The Journey So Far: How Grace Is Gonna Get You (2001-2010)

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

This is part three in my blog series on my “story,” beginning with why I’m a Christian, continuing with why I’m a pastor. If you missed the first (“Why I’m A Christian“) or the second (“How Seminary Ruined My Life and Made Me A Better Person“), you can follow those links. 

For those who’ve been reading along, you know that “The Journey So Far” was my effort to tell my story, both about what I believe and why I believe it.  After several conversations about how Christians have amazing stories at their fingertips (their own) but often fail to use them (instead, trading real-life examples for reasonably cold theological treatises), I thought I might lay it all out there. But one of the questions that I’m asked more frequently than almost all the others is, “so… why are you a Methodist minister?” (For the record, last week’s installment, “How Seminary Ruined My Life & Made Me A Better Person,” can’t be completely separated out of this, as the road to Methodism and the pastor’s call for me are inextricably intwined.)

Like most things, the reasons for the question and the heart behind them vary. Does this mean, “why in the world are you a minister?” in a tone that implies I’m crazy? Or “I never thought of that as a profession before, so how did you select that one?” “Why are you a minister?” as “how do you become one?” is my personal favorite. It’s coupled with the fact that Catholicism is the prevailing Christian denomination where I’m from and Southern Baptist is the prevailing Christian denomination where I live now! So, all of these questions can work together but it’s a complicated question with complicated answers.

The first answer has to begin with the fact that I never set out to be a pastor. Sure, when I was three or four, some well-meaning church member said I’d be a pastor some day because I was welcoming in new people and eager to get them to stay and be included in our fellowship. But even after seminary, I had no interest in being a pastor of a local church, governing church council, making financial decisions, visiting the sick, or preaching on a regular basis to a starchy congregation.

But to take it a step further, I spent the first twenty-four years of my life not belonging to any church either. The denominational attachment just wasn’t on my radar.

In 2001, I graduated from seminary after two and a half years of education, and moved back to the Richmond (Va.) area to look for a job and get married (and maybe not in that order). I ended up working at a local United Methodist Church as a part-time youth director and a part-time director of a small spiritual life center. [Do you notice that neither “minister” or “pastor” are in either title?] But at the same time, I was asked the following question, just a few months before I got married.

Logan, a graduating senior at the University of Richmond, and a leader in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes there: “Hey, man, so it’s good to see you back. I don’t know if you heard, but our campus minister left suddenly, and we don’t have anyone lined up to be the campus minister for FCA in the fall. I know you just back from seminary, and we were wondering… would you be willing to be the campus minister?”

[Sidebar: A note on sidebars– they should never be ignored, because often they are more interesting than the main plot. But I digress…At the same time, I was also attending Reveille United Methodist Church in Richmond, working part-time at the now defunct Cokesbury Bookstore, and waiting to get married. And in that same time frame, the way that the United Methodist Church, specifically the teachings of John Wesley that I spent two-and-a-half-years studying, finally broke through. Where some put the focus on earning one’s salvation, Wesley urged his listeners to consider that it was only by the grace of God that they were saved; that by God’s prevenient grace moving in a person’s life before they knew God, God allowed them to repent and see God; that by justifying grace, a person came to faith by asking for forgiveness and turning to God’s plan for their life; that by sanctifying grace, they could move forward in faith, not as a finished product but as a growing person of faith. That made sense to me, and I chose to join Reveille.]

Back to the late night parking lot conversation: Of course, I said yes. That’s why I had gone to seminary in the first place! And over the next five years, I would volunteer as the campus minister there, working with a group of student leaders to re-grow FCA at UR. We met on Wednesday nights from 9 p.m. until close to midnight, planning worship and studying the Bible, trying to figure out how we could increase our impact on campus through discipleship and service. And then we had worship on Sunday nights, from 9 p.m. until 11 p.m. And there were countless meals and cups of coffee and sporting events to attend in between. It was basically another pro bono part time job, and thankfully, my wife didn’t begrudge me the additional time away.

By the end of the first year, I knew I didn’t want to be the part-time this or that, and another minister offered me a job at Bon Air United Methodist Church. I was now the Director of Youth Ministries, and I was still serving through FCA at UR. Bon Air’s love for youth and college students allowed me to bridge the gap between my employment and what I saw as my calling, to minister to college students who were working out their faith in the divide between their parents’ influence and living on their own. I touched on why campus ministry mattered to me in the last segment, but I was blown away by the eagerness of these young adults to learn and to serve. Over time, our ministry at BAUMC would keep growing, until the role I had there was as a Minister to Youth, Young Adults, and their families. (It may seem like it, but it is not just semantics!)

Again, in the parallel universe of work, I was asked to speak in the mid-2000s as the Saturday night, “come to Jesus” speaker at a District retreat. My senior pastor, Rhonda Van Dyke Colby, had been pushing (prodding?) me to take a renewed interest in the United Methodist ordination process, but I had rebuffed all of her efforts. But now I was faced with a situation I hadn’t been in before because we never considered FCA to be church: what would we do about communion?

The UMC’s Book of Discipline states that the laity don’t consecrate communion, but that elders do. (You can read more about the role of the elder here.) At this retreat, on this night, at Eagle Eyrie in Lynchburg, I was going to present the message and I was supposed to explain communion to these four hundred kids. But in between, an elder had to step forward and consecrate the elements. I couldn’t do that. So, here were kids who were looking at me, having just presented the gospel, but I couldn’t be the one to serve them communion?

I walked to the back of the auditorium in tears. There could be no more running. There could be no more stalling, denial, or doubt about it. I was supposed to get ordained.

I went home and told Rev. Colby, and she just grinned. Soon, I was reading the red book, and then the purple book, and moving through the system. And in 2007, I was offered the one-year job of interim associate chaplain at UR. Having respected, admired, even idolized the chaplain during my time as a student, this was my dream job. Unfortunately,  the interim period ended the following spring, and I experienced what it’s like to lose a dream at the ripe, old age of thirty. (For a real eye-opener on the “death of dreams,” check out Phil Vischer’s book, Me, Myself, & Bob.)

Ordination could probably be its own post, but in 2008, I was appointed to a local UMC in Prince George, Va. I’m in my sixth year at Blandford, and I’ve learned a lot about myself, about God, and about ministry thanks to the kindhearted collaboration of the people I’ve come to know there. By 2011, I was eligible to write my papers, to apply to become ordained as an “elder in full connection” in the UMC, and by the grace of God, I passed in the spring of 2012 and was ordained in June 2012. For those of you keeping score, that means I experienced my call to ministry in 1997 and wasn’t ordained until 2012!

Let’s be real for a minute: no one’s road to their calling is the same as anyone else’s. I wouldn’t have made a great minister in 2002, fresh out of seminary; I am a better pastor because I was a campus minister first. In reality, I’d drop everything to work with college students in a heartbeat: their desire to know God, to ask the big questions, and to do so guilelessly, leaves my heart beating faster. So, who knows, maybe I’ll work on a college campus again one day!

I also wouldn’t be the minister I am today if I hadn’t gotten grace first. Now, I’m not trying to say that other denominations don’t “get” grace, but the Wesleyan understanding, and its articulation (not the polity!), are why I’m a United Methodist.

For right now, I’m clear where I am supposed to be. In Jeremiah 29, it says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I’ve seen God’s grace show up again and again, and I’ve come to understand that I don’t need to know how the game ends to run the next five plays the way they’re meant to be run (sorry, it’s college football season, what can I say?)

In the process of ministry, I have:

-experienced the church at its worst and at its absolute best.

-learned to listen in ways I never believed that I had the capacity to embrace.

-developed relationships that will last a lifetime.

-stood in the gap with people as they struggled, celebrated, married, buried, and more.

-celebrated communion hundreds of times, embracing God’s sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and God’s miraculous victory over death.

But I’m very aware that I didn’t choose this, it chose me. Or maybe more correctly, God chose me. God’s plan from birth til now has prepared me along the way, in the same way that Mowgli’s friends prepare him for a dangerous life in Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. I haven’t danced like a bear or roared like a panther (lately), but the journey helps prepare us for the next mile as we go.

Initially, I thought this was going to be a three-part process (for now) but over the last few weeks, I’ve felt called to a fourth installment. While the story of seminary can still stir up a mix of painful emotions, and this section fills me with hope as I consider the way God used my unwilling heart, the next part is the most passionate, because it’s the part I’m living right now.

You’ve walked with me this far, so why not one more post?

Next week: “Why I Want To Plant A Church” or “Shouldn’t We Make A Home For Everyone”

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FFRant: It Begins (And I Predict How It Ends) (Fantasy Football)

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

I had five drafts that counted this year, that is, they were against my friends. For those tracking how all this plays out, I’ve given the highlights of my drafts here; next week, I’ll dive into the sleepers you can find on the waiver wire.

Team 1, You’ve Been Clowneyed (8-team snake): Russell Wilson, Doug Martin, LeSean McCoy, A.J. Green, Vincent Jackson, Jordan Cameron, MJDrew, and the bench is decent (Dwayne Bowe, Lamar Miller, Mike Williams, Shane Vereen). My backup QB is pretty “soft” in Michael Vick, but overall, it’s a solid team. Five top-25 players (maybe 6-7 depending on the rankings) and that’s a solid, if unspectacular team. I’ve already received a Brandon Marshall-f0r-Martin trade offer but with my WRs, it hardly seems worth it.

Team 2, Night Watch (10-team auction, 2 keepers for 2014): Russell Wilson, Jamaal Charles, Chris Johnson, Marshall, T.Y. Hilton, Stevan Ridley, Owen Daniels. Already, you can start to see the difference between an eight and a ten-team league, but I’ll admit I whiffed a little there with at least twenty dollars left over. Not my best draft. The starters look good until you hit Hilton, and he’s the best of that bench.

Team 3, Midlothian Monks (10-team PPR auction, 2 keepers for 2014): Tony Romo or Robert Griffin III, Steven Jackson, MJD, Ridley, Dez Bryant, Tavon Austin, M. Williams, Vereen, Lance Moore, Ben Tate. This team was budgeted the best from top to bottom, but I’m still disappointed that Jackson is my most expensive player. There’s something about the economics that forces me to fight spending $40-50 on a player. Tight end could be a problem, with Jordan Cameron and Jared Cook as my best options.

Team 4, Elves o f Midlothian (10-team PPR auction against HollywoodJesus.com writers only, 2 keepers): Matthew Stafford, Martin, Ridley, Bryant, Marshall, Jimmy Graham, Bowe, Reggie Bush, with a decent bench and Le’Veon Bell stashed on the IR. I think this is my favorite team of the five. Martin, Ridley, Bryant, Marshall and Graham are all top-20 players; Bush is a PPR beast; Bell is the future of Pittsburgh Steelers football.

Team 5, Midlothian Monks (10-team auction, 4 keepers each from 2012): Colin Kaepernick, Charles, David Wilson, Eddie Lacy, Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, Giovani Bernard, Graham, with Williams, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, Vereen, and Garcon on the bench. It’s pretty balanced but to compete in a league where one guy got Marshawn Lynch and Martin for $18 total (eighteen t-o-t-a-l!), I need one of these guys to go crazy. Maybe Cruz and Nicks will play like it’s 2011 or Lacy will be the real deal. One star, total, in RB/WR, but Graham is easily the cream of the crop. And the future looks decent with Bernard, Lacy, and Kaepernick as keeper options.

Now, on to the real football: the Denver Broncos will take the win tonight from the Baltimore Ravens (no Dennis Pitta, no Ray Lewis) in Denver but…

For The Playoffs:

AFC: Denver, NE, Cincy, and Houston; wildcards, KC and IND

NFC: DAL, SEA, GB, and ATL; wildcards, PHI and NO

AFC Final: Denver over New England

NFC Final: Seattle vs New Orleans

Super Bowl: Seattle over Denver

Where’d I go wrong? Obviously, as a Pats fan, I doubt it ends the way I want it to…

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Sunday’s Sermon Today: Don’t Look Back (I Kings 19:1-18)

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

In one of my favorite movies growing up, a chubby kid named Chunk gets kidnapped by a trio of bank robbers named the Fratellis. They cross-examine him about the location of a treasure trove, and he doesn’t know exactly what they want. They start screaming at him, “tell us everything!” And Chunk starts confessing every sin that he can think of.

“Everything. OK! I’ll talk! In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max’s toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog… When my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then they served lunch I got nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out… But the worst thing I ever done – I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, t-t-then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa – and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.”

Chunk’s perspective on everything is purely negative. He doesn’t see the good in his past, only the times that he failed. It’s one of those character traits that too many of us share. Rather than rosey-colored glasses, we have on too-tight, negative spectacles. And today’s hero Elijah is really no different.

We pick up the story of Elijah after his righteous victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. He gave the idol worshippers an opportunity to worship their god with a divine intervention, and they received no response. But Yahweh God’s holy fire rained down and Elijah’s challenge resulted in the conversion of thousands of Israelites. Elijah was vindicated, victorious, even heroic. But in every political clash, there’s always fallout, right?

The queen Jezebel, who had corrupted the king of Israel and called the nation to worship idols, is enraged that Elijah had defeated her prophets. So she sent word to him that she had placed a death penalty on his head and that he had twenty-four hours to live. It wasn’t that she simply ordered his execution, she made sure he knew that death was headed his way. She wanted him to experience fear. And it worked.

Elijah did what any terrified person would do in that situation: he ran. Elijah, who had been fed by ravens and who had called down a holy fire (and made it rain), feared that somehow God would not protect him even after he’d been obedient. So in the middle of the wilderness, abandoned and alone, he prayed that God would just kill him. Elijah was emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually exhausted, and rather than turn to the refuge of great strength, he was ready to give up.

Before you think I’m being too hard on Elijah, hear me say this: it’s what we’re inclined to do in situations like this. Fight or flight. And when our strength gives out, we tend to give up.

But an angel woke Elijah up, and told him to eat. A miraculous fire had appeared, and bread was baking next to a jar of water. So he ate, and went back to sleep.

A second time, the angel of the Lord woke him, and told him to eat. So he ate and drank again, and set out for the mountain of God which was forty days away. When he arrived, he spent the night in a cave, and God appeared to him.

Even though Elijah had given up on God, God refused to give up on Elijah. (I imagine that some of you reading this went back and read that sentence again, while others breathed a simple “amen.”) Isn’t that good news? That even when we’ve exhausted all of our understandings of God and God’s plan, even when we figure that there’s no hope left in the wideness of God’s mercy for us, God shows up and says, “I’m not finished with you yet”?

So God and Elijah have a come-to-Jesus moment, even though the phrase won’t be valid for another few hundred years.

God doesn’t really need to know the answer. But rather than showing up and blasting Elijah with the “how dare you?” questions, God is letting Elijah get to this on his own.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?” asked God.

Elijah replied, “I have done everything you asked me to do. And the people have rejected everything you’ve taught, and killed all of the prophets, except for me!”

Now, we know that’s not completely true, right? We know that God’s miraculous intervention just resulted in the conversion of thousands of people, and we know that God had watched Elijah throughout his mission to speak the word of God. But God doesn’t really engage in Elijah’s pity party; he doesn’t argue with Elijah, or deal directly with Elijah’s depressed state.

I wonder how often we complain about the way we’re treated for doing right. Galatians 6:9 urges us to “never get tired of doing good,” but sometimes our hearts lack the strength to keep doing it on our own. Again, this isn’t a new world problem!

Elijah isn’t the first or the last man of God to feel abandoned and alone, or to think that they had failed absolutely. Half of David’s Psalms are from the depths of despair; Jeremiah was even thrown into the pit of a well. But God doesn’t hand out tissues or even tell Elijah to buck up.

Instead, God tells Elijah to go out of the cliff onto the mountain into the presence of God. A wind tore the mountains apart, with rocks shattering everywhere. Next came an earthquake, and then a fire. But God wasn’t present in any of those three, fierce natural elements. And then Elijah experienced God as a gentle whisper, who told him to anoint a new king, to anoint a successor to be the next prophet, and to recognize that there were seven thousand men in Israel (not counting women and children) who had not given into idol worship, who were still loyal to God.

In Elijah’s darkest moment, God showed up, first as a miraculous wind, earthquake, and fire, and then the subtle encouragement he needed to complete his mission. It’s funny how darkest moments seem to come just after high and holy moments, or right before them. How to get through to where we’re supposed to be, we have to experience the valley on the way to the mountain. How when we’re pushing forward to what we’re supposed to be, we experience the most pushback, the most resistance, and sometimes, it’s internal!

Are you there right now? Have you become tired while doing good, or felt that there is no hope in the midst of the present darkness? Are you experiencing the highs of a breakthrough moment, but exhausted by the effort? I hope that you will turn boldly to the God of the universe and be real about where you are.

Because God’s not done with you yet.

I wonder what it would look like if we pushed past the depression, the valley, the wilderness into the mountainside where God meets us. I wonder what it would look like if we trusted in the darkness that the light was just around the corner, if we embraced the darkness as a temporary spot and the light as the truth, if we would be more effective in being who God wants us to be. Would we save ourselves the aggravation of trusting in ourselves and pull a Sweet Frog (fully rely on God)?

What do you need to give up to God today? What are you holding onto and trying to control on your own? Is it work-related, or family-related? Is it about your time or your money? Is it something you’ve struggled with secretly and haven’t been able to tell anyone else about? Let it go, and let God.

Too often we look back at our lives and we only see the low spots. We tend to have negative 20/20 vision. We recognize where we went wrong, where we messed up, where life dealt us a blow. We fail to see the ways that God moved or carried us through the roughest parts, the ways that others were there for us, that we weren’t alone. It takes practice to focus on the positive, on the good, on the JOY. It takes living in the here and now, instead of reflecting on the past so much until we live in it.

We have great opportunities in front of us. We have Charge Conference in a few weeks, and we’ll look to the ways that God is working in our church; our Treat or Trunk and Spaghetti Supper events are coming up, as opportunities for us to invite our friends and the neighbors into our church for fellowship. And along the way, we have our weekly Bible studies and Sunday School classes to examine the Scripture, to share of our lives, and to pray for God’s guidance in the ways that he might use us.

When Elijah follows up on God’s plan for him, he tracks down Elisha in I Kings 19:19-21: “[Elisha] was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. 20 Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah. ‘Let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,’ he said, ‘and then I will come with you.’ Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his servant.”

Elisha got it. He wasn’t going back to his family; he wasn’t going to be a farmer again. The yoke, the oxen, the equipment for plowing– all of those things were dead weight once he became Elijah’s apprentice.

To move forward, to follow in Elijah’s footsteps, Elisha had to let his past go, and embrace a new future. He had to surrender the expectations that he’d had as a farmer, as a son. He was now a mentee, and a prophet. He was called by God to something new.

It’s the same thing that the first twelve disciples went through, that Paul went through (he even got a new name!) And it’s the same thing we go through when we recognize that we’re too focused on ourselves, and the things that other people tell us are important. We’ve got to cut the cords to our doubts and our fears, and embrace the present opportunities that God has to offer us. God wants us to know that our future is bright in his plan, that God’s future is so much more important than our past.

God shows us the fire, the earthquake, and the wind, but God is in the whisper if we will only listen to what he has to say.

God is not finished with us yet.

This sermon is for the 11 a.m. service at Blandford UMC on September 8, and is based on I Kings 19:1-18.

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Sunday’s Sermon Today: Make It Rain (I Kings 18:18-38)

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

In the film Leap of Faith, the traveling revivalist Jonas Nightengale is very convincing. He works with his team of con artists to make sure that small town after small town experiences a “holy moment,” so that they’ll give Nightengale more money. He’s counting on their need to believe in something, so he hoodwinks them out of their hard earned money and fails to practice what he preaches. But when he encounters a town that thinks that Nightengale can harness a miracle and make it rain, Nightengale is himself the one who finds what a miracle looks like. He’s never seen anyone who believes with true conviction, just falsified, go-through-the-motions kinds of “believers”.

Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of faith that a lot of people have seen.

In our Scripture today, we meet a prophet who has been fed by ravens, who has struggled with the political system, who has followed what God wanted him to do all along. He is a true believer. But God has been holding Elijah back, keeping him in the shadows while the nation struggles through the drought Elijah promised on God’s behalf. Elijah could end it merely by making it so, because God gave him the power, but God wants the people to get “it.” And then the day comes when God is ready to draw his people back to him… and it plays out like a movie directed by Zach Snyder (dynamic, blood flying, and far from understated…)

Elijah isn’t subtle. He tells the king to bring his prophets, four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, and all of the people of Israel. And the king is so afraid/troubled/bemused by Elijah’s orders that he actually gets all of them together. The king doesn’t want to listen to Elijah, but he knows that God is in this, and that Elijah speaks for God. For his part, Elijah knows what the point is, and here, he seems confident in what he’s supposed to do. But he poses a question to the gathered crowd that is relevant to us today:

“How long will you waver between two opinions? If the God is God, follow him; but if something else is God, follow him.”

At this point, the people are apathetic, much like we have a tendency to be. They’re neither passionately worshipping God nor are they passionately worshipping one of the idols available to them thanks to the king’s idolatry. They’re not worshipping because it matters to them or because they believe it’s actually what they want to do, but just because it’s what everyone else is doing and what they’re expected to do. But there’s no understanding here that the people actually believe anything.

Do you know anyone like that? Is that you? Are you pushed around by other people’s beliefs, like a leaf on a stream, pushed from here to there as the current takes you?

Elijah is also aware that everyone believes in something; actually, everyone worships something. Whether they believe in a higher power or don’t, they’re believing in something (even if they believe in nothing at all). They can worship God, their spouse, their work, their “stuff,” their money, their intellect, themselves. Whatever they focus their energy and understanding, whatever they give the power to lead them and make decisions, they’ve put in that “God” spot. Even if they say they really don’t care.

Elijah has seen too many people like that, and he’s not taking it anymore.

So Elijah lays out “The Challenge” for them. We read that there were actually other prophets of Yahweh but that they’re all in hiding. Elijah is the only one who is bold enough to show up and run around in public. And he has a “put up or shut up” moment, a go-big-or-go-home proposition. He tells them to bring two bulls, cut one of them up, and lay them out on a wooden altar. He even lets them pick which bull they want, and he takes the other, letting them choose the one “more pleasing” to their gods.

It doesn’t matter what gods they worship, or what or how they’ll sacrifice. Elijah is setting the stage that this is all about Yahweh God and what Yahweh God will do. And that’s where the emphasis is for Elijah: “whichever God miraculously ignites the altar on fire without human intervention, he is God.”

So the apathetic people, the stand-in-the-distance-and-watch people voice their approval to the challenge Elijah has laid out. Remember, it’s eight hundred and fifty to one. It’s the new, bold kid on the block challenging the neighborhood bully on the playground, and all of the other kids are standing around going “sure, you step up to him! You go get ’em!” while they push him forward and stay out of the way. It’s more for their violent, we’re-here-to-watch-a-hanging kind of crowd than it is actually believing that Elijah even has a chance of winning.

When the bulls are prepared, Elijah sits back (I see him leaning back smugly against his altar with his arms crossed, and a bored look on his face) while the prophets of Baal scream at the heavens for five or six hours. They even try their sacred fire god dance! But nothing happens…

By lunchtime, Elijah’s boredom has made him sarcastic. He urges them, teases them, to shout louder, saying maybe their god is sleeping or thinking hard or too far away to hear them. As if that wasn’t ironic enough, given that we know people who think that maybe they have to stand just right, or act just right, or go to just the right places to get God to hear them, or even ask the right people to pray for them because God doesn’t hear their prayers… the prophets of Baal actually turn up their volume and “dance” to try and get their gods’ attention. They literally try out Elijah’s advice, admitting by their actions that what they’re trying isn’t working.

These prophets take it a step further though. They believe that their gods want to experience pain, that these gods take joy in the suffering of others, so they cut themselves over and over again until blood poured out of them onto the altar they had made. But the NIV translation says again that “there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” That “no one paid attention.”

Again, that’s unfortunately what so many people think about prayer. That no one is answering or listening or caring. That somehow the world got set up, wound up like a pocket watch and let go, but it’s firing now on its own. That’s what some people think today who haven’t experienced what’s about to happen next for Elijah the prophet.

Elijah called the people to gather around him, and he repaired the broken down altar that had previously been built for God but which was out of use. He takes twelve stones, symbolically representing each of the tribes of their country descended from Jacob and Joseph, and then he dug a pit around the altar in the dirt.

Three times, he told them to take four jars of water and to soak the bull offering, the altar itself, and to fill the trench around it. The prophets of Baal couldn’t get their “gods” to ignite even a spark on a dry, newly-minted altar and sacrifice, but Elijah wants it to be even more difficult, even more amazing, when God ignites his offering miraculously.

And then Elijah prays, a simple, direct, awesome prayer, meant for the transformation of the world and the making of true disciples. “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

Elijah prays that God would show up and show off to convince the people around him that what Elijah has done was on behalf of God. Elijah wants that convincing flame to strike his altar and burn up his offering so that the people would repent and turn back to God. He wants a holy fire to burn on the exterior offering so that the interior fire of belief would burn bright and fierce inside of these people.

And instantaneously, without dancing or hours passing or any theatrics, the fire of the Lord burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the dirt, and evaporated the water. Pretty spectacular, right? The God of the universe, the creator of the world, answered a prayer immediately and spectacularly, defying the laws of physics. But does that really top off this story?

Which is more spectacular, that there was instantaneously scorched earth where there had previously been an altar and sacrifice, or the fact that all of the people saw what had happened and were instantaneously convinced of the glory of God?

Which is more amazing, that God would perform a miracle that defies physics and nature, or that God would perform a miracle that would transform a life, even thousands of lives?

But God isn’t done. In I Kings 17, God told Elijah to announce the drought, to let everyone know that it wouldn’t rain again until Elijah said it could rain. Now that the people of Israel have repented, and turned their hearts to God, Elijah tells the king and his people to eat, drink, and make haste for their homes, because rain is coming. They should celebrate and then get somewhere dry!

In verse 43, no one else can see the rain coming, but Elijah tells them to prepare. And before the long the sky was black with clouds, and then the rain came.

One man stood up in the midst of a corrupt society, in a world where the one true God was marginalized and dismissed, where people were apathetic to what God could do. Does that sound familiar? Do we live in a time where people are apathetic to God, even while the world becomes more “spiritual”? I think we do.

But the world longs for an end to the drought. The drought of compassion, of health, of blessing, of moral standing for something. The world wants the rain but it doesn’t understand or believe anymore how to make it rain. But we do! We’ve met God, we’ve seen God in community, we’ve experienced forgiveness and love.

We’ve seen the impact of absolute obedience, and the worship of the one, true God.

Are we ourselves obedient? Are we willing to speak for truth? Are we willing to be one versus eight hundred and fifty? Or are we afraid and hiding out like the other prophets? Are we still standing on the sidelines waiting for someone else to make the first move?

God keeps calling for leaps of faith, for bold challenges, and bold lives. Will we be a generation that stands up and says, “God is alive. Love is true. Belief matters”?

Let’s make it rain.

This Sunday is for Sunday, September 8, at the 9 a.m. Stand UMC worship service at Blandford UMC.

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The Journey So Far: How Seminary Ruined My Life & Made Me A Better Person (1995-2001)

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

This was supposed to be called “How/Why I Became A Pastor” but “How Seminary Ruined My Life” has a certain ring to it. To be fair, this is really about college at the University of Richmond and seminary at Asbury Theological Seminary (Wilmore, KY), because my road to being a pastor took significant steps forward in my sophomore through senior years as a Spider. But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s rewind to freshman year. (You may want to read the previous installment, “Why I Am A Christian,” but it’s not mandatory!)

Freshman year, I did it all. I was a card-carrying member of at least a dozen organizations by Christmas, and going to class was sometimes an afterthought to my co-curriculars. I participated in a few Christian organizations, tried out some churches in the area, and settled on the on-campus chapel service led by the university chaplain. The chaplain was a man of high caliber, who served for twenty-plus years in that capacity, preaching that God longed to have a relationship with everyone, and proving to be one of the finest mentors I’ve ever had.

But in one of the campus organizations, I heard a different form of interpretation. Here, Christianity was about abstaining from everything “the world” was involved in, and I wondered sometimes if I fit in there. The organization made the decision about participation easier for me; when I applied for a leadership position for the following year, I was told I had “too many non-Christian friends” to be a good fit there. (Somehow, they still asked me to lead a Bible study for the first years.) I went home that summer wondering where I fit into the picture of “Church” on campus, but confident that I had some straightening up to do of my life.

Sophomore year, I narrowed the extracurriculars to three or four, and actually went to class. I still loved to be everywhere, but I realized that I had to make some fast determinations about who I was going to be. In the process, I was invited by a friend of mine to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. We met in a little meeting room, just ten of us and two adults who lead the study and worship. Pretty soon, the guy who’d invited me stopped coming and I was left with nine football players… and me. For as homogeneous as the school was, our group was multicultural. And what we had grew under the right situations: prayer, a desire to share what we had, and some encouraging administrators who funded outreach. By the end of the second year, we had grown to a group of over one hundred, still multicultural, but now co-ed as well.

These situations made me recognize that I had experienced two kinds of campus ministers (broadly) in the half-dozen Christian campus ministries on campus: one group who knew the Bible and judged me severely by it, and one group who were less comfortable with the Bible than I was but who were culturally relevant. And while forty years my senior, the Scripturally-savvy and openly welcoming chaplain proved to be the kind of person I wanted to be (the happy medium) when I grew up. Which was about the time that God made it clear that maybe I was supposed to be that kind of minister, not one who was either too far one way or another.

Fast forward a year and a half, and I’m sitting in class at Asbury in the middle of Nowheresville, KY. I had heard that there was a solid, Biblical, academic reputation to the school, even though I didn’t know what a Methodist was yet, and so I went. (I might choose Duke Seminary should I ever get the call for a second degree, but here’s hoping my days in school are done. You know how that goes.) I didn’t know anyone, I’d never visited, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. (Did I mention I didn’t know what a Methodist was yet?)

To be clear: I didn’t “enjoy” seminary. There were mitigating factors though: I soon discovered that there weren’t a lot of people like me at seminary. I was engaged to the woman who has now been my wife of eleven years, and my desire to be with her drove me monthly to see her eight hours away. I had probably overdone school for successive years in a row. I was immature and unsure about what God wanted next for my life (I went believing I was supposed to become a campus minister, that I needed to have theological understandings about God before I tried teaching others about God). I was a mess.

Life outside of the classroom was certainly interesting. Over the two and a half years I was there, I juggled several jobs to pay the bills: admissions work, work study data entry, water and sewer in town, tutoring at-risk boys, construction, serving cappuccinos near the University of Kentucky. I served at a local hospital (the first week, an elderly woman told people she’d been abused by a hospital employee but she’d only talk to the administrators if I was present) and a megachurch (fifteen hundred people came out to seven different services a week). I played basketball five days a week, volleyball twice a week, and Playstation with a few good friends until the wee hours of the morning… every day. In some ways, it was just an extension of college.

But seminary is a funny place. It’s full of the same kind of people who are in the church, and who are in the world. They are broken, selfish, rundown, scared, and lonely people (but they are also amazing, compassionate, selfless, Christ-like people, too). I remember experiencing homophobic behavior in a dorm setting, and being surprised when someone noticed that I spoke out against it. I remember seeing cliques break down friendships, and the desire to date or marry dominate social interactions. I remember being spoken to derisively because I wasn’t “in” as a Methodist by professors, and experienced the small town life where a seminary and a college elbowed each other for space instead of ministering together.

And yet, I am the man, the pastor, the husband, and the friend who I am today in part because of seminary.

In seminary, my RA took me under his wing, watched Duke-UNC games, and challenged me to explore my world theologically. (He’d later send some checks for groceries to a friend of ours, so that I’d have more to eat than peanut butter crackers and bottles of IGA water for lunch.) When I snapped my leg in half playing soccer one Saturday morning, and my Greek prof kicked me out of class for missing a session while I was getting casted, a group of women let me sleep on their couch, cooked me food, drove me to the doctors, and reminded me that I wasn’t alone. When I stood to be one class short of graduating a semester early because of missing Greek, my advisor created an independent study just for me. When I flipped my car on the way to work one morning, and found myself stranded in Wilmore, three different people lent me their cars so that I could get to Virginia so I could see my fiancee. When I was nearly forced to leave because I didn’t have the funds to pay for a summer class, an anonymous donor left four hundred dollars on my chair during a break so my bill got paid.

I’m a pastor today because in the midst of my wilderness, God showed up. He showed up in the midst of my car wreck, as the emergency staff told me that the call they’d received meant they expected someone dead on the scene. But I didn’t experience (until looking back much later!) the presence of God in the midst of a thunderstorm (like Martin Luther) or a warming of the heart (like John Wesley), but in the people who rose up to be my community, even in the midst of my isolation. I had to get somewhere that my normal crutches, like extracurriculars, my dating relationship, and “going out,” couldn’t exist, and Wilmore, KY, was that place. I certainly learned from Drs. Whiteman, Dongell, Green, Witherington, and Thobaben, as well as some others, but I learned even more from my peers, by the angels I encountered, unaware.

At a time when I needed God to “show up and show off” (still my favorite quote from Hometown Legend…maybe my only one), these people showed me what it meant to be real, to be Christian, and to believe that God’s calling rises above whatever life (and other people) throw at you. I believe it, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. How about you?

Next week: Why I’m a Methodist (Pastor) or “How Grace Is Gonna Get You”

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FF Rant: #Winning (Fantasy Football)

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

This year is going to be exciting. I’ve narrowed down my fantasy football options, and I’m only playing with either a) people I know or b) in leagues I’ve played before. From double-digit teams to… 6 teams, and three of them I’m league manager. See, playing fantasy is almost entirely about the relationships, the ribbing, and the “smack” that will be talked (along with the all-consuming desire to be the last team standing). The best part is that I don’t have to worry about cheating the way you do in a public league.

My “favorite” cheating story comes from last year: in a public ESPN league, one guy admitted to having three teams in the same league. That’s right: he opened up three different web browsers (like Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox) and increased his budget from $200 to $600. Of course, he got a couple of good trades to himself while some owners were AWOL, and suddenly, the league was pointless. That doesn’t happen when you’re playing with your friends.

A recent Sports Illustrated article was entitled “Why Men Cheat.” I thought it was going to be a statistical study about why men feel the need to cut corners; instead, it was about foreign minorities are pressured to use steroids more than Americans. I thought it was going to talk about A-Rod and Ryan Braun, about how we as Americans (or is it the human race?) have mixed up #winning (thanks, Charlie Sheen) with success. We’ve become convinced that we need to be the top dog more than we need the process of trying, that coming in fourth on our own merits isn’t better than winning by destroying relationships and breaking the rules.

But playing with your friends can change all of that.

I tallied the folks playing in this year’s leagues: there’s a real estate agent, a private school teacher, a grant writer, a human resources manager, two IT guys, a banker, six writers, a news producer, a politician, a county planner, a news reporter, and… ten ministers. (For the sake of my numerical exploration, there’s no overlap.)

For the first time ever, I’ll actually be playing against family (my newly minted brother-in-law Josh is in a league, and his brother is in another). Several good friendships from the present will be tested, as well as three I made in seminary; my best friend from high school will be playing in one of my leagues for the first time, and fantasy football literally has us chatting for the first time in a decade. Several of my ministerial colleagues are wading in for the first time, and one of my former youth stands to be my fiercest competitor.

These folks are my real-life dream team, a group of guys I’ll razz, laugh with, and stay in better touch with because I’m playing against them.

But my “fake,” fantasy dream draft? I’ll let you in on my ideal line-up, and check back in next week with who to add, who to drop, and whether or not my line-up holds up after four drafts this week.

First rounder/$45: Jamaal Charles. Seriously, if I get the first pick or Adrian Peterson goes for less than $45 (yeah, right), I’m all over AP. But otherwise? I’m taking Andy Reid’s new pet project over the rest of the maybe-they-will-or-maybe-they-won’t. Honestly, AP is the only one that’s as pure a shot as an MJ jumper from fifteen.

Second rounder/$35: Dez Bryant or A.J. Green. Which one of these guys are you counting on for 10 TDs and over 1,000 yards receiving? The talented head case or the dinged-up, one-trick pony? Tony Romo’s head or Andy Dalton’s arm? I’m giving Bryant a slight edge, but I’d be happy with either of these guys as my top wideout.

Third rounder/$30: Stevan Ridley and Maurice Jones-Drew. With the first guy, I’m counting on Bill Belicheck to not pull a Shanahan and go away from what gave the team stability last year (with apologies to Gisele and mighty Smurf, Wes Welker).

Fourth rounder/$20: Larry Fitzgerald. You need at least one more WR. Why not count on Carson Palmer to be a more “half full” than “half empty” kind of glass?

Fifth-eighth rounder/$10-15: Matthew Stafford or Matt Ryan, Darren Sproles or Lamar Miller. Which year are you going to give more credence to, 2011 or 2012? If you think last year was a fluke, I’m going Stafford; if you think last year was “the truth,” I’m going Ryan. For the second pairing, it’s all about whether it’s PPR or not. Either way, one is going to be a steal.

The rest/less than $10: Chris Ivory, Vincent Brown, Tony Gonzalez, Carson Palmer, Daryl Richardson. Obviously, I’m not getting, nor do I need, all of these guys. But they’re some of the ones I’m targeting at the backend for potential starting jobs, and some sleepers that may ring it up for me as the season goes on. You might notice that I’m of the opinion that the quarterback position is deeper than the fry vat at McDonald’s; there’s just no reason to reach for one of the really expensive guys at the beginning.

And I’m still not taking a Defense/Special Teams or Kicker until last for $1 each.

Tune back in next week to see how I did, and to evaluate the first week of real live play and how it impacted our little fantasy world.

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Planes: You Can Fly Higher (Movie Review)

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

In Planes, the latest Walt Disney animated flick, a young crop duster named Dusty (Dane Cook) dreams of becoming a racing plane, and ends up in the Wings Around The World competition, up against the likes of the multi-race winner Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith), the lovely female planes Rochelle (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Ishani (Priyanka Chopra), and the comic relief, Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui). He’s mentored by the aged warrior Skipper Riley (Stacy Keach) and aided by his friends (Terri Hatcher and Brad Garrett). It’s typical Disney stuff, but it’s the best we’ve seen since Tangled in 2010.

While Brave may have looked better and Cars 2 had bigger names voicing its characters, Planes has a purity of heart and a steady stream of action that’s better than anything I’ve seen lately from the Mouse (yes, I’m definitely including Wreck-It Ralph and no, I haven’t seen Monsters University yet). Dusty wants to be more and do more, and it’s not just imagination, it’s recognizing potential in himself that others can’t (or won’t) see. Yes, he’s a duster, but he also has aspirations, hopes, and dreams that aren’t just fantastic, they’re actually attainable.

But Planes isn’t just about the dream; it’s also about those who help us get there. Dusty needs to learn how to fly faster not just fly, and he must recognize that he can fly higher than he believes he can. Dusty is afraid of heights (I’m right there with you, buddy) and his love of flight is challenged by that fear. There’s nothing quite like knowing what you’re called to do (preach) and struggling with the inadequacies of the situation (young age, lack of public speaking practice) that have to be overcome with time, practice, and mentoring.

It’s the mentoring that stands out from Planes. Skipper doesn’t give Dusty magical advice and then fade, the way that say the Cheshire Cat or that the Fairy Godmother blows in and leaves quickly. Skipper’s stories (another interesting strain throughout the film) prove to inspire Dusty, but there’s a strong element of the older, past-prime flyer investing in the youthful one, who holds so much promise. Mentoring is certainly an investment in our future, and it’s a Biblical principle that we shouldn’t lose sight of. Throughout Scripture, the wise are called to teach the young, the partnerships of friendship and mission are intwined, and the yoking of two workers is evident.

Dusty’s personality also shows a Biblical element, the “farm life” of “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” It “pays it forward” right back to him in several ways, but it’s an important lesson for us to be examining for ourselves and our children: it’s impossible to miss here. Planes doesn’t shrink from this obvious lesson, and it plays out powerfully several ways: no one is “too small” to be important, too trivial to be treated with respect. Seriously, what would happen if we actually lived our lives that way?

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Sunday’s Sermon Today: Raised By Ravens (I Kings 17)

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

My high school mascot is a raven. A raven? I know, I know, fans of Baltimore’s football team have been parading around in purple and black-themed gear since 1996 when Art Modell fled Cleveland. But we played against serious teams like Vikings and Mustangs, Ravens seemed so… lame. They’re carrion birds who eat whatever they can find, and they show up in Gothic literature thanks to Edgar Allen Poe and others. Why would a Catholic boarding school choose a raven as its mascot? That makes no sense.

But my biologist father points out that ravens are resourceful. That they are highly intelligent with the ability to solve problems and communicate in conversation.

From reading I Kings 17, it seems that Elijah survived thanks to the characteristics my dad highlighted in ravens. A mysterious man blows into town and tells the king, “God told me to tell you that it is not going to rain unless I tell it to.” Imagine the king’s reaction. Imagine the people’s reaction! We need to remember that prophets were the main form by which people understood that God was speaking to them in these days, and this prophet is NOT showing up with good news. Instead, he’s basically condemning the country to struggle and suffering.

Ahab the king had sold out to worshipping his wife’s idols. He knew what was right and what God expected of him, but he went out and did quite the opposite. He encouraged his people not to worship God but to sacrifice to these evil powers. And the drought was God’s way of getting Ahab (and the people’s attention).

Suddenly, this prophet no one knows is on everyone’s radar, and he’s in trouble. He’s delivered bad news, he hasn’t provided any way out of it, and he’s the only one as far as anyone knows who can reverse it. Naturally, God tells him to skedaddle. But instead of sending him to another country or somewhere comfy, like a country club kind of prison, God tells him to go hide out in a hollowed out river bed.

God says he’ll have enough to drink from the brook and ravens will supply him food. So Elijah goes (this isn’t a dialogue!) and presumably waits. And while he is there, he eats bread and meat in the morning, and bread in the evening. It wasn’t big on the company, but the provisions were actually bountiful compared to what he would’ve eaten in the city where meat was a delicacy.

So, quick recap:

God speaks to Elijah and gives him a message.

The message God gives Elijah isn’t “good news” for the people who will receive it.

As a result of giving the message, Elijah will be forced to go on the run.

God’s care for Elijah involves sleeping in a ditch and eating food that ravens bring.

This is not your “gospel of wealth” scenario where if you do everything you’re supposed to then God will give you everything you’ve ever wanted drivel. This is real deal sacrificial faith and obedience.

Elijah’s main mission is to do what he’s told. He shows up and delivers the message, and then puts himself in a place where God will take care of him. But it’s not like he’s living a life of luxury. So why is it that when the first hint of trouble comes, people have an inclination to say “woe is me”? From this example, it looks like we should be prepared for more Spartan living if we’re following God (and no, I don’t mean of the 300 variety).

Elijah’s obedience is amazing. [Note that it says nothing about how he responded or really felt about God’s decision-making, primarily because it didn’t matter.] If God showed up and told you, “hey, you’re going to go and deliver this bad news, and I’m going to hide you in a rock gully,” wouldn’t your inclination be to pull a Jonah and run the other way?

Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly needy, it does my heart good to explore the Old Testament adventures of the brave men and women who were used by God in uncomfortable situations. If that’s what it means to be a Christian, then I think my attitude needs a chiropractic adjustment.

Instead of looking for the most comfortable root, I want to look for the right route. I think if I’m going to live the life God wants from me I’m going to have to subject myself to being raised by ravens, like Mogwli was raised by wolves, a panther, and a bear in The Jungle Book. Mogwli was still a human boy, but he had the skills of those animals: the cunning, the survival skills, the ability to camouflage himself. He needed to be like those animals to survive the jungle.

These incredibly intelligent birds who find the food they need wherever they can, who communicate with each other, who could be used by God to feed Elijah.

In Luke 12:23-25, Jesus said, “For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” Funny how Jesus told his disciples to look to the ravens for an example of God’s graciousness and care. Think maybe he was thinking of obedient Elijah who only survived by the Meals on Wheels delivery of some ravens?

So what’s the stripped down look you need for the journey? Is stuff getting in the way of you being the disciple God wants you to be? Is it the way you prioritize your time? Is it where you go when your time is your own or the kind of job you work (or how you do that job)? It seems to me that Elijah went out on a limb for God, and jumped up and down a few times, and the limb never broke.

But how can I say that? Elijah is one of just a handful of people who never died. He NEVER DIED. He was so sacred to God that his life was spared! God took him straight to heaven.

Elijah’s obedience, the life he lived, led to the reward that he bypassed death.

Not a car. Not a 401k. Not a life of power and security. But an eternal relationship with God that superseded death. “Get out of a jail free, go straight to heaven.”

I think there’s something to this whole “raised by wolves” thing. Or maybe it’s ravens. Either way, obedience IS rewarded, just not the way we expect it. God’s grace will find you, even if it takes you into the wilderness first, and stands you before kings with terrifying news.

A raven is not such a bad mascot after all.

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Sunday’s Sermon Today: God Comes Near (I Kings 5:1-6, 8:1-13)

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

For his fourth birthday, our family pooled their funds and we bought my son a wooden play set. My wife, my inlaws, and I worked for two and a half days to screw it all together. It was one of the most arduous tasks I’ve ever been involved in. I’m not the best builder to begin with, but I wanted our son to have something to play with in the yard! So we re-drilled holes, screwed it together, and he had a “tree house” he could call his own.

And that’s when I realized how much having a place meant to him. He wanted to play there every morning, and every night. He wanted to climb and jump and slide, to throw “gumballs” at each other, to play hide’n’seek. And he wanted to have lunch there.

Now, I’m not sure what the weight limitations are on this play set, but I know I exceed them. I’m not exactly Mr. Flexible to begin with, but getting up the ladder and into the little clubhouse is a real stretch. But my son wanted to have lunch there, so we made it work.

I have this image of God trying to condense himself into “tree house” size to “fit” inside the Temple that Solomon built. It’s not that I think Solomon didn’t get it in the Scripture for today; it’s just that I think we fail to see the epic nature of God outside of time and space!

Solomon sets out to complete what his father could not.  He enlists the help of a rich ally of his father’s, intent on building a holy place for Yahweh God to “be.” He selects only the best supplies, the best pieces, to build the most beautiful Temple anyone had ever seen. He gathered up all of the important people, packed up the ark of the covenant, and everything sacred to his people, and he sacrificed until they couldn’t count the sheep anymore. When the ceremony was over, it says that the cloud representing God’s presence filled the temple, that the glory of the Lord was so great that none of the people could enter.

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple. Can you imagine that? It says in Exodus that when Moses used to meet with God to get instructions for how to lead the people, that the people couldn’t handle looking at him because his face shone so brightly. Consider the glory of God that it was so explosive, so powerful, so majestic, that people couldn’t handle being in “direct contact,” like someone who’s taking antibiotics and has to steer clear of the sun.

Solomon is pretty pleased with himself: he has built the most magnificent temple to any god, anywhere. Remember, he’s still operating under the assumption that “place” is pretty important to God, that even though God has said that he’ll be with his people wherever they go (and repeated himself several times), they still have this perception that if God isn’t happy with them, he’ll leave.

But what if space or location doesn’t matter to God? What if God’s greatest joy in the building of the Temple was that Solomon spent time with him? What if God didn’t care how ornate or magnificent it was but rather that it was made by God’s people for God? Do you understand God to be of a fixed point or a location, or do you recognize that God wants to be with you?

It’s no wonder that one of the names given to Jesus was Immanuel (“God with us”). In John 1, we see it spelled out more fully:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

This idea isn’t that God needed a space to make himself known to us, but that Solomon needed a space to be able to understand where God was. God didn’t need us to know Jesus but God knew we needed to know God, and Jesus was the way we could wrap our minds and hearts around God. God didn’t come near to us, to be with us, because he needed to know us better, he came so we could experience God’s love.

But God took it a step further: God stayed. In Acts, the disciples wait in Jerusalem (again, the holiest of holy places at the time) and await the promised “gift.” By the death of Jesus on the cross, God liberated us from sin and death; with the arrival of the Holy Spirit, God has made himself available to the believers all of the time.

In the last verse of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” John M. Neale’s hymn calls on God one last time,

“O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.”

Having already prayed for mercy, for knowledge, and for the promise of heaven, Neale points toward the future time when God will be near to us, personal, close, and forever. But Neale recognizes that God’s proximity is in direct correlation to us being open to the way God wants us to live: for us to truly recognize that God is with us, we must live our lives in a way that is pleasing to him.

If we can see that God doesn’t need a place, that God has come near, that God IS near, then the question remains, are we acting like it? Are we treating ourselves like the Holy Spirit lives within us? Are we interacting with our family, our friends, our coworkers like they could in fact be Jesus? Because of the Holy Spirit is in us… it could be in them, too.

Recognizing that God came near, because he loved us that much, changes everything. Recognizing that Jesus came here once and that he’s coming again sets us up to recognize that we’re not alone, and challenges us to consider the way we interact with Christ in others. Colin Raye simplified it for us when he asked “what if Jesus came back like that?” laying out the case for Jesus as a hobo or a drug addict, and asks us if we’re a place God would want to be?

It’s a lot like preparing the house for company. There are things I’m doing all of the time, like the laundry or the dishes. But I can let the dust slide, maybe fail to vacuum as often as I should. And then the guests are going to be there the next day, and it’s a pell-mell race to get everything looking just right. Would it look like that if Jesus was coming? Would you have to “scrub up” your life, throw out a bunch of trash, to make it presentable?

Solomon made a temple, and God squeezed himself into Solomon’s idea of space and time to meet with his people there. Then he became a man to live like us and with us, so we could see what sacrificial love looked like. When he comes again, will our lives be open and ready to receive him? Will we be ready?

This is the 9 a.m. sermon for The Stand UMC on September 1, 2013, at Blandford UMC on South Crater Road, Petersburg. 

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FF Rant: Back Away Slowly… (Fantasy Football)

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Jacob Sahms

There are just some situations you should avoid…like the advice I gave my college students back in the day.

“Don’t make any major decisions after midnight.”

“If it’s not a good idea at two in the afternoon, it’s definitely not a good idea at two o’clock in the morning.”

“Don’t cheat.”

Seem like no-brainers, right? Too often, we live life like everything goes and it’s all fun, when instead, we need to recognize that there are consequences. Drafting the following guys will bring bad consequences this season…

Ray Rice has too much tread worn off the tires, Bernard Pierce is nipping at his heels (and carries), and Joe Flacco’s intermediate route runners (Anquan Boldin and Dennis Pitta) have left the building. Rice is going to get a lot of defensive attention.

Wes Welker is not in Kansas, er, New England, anymore. He’s one of the many receiving mouths that Peyton Manning has to feed, and folks who expect a repeat of his hundred-plus-reception seasons are forgetting that he’s getting long in the tooth, even if he’s still short. (And I promise that it’s not just the Patriot fan in my writing that!)

DeMarco Murray (or Darren McFadden) will not be on my team. He’s too breakable, like Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable, to be worth the draft pick/auction price that you’ll have to pay to get him. Save yourself the “will he play or won’t he” on Sundays and leave him for Jerry Jones to fawn over. He’d be better off sitting in the cockpit of a Pacific Rim jaeger.

Greg Jennings has been running his mouth more than the hosts of The Talk but he’s forgetting that Aaron Rodgers is an all-world quarterback and Christian Ponder was so-so at Florida State. Oh, and Jennings is still getting older. He should stick to complimenting Mike McCarthy, because he’s going to want to retire as a Packer soon.

Andrew Luck had a beautiful rookie season. He blew away everyone’s expectations, and even made the Colts’ fans forget (or at least, not miss immediately) Peyton Manning. But Bruce Arians is in Arizona, Pep Hamilton wants to run, and Reggie Wayne makes Jennings look like a young pup. Draft him, but don’t expect a repeat of last year. I’m also avoiding Ben Roethlisberger, whose deep threat (Mike Wallace) has taken his talents to South Beach, and whose running back is a rookie (Le’Von Bell) that didn’t light the world on fire at Michigan State.

It’s almost time for the real games to begin. Got questions? Critiques? Leave ’em here or Tweet me at Spider_Raven. Next week may just be the release of my perfect team…

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