Where Is This God?

Good Morning, Loved Ones,

Holy Week is upon us and we are reminded that God is with us through the hard times and is perhaps best known and experienced in and through the deepest challenges of our lives.

Psalm 42 (The Message)

^1-3 A white-tailed deer drinks from the creek;
I want to drink God,
deep draughts of God.
I'm thirsty for God-alive.
I wonder, "Will I ever make it—
arrive and drink in God's presence?"
I'm on a diet of tears—
tears for breakfast, tears for supper.
All day long
people knock at my door,
Pestering,
"Where is this God of yours?"

Can we thank God for the worst of times?

I give thanks for my tears.
Thanks be to God for heartaches and headaches.
Thanks, Lord, for my missteps and failures.
Thank you for my weaknesses.
Thank God for my enemies.
And thank you, Lord, for being with me through it all.

Peace,
Pastor Rick
http://gimmecinco.blogspot.com/

“Yes, Lord! Yes, Lord! Yes, Yes, Lord!”

A recent survey by Barna indicates that only 2% of people in the United States identify Easter as the most important holiday of their faith. Less than half (42%) say that the meaning of Easter is the resurrection of Jesus or that it signifies Christ death and return to life. And yet 85% of people in the United States identify themselves as Christians. It seems there is a disconnect somewhere. The resurrection of Jesus is without a doubt the centerpiece of the Christian faith. How is possible that we could miss the significance?

Easy. Easter, like everything else in our culture gets co-opted by those seeking a profit. Profligate bunnies, psychedelic eggs, spring sentiments from Hallmark, and an afternoon all-you-can-eat gorging are more likely to be part of one’s Easter celebration than a reading of even one of the four resurrection narratives (Luke 24, John 20, Matthew 28, Mark 16). Even so, Easter loses out to the far more commercially viable and mass-marketable Christmas. In the United States we allow the market to define our faith. The survey says . . .

But what is Easter about really? Where can we actually experience it, if not at the $19.95 holiday brunch?

Our son, Sam, is home on break from his semester-long Border Studies Program. He has spent his semester thus far studying migration. The last five weeks he has been in Guatemala and Chiapas in southern Mexico. It has been an eye-opening time for him. He has learned of the Acteal massacre of 45 children, women and men who were murdered while attending church on December 22, 1997. He visited the church where this happened and what he saw was not despair, but hope. Hope in the eyes, the hearts, the hands of hospitality extended to him. Hope for basic human values of dignity and respect. Hope that death is not the end of our struggle. The bus driver for the trip, Julio Cesar, expressed his understanding of the resurrection in the shadow of this massacre when he told the students, “They tried to bury us, but they forgot we were seeds.”

The resurrection is not easy, pie-in-the-sky theology. The resurrection takes us right through the heart of human suffering, grief and pain. Jesus teaches us that we can’t go around it; we have to go through it. No matter how much we try to dress it up in gold and silver the cross is an ugly thing, an instrument of torture, a death machine. The cross is the ultimate expression of the world’s life-denying “No!” But God, in Jesus, takes the world’s ugliness, the world’s “No!” and fashions a “Yes!” Yes, life is ultimately good! Yes, we can live everyday in hope! Yes, we can serve others and work for the common good of all! Yes, peace and dignity and justice will come! Yes, God is with us!

So, if you’re not already in that 2% who recognize Easter as the most important holiday of the Christian faith, then how about you reconsider. Perhaps these words from Jesus might help: "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.” John 12:24-25 (The Message)

Let go and make Jesus’ resurrection your most important thing.

See you in church,
Pastor Rick

Evident in Us

Good Morning, Loved Ones,

While spring begins to rise all around us we find ourselves moving into Holy Week and remembering God's great act of love in Jesus. Today's scripture links that great act to our persistence in the face of many obstacles.

2 Corinthians 4:7-12 (The Message)

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus' sake, which makes Jesus' life all the more evident in us. While we're going through the worst, you're getting in on the best!

Let's remember today that even though we may not be experiencing 'trial, torture, mockery and murder', there are always people here and around the world who are daily enduring the same kind of threat and pain that Jesus suffered. On the one hand give thanks that it is not you at this moment. But while that hand is raised in thanksgiving, the other should be hard at work for God's reign in which every tear shall be wiped away and the wolf shall lie down with the lamb.

Lord, I am thankful today that you open our eyes to the realities of suffering here and around the world.

Lord, I thank you for the faith, persistence, hospitality, grace and love I have experienced through our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Lord, thanks for the 200,000 people from around the country who marched for immigration reform on Sunday in DC.

Senor, muchas gracias for people of every faith and even no faith who work for basic human rights and justice here and around the world.

Lord, thank you very gracias for being a patient teacher.

Lord, thanks for letting us in on the best!

Let's spread the gracias around. Gimme cinco!

Pastor Rick
http://gimmecinco.blogspot.com/

Alert and Present

Good afternoon, Loved Ones,

A Wednesday morning full of Coffee in the Street and Lucas at a soccer camp prevented me from my morning Hump Day gratitude discipline. Still good to give thanks even late in the day. Our text for the day is one of the lectionary passages for this Sunday.

Isaiah 43:18-21 (The Message)
"Forget about what's happened;
don't keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new.
It's bursting out! Don't you see it?
There it is! I'm making a road through the desert,
rivers in the badlands.
Wild animals will say 'Thank you!'
—the coyotes and the buzzards—
Because I provided water in the desert,
rivers through the sun-baked earth,
Drinking water for the people I chose,
the people I made especially for myself,
a people custom-made to praise me.

Is it curious to you that the ones singled out as giving thanks in this passage are the coyotes and buzzards? It would seem that whatever new thing God is doing it is amazing enough to cause scavengers to pause and bow their heads. What new possibilities are emerging in our lives? Are we alert and present enough to be as ready with the "Thank Yous" as the wild animals are in the desert?

Thank you for dreams, both the daytime and nightime varieties that open up visionary possibilities for our world.
Thank you for youths who are naively and hopefully tilting toward tomorrow.
Thank you for days that give us all new opportunities to be present, to listen, to pay attention.
Thank you for teachers who help us to see things with new eyes.
Thank you for new roads God makes through the wildernesses of our lives.

Your turn. What's new for you? Gimme cinco!

Pastor Rick
http://gimmecinco.blogspot.com/

First Thanks First

Good morning, Loved Ones,

Here's praying that your heart is turning to spring as the breezes warm and the light returns.

Romans 1:8 (The Message)
8 - I thank God through Jesus for every one of you. That's first. People everywhere keep telling me about your lives of faith, and every time I hear them, I thank him.

It's interesting that Paul's first order of business in Romans is to thank God for his sisters and brothers in the church in Rome -- brothers and sisters he had never even met. But what he hears is obviously good. How many times do we hear of people who live their faith daily, servant leaders working daily for common good, and yet we never send a note of thanks or encouragement?

Here are the folks I'm 'thanking' of today.

Thank you, God, for my friend and fellow pastor, George, who daily shares his gift of poetry and poetic sermons via Facebook. His poems lift me and his sermons inspire me.

Thank you, God, for Martha who is one of those whom Sandra Bullock thanked in her Oscar acceptance speech -- "moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from."

Thank you, God, for Carmen who puts up with her pastors and works diligently to interpret the sometimes difficult and confusing sermons those pastors write every week. For Carmen's smile and her willingness to burst into song as she interprets Sunday after Sunday -- Thank you, Lord!

Thank you, God, for Angela, Mark, Javier, Alfonso, Judy, Diosselyn, Lucas and Tino who gave their Tuesday night to hear the stories of nine immigrant brothers who were abused and abandoned by a restaurant employer. May God help us find justice.

Thank you, God, for my brother, Terry, who is relentless in his pursuit of genuine community, empowering individuals and developing resources to bring justice and life to those who are losing hope.

Thank you, God, for all the people who 'pave the way' for us everyday. Those we know and can acknowledge and the many, the thousands, we don't know who do the work daily to make our lives better.

Who are you thankful for today?

Gimme Cinco!

Rick Behrens
http://gimmecinco.blogspot.com/

Divine Simplicity

Isaiah 55:1-11
March 7, 2010

How many of you have seen this dude?
How many have seen him or her standing on the side of the road trying to distract you from your day’s agenda?
How many of you, like me, are gripped by a mix of pity and anger at the sight of them?
Pity, because I can’t imagine having to do that job in the middle of February when it’s 10 degrees outside . . .
Anger, because probably the most moral and hopeful symbol of our nation is being abused for what? To sell tax services.


This is the true symbol.
And this is her message . . .
A poem penned by Emma Lazarus in 1883.
In the poem she is called “The Mother of Exiles.”
She says . . .
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

You see, in our great country, nothing is sacred.
How many of you knew that the Statue of Liberty is called the “Mother of Exiles?”
Yet how many of you connect this great symbol with a for-profit company called Liberty Tax Services?

We take powerful symbols and messages, strip them of their meaning and use them in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

The Mother of Exiles stands at our shore and cries out a message of welcome, of hospitality for the poor and oppressed.
But we, as a nation, have long forgotten that message as evidenced by our immigration laws that do exactly the opposite and weed out the poor and oppressed.
And we don’t care that this great symbol of hope for the poor of the world is parading around on our street corners like a prostitute for a pimping tax service.

Hope, symbols, morality --- it’s all for sale today in the US.
It’s not new, however. This is how empires operate.
Isaiah saw it 2600 years ago in Babylon.

The children of God were chasing after the security, the seeming comfort that allegiance to the empire offered.
They were exiles in the land of Babylon.
But they had gotten so comfortable that they had forgotten God’s call to a better life, a deeper life, a hopeful life.
They were selling out their faith to the prostitutes of the empire.
The empire was consuming them, their lives, their hopes their faith in God.

And Isaiah, in this magnificent passage of poetry calls out like God on the street corner . . .
“Hola . . .
"All who are thirsty, . . . come to the water!
Are you penniless? . . . Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money—everything's free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best, fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now, listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.” (The Message)

This message may be 2600 years old, but in its divine simplicity it couldn’t be more relevant to us today.

Some of us here today are genuine exiles.
Some of us are economic refugees who heard the call of the Mother of Exiles and somehow made it here even though we as a nation don’t embrace her message anymore.

And some of us are spiritual exiles.
Born and raised here, but watching daily as basic faith values are stripped away by our culture of greed and consumerism.

Here’s the sad truth.
For the genuine exiles in our midst, life in this country becomes anything but life as they knew it.
Many say, “I come to this country to make money, not to live.”
And the disturbing thing is that the health of immigrants and their families decline the longer they are in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

But that’s our national disease, isn’t it?
We are a fast food nation.
Fast food is cheap and easy for us as consumers.
And it makes multi-national corporations like McDonalds very rich.

But is it good for us?

No. Not at all.

But our culture tells us, “Listen, you don’t have time to cook a meal . . .
You need to be out there making the money, paying the bills, hurry, hurry, hurry.”
We don’t have time for the very basic, simple things of life anymore.

But God is calling out to us on the street corner saying . . .
“Slow down. Have some of this Agua Viva. Sit down and let’s chat over the Bread of life.”
“Put your credit card in the trash. I’m buying,” says the Lord.

God is calling us out of the fast food world and all it steals from us.
God offers us a divinely simple life.
God calls to us like a mother on the front porch . . .
“Ricky, come on in. Dinner’s ready!”

When we are lost or alone, God welcomes us home.
And when we are hungry and thirsty for life, God offers the simplest of pleasures.

And when life has lost it’s meaning . . .
When the symbols of hope that you’ve known since childhood are abused and broken . . .
When all seems lost and this world has told you that you are worthless . . .
Disposable . . .
When the systems of the world are determining your net worth and it turns out to be a negative number . . .
God says, “Wait a minute . . .
“Hold it right there . . .”
“Slow down, my friend . . .”
“Who told you that?”

God says, “This is where you find your worth . . .
Here in my house . . .
Around my table . . .
As you love one another . . .
As you cook for one another . . .
As you share with one another . . .
As you bear one another’s burdens . . .
As you learn to speak to each other . . .
As you look in each other’s eyes and see me . . ."

"It’s very simple," God says.
And yet it is the best thing in all the world.

"It’s me," God says.

"It’s my Word."

"It’s my Love."

"And it’s not for sale."

No Matter What

Good morning, Loved Ones!

Our passage for the day:
1 Thessalonians 5:16-20 (The Message)
Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.

Thanking God no matter what happens is not exactly a natural or reasonable response to crises. However, the benefits of a grateful response have been documented.

A grateful attitude is not only helpful during tough times, it’s essential, thinks Robert Emmons, a University of California-Davis professor who specializes in the psychology of gratitude.

“It is precisely under crisis conditions where gratitude achieves its maximal power,” he said.

Emmons found that the most grateful individuals often have experienced the most loss. It’s not that they feel grateful for losing a home or a job, but that they choose to maintain a “fundamentally enduring orientation that says ... underlying goodness exists in the universe and therefore I will be grateful in spite of circumstances,” he said. That orientation forms a psychological immune system.

In his book Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Emmons suggests practices to cultivate such a mind-set. One is gratitude journaling — writing down what we are grateful for. The key is to take time to savor those things as “gifts,” and not just dutifully jot them down on a list."

What are the gifts you are savoring today? Here are mine.

Thank you, Lord, that in the middle of crisis people like Laurie, John, Ginny, Pat, Muriel, Donna, Jim, Angela and Daniel continue to work together toward justice and hope for our immigrant families.

Thank you, Lord, that in the middle of crisis people like Greg and Telma arise at 6 am on a Wednesday morning to make coffee, hot chocolate and sandwiches to share with those who are waiting and hoping for work at day labor sites in our community.

Thank you, Lord, that in the middle of crisis the folks in and around the community of Conception, Missouri are coming together to listen to each other and work together.

Thank you, Lord, that in the middle of crisis people are able to smile, hold the door, say
Thank you!" and "You're welcome!" and offer peace and shalom to one another.

Thank you, Lord, that in the middle of crisis we are not, as Pastor Alfonso Tot says, juntos en crisis (together in crisis), but, instead, juntos en Cristo (together in Christ).

There's my Gimme Cinco. What are yours today?

Peace,
Pastor Rick
http://gimmecinco.blogspot.com/