Praying for Syria

Last week, my heart broke as I sat down to the evening news and saw images of the 1400+ Syrians mercilessly killed at the hands of their own leader.  A civil war that has waged for several years and claimed over 100,000 lives was suddenly hitting close to home.  I cannot imagine the fear, grief, anxiety, and pain the Syrian people are experiencing.

My heart sunk even deeper on Saturday when I heard our President calling for our own nation to respond to the Syrian crisis with a military strike.  I have prayed and worried for my older brother as he served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the thought that our nation may again become embroiled in war overwhelms me. 

And yet, our President, Congress, and other international leaders find themselves in a difficult situation.  To do nothing sends the signal that the international community will sit idly by while innocent life is taken.  To take military action is to respond to violence with violence, which will neither solve the Syrian crisis nor bring about a lasting peace.

No matter how the international community chooses to respond to this crisis, we who follow Jesus have only one appropriate response: prayer.  God’s desire is that none of His children war with each other, that no one be victimized by brutal violence, and that all live at peace.  In his death and resurrection, Jesus broke the cycle of violence and death that plagues our world and created the conditions for a true and lasting peace.

Pope Francis has invited people of faith around the world to observe a day of prayer and fasting for the people of Syria this Saturday, September 7^th.  I myself intend to join with brothers and sisters across the world in observing this solemn day.  I will fast from sun-up to sundown, and spend time through the day praying for the victims, for the peaceable end to the civil war, for those working for peace and justice, and for national and international leaders as they discuss a response.  I encourage all of you to join me and brothers and sisters around the world in this day of fasting and prayer. 

In our worship service this Sunday, we will continue this observance with a special time of prayer for the people of Syria.  No matter what your opinion on this matter (and our opinions are many), prayer is our way of acknowledging that the challenges of our world cannot be met by politicians, generals, or cruise missiles, but only by the power of our great and gracious God.

In it for the Long Haul

“If I say, ‘I will not mention God’s word, or speak anymore in God’s name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones.  I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jer. 20:9).

Every year at Annual Conference (a gathering of United Methodist clergy and lay leaders) we honor those pastors who are retiring.  I am always amazed at the number of retirees who have served 40+ years in active ministry.  That’s 50% longer than my lifetime (to date)!  In a day and age where the average person changes careers three times, it’s remarkable to recognize those who have stuck with something for four decades.

If our ministry is a race, then God is calling us to be
the tortoise, not the hare.

Jeremiah’s ministry as a prophet also lasted forty years (627-587 BC).  He first began speaking God’s Word as a young teenager.  Over the next forty years he would continue to speak God’s Word through some of the most tumultuous and challenging days in the history of Israel.  In Jeremiah’s lifetime he witnessed the demise and fall of the holy city of Jerusalem – a demise rooted in the reckless faithlessness of the people of God.

Imagine how difficult it was for Jeremiah to stick to it – to get up every morning with a willingness to be faithful to God’s message, even though it seemed few were willing to listen.  How did he do it?  How did Jeremiah make it forty years in such a difficult vocation?

The answer is that Jeremiah was deeply connected to God.  Hardly a page goes by in the book of Jeremiah where we don’t find the prophet on his knees in prayer, asking God to clarify his purpose, free him from suffering, give him strength to carry on.  Jeremiah’s heart was so passionately devoted to God’s purpose for him, that he found he couldn't quit.  There was a fire in his bones.

As we begin our fourth year together in min

istry at Faith UMC, I am reminded that we have just begun.  God has called us to be in ministry with our community and world.  It is a calling that includes welcoming all people to worship God with passion, grow deeply in Christian faith, and serve Christ in community.  And while God has begun some good work among us in these past years, we have barely started on the journey God has for us.  We have not been called to a short-term ministry, but to a lifetime of ministry.  And what we learn from Jeremiah is that if we want our ministry to last a lifetime, then we must be deeply and passionately connected to God.

Do you have the kind of faith that gets you out of the bed in the morning ready to serve Christ?  Are you passionately devoted to God’s Word, seeking to know and live out the scriptures?  Do you regularly connect with God through prayer and worship?  Does your connection to Christ enable you to be in ministry for the long haul?   

Get Ready to Get Wet!

Before ascending into heaven, Jesus left his followers (including us!) with the one last command: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).  This Sunday, we have a very special opportunity to do just that.

It’s been nearly a year since Jeff Vasalech first joined us in worship.  He moved to the Pittsburgh area from Monterey, CA seeking a fresh start in life.  Over the past year, it has been my joy to journey with Jeff as Jesus has given him the fresh start he was looking for.  In our conversations together, Jeff and I have read the scriptures closely, prayed for God’s transforming grace to be at work in his life, and marveled at how Jesus has made Jeff a new person. 

Now, convinced that he is called to follow Jesus all his days, Jeff is ready to be baptized.  Baptism is an act of God’s grace, in which water symbolizes the cleansing power of God’s forgiveness, and our acceptance into God’s eternal family.

Jeff’s desire from the beginning has been to experience a deep water, full immersion baptism.  This Sunday at 2 p.m., we will hold a special baptism service for Jeff at Campbell Lake.  The lake is owned by owned by a local family and is close to the church.  Out of respect for the family, I will not publish their address on the world wide web, but you can call the c

hurch office (412.963.8155) or email me (pastortom@faithfoxchapel.org) to get the address.

I want to invite you to come and share in this special service.  Baptism is an act of the church, and so it is important that as many of us as possible be present for the service, to witness God’s grace at work in Jeff’s life and to remember our own baptism. 

Following Jeff’s baptism, you will have the opportunity to remember your baptism.  You will be invited to enter the water in whatever way you choose (you can simply dip your feet in, or fully immerse yourself) and I will offer a short prayer over you, asking God to remind you of your place in God’s family.  Feel free to wear your swimsuit and a t-shirt and bring along a towel should you wish to wade deep into the water.

Words can hardly express how excited, honored, and humbled I am to have the opportunity to share in this special service.  I hope to see you there.

The Prophetic Power of Tears

“Oh, my anguish, my anguish!  I writhe in pain.  Oh the agony of my heart!  My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent” (Jeremiah 4:19).

“Is there no balm in Gilead?  Is there no physician there?  Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?  Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!  I would weep day and night for the slain of my people” (Jeremiah 8:22-9:1).

There are a lot of tears in the book of Jeremiah.  So many, in fact, that we could easily call Jeremiah the crying prophet.  Tears are a crucial part of Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry.  His tears convey the deep ache in God’s heart over the brokenness of the world. 

Jeremiah lived in a time of great uncertainty and grave sin.  The people of Israel had strayed so far from God that it seemed they were doomed to die in a foreign land.  Seeing clearly the fragility of the situation, Jeremiah cried.  His tears spoke the powerful message that something is deeply wrong – things are not as they are supposed to be.

While Jeremiah’s tears express his agony and grief over his personal sufferings, they also express the ache of God’s heart.  God takes no pleasure in the suffering of Israel.  The wound of their sin is self inflicted, and God weeps for them as a parent weeps over the loss of a child.  Jeremiah’s tears are also God’s tears.

If we’re honest, you and I aren’t comfortable with tears.  When someone cries, we’re quick to wipe their tears away and say “there, there, don’t cry, it will be alright.”  When we read the book of Jeremiah, we’d prefer to skip past the tears and get on to the more hope-filled passages, where God’s promise of restored life is the focus.

But tears play such an important role in God’s work of salvation.  There is no salvation without tears, for weeping permits newness.  It’s why Jesus wept before raising Lazarus from the grave (John 11:35).  It’s why he wept in the garden of Gethsemane before being crucified and raised (Mark 14:34).  Tears are the prelude of resurrection!

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4).  Those who shed tears of grief are blessed because they are the ones who see clearly that we need the salvation Jesus brings.  In our lives, when we shed tears over the death of a loved one, the suffering of a child, or the loss of a relationship, our tears are our acknowledgement that we need to be saved – we need God’s help.  Our tears open us to the possibility that God has something more for us – that we need new life.

What makes you weep?  How have your tears unveiled your need for God’s grace?  How can God work through your tears to bring you new life?

We are Not Our Own

"I know, O Lord, that our lives are not our own, that we're not able to direct our paths" (Jeremiah 10:23).

It's not about me.  That might be one of the most difficult lessons to learn in our culture.  We live in a "me-first" culture, where my dreams, my interests, my goals are exalted above all else.  Yet, one of the fundamental messages of the scriptures is that if I put myself first, I am doomed to failure.

That's essentially what happened in Jeremiah's day.  Convinced that they knew a better way to live than the one God had designed for them, the people of Israel went their own way.  They made their own gods, with their own hands.  They made their own rules and laws.  They pursued their own dreams.  They ignored the God who freed their forbears from slavery in order to pursue their own way of life.

As the people of Israel would soon discover: God ways are higher than our ways, and God's thoughts higher than our thoughts.  Our ways will ultimately lead to our doom.  The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people of Israel is the result of Israel's attempt to make their own way in life.

Jeremiah's reminder to the people of Israel is also a timely reminder for us.  "Our lives are not our own."  We didn't make ourselves.  We were made by God for God's purpose.  Everything we have, and everything we are belongs to God alone.  And that's a good thing, because all of God's ways lead to life.

Are you living your life for yourself, or have you surrendered your life to God?  Is your first priority your own desires, or do you seek what God desires for you?  What needs to change in your life in order for God to be first?  

  

Hypocrisy, The Church, and Following Jesus

Hypocrite: “A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.”

Run a Google search on the word “hypocrite” and you’ll discover that for many the word is synonymous with “Christian.”  According to the Pew Research Forum, hypocrisy is one of the most common reasons why many Americans don’t go to church. 

In his book They Like Jesus but not the Church, Dan Kimball writes, “Ask someone today if he or she likes Jesus, and the answer is usually yes.  But ask if that person likes the church, and chances are you will get a far less favorable response.”  While Jesus teaches a gospel of inclusion, grace, hope and love, Kimball notes that many have experienced the church as a place of exclusion, judgment, negativity, and rejection.  Sometimes when it comes to sharing Jesus with the world, the church gets in the way.

Lest we think that hypocrisy is a new phenomena, we remember that the struggle to live out our beliefs is as old as the human race.  In Jeremiah 7, God sends the prophet Jeremiah to the temple to convict the people of Israel of hypocrisy:

“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come into this house which bears my Name, and say ‘we are safe?’ (Jeremiah 7:9-10).

The people of Israel were hiding their sins behind the walls of the temple.  They came to the temple on the Sabbath to make the proper sacrifices and confess their sins, but then they left and did whatever they wanted the rest of the week.  They treated God’s forgiveness as an excuse to do whatever they pleased.  They were hypocrites.

Jeremiah’s exhortation to the hypocrites of Israel is instructive: “Reform your ways and actions” (7:3).  In other words, practice what you preach.  True worship of God is not just what happens inside the temple.  True worship entails a total way of life.

James 2:26 says “faith without works is dead.”  Following Jesus entails much more than believing the right doctrines, saying the right prayers, or being in church every Sunday.  Following Jesus is a total way of life.  What we say and do on Sunday morning must cohere with how we live Monday through Saturday.

Is your life consistent with what you believe?  How does the faith you profess on Sunday morning impact the way you live the rest of the week?  In what ways are you hypocritical?  How can your life better reflect the values of Jesus?  How is God challenging you to “reform your ways and actions” so that you may live a life that reflects the gospel you believe?

      

Where is The Lord?

One of the most astonishing facts about Jeremiah's day and age was that the people of Israel had lost the book of Deuteronomy.  An entire book of the Bible, missing from the collective memory of the people of God!  An entire generation of Israelites grew up never hearing the Shema, perhaps the most important verse of the Old Testament:

         "Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God, The Lord is one.  Love The Lord your God with all

          your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

Every time I recall this historical fact I find myself asking "How?  How do you lose memory of a sacred text like Deuteronomy?  How does a nation with generations of priests, scribes, and Bible teachers lose track of one of the most precious pieces of scripture?

The answer, according to Jeremiah, is that it didn't happen overnight.  It began at least one generation before Jeremiah's when "your fathers did not ask, 'Where is The Lord?'" (Jer. 2:5). It continued when the priests, the one's charged with maintaining Israel's relationship with God, stopped asking "where is The Lord?" (Jer. 2:8).  Finally, by the time Jeremiah was born, the Israelites, having forgotten the book of Deuteronomy, had "exchanged their glory for worthless idols" (Jer. 2:11).

There is a difficult lesson to be learned in all of this.  If we stop asking "where is The Lord," we just may find ourselves forgetting who we are as a people of God.  If we stop seeking God everyday of our lives, we will slowly fall away from God's path, until (like the people of Israel) we find ourselves astray in a foreign land, not looking anything like the people God has called us to be.

In our lives, it is typical for us to seek God in times of desperation and tragedy.  The tragedy of 9-11-01 is a great example.  Church attendance went through the roof the Sunday after the attacks, as people across the country asked, "Where is God in the midst of this?"

But we are far less inclined to ask "where is God?" in the midst of the ordinary patterns and rhythms of life.  Yet, it is when we seek God everyday that our faith is formed and grounded.  Then we are more prepared to face the unforeseen adversities of the future.  How do you seek God everyday?  How are you feeding your spiritual memory so that you won't forget all that God has done for you?

Jeremiah: The Gardener-Prophet

“Today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10).

A couple of weeks ago, Amy, Isaac, and I planted our garden.  While neither of us is a natural “green thumb,” we enjoy working in the garden together.  We especially enjoy the fresh squash, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers that we’ll be eating in a few months.  But, as we’re quickly learning, fresh vegetables don’t come without a little sweat.  Tilling, planting, weeding, and watering all must be done routinely in order for the vegetables to grow.

One thing that has struck me about gardening is how destructive it is.  In order to plant seeds, one must first take a piece of ground and uproot it – tearing away the sod, turning up the dirt, digging out the weeds.  It is this act of uprooting and tearing up the ground that is the most difficult work of gardening.  Yet, laborious and undesirable as such work may be, it is worth it to create space for fresh produce to grow.

When Jeremiah was called to be a prophet, God told him that his work would be like planting a garden.  “Today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”  Surely Jeremiah must have been excited about that last part.  As God’s prophet, Jeremiah will have the opportunity to plant the seed of God’s hope-filled future.  It is Jeremiah who will get to deliver one of the most inspiring messages in the Bible: “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11).

But before Jeremiah could plant that hope-filled seed, he would need to do the difficult work of uprooting, tearing down, destroying, and overthrowing.  In Jeremiah’s day, the people of Israel had wandered far away from God.  They worshiped idols, neglected the poor, and disregarded God’s Word.  In such a condition, the people of Israel were not fertile soil for God’s Kingdom.  If the seeds of hope were to be planted and take root in Israel, then the ground first needed to be prepared.  Things needed to changed.  Idolatry needed to be uprooted.  Injustice needed to be destroyed.  Corrupt leaders needed to be overthrown.  Someone needed to sound the alarm that everything is not okay.  Jeremiah is called to do just that.

Take some time this week to consider your own life.  What is God is calling you to uproot in your life to make space for the seeds of God’s peace to be planted within you?  What bad habits do you need to tear down?  What sin do you need to overthrow?  What barriers do you need to destroy in order to live more fully into God’s purpose for your life?  Such questions can be difficult to ask, and even more difficult to answer, but they are an important step in creating fertile ground in our hearts for the hope of God to be planted and to take root. 

             

Jeremiah: Prophet for All Ages

Michelangelo's depiction of Jeremiah reminds us
that Jeremiah was a prophet who grieved over
the brokenness of his generation.

Next to the Book of Psalms, Jeremiah is the longest book of the Bible.  It’s 52 chapters are an anthology of sayings and events from the life of the prophet Jeremiah, whose prophetic career spanned forty years from 627-587 BC.  Our 2013 summer worship series at Faith UMC will center on key passages from this book.  In addition to weekly sermons, I’ll also be writing weekly reflections on this blog that will invite us to dive deeper into the message of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah’s influence has left at least one indelible mark on the English language.  According to Websters, a “jeremiad” is a “lamentation or doleful complaint.”  Indeed, as we will see, there is a lot of lamenting in the Book of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was born into a difficult and challenging world.  In his lifetime, the mighty Assyrian empire crumbled, and Egypt and Babylon battled back and forth for the title of world power. 

In the midst of it all, Jeremiah and the Southern Kingdom of Israel (called Judah) lived in a time of anxiety and fear, unsure of what the future would hold for their small nation.  What is more, Jeremiah saw how far his people had strayed from the ways of God.  Idolatry was rampant in Israel, and the poor and needy were often neglected and forgotten.  Such difficult and dark days created plenty of reasons for Jeremiah to offer a “jeremiad.”

But that is not to say that the overall tone of the Book of Jeremiah is mournful and dour.  As a matter of fact, some of the purest expressions of hope are found in Jeremiah’s prophecy.  In the midst of a turbulent world, Jeremiah was a man of God-inspired vision.  Where most people saw only chaos and turmoil, Jeremiah was able to see and articulate God’s purpose at work in the world.  In the midst of the brokenness of his age, Jeremiah envisioned a new covenant, when God would break into history and restore the hope of God’s people. 

While our contemporary world is very different than Jeremiah’s, his message still speaks truth into our lives.  How many of us have lamented the current state of our world?  How many times have we broken down and cried at the harsh realities of life?  How many times have we wondered, “where is God?”  For us who know that something is wrong with the world, the voice of Jeremiah helps us to articulate our grief over the world’s ills, while also helping us to speak energizing words of hope in the midst of it all. 

My hope and prayer is that this summer journey into the Book of Jeremiah will inspire all of us with the hope of God, which comes to fullest expression in our savior Jesus Christ.  The journey starts this Sunday.  See you there!