James 24:7

I recently created a little blog site where I will post questions on the upcoming texts of the Revised Common Lectionary.  The questions (which I hope to improve on a weekly basis!) can be used for personal reflection or to engender discussion in a small group or Sunday School class.

You can get the questions here.

You can also get to them by going to my ever-expanding RCL site on Squidoo and scrolling down to the module called "Small Group Resource."  Check that out here.

I wrote a brief article today called "What Time Is It?"  What shapes your sense of time and how is that shaping you?

You can read it here.

And, to explore more about what I'm talking about...here is a little resource I created.  Check it out here.

As you may know we are experiencing a drought in Georgia, USA.  Although we've had a good rain on this Thanksgiving morning, we are far behind what is needed to fill our reservoirs.

Indications are that within a few months the Atlanta area will be in a real water emergency if something drastic doesn't occur. Our governor, Sonny Perdue, has taken it on the chin from critics for leading "pray for rain" sessions on the steps of the state capital building.

To say that things are getting  desperate would be an understatement.

As a result of the drought many of us are thinking more about water conservation.  To this point, we have been so blessed with water that most of us took it for granted.   That was wrong and you can be sure that our sins are finding us out.

For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking more about the matter of gratitude and have been trying to remember to articulate my thanks as often as possible. 

A couple of days ago I wrote that giving thanks on a consistent basis helps us to realize that our lives and everything that comprises our lives is a gift given by the hand of God.   I see the offer of ongoing thanksgiving as a practice that opens our eyes to the gift and gifts of life.

I think in the past I have thought that the way to become more thankful was to grow in my understanding of this "life-as-gift" idea so that I can be thankful.  I am now beginning to see that it really is the other way around: we learn to see life and everything in our lives as gift when we undertake the practice of gratitude.

Continual thanksgiving helps us to remember that.  (After all, how often do we give thanks for the things we believe we have earned?)

This "gift" awareness that is growing from the practice of gratitude touched me in a small way yesterday.  I got into the shower and when I glanced up at the streaming shower head I saw that water as a gift and I immediately began to think about what a precious gift it is and how much I have to grow in my stewardship of it.

Later I was driving in my car thinking about that brief flash of insight when I began to say to myself: "Well, of course you see it as a gift NOW!  That's called 'supply and demand'.  Water is in short supply and that is why you see it as a gift."

I then thought: "No..that's why I see water a valuable.  However, I do not think of all things that are valuable as gifts.  Someone might work hard and believe that their home is a product of their hard labor.  They would see their home as valuable but they would not necessarily see their home as a gift."

I don't think you can think about water or anything else in this life as gift without simultaneously thinking that there is a Giver. 

The water flowing from my shower head?  Yes, I pay for it.  Yes, it is valuable and I am seeing its value grow everyday as the supply diminishes in this part of the world.

However, I see it primarily as a gift, a gift given by a loving God, a gift over which I am a steward.

Working on expressing gratitude is helping me see the world in a new light....the light of grace.

If we would become "gratitudians", that is, people whose lives are characterized by gratitude, we would do well to practice gratitude.

We become what we do.

Consider the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:20: "...be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."  (NRSV)

Focus on those italicized words.  Paul uses a participle, which denotes continuing action, underscores it with the word always, and underscores that with the phrases "at all times" and "for everything."

Do you think maybe Paul thought that giving thanks ought to be a constant practice among followers of Jesus?

I read that this way: Always keep on giving thanks all of the time for everything and in ever situation.

Paul doesn't seem to think there are occasions when we should not offer thanksgiving!

His call is for constant, consistent, ongoing, thanksgiving at all times and in every circumstance. 

Now does that mean that we must constantly walk around repeating the words, "Thank you, thank you, thank you?"  Well, that wouldn't be a bad practice would it? (It might get a little tedious, especially for those of us who are not multi-taskers!)   But maybe that's what it would take for us to develop the habit of thanksgiving as we journey toward becoming gratitudians.

I think the deeper point is to become someone whose life is marked by gratitude, whose very being exudes gratitude, whose every gesture and word is filled with grace.

Such a person is a constant offering of gratitude. 

Let me add one other thing here that goes beyond this text, something I just realized this week-end...More often than not, far more often (maybe even always!) Paul directs all thanksgiving to God.  

While a few examples may exist of Paul offering thanks to a person, his practice seems to be to thank God for the person and for their actions.  "I thank God for you.." is more often on the lips of Paul than a mere "Thank you..."

I had not noticed that before this week-end when I was flipping through my trusty Strong's Concordance and noticed time after time when Paul employed that kind of language.

I think that kind of 'thank you' is better than a straight to the face thank you. 

When we thank God for someone (and/or for what they have done) we rightly name them and their action as "gift."   They are not just accidentally in our lives and their presence and their action are not accidents either. 

They are signs of God's grace. 

In thanking God for others and their actions, we place ourselves, the other,  and their their action toward us all within the province of grace. 

We are thus living the moment in the domain of ultimate reality, that is, in the domain of the sacred.  The ordinary give and take of life becomes charged with the grandeur of God.

I thank God for you!  I thank God for your many kind words of encouragement.  I thank God for good and patient people who read what I write because I have little choice but to write (or speak!)  I thank God for you because without you I could not be me.

You see?  My simple act of writing and your simple act of reading is a gift- a sign of grace, a sign of the love and presence of God!

Now what if we saw everyone and everything with those eyes?

More tomorrow.

When I first became pastor at North River Community Church, I was invited to the home of Robin and John for dinner.  Robin was one of the sweetest, most loving people I have ever known.

She was also one of the funniest.

Robin was most funny when she was not trying to be funny.  She was one of those folks who was just offhandedly funny.

Several people were at Robin and John's that night.  Kelly and Lori were there and Robin started bragging on Lori's skills at showing hospitality.  After providing a litany of Lori's hospitality skills with examples of her skills in practice, Robin paused for a split second and said: "Why Lori is a real hospitalian!"

I thought that was a great word and a real compliment to Lori because it suggested that Lori was not only good at demonstrating acts of hospitality, Lori was someone whose character was marked by hospitality.

In Robin's eyes, "hospitality" was not just something that Lori did, "hospitality" was something that Lori was.

Sadly Robin passed away in September, 2006.  However, much of Robin has stayed with me including her word "hospitalian."

The word has stayed with me because it is such a neat way of describing what happens when someone has passed from just performing certain kinds of moral actions to becoming a person whose very being is marked by those actions.  

For me, the word "hospitalian" opens up a world of possibilities as we think about what it takes to become a whole person and uncovering the meaning of a "well-lived life." 

Following Robin's lead, I have created another word that may serve to describe a kind of character that marks a "life well-lived." 

That word is "gratitudian."

Gratitudian

Gratitudians are people whose lives, whose character, whose very being is marked by gratitude. 

Gratitudians are those who have made (and who continue to make) the practice of expressing gratitude such a part of their lives that they have become the very embodiment of that virtue. 

A gratitudian is someone who is graceful, gracious, grace-filled, congratulatory, gratuitous, and yes...grateful.   Such words suggest elegance, kindness, a propensity toward showing favor, a willingness to honor others when such honor is due, and a habit of offering good to others without expectation of reward or recompense.

Gratitudians are large-souled people.  They are maganimous, unselfish, generous toward others and free of pettiness and resentment.

Gratitudians become themselves by means of grace.  The word itself suggests the necessity of grace.  After all, the word "gratitude" is derived from the Latin word for grace, "gratis." 

However, claiming that grace is necessary to becoming a gratitudian does mean that there is nothing one can do to become such a person.   

To become a gratitudian one must practice the skills necessary to becoming such a person and we only know what skills to practice because we have been told by God what they are. 

We only know the practices because of grace.  The hard line between doing (practicing) and receiving (grace) is softened as we realize that....That we have any idea what we may do to become whole is itself a matter of grace.

Practices are gifts.

The central practice of gratitudians is, as you might expect, gratitude.  Becoming a person whose character is marked by gratitude (i.e. a "gratitudian") is a matter of expressing, showing, displaying gratitude.

You might say that the way to goal is the goal itself.

The way and the destination are one.

Or, to borrow a quote attributed to Mahatma ("Large-Souled") Ghandi..

"Be the change you wish to see."

More tomorrow.

Please go here to vote for Zach Hunter for CNN's Hero.  Zach, who is a 15 year old abolitionist, stands to win $25,000 to apply toward his work called "Loose Change 2 Loosen Chains".  (You can see it over there on the right among my links). 

Zach has been an abolitionist since he was 12.  He is the author of a book on abolition for young people and a spokesman for several abolitionist groups.

You can vote as often as you like but must do so before 11/12/07.

Again, vote for Zach right here!  It's quick. It's simple and it's a good, good thing.

Thanks!

I'll be blogging again before long.

I started preaching 34 years ago just down the road from where I currently preach.   However, between the time I started and now, Gwinnett County, Georgia has changed.... Wait that should be  chaaaaannnnggged.

My agent, Irv, sent me this article.   I love the last line...

"America is changing...get used to it!"

This ain't your grandma's church.

Rick Warren and a host of other religious writers have been thrown out of prison...well, at least their books have been.

Read this bit of ridiculousness here...

And here is where you can go to do something about it...

Hopefully, we won't always need a good mackerel-slapping or a snake in our path or a hot gun pointed at our face for us to wake up. 

We will need grace and maybe grace is often delivered in extremis. 

Another alternative might just be practice.   We might just practice waking up, practice becoming aware.  (Or, we might pick up a book like Dallas Willard's Spirit of the Disciplines and really get with it.  And, by the way...if you are hung up on the distinction between grace and practice just keep in mind...we wouldn't know what to practice were it not for grace.)

We may have to do it in short spurts.   "For the next couple of minutes I think I'll turn on all receptors and just see, smell, hear and feel what's going on.   Maybe I'll watch myself and be completely honest about why I do what I do and resist doing the other stuff. Maybe I'll just be silent for a while and listen and see."

I wrote before that the big thing Jesus wished to convey was that God is a welcoming God who invites everyone (i.e. sinners and no-counts) to sit down and relax.

That reminds me of a joke.  I told it one Sunday and nobody laughed much.  (I'm not too good at telling funny stories although I'm fair at telling stories funny...it's a Southern thing.)

Here's the joke:

A guy dies and goes to heaven.  God invites him to dinner.  When he shows up, God says "make yourself at home I'll go get the food."

When God goes out of the room, the guy walks over to edge of heaven and looks down and sees all these people gathered around a big banquet table.  There is more food than you can shake a fork at.

God comes back in with a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. 

The guy asks God: "Who is that down there?"

God says: "Oh those are the people in hell."

The asks: "Why is it that they get to have  a banquet and all you serve me is this soup and bread?"

And God says: "Ah with two why cook?"

(Laugh track insert here)

Jesus taught a lot about the welcoming nature of God.   He wanted folks to be aware of that and to act in their own lives toward others the way that God acted toward them.

Which takes me to the second matter of awareness: we must become aware of how we treat other people....or better...how we often prefer ourselves to others.

As Jesus pointed out when he ate at the home of the Pharisee, we really get into ambition, competitiveness and comparison.

"Some of you guys came in here and rushed for the seat of honor," he said. "You are setting yourselves up for shame when you do that.  Here's why: the host may come to you and say, 'what are you doing next to the seat of honor? You go sit at the foot of the table.'  When that happens you are going to look and feel really bad."  (Maybe Jesus used that example because these silly folks were really into how they looked. Imagine that....)

Jesus went on to point out to them that they should take the least seat and maybe they would be honored.

Of course, all of that squares well with things he taught in other places: the greatest among you will be the least, the first shall be last and the last first...the greatest will be the servant.  I came not to be served but to serve.

Whole people are folks with the hearts and lives of servants.  They are not interested in climbing any ladders (unless it's to get a widow's cat out of a tree) or beating down someone else to get to the top or being seen as being somebody when they put on their pants like everybody else...

(Woody Allen said he put his pants on like everyone else...he pulled them over his head.  But I digress....)

According to Jesus, if we would live well, if we would be fully human, if we would be whole...we would be servants.

Again...think of the freedom of that.  No more comparing myself to another.  No more scrambling.  No more discontent in the name of achieving more and more and more. 

Contentment.  Seems that may be the chief virtue of a servant.

See....a servant is not just what someone does.  A servant is who someone is. 

How silly would it be for the lowly servants to be fighting over who is the greatest servant? 

In the end, you are still a servant!

+++

News Alert: Just as finished this, my wife, who is just returning from swimming laps in a pool, said she thought she saw a leaf floating next to her.  When she looked closer it turned out to be a SNAKE!  Yes, it made her more aware.  She managed to flip him out of the pool with her kickboard. She said, "Nothing keeps me from swimming laps."  And she ain't kiddin'...she paddles over a mile a day!  See snake post below....

Now I'm not saying that Jesus came for no other reason than to make us aware as an end in itself.  I say that because "awareness" is a big topic nowadays.  It's one of those things that we are supposed to be without reference to what it is we are to be "aware" of. 

Let us all grow in "awareness."

Ooo-kay.

As I've read and studied these "Dining with Jesus" stories I have become aware of several things that must become objects of our awareness.

First, we must become aware of the nature of God.   What is God like?  Well, in several of these incidents- like when Jesus ate with tax collectors and 'sinners'- Jesus showed God to be a welcoming God. 

God loves people...all people...but seems to really get a kick out of sinners and outcasts- people who are really messed up.

After worship on Sunday I went home, ate lunch and reclined upon the old couch.  I turned on the tube and watched Miami Ink just about all afternoon. 

Now you may ask yourself: "Jim's into tattoos?"  That's what Miami Ink is about- a tattoo parlor in South Beach Miami.

No.  Can't say I'm into tattoos.  Don't have one.  Don't want one.

Frankly, I never understood the appeal of that show until I sat laid down and watched it for a few hours.   That show is not about tattoos.  That show is about stories...real human stories...many told by people who would not darken the doors of a church...or, better...people to whom many churches are closed.

Stigmatized people.

I've learned some things watching that show.   Most folks who get tattoos (or who are into that) do so because they want to commemorate someone or some event. (Or they want to be reminded of something or some situation) Often those events are tied up with tragic circumstances.

Let's see...On Sunday:

There was this young guy who wanted to get a tattoo portrait of his son who died from SIDS...

There was this young woman who wanted to memorialize her friend who was killed in a car wreck three weeks after her friend's brother was killed in a car wreck

There was this guy, nicknamed "The Beard", who prayed to the guy who holds the record for the world's longest beard.  (He had his portrait tattooed on his back.)

There was this young mother whose baby died shortly after birth...She had the baby's name, Sage,  tattooed on her side.

There was this man with Brittle-Bone Syndrome whose forearms were almost too small for the 3 birds he wanted tattooed on his arm to commemorate his parents and his grandmother who raised him under such adverse circumstances.

Then there are all the stories associated with the "alt" people who run this shop and the other customers who come into the store. 

I gotta tell you...as I watched this show I thought that that kind of place may very well be where you'd find Jesus nowadays.  Hanging out in a tat shop where the strippers and bikers and freaks of all stripes gather.

I even wondered whether Jesus would more likely be in your average church or your average tattoo shop on Sunday.

You can be sure that if he didn't hang out there he sure wouldn't avoid those kinds of places or those kinds of people.

And all God's children would say, "This Jesus hangs out at the tattoo parlor."

I hope this gets you thinking....Because, when you get down to it, that's the Jesus the gospels seem to portray.

Jesus among the broken, beaten and battered.  Jesus among the misfits and outcasts.  

Jesus "welcoming sinners (i.e. regular and irregular and non-regular folks) and eating with them."

See...I kind of wonder if part of our problem is that we don't...see.   I wonder if there are not whole classes of people who are sort of "non-entities" to us.   People with whom we might associate if they would just clean up their act.

Jesus ate with folks...while they were yet sinners.  That included the tax collectors and the self-righteous Pharisees.

He didn't say to Zacchaeus, "When you get your act cleaned up I'll come home with you."

He didn't say to Matthew, "When you quit collecting for Uncle Charlie I'll let you follow me."

He didn't say to that bad girl: "When you quit a-whorin' you can wash my feet."

Nope he welcomed people right where they were.

Now think about it: What if we were more like that.  We would be free of the burden of judgment.  We'd be released from our fears of them.  We could relate to anyone- whether good, bad or indifferent- because they are the beloved of God and not because they measure up to our own self-burdening standards.

We'd be free!

And so would they!  Free to see who God really is and what God is really like and what God really wants for us and for God.

Jesus showed us a different kind of God than we might otherwise have imagined left to our li'l old narrow selves.

Jesus wants us to Wake UP to who God is! 

Here's a cool video about Waking UP.  (Now look I'm telling you now...I'm pointing to the video.  If you scroll down into comments you may be offended and rightly so.  But if you do...don't say you weren't warned!)