Tuesdays with Morris

Yesterday was what many retailers refer to as “Black Friday.” It’s a day in which businesses offer numerous “specials” to lure mass quantities of customers into their stores. People will line up in the brutal cold in the wee morning hours in their attempts to be one of ten people to save $300 off a plasma TV (or whatever the hot item happens to be). The day draws so much attention that the morning, afternoon, and evening news programs cover the events.

My goal for this “Black Friday” was to not spend any money. And, I failed. In fact, I spent more money yesterday than I have on any other “Black Friday”. And “Black Friday” will simply be the start of my spending. In fact, “Black Friday” will look like nothing when Monday and Tuesday hit.

To make a ridiculously long story short, our furnace stopped functioning. We had one company come out in the morning. The technician pretty much gutted the furnace (which the next company who visited said he never should have done…and he left it ripped apart…and a couple of small parts were missing…again, another long story). Our normal heating and cooling guy is out due to surgery. But, we’re going with the company he recommended (as they seemed to be the most honest, straight-forward, and affordable).

So, yesterday, when my goal was to spend absolutely no money, we ended up paying for a couple of service calls and some space heaters. The space heaters are amazingly efficient (our house was around 72 when I went to bed, and only dropped down to 68 through the night…we turned the heaters down for the evening). It looks like we’ll have our new furnace on Tuesday. It will be more efficient than our 22-year old one. But, as we head into the holidays, it’s not what I really wanted to spend money on.

This year, our goal for the Christmas season is to worship fully, spend less, give more, and love all (thanks Advent Conspiracy). Now, when it comes to the area of spending less on Christmas, we won’t really have a choice!

So, like I said, I failed to avoid spending money on “Black Friday.”

Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about sin, repentance, forgiveness, and the coming of Christ. When I think about failure, I realize that we all fail…every single day…in some manner to live out the lives Christ calls us to. Whether it’s our thoughts/attitudes, our words, our deeds, whatever…we all fall short. But, the story doesn’t end with sin and failure. In a weird way, that’s simply a beginning. The story starts with repentance & forgiveness, which hopefully leads to faithful obedience, which then leads to eternal life.

I’ll just chalk the “Black Friday” failure up with all the rest. I don’t know about you, but my list of failures is pretty lengthy. But, I have great hope in knowing that God takes all of my failures and gives me a clean slate.

ad·vent (ād’věnt’) n. 1. a coming into place, view, or being; arrival: the advent of the holiday season. 2. (usually initial capital letter) the coming of Christ into the world.
3. (initial capital letter) the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas, observed in commemoration of the coming of Christ into the world. 4. second coming.

This Sunday, I have been given the opportunitiy to launch our congregation into the Advent season. Well, in reality, I’ll be kicking off Advent on Wednesday at WNL as we begin our four-week Advent Conspiracy series.

As I’ve been looking at Scriptures for both Sunday and Wednesday, I’ve found myself wondering what other people think of the Advent season. What does Advent mean to you? If you’re a Christian, it might mean one thing. If you’re not a Christian, it might not mean much of any thing to you. But, I would be interested to find out what your thoughts are on this subject.

“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” ~ James 4:17

What is it that keeps us from responding to needs around us? What is it that keeps us from lending someone a helping hand? What is it that keeps us from doing the good that God has called and created us to do?

We can often find ways to blame circumstances, to justify our avoidance, to excuse ourselves from responsibility, or even blame the devil. We like to pass the buck. At least I do! It’s like the story of the Good Samaritan. We see someone barely clinging onto life, but we walk by because our schedules, our work, our stuff is just too important to stop and help. At least, that’s how I often respond. Oh, if I could only become more like the Good Samaritan. If I could only take on the heart of Jesus. If I could only take my focus off myself and turn it onto God. Maybe then I would have a proper response to the needs around me.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Satan’s desire is to turn me in on myself to the extent that I become enslaved and become a destructive force in community. The thrust from Jesus Christ is the opposite - to enhance my freedom so that I can become a creative force of love. It is the spirit of self-centeredness and selfishness versus the spirit of openness and self-sacrifice for the good of others.”

There have been times when I’ve wondered why some are turned off by the Christian faith. When I think about how I sometimes fail to faithfully live out the teachings of Jesus, how I fail to love God and others, how I fail to help meet the needs of those in my community, how I prefer to focus on myself instead of doing all I can to become that “creative force of love” Bonhoeffer talks about…it becomes all too clear.

This Sunday, we’ll wrestle with what it means to faithfully respond to God’s call on our lives. We’ll wrestle with what it means to be faithful with God’s blessings. And, hopefully will be motivated, challenged, and encouraged to stop making excuses, to stop ignoring the needs of others, and start taking some practical steps to meet the basic needs of those in our church, community, and world.

If you’re in the area on Sunday, we’d love to have you join us at Center Chapel for worship. We gather together at 8 and 10am. We have coffee available before and after each service. This Sunday, we will have our Thanksgiving fellowship meal following the 10am service. So, if you come at 10am, come somewhat hungry because we’ll have an awesome feast!

If you’ve been following along this week, you are aware that I am posting some of the things I’ve discovered while preparing for this Sunday’s message. The message is titled “Call & Response: Blessings & Curses.” It will explore the idea of God calling His people into action and watching for how we respond. Built into this idea of call and response is the concept of blessings and curses. God has uniquely blessed His followers. But, His blessings are not simply for the sake of the one He blesses. The blessings are meant to be shared…to be utilized…to be worked to bring about a greater good. When our blessings are put into action, the result is often more blessings. When we fail to put our blessings into action, the end result could be curses. We’ll be wrestling with the difficult words of Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage, Jesus talks about His judgment…that it will in large part deal with how we respond to the needs we see around us. For those who respond in appropriate, tangible, practical, and helpful ways there is a reward. For those who fail to respond in appropriate, tangible, practical, and helpful ways there is a curse. If we need any motivation to help meet the basic needs of those around us, it lies in this passage. It’s a pretty uplifting thought (judgment) to deal with on Thanksgiving Sunday. We’ll have some fun with it. We’ll laugh. We might even cry. Hopefully, we’ll all leave with more than just a desire to do something…hopefully we’ll leave equipped and motivated to actually do something.

Today, as I continued to study and craft the message, I found myself sifting through Brennann Manning’s book, “The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus.” It’s a great book I devoured a few years ago. While sifting, I stumbled upon several passages that challenged me and at the same time confirmed the direction of this Sunday’s message.

“The mind of Jesus is focused on the fulfillment of God’s will through the proclamation of the Reign of God. Jesus’s intimacy with God and awareness of God’s holiness fill him with an all-consuming thirst for the things of God. His interior life of trust and loving surrender is not simply a matter of personal prayer, private religious experience, and delight in God’s intimate presence. Such a limited relationship with God would ignore the real world and its struggle for redemption, justice, and peace. No, the inner life of Jesus Christ takes expression in a special, vital quality of presence in the world in the most active situations. There was a towering desire within Jesus to reveal his Father in serving the poor, the captive, the blind, and all who were in need. Jesus was entirely devoured by this mission. It was Jesus’s experience of God’s holiness that created the imperative of preaching the reign of God’s justice, peace, and forgiving love.”

“So often we are self-moved and self-motivated rather than moved and motivated by the Spirit. When our sense of self is derived from our base desires, we act in ways intended to win approval, avoid criticism, or escape rejection…The cure for our selfishness is to develop discerning hearts. When we put on the mind of Christ and focus our thinking and behavior on the kingdom of God, we can begin to evaluate our choices, our decisions, and our motivations with new clarity…in our self-centered desires we have twisted the notion of boundaries to serve as an excuse for ignoring the needs of others.”

“We cannot claim to have the mind of Christ and remain insensitive to the oppression of our brothers and sisters. We cannot stay oblivious to the world’s struggle for redemption, freedom, and peace.”

I know I shared a lot. But, this just barely scrapes the surface of what I was struck by in re-reading through a few sections of this book. Thinking about my own response to the needs of those around me, I know I have a lot of work to do. So, the crafting of this message has been challenging and difficult for me. It’s spurring ideas and actions in my own life.

I hope you’ll join us this Sunday at Center Chapel. We worship at 8 and 10am. We have coffee available before and after each service. And, as an added bonus, this Sunday we will share in our Thanksgiving meal. It’s a great time of food and fellowship. Stop in and say “hello.” Maybe together we can begin to make a dent in address the needs of those in our community, our country, and our world!

As I’ve been preparing for Sunday’s message, I’ve come across a wealth of resources that have really confirmed the direction for crafting the message. During this time of year, we often pause to give thanks for our blessings. But, I think what God really desires is that we show him how thankful we truly are by how we utilize our blessings to be a blessing to others. And, so, I’ll be talking about how we can show our thanks rather than just saying “Gee, thanks God for blessing me.”

While doing some reading over the weekend, I found the following in Dan Merchant’s book, “Lord, Save us from Your Followers.” Parts of this passage might make it into the message. So, like I said with my previous post, if you’re reading this and you hear you start to recognize it in the message…don’t check out…listen for a deeper meaning, engage with the words, and see what God is trying to say to us and challenge us with in these words.

“There’s one thing that will bridge a divide every time: valuing others above ourselves. Putting another’s need above your own, that’s the secret sauce. That’s why Mother Teresa was such a superstar - all she did was put the needs of others above herself. The advertising world is built on selling the notion of ‘you better get yours, you deserve it,’ but, oh man, we’ve missed it. We’re so in love with our own comfort we can’t see anyone else. We’ve been hypnotized. This is why when we do see those people sacrificing for others, we simply figure they’re freaks or destined for sainthood. But is it fair to dismiss them as the oddity when, actually, they’re the only ones who get it? If they’re doing it properly but are in the minority, they’re still the ideal, right? It’s funny, I trust the motives of those who are helping others with no chance of reward or personal gain. Only then do I believe they’re actually doing it, for the other person, and if that’s why they’re doing it, then I’m with them. The difference between trying to win an argument with someone and demonstrating love is the difference in they by-products: animosity or meeting needs. If you show people something real, something beautiful, they will want to talk. Why is the gospel of love dividing America? Because people are tired of hearing about love and not seeing enough of us show it. It’s time to do. And by do, I don’t mean take action for our cause; I mean selflessly assist someone in need, love one another, show me don’t tell me. People can’t help but respond to the authentic. Truth doesn’t have to shout, ‘Hey all you losers look at me, I’m Truth and you’re not!’ No, when Truth walks in the room, everybody simply stands up.”

So, how does that sit with you? Does it stir any thing up in your mind…your heart?