Category Archives: dad

Joy Conquers Fear: A Sermon

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A sermon preached Sunday, December 16, 2013 at Peakland United Methodist Church.  Scriptures were: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18.

The wilderness.  It was the place where the Hebrews wandered for forty years before reaching the Promised Land.  It was the place where Jesus would go and be tempted for forty days before officially starting his ministry.  And it was the place where John the Baptist lived and preached.

The wilderness is dangerous and inhospitable.  It is barren, rough, and rocky.  It is a place that is unstructured and chaotic.  The wilderness is a place of fear.  We have been in the wilderness this weekend.  We were forced into the reality that the world is not safe and is unpredictable. We have roamed in fear, grief, and horror after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school.

Sometime Friday, a clergy person I know posted on his facebook, “WHY!?!?!”  We have probably all asked the same question at some point.  Why did this happen?  Why does this keep happening?  Will we be safe?

But if we let the words of John echo through our wilderness, we may find the next steps.  John calls for repentance and change.  He calls for the people of God to bear good fruit.  It is not enough, he tells them, to claim your heritage to Abraham, you must act like who you say you are.  To us we hear it is not enough for you to say that you are a Christian, you must act like who you say you are.

In the midst of the barren and inhospitable, John calls for reprioritizing.  In the midst of chaos, John calls the people to focus their lives on God’s love.  And we, like the people in the wilderness of John’s day, ask, “What then should we do?”

John’s answer is preschool worthy.  What then should we do?  We should share.  John gives examples of what to do.  If you have a lot, and your neighbor has nothing, you should share what you have.  It reminds me of the saying, “Live simply, so others may simply live.”  But this sharing goes beyond our material things.  We who claim the Christ Child as our Lord and Savior are to share the love of God with others.  We are to share grace and forgiveness.  We are to share our hugs. We are to share our prayers.

In Philippians 4, Paul tells the church, “do not worry.”  At a time like this, that seems like a tall order.  If anyone knew anything about what it meant to worry, it was Paul.  He had churches that were being bombarded with false theologies and pagan ideas.  The churches were infested with conflict and confusion.  They were looked down upon by the rest of the society.  All of this is tough when you are responsible for one church, but Paul had them scattered all around.  Oh, and Paul was in prison.  Paul knew about worrying.

But Paul goes on to say in Philippians 4, “but handle everything in prayer.”  For Paul, the opposite of worry is prayer.  Instead of worrying and being anxious, Paul says, pray!  Prayer should not be the last resort when we are panic-stricken.  Instead, we should be so tight in our relationship with God, that we open ourselves up to God on a daily basis, so that when we are panic-stricken, we are in a place where we naturally hand things over to God.  We do no worry, we give it God.  Because, at the end of the day, God is in control, not us.

My Dad was an example of this for me.  While he was in the hospital sick with prostate cancer, the meds were leaving him in such disarray that he did not always realize where he was.  So, we took turns staying overnight at the hospital with him.  On the night I stayed, I was a young 20, Dad thankfully was alert to his surroundings. During our conversation that evening, he lifted his hands as high as he could and said, “It’s in God’s hands now.”

It would be easy to say that my Dad was giving up, and to be honest, that’s what I feared was happening.  But the reality was that he was opening himself up to God in such a way that it was natural and easy for him to say, “It’s in God’s hands. I’m not in control. God is in control.”

This experience was a wilderness one for me.  It was a time full of fear and uncertainty. It was a time of sorrow, and a time of hopelessness.  It was difficult to see my Dad, whom I had never seen sick during my childhood, in a hospital bed, barely able to lift up his own hands.

Every year during Advent we come to the wilderness to hear John’s story and his message of repentance and change.  It is a message of transformation and renewal.  There is no getting to Bethlehem and the sweet, little, baby born in the manger without first going through the wilderness.

There is a Native American proverb that goes like this. A grandfather told his grandson about two wolves who were constantly battling inside his heart.  One wolf was greed, hatred, and fear.  The other was love, peace, and kindness.  “Which will win?” asked the grandson.  The grandfather replied, “The one I feed.”  When we open ourselves up to God and live in this tight relationship, we are feeding the wolf of love, peace and kindness.

Paul goes on to say, in Philippians 4, to rejoice!  That too seems like a tall order in moments like these.  We can rejoice, however, because the Lord is near.  One Bible translates as “God lives among you.”  This is a word of comfort, no doubt.  In the midst of our grieving, God is with us.  In the midst of our sorrow, God is with us.  In the midst of loss and tragedy, God is with us.  In the midst of healing, God is with us. These are all causes for rejoicing.  Because God is with us, we discover joy.

This is perhaps why the words from the prophet Zephaniah are so profound.  The Israelites of this generation were surrounded by destruction and exile.  They had failed to listen to God; they had strayed; they had not trusted God.  They were need of renewal and change.

What Zephaniah pronounces is that the crises we face are best addressed in community.  Change and transformation, healing and renewal happen best in community.  Nurturing our relationship with God as well as with others is essential to the Christian faith.    We need each other. The Christian faith is not a solo, rather a choral arrangement.  And at the center of this community is the God who comforts.

Despite the conditions and challenges we face, the pain and disappointment, God is a God who comforts, consoles, and nurtures.  God is a God who hears the cries of God’s children. God has not abandoned God’s people.

The events on Friday showed us that in a moment everything changes.  In a moment 15 first-graders were taken from us.

In a moment a teacher, protecting her students, lost her life.  In a moment the lives of ten individuals in Chicago ended.

In a moment, a father loses his job and a family struggles.  In a moment, an accident leaves a mother in a wheelchair.

In a moment a light begins to shine.  In a moment we discover joy.

And it only took a moment for a baby boy to be born. A baby boy who will change everything.

Go from this place and share. Share the love and grace of God.  Share your prayers.  Share a hug.

 

Amen.

Penny’s Rescue

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When I was in middle school, a friend of my Dad’s brought a collie to our house.  He had found her on the side of the road, hit by a car.  He took her to the vet.  He couldn’t keep her because of the apartment he lived in, so he brought her to us.  He had named her Penny.  Penny looked just like the famous collie, Lassie, just a lighter shade of brown.

Over the years, Penny would be there to see us get on the school bus each morning and to welcome us home each day.

My senior year, our marching band trip was to Walt Disney World.  My Dad was going as one of the chaperones and we were leaving the house to go to the school.  It was that part of the day when evening was coming on.  The sun was slowly slipping away and the moon was slowly rising to takes its place.  Penny was nowhere to be seen.  I remember thinking that this was odd.  She was always around.  She always there to greet us or to see us off.   But on this evening, she wasn’t.

Something deep within me knew that something wasn’t right.

I called her name, “Penny!  Penny!”  Nothing.  No bark.  No collie feet running through the woods.  Nothing.  The strange feeling I had that something was wrong wouldn’t leave me.

I called again.  Still nothing.  My Dad was urging me to get into the truck.  We were going to be late.  It would be ok, he said, she’ll find her way back.  I kept calling.  Then, I heard something.  I asked my Dad, “Did you hear that?”  He said he didn’t.  I called Penny’s name again, and the sound of faint bark could be heard.  Soft, quiet.  Something was indeed wrong.

I took off running, despite the cries of my Dad telling me to wait or to get a flashlight.  Back behind our house was a huge creek that would run into the Pamunkey River.  There was a trail from our house to the creek and another trail that would lead to my grandparents’ home next door.   I ran, stopping every so often to call Penny’s name again, listen for her bark, and then run in that direction.

I ran down the path, jumping over dead logs.  I crossed the creek using the old oak that had fallen in just the right place to serve as a bridge.  I struggled to get up the steep hill using weeds and branches to pull myself up it.

I reached the top and there was this old abandoned house.  No one had lived here for years.  Windows were broken.  Doors were missing.  It looked like something out of a horror film.  As I ran around to the front of the house, I stopped to see Penny standing on the roof of the porch.

Without a moment of hesitation, I ran into the dark house, up the stairs, and found the room whose missing window, Penny had walked through.  I called her to me, and she came back into the house and together we ran out of the house, down the hill, across the old oak bridge, and up the path back to my house.  Somewhere in the midst of this running back, we bumped into my Dad would was coming after me with a flashlight.  But, we didn’t stop, we both kept running until we made it home.

Stand Up 2 Cancer

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April 15, 2001.  Easter Sunday.  For the most part, it was like any other Easter Sunday.  Except for one thing.  One week prior, my father went into hospice care.  Dad was, instead of sitting in a pew, he was limited to his hospital bed at home.  Our world, for six months, was turned upside down when it was discovered that Dad had prostate cancer.  And despite the amount of chemo or radiation he received, the cancer kept returning and each time more aggressive than before.

I remember sitting in the choir loft at church barely able to sing songs like “Up from the Grave He Arose” and “Because He Lives” without getting a lump in my throat.  It was all too surreal.  The music, the words, the prayers were all focused (rightly so) on the Resurrection.

I wanted to get home after church as soon as I could.  I was so worried that he would be gone.  But, thankfully, he was not.  It would be a long day of Dad going in and out of consciousness.  At times he would recognize where he was and who was around, at other times he wouldn’t.  It would be sometime in the 7pm to 8pm time frame he began to slip away.  He was talking with my PaPa, his father.  It was quiet and painless.  That evening, Easter Sunday 2001, Dad passed away.  He entered into resurrection.

My father lost his battle with prostate cancer.

Today is World Cancer Day.  A day designed to raise awareness, educate, and lobby for change.  A day to stand up to a disease that takes away close to 7 billion people.  Will you join me in lifting your voice and prayers to do something?

Learning to Sing Again

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In Suzanne Collins’ book The Hunger Games characters Katniss and Peeta are District 12′s Tributes in the Games. (For those you haven’t read the book (A) you need to and (B) I promise to keep the spoilers to a minimum.)

The rules have changed and now they can work together as a team to win the games.  In one moment sitting in the wilderness of the arena, the two teenagers begin to discuss life back in District 12.

As they recall memories, Katniss remembers her father.  A man whose life and death was by the coal mines.  A man, who when he sang, “even the birds stop to listen.”  Singing not only reminds Katniss  of her father, but also how much she misses having him around.  Singing was something he taught her how to do and something she recalled while in the wilderness of the arena.  Since his death, she has had to grow up and become the leader, supplier, and caretaker of her family.  In in the midst of these added responsibilities, Katniss had stopped singing.  She reflects:

It strikes me that  my own reluctance to sing, my  own dismissal of music might not really be that I think it’s a waste of time.  It might be because it reminds me too much of my father.

A few weeks ago in worship we sang the hymn, “In the Garden.”  I had to stop singing it.  It was one of those moments where if there was a rock for me to crawl under, I would.  But, there was no rock.  It reminded me of Dad.  As his grave side service concluded, the bell tower at the cemetery began to “sing” this hymn.

Music was a central piece to my father’s faith.  He sang in a group at our church called the Gospel 7 since its beginnings.   Still to this day there are certain songs that he sang with this group that when I hear them I pause for a moment because it reminds me of him.

For the longest time I would avoid those songs because the memories were so painful.  For example I couldn’t hear “Go, Rest High on that Mountain,” a song originally recorded by Vince Gill that Dad sang in church often, without missing him to the point of being in physical pain. But now, I add songs like “Go, Rest High on that Mountain” to my iPod so that when the music shuffles through to that song and others like it, I remember.

I remember his powerful witness through song.  I remember riding in his old Chevy truck listening to cassette tapes of the songs he was learning to sing.  I remember sitting in wooden pews listening to him sing during church.  And now, instead of bringing pain, the memories bring me comfort and peace.

In a way, with these songs and memories, Dad is always with me.

Thy Will Be Done

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Last week in our beginnings small group (for college students and 20-somethings), we discussed prayer.  One of the questions we pondered was, “Why would God not answer a prayer?”  As we discussed we began to wonder who from the Bible may have experienced this.

One of the college students mentioned Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus has gone to the Garden to find a quiet place to pray.  He knows what is about to happen.  The guards are going to come and arrest him.  He will be put on trial and convicted.  He had talked about that night during the Passover meal.

But, here, in the stillness of the garden he prays for this cup – the role he is about to play in the salvation history of humanity – to pass from him.  We can all imagine that the pain of the next day would be too much to bear.  Yet, we are reminded that Jesus is a man of prayer.

And what a bold prayer he prays that night.  “Let this cup pass from me,” yes, but also, “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

When Dad was sick with prostate cancer, I would pray and pray asking for healing.  I would plead with God to take the disease away.  But Dad just got sicker and sicker.  It seemed that my prayer was going unanswered.

After many doubtful days, I began to pray a different prayer.  It was one of those days in an empty church when the words just came to me.  It was, no doubt, one of those listening moments in prayer.  “Your will, not mine, God.”  It was a hard prayer to pray.  It was a prayer filled with a lot of what ifs.  But in those days when the cancer was winning, it was the only prayer I could pray.

John Ed Mathison, a United Methodist minister from Montgomery, Alabama, says that when we reach the point where we are able to pray for God’s will over our own, “God helps us out.  God helps us conform to his will.”  The idea of prayer leading to conformity may be an interesting one.   Prayer, listening to as much as talking to God, leads us into an almost mystic understanding and peace of God’s will.  For me, the more I prayed for God’s will to be done where my dad was concerned, the easier it got for me to deal with his sickness and eventually his death.

God’s will is not always what we want, and it is not always the happy ever-after ending we long for.  But God’s will is God’s will.  The more we pray, “thy will be done,” the more we trust God’s will, and the more we find ourselves at peace.

Empty Churches

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He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10, NIV)

I walked into the sanctuary.  It was empty.  No music.  No people.  No noise what so ever.  The only light in the room was that which was peeking through the stained glass windows.

I walked down the aisle, taking in the stillness and searching for the right pew to claim as mine.  There were so many to choose from.  Any would do.  They were all the same.  Yet, I felt called to one.

I continued my search, tracing the tops of the pews on the ends with my fingertips till I landed on a pew three rows from the back.  And there I sat for hours, praying and being still.  My dad had a disease that he did nothing to get.  I wanted answers.  “This kind of thing,” I reasoned with myself, “doesn’t happen to people like us.”

The stillness and quiet of an empty church has always called to me.  It probably started as a kid when I would accompany my NaNa and PaPa on Saturday mornings to our church.  They were (and still are) the janitors.  It was their Saturday recital to go up and spend half the day cleaning the church.

Much later in life I realized how important these days were for my grandparents.  Not because of the time they spent with each other, but with the time spent between them and God.

When Dad was sick from prostate cancer, struggling not only with his disease but also for his life, I would often seek refuge in many an empty, quiet churches.  At times, the words flowed freely lifting up to God.  At other times, it’s like I had forgotten how to pray.  So I sat.  Quiet.  Still.  And in the midst of the stillness and the quiet there was God.  And there I found strength.

Lost Journal

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Sometime last week during LebCamp, my journal went missing.  I  haven’t been able to find it.  I’ve looked everywhere in my office, around the church, in the church van, at home, in my car.  No journal to be found.

I’ve been hoping that it would be like one of those lost and found stories in Luke’s gospel.  Like the lost coin, I’d find my journal and rejoice!  Or like the lost sheep, I’d find my journal and bring it back to the journal fold.  Or like the lost son, I’d find my journal and throw a party.  But, alas, no journal.

And to be honest, I’ve been a little lost this week without that journal.  I do have a nice, clean, fresh, never-been-written-in leather journal, but its not the same.  That journal with its worn cover and pages falling out has been through some incredible journeys with me over the last year or so.  There were thoughts about my recent doctor visits and tests that were run on my heart.  There were thoughts about life, dad, and films.  There were outlines and scribbles about new writing projects.  And, it’s all gone.

But, I’m hopeful that it’ll turn it up and those lost thoughts will be found.  And you never know, maybe I’ll throw a party.

Tangled

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My father never really talked about his faith.  He was a former U. S. Air Force guy who was stationed in Thailand during Vietnam.  His faith was something that was seen not spoken.  But one night in a hospital room while he was battling prostate cancer, he and I had a faith discussion.  It was my turn to stay overnight at the hospital with him, something I was very much willing to escape from if I could.  You see, I was tangled up.

I was tangled up in bitterness towards the cancer, and kind of towards God too; tangled up in fears of a future without my father, tangled up in uncertainties of what that future would look like.  I was tangled up in doubts of my faith, my father’s faith, and doubts in my prayers and the prayers of the people at church.  But this one night in the hospital, with the only background music being the consistent beeps of the various monitors, my father started a faith conversation.  During that conversation, he lifted his hands as high as he could, which wasn’t very high, and said, “It’s in God’s hands now.”

It was almost as if he knew that I doubted; that I was struggling with my faith in the midst of all this.  On the heels of that conversation, I began to slowly be untangled as I began to see that my vision was cloudy because my mind was occupied on the bitterness, the doubts, and the fears.  I began to see that the more I struggled, the more I got tangled up, like quicksand.  The struggling sucks you farther and farther down in the dark pit, rather than upwards toward safety and comfort.

No matter what you’re going through, Christ is walking with you.  In the midst of your hopelessness, in the midst of your anxiety and uncertainties, in the  midst of your fears and doubts, Christ is there ready to untangle you.

Because of Lady

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I’ve been sitting in my office the past few days working on an adult curriculum for our church’s summer Sunday school.  Our Summer Sunday School program is called “One Church, One Book.”  We’re using Kate DiCamillo’s book Because of Winn-Dixie, which captures the adventures of young Opal and her dog Winn-Dixie in a small town.

As I’m rereading portions of the book and writing this curriculum, I’m remembering my own pets.  Especially my last real pet, Lady.

About 11 years ago, I came back to work after a lunch break and noticed that a black lab was wondering around the building.  She was thin, so thin.  She showed evidence of having just had puppies, though the puppies were no where to be found.  She was shy at first, not sure if she could trust me or not.  I went inside, found a bowl and poured water in it.  I took the bowl outside and set it out for her.  A coworker found dog food somewhere in the building and she put that outside too.  After we had gone back in, the lab would finally come get some food and water.  And she stayed.

At the end of the day, someone told me I should take her home.  I wasn’t too sure about that.  While outside, the lab came around, now no longer shy or frightened.  I thought, well, if she doesn’t get in the car, then it’s settled.  I opened the back door of my car and without a word, the lab jumped in and sat down.  So, it was settled.  She was going home with me.

This was about the time that Dad was staying home from work because of the prostate cancer he was fighting.  I took the dog home, much to the surprise of my parents, and quickly said, “We’re not keeping her.  Just for a few days, until I can find a home for her.”  And, I was just as quick to add, “Don’t name her.  Because once we name  her, she’s ours.”

I came home from work a few days later, still unable to find a home for the lab, and she is outside on the deck with Dad.  A relationship was forming between this dog and my Dad in those few days.  Dad had named her “Lady”.  The name stayed, and so did Lady.

Lady became a companion for Dad during those long days of staying home when he really wanted to be at work.  In the book Because of Winn-Dixie, young Opal reflects on how she just talked and talked to Winn-Dixie and he listened.  Dogs are good listeners.  I imagine Dad sitting on the back deck petting Lady and talking things out with her.  And Lady resting her black head on Dad’s knee giving him advice in the way only a dog can.

Lady was also my listener during that stormy times of my life.  We would go on walks through the woods or play fetch in the yard.  After Dad died, Lady still hung around.  She would sleep by my bed at night.  After one stormy night where she got frightened, she slept on the foot of my bed for awhile.  She seemed to fill a gap for me.  A gap I didn’t realize I had at the time.

Lady died about a year ago.  She was a dog with 9 lives, having survived being hit by a car, a really bad cold one summer, and going blind in one eye.  But she lived a good life and was a blessing to me . . .and my Dad.