In our old way of thinking, the law traps us, forcing us to seek things and rewards that are extremely fleeting.

The gospel of Jesus – the good news of Jesus – is that there is a way of being that moves beyond both secular and religious conventional wisdom. The path of transformation that Jesus spoke about leads from a life of requirements and measuring up (whether it is to the daily culture we live in or to God) to a life of a relationship with God. Though the path that Jesus puts before us may look narrow, rough and rocky, it leads us away from a life of anxiety and towards one of peace and trust; from a life centered in culture to a life centered in God.

Jesus challenged his disciples to follow him, to go from being just fishermen to becoming fishers of men. Jesus challenged Nicodemus to be born again, to be born of the Spirit. The disciples followed through faith and came to understand Jesus’ message when the Holy Spirit came to them. Nicodemus went away, probably more confused than he was when first came to Jesus that night so long ago. How will you accept Jesus’ challenge and invitation? Will you hold to the old way of thinking and not understand? Or will you accept the Holy Spirit and accept Christ as your Savior? It is a new way of thinking. But then again the life that you lead as a result is a new life, one in Christ.

Lessons for the Future

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The philosopher George Santayana is perhaps best known for his quote that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Of course, the problem is, if we do not know the past, we cannot remember it. And that makes the condemnation even more severe.

The present thought in Congress, especially the House of Representatives, is that all spending other than military and security spending is to be cut and, if at all possible, eliminated. I know what the arguments for doing so are but they seem a little bit short-sighted.

If the House of Representatives had had their way, money for NOAA would have been cut. It is NOAA that oversees the operation of the tsunami warning system. We saw what happened a few years back when money for weather service reconnaissance aircraft was cut; it threatened to remove part of our ability to track hurricanes.

We are on the verge of destroying our educational system under the guise of educational reform. We say that we are holding the system accountable when we insist on test after test in the classroom (I have another post being prepared on that issue). In the end, what we will have is a number of individuals who know things for the moment but don’t know anything tomorrow. And that will make Santayana’s prophecy even more frightening.

Now, let me ask you a question. Where will the next big earthquake strike in the United States? The answer is not California but southeast Missouri near a town called New Madrid. The last really big quake in this area changed the course of the Mississippi River and church bells rang in New York City and Boston.

Now, it is very hard to predict the exact moment of an earthquake or its severity. Recent events tell us that. But we can look at the history and see what it may say about the future. For the New Madrid fault, it appears that an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater occurs every 80 years or so (the last one was in 1895). An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 or greater occurs every 200 – 300 years or so. The New Madrid earthquake of 1811-12 was actually a series of some 2000 shocks over a course of 5 months with the greatest having a magnitude of 8.0. (FYI, the Richter scale is logarithmic – a change in 1 unit on the scale, say from 6 to 7, is a ten-fold increase in energy.) (Information on earthquakes in the heartland of America can be found at http://www.scchealth.org/docs/ems/docs/prepare/newMadrid.html and http://www.ceri.memphis.edu/index.shtml.)

Also, I do not believe that the earthquake swarm that has been occurring in Arkansas recently is related to the New Madrid fault but to our lack of understanding about the geology of the area. But again, our lack of understanding is proving to be detrimental to our well-being.

The problem that we are faced with at this moment is that should the New Madrid fault slip anytime soon, we are not prepared for it. There would not be a tsunami like what hit Japan but practically every bridge across the Mississippi River would probably be damaged to point that it would be unsafe to cross. And we have quit using ferries to cross the river and trains don’t use ferries so we would have major, major problems as regarding interstate commerce.

And as we found out after Hurricane Katarina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, we do not have the ability to utilize the National Guard as a first responder since most of the equipment is over in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And if we totally gut the social safety system, as many in Congress so want to do, how will we solve this problem? Even Japan is beginning to suffer under the ability to care for its people because the country’s communication and transportation systems have been devastated. I do not wish to be a prophet of doom but I fear that what is transpiring in Japan right now may very well be an image we might see sometime in the next thirty years in this country. We are not prepared to deal with such a crisis at this time and unless we change our mindset about what our responsibilities as individuals and as a society are, we will not be able to deal with any time soon.

Let us take the lessons of the present and make sure that we have a future.

Nuclear Reactor Information

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As a way of disclosure, I hold a degree in Chemistry and find the subject of nuclear energy quite interesting. From one standpoint, it is the 21st century equivalent of alchemy as we have found ways to change elements into other elements. Theoretically, we can even make lead into gold though it is 1) complicated and 2) the gold wouldn’t be worth anything.

But nuclear energy is also the genie that was loosed from the bottle and we are having a difficult time getting it back in. After the first atomic weapon was exploded in New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the civilian director of the Manhattan Project thought of two verses from the Bhagavad Gita,

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.

He later added the line that he is more often remembered for,

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

I believe in nuclear power as an alternative source of energy. But I am also aware of the risks, the dangers, and the consequences that come with using nuclear power. It comes down to what we, individually and collectively, know and what we do with the knowledge. I believe that most of the accidents that have occurred in the past and the problems in Japan are not related to nuclear power but to human failings. It may be, as one source suggested, that the problems in Japan occurred because the people building the plants did not test the back up systems properly. I will hold judgment on that but I have heard too many other stories about management insisting on improper shortcuts to dismiss such comments.

In the end, we the people must make informed decisions and not rely on others to make up our minds for us. So I am providing some links that will give you the starting information that can help you understand what is going on.

Basic information about nuclear reactors and what the terms used in the media are supposed to mean can be found at "ABCs of Japan’s Nuclear Reactor Disaster". The Union of Concerned Scientists also provides updates about the nuclear industry at "All Things Nuclear".

This Journey into Lent

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Here are my thoughts for this 1st Sunday of Lent, 13 March 2011 (not sure why but I had this as 2005 when I first posted it). The Scriptures for this Sunday are Genesis 2: 15 – 17, 3: 1 – 7; Romans 5: 12 – 19; and Matthew 4: 1 – 11.

I presented these thoughts at the beginning worship for the Lenten School, a collection of classes on a variety of topics. This year, we had a basic course in lay speaking, a course in sermon planning, and advanced courses in preaching, caring ministries, spiritual gifts, a study of Ecclesiastes, and Christian Stewardship. There is also a six-week Lenten Study and a “rock camp” for youth.

We are all on a journey. For some, it is not just a journey of time but place. After all, unless you happen to live here at Grace UMC, you have traveled some distance to be here.

But during Lent, this journey becomes a journey of the soul as we seek to find out more about ourselves and who we are to be in this world. We know where this journey began and why. It is a journey that began for all mankind in the Garden so many years ago.

We also know that this some forty days from now we will be in another Garden. As Paul wrote to the Romans, just as one died for doing wrong and getting us all into trouble with sin and death, so did another person get it right and get us out of trouble.

But we struggle with those days in between. Our journey confuses at times; at times we are not even sure where we are.

And if we get confused and we know where we started and where we are going, think of those today that are searching for those central points of life.

So we are here, seeking and hoping, being tested by society in ways much like Jesus was those first forty days of His ministry.

Our fear perhaps is that we can’t answer the Tempter as Jesus did. But we forget that once Jesus as like us, a student studying the Scriptures. Have we forgotten the young boy of 12 who engaged the teachers in thoughtful and intellectual discussion?

Can it be that what we learn during the next six weeks will open our minds and hearts just as it must have done for Jesus and those there in the Temple that day?

And lest we forget, we are United Methodists where education is as much a foundation of our faith as reason, experience, and tradition.

For some, the journey begins; for others, it continues. And though forty days from now, this gathering ends, the journey continued.

Because there will be times when we will be like Stephen and encounter some one searching just as we once did. And you will be able to help them on their way.

So let the journey begin.

Tell Me a Story

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This is from a 1960s – 70s era earth science textbook. You start at the bottom where the two sets of tracks are apart and you ask the students to tell you what they think is happening. They do not see the top two sections. Then you uncover the middle section and ask the students to add to or revise their stories. What additional details can you add? Finally, you show them the third part of the photo so that they can write the conclusion. I thought an interesting twist would be to change it so that the little footprints walk away.

 


So can you tell me a story?

“The Beginning or the End”

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This is the message that I presented at Tompkins Corners UMC for the 1st Sunday in Lent, 13 February 2005.  The Scriptures for this Sunday were Genesis 2: 15 – 17, 3: 1 – 7; Romans 5: 12 – 19; and Matthew 8: 1 – 11.

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I used to play a lot of chess when I was in high school; but as time went on, my competitive playing tapered off. Chess is an interesting game, both for the logic and strategy that it teaches as well as the history of the game. But one thing always confused me. In chess, there is an opening, a middle game, and an end game. The only problem is that there is very little differentiation between each of the sections. You start with a particular opening gambit and then before you know it, you are in the middle game. And, if you are not careful, you are in the end game and the game is over.

The same can probably be said about the life of a church or churches in general. Some look around at the world and conclude that we are in the "end times." But are we?

Last year, I was concerned that the end of the United Methodist Church was close at hand. I saw signs that suggested that the General Conference would be the most divisive conference, at least since the General Conference of 1844 when the Methodist Episcopal Church split over the issue of slavery and slave ownership.

When you look at the history of the Methodist Church, it is amazing that it even exists today. In the early 1800’s, the Methodist Episcopal Church walked a fine line between opposing slavery and allowing its members to own slaves. The African Methodist Church (or A. M. E. church) and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church were formed because of the way black parishioners and preachers were treated in the predominantly white churches of this country. In 1830, the Methodist Protestant Church was formed in protest because the General Conference would not grant representation to laity in church matters and permit the direct election of presiding elders (our district superintendents).

In 1844, when the General Conference ordered James O. Andrew, a southern bishop, to either get rid of the slaves that his wife owned or give up his position as bishop, he chose to do neither. The conference voted to suspend him until he did one of the two. In response, the southern delegates to the General Conference walked out. In 1845, the delegates met and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church South. This split lasted until the union of the three branches of the church, the Methodist Protestant Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Methodist Episcopal Church South reunited to form the Methodist Church in 1939.

It should be noted that many of the churches in the ME South suffered great damage during the Civil War. Most notably was the battle fought at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee on April 6th and 7th, 1862. It is known in the annals of the war as the Battle of Shiloh, named after the Methodist church where the battle was fought. 23,746 men were killed, wounded, or missing after the two day battle on the grounds of a place named for peace.

But the General Conference of 2004 did not split the church. But the issues that threaten the destruction of the United Methodist Church still exist and will not go away until there is a new vision, a new way of seeing things and working together. It is also a problem that is going to plague and haunt most Christian denominations over the coming years.

Many people who need to find Jesus are not willing to come to a church that they perceive does not welcome them, for whatever reason. There is a perception that if you do not fit into the mold of the church, you will not be welcome. I cannot imagine how this is the image of Christ’s ministry described in the Bible. Did not the Pharisees and power brokers of the day criticize Jesus for being with the poor, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and those that they, the Pharisees and power brokers, considered the "scum" of the earth? What images do those outside the church see? Do they think they will find Christ in a place that bans people for any number of reasons?

It comes down to what we say and what we do. Are the words that we say the words in our heart? Are they the words of a true Christian? Consider what we read this morning from the Old Testament.

In the first part of the reading, we hear God say to Adam, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2: 16 – 17) But Eve says to the serpent, "we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’" (Genesis 3: 3)

Now, much has been made about Eve engaging in this conversation and much has been made about the fact that Adam ate of the fruit of this tree when it was offered to him by Eve. But that should not be our concern today. It is that in response to the challenge of the serpent, Eve did not hold to the obedience to God that was expected of her. In his accepting the fruit, be it an apple or something else, Adam also gave up his obedience to God. Eve’s distortion of God’s command is not the problem; as one commentary points out, what she said would have insured that the command was kept. What is important is that the serpent’s challenge is a challenge to God’s authority; for Eve, it creates a doubt about God’s authority.

We see the same thing when we look at the temptation of Christ. Satan tempts Christ by quoting the Bible. But each time Satan speaks, he puts the context in terms of personal power rather than the glory of God. Satan is challenging the authority of God. Ultimately, Jesus defeats Satan because He, Jesus, will not put the world above God. The kingdom that Jesus seeks in His ministry is God’s kingdom, not a worldly one.

How does this all fit into this time, this season of Lent? Thomas Merton wrote,

"The purpose of Lent is not expiation, to satisfy the divine justice, but above all a preparation to rejoice in God’s love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of God’s mercy – a gift which we receive in so far as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.

Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. IF we are terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await God’s mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer. Our peace, our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace. (Thomas Merton, in "Seasons of Celebration" as noted in Sojo mail for February 10, 2005.)

We have allowed ourselves to live in a world of fear. Note Adam and Eve’s response to the knowledge that they had sinned; it was fear, fear that they had offended God. In their fear, they hid from God. And in our sin, we try to find ways of reclaiming God that do not necessarily involve God.

Paul’s words to the Romans offer us the knowledge that sin took away. That life comes from God through Christ. It is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross that brings us back into God’s kingdom. As Paul states, "one man’s obedience to God means that many will be made righteous."

As I stated earlier, I worried about the future of the church following General Conference last year, especially since much of what took place was a battle of words, all in the name of God. But I have hope for the future. But it is a hope based on a different vision, not one offered by man but one offered by God.

We cannot offer hope for the future by ourselves; it must come from God. The prophet Habakkuk was a dissenter, a critic, and a voice of the opposition. He was the type of person who spoke out about the problems of society. But at the beginning of his prophecy, he did little to change society. It was when God spoke to him and told him to write down the vision that things began to change. (Adapted from God’s Politics by Jim Wallis, page 27) 

For us, it is the cross that is the ultimate metaphor of prophetic criticism.

It means the end of the old consciousness that brings death on everyone. The crucifixion articulates God odd freedom, his strange justice, and his peculiar power; it is this freedom, justice, and power that break the power of the old age and bring it to death. Without the cross, prophetic imaginations will likely to be as strident and destructive as that which it criticizes. The cross is the assurance that effective prophetic criticism is done not by an outsider but always by one who must embrace the grief, enter into the death, and know the pain of the criticized one. (Adapted from The Prophetic Imagination by Water Brueggemann (Cokesbury prayer guide)

The crucifixion of Jesus is not to be understood simply in good liberal fashion as the sacrifice of a noble man, nor should we too quickly assign a cultic, priestly theory of atonement to the event. Rather, we might see the crucifixion of Jesus as the ultimate act of prophetic criticism in which Jesus announces the end of a world of death and takes that death into his own person.

We celebrate Holy Communion for two reasons. The first is to remember that last night before the crucifixion; the second is to celebrate what that crucifixion means for our lives today. We see the world in one way when we live without Christ; when we accept Christ as our own and personal Savior, when we allow the Holy Spirit to come into our lives, the way in which we see the world changes.

Is today the beginning or the end? It is the first Sunday in Lent, so in one sense it is the beginning. But it is also the end of a life lived without Christ, if we will let it be. The beginning or the end, the answer lies in your heart.

“Seeing Through the Clouds”

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I was at the United Methodist Church of the Highlands (341 Main Street, Highland Falls, NY 10928) yesterday (6 March 2011), Transfiguration Sunday.  The Scriptures for Sunday were Exodus 24: 12 – 18, 2 Peter 1: 16 – 21, and Matthew 17: 1 – 9.

Their service starts at 11 am and you are welcome to be a part of the worship.

Notes added on 12 November 2013 – To get from Newburgh to Highland Falls requires driving over Storm King Mountain.  As I recall, on this Sunday, the cloud cover that morning was rather low and you entered the clouds as you drove up the north slope and then back through the clouds as you came down on the south slope.  It made for a very interesting drive and relationship to the Old Testament reading that morning.

I have also removed the link to my publications list; if you are interested in seeing this list, please contact me.

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There is a new phrase floating around these days called “cloud computing.” Essentially, it is a way for two members of a family to share pictures or videos or some other file through the Internet. It is a great idea, except for one thing; it is not a new idea.

Sharing files was one of the primary reasons that the Internet was invented back in the late 1980s. And the sharing of files so that two individuals in different locations can work on the file at the same time has been a part of most office computer networks since the invention of the local area network. What “cloud computing” does is to expand the range of the collaboration. But again, that is nothing new, at least as far as I know.

Back in 1991, Marcin Paprzycki and I co-authored a series of manuscripts that focused on the use of computer networks in the classroom. We foresaw a number of situations that are in place today. And after the publication of one of our papers, George Duckett contacted us about a possible collaborative research project. Now, some people will say that this is no big deal; collaborative research projects are part and parcel of academic life. The only thing about this project was that George was at the University of Tasmania in Australia, Marcin was at The University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, Texas, and I was at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The only contact that the three of us had was through e-mail communication on a regular basis. I was fortunate to meet George when he came to the United States in 1995 but Marcin never met him in person. In addition to the research papers generated by the project, what was, I believe, the first paper to outline what was needed for an on-line collaborative project was also published. Some aspects of what we wrote are no longer applicable but I believe the general ideas expressed are still valid. (A list of the papers that Marcin, George and I wrote from 1991 to 1995 can be found on “Publications of Tony Mitchell”; if you are interested in a copy, drop me a note. The outline for doing research on the Internet is still available – “Research Methods Using Computer Networks”, with Marcin Paprzycki and George Duckett, The Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture, 2(4), August 1994.)

Now, what do you ask does all this have to do with a church? Well, there are a number of churches who see “cloud computing” and what one can do with it as their, excuse me for an obvious pun, salvation. There are a number of churches who have been recording their Sunday morning worship services and sending the tapes around to the home-bound members and that is good. Some have even video taped the service and sent copies of the video. With “cloud computing”, it is possible for any church with a minimal cost to broadcast on the Internet, extending the range of the church from the local community to the whole world. There is the possibility of interactive communication, of people in one place conversing in real time with people in another. This will open new avenues for the church, such as an on-line church (which some are trying to develop right now).

But at some point we have to realize that the church is still in the “people” business. I have said on numerous occasions before but it bears repeating. Technology is nice; after all, I used a laptop computer to prepare and print this sermon; I will post it to my blog so that others can read it later in the day. But it always comes down to the people.

It does not matter how many people you reach on-line. For one thing there are certain aspects of the church, baptism and communion, that I truly feel cannot be done on-line; they must be done in person. It doesn’t matter if you make either an audio or video recording of the service and take it to the home-bound if you don’t spend time with the people when you take the recording.

It may be nice to do church in “the cloud” but I would much rather be there as well.

Of course, Moses spent forty days in the cloud with God but he was alone and all the Israelites saw was something that looked like a raging fire (to borrow a phrase from The Message’s translation of the Old Testament reading for today). And while Moses was on the mountain with God, he could not see what was happening to the people at the foot of the mountain.

He could not see or sense their panic as the days passed and he did not return. He could not see them begging with Aaron and the other elders to create the golden calf so that they would have tangible evidence of a god.

We all know what happened when Moses and Joshua came back down from the mountain and discovered the unfaithfulness of the people. So we will leave that for another day and jump forward to the Gospel reading when Peter, James, and John join Jesus on the mountain top.

We aren’t told if the mountain was shrouded in clouds as was the case when Moses climbed to the top. But we do know that Peter, filled with the excitement of the moment, wanted to build a monument to mark this moment and place. But who would have seen this monument? How would the people have gotten to it?

If this mountain were shrouded in clouds, the people would not have seen it and the fact that it was on the mountaintop meant that it wasn’t easily accessible. That’s not what a church is supposed to be. A church is supposed to be visible and accessible, available for all the people of the community, not just a select few.

What Jesus did and does today is call us by our own name. He has removed the clouds of mystery that surround our lives and keep us from seeing God. Each one of us has a unique and different relationship with Jesus and it is this fact that we each individually have this in common that brings us together every Sunday. We are reminded that I cannot answer your call when Jesus calls you by your name. Nor can you answer when Jesus calls me. But because we are a collective group of individuals who are joined by a similar experience we can help each other. (I want to thank John Meunier for his thoughts on this relationship – “What you can’t do for me”)

And that is what prompted Peter to write his words. He was there that day; he saw the Light that was Christ but instead of keeping it secret or private, he chose to share it with others. As was written, “Prophecy resulted when the Holy Spirit prompted men and women to speak God’s Word.”

The clouds have rolled away and the sun shines brightly. And we have been challenged to tell others what we have seen and what has happened. Some may choose to use new technologies and this will allow many to know about Christ for the first time. But many more others will come to know who Christ is and what He means by what each one of us does. Peter, James, and John were told not to speak of what they saw on the mountain that day some two thousand years ago because the time wasn’t right. But the time is right today for each of us to go forth in the world and let the people know who Christ is and what He means for each one of us.

“The Mountaintop Experience”

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This is the message that I presented at Tompkins Corners UMC for Transfiguration Sunday, 6 February 2005.  

The Scriptures for this Sunday were Exodus 24: 12 – 18, 2 Peter 1: 16 – 21, and Matthew 17: 1 – 9.

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I have probably said it before but it is worth repeating. Opening the church in the morning and seeing the sunlight peak over the hills is a very warming experience, not unlike the experience I had waking up in southeastern Kentucky. But then again, hills and mountains have always been a part of my life.

From the time I was two, living in the Philippines and having Mount Pinatubo in our backyard at Clark Air Force Base to our days in Colorado with the Rockies and Missouri with Ozarks, there have always been hills and mountains. And coming from the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky to the broad expanse of the Hudson Valley, not unlike the eastern slopes of those same Appalachian Mountains continued that trend.

Even living in Memphis, I encountered mountains, though not geological mountains. Rather, as a senior graduating from a Memphis area high school in 1968, my classmates and I, along with the entire city and surrounding area, saw Martin Luther King come to the aid of the sanitation workers and their strike for equality and fairness in working conditions. It was a struggle that went barely noticed outside the city limits of Memphis.

It was in Memphis that spring that Dr. King said those rather prophetic words, "I have been to the mountaintop and I have seen the Promised Land." He concluded that thought by noting that he may not be able to finish the journey. The next day, he was shot down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis. Whether or not I was aware of why Dr. King had come to Memphis then, that event changed my life as it did just about everyone else living in Memphis and Shelby County back then. No longer would the struggles of any worker to gain a living wage and respectability be confined to one place or one time; rather, such struggles would be the struggles of all when one who fought for equality was shot down for his efforts.

Dr. King’s reference to seeing the Promised Land from the mountaintop was a reference to God’s promise to Moses that he, Moses, would see the Promised Land before he died. (Deuteronomy 34: 1 – 8) Because of the transgressions of the Israelites when they first came to the Promised Land, the original families that had left Egypt for the Exodus were prohibited from entering the Promised Land. Even though he did no wrong, Moses was not allowed to enter either.

But this was not Moses’ first mountaintop experience. The first time Moses went to the mountaintop was described in today’s Old Testament reading. And like all mountaintop experiences, it was a life-changing event.

When you go to the mountaintop, things change. It is clear that when Peter, James, and John accompanied Jesus to the mountaintop they were not prepared for what happened there. Despite their initial thoughts that Jesus was the true Messiah, they were not entirely sure that He was. The experience of seeing Jesus along with Moses and Elijah, and then hearing God proclaim that Jesus was His son clarified who Jesus was then, now, and forever. For the three disciples, it was a life-changing experience. Their lives after coming down from then mountaintop would never be the same as they were before they went up. It certainly was the case for Moses.

Moses came down from the mountaintop aglow from having been in the presence of God for those forty days. He also came down with the Ten Commandments, the basis for the covenant between God and man. Life for Moses and the Israelites would never be the same as it was before he went up the mountain.

Maybe that is why Peter wanted to build the memorial on that spot. He wanted to hold on to that moment in time for as long as possible. But the problem with seeing life on the mountaintop is that it is not the life one lives at the bottom of the mountain. That is probably why Jesus would not allow them to proceed in that regard.

You can see very far from the mountaintop but you cannot tell what it is that you are looking at. You can see literally for miles beyond the horizon. In the days before Interstate highways, it was not uncommon to see barns painted with advertisements to go to Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN, where you could see seven states. Of course, you needed a reasonably decent sense of geography to know which states you were seeing since there were no signs to tell you what states you were seeing.

As the Old Testament reading tells us, the mountain was shrouded in clouds, so Moses would not have been able to see the tribes of Israel encamped at the base of the mountain. Where I lived in Kentucky, you could probably see New York but you could not see much detail. In fact, you could see the streets of Whitesburg from the top of Pine Mountain but you could not see the people walking on the streets and you could barely see the cars as they rolled by.

You may achieve great understanding through a mountaintop experience; that certainly was the case for Moses, Peter, James and John. But you cannot put that experience to work until you come down from the top.

The transfiguration comes at a critical point in Jesus’ life, a point of major transition as He shifts from an active ministry among the people towards the journey to Jerusalem and his death and resurrection, to that point in time where human and divine will intersect. Knowing how hard it would be for His disciples to understand what is to take place in the coming days, Jesus takes His three closest disciples and heads up the mountain.

There they come into the presence of God, and their hearts and souls are opened to see what their eyes can barely believe. Their friend and teacher, the very human Jesus, is transfigured before them. The appearance of His face changes. His clothes become dazzling white. They sense the presence of Moses and Elijah. And they are afraid. But God perceives their fear and responds by speaking to them. God wants them to begin to understand how this Jesus, fully human, is also fully divine.

Matthew’s story of the transfiguration shows us the true reality of Christ, the light of the world. Its aim is to help us see beyond Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean, and see Him radically transformed into the Son of God, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Only then will we begin to take in the foreshadowing of his resurrection and future glory.

Illuminated by this new light, we can at last comprehend Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. We see past the gate of the visible to the mystery of the invisible. This knowledge will change forever how we live, how we face death and how we begin to see beyond the grave. And that will change everything.

Yet, even today, these are very hard times in which to see clearly. A murky human-made smog of dreams deferred, of violence, confusion and fear stings our eyes and blurs even what is closest to us. Where God would bring light, we linger in the darkness of ignorance and fear.

Peter, in his second letter, speaks to that fear, "You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." (Adapted from "Heart of the matter" by Patricia Farris, "Living the Word" – Christian Century, January 25, 2005)

On the mountaintop, the sun shines brightly and if the valleys below are shrouded in clouds, this sunlight can almost blind you. But when the valleys are shrouded in clouds, it is dark and gloomy below. And sooner or later, you must leave the mountaintop and go into the valley. When that mountaintop experience is the opening of your soul to allow Christ to come in, you are given the light to illuminate the darkness and drive away the gloom that comes with the darkness.

The light that comes from God as Jesus Christ allows us to see beyond the limits of our own experience. Through this light, God gives us hope and shows us possibilities for meaningful action and participation; through this light we can see purpose and the future.2

As we look forward in time to the coming days, we see the beginning of Lent and that journey of preparation for Easter Sunday and the celebration of life. But that journey begins with a mountaintop experience. Is today the day that Christ will come into your heart and soul? Is today the day that you have your mountaintop experience?

We Have Some Decisions to Make

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Here are my thoughts for the 8th Sunday after the Epiphany, 27 February 2011. The Scriptures for this Sunday are Isaiah 49: 8 – 16, 1 Corinthians 4: 1 – 5, and Matthew 6: 24 – 34.

In the Gospel reading today Jesus challenges us to choose between God of Life and the gods of this world. As we read the rest of today’s passage, we see that Jesus doesn’t give us much of a choice – we follow the One True God or we don’t; he doesn’t really examine the options.

Now, when I first read this passage, I thought about the idea of free will. We really don’t have to follow Christ and choose God; we can do whatever we like. And you know what? We have as a society decided to follow the other gods. We would rather follow the god of war rather than the Prince of Peace. We allow the military-industrial to keep get wealthy while the poor, the homeless, the sick and outcast get nothing. We have abandoned Christ and His dedication to healing. We so want safety and security in this world we are willing to engage in wars around the world and allow our own civil liberties to be trampled. We somehow think that allowing rich people to keep their wealth will somehow make each of us wealthy as well. We have accepted the lies and machinations of the ruling class because we honestly think that when they slam the door in our faces, they are offering us an invitation to the party.

We miss the point. As long as we are concerned with the material things in this world, we aren’t to get what we seek. So we have some decisions to make.

It starts with our understanding one thing – that those who tells what they say is the truth haven’t got a clue, except that if what they say is enough to scare us, we will believe them. And we do believe them. We accept their statements without qualification. And if we don’t make some decisions real quick, we are going to find us in situations worse than anything that the people of Jesus’ time might have faced.

As Paul warns the Corinthians, we cannot imagine our leaders to be something that they aren’t. Paul repeatedly acknowledges his own failings and weaknesses, especially when it came to following Christ. He acknowledges that he is a servant of Christ and not his master. Many of the so-called experts in today’s society would have you believe that they are privy to some secret knowledge that only they have the power to understand. What Paul wants the Corinthians to do, what he wants us to do is make sure that we have all the information before we make any judgments.

That is hard to do, especially when the establishment (both political and religious) would rather we not think. Consider this, the first thing that the Egyptian government tried to do to stop the revolution was to stop the information pipeline; it didn’t work because the information was already set free. And while the Chinese government has quit censoring the Internet, they still monitor it sufficiently to keep protests from even forming. I will say/write this somewhat sarcastically but the one thing that will keep Facebook from being the vehicle of change in this country is that most people haven’t figured out what it can do; it is more for chit-chat than political revolutions. I hope I am wrong but I doubt very seriously that many of our young people, who assiduously text messages to their friends each day, have any clue what their counterparts in Egypt were doing with the same tools.

If we would stop and think (even if that has been difficult these past few years), we could see that there is hope. We live in a time much like that of Israel when Jesus began His ministry. It was a time of peace imposed by military force and status in society determined the success or failure of one’s life. Jesus did not speak of accepting the status quo as the solution or blindly accepting one’s place as the result of God’s will. But he pointed out that those who sought to gain through society’s ways were doomed to failure. We live in a time where the Word of God has been so abused that many people are not willing to listen and still others will not accept it.

There are those who call for God’s kingdom to be enacted here on earth but their call is a call for exclusion, not inclusion. We can have God’s kingdom here on earth, the one that Isaiah wrote about where no one was hungry, no one was thirsty, and there was shade from the sun and shelter from the wind. But we must make some decisions.

We must make them individually first, then collectively. We must find Christ in our lives by ourselves and not in a manner dictated by others. And we must accept that they have found Christ, even when it is different from the manner in which we found Christ. And then we must work and live in the manner that Christ worked and lived. It is a tough decision to make but it is clear that it may be the only one.

We can continue the way we are going. But it will not get us to heaven. We have some decisions to make. Which God shall we follow? What road shall we walk?

“A Scout Is Reverent”

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This was the message that I presented at the Neon UMC (Neon, KY) on Transfiguration Sunday, 14 February 1999.  This was also Boy Scout Sunday.  The Scriptures for this Sunday were Exodus 24: 12 – 18, 2 Peter 1: 16 – 21, and Matthew 17: 1 – 9.

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A Scout is Reverent – the twelfth point of the Scout Law.

He is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties and respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion.

Today is a very special day for me. For it was on this Sunday, Scout Sunday, in 1965 that I joined the First Evangelical United Brethren Church of Aurora, Colorado, and became a Christian. Later that spring, I completed the work for my God and Country medal.

And while I may not have realized back then, it was the process of getting the award, the training I went through, and what I learned that has kept me alive during the times I was in the wilderness of my early years. And like Peter was to be the rock upon which Christ would build the church,

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will note overcome it. (Matthew 16: 17 – 18)

So would the church be the foundation upon which I could build the foundation for my life.

But it was not the training and what I learned so many years ago that made me a Christian; it was that I knew in my heart that Christ was my own Savior and that he came to save me from my sins that made me a Christian.

As the writer C. S. Lewis expressed it,

… Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of a map. But the map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God – experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you or I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion – all about feeling God in nature, and so on – is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map. (From The Joyful Christian by C. S. Lewis)

What Lewis is saying is that without the real experience of God in one’s life, it is impossible to turn book learning into real Christianity. We might feel that we are Christians because we have studied the Bible and know about Christ. But until you experience Christ as your own personal Savior, all that training and study are no more than what Peter called the “cleverly invented stories”.

John and Charles Wesley spent all of their college studying and preparing for a life in the ministry. They came here to America in 1736 convinced that they knew what it took to be servant of Christ. Yet two years later when they returned to England, they felt that for all that they had done, they were failures in their missionary work. Though they understood that there was no peace in life without Christ, neither brother felt that they had truly found such a peace. That peace came only after they trusted Christ with their lives. As Wesley was to write later, describing what we have come to know as the Aldersgate moment,

I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation. And an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and save me from the law of sin and death.

But it is also impossible to have a real experience with God unless you understand what Christianity is all about. Lewis pointed out that there were those in his time who sought a religion of God without the church; who claimed to feel God’s presence in the world around them. I am not sure of the date when Lewis wrote that (sometime after World War I, I think) but it is still true today. We hear many people say, “I don’t need to come to church because I see God around me all the time.” It is true that God is a part of our everyday lives, but unless we understand why Christ was sent for our salvation God cannot be a true part of our lives.

The evangelist Philip can tell you about the need to understand why Christ saved us.

But as for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, "Go over to the road that runs from Jerusalem through the Gaza Desert, arriving around noon." So he did, and who should be coming down the road but the Treasurer of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace the Queen. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple, and was now returning in his chariot, reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

The Holy Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and walk along beside the chariot."

Philip ran over and heard what he was reading and asked, "Do you understand it?"

"Of course not!" the man replied. "How can I when there is no one to instruct me?" And he begged Philip to come up into the chariot and sit with him.

The passage of Scripture he had been reading from was this:

"He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before the shearers, so he opened not his mouth; in his humiliation, justice was denied him; and who can express the wickedness of the people of his generation? For his life is taken from the earth."

The eunuch asked Philip, "Was Isaiah talking about himself or someone else?"

So Philip began with this same Scripture and then used many others to tell him about Jesus. (Acts 8: 26 – 35)

What this passage for Acts tells is what Peter also pointed out in the Epistle reading for today, that the words that we read are nothing unless we are open to the presence of the Holy Spirit as well.

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love’ with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the scared mountain.

And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

That is still true today. What we know about Christ only comes true when the Holy Spirit is present in our lives. For without the Holy Spirit the words that we write are just words, without true meaning, but we must be able to write the words that explain what the Holy Spirit is about. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit that gives a meaning to our lives, as Peter wrote, “ a light shining in a dark place.”

This day is about discovering God in our lives, about letting the Holy Spirit be a part of our lives.. There may be times when we might think that God is not here, that he has left us alone in the wilderness. As C. S. Lewis wrote on another occasion

…in order to find God it is perhaps not always necessary to leave the creatures behind. We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake. (From Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer by C. S. Lewis)

We might think that God has forgotten us but we have to remember that, as Lewis wrote, God is here and we only have to look for him.

Even while wandering through the wilderness during the Exodus, the Israelites knew that their God was never far away. As noted in Exodus 13: 21 – 22

By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. (Exodus 13: 21 – 22)

And God was there in the cloud, the fire, and smoke when He renewed the covenant with Moses that He had first established with Abraham. When the three disciples saw Moses and the prophet Elijah standing next to Christ on that mountaintop, it was to show them that the old covenant, promised to Abraham and renewed by Moses with the Ten Commandments, was to be renewed and begun anew with Jesus.

The Transfiguration of Christ served to help the three disciples know that what they felt in their hearts was true, that Christ was the Son of God. Through our reading, we know that Christ is truly the Son of God but we often don’t understand it because the Holy Spirit is not a part of us.

It is that way for us. The presence of Christ in our lives is a transfiguring moment for us. It is that moment when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and changes our lives.

Peter Jenkins wrote a series of books depicting his journey across America and his own personal journey. As he passed through North Carolina, he came to understand why he had begun the walk. But it was not until later, in Mobile, when he attended a revival, that he felt the presence of God in his soul. As he wrote,

I was going to die. The deepest corners of my being were lit with thousand-watt light bulbs. It was as if God himself were looking into my soul, through all my excuses, my dark secrets. All of me was exposed in God’s searchlight.

When the question ended its roaring echo, I decided for the first time to admit I needed God. This must be the God I had been searching for, and the same One they worshiped back in Murphy (NC) at Mount Zion. (A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins)

Just as John Wesley knew that he could trust in the Lord, Peter Jenkins came to the understanding that Jesus Christ had died for him. With that understanding Peter accepted Jesus Christ as his own personal Savior. That same understanding allowed him to appreciate how the Holy Spirit could guide him through life.

In the dark in downtown Mobile as I walked home, I felt the smile on my face and the glow of heaven around me. My soul had been like a wavering compass needle, but now it finally pointed to true north. I had found my lifetime direction. (A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins)

Just as Peter Jenkins felt the smile on his face and the glow of heaven in his heart and John Wesley felt his heart warmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit, so to we can know the meaning of Christ in our life.

What is your first memory of Christ in your life? Do you remember when it was, like Wesley, that you knew that you could trust Him? If there ever was one thing that I want you to take away from this service today, it is the memory of when you first came to know Jesus as your Savior, for that day is very much what we read about in the scriptures today.

And if you are not sure if Christ is a part of your life, then the invitation is made to open your heart and allow Him to enter into in, transforming your life and allow a light to shine in the darkness.