Remembering Tony's 'Going Home'

(The following words concluded my sermon in memory of my friend and brother in Christ, Tony Scherg, who died in August 2018, following a very courageous medical battle. We remember, Tony.)

Tony wanted so desperately to go home.  He knew that he would pass from the home where he would be surrounded by the loves of his life to the home where he would receive the victor’s crown: the ultimate reward for those who keep the faith through suffering.

Jesus promised Tony, “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Rev. 3:21) The promise that became reality for Tony on Sunday morning is not just for him. It is ‘for all who long for the Lord’s appearing.’  It’s what you hope for that defines your death and your life.

Life is not defined by sickness, by cancer, the limits of medical science. Life is defined by the fact that the people who long to see Jesus face to face are promised that their pilgrim journey will finally bring them home.  In Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies, she writes about a story her minister told.  When she was about seven, her best friend got lost one day. “The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark. She was very frightened. Finally, a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, ‘You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.’”

          

Corry, you brought Tony to this church. Through the three baptisms he witnessed, through the life he witnessed in you, this church became his home.  Mitch and the Praise Team brought him under their wing as he learned to praise God with his bass. And, in time, this church became his home.  And so it is proper that we bring Tony back here, to his church. Because Tony wanted to go home. And he knew he could find his way home from here.

You can too.  If you want to find your way home.

Baseball, Mud and Saving Lives

Ray Chapman died in 1920, hit in the head by the pitch of a slick baseball. That was enough to get the powers that run America’s Pastime to take action.  A baseball should not be a weapon that kills people. ‘Let’s find a solution’, everyone who mattered agreed.

No Major League Baseball player had ever died from getting hit by a baseball before. No one has since either.  When baseballs are manufactured they look nice and clean, but they are very slick. Pitchers can easily lose their grip, and that is what can turn a baseball into a weapon. The baseball authorities knew they could do better. They knew that they must find a solution.

They tried rubbing the new slick baseballs with all kinds of materials. Nothing worked the way they wanted it to until they discovered ‘miracle mud’ in the 1930’s. “Miracle mud’ comes from a one mile stretch of one river in the United States, a secret location, so secret that not even baseball’s owners know it.  But, since the 1950’s, it’s been the rule that this mud must be rubbed on every baseball for every MLB game, some 240,000 baseballs a season.

Pretty amazing, don’t you think. Someone dies.  The governing authorities decide they need to do something about it.  Not just lament Ray Chapman’s death; find a way to prevent the next one. Then, with the will to change in place,  the genius of the American mind works, experiments, until a solution is found. Then, that solution is written into the baseball rules. Everyone must follow the rules, because mud on baseballs saves lives.

The American mind, the American spirit. Creatively making life safer.

When there is a will, we find a way.

Hmmm.

(Source and credit: Sports Illustrated, July 29-Aug. 5, Stuck in the Mud, by Emma Baccelieri)

Community Picture

We came for the music. We stayed for the community.

The western sun brilliant in the cloudless sky. Thursday’s twilight approaching.  A sample of a local brew safely perched in the cup-holder in my blue fabric sling chair.  Some Gouda and Wheat Thins for in between sips.  Live jazz like you hear in the big city, right here in downtown small city.  The crowd was an eclectic mix of boomers and millennials, of X-ers and Z-ers, and whatever today’s toddler generation will be named.  No one asked who anyone loved, married, or didn’t. I couldn’t tell the citizens from the guests as a thousand folks mixed and mingled, danced and laughed.

I didn’t love the music. I did love the food. A buffet of food trucks to feed every appetite: Asian, Mexican, Greek, American.  We found old friends and we sat together, laughing about getting old, admiring how diverse our city had become. Where did all of these people come from, we wondered? These were the people our growing economy is bringing to town, giving them gatherings to entice and retain, we surmised. The future and the past all together, sitting in random rows, as dogs and babies entertained.  An unintentional intentional community had formed right around us.

A community drawn by the light; by the bread; by the wine; by the friends of many languages and nations. And by the music.

I asked my wife, only half in jest, ‘I wonder where all of these people go to church?’ The answer is that some 60% of them don’t attend.  And for the other 40%, they divide into churches of many tribes with many rules and admission tests, lest ‘impurity’ stain each other’s tribe.

I can only begin to imagine the joy on Jesus’ face as the community gathers on Thursday nights in the public square…all God’s children.  I can only imagine the quizzical frown on Jesus’ face as the Sunday community continues two centuries of failure to replicate that picture of Thursday’s community.

When did we decide that the people we party with on Thursday could not worship with us on Sunday? Talk about fields ripe for harvest.

Churches and Hospitals: Which is the Neighbor?

The parking lot was filled to overflowing.  A woman dressed in a burka, trailed by three children, passed me on the parking lot.  She looked at me with a look that I can best describe as fear. I smiled at her and said ‘hello’.  I don’t know if it helped ease her fear. 

In the bridgeway from the parking lot to the hospital I was passed by black and brown and white children and their parents.  Some small kids were carried on backs of moms. Some children were pushed along in wheel chairs. Some parents were chatting and walking as if they had just received very good news. Some were quietly moving forward as if  the news was difficult to comprehend.

At the reception desk, while they made the inquiries to verify that I could join a family as their pastor in waiting for the results of an infant’s heart surgery, I picked up business-sized cards offering access to interpreters in Mandarin, Arabic, Burmese, Cantonese, Spanish, Hmong and Somali.  Disease does not discriminate. Neither should the effort to offer a cure.

What does it mean to be a ‘neighborhood hospital’ today? I grew up a block from a ‘neighborhood hospital’ which served the ‘Protestants’, while the other hospital in town served the ‘Catholics’. At least that is the way I perceived it. Today, I think, the definition of ‘neighborhood’ is closer to what Jesus was trying to get at when he talked about being a neighbor in Luke 10:25-37. A hospital’s ‘neighborhood’, especially one serving a specialized population like children, is not defined by geography or religion or social status. A hospital’s neighbors are those in need of its services.  Anyone and everyone is welcomed to these places of care, and they are doing their best to make sure you feel welcomed. They speak your language.

You might say, “Well, of course, that is what we expect a hospital to be. Healthcare should erect no boundaries, should ask no questions other than, ‘Can we offer you what you desperately need?’”

Is the only question a ‘neighborhood church’ asks of its guests, ‘Can we offer you what you desperately need?’  If Jesus re-wrote the story of “The Good Samaritan” using churches and hospitals as the illustrations, which would be the model ‘neighbor’?

The Reason for Fireworks

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —”

The fireworks celebrate a revolutionary idea: Government exists because the people it seeks to govern consent to it.  People possess power. Without the consent of the people, Government dies.

The fireworks celebrate a foundational statement of faith: that God created all people equal; with Rights that cannot be taken away: Life; Liberty; the pursuit of Happiness.

The fireworks celebrate  a simple truth: People consent to Governments to secure these God-given human rights. 

The Fireworks are an annual reminder to the Government why the Governed allow it to share their power.

Tell you children. Tell your grandchildren. Tell your closest friends, your neighbors, the stranger next to you.

There is a reason for fireworks.

VBS: "The Encouragement of Light"

“How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise, we all remain too frightened.” –Hafiz, The Gift (Translated by Daniel Ladinksy; posted by Jim Marsh at inward/outward.org)

Can there be better encouragers of light to budding hearts than the people who make Vacation Bible School happen?  For ten summers now it has been my privilege to observe the opening of roses as laughter, praise and wonder rise up from the eyes, mouths and hands of children displaying their unique brand of enthusiasm for Jesus.  Their praise blesses the church and world.

For ten summers now I have watched our building be transformed into forests, jungles, oceans and more by the most creative, hard-working servants of Jesus you can find.  I have witnessed a couple dozen gifted women and men lead many dozens of children through five mornings of learning the story of the Bible, using their many gifts to stretch bodies, minds and imaginations.

Why would these friends of Jesus offer a summer week, and all of the hours and hours that lead up to it, year after year after year, for children they often do not know and may not see again? Because they are possessed, in the best sense of that word, by the Light; a Light so powerful that it cannot remain within them; a Light which must be set free to press against the darkness, into every corner inhabited by fear, so that the Light can reach the roses within the hearts.

The world is a more beautiful place today because the encouragers set free their light for no better reason than this: God has sent them with a message of his goodness.

When the world is dark, God sends the light.  When the rosebuds are shy, God is good.   

A Love Story About Golf

I was scheduled to play a competitive match against another golfer, so I was focused on being focused. Then the pro shop put another single golfer with us, which is perfectly fine. Except.

My partner’s first question was whether I minded if he played music on his big speaker. As politely as I could, I told him that in fact I did mind. Not the best start to building a friendship. It soon became obvious that my friend really needed his music or he was not nearly as good of a golfer as he imagined in his own mind, so after every bad shot (of which there were many) he uttered some sort of expletive, each one growing louder.

My new friend was playing expensive Titleist Pro V1 golf balls. He lost two of them in two holes, and he became even more upset with Jesus.  We searched far and wide but, alas, they were lost.

After nearly four hours together, he asked me what I did for a living. I had been waiting for this moment.  As soon as I told him I was a pastor in a local church there was this very awkward silence.  He asked me which church, and when I told him he suddenly became very interested in our location and history.  What a transformation!

On the final hole he hit his ball well behind the green and we thought it landed in a parking lot.  But, as we drove toward the area we saw a ball lying on a cart path. I jokingly said he should go check out the ball because perhaps someone had found one of his expensive lost Pro V’s and left it for him. He walked over to it, picked it up and returned to the cart with this strange smile, saying, “You are going to like this. It is a Pro V1. Read what it says.” He handed it to me and I saw that someone had inscribed it with green felt tip ink and the words, “Jesus Loves You.”

I could not have laughed harder or louder.  He offered me the ball.  I said, “No, I think that is one you should keep. Because it’s true.” He put it in his pocket. The rest is up to the Spirit.