MetamoraUMC.com

This site is being retired.

Since becoming the pastor at Metamora United Methodist Church, I've entered into a new season that involves different creative projects than these writings.

Visit our website where I will continue to write and blog and create, but where you can also find what we are up to as a church.

For sermon and teaching audio, feel free to visit http://www.metamoraumc.com/listen-to-sermons/





MetamoraUMC.com

or

ChurchatEvergreen.org

Planting the Seeds of Genesis

A teaching on the importance of beginnings and stories and how we find ourselves in them


"Planting the Seeds of Genesis"
[Metamora United Methodist Church - 2/23/14]


For audio, please go here or
Listen to this episode

Partners in the Song of the Universe

A teaching on what exactly it is humans are created to do in the world.


"Partners in the Song of the Universe"
[Metamora United Methodist Church - 2/9/14]


For the podcast page, go here


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The Creative Order of God

A teaching on why God creates people in the specific way God does and what this has to do with a world-centric posture. 

"The Creative Order of God"

[Metamora United Methodist Church - 2/2/14]

Listen to this episode

Or go to the podcast site.

Tohu Va Vohu and the Primordial Light

A teaching about the story we are telling - the same story God has shown us from the beginning and that has continued in the world through Jesus. 

"Tohu Va Vohu and the Primordial Light"

[Metamora United Methodist Church - 1/12/2014]

Listen to this episode

Or go to the podcast site

Before You Do That...

A teaching on owning your story and entering into the new worlds and seasons we experience every day with the same posture God shows us when he creates the world. 

"Before You Do That..."

[Metamora United Methodist Church  - 12/29/13]

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The Story of Advent - Why We Wait

A teaching continuing the story of Advent looking specifically on the theme 

of waiting and what it means to wait during this season. 

"The Story of Advent - Why We Wait"

[Metamora United Methodist Church - 12/15/13]

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The Story of Advent - Entering Exile

A teaching on the progression of Advent and how we can begin moving through this season.


"The Story of Advent: Entering Exile"
Metamora United Methodist Church [12/1/2013]


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An Advent Soundtrack

There isn't much Advent music out there. A lot of Gregorian Chant, a lot of Christmas tunes, but not a whole lot that captures what this season is all about.

So while this song has plenty of its own dimensions and meanings and things it is addressing, whether the creators knew it or not, they wrote something that expresses what we are entering and experiencing during Advent.

The central line - "Say something, I'm giving up on you," - I imagine this is something you would say in the hopeless waiting of exile. I imagine this is something you would say in a world where we sit in the tension of God's world being here yet not always being here. And as we navigate through this season, maybe we can use this song to help us - so that by the time we get to Christmas, this baby being born will make a bit more sense.

Enjoy the video and may it fill your Advent with utter, futile darkness.

The Primal Blessing of the Divine

"The Primal Blessing of the Divine"
Metamora United Methodist Church [11/17/2013]


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On Piercing Concrete

|  Two Years of Attempted Flowering

Two years ago, on July 1st, 2011, I stood in a rather old building in a small town of the hills of Pennsylvania and declared to the world that I was giving my life away. It was a unique occasion calling for much decorating and dress, I, in a rare moment, wearing a tuxedo complemented by my white shoes (Because I love my white shoes). The building looked magical in its own way, capturing the descending July sun as the heat lifted, something that gave the room a colorful glow. And here were all these people staring at me as I wept like a small child and handed my life over to another.

The Evolution of Relationships and Metamorphic Rocks

                                                                                         | The Evolution Process



Every relationship has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Dispersing Gifts and Holding Eggs

|  Blessings and Tithes and How You View Your Stuff

[Genesis 12v2]
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your people and your father's house to the land I will show you. I will make a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great...

...so that the world will be blessed."

Heretical Challenges to the Well Trodden Path of Worship - [A Warning]

|  Cold, Broken, and Empty Hallelujahs

Heretical Challenges to the Well Trodden Paths of Worship - [Guide]

|  A Couple Frameworks to Reactivate Worship

The problem with the word "worship" is the familiarity it breeds in our language. 

There is a sort of assumption of what it is and what it means. Which means we've taken something that is profoundly deep and mysterious made it rather two dimensional; it simply becomes a title that it is then defined by. So we've seen that the worship experience has been trapped in a sort of cage and we've attempted to unleash it, but now we have to start asking what exactly this creature is that we've unleashed. As we wrestle with how to interact with it and navigate it and engage in the act of worship, we have to begin re-instilling the meaning that may have become obscured by our familiarity. 

So I want to offer a couple pictures of this concept of chavah, some frameworks that may help us process how to take this into our contexts and cultures and communities. Because it would be easy to just confront something and then leave the conversation with an aroma of skepticism. It is easy to just negatively challenge what you find yourself if. It is another thing to take some responsibility and try to do something with it. My goal with this whole writing is not to do away with "worship", but to embrace it with such wholeness and beauty and power that we pull it forward to an even bigger understanding, maybe even a more rooted understanding, of what we are handling.

Heretical Challenges to the Well Trodden Paths of Worship - [Provocation]

|  Pumpkins, Grills, and Worship Being More Than Music

The first time we see the word "worship" in the book of Genesis is during this story of a man named Abraham:

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two

of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for 

the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God

had shown him. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place far away.

Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy

and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you."

Now, first of all, the context of this whole thing is that their worship is a burnt offering. They are going to take something and light it on fire.

And they call it worship. 

Too Much Salt

[Matthew 5v13]
"You are the salt of the earth..."

Lately, I've been sharing a meal with a friend of mine every morning in the early hours of the day. We wake up and do some sort of excuse for exercise and, before heading off to class and work, we feast.

On oatmeal and eggs.

Every single morning.

Being Cain and Being Green

A rising awareness has emerged within much of Christianity about the sort of world we are told God creates in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. There has been a resurgence of discovering the sort of relationships and roles that form the identity of what it means to be human in the midst of this interconnected community of creation.

And so in this attempt to push Christianity to "be green", the creation narratives are often referenced again and again and again.

2x4's , Shoes, and Mirrors

There is this discourse Jesus gives that is often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain, depending on which version you are looking at, where Jesus is essentially discussing the very essence of the God's Kingdom. What it looks like, who it is for, how it works, and how it doesn't work. And, interestingly, in giving us this picture, Jesus shows us that this whole Kingdom thing has a lot to do with how we are to interact with one another. Jesus' whole progression of the discourse revolves around the very nature of a community that exists in God's Way for the world and Jesus ends it all by saying this:

 "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Torah and the Prophets."

One of the most loaded sentences Jesus utters.

Yet it is also one of the most thrown to the side quotations of Jesus that never really gets a whole lot of thought to what he actually means.

Words on Words

"When we convene again
to understand the world,
the first speaker will again
point silently out the window
at the hillside in its season,
sunlit, under the snow,
and we will nod silently,
and silently stand and go."

[Wendell Berry - Sabbaths 2000, II]

There is Pain in These Names...

Abraham.

Isaac.

Jacob.

Names that often emerge thoughts of prosperity and power and triumph.

The Village

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

A priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, "Look after him and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense that you may have."

Interesting story.

Stop Killing Your Brother

Resurrection: The Passover of All Things

For many of us, I know the term "Easter" or, even, "Resurrection" has become simply a title or a symbol that we have lost track of. We use the words as if the essence of what we are talking about is assumed. As if it is some distant, abstract, mysterious thing that we celebrate as some routine pattern of Christianity.

So I've often found myself asking, what is this all about anyway? Where does it come from? What does it mean for the world? Why is it such a big deal and what does it actually have to do with Jesus and God's movement in the world?

So for those of you who may be having the same thoughts, who have wondered about the substance behind Jesus' death and resurrection, I wanted to share some things I've discovered over the past couple of years.

Because there has got to be more to it than that.

And my hope is that the Easter story and the movement of Jesus can become a little bit more real for you.

Drops

Central to what we find Jesus doing in the world is bringing God's 'Way' to earth. It is typically referenced as God's Kingdom or the Kingdom of Heaven [just a Jewish way to say 'God' without actually saying it] and it has the implication that, by Jesus using this particular phrase and language, he was intentionally contrasting the other kingdoms all over the world. The kingdom of Rome, the kingdom of Herod, the kingdoms of violence and oppression and injustice, the individual selfish kingdoms that we so often orient our worlds around.

It is into this that Jesus enters announcing that another Kingdom is on the scene, the Kingdom that embodies the very essence of God and God's vision for humanity.

This is what Jesus means when he brings up God's Kingdom.

It is God's realm.

God's movement.

God's economy.

God's sphere.

God's dominion.

God's Way.

Not ours.

The Kingdom is just another way of talking about God's dream for the world.



And I think a good way to describe how this thing works is that it is a bit like the ocean.



The Kingdom of God is like the ocean.

Hands, Boxes, and Colorful Shoes

[Please begin with this short video  -  it is about four minutes that will change your life]

Pete the Cat - one of the great teachers of our time. 

Its kind of a weird story though, isn't it? A cat that wears shoes and steps in massive piles of berries, probably costing a lot of money and that shouldn't just be left sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, followed by clumsily wandering into mud and water all with the tranquil sedated look of a young jazzy hipster in a coffee shop. 

Yet somehow this story is capable of communicating the common human experience of navigating the world. 

And I think that there is something here that our world and our culture could use a little more of. 

Everything You Do Says Something

[Thomas Cole - "The Architect's Dream]

____________________________________________________________________

This is the basic model for how communication works. 

A person sends a message, often through various environments and channels, the message is received and interpreted, feedback is given followed by it being received and interpreted and it goes back and forth again and again through a continuous process of encoding and decoding.

Without stopping. 

Which means that to understand this model of communication is to understand that we are constantly communicating.

Your Bag is Actually a Coffin

For the Jewish people, there is a day called Sabbath that is central to their existence as a people.

Bad Deck of Cards

There is a show that my wife and I tend to frequently watch called "Kitchen Nightmares". 

The plot of the show is this: there are a lot of restaurants that are quickly destroying themselves and a man named Gordan Ramsay [infamous picture posted above] goes in and tries to fix them. 

What is interesting is that almost every single episode is the same. Because what is typically wrong with restaurants may change shape and size and appearance, but it always comes back one recurring issue:

Before You Do That...

One of the most nerve-wracking nights of my life was Christmas Eve of 2009.

My family had done some celebrating and reflecting and gift opening and meal sharing throughout the evening, all that stuff you are supposed to do on Christmas Eve, but by about ten o'clock all had gone to bed in preparation for the next morning. 

Because we had to get up early. 

It was going to be my nephew's first Christmas and we wanted to make sure everyone got to thoroughly enjoy that experience before we left. So instead of the ideal 8:00 or 9:00 beginning of the morning on Christmas day, it had to be more like 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. 

I, however, wasn't going to be able to fall asleep like the rest of my family. 

Midnight had crept on me and I had been sitting in the old and worn rocking chair my grandma had given me and that now had its home in the corner of my small bedroom in my parent's house. At some point that evening I had angled the chair to face out the window and roughly two hours of staring and thinking and pondering had since passed. My body felt light and my breaths were quick and shallow as my mind continuously turned over everything that was soon going to happen. Tears were even on the brink as that small swell that moves in your throat without your approval was making its presence felt more and more. It was like this octane of emotion moving inside of me in conjunction with that nervous energy that leaves your mind racing while the world moves slowly around you. 

By 1:00 in the morning I had continuously been in and out of that chair and was now pacing around the little available space in the room rehearsing, practicing, and envisioning what the next day was going to bring. The moment was spinning in my head over and over again and the anxiety of wishing it would just happen already was heavy. But no amount of thinking or preparing could change the intensity of my emotional state of being. There was only waiting to be done while every single atom of my body knew that something was soon going to happen that would change everything. 

Until a blurry 3:00 in the morning I sat in my room facing this approaching experience that hung in the Christmas air, but finally, my eyes were able to shut and my body rest. Because I knew I had to sleep even in the midst of the constant pounding of my heart.

Because we had to get up early.

Letting Your Scars Tell Their Story

There is an ancient story about a rabbi who had been slandered by someone in his village. A couple weeks later, this particular man had a change of heart. So he went to the rabbi and said, "Rabbi, what must I do to repair my sin?" The rabbi instructed him, "Get a pillow and go to the top of the hill outside of the village. Rip the pillow open and spread its feathers on the wind and return back to me."

The man quickly ran back to his home, grabbed the pillow from his bed, and did exactly as he was told by the rabbi.

Later, he returned to the rabbi and explained that he had done everything he was told. The rabbi then said, "There is one task remaining: go and find all of the feathers that came out of the pillow, collect them, and bring them back to me."

The man looked at the rabbi and gasped, "That's impossible!"

The rabbi, slowly lifted his eyes to meet the man's, responding to his sudden exasperation,"Yes. It is impossible for you to re-gather those feathers, just as it is impossible for you to repair the harm that your slander has worked on me."

We have this story where something happens to this rabbi and it hurts. This guy comes back and wants to fix everything and what doesn't happen is we don't see the rabbi say, "Oh, its no big deal, don't worry about it." For some reason the rabbi can't just shove this to the side. But it is more than him just choosing not to, it is that he can't. Because the rabbi understands that there are some things that can't be undone.

This is simply the reality of how the world works.

You can't put the pillow back together again.

The Story of Landon Shae

Wednesday December 12th, 2012, Vanessa and I didn't know it, but our life was about to be completely changed. 

Christmas: A Revolution

In this large composition of writings that is commonly referred to as the Bible, there are only two narrative accounts of Jesus' birth that we call the Christmas story. One is a writing titled Matthew and the other is a writing titled Luke and essentially it is two authors attempting to give pictures of Jesus being born because they believed it had major implications for the way the world works.

What the authors were not trying to do was give us something to celebrate on December 25th. At no point in their composing this story of Jesus' life did they say, "Ya know, I think I should put the story of Jesus being born in there because it will really just complete the 'Christmas' season." There were no Christmas Eve services, no quaint little holiday that they were trying to capture. Rather, these authors were up to something bigger.

Eating Our Way Back to the Garden

[Reimagining the Dietary Laws]

In the Hebrew Bible there is a book titled Leviticus. It one of those books that a lot of people begin reading and, slowly, the reading tapers off and few ever really finish it. 

The book gets its name from one of the twelve tribes of ancient Israel, the tribe of Levi, which happens to be the tribe full of priests that helped lead the community and the nation to live together with God. So as you can imagine, if they decided to get together to write a book, it would definitely be interesting. 

Advent: "Let's Make This Thing Good Again"

Typically when we think of prophecy, we assume it has to deal with someone telling the future or predicting future events. And in most cases, this is probably true.

But the Hebrew prophets were a little different.

There is an entire array of writings in the Hebrew Bible grouped together as 'prophets' and they really don't have a whole lot to do with 'predicting the future'. Because these prophets weren't worried about what was out 'there', they were worried about now. They might of talked about future implications every now and then, but it always came back to living a particular way of life now. So with the Jewish people, what you see isn't someone going around telling everyone what is going to happen down the road. What you actually see is someone going around and confronting their own people about the kind of lives they are living today. You see someone challenging the world around them to stop going in the wrong direction and to get caught up with what God was doing in the universe.

This was the prophets job.

To wake people up.

One of these prophecies is a writing called "Isaiah". Now, Isaiah probably has several authors that span quite a bit of time and tell several different stories about waking the Hebrew people up, but essentially the message is quite simple: "You've forgotten God, God is doing a new thing in the world, so starting getting caught up in it."

And at one point, Isaiah begins talking about this new thing God is doing in the world and in the midst of that, he mentions an "Emmanuel" figure. Which technically is a name, but the prophet is actually using the name to make a point. By saying "Emmanuel" is going to show up, Isaiah is essentially saying, "God is going to be with us," because that is what "Emmanuel" means. The Jewish people would have been very aware of what Isaiah was saying.

Which would have been quite a big deal.

Because at this point in Israel's history, there was no "Emmanuel".

Harvest Festival: Feast of Participation [Thanksgiving and Sukkot]

Following is what Vanessa and I have come to understand as "Thanksgiving". For us, the day had become a sort of assumed, detached ritual that had lost its meaning so we sought to rediscover what a celebration during this particular time of the year might look like. 

The idea of a "Harvest Festival" has always been a part of humanity's history. Whether it be our modern Thanksgiving, the ancient Jewish 'Feast of Sukkot' or the thousands of ancient harvest festivals that have existed in all sorts of different cultures; stopping in the Fall to reflect and celebrate just seems to be a natural human experience. So this is our attempt to rediscover that experience. We've taken our understanding of the seasonal celebration and put it into something that works for us. 

We've called it "The Feast of Participation". 

So if you have also found yourself in a similar position then maybe this will help you do some reframing and reinterpreting in order to again infuse the day with meaning. 

Enjoy the Celebration.

The Gift and the Map: A Couple Thoughts About Purpose and Calling

There is a drive in most human beings to have a direction in life. We want to contribute and be a part of something. We want to have a sustaining significance in the world, an identity that captures our lives.

Too Many Seedlings...

When Jesus wanted to make a point about something he would use what is called a parable; which has kind of gained its own definition in our culture, but it literally means 'to throw alongside'. You take something; an idea, a thought, a picture of the world, and you throw it alongside something that people already know and understand. Basically, parables are stories that reveal something bigger about the world by saying, "It is kind of like this."

Because sometimes stories just work better.

So we see Jesus all the time saying, "To what can God's Kingdom be compared to? Well, it is kind of like this...that thing is kind of like this thing...this is kind of like that..." and he leaves you with some mind blowing picture where the only thing you can do is sit there at the end saying, "Dang..."

Jesus was good like that.

Today, we have a lot to learn from how Jesus taught. Because we would understand the world a little better if we would start 'throwing alongside' a little more.

So to what can living in God's Kingdom today be compared to?

It is kind of like a gardener who planted seeds in a bucket.