The Night before surgery

   I'm sitting in my room watching the sun go down and enduring several rounds of liquids to prepare me for my surgery tomorrow. I have been diagnosed with Prostate Cancer and the doctor who did my kidney surgery five years ago will be operating on me in his actual area of specialty. He has had five more years of experience with the DaVinci robot for surgery. I should be in surgery for 4 to 5 hours and then here for a couple of days before I can go home to recuperate.

   I am grateful for all the people who are praying for me. I have been touched by the notes, emails, and texts that have been sent to confirm their prayers. It seems like every church I've been the pastor for, and the church I grew up in, and my Brother Bruce's church are all on alert for praying this week. Thank you all for that. In the letter to the Hebrews we are told that the prayers surround us like a stadium full of people cheering us on in the race we are running right now. I feel the support tremendously.

   I won't be able to write tomorrow but maybe Tuesday evening I'll update you on what has been happening.

   Blessings on each of you.

Pastor Jeff

Life is a Journey

   Hello Blog followers. Pardon my interruption to the flow of the reading from Luke. Several things have happened in the last two weeks and it has diverted all of my attention. Let me try to catch  you up. I hope you don't mind this little side tracking from our regular sharing of the chapters in Luke.

   A few days ago, and it will seem like a lot longer very shortly, the Bishop of the Baltimore Washington Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, of which I have been a part of for almost 50 years between youth delegate/member to Annual Conference sessions and forty years under appointment to be a pastor, has re-appointed me to the North Bethesda United Methodist Church beginning on July 1, 2014. That has meant a great deal of prayer, visits to the church, meetings with the personnel committees of both congregations and the announcements in each church on the same day. This has also meant a great deal of reflection and conversation with the people at Liberty Grove who are having a hard time understanding how all of this works.

   To try to explain, with apologies to John Wesley and Francis Asbury, how the UMC does this. John Wesley believed that an overall plan or vision for the growth of disciples for Jesus Christ, would take several people to accomplish. The idea of rotating pastors was to provide a congregation with an overall more thorough training for ministry with several pastors than just one for a long time. The belief was each pastor was good at somethings, blessed with certain gifts of the spirit for the ministry, but not all of the gifts. If we switched pastors around, the local church would benefit from a good preacher onetime, a good administrator, at another, a good educationally focused pastor, a good mission minded pastor, a good social service pastor, etc. The local church would then be encouraged by a step in the right direction under the leadership of each pastor.

   One way to look at this is to consider a barrel. The barrel has many staves, (the up and down parts of the barrel) and each stave could be at a different height. If the church was a barrel and only had one tall stave, the others would be much lower and wouldn't hold much in the barrel. So if the church only got encouragement and growth in one area, it would be a funny looking barrel. But with rotation of pastors, a good administrator would raise that stave. A building pastor would enlarge the building for ministry, a good fund raiser would help bring in the resources for ministry, a good evangelist, would bring in more members. A good teacher would help develop the spiritual life of the members, and after a while they would be a much taller staved barrel, capable of holding more in the barrel. That's the way it was seen in John Wesley and Francis Asbury's day. And as the country grew, it would take an appointment to move across the mountain and start a new church, because some pastors would like to stay put once they got to know everybody. But then the church would not expand and it would eventually be left alone. So Methodists covered the country and by the Civil War nearly a third of the country had a Methodist connection. We had more churches with our name on the door, than there were post offices.

  The country and the culture have changed but our way of doing church has not so much. So the Bishop still makes the changes, and they are supposed to be strategic, helping the churches and the Church grow in faithfulness. It doesn't work as well and since all pastors are not trained the same way and people have learned to be consumers with their own choices for almost everything, the connection to a church is much harder to do. And with so many churches under the responsibility of the Bishop, it is harder to be able to fit every situation and every congregation and every expectation of what their pastor is supposed to be like.

   So now you can see why it's a challenge. And it needs much prayer. And I can use your prayers. For a church loses a pastor and lots of people grieve the loss of their spiritual shepherd. The shepherd on the other hand loses a whole congregation which includes many really good relationships and experiences and suddenly the grief and loss can be overwhelming when you think about that. So I am grieving the loss of many of my friends all at once. I am wrestling with the challenges of moving to another church and learning to love them and provide the kind of ministry and leadership they need, not knowing them yet. So keep me in your prayers.

   I too am on a journey of faith, called by God to leave the comfort of familiar and travel, like Abraham, to a new place God will show me. Like Jonah, there are times we would rather not, but God will track us down and help us to see clearly that we are going to Nineveh and share the good news. Best of all, God is with us.

Thanks for your prayers

Pastor Jeff

Luke ch. 9

   Chapter 9 of Luke, which we are reading a chapter at a time, gives us a great view of the turning point in Jesus' ministry. He is preparing his disciples to carry on the work bringing the kingdom of God to our world, when he won't be physically present with them. So to discover if they are ready, and they aren't, but that's another story like ours, he sends them out to tell others the good news.

   We are reminded by this event that all of us have a part to play in the work of the church, the church is not a building or a social club with a religious theme, or a social service agency motivated by our faith, but a way for God to change lives to bring people who are separated from God into a relationship with God. He sends his disciples out to get them some experience in sharing the good news, of helping people who are overwhelmed in life to find the help God can give. They cast out demons, heal the sick and tell the good news, which they have been seeing Jesus do all along. That's our mission too, tell people, help people when they are having troubles, that God wants to heal and restore and connect to them for their wholeness.

   They come back and apparently a whole group of people are coming with them so that suddenly there are five thousand men and their families sitting on the hill side listening to Jesus and being healed and taught. It get's late and the disciples feel that the people should leave now, or they will be hungry. Jesus suggests that the disciples feed them. Once again, Jesus is asking us to be helping people as a part of their learning and growing in faith. The disciples still haven't developed the faith they need and wonder how on earth we are going to feed all these people. Someone suggests that there isn't enough money in the treasury for all of them to have food. Someone  else found a small lunch, consisting of 5 loaves of bread and two fish. The loaves are about the size of a dinner roll or hamburger bun. How will that feed this many people?

   Once again Jesus gets to show us that our faith can be a whole lot bigger than it is. Jesus asks the people to sit down in groups of about fifty, and then he lifts the bread toward heaven, and gives thanks for them and then breaks them and passes the bread to the disciples, who pass the bread to the people. He does the same with the fish. And lo and behold, a dramatic expression when we see God at work, there is enough food for everyone and a collection of 12 baskets of left overs! God has a way of doing far more than we can even imagine.

   The next part of the story invites us to wrestle with what all of this means. So after the people are gone and they have traveled some more, Jesus starts to ask them, "Who do people say that I am?" This question is still asked today. Who do people think Jesus is? well some say, you are a prophet, or John the Baptist come back to life, or some other great rabbi. It sounds like the same answer by people today. Jesus is a great teacher, a miracle worker, a religious leader from the first century, a person we have heard about from a long time ago. Even today we have many answers to what we and our friends think of Jesus. We will explore that in more detail later. Stay tuned.

   Then to make sure that Jesus can move toward his purpose of dying in Jerusalem to accomplish the forgiveness of sins and prove who he really is with his Resurrection, he asks the disciples and he really is asking us. "Who do you say that I am?" The reality comes to us, how do we answer that question. Who is Jesus? Peter blurts out that he is the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah of God. And Jesus thanks him for the revelation that was not a human concoction, but a divine revelation.

   Yes, Jesus is the Son of God, yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah of God. Which is pretty unbelievable sometimes. And when Jesus says that this revelation is right and that as the Son of God we are going to have the same challenges he has, we have a hard time with that. He tells them that the Son of God will be betrayed, arrested, tried, crucified and buried. But on the third day be raised back to life. And as a matter of fact each of us, if we want to be a true disciple, must surrender our own wills and take up the cross of obedience and follow him to that difficult end.

   The disciples, and us included, have a hard time with Jesus announcing such a horrible event coming to him and they begin to doubt his divinity and his purpose. He will need to show them something else to help keep them on track, and that's what comes next. He takes Peter, James and John up on a mountain top for a time for prayer.

   I pray you will continue to read the gospel of Luke for more details, and continue to struggle with and decide for yourself, who Jesus is and what you will do to stay with him for your whole life and beyond. Come back and we will share what happens next in a future Blog report.

Blessings

Pastor Jeff

Year with Luke ch. 7

   Luke gives us so much go learn about Jesus, and the hits just keep on coming. This past Sunday we looked at ch. 7 where Jesus accepts the invitation from the enemy Roman soldier, to heal his servant. Jesus will love the enemy really, and heads for his house. Before he can get to the house, the soldier has begged Jesus to stay away because he is unworthy. He tells Jesus that all Jesus has to do is say the word, a lot like his own power to send orders, and he knows the servant will be healed. WOW, Jesus says, he has never seen so much faith in all of Israel.

   Jesus lets us know two or three great things here. Faith is believing without seeing, and without even being present, which will be very important to those who live after the time of Jesus. We don't have to be in the very presence of Jesus to be healed, encouraged or blessed. Jesus just says the word. We are going to be touched by his words, even when we live years later. It's also very important to learn that our prayers travel a lot further than we think they do. Actually we can pray about people, situations, world issues and challenges, from a distance, and it's still a very powerful prayer. So the next time you hear about horrible events in the news, from somewhere very far away, lift that situation up in prayer, knowing that God can work there as well. We can make a difference, more than we thought.

   Jesus then stops a funeral procession and raises the dead man, to give him back to his widowed mother. In the first century the care of the parents was in the hands of the children. This was her only son, she was going to be without support. So Jesus shows compassion and heals the son, so that he can go on taking care of his mother. I'm particularly touched by this story, as Elaine and I are in the process of helping her mother move from a group home in Florida, to a group home near us. Her dementia is getting worse. Caring for parents has become more and more a responsibility for us Baby Boomers than we at first realized. My parents didn't have to worry about my grandparents, so this is a new level of involvement and responsibility now. Seeing that Jesus get's involved and helps out is good news for us too.

   John the Baptist gets back into the picture here. He is concerned from his prison cell, that Jesus isn't doing what he expected Jesus to be doing by now. To prepare the way for the Messiah, was like getting ready for a great war that would take away the enemies of Israel, expecting someone like David to be a great warrior and re-establish the nation of Israel. John the Baptist hasn't seen any of the sweeping away the enemy yet, and was wondering what was going on. So he sent some of his followers to go check this out. Jesus invites the followers to hang around for a bit, so they can see what Jesus is doing.

   After a while, Jesus tells John's followers, "Go tell John, what you see and hear." take a look at what is really going on. The blind can see, the deaf can hear, the lame can walk, and good news is being proclaimed to all people. The real work of the Messiah this first time, is to work on the far more important mission of recovering the relationship to the Creator, not restoring the flag to the capitol, the real mission is to see the relationship is an eternal one, not for a brief reign of a king to the palace. Jesus asks us to look at what we are really accomplishing with our ministry. Are people really being transformed and connected to our God? It's not about buildings but about lives being brought closer to the Creator and what God hopes we will become.

   So I pray that your reading the Gospel of Luke one chapter a week with us, will begin to help you discover what the essentials of our ministry is, "We are partners in the ministry of Jesus, to connect people to God, to one another, and to a broken and hurting world, so that future generations will praise the Lord." (from our Vision Statement.) May you see the part you can play in helping people get closer to God.

   Later this week we will look at the diner party with Simon the Pharisee and the woman who was washing Jesus feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. Great stuff there too, about the great mercy and grace of God for us all.

May God bless your journey of faith and discovery.

Pastor Jeff

Year with Luke Ch. 6

   Hello Pilgrims of faith, those who travel the road toward God. Chapter 6 of Luke has a couple of words of encouragement for us on the pathway. Luke ch. 6 starts out with the disciples gathering wheat to chew on as they walk. The Old Testament was about sharing for the needs of those on the road, so it allowed for the taking of food, but only enough to consume then, not carry off for later. The disciples were allowed to do what they were doing. But for the Pharisees, who jumped all over them for doing this on a Sabbath day. But Jesus reminded them of when David needed food, he got the bread on the altar table for his friends. Knowing the Bible can be of big help when we get to a variety of situations that need resources for the deciding.

   I'll continue to urge everyone to start or reconnect to a daily reading plan for Scripture. There are so many out there that can be very helpful. Type in Google search for a "one year Bible" and you will get pages of suggestions, you can pick your version of scripture, the kind of reading you want etc. In You Version app on my iPad, I've chosen to read a book at a time year Bible. So I read the whole book of the Bible a chapter at a time, with a Psalm of Proverb thrown in for variety and a prayer suggestion. I've just read through Genesis, Mark, and Exodus, and I'm now in the book of Acts. It's a good way to keep the story together in my mind and still know that I'll read the whole Bible through this year again.

   Back to Luke ch. 6, Jesus finds a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on a Sabbath. The Pharisees circle around like vultures on a road side kill, waiting to see if Jesus will break the sacred Sabbath law. He challenges them to look at the poor man with a withered hand. "Is it right to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath?" "Should we ignore a person in pain, because it's the day of worship?" To not do good is like doing evil, don't you think? you could help but didn't, leaving the poor man in pain when you had the power to help. Jesus heals him.

   Maybe we have withered parts of us that need God's touch and healing and going to worship should be the place were we can reconnect to God and be healed. God wants to heal us, rather than seeing us suffer still. Our withered part, could be an experience we carry around that should be forgiven, and yet it lingers on and poisons our future, because we can't forgive and let go. Maybe our withered part is unanswered prayers, we have begged God to do something for us or for a loved one and it hasn't happened yet. Maybe our withered part is a disappointment from an experience we had with others, or we didn't get the job we were hoping to get, or our children made choices we would not have wanted them to make. The loss can be overwhelming, the grief can be around for a long time. So we need to bring that to Jesus for healing. Sometimes the healing is in our attitude. The pain could be what shapes us into what God wants for us. Remembering that St. Paul prayed three times for the thorn in his flesh to go away and God answered no, because, Grace is better, and in your weakness, you depend on God's strength, which is so much better. Even if we don't think so at the moment. See another example of knowing the whole story, you can find help in any moment or any issue. (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)

   On with the story, Jesus goes up to the mountain top to pray for his selection of disciples to become apostles. There are many disciples, students of Jesus and his teaching. Jesus is now ready to make some leaders and to be sent out when Jesus is finished with his earthly ministry. So he prays all night long and then chooses the twelve. We try to do the same thing in the life of our congregation and yours. Prayer is an absolutely essential component of who is selected to be a leader in the church. We ask God to be the one who can show us who that should be.

   The helpful part of this moment is that Jesus chose Judas to be in that group. He chose one who he knew would betray him in the end. He demonstrated what he taught in the sermon he was about to give, to love your enemies, to turn the other cheek, to accept those who were not going to do you any favors. A lesson he was willing to share with us, in choosing Judas for his apostolic team. Prayer made it possible for him to get along with the betrayer. Prayer will help us to make it through difficult places too.

   Come back later for the rest of the story. But hopefully as we read a chapter a week, we will discover we can get a lot of help for our pathway.

Blessings

Pastor Jeff

Year with Luke Ch. 5 part 2

   There is a lot going on in each chapter of Luke and now that we are in the fifth chapter we have a couple of calling the disciples stories, and a couple of healing stories. There is also the conflict with the Pharisees, who thought they knew better than anyone how religious life should be. Let me give you an example.

   Jesus healed a man of leprosy, which in the eyes of the Pharisees, was God's punishment for some sin and the person deserved it. So for Jesus to heal him seemed like interfering with the laws of God. Jesus even took a step further with his next miracle. When you were discovered with the skin disease, you had to leave your home, your family, your community and go live outside the village, sometimes in caves or little huts or with other leprosy sufferers. When you are healed, you are clean and allowed to move back home, to be with family, to be with friends, to participate in life. Jesus was giving the sick man his whole life back. A true reason to be grateful. When Jesus heals us our whole lives can be transformed, everything will be different.

   Jesus was at home, teaching, when four friends brought their paralyzed buddy to be healed. Because the crowd was so large, and they couldn't get to the door, they decided to climb up on the roof, hoist their friend up there, rip a hole in the roof big enough to lower their friend down to place him right in front of Jesus. This is an incredible act of love and friendship and one we are invited to consider, when we know friends, family, loved ones, who need to be healed by Jesus. We can bring them and do whatever it takes to get them there.

   Jesus is so special, he didn't blow a gasket because they were tearing a hole in his roof, he was impressed by their care for their friend. He announced that his sins were forgiven, so he would know he was completely healed. Now the Pharisees went crazy again and reminded everyone that only God could forgive sins. They weren't interested in the poor man being healed, but about their attitude about rules and laws of their faith. We can get that way sometimes about the things we think are so special. We are seeing a lot of that criticism played out on religious radio and others, dividing up sides about some feelings about some topic.

   But Jesus says, to show you that he had the power to forgive sins, he forgave the man on the stretcher and invited him to pick up his mat and go home. He did. Jesus explained a little further in Luke's gospel in this chapter, that the well don't need a doctor, the sick do, and he had come to heal the sick. Perhaps we need to see in this story, that Jesus comes to help us, to heal, to forgive, to lift us up from our stretchers and limits, and walk home set free. Ask Jesus to heal you, to forgive you, and to set you free. He loves to do that.

   We have a couple of lessons we can take away from this story. Friends who care for those who need help are very important at bringing friends to Jesus. So when ever you pray for a friend, co-worker, or member of your family, you are symbolically bringing them to Jesus. When you mention them in Joys and Concerns in worship or in small groups, you are bringing them to Jesus. Asking for prayer and our praying for them, is like helping to carry them together, so we can get them to Jesus.

   So, think about friends who need to have a new life, a new perspective on faith and practice, who seem trapped and need forgiveness and healing, and pray for them. Share the story of what Jesus does because he has the power to forgive sins. His death on the cross was to make sure that happens for all of us. As he reminds us when we take part in Holy Communion, this is a New Covenant poured out in my blood for the forgiveness of sins. Drink this and remember these blessings.

   Good news for your journey, blessings on you, I'll share more later

Pastor Jeff

Year with Luke ch. 5

   Chapter five of Luke is an exciting reflection on the qualities of Jesus' ministry. There are a couple of healing stories, two calling disciples to follow, some confrontations with Pharisees and a miraculous catch of fish to help us to pay more attention to Jesus and to become more committed to following the Master.

   Jesus approaches the fishermen who are cleaning their nets after not catching anything, he asks if he can use one of their boats for a pulpit to teach from for the crowds have come to the beach. He teaches the crowd for a while, then he asks Simon to go out into the deep for a catch. I love the irony here, the professional carpenter, is telling the professional fishermen, where the catch is going to be. And besides that, the fishing is usually better closer to shore, their weighted nets can settle to the bottom and trap the fish between the bottom and the net that descends upon them, then they pull the ends of the net together into a bag, and bring the net up to the boat.

   Going out into the deep defeats some of the purpose of shallow fishing nets. But here is the way we might gain some spiritual insights, Jesus asks us to follow him, and not just follow him, like yeah, You are my guy, but follow his instructions, including how to do you job, and do your life. And there are going to be times when this does not make much sense. We often have come to our ideas by hard work or experiences, or by common sense. Then being told something else, just unnerves us. But Jesus asks Simon to go out deeper. Like we do, Simon, complained first, explained why this wouldn't work, but then goes ahead. They get a huge catch of fish. So full, that it's tearing their nets. So full that it requires more help, from the other boat. So full, that it begins to weigh the boat down.

   Another little message from God, being obedient and faithful to the instructions, will yield a miracle, not as we expect, but God sent. Their boats were on the verge of sinking because the catch was so plentiful. Maybe we can learn from this, and be more willing to be obedient and faithful to what God asks of us. Maybe we need to be more willing to trust that God sees and understands parts of life we don't. Maybe we can learn that trusting God's leadership is really worth the effort and the commitment, and like in this case, leaving behind the familiar in order to really follow Jesus.

   I hope you are reading the whole chapter with me. Jesus invites Simon and Andrew, James and John to leave everything and follow him. They are going to become fishers of men and women. Bringing people into the network of God.

   We sometimes ask Jesus to come into our lives, but it's for our benefit. We want to have the rescue available should we need him in times of trouble. But he asks us to follow him. He asks us to do all things his way. He asks us to leave behind our ways for his ways. We are going to need to make a decision, to accept his call for following him, and let his directions and his desires and his expectations become the primary source of life. Sometimes we stay in our current lives and responsibilities but we gain a new perspective of following Jesus.

   This could mean we treat others, not as we are used to treating them, based on what we get out of the relationship, but as Jesus would relate to them. We treat our boss as Jesus would show respect. We treat our families as gifts from God and do the right thing for them. It is something to think about. And we won't know what that all will look like, unless we read the rest of the story. Join me as we read Ch. 6 leading up to the sixth Sunday of the year. I'll write more about ch. 5 in a day or two.

   Blessings on you all in your spiritual journey, come and follow Jesus.

Pastor Jeff