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Be You - Psalm 139:7-16

6/22/2021

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They say just be yourself, just be you.  But not too much you because you wouldn’t want everyone to know the real you.  That’s too risky, too much information.  Other than that, just be you. 

They say be strong and assertive, but not too assertive because you don’t want to appear bossy or come across as a demanding control freak.  Be strong, just not too over the top. They say be confident, but not overly confident.  You don’t want people to think you are arrogant or rude.  You don’t want to come off like a snob or anything.  Be sure of yourself, but not too sure. 
Be smart, but not too smart.  You know, not like a know it all or like you are too good for the rest of us.  Be smart but don’t make anyone feel dumb. Be sensitive, but not too sensitive, otherwise people will think you are weak or too emotional, or that you can’t handle your emotions. 
Be creative, just not too creative because we don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or feel out of place.  Express yourself but just maybe not challenge ideas.  Be open but not too open because then you might change how you think about something or change how you feel about other ideas and insights.  Be open, just not too open.  What I mean by all this is, just be you.  Mostly. Kind of.  

Is it any wonder that young people struggle with knowing who they are, their identity or relationship to the world, or struggle with just being themselves?  Is it any wonder that adults wrestle with knowing how much of themselves to be or reveal and when and where and how?  Or who they are once their kids grow up, who they are if they have no kids, or who they become if they are married, not married, divorced, or widowed?

Identity.  On the one hand it’s a simple thing.  On the other hand, it is a multi-faceted and challenging undertaking.  It is something we are born with yet we spend our entire life growing into. 

The book of Psalms gives the best example of who we are and who we are to be as God’s people and what it means to live into our identity.    It is a book of tragedy, hope, and justice that speaks truth to the reality, pain, sorrow, love, victory, and joy of this thing we call life.  It has been described as, “both, humanity's words to God and as God’s word to humanity” (NIB 642).  
As we consider the meaning, power, and purpose of compassion as it relates to the meaning, power, and purpose of being ourselves (individually and collectively), may the words of Psalm 139:7-16 teach us who we are. 

God created you.  God knows you.  There is no where God cannot find or pursue you.  Your life derives from God, belongs to God, and finds its purpose in God.  I believe you are never too old to hear again who you are.  Your identity, individually and collectively is found in God.  The key word in Psalm 139 is the word “known.”  It may be entirely coincidental that it occurs seven times; the number indicating fullness or completion, but such a pattern reinforces the message that the psalmist is fully and completely known by God.  The very first word of the psalm is the divine name “yahweh,” and the first word of verse two is the Hebrew pronoun “you.”  So while verses 1-6 are often described as a statement of God’s omniscience, what really matters about God to the psalmist is that the divine “you” knows the human “me.”  One commentator put it this way, “from beginning to end it is I and you” (NIB 1235). 

God’s gift of compassion is in that I - you relationship which in turn allows us to participate in the you - we relationship.  Compassion is God’s gift of love poured into our hearts that we might have and express compassion for others, ourselves, and the world.  God created and designed us for relationships.  Strong, meaningful relationships understand the depth and purpose of compassion.  At the heart of that compassion is the freedom to be you - the God created, perfectly imperfect, flawed but trying, you.  The presence of such love / compassion invites both fierce loyalty and sweet surrender to God first and our human connection second. 

Being you is not about making everyone happy or trying to be everything to everyone (individually or collectively).  Being you is not about thinking you have to forfeit what you believe or deny your core values.  It is not about anything being taken from you.  It is not about political games, manipulative power plays, or sacrificing who God made you to be.  Being you is about knowing that you are known and have purpose in the God of the universe.  Why would you as an individual or as a collected body called the church, want to be anything or anyone else?  

Compassion is about being you the person and you the church and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and use your interests, passion, talent, skill, education, experience, and resources to be a beacon of hope in our world. Oh how our world needs hope.  Compassion means to be a people and a place of hope; a place to come home to, a safe place to land.  To be a people and a place of welcome and refuge; of healing and growth; of learning and transformation.  

Being you is not about having all the answers, it's being willing to ask the questions and listen for understanding.  It is not about being right or wrong, or keeping score.  It is about being willing to seek wisdom and truth alongside others; along other “yous” and live into the answers together.

Be you church.  Don’t make it harder than it is.  Don’t get bogged down in what ifs and what abouts, just be you.  Be you - try something different, explore opportunities and find fresh expressions of hope, of ministry, of transformation.  Be you individually and collectively - the you God created and brought together.  Don’t let fear dictate faith.  Don ‘t let conflict control decisions or commitment level.  Be you -  and allow the God who knows you to use you as God’s expression of compassion to the world.  You be you.  I’ll be me.   We’ll be us and God will lead the way. 

May it be so.    Amen 
Pastor Jenothy Irvine 
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Be Kind - 1 Kings 19:3-9

6/15/2021

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There’s an old legend that tells how God sent one of his angels to Satan with the message that all the methods the devil uses to defeat Christians would be taken from him.  The devil pleaded to be allowed to keep only one.  The angel, thinking it an unusual, modest request from the greedy devil, agreed Satan could keep that one.  “Which one would you want to keep?” the angel inquired.  “Let me keep discouragement,” was Lucifer’s reply.  The angel agreed.  Satan could keep discouragement.  And the devil rejoiced for, said he, “In this one I have secured all I shall ever need to accomplish my dastardly work.”  
    
If there is one thing that will tear a person apart more than just about anything else, it is discouragement.  Broken bones can be repaired.  Torn muscles eventually heal.  Even grief, loss, and disappointment mend in time.  But a discouraged soul is hard to overcome.  Even those we consider some kind of “super human” face discouragement at one point or another.  In recent years more and more people of influence; actors, professional athletes, inventors, musical icons have cleared their throats of the embarrassment or shame and given voice to their experiences of discouragement and the toll it took on them; the manner in which it nearly destroyed their lives, careers, and families.  Harrison Ford, Prince Harry, Adel, Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, Micheal Phelps, Duane “the rock” Johnson, 

Fame, fortune, or education.  Status, accomplishments, or skin color.  Experience, location, or lifestyle.  Religion, spiritual formation, or biblical foundation.  None of it matters to discouragement.  Even the biblical greats found themselves at the mercy of the devil's use of discouragement.  

Take Elijah for example.  Elijah was perhaps the greatest prophet.  Best known perhaps for his showdown with the 400+ prophets of Baal, a popular pagan god during the time of King Ahab.  
During the reign of King Ahab, there was a horrible drought and famine in the land and people had turned to praying to and offering sacrifices to the pagan gods and following the pagan prophets in desperate attempts to appease them so that the rain would come, crops would grow, and life would get better.  People were turning away from the God of Israel and prophets of Israel were being killed.  Elijah comes on the scene and confronts the situation.  He tells the people of Israel to make a decision - to stop trying to please a pagan god, listening to the prophets of Baal, while claiming to worship the God of Israel.  Stop worshiping idols, make up your mind, and trust the One true God.  So he tells them, get two bulls and prepare them for sacrifice.  He tells them “You take one and put it on the wood of the altar with no fire to it while I take the other, prepare it and put on another pile of wood and put no fire to it.  Then you call on the name of the gods of Baal and I will call on the name of the Lord and the god who brings fire, is God.  The challenge commenced and the prophets of Baal called upon their god from morning til noon and nothing happened; no fire.  Elijah comes and basically eggs them on saying, come on call louder, and they continued until late into the day.  No fire.  

At a time when Elijah should have been feeling incredible, undefeatable, secure in his calling, and like he was being used as a powerful voice for God, instead, he felt vulnerable, insecure, and scared.  “After the heights of triumph come the depths of despair.  And it is often when in this second state of heart and mind that we are more open to new learning.” What begins as running for his life, becomes a pilgrimage of compassion.  Elijah learns the life giving and life saving message of compassion for self through God.

When we listen to and observe the life of Elijah, we hear and recognize common emotions, questions, and struggles we have all had in times of stress, struggle, and maybe even during times of perceived victory.  It often seems as though on the tail of success, discouragement can creep in.  In those moments it is easy to want to run and hide, or run away to the last place we felt safe, strong, or grounded.  It is when we want to pull the covers back over our heads and say, “nope not today.”   So often and especially in our western culture, self compassion is seen as being weak, or too touchy feely, or some self-centered act of self help.  When in reality self-compassion is the restorative work of God’s love for God’s people. 

We have all been through a lot this past year and a half.  Many have been through a lot without the pandemic.  Now, it seems, we have the relief and joy of seeing things on the other side a little bit, which feels like victory.  Let’s not allow discouragement to take that from us.   Be kind church - to others, yes and to yourselves.  Do not let discouragement steal potential of new beginnings and possibilities, or stifle creativity and hope.  Be kind.  Don’t make a big splash about it.  Don’t overthink it.  Be kind to others AND to yourself.  Don’t feel bad about it.  Don’t wallow in it.  Just be kind to yourself too. Laugh a little more.  Play a little.  Rest.  Do what feeds your soul and be prepared for the journey we have ahead.  

 In the name of Jesus, may it be so.  Amen.

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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Be Love - Zechariah 7:7-10

6/8/2021

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Think we already know what there is to know about compassion?  Then why are so many people broken and oppressed?  Why are mental health issues running rampant?  Why is the burnout rate among health care professionals, social workers, pastors, and teachers hitting record highs?   Why does the suicide rate among young people, veterans, and law enforcement continue to increase.  Why are hate crimes becoming almost normalized?  How is it that women, children, people of color, and the marginalized are still the largest groups to experience injustice and violence?  Why does it seem we have become calloused to the pain and suffering of others and accept it with comments like, “it's just the way it is,” “they chose to live there,” “it’s always been that way”? It’s easy to point to the pandemic as the cause, and it has had an impact, but these things were happening pre-pandemic.  We may think we understand compassion and I am sure to the best of our knowledge and ability we do.  AND I believe we can do better.  I believe we must do better.  God calls us to do and be better. 

That was the message of the prophets.  The Old Testament is full of the witness and testimony of prophet after prophet speaking the truth and wisdom of God to a people wandering in the wilderness of uncertainty, struggle, war, violence, political upheaval, division, and unrest.  Sound like any situation or time in history you know of?

Prophets in the ancient world, were called to deliver messages from God, tradition marked them as preeminent bearers of the divine word. Hebrew prophets rarely, if ever, merely warned or gave advice; they spoke the divine word with authority. Some biblical authorities state that the phrase “the word of the God spoke / came to…” occurs some 2,000 times in the Old Testament alone.  It was the way God revealed God’s self, rule, law, way, and expectations to God’s people.  They weren’t magicians or fortune tellers.  They were ones identified by God and others to have a special connection, depth, and intercession with God and had authority to speak divine messages to the people of God.  You probably know or are familiar with the big guns of the Old Testament prophets.  Those known as the major prophets - guys like: Isiah, Jerimiah, Ezekial, and Daniel.  Lesser known are some of the minor prophets - folks like: Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Zechariah, and Malachi.
    
Zechariah was a prophet in Jerusalem around the time of 520 - 518 B.C.  He lived and ministered during one of the lowest points in the experience of the Hebrew people throughout the whole biblical period.  Some 66 years earlier, the city of Jerusalem had been defeated by the armies of Babylon and its temple had been destroyed, desecrated.  Large numbers of Jerusalem’s population were exiled to live in the labour camps, others escaped and settled in foreign countries.  Only a few remained in the promised land; devoid of any leadership, they survived, but they had neither the vision nor the will to retain the vitality of faith which used to be celebrated.  By the time Zechariah comes on the scene, the Persian Empire has taken control, defeating the Babylon armies.  Cyrus, the Persian Emperor, made it possible for Jewish exiles to return.  Of those who returned home, a few seemed to have set about the task of restoring the temple which had been destroyed.  The problem was, there was no money to rebuild.  The economy was bad, supplies were low, and a lot of believers thought it better to just let it crumble and forget about rebuilding (Craigie 133-34).

When the people had given up on rebuilding the place of worship they began to cling to the practices, rituals, and rules of the church.  So much so that they began to hold the practices (fasting, prayer) in higher esteem than the One who gave them. They focussed so much on looking and sounding like a church - going through the motions to make themselves look and feel like church, that they lost sight of what made them church in the first place (Craigie 189-91).

Zechariah steps in and boldly reminds them as so many of the prophets did for generations before him. Zechariah challenges the people of God just a few verses earlier by asking, “Do you do this (fasting) for yourselves or for God?”  It isn’t the rules and practices that make a people a church.  It’s the presence of God’s love in the hearts of the people and how that love is made manifest through acts of compassion - compassion to see the suffering of others and take action as Jesus modeled later in the New Testament.  It’s the ability to empathize with the “other” and feel compelled to reduce their suffering as Jesus did.  It is different from mercy.  Mercy is a gift given or offered out of compassion - Compassion is a tangible expression of God’s love to the suffering.  It wasn’t that what they were doing was wrong but they were doing it for the wrong reason.  

One of the powerful things about Zechariah’s message is that it did not remain in the Old Testament.  It is quoted seventy one times in the New Testament (tabulation from the appendices to The Greek New Testament, ed. Kurt Aland et al, Third Edition (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1983).  Primarily in the gospels as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John speak of God’s message through Jesus.   What is that message?  It is this: “Treat one another justly. Love your neighbors. Be compassionate with each other.  Don’t take advantage of widows, orphans, visitors, and the poor.  Don’t plot and scheme against one another.” 

Zechariah reminds us that we are not commanded to like or agree with what someone is doing, how they live, or the choices they make but we are commanded to be love in the midst of even our differences.  We are not commanded to have all the answers before we “go and make disciples,” or understand the complexities of every situation but we are commanded to be love wherever we are with all that we are with all that we have.   Who are the widow / widowers among us?  Are they included, remembered, and cared for?  Who are the orphans (those without loving, safe, or healthy families - those with no place to call home)?  Are they seen?  Are they safe and provided for?  Who are the strangers (visitors, outsiders, aliens in a strange land)?  Are they welcome? Are they heard and accepted? 

Without a solid understanding of compassion, we can’t be the church.  Without fully committing ourselves to being love, we do not and cannot have the compassion of God, who is love.  Be love church.  Don’t overthink it.  Don’t over complicate it.  Don’t conditionalize it.  Don’t demand it in return.  Be it - be love and trust the Holy Spirit will take care of the transforming, healing, unifying, renewing, and rebuilding that follows.    Be love.  In the name of Love himself, Jesus.  Amen
Pastor Jenothy Irvine

Sources consulted:
Homeleticsonline.com 
New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. VII 

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All in One - Romans 5:1-5

6/1/2021

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Holding a baby as it takes its first few breaths.  Holding the hand of someone as they take their last breath.  These are moments that leave you speechless.  Watching the sunrise while standing on a 13,000 foot mountain.  Watching the sunset over the ocean as the tide carries your worry away.  These are moments that leave you silent and in awe.  When was the last time you saw something so beautiful you couldn’t find the words to adequately describe it?  Or, heard a sound, a song, a melody, so incredible you stood speechless?  We have all at times experienced the limitations of words when trying to describe those transformative moments.  It’s like trying to explain the unexplainable.

The famous painting, The Trinity, created in the fifteenth century by Russian artist Andrei Rublev helps us do just that, explain the unexplainable.  According to Richard Rohr, this painting has become “the icon of icons” for many in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions.  It is said to be based on the biblical account in Genesis chapter eighteen, in which three visitors came to Abrhaham and Sarah.  Abraham called to his servants and Sarah and they prepared a meal for the guests.  It was during that meal, the visitors told Abraham and Sarah they would have a son even though they were along in years and Sarah was considered barren.  Upon that story and the powerful encounter, Rublev depicted the holy guests sharing a meal together.  

So powerful is this painting that a story is told that one artist became a flower of Jesus just from gazing at this icon, exclaiming, “If that’s the nature of God, then I’m a believer” (Rohr).  The original is still on display in the Tretyakov (Tret-ya-kov) gallery in Moscow.  The invitation for you, for all of us, is to allow this painting to teach, inspire, and broaden our understanding of the trinity.  It is my prayer that all of us will expand our awareness of the role, significance, and power of the Trinity. 

The Holy One expressed in three - each revealing a unique aspect and quality of the whole; each interdependent on the other;  eating and drinking, in infinite hospitality and mutual indwelling; both separate but one, sharing the deepest connection between themselves in true communion and community.  (Rohr).

Like with any powerful piece of art, the more you look at this piece, the more you can see; the more it “speaks” to you of its mystery.  Every part of it was obviously meditated on with great care: the gaze between the Three, the deep respect between them as they all share from a common bowl.  Note the hand of the Spirit pointing toward the open and fourth place at the table.  Why would Rublev include this action?  What does it mean? Is the Holy Spirit inviting, offering, or clearing a space and if so, for what?  For who?  

Perhaps the words penned by Paul in the book of Romans 5:1-5 will provide our answer.  The answer is “you” in the plural form; you all, you-ins, all y’all. Everyone and anyone. 

The power of the Trinity is found in its relationship to itself first and to us second.  Without understanding or at least acknowledging the depth of love and communion in the relationship between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, we cannot come to understand or acknowledge what our relationship with them is nor what our relationship one to another is to look like.  Without the trinity we cannot understand true community.  We do not grasp the depth of love, service or sacrifice without the trinity.  

That was the mystery within invitation to Abraham and Sarah - to be a part of God’s bigger plan and that is (at least in part - as much as I can articulate) the mystery of our participation with God, with Jesus, and with the Holy Spirit - All in one. We are invited to sit at the very table with the Three in One. We - the collective we are the fourth presence at the table! 

The question for us then, is this: What does it mean for you to know that God, the all in one, invites you to participate with them in all things good, beautiful, and true?  What ramifications does it have on your life to know that at any given time and in any given situation or circumstance, there stands with you, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, all in one?  How might your life be changed, your interactions different, your decision making challenged, your relationships transformed, knowing that all of God, represented in all of Jesus, is given to us by all of the Holy Spirit?  All in one.

Dear People of God, if that doesn’t leave you speechless and standing in awe, I don’t know what will.  Amen. 

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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Grace United Methodist Church
1300 E Adams Dr,
Franklin, IN 46131

Phone: 317-736-7962
grace@franklingrace.org

Weekend  Worship Services
Saturday: 5:30pm 
Sunday: 9:00am & 11:00am

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