Listening During the Holidays

The holidays are hard on people who are mourning the loss of a loved one. Our sensitivity to their feelings is an important part of what it means to be the church. I think of Bible verses like, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” Jesus who came to show us who God is stood with Mary and Martha after their brother Lazarus had died. He spoke words of assurance to them. Then as he moved among those who were weeping he did that which was most helpful to them. “Jesus wept.”

You may not shed tears with those who are grieving this Christmas, but you may have an opportunity to listen to their story. When you are with a person who is in deep emotional pain, they don’t need you to give them explanations or soothing words. They need you to listen. Real listening is a powerful act of love, blessing both you and the speaker.

God came to be with us in Jesus. He was called Emmanuel, “God with us.” The most important work you do for God this Christmas may be just to be with someone who is mourning. Your presence may be the channel though which the love of Jesus flows.

What Moves Us to Give?

Christmas is a time when we tend to be a little more enthusiastic about helping people in need. Why is that? We gave more than normal to Halifax Urban Ministry and to our own Benevolence Fund this past Sunday, December 6. What got into us?

Jeanne Mathieson, chairwoman of our Benevolence Ministry, told me that our offering amounted to $160. That is a pretty good offering for just passing around two baskets during the announcements.

I delivered our Communion Sunday bags of food to Halifax Urban Ministry. The men who helped me unload my car were impressed with the amount of food that was there. They unloaded it into grocery carts. Usually it only takes one cart. This time it took two. We were standing in a slight drizzle of rain. The carts were full. I received more thanks directed to our church than ever before. One of the men told me with a broad smile about the more than 300 hams Halifax Urban Ministry plans to give to people in need this Christmas season. I drove away feeling good about the help our church gave.

What is it that makes us delight to help others at Christmastime? Is it that Charles Dickens made us want to avoid being like Scrooge? Is it that ministries on the front lines are good at making us aware of how much need is out there? Is it the Spirit of Christ reminding us that the Good Samaritan fulfilled the Great Commandment, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” by helping a man in trouble?

Or are we responding to what God did at Christmas? Are we moved to give because God gave to us? “God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son.”

Forgiveness Preparedness

On October 2, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts IV carried his guns and his rage into an Amish schoolhouse near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Five schoolgirls died that day, and five others were seriously wounded. These facts are stated in the preface to Amish Grace, an inspiring attempt to explain the Amish response to the killings. Within hours after Carl Roberts shot the girls and turned his gun on himself, Amish community leaders were visiting his widow, his father, and his grandfather to tell them, “We want you to know that we will not hold a grudge against you.” Then parents of two of the little girls who were killed invited Roberts’s family to attend their funerals, and many Amish people attended the funeral of Carl Roberts. Out of their compassion for Roberts’s wife and children, the Amish brought meals to them and gave them funds to help with their expenses.

The media began to focus on Amish forgiveness more than on the horror of the event. Donald Kraybill, one of the authors of Amish Grace writes, “When forgiveness arrived at the killer’s home within hours of his crime, it did not appear out of nowhere. Rather, forgiveness is woven into the very fabric of Amish life, its sturdy threads having been spun from faith in God, scriptural mandates, and a history of persecution.”

If we members of New Hope Baptist Church are going to be found faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ when the worst happens to us, we must develop a process that promotes spiritual growth. We are going to have to become fully devoted followers of Christ who are radically different from the nobody-tells-me-what-to-do, pleasure-seeking world that surrounds us. We are going to have to become a community with traditions, rituals, discipline, and ways of teaching that will produce more than casual, unconcerned Christians.

The grace extended by the Amish was in their hearts and minds before this terrible event ever happened. Their way of life did not make much of emergency preparedness, says Kraybill. It gave them “forgiveness preparedness.” Their story raises questions for us. Are we members of New Hope being shaped by our faith in God, by what the Bible demands of us, and by our life together? Are we preparing for the uncertainties of tomorrow? Are we allowing the Spirit and teachings of Jesus to be so woven into the fabric of our life together that we are being prepared to forgive and show compassion when our time of suffering comes? How do we promote forgiveness preparedness in our church like that of our Amish bothers and sisters in Christ?

New Hope New Year's Resolution

I met on Friday with Vernon Buchanan, our Church Treasurer and Bill Batchelor, our Church Council Chairman. We looked at the proposed budget for 2010, which will be presented to the Church Council on December 17. The Church Council will finalize the budget and present it to the Church for a vote to adopt it on January 20, 2010.

As Vernon and Bill and I discussed plans and budget needs for next year, I asked Vernon if he, as Church Treasurer, had noticed any increase in giving during or since the three Sundays I preached on giving. I expected to get the answer he gave me. “No. There was no increase in giving.”

I asked Vernon, our Treasurer, what we could expect in income this year as compared to last year. He said, “Last year our giving exceeded our budget by more than $2,000. This year it looks like our giving is going to fall $25,000 short of our budget.” That $25,000 which did not come in through the offering plates came out of our savings.

Our budget is a way of setting our goals for 2010. Where we spend our money is simply a reflection of the things we intend to accomplish as a church. We will be emphasizing Sunday School, Small Groups, Children’s Ministry, and Youth Ministry. If we make it our goal to serve more people in the name of Jesus than we did in 2009, we will set higher spending goals. To put it another way, the ministry of New Hope Baptist Church will cost more in 2010 than it did in 2009.

I am going to recommend to the Church Council that, once we vote to adopt our budget on January 20, we ask each of our members to pledge an amount they will give to support the 2010 Church Budget. When we set spending goals we must give the money to meet those goals.

How about this for a New Hope New Year’s Resolution? With the help of God we will increase our giving to meet our ministry goals for 2010.

Thankful Because . . . .

Walter Shurden is teacher and friend to many preachers. In his latest “Preaching Journal,” which I am thankful to receive from him each month, he quotes from Wendell Berry’s novel, Hannah Coulter: “I was grateful because I knew I ought to be, sometimes because I wanted to be, and sometimes a sweet thankfulness came to me on its own, like a singing from somewhere out in the dark.” That provides three points on which I will preach, as Walter suggests.

1. Thankful because I ought to be: as I look at my life, my church, my family, all the care I have received, how could I be anything other that thankful. November is the month of Thanksgiving. For my family, it means gathering in Easley, SC at Fleda’s mother’s house on Thanksgiving Day.

2. Thankful because I want to be: when we list the things we are thankful for each Wednesday night at New Hope, we come up with a pretty long list just because we want to be thankful. There is joy in thanking God for good gifts he gives, and especially in thanking him for people.

3. Thankful because I couldn’t help myself: as I prepared for All Saints Day on Sunday November 1, I read these words from Henri Nouwen and realized that “sweet thankfulness” comes to me when I think about people I have loved who have died: “As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. . . . Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives.”

What ought you to be thankful for? What do you want to be thankful for? What “sweet thankfulness” has just come over you lately?

On All Saints Day

This year on All Saints Day we remember four New Hope members who died in 2009. We thank God that they lived among us: Al Bittel, Betty Myers, Kiyoko Bundens, and Guy Wells. All four of them loved our church. We have our memories of them and are blessed to have had them with us as brothers and sisters in the faith.

In his book, Bread for the Journey, Henri Nouwen wrote a brief devotional thought that he titled “The Companionship of the Dead.” When I read these words weeks ago, I marked them to share them with you on All Saints Day, because they define the meaning of this day in the Church Year better than anything I have read.

As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. It is very important to remember those who have loved us and those we have loved. Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives. They can become part of our spiritual communities and gently help us as we make decisions on our journeys. Parents, spouses, children, and friends can become true spiritual companions after they have died. Sometimes they can become even more intimate to us after death than when they were with us in life.

Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.

Who are you remembering today? Whose ongoing companionship is important to you?

Blaming Others for Your Lack of Fulfillment

I have been watching more TV than usual as I recover from surgery. Joy Behar was talking to Valerie Bertinelli the other night. Joy, the host, said something like,
“Wasn’t there some messing around involved in the breakup of your marriage?” I know nothing about Valerie’s past, so I may have the details wrong, but this was the line that I clearly heard Joy say and then Valerie agreed:

“When there is messing around with someone else it means the marriage was already in trouble. You find somebody else because you were not being fulfilled by the relationship within the marriage.”

Immediately, I started thinking up arguments against Joy Behar’s statement. It is the kind of thinking that leads to one divorce after another. Whenever someone cheats on his or her spouse, it is wrong to blame the cheating behavior on not being fulfilled by the marriage. It is wrong for at least two reasons.

First, when we got married, we promised to take the other person as a marriage partner “for better or for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health as long as we both shall live.” In other words, we made a pledge: “I will love you unconditionally.” Not, “I will love you as long as you make me feel fulfilled.”

Second, the person who goes outside a marriage to find another sexual partner is not reacting to a lack of fulfillment in the marriage. He is reacting to a lifetime of emptiness and fear within himself or herself.

The lack of fulfillment was there inside before there ever was a marriage. When we don’t have an adequate supply of real love inside ourselves, we reach out for anything that will take away the pain. Sexual pleasure can be one form of imitation love meant to ease the pain. Praise from another person or power over another person can also bring temporary relief from inner pain.

Why is it important for us to learn this truth? Because we never help ourselves by blaming our lack of fulfillment on other people: our marriage partner, our friends, our church, or our job. If we will tell the truth about our emptiness and fear and learn not to blame our bad feelings on other people, we will open ourselves up the flow of God’s love. That flow comes through many human channels, and God’s love, real love drives out fear.