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Life · Ministry · Faith

Tag: hospitality

Fire is Life

September 29, 2015 /

campfire

One of my proudest moments as a Boy Scout came while on a winter camping trip as a guest of another troop. As one might expect, significant rivalries can exist between Scout troops, ours was no different. Each task became an attempt to show whose troop was the best. So it was that a little contest was set-up to see who could build a fire the quickest. Each of us was given one match and the charge to build a fire. The first to do it gained the glory for his troop. I should point out the little detail of there being two feet of snow on the ground, just to make it a challenge. At the shout “Go!” we each trudged through the snow and into the woods to figure out the challenge. Much to the opposing troop’s disgust ,in less than five minutes I had a raging fire going. The others had not yet even figured out how they were going to do it. It was an unprecedented trouncing of the competition. How did I do get a fire going so quickly in two feet of snow and with only one match? I can assure you I didn’t cheat in any way, but if I told you I would have to kill you. Sorry, I must maintain the pride of my troop. Why was it an important challenge? In a survival situation, the ability to build a fire can mean the difference between life and death.

In fact, for all of us, fire is life. Having a fire means the ability to stay warm when it is cold. Having a fire means the ability to safely prepare food. Around the fire, community happens. Stories are told and the legacy of generations is passed down. Even in our suburban homes, fire is still life. The fire may be a Lennox furnace, a Maytag stove, and a Kenmore microwave, but its importance to life is no less significant.

A person whose fire has gone out is in a vulnerable position. The cold night may suck their life away. The inability to prepare food puts them on the edge of starvation, because fire is life.

A few months ago, I was having a conversation with a fellow pastor. In that meeting, he shared with me an insight from an Egyptian Christian pastor that he knew. The insight pertained to a passage of scripture I never really understood. The passage comes from Romans 12 and Paul is giving instruction as to the practical realities of living as a follower of Jesus in a hostile world. Paul says to his readers, quoting Proverbs 25 “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:20-21, NIV).

It seems that Paul has turned his own words onto their head. Is he really saying that our hospitality is an opportunity for us to heap guilt and suffering upon our enemy, as though we were pouring burning coals on their head? In effect, we serve them as a way to get back at them? While this meaning is not consistent with the surrounding verses, it certainly does seem to be the most obvious interpretation of the text. It’s an interpretation I have heard preached many times. Still it has never sat well with me as it appeared to be inconsistent with the larger context of the passage and the Bible. That was until my a recent conversation with my pastoral colleague. He shared that the Egyptian pastor said, as a middle easterner, he reads this passage differently. For him, fire is life. To heap burning coals upon your enemy’s head is to fill a jar with coals that may be taken home, carried upon the person’s head, so that they may restart their own fire. It is to give life to one whose fire has gone out. In effect Paul is saying, when your enemy has come to the edge of death and their defeat is imminent, give them life. Overcome the evil of your enemy with the goodness of life.

For millions of Syrians, their fire has gone out. They are in desperate need of someone to heap burning coals upon their heads and give them life before it slips away in the bitter night. Many Christians are tempted to look upon their suffering with fear. We wonder how many of their ranks are really members of ISIS, our enemy. Could we, by welcoming these refugees into our lives really be giving aid to our enemy and giving life to a person who, by our doing nothing, would be defeated? If our enemy’s fire has gone out, should we not let the darkness envelop them? Would this not be in the best national interest of our country?

Maybe it would be, but as citizens of the Kingdom of God, we live by a different standard of life. Our king says to us something so radical as “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”

Pastor Stephen

Are we on the run?

September 21, 2015 /

crowded street
As I see the images of Syrian children washed up on Mediterranean beaches, my thoughts go to another fugitive—much older but hardly wiser. His name? Jonah. Unlike today’s refugees, however, Jonah wasn’t fleeing war, violence or hunger. He was running away from God. More precisely he was running away from the opportunity to be used as a conduit of God’s compassion. Jonah reveals his heart in Jonah 4:1-3:

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, ‘O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. (NIV)

Thousands of people in the ancient city of Nineveh (modern day Mosul, Iraq) repent and turn to God in sackcloth as a result of Jonah’s words, and Jonah’s response is to ask God to kill him. “It is better for me to die” (Jonah 4:3), he says, than to live and see you extend compassion to these people.

Jonah is angry. Really, really angry and perhaps rightfully so. After all, the Ninevites were Assyrians, people who weren’t afraid to flay Jonah’s countrymen alive in front of their wives and children and impale others on poles. In Jonah’s book, they were the absolute worst kind of people.

And yet God has a message for Jonah. Jonah thinks he has a right to be angry, but God has a right to be concerned. And so when Jonah stomps off and builds a shelter out of a few tree limbs, God does something. He sends a “Jack and the Beanstalk” type of vine–one of those vines that grows up super quickly. Sitting out in the hot sun all day, Jonah is exuberant about the vine and the shade it provides. However, the next morning his happiness once again turns to anger as God sends a worm to chew on the vine that God had made to grow. By mid-morning, he is steaming. The vine is wilted, the sun is beating down, and God has sent a scorching east wind. Once again he says, “It would be better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:8).

“But God said to Jonah, ‘Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”

“I do,” Jonah said, “I am angry enough to die.” (Jonah 4:9)

“But the LORD said, ‘You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?’” (Jonah 4:10-11). Jonah does not have a reply and neither do we. Suddenly we learn that God’s concerns are different and greater than our own. While we are worried about how someone has injured us or fearing someone taking advantage of us, God not only knows their name, he has nurtured them and cared for them. He has made them to grow and tended them. He cares deeply for them and values them.

Suddenly Jonah’s words in Jonah 2:8, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs” pertain not just to those who worship other gods, they pertain to Jonah and perhaps to us as well. When Jonah chooses to flee from God in Jonah 1:3, he clings to a worthless idol and chooses to forfeit the grace or hesed (covenantal love) that could be his. Jonah is so concerned about keeping God’s covenantal love or hesed to himself that he fails to realize that in doing so, he is actually leaving it far behind. When Jonah runs away from the LORD, he isn’t just running away from the LORD, he’s running away from a relationship with the LORD—and all because he doesn’t want God to extend to his enemy the same kind of grace and compassion or covenantal love that he himself has received and experienced time and time again.

The irony of Jonah’s story is that he cannot outrun God or his covenantal love. When Jonah begins to sink into the depths of the sea, God sends a fish to eventually take him to dry land. When Jonah stomps off in a pout, God sends a vine to shade him. And when Jonah is drowning in self-absorption and self-righteousness, God sends a worm to destroy the vine and a scorching east wind to heat things up again. God has a lesson for Jonah and for us. Those people you think are far from me—those people you view as enemies—I love them. I have tended them and I know them. I am concerned for them.

The same might be said about Syrian refugees today. God knows them, has tended them and caused them to grow. When we choose to hold up fear rather than to extend love and hospitality are we not behaving in the same way as Jonah? Are we in our attempt to protect ourselves, our way of life and even our religion actually running away from God and forfeiting the covenantal love and grace that could be ours? Can we not hear God say, “But Syria has many, many innocent people. Should I not be concerned about that great country? Should I not be concerned…”

Pastor Laura

 

Author’s note: I am not suggesting Syria is an evil country or that the Syrian people are evil or that they are the enemy. I am simply responding to the general fear and suspicion currently being propagated towards Syrian refugees.

Unclaimed treasures: thoughts on the Syrian refugee crisis

September 9, 2015 /

refugee camp

When I was around seven, my mom got a call from the American Red Cross. They were trying to track down my dad for a Vietnamese refugee staying in a Philippine refugee camp. The young man had escaped from Vietnam and made his way by boat to the Philippines. Years before, my dad had sponsored this young man’s Amerasian sister through the Pearl S. Buck Association. When South Vietnam fell to the communists, my dad lost all contact with the family. Now Michael (not his real name) was trying to reach the only person he “knew” in the United States. Would my dad sponsor him to come? My parents prayed about it and knew that if they were in such a situation that they would want someone to help them. This decision lead to days and perhaps months of preparation–I honestly don’t know how long it was from the time my parents received the phone call from the American Red Cross until we picked Michael up from the airport. I can remember going to Refugee Resettlement meetings with my mom. One of the women present encouraged others to be sure they got everything out of the “vanilla” envelopes they received from the government. She had once missed an important document for a refugee because it was stuck to the bottom of the “vanilla” envelope. As a seven-year-old, I wondered why people were sending paperwork in empty cartons of vanilla ice cream.

When Michael arrived at the airport, he had very, very little. It was winter and he had come from the Philippines. He had on a red, white and blue coat and carried a small blue bag–about the size you would put a bowling ball in–that was it. We took him home and my dad got him set up in the bedroom we had gotten ready for him in our basement. We had been a one bathroom house up until that point, but my parents had a bathroom built in the basement in preparation for Michael. I’m not sure how long Michael lived with us–maybe about six months. I remember him sitting in the living room drawing pictures with magic markers for my sister and me. One picture was of a two story house with a clothesline and gardens. That was his family’s home before Vietnam fell. It seemed to be a nice house and I remember thinking that he liked it a lot. The picture looked peaceful. When he decided to try and escape Vietnam, he went to stay with his grandmother who lived near the coast. When he got up in the morning to leave, she was dead. He ate bananas from a tree and managed to get on a small boat. There were lots of people on the boat. He drew a picture of the boat. The boat was attacked by pirates. The pirates took the gold ring his father had given him when he left. The pirates also took the babies on board and tossed them into the ocean. The babies’ parents jumped in after them to save them and drowned. Somehow Michael and some of the others on his boat managed to survive. Perhaps the pirates got what they wanted and left them alone. I don’t know if he ever said. Eventually, they got to a beach and, well, the rest is history. I know it wasn’t that easy, because he talked about surviving on bananas.

In some ways, the time Michael was in my life on an everyday basis was short, but I have many memories. I can remember my mom loading him and my sister and me in the car and taking us to the Oriental Market, so he could shop. He had his own money and I remember he bought a package of “candy” and opened it up to share with my sister and me. Expecting something sweet, I just about gagged on the dried squid he proudly offered and was probably not very gracious. He had learned how to play the piano while in the refugee camp and would sit down and play for us. Once while he was playing, I came up to him, held up my foot and said, “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!” He stopped playing and disappeared out the front door. When he came back, he had a package of candy–he had run all the way to the grocery store and back, which was at least a mile away.

I also remember going to Vietnamese banquets for New Years and other important events. Michael would play the keyboard and we would listen to people sing and talk in Vietnamese. I usually liked the food at these events. Some of my favorites were the egg rolls, chips that I thought looked like Styrofoam but tasted good, and the ever present Vietnamese-style “bundt” cake–I’m pretty sure it had lots of eggs in it. I got used to being one of the only blond-headed kids in the room and really didn’t mind it. Honestly, I kind of enjoyed it.

I’m sure as a family that we missed opportunities to make Michael feel more welcome, but we helped him get here and we still see each other. Today he and his wife are long-time business owners in my hometown. When my dad died, he was there at the graveside with his son. Seeing him meant so much at that moment.

Today, when I see pictures of young Syrian children washed up on shore, I’m filled with sadness. They could be my own children and it seems like this could be avoided. I know something can be done about it, because people throughout history have opened up their homes to refugees seeking asylum. And I envy countries like Germany, Iceland and Greece whose people are opening their hearts and homes to these people. Is is easy? No. Is it doable? Yes. Is it the right thing to do? Yes. Will it pay dividends? Yes. Will it shape your family and worldview for the better? Yes, definitely yes! Is America missing out? Sadly, yes. Every day, we miss out on beautiful, unclaimed treasures. Countless people who could enrich our lives, our homes, our communities and our children’s lives. We are the poor ones.

Pastor Laura

I visited your church this Sunday

August 4, 2015 /

Pews in a church sanctuary

I visited your church this Sunday

I came to your website first. It was very well done. The colors were good. The information was up to date. I could not find your service times. I could not find directions to your church. It was not under the “About Us” tab. I did eventually find it on your site and several clicks later, I finally had the information I needed. I didn’t feel much like going to your church after completing the hunt, but I still came to your church, but only because someone else had made the suggestion.

I came to your church this Sunday. There was no clear signage telling me which door I was to come in. Once I found the door, you did have someone standing outside to greet and hold the door open. A welcome surprise. As he held the door for us to enter, he smiled and said hello. Once in the doors I was greeted by a staircase with no clear indication what to do next. I saw a sign advertising your vacation bible school and encouraging people to register their kids. I noticed it because it was the same one my church had just completed. Your church had completed it too, the event had already passed. I wandered up the stairs and through a doorway, following the smell of coffee. Coffee is always good to have. Good job on that.

I came to your church Sunday, but I did not come alone. My children were with me. Considering the size of your church, I figured you probably had children’s programming during the service. I didn’t know for certain, because it was not on your website, or if it was, I never found it. I looked around for some sign telling me where to go with my kids. There was none. The room I was in, the one with the coffee, did have a desk with a large sign hanging over it that read “Information.” I went there to learn about your kid’s programming. The person at the desk was engaged in a conversation with a friend. I had to interrupt your conversation, I am sorry for intruding, but I needed some information and I was a visitor. I asked if there was any programming for children. Your information person did not know and she suggested I check with the children’s desk and pointed across the room. You did not take me over to the children’s desk. You left me to find my own way. This was made extra difficult because there were no signs indicating what was the children’s desk (in fairness to you, as we left your church, I did finally see in very small letters “Children’s Ministry” on a screen over the desk).

I came to the desk we had been pointed to and asked if there was children’s programming. The person at the desk said he did not know, but offered to check my kids in. I wondered if I was at the right desk. I asked what I was checking my kids in for. He did not know. I said I would keep my kids with me. I really wanted to leave.

I tried to enter the service, but my kids protested having to go in. They know how the church system works and they wanted to do the kids stuff. Now did not seem to be the best time to explain to them my fears and so I relented and took my kids back and decided to try your children’s programming, whatever it was.

I registered my kids and then asked what to do. I was told us to go through a locked set of doors and go upstairs. As I tried to comprehend these instructions, a woman, mercifully, intervened and offered to take us to the room. This was good because once we entered through the locked doors we came into an empty dimly lit hallway. To our left was another set of double doors. Opening them revealed the stairs we were to take. We would have never found them without our guide. At the top of the stairs and through another set of double doors we again found ourselves in an empty hallway. Other children, if they were around, were nowhere to be found. We heard some noise and found a room with a couple others watching a Veggie-Tales movie. Our guide asked if this was the place for the kids. Your leader said it was, but she did not get up to greet me or my kids. I asked if I was supposed to come back here to get my kids. She didn’t really answer but smiled and nodded. As we left our kids with your children’s worker I pleaded with my son to watch out for his younger sister. I will admit I tried to say this loud enough for your children’s worker to hear and maybe sense that I was not comfortable with this situation.

I found my way on my own back to the worship center. As we came into the space there was no person passing out bulletins at the doors I came in. These were the doors immediately off your common space: the room with the coffee. I walked across the room to another doorway to ask a person for a bulletin and then walked back across to find a seat.

You seating was comfortable with a good amount of spacing between rows. The room was well lit. The stage was clean and uncluttered. You made good use of stage lighting. The image on your screen welcomed me to the service. Upbeat music with life in it was playing in the background.

Early in the service you asked me to complete a tear off card and place my information in the offering bag that went by, but you did not give me a pen to use to complete the card. Which was okay, because at this point, I was not sure I wanted you to have my information.

I am sorry to say I cannot evaluate your sermon. I was too distracted by the experience of having to work to be a visitor and was wondering what my kids were doing that I didn’t hear a word that was said in the sermon.

When the service did come to a close the pastor prayed and the band started to play. I was not sure if the service was over or if this was another song we were going to sing. There was no clear indication that the service was over. Either way I got up to go rescue my kids.

Finding them, the worker did not attempt to match the tag we had been given to the two children I was taking with me. Fortunately, I am pretty fond of my kids and really didn’t feel like trading them in for new models.

We left your church, only having been greeted by the person standing outside the door as we came in.

Back in our vehicle I asked the kids if they enjoyed the children’s area. They said they had fun. They watched a movie, played with clay, and played indoor volleyball. There was no lesson. Thank you for providing an hour’s free daycare.

I visited your church this Sunday, but I will not be back, it was too much work to be a visitor. Thankfully, I also already have a home church.

==

Dear friends,

I am sharing with you the recent experience I had visiting a church while on vacation. I do not say, nor will I, which specific church we visited. My purpose is not to publicly shame a particular church. All churches have bad Sundays when it seems, that despite the best planning, everything falls apart. I will accept this may have been the case with this church. My purpose for sharing is for each of us to think about what it must be like to be a visitor in our own churches. Have you ever attempted to see your church through the eyes of a visitor? Could our experience happen at your church? What needs to be changed?

Pastor Stephen

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