ASP Day 3 - Fun

As I write I can hear the Youth from our church down the hall playing a game.  They are laughing, smiling and having fun.  Mind you -- none of the trappings of their normal lives are here.  It is not their normal den, normal TV, normal entertaining diversions.  Their normal social circles are nowhere near.

Yet they are having fun.  A lot of fun.

Even in the midst of long, hot, labor-filled days fun is happening.

Getting ready to work, wondering why he is holding a cat?

Running down the road after saving a turtle.  Our group is leading the pack in turtle saves.  3 in 3 days.

Laughing near uncontrollably as we "dusted" off one of the youth with a shop vac.  Very dusty day for group 4.  Very dusty.  So dusty that sneezes and laughter abounded.

One of our youth got a makeover by the 8 year old girl who lives at the house where she is working.  

"It's all about attitude."  Ask her about mixing paint with a drill.  Trust me it was fun and funny.

Bluegrass dancing.

Getting ready for bluegrass singing.  When you see the videos you'll see - we rocked the room with song and fun.  Even the bass player joined in.

Fun. Could it be that the Holy Spirit is ever present, and we remove our other concerns we are allowed to see the joy in others and that is inherently fun.

So hard work leads to fun?  Service leads to joy-filled laughter?

Culture teaches that the only fun to have is in indulging ourselves and entertainment.  Culture says the more you spend the more fun you can expect to have.

I beg to differ.

ASP Day Two - A Song from A.

Here are some photos from today with our group, "Denver the Guilty Dog" (which is still a really good Youtube offering).

Jennifer speaks to Charlotte, our site coordinator about the next repairs we will attempt.  You can see in the background that the painting has been all but completed.

Two of our youth taking a moment to cool off indoors (it was really hot in East Kentucky today).  And of course, kittens.  Yay!  Kittens!

We are moving items out to begin installing a vinyl floor.

There are many more photos I could share.  For example tonight we went to a bluegrass show and most of our Youth danced with one another, other ASP kids, and even some local members of the community.

It was really glorious.

I even played guitar joined by a real blue grass bass player.  Our Grace Like Rain folks led the crowd in Wagon Wheel.  Again, really glorious.

But here was the best part of my day.  The woman we are primarily working for is named A.  A. is a disabled lady.  Her life is limited by her disability.  Her life is limited by her circumstance.  But her soul?

Her soul is not limited in the least.  The most beautiful moment of my day was when A. shared the songs she had written with me.  Here is one of them, her hands holding the song.

If you can zoom in, please do.  It is worth it.

What would your love song to God read like, sound like, be like?  Could you write it if your circumstances were as difficult as A.'s?  

God is doing amazing things in those homes and lives we are whizzing by in our cars and busyness.  Let's pay attention.  And do likewise.

Bonus picture:  here is the view looking up from the Cordia School

Day 1 - ASP Lessons

Here is our group before we left this morning for work.  It was a great day.  One group is painting, flooring, and installing a new toilet.  Another group is going miscellaneous jobs -- all geared to making a house more a home.  Still another is building a deck.  And another is building shelving and cabinets.

Here are the Youth I am working with along with one other adult.  Our group is named "Denver the Guilty Dog" after a popular Youtube video.  If you have time it is worth watching.  ASP assigned us the name because of an incident with a dog that happened near the home.

There are no dogs in the house where our group of 7 is working.

There are lots of kittens.

Today I removed a faulty, leaking toilet in the home and replaced it with a new one.  What made me qualified to do this?  Nothing really.  

I did watch a Youtube video.  It was very helpful.  I also read an instruction manual on how to do it provided by ASP and another online.

After a couple of false turns, me, and two other of the Youth got it to work.  Here was a home and we helped it acquire a working toilet.  That may seem a small thing.  But it is a really, really big thing.

How did we do it?  We we informed ourselves and we proceed with a combination of confidence and caution.  Just like if I were to do a Youtube video called, "how to pray" or "how to lead a youth trip" or "how to lead a devotional," I am sure people could follow what I suggested.  But without confidence?  Without confidence nothing they watch will matter.  Truth is we could have still been watching the video right now, gaining knowledge.  Only that doesn't get the toilet installed.

How different might our faith be if we practiced it with confidence?

P.S.:

If you want to learn more about where we are staying, the Cordia School near Hazard, KY, simply cut and paste this into your browser:    http://www.lottscreek.org/cordia_school.html

If you want to learn more about the county where we are working, simply cut and paste this into your browser:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knott_County,_Kentucky

On June 8 at WMPC we will welcome Alex Evans, Roy Cooper, and Sandra Wartski to our church to lead us in a colloquium, a conversation - guided by prayer and faithfulness about violence, mental health, community, and policy.

I am hopeful and prayerful that it will be a fine day.

I am hopeful and prayerful that those who come will be invigorated, enlightened, and better informed about the stains of violence and shootings which are plaguing our current national moment.

As I said in our newsletter last week - I am convinced that God, and our Savior, are left broken-hearted when the children of God murder one another.

I hope we will rise to the challenge of discussion solutions to the disease, instead of turning a deaf ear and contributing to the problem.

Here is a link to the website with all the information.

 http://www.whitememorial.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=265382

Please come and join us.

It is finished.

“It is finished.”  And so it was.

            Good Friday.  Day of death.  The veritable death of God by the biblical account and by Christian acclamation.

            John Dunne, master poet and Englishman of letters and lore once wrote, “Last night in the wee hours a thought came to me:  to trust God beyond my own understanding of God.”[1]

            If there is anything good about Good Friday, this day of darkest action and deepest need, then it is this:  that Jesus Christ, arrested, beaten, scourged, and crucified trusted God beyond our understandings.

            We ask God about suffering…

            We ask God about death…

            We ask God about pain…

            We ask God about injustice…

            We ask God about right and wrong, and should and ought…

            We ask God about poverty and pain in our midst and the whole time we are demanding an answer that is within what we already know, or in terms that we already understand.  We expect God to tell us what we expect to hear.

            It is not that God is not answering.  God always answers.  Most of the time, it is we who are not fully prepared to hear.  Our “understanding” – whatever that is – gets in the way.  Most of the time, we want cherubs and seraphs, angels on cloud and wing and harp, heavenly choruses raining down “Alleluias! and Hosannas!” upon our dried tears and our warm feet.

            But on Good Friday we get a cross and an empire and cold footed death.  We get a reminder that its God up there on that cross, and by virtue of Jesus, us too.  We get a reminder that we are upon that cross while we are at the foot of that cross.  We get a reminder that while we want to pass go and collect our 200 dollars, while we want to stop at the rest stop as quickly as possible and resume our 75 mile per hour journey to Easter morning and the resurrection sun; we get a reminder that with no cross there is no tomb; no Friday, no Sunday; no death, no resurrection.

            “It is finished.”

            Suzanne Gutherie at Cornell University writes, “What is loss but the experience of love, after all?  If you did not love, there would be no loss.  Absence become a kind of presence.  What man or woman does not bear grief?  Even a happy and healthy childhood has its frustrations, and too often war, hunger, injustice, poverty, disease, and natural disaster prevail.  What drove Abraham and Moses to plead for their generations?  What drove prophets to pit their lives against their society and culture?  And absorbed as he was in that tradition of patriarchs and prophets, what drove Jesus to the cross?”[2]

            Dear friends, it was love divine all love’s excelling, and nothing less.  Love for the criminals to his right and left.  Love for the poets, the lovers, the thieves.  Love for the educated and proper.  Love for a world which in that moment was not prepared or able to love him back or to even be aware that what he was about would be and was the most important work that any of them would ever witness.

            They failed to pay right witness to it – not the Mary’s or the chosen disciples, but the great and obtuse “they” who were simply going about their business, tending the fields, faxing the documents, placing the orders, making the copies, feeding the child. 

            Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall has written, “The cross is our Christian reality-check, and unlike a lot of other religious symbolism the cross doesn’t lie about realty.”[3]

            “It is finished.”  And so it was.

---

[1] Christianity Today, page 92.  April 2005.  from A Journey with God in Time.

[2] The Christian Century March 22, 2005.  Suzanne Guthrie, “No Time to Linger,” page 18.

[3] Journal for Preachers.  “Preaching the Cross in our Context.”  Easter 2005, page 12.

Remember

 

 How do we remember God, Jesus?  Especially this Holy Week? 

Triumphantly?

Penitentially?

With hesitation, great or small?

Would we rather not think about him at all?

Do we remember him like an old friend?  With a drink, a libation, a shot and cheer?  Or is it a quiet memory on this Wednesday, the eve of Maundy Thursday?

It strikes me that among the most basic human concerns that we all share is this one: how will we be remembered?

Who among us does not want to be remembered well?

On of the most interesting activities I have led on retreats with adults is having the people write their own obituaries. It is a humbling endeavor. Obituaries generally don’t list assets or property. They usually don’t list favorite movies or favorite songs. They are not concerned with the cars we drive or the type of television in our living room. They typically list the people, achievements, and accomplishments by which we are most likely to be remembered; they are concerned with family, community, and church.

In so far as this the last supper, Maundy Thursday, is the obituary act of Jesus, then we can learn a great deal about him by understanding what he offers as a means of remembrance, as a method of obituary.

He is sitting with his “family” – his disciples, brothers in faith, presumably with the remainder of his closest followers in the streets nearby. His act is an act that feeds the community around him – it’s a supper, a meal of remembrance that allows us to join alongside each other and our neighbors. There is no community that is not enhanced by the sharing of a meal, by the breaking of bread, through what our forefathers and mothers have called ‘table fellowship.’ His actions are become for the church sacramental. They are a continual giving of himself as a sign and seal of God’s gracious love.

An example for us each time we gather arround a table of communion and Eucharist. And when we share this supper to remember Jesus time and time again we take our proper places in the continuity of witness, and we stand alongside brothers and sisters in the church visible and the church triumphant, saints of every time and place.

We break bread.  We pour cup.  And when we dothe Holy Spirit connects our memory to the memory of those before and those who will come after. Indeed I might be so bold as to say that long after the homes we have lived in have crumbled, long after our portfolios have exhausted, long after our businesses and practices have changed hands over and over again there will be somebody in this world tearing a loaf of bread and blessing a cup.

It is sacrament because it allows us to become a part of Jesus’ obituary-meal.

And in a sense as we sit at table with Him and His Holy Spirit we become a part of His obituary even as he is most assuredly a part of ours. And so Jesus makes a way, on the night before his scourging and his crucifixion to leave us a ceremony and a sacrament that emboldens family, community, and church.

I want to remember Jesus the way he asked to be remembered.

This image found at relevantmagazine.com a site you all should follow and give time and attention to. This image is from St. Peter's in Rome from the past week. What does it tell us about the nature of the church? Here are a group of people participating in a ritual that is 1000's of years old. Look what has happened in the past 8 years. What does it tell us about the nature of the church? Everything is chaning in our midst. My sermon on Sunday should have been titled, "The seven last words of the church: we've never done it that way before." I think most of us think that if we change how we practice our faith we will become like "them" (whoever "them" is). My argument: we better be prepared to change so that "we" can remain being "us." The change is exponential. We ignore it at our own peril.