Preaching Outside of Your Comfort Zone

There I was, ordained, with a ministerial position, and with a preaching style I felt was finally starting to gel together and define itself. I was quite comfortable with myself and my preaching style; personal, persuasive, practical. It was one of those, perhaps rare, moments when ministry and your place in it makes sense...Then God gave me my latest sermon topic. I watched in baffled amazement as a sermon began to form on the page before me that was nothing like "me" - all fire and brimstone, talking of consequences and wrong-mindedness. Horrifying. I had gotten quite comfortable being the "love preacher," who brought up challenging but liberating truths gently and personally.

I have learned that when I get comfortable, God loves to stretch me and grow me to the next level. I had gotten comfortable with a style of ministry that involved very little confrontation. (How very un-prophetic of me.) So, of course, God appears to tear down the reassuring fences and limitations I had built around me.

This Sunday I'm preaching a sermon on Amos 5:20-24 entitled, "Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself," and I'm more than a little bit terrified. I often get that way when I sense God is going to do something beyond what I can anticipate. There is always something exhilarating and unpredictable about serving a Living God, as opposed to a figment of my imagination.

I am reminded of a pastor's comment to me, "We want good for ourselves, but God wants best for us." - Thank you Reverend Kouadio!

So I will leap forward, heart racing, into the path God has placed before me, dying (daily, as Paul said) to see how God continues to transform and enliven me.

Being Sick Will Teach You..

I've been in bed, either in a hospital or at home, for an entire week now. Finally I am felling better and more like my "normal" self. But severe illness was wholly alienating to me as a young(-ish?) adult. I had to gather up my strength and focus if I wanted to turn from one side to the other in bed. I pressed a call button and waited for a nurse to come and help me to the bathroom or to refresh my medications. Once home, a big day consisted of getting the energy up to sit in a chair for a few hours instead of my bed. I found I didn't know how to be "sick." Despite my certainty that I had left the impossible folly of my teenage youth behind, I found myself confounded by a circumstance that assured me I was not invincible or immortal. Apparently I still thought I was untouchable, and this episode had come to teach me otherwise.

"I need Thee, oh I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee," says the famous hymn. I thought I had as deep an understanding of that sentiment as possible. But there was, and ever remains, more room to grow in understanding that of myself I can do nothing, it is the Christ within me. I became dependent on God for life, comfort, movement and healing with a new and urgent kind of intimacy.

My faith has grown in this last week because I could no longer lay any claim, however subconscious, to the egotistical thought that I was the source of my own power and life. Being sick will teach you that every moment and movement is a gift from God.

Some, like myself on this occasion, get out of their sickbeds while others breath their last in them. I pray we all, whatever the outcome, feel the kind of closeness and dependence on a loving and giving Source that I have this week. Being sick has taught me the calm assurance that I am not alone and that it is not all up to me. Thank God!

Dealing With Damaging People

So I was praying this morning and got the urge to reach out and communicate with a specific person from my past. I shirked at the thought because whenever I seem to deal with him, I seem to walk away damaged and hurting. It is not intentional on his part, but his life and our friendship have all of these landmines that can explode at any time. I just don't want to deal with him. Now is that Christ-like? To avoid him? But does Jesus want me to put myself in a situation that will probably hurt me? Sometimes the WWJD litmus test is unhelpful because, to state the obvious, I'm not Jesus. Jesus could interact with anyone to whom the Father instructed Him because He held all power in his hand and had so firm a foundation that He could not be shaken. In my efforts to grow in grace and be a living epistle, I am not nearly "there" yet. I still stumble, and traumatic experiences can rock me to my core so deeply that it may take time to find my center in God again.

The reality of my flesh does not negate or absolve me from recognizing the victory and responsibility of my spirit. I heard a sermon in preaching class Wednesday that urged us not to lie on the power of God in our lives. By being afraid of interactions with my old friend, I have given that territory to the enemy - in essence saying that this is an area that God can't heal so all I can do is try to avoid it.

However, as the saying goes - fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The solution is not to rush into the situation only to be torn to pieces and suffer in my walk because I have been hurt. The answer, as it so often is, is found in strengthening my relationship of God. The process of sanctification is no joke! It is not enough to accept Christ, the consequent process of letting Him work through me and change me into a new creature that looks acts and thinks more and more like Him is the only way my spirit will be strong enough, loving enough, holy enough to enter into difficult situations bearing the love of Christ, not my fears and weaknesses. Abiding more and more with God will also show me how to enter into potentially difficult situations.

Strength, courage and wisdom. These are virtues whose fullness abide in Christ. So I must enter into the body of Christ (fellowship is an inextricable part of this - there are no private Christians!) to partake earnestly of those attributes.

Will I call him? I just don't know. But I can say that the decision to call him or not, and all that may ensue, will come from God, not my flesh.

Over and out.

Forgiveness: Turning the Other Cheek

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” Matthew 5:39

This, as other passages support, exhorts the hearer to avoid repaying evil with evil, even when confronted directly with physical violence. It is certainly true that Jesus thematically eschewed earthly victory gained through force or defense in favor of an ultimate victory through obedience to and freedom in God. But it is not equally true that Christ’s messages are entirely esoteric and largely irrelevant to earthly struggles. Many may view this as Jesus advising that we be a punching bag for others, not only taking abuse but also volunteering for more. Based on this interpretation, this course can and has been minimized; deemed as impossible or foolhardy and dismissed as a behavioral ethic or relegated to the internal aspects of Christian living.

There is, however, an important exegesis of this text with a different and nuanced understanding of Christ’s intent that keeps the behavioral relevance and concreteness of this saying intact. Slaps -it says slaps not punches, so this means the palm of an open hand- to the right cheek were done with the left hand. In the time and place of Jesus, open-handed blows from the left hand were acts of humiliation and abasement as opposed to ones of severe violence and harm, as blows to the left check or elsewhere would have been. Christ advises in this scripture that we not respond in kind to our assailant. We are instead to take the power from the person trying to humiliating by not resenting indignities but instead “daring” them to truly harm us. This indicates to them that their efforts to abase us – and the institutionalized systems that support this – have failed and are flawed, and the only way we can be wounded is with a true act of violence – which “bullies” are often unwilling or afraid to perform.

In this way, Christ is indeed advising us not to strike back. Taken in its proper context, however, this advice is given not to victimize, but actually to liberate the follower from humiliation and victimization by those that would attempt it in this manner. What can easily be read as pointless and abject cowering and cowardice is in fact the opposite. In this case non-violence is a valiant act that can lead to liberation; the liberty in Christ of which the apostle Paul revels.