Mission Trip to Jamaica

I am sure by now you’ve heard about our planned mission trip to Jamaica in March. As it now stands, we will be sending two teams to Little London Methodist Church in Little London, Jamaica. Eleven Missioners will be meeting this week to look at the project: replacing the roof of this aging structure and helping to refurbish the inside. Those who have made the commitment are moving forward with a good deal of excitement. When the subject comes up, I can see it in their smiles.I’ve taken part in a number of these “out of the country” projects over the years and the same question is always asked of me. “Wouldn’t it be a wiser to just send money rather than people.”? They’ve got a point. All that money spent on plane tickets adds up. There is the added work of making arrangements for a place to stay, in communities where hotels are rarely found. Through the years I’ve slept in all manner of places; local homes which have always been smaller and far more primitive than my own, church floors and most recently the second home of what I gather was a local politician, a rather shady character. Then, there is the food. While you may not always want to know what you are eating, be careful of what you eat, if that makes any sense. I’ve gotten sick.So, it is a legitimate question. Wouldn’t it be a wiser use of our resources to send money and one or two experienced builders to oversee the project, a contractor and someone licensed for the particular work at hand? Why send a dozen volunteers, many whose real jobs are at a desk. On these trips, without exception, the local community of mostly other Methodists has worked alongside us, so the labor pool is there.But then, all these reasons not to go give us the even greater reason of why we should. We go to work alongside others of a different culture and world view, and we find our lives and theirs richly blessed. We go to share their food and share stories, and find that common bond that holds us together, which is love of God and love of neighbor. The cost of a plane ticket can’t compare with what we receive in friendship. I’ve never read a book or heard a lecture that better educated me on harsh realities and the complexities of poverty than working side by side with the poor to build their community. I’ve always returned home with a greater hope and a greater in trust in Jesus, who we claim is Lord and have come to worship.If you are at place in life where you can take leave for a week, come join us.“For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jew or Greeks, slaves or free- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” (I Cor.12:12)

MS150 Breakaway to the Beach

On my return from bicycling the MS 150 the question that was most commonly asked of me was what I knew of the 15 year old girl that was hit by a motor vehicle and killed. My answer was that I knew no more than anyone else who has watched the local news or read the paper. On Sunday morning when the 2000 cyclists converged on the Darlington race track to begin the second day of the ride, the president of the mid-Atlantic chapter of the MS society, Ann Marie McDermott, with poise and grace, informed us of what had taken place. For many of us this was the first we had heard of an accident. She told us that a driver in a pickup pulling a trailer had collided with a tandem bicycle taking the life of Rachel Giblin. While Ms. McDermott held her composure, many of the riders wept. When she had finished someone led us in prayer, and from that we stood for a moment in silence. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for riding a bike and the atmosphere was festive, until then. Speaking for myself, I didn’t feel much like getting on a bike. I would have been just as happy to go home.

What I will recall for years to come was the message delivered to us by the family through Ms. McDermott. We were told that while the family understood that some of us would be too upset to continue our ride, they didn’t want us to quit. They wanted us to “enjoy this day” and to continue the fight to wipe out a devastating disease by, “Peddling to the beach”, they said.

This is how love speaks. It encourages, it supports, it gives reason even when tragedy takes place. While the Giblin family suffered an incomprehensible loss, they wanted the good that we had begun to be completed. Paul’s words about love come to mind. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Their words to us, this message from the Giblin family, helped to make a glorious late summer day bearable. So, we got back on our bikes and had another reason to finish the ride.

The Book of James

As of yesterday, I’ve begun a sermon series on the Book of James. Tradition holds that it was written by James, the brother of Jesus. Some scholars call this into question. Regardless, the book is written as a surviving and devoted brother would have. This short letter to the Jews in Diaspora applies Jesus’ teaching to the lives at hand, after his death and resurrection, in the first century of the Holy Roman Empire. Some of the topics James covers are: overcoming temptation, taming the tongue, treating people in different ways according to their appearances and the power of prayer within the Christian community. In studying scripture I am continually struck at how relevant the issues of a first century world are with us today. Human nature is as it always has been. We still have our bent to sinning, and we’ve seen it take us down and yet in our more honest moments, most of us want desperately to please God and to be in relationship with him. As that often quoted passage from St. Augustine reads, “We will not find our rest until we find our rest in thee.”

I hope our time spent with James leads us to that rest, for ourselves and our communities. In Bible talk James is known as Wisdom literature, sacred literature about living life to its fullest.

To prepare yourself for Sunday morning worship I encourage you to read the Book of James. It’s not long. A careful reading won’t take more than a half hour. For those of us new to the Bible it’s in the New Testament, just after Hebrews and not too far ahead of Revelation. I’ll be riding in the MS Bike Ride this weekend and Amy Burton will deliver the message. Come and support her. The following Sunday (9/24) my text will be James 2:1-10. And buck the Methodist trend and bring your Bible to church so you can read along. The preaching will stay close to the text.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Along the lines of a Monday morning quarterback, this is a Monday morning reflection on yesterday’s sermon, only the quarterback is not an armchair fan but the man who threw the ball. If you weren’t in church yesterday — and being the Labor Day Weekend there is good chance your feet were on a sandy beach or some such holiday place — the title of my sermon was “Learning to Sit on a Stump”. As a way of observing the Sabbath, my premise was “we all need to learn to sit on stump”. I began by telling of a retired minister who some thirty years ago began his ministry during the summer months as a student pastor in rural New Hampshire. Reflecting back, he recalls jogging most mornings from his home, through the town square, to the church where he has been assigned. Each morning, he would pass a boy of about nine years old sitting on a stump. The young pastor would wave, and the boy would ever so slightly follow him with the turn of his head, a slight smile creasing his lips. Throughout the next two weeks, something of a relationship built between the two, and one morning the boy shouted to him as he scurried by, “You, I’m going to teach you how to sit on a stump.” Looking back, the old preacher wishes he had taken the boy up on his offer.

The Sabbath, I noted, was a commandment, one given to us by God. No longer slaves, we are God’s children and He commands that we take a day off. It would do us all good if we learned to sit still on a stump. It’s a decent topic for a Labor Day sermon, and I’d say that the congregation was generally with me. I felt good about the morning, the worship service, the preaching; I went home and took my rest.

Then this morning, Labor Day, I opened the newspaper and found myself convicted. The Local section of the Observer ran an article with the lead “This Labor Day, many debate living wage.” Honestly the article didn’t inform me of much I hadn’t already known, but I found myself called to task when preaching that people need to learn to sit on stumps. A living wage in our city is about $16 per hour. About 35 percent of employees in the Carolinas earn less, a good many of them significantly less. As has become common practice in retail, full time employment can be elusive, and so a good many work more than one job. The working poor, who comprise the majority of the poor here in Charlotte, do not have the privilege of sitting on a stump.

It’s ironic that Labor Day was a hard-fought battle among the working class in the late 1800s, and today it is the working class who punch the time clock. The cashiers at most big box retailers in town are at work. Lawn maintenance crews, construction workers, waitresses and the garbage collectors are at work. That Labor Day would be a paid holiday for the vast majority of them is only a dream. Back in the 1800s, while the railroad executives and the management of textile mills opposed the idea, President Grover Cleveland, faced with national boycotts and striking workers, signed a bill into law and Labor Day was born. Of course today it is management that takes the day off, while the working class continues to serve.

Perhaps the pulpit on Labor Day would have been better used to call these thoughts to mind. Some would call this the church meddling in politics, but Scripture reminds us that it is instead justice.

Once again, yesterday’s Scripture: “But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work- you or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey…or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male or female slaves shall rest as well as you.” (Deut. 5:12)

Inspiration

There isn’t a season in the year that hasn’t somehow inspired me, except perhaps late March through early April, when winter looks like car soot, and it appears spring doesn’t have the determination to making a showing. But summer, late summer when there is a deep green in the trees and the warm weather is assumed, may be my favorite time.

Yesterday evening my family shared a pizza on the patio of a Charlotte restaurant with some long time friends. Thinking it over the morning after, I’ve just about concluded that our evening was sacramental. Our getting together was an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Like Holy Communion, it was mundane. In church, we make a big to do before God, and call people forward, and then give them a piece of bread and wine. In the Methodist tradition we haven’t even given it a chance to ferment: it’s just toddler drink – one would think we could serve better. But then we celebrate, and mystery happens.

I would describe last night as joy. And it didn’t involve a plane ticket to get out of the city or Ticketron. We arrived in our late summer attire, flip flops, and t-shirts and shorts all of which had the smell of us from a hot afternoon. We drank iced tea and ate pizza and laughed at ourselves. We came up with the idea of water rugby. A few of us would like to pull together a team. We talked about how much our kids have grown, their perceptions of the world and their schooling. We talked about dating way back when and the awkward and funny moments we have found ourselves in. In other words we just talked. If there had been a spy at a back table gathering information, he would have fallen asleep. It was mundane and just another summer night, and yet it was sacramental.

Looking over the newspaper this morning and seeing the photo of a bombed out neighborhood in Lebanon and terror in the eyes of a middle aged man, I realized that’s what most of us want. Whether Jew, Muslim or Christian, the vast majority want the mundane. Be it pizza or falafels, we want our simple and familiar food, and to enjoy it with old friends on a restaurant patio without having to consider whether or not it’s safe. We want a quiet place to live. We want to be sacramental. We want to be an out ward sign of an inward and spiritual grace. We want joy.

Call me naive, call me hopelessly optimistic; I’ll call it faith, but I still believe it can happen on a late summer evening, and one day in every town and on every restaurant patio.

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us.”

Ben’s email address is ben.devoid@dilworthumc.org if you would like to contact him.

Welcome to Pastor Ben’s Blog!

Welcome to Pastor Ben’s Blog on wordpress.com! Occasionally, Ben’s thoughts will be posted on this blog for the world to see.