Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Prayer as Listening

Let’s just get a few things on the table. The “listening” part of prayer is sometimes the most difficult part. When we pray to God, we do not always get an answer right back. Sometimes the silence is deafening. Sometimes the silence is frustrating. But for me what is even more frightening is when God does speak back to us: through the Scriptures, through other believers, through situations and events, or through creation.

First, the silence. The silence of God is something that I believe we need to grow increasingly accustomed to. When Elijah is on the mountaintop, running scared from Queen Jezebel, God does not come in the earthquake and wind and fire, but in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:12). The greatest answer to prayer, the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, is done quietly, almost silently, as he is born in a manger in a small town: Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. As Jesus is tried and beaten and sentenced to death, the first Christians looked to Isaiah to describe what has happened: Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). And the most deafening silence of God is the silence of God the Son on the cross: the silence following the words It is finished and the silence of tomb. This is all to say that while we may find silence uncomfortable and frustrating, apparently God does not. In fact, silence seems to be one of God’s preferred ways of communicating with us, his creatures.

Second, when God speaks. If the silence of God can be deafening and overwhelming, then when God speaks—watch out! Have you ever had the experience of being deep in prayer and God answering you clearly and concretely through God’s creation, through situations and events, through other believers, or through Scripture? For me, the most humbling is when God speaks to me clearly and directly through his Word. The experience is overwhelming. Author Marva Dawn speaks of it as “God moving the bookmarks” (in our Bibles): God speaking a clear word to us through the Scriptures we read.

This also is a word of challenge to us. Hearing God speak through the Scriptures involves us taking time to read them and pray them and digest them. Eat this scroll, God says to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:3). Watch out, though, God often does not say what we want to hear!

 Lord, we give you thanks for your silence. Help us to be still and know that You are God. Lord, we give You thanks for Your Word. May we listen when You speak to us through the Scriptures. Lord, we give You thanks for speaking to us through our brothers and sisters in Christ. You are far more generous with us than we deserve. Make us ready to listen and quick to respond to what You ask of us. In the Name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.


[This article will be published in the monthly newsletter of the congregation I serve. Once it published, you can view it through our website.]

Monday, October 10, 2011

A Columbus Day Reflection

Columbus Day, I imagine, is a non-holiday for most of us. It probably evokes one of three reactions:

1. a vague reference to history: "Oh yeah, that guy who discovered America,"

2. a grieving of his legacy: Columbus as a representative of white colonial imperialism (see this e-card circulating on Facebook and Twitter), or

3. a chance to complain about how bank and postal service employees get the day off while the rest of us have to work. [I'm sure it's not worth the grief they get all day the next day, by the way.]

May I suggest a fourth? Columbus as metaphor: for discovery, for taking risk, for striking out and doing something new--even at great personal cost. Even if the Queen is partially financing it.

I imagine most of us sail along on someone else's boat, someone else's ocean, using a corporate-logo-inlaid compass of someone else's creation. We put the sails up and down day after day and rarely ask, "Where is this thing going anyway?" or "Is this a journey worth spending even a part of my life on?"

So how would I suggest we celebrate Columbus Day? Open your notebook to a blank page or take out a clean legal pad and start to dream, start to plan, start to chart new courses.

And if the current ship you're on (or you own!) is not worthy of your mission, make plans to change (or jump) ship, sooner than later.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Bible Reading

Just bought and watched one of the new Francis Chan short films, Teaching, on reading the Bible. Well done.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

A Blank Legal Pad

A blank legal pad. This is what I love about Saturdays.

While most of my "to do" lists during the week are done on a calendar / list matrix (I actually created my own paper calendar this year that fits how I do calendar / to do list triage), on Saturdays I begin with a blank legal pad.

And that is actually kind of inviting.

Whatever happened yesterday and this past week is done and now in God's hands, not for me to obsess over except to give it to God in prayer and ask for forgiveness when necessary.

Today is a new day.

The resurrection of our Lord Jesus means a lot of things. One of them is simply this: each new day is really a new day, a day infused with the light of Christ, a day for rising and being born again, a day for believing that whatever has happened in the past is now done.

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb...

Christ rises before the sun dawns and begins his work before I am even up.

A new day. A new creation. A blank legal pad.

What I should write at the top is this: Christ is risen! So love well, Matt, for it is not you who live, but Christ who lives in you!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Prayer as Waiting

I hate to wait. So when I begin a newsletter column on prayer as waiting, it is not a topic I am fond of. At the same time, I am struggling to become a more patient person and am convinced that this begins with prayer. So what exactly do I mean by prayer as waiting?

My first thought when it comes to waiting is standing in line for a roller coaster at an amusement park or for concert tickets to an artist I really want to see. But I’m not sure this captures prayer as waiting, because in these examples the waiting is simply the thing we do to pass the time before the main event. The real thing is in the future; the waiting is just the prelude.

But there are many other types of waiting. Consider the nine months of waiting that precede the birth of a child. These are filled with anticipation, preparation, activity, and, of course, hope. Consider waiting for an adult child coming home from college or military deployment overseas. The waiting is filled with nervousness, but is also precious, even holy.

In the Gospel of Luke,* we find two times of waiting that invite us to consider how prayer can be a time of active waiting. The first time of waiting is waiting for God. It is captured in the first several chapters of Luke as Mary waits for the birth of Jesus, as she waits for God to be born in her and through her. The second time of waiting is the waiting of God. It is captured in the last two chapters, as Christ sleeps the sleep of death. This waiting, the waiting of God, invites us to consider God’s first act of rest on the seventh day of creation and the act of waiting, Christ in the tomb, that preceded the day of Resurrection, the first day of the new creation.

Prayer is both of these kinds of waiting: Prayer is waiting for God, in hopeful anticipation of what God promises to do. Prayer is also the waiting of God, who is patient and longsuffering with us.

Almighty God, Your ways are not our ways, nor are Your thoughts our thoughts. Give us patience and perseverance, that all of our waiting may be done in hopeful anticipation of what You are doing within us and among us through Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray. Amen.

*These insights are from the late Henri Nouwen’s lectures, The Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God’s Presence in Our Lives, which I would highly recommend.
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Monday, August 22, 2011

Leaves for the Table

We watch our neighbors' children a few days a week during the school year. It is a wonderful arrangement. My wife and I have always joked that when people come to visit, it is just the kick in the pants we need to clean the house. Yesterday evening, the basement got a thorough cleaning for the first time in weeks.

As we were preparing the house of their arrival as our guests this week, I thought to myself, "We'll have to add the leaves in the table." Our dining room table, a gift from my late grandparents, is large without the leaves; when the leaves are added, the table almost doubles in size.

The leaves, for me, became a metaphor for the hospitality we are called to offer to all people, in the name of Jesus. This simple act of literally widening our table, called me to re-examine how I offer hospitality to all guests in our home.

What are your "leaves"? How do you offer hospitality in your home and in your life? How is Jesus calling you to "add leaves"?


Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Burden of Preaching

My spiritual father, also a preacher, is quick to remind me that we preachers do not have to preach... we get to preach. I believe he is true. At a preaching conference two summers ago, Rob Bell spoke of the preacher's dilemma as the difference between "having something to say" and "having to say something." In between these two reflections is the glorious burden of preaching.

I choose the word "glorious" because the Word that we bear is the greatest treasure the world can ever know. The Psalms speak over and over of the delight of the Lord's commandments (Psalm 19:10) and how the Word of God is a lamp and a light to guide us (Psalm 119:103).

And yet preaching is also a burden. Not in the "have to" sense, but in sense that it is an immense weight to bear. It resembles for me the task of moving a huge rock from one place to another. This is heavy stuff, moving this glorious and heavy treasure into the hearts and minds and bodies of God's people.

The Hebrew phrase kavod Adonai (the glory of the Lord) brings these two concepts together. In Hebrew, the glory of God is also something heavy, weighty, substantial. So it is with preaching.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Bonhoeffer and Bell

Joel Willitts has written a series of blog posts reflecting on Rob Bell's book Love Wins. His latest (and last), #9, compares Bell's book with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship. Having read both, I believe Willitts is spot on in his comparison and critique. Read it yourself here.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Prayer on the Go

May and early June have got to be the busiest times of the year for many of us. And just as soon as we catch our breath, many of us are off to take much-needed family vacations. In the summer, it seems, everyone is on the go.

So what does prayer “on the go” look like? Here are some suggestions:

1. Make the sign of the cross. In a hurry to get out of town on your family vacation? In a hurry to the ball field? Running a last-minute errand for hot dogs and watermelon? Make the sign of the cross over yourself and pray: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

2. Make it a car game. Before playing some of the traditional car games on a long trip, challenge each other to indentify things you see on the way and to pray for those people, things or events as a family.

3. Make a pilgrimage. For hundreds of years, Christians have made pilgrimages to places of significance for our faith. While you may not be traveling to Jerusalem this summer, you may want to visit another local church building, a retreat center, or another place of significance, like a cemetery. Find a local congregation that has a labyrinth and make a prayer walk.

4. Pray a map prayer. Find an area of the world that you would like to pray for and keep that place and its people in your prayers throughout the summer. You may want to consider praying for our missionary, John LeMond, in Hong Kong or our companion synod, the Dodoma Diocese of Tanzania in east Africa.

5. Pray a map prayer II. Use a globe or map and, with eyes closed, pick an area of the world to pray for each week of the summer. The Voice of the Martyrs publishes a global prayer map for areas of the world where Christians are persecuted. Pray for the suffering church!

Keep this page in your glove box this summer, especially the prayer below from our hymnal which can be prayed before travel.

O God, our beginning and our end, you kept Abraham and Sarah in safety throughout the days of their pilgrimage, you led the children of Israel through the midst of the sea, and by a star you led the magi to the infant Jesus. Protect and guide us now as we set out to travel. Make our ways safe and our homecomings joyful, and bring us at last to our heavenly home, where you dwell in glory with our Lord Jesus Christ and the life-giving Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 331)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The Holy Spirit

On Sunday, May 29 we will begin a three-week series on the Holy Spirit:
May 29: Who is the Holy Spirit?
June 5: What is the work of the Holy Spirit? (I)
June 12 [Pentecost]: What is the work of the Holy Spirit? (II)

I have been reading Francis Chan's Forgotten God as part of my preparation for this series. You might want to take a look at that.

As preparation for hearing the Word, I also invite you to see Chan's videos on God, which will be streaming for free this coming week, beginning on Sunday. You can watch them here. You can also purchase them in a variety of formats at flannel.org, the same good folks who brought us the Nooma series.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

A New Commandment

My friend Phillip has written a reflection for Maundy Thursday. You can read it here.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Kids These Days

A wise professor of mine once observed that, if the discussion leader is not careful, most Bible studies and adult Sunday school class devolve into hemming and hawing about "kids these days."

I think he is exactly right.

This speaks to the larger sinful tendency we have: pointing out the sins of others before dealing with our own.

What if, instead of discussing "kids these days," we dealt with our own sin and began with questions like, "How does this text invite me to repent?"

Log out of our own eye first... then the speck of sawdust out of our neighbor's, as it were.

[And, yes, I am aware of the irony of this post.]


Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Facebook Forgiveness

Ever had to "re-friend" a friend you had "de-friended" on Facebook? It can be awkward at best (not to mention the grammatical conundrums such verbs present).

I confess to having done this. Usually it is because I am simply gleaning my "friends" list and delete a few here and there. Every once in a while, it is because the person posts to much (I am also guilty of this).

In every case, when I want to add them back in as a friend, it involves a good does of humility on my part. What if they are offended? What if they won't take me back? What if....?

But in almost every case, they consent to my friend request and, I presume, they forgive me.

What if that is the kind of forgiveness that we are called to practice?

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Scripture by Memory

I have always thought of memorizing Scripture in mostly positive terms. Even when my own practice was spotty at best, it seemed to me an inherently good thing to do. I have been reading through Scripture by Heart by Joshua Choonmin Kang, who has prompted me to think more deeply about the many benefits of memorizing Scripture. Even when he raises something I've considered before, he does so in a way that deepens or expands my understanding.

However, I have bristled when well-meaning Christians have used their treasure-trove of memorized verses as blunt instruments to proof-text their way to "winning" a theological argument. And I have struggled to break--or at least reshape--a strong resistance to memorization among catechism students. I think Rich Melheim is on the right track by integrating Bible verses, singing and American Sign Language in his Bible Song curriculum.

Recently I have reclaimed Scripture memorization as a family (rather than individual) practice and have found it to be quite delightful. Yes, it has actually been delightful.

On the Sunday of the Transfiguration, we began as a family working together on a verse each week from the Sunday lectionary readings. We carefully choose a verse central to the theme of the day, usually from the Gospel reading. This serves a number of functions:
1) It binds us together as a family under God's word.
2) It binds the rhythms of Monday - Saturday to Sunday worship.
3) It binds our spirits, bodies and God's word together in an organic unity.

What have been your experiences memorizing Scripture? What you have you found helpful?

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Pastor as Turtle

The other day I was thinking about the importance of a pastor having waxy skin, so that criticism, the attacks of the evil one and the "tyranny of the urgent" can simply roll off, like beads of rainwater on a waterproof jacket. The more I thought about it, however, the image of a turtle surfaced.

1. A pastor needs a tough shell. This probably goes without saying. Pastors are often ego-driven people and we need to set up appropriate checks on that ego to keep both high criticism and high praise in their proper place (see this blog post from Michael Hyatt on this very subject). St. John Chrysostom writes that preachers should learn to disdain both praise and criticism equally. Pastors need a tough shell, to avoid the assaults of the evil one through their own ego.

2. A pastor needs soft skin too. Turtles have tough, protective shells, but turtles also have soft skin--at least skin that is vulnerable. So too with pastors. To me this is an incarnational issue. If the Son of God took upon Himself the fullness of our humanity, we are called to embrace our humanity as well: the pain and the tears, the joy and the elation.

3. A pastor needs to move slowly. This maxim is probably frustration for both pastors and the people they are called to serve and lead. We live in a world in which a text or email message can be around the world in an instant and a book can be downloaded to a portable reading device in under a minute. However, there is a virtue it moving forward slowly and patiently. And, as financial guru Dave Ramsey is fond of saying, "Whenever I read the story, the tortoise wins the race every time."

4. A pastor can move swiftly in the water. Once, when I was doing disaster relief work in the Caribbean, I had the chance to snorkel among sea turtles. I was amazed at how fast they move in the water. So too, pastors can move quickly when they are surrounded by the grace of baptism, and with a congregation of people who deeply embrace that they are all called to be priests in these same life-giving waters.

What do you think about this metaphor? What other images come to mind?

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

When is the Sermon Done?

When is the sermon done? This is a question preachers struggle with quite frequently--not only in crafting the sermon, but in delivering it.

When is the sermon done? This is a question jokingly posed by hearers quite regularly--as if the proclamation of the Gospel is something simply to endure.

When is the sermon done? When God is finished winging his word into the hearts of his people and bringing forth fruit for his Kingdom.

Isaiah 55:11: . . . so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.


Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Devotional Books

Each new year I evaluate the devotional books I use as part of morning prayer. I always keep a few and then switch others out. The list below represents the ones I use on an ideal day, in roughly the order I move through them.

For the order of Scripture readings, I use the St. James Daily Devotional Guide for the Christian Year. This guide moves through the New Testament once a year and the Old Testament every two years, with a good balance between reading systematically through books of the Bible and taking into account major feast days such as Easter and Christmas.

Some others I find helpful are:

+ Eugene Peterson's Praying with the Psalms: I love Eugene Peterson's work. Last year I read through Living the Message. Each day there is an invitation to read a Psalm or part of a Psalm and he has brief meditation and a prayer. Often I pair this with the selected Psalm in Reading the Psalms with Luther.

+ I have always enjoyed reading the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. One way to do this, gem by gem, is through Bernard Bangley's By Way of the Desert.

+ Henri Nouwen's Bread for the Journey contains a brief meditation for each day of the year. Nouwen always has perspicuous insights into the "everyday" of living the Christian faith.

+ For a bit meatier fare, I enjoy J.D. Watson's A Hebrew Word for the Day. He also has a companion Greek volume that I read through last year.

I should probably say that it is not everyday that I get through all of these devotional books. At a bare minimum, I pray the Trisagion Prayers and try to read as many of the daily Scripture readings as I can, beginning with the daily appointed Gospel reading.

For shorter snippets of Scripture throughout the day, I subscribe via email to the Moravian Daily Texts. A friend of mine also gave me a copy of Bread for the Day, with a short Scripture reading each day based on the Revised Common Lectionary.

What devotional books / guides do you find most helpful for daily prayer and Scripture reading?

Friday, January 7, 2011

The Future of my Blog?

I have not been posting to this blog as regularly as I would like. Chalk it up to a busy fall, especially on the funeral front.

In any case, I am rethinking its purpose and theme and--on a more fundamental note--whether I will continue it at all.

So what do you say, faithful readers? Feel free to email me directly: pastormusteric [at sign] gmail.com with any suggestions. What have you found most helpful? What would you like to see more of? What is the perfect frequency for posting?

In the off-chance that I get few or not responses, that will help me settle the question as well.