Sharing God's Love and Grace

Meditation on 1 Kings 17:8–16

Pastor Karen Crawford

Nov. 7, 2021

Link to live-streamed worship service with adult and children’s messages: https://fb.watch/97ZL_5iVT-/

Downloadable Bulletin:

    Hattie May Wiatt wanted to go to Sabbath School in the early 1880s, but the building was too crowded for her and other children like her to get in. What did you think of the story I shared with the children about Hattie May’s gift?

     Russell H. Conwell was the young pastor.  

The church was Grace Baptist in Philadelphia, located, at the time, at Berks and Mervine streets. Russell saw the little girl waiting outside the church one Sunday morning, and he carried her on his shoulders to the back of a crowded, Sabbath school classroom.

    Russell met the girl on the street later that week and told her that the church would raise the money to have a Sabbath school building someday for all the children of the community who wanted to come. Hattie was excited and began to save her pennies, without the pastor knowing.

    About two years later, when Hattie was about 8, she was sick and the pastor was called to her home to pray for her. Sadly, she didn’t recover. After she passed away in 1886, her mother gave to Russell Hattie’s purse with 57 cents that she had been saving for the new Sabbath school building.

    Russell would later admit that when he told Hattie about the plan for the Sabbath School, it was just a dream. He didn’t have plans to raise the money and hadn’t told anyone about it. For the church was in a poor, working-class, neighborhood. People didn’t have hardly enough money on which to live, let alone to give to the church.

   But to honor Hattie’s wishes, Russell took the 57 cents and shared her desire for a Sabbath School where the children didn’t have to wait in line or have a ticket to get in. He offered for sale to the congregation her 57 cents. They raised $250 plus the return of 54 of the 57 cents from the people who bought them. Russell mounted the 54 cents in a frame and hung them on the wall of the church for everyone to see Hattie’s gift.

    The Wiatt Mite Society was organized, and they took the $250 raised by the sale of Hattie’s pennies and bought the house next door to the church for the Primary Department of the Sunday school. The church and Sabbath school continued to grow and became so crowded that one day they decided they needed more space for the church and the Sabbath School. They had faith and the 54 cents left from Hattie May Wiatt’s gift—and that was it.

   Russell approached a local businessman about buying a lot on which to build a new, larger church.  “Mr. Baird said: ‘I have been thinking this matter over and have made up my mind I will sell you that lot for $25,000, taking $5,000 less than I think it is worth, and I will take the  54 cents as the first payment and you may give me a mortgage for the rest at 5%.”

  “…Mr. Baird afterwards returned the 54 cents as another gift. Thus we bought the lot,” said Russell in a 1912 sermon, “and thus encouraged of God step by step,  we went on constructing this building. We owed $109,000 when it was done, but we had courage and faith in God… We could hardly have dreamed then that in the number of years that followed this people, without wealth, each giving only as he could afford from his earnings, could have paid off so great a debt without any outside help.”

   But there was one extraordinary gift of $10,000—if the church would change its name from Grace Baptist to “The Baptist Temple.” The church agreed.

   This is a drawing of the first church building at the corner of Berks and Mervine Streets in Philadelphia in the 1880s.

And this is a Broad Street view of the new Baptist Temple, around 1900.

 And this is Russell Conwell, around 1921, with some of the children and youth at the church.

    Are you wondering what became of the house at 1913 North Mervine Street, next to the church, bought by the Hattie May Wiatt Mite Society to be used for the Primary Department of the Sunday school?

    That house would become the start of what is now Temple University. Pastor Russell would be the first teacher of the college, founded to prepare men for ministry.

Here is one of the graduations held at The Baptist Temple.

    All because of Hattie’s gift.

    Our readings in 1 Kings and in Mark are about extraordinary gifts from people so ordinary that they are practically invisible. Unlike Hattie May Wiatt, we will never know the names of these women, only that they are widows and they are poor.

    The widow in our gospel reading is an Israelite woman who contributes the smallest but most generous gift to the temple treasury—two copper coins worth a penny. Jesus calls his disciples and says to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

    But the widow of which Jesus speaks in his first sermon in Luke 4 in his hometown of Nazareth, is the widow of Zarephath of I Kings. When the synagogue of his childhood responds in disbelief, Jesus warns them that he would do no miracles in his hometown and that his ministry would extend to Gentiles and foreigners.  “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”

     This unnamed widow at Zarephath is not a follower of the God of Israel. Yet she is the one whom God chooses to feed the great Israelite prophet, Elijah.

Zarephath is a small Phoenician town, a mile from the coast, about 8 and ½ miles south of Sidon and 14 miles north of Tyre.  This is the homeland of Israel’s Queen Jezebel, a worshiper of Baal, married to Israel’s King Ahab, who built altars to Baal and “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.”

    Elijah meets the widow at the town’s gate, and asks for a little water to drink, much like Jesus will do in John 4 when he meets the Samaritan woman at the well.

     As the widow goes to bring Elijah water, he asks for bread. “As the Lord your God lives,” she says, in respect to Elijah’s faith, she has nothing baked—only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jug. She conveys her sense of hopelessness and acceptance of a cruel fate for herself and her child, when she says,  “I am now gathering a couple of sticks so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son,” she says, “that we mat eat it, and die.”

 “Do not be afraid,” Elijah says. She obeys his instructions to make a little cake of the meal for him first—and then something for herself and her son.  “The jar of meal will not be emptied, “he says, “and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

      The words of the Prophet come to pass.The love and compassion of the God of the Exodus who fed the Israelites daily bread in the wilderness goes beyond worldly boundaries and divisions: Nation and politics. Race and gender. Wealth and poverty. Religion, language, and culture. Marital status. Age, education, and occupation to reach a poor, foreign widow and her son, fed for many days by a jar of meal and jug of oil that never run out.

      The widow will forever be remembered for her welcome and generosity to a stranger and foreigner, someone distinctly Other to her—the great Israelite prophet Elijah.

     Friends, in a moment, we will celebrate our Communion with Christ and one another—and drink deeply from a spiritual well that never runs dry.  As we seek to satisfy our hunger for the bread of heaven, and see Christ and ourselves more clearly, let us give thanks to the God who uses ordinary people for His glorious purposes.

      Ordinary people like little Hattie and her gift of 57 cents for a Sabbath School—and it was all she had. Ordinary people like the unnamed widow who gave a couple of coins to the temple treasury—and it was all she had. Ordinary people like the unnamed, foreign widow who shared her last meal with God’s prophet—and it was all that she had for her and her son. Ordinary people—like you and me!

     Let us offer all that we are, all that we have—for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom.

     As we ask God to cleanse our hearts, heal our hurts, and nourish us to eternal life, let us remember: there are NO SMALL GIFTS when we give of ourselves wholeheartedly. Like manna from heaven, loaves and fishes for a mountain multitude, meal in a jug and oil in a jar, let us remember that God’s provision—for body, mind, and soul—will never end.

     Remembering this and more, giving thanks with grateful hearts, let us break bread together.

Let us pray. Holy One, we thank you for your loving provision for us and for choosing us to be Christ’s followers. Thank you for your promise to use us—ordinary people—for your glorious purposes and for the examples of little faithful Hattie May and her kind pastor, and the two unnamed widows of Old Testament and New—who humbly offered all that they had and held nothing back. Gracious God, build up our faith and lead us to give generously from all that we have—and all that we will become, by the power of the Sprit so that your Kingdom and this congregation will grow. Loving Lord, let us see you and ourselves more clearly as we gather at your table, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, seeking faith, hope, peace, and love as we break bread together. In the name of our Triune God we pray. Amen.

Pastor Karen Crawford

November 4, 2021

Meditation on John 11:32-44

All Saints Sunday

Pastor Karen Crawford

The Presbyterian Church

Oct. 31, 2021

Link to live-streamed service with the message and candle lighting: https://fb.watch/8_xNikrCCo/

Bulletin:

The phone rang yesterday—and it was a rare and wonderful surprise for Jim and me. His nephew was calling on Facetime so that his mother, Jim’s big sister Mary, could see and talk with her one and only sibling on her birthday.

Mary was born on Halloween! She is 10 years older than Jim. Today she is 87.

She is a former longtime church preschool director and kindergarten teacher in the public schools. She decided she would be a teacher when she was a little girl growing up in the Bronx. After she graduated high school in 1952, she went away to New Paltz State Teacher’s College. She graduated from college in 1956 and two years later, married a boy she had met in high school—Chuck Amann, an engineer.

One of Mary’s first teaching jobs was in a one-room schoolhouse in Fishkill, NY. Later, Chuck and Mary moved to New Rochelle and then to Pelham Manor to a home not 5 miles from where she had grown up. They had two boys–Scott and Kenny, and after Scott married Shelagh, two grandchildren came along: Molly and Jack.

When I met Mary around 2005, she had retired, but was still teaching every day, working as an elementary substitute. We had great conversations—Mary and me—with our early childhood backgrounds. She had strong opinions about what’s good for young children’s development. She loved it that I had three boys. She tried to spoil them whenever we visited.

Chuck passed away on Feb. 25, 2017. Mary has never been the same. We don’t know the actual diagnosis, but she has some form of dementia. She lives with a full-time nurse/companion. She no longer remembers or recognizes her children or grandchildren. She calls her oldest son, Scott, by her husband’s name.

When Jim called her about a year ago, saying, “Hi Mary! This is your brother, Jim.”  Mary replied, “I don’t have a brother.” Jim was so sad after that!

On the call yesterday, Mary was having a good day. She was about to eat birthday cake with her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. And though she struggled to find words and engage in conversation, she listened as Scott and Jim took a walk down memory lane, remembering the apartment on Corsa Avenue in the Bronx where Jim and Mary lived as children with their Irish-immigrant Presbyterian parents.

For a moment, there was a lifting of her confusion—and a look of joy. Could it be recognition?  Had we seen a glimpse of the Mary we all knew and loved and for whom we still long?

Then I had this thought. “If only the Lord would heal her.” I decided, right then, that I would pray for her healing—something I haven’t done in a long time. I think I had just given up hope that Mary would ever get better.

But this is the same Lord who called forth Lazarus from the tomb. “Unbind him,” Jesus commands the crowd. “Unbind him and let him go!”

***

     Jesus has delayed his response to Mary and Martha’s message about the illness of their brother, Lazarus, in our gospel reading in John 11. Jesus tells the disciples that the illness is for “God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” He waits a couple of days before going to Bethany. Martha runs to meet him on the edge of town, saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

     Jesus will engage in a theologian discussion with Martha that leads up to his declaration, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

   “Yes, Lord,” Martha says, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

    Martha runs home and tells Mary, “The teacher is calling for you.” She goes to meet Jesus—and this is where today’s passage begins. The one who will gratefully anoint his feet with perfume and wipe them with her hair kneels at his feet, crying and saying what Martha said. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

    Seeing her tears, Jesus is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” This phrase “greatly disturbed” will be repeated. Scholars wonder if this is grief mixed with anger, perhaps at the lack of faith shown by Mary and Martha and the Jewish community. Or, it could be anger at death itself!

     Jesus asks to be taken to Lazarus and begins to weep before praying aloud, revealing more about our compassionate God. Here are just some of the things we can learn from this text:

1. God shares in our grief and losses. This is not an unemotional God who doesn’t care about our pain and suffering. God is not “aloof in the heavens,” says theologian Gilberto Ruiz. “God is emotionally invested in our well-being.”
2. God always hears our prayers and wants us to know that he hears our prayers. Sometimes we assume that if we have prayed for someone’s healing and they aren’t healed, that God must not be listening. God always listens—but God may have other plans!
3. And the purpose of miracles is to bring glory to God and lead others to believe in God’s Son.

At the end of the passage, when the dead man comes out, his hands and feet still bound with strips of cloth, I hear an invitation that I don’t want you to miss. The Lord is asking us to participate in his healing ministry, setting people free from the burdens they carry so that they may become something altogether new.

Jesus could have removed the graveclothes himself. He didn’t! Instead, he compels the crowd into action with, “Unbind him and let him go!” The Greek word translated “unbind” can also be translated “release.” So we can say that Lazarus is “released from the constraints of death.” (Gilberto Ruiz).

The raising of Lazarus is ultimately a sign story—and not just to the group of family and friends at Bethany but to all of us about “what the glory and presence of God in the world really means,” says one theologian, Theodore Wardlaw. “The point is that—through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord—the world is finally not a place where we need to revisit endlessly the losses in our lives that make us weep…We are forever being given the opportunity to step out of sorrows that would otherwise bind us, and to be embraced by what the story points to:.. life-giving resurrection joy.”

   This story is not for people who have never wept or lost, Wardlaw says. It is “for those who, like Lazarus, are being called by Jesus to get back up again—to honor and thank God for what has been… (and) step into a life that still begs to be lived and that invites them forward into a hope filled future.”

   Here on All Saints’ Sunday, we remember and give thanks for the lives of Christ’s followers in every time and place— and read scripture filled with the promise of things to come—when on earth, it really is like it is in heaven.

   My sister-in-law, Mary, is one of those saints of the church who has touched many lives as a teacher of young children, a friend to many, a mother, grandmother, sister, wife, and faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.  

   I had forgotten how she had encouraged and supported me throughout seminary, even though she and Chuck didn’t think women should be pastors. Then, when I accepted my first call to ministry to the congregation in Minnesota, Chuck and Mary made an exception to their rule about female pastors. They were happy and proud—but sad that we lived so far away. Every time we talked to Mary, she invited us to come and stay with them.

   Friends, who are the saints that touched your life? Who encouraged you and nurtured your faith? Parents or grandparents? Another family member? A Sunday school teacher, youth leader, or other church member? A friend or neighbor who invited you to church?

    When I look around this sanctuary, I see a room full of saints! So many of you serve the Church quietly, behind the scenes. You have shaped the faith of many others and helped to grow the Kingdom. In your own personal life, you take time to talk to people and listen to their problems. You pray for the sick. You share what you have with people in need.

    We are all ministers and saints, people of God redeemed by the Son and called to participate in Christ’s healing ministry. Jesus could have removed the grave clothes himself when he called a dead man out of the tomb. But he didn’t.

    Instead, he cried out to the crowd an invitation to serve, “Unbind him and let him go!”

Let us pray.

Loving God, we thank you for forgiving us for all our sins and offering us new lives in Jesus Christ. Thank you for all the saints who have gone before us and who continue to cheer us on the race of faith from the Great Cloud of Witnesses. Empower us to minister to people who are carrying heavy burdens, Lord, and help them to trust in you. Lead us to build up the faith and hope in our community and world. And Lord, stir us to let go of our own burdens that we are carrying so that we may experience the fullness of your resurrection joy! We cry out to you now, “Unbind us and let us go to love and serve in your Son’s precious name.” Amen.

  

Pastor Karen Crawford

Oct. 28, 2021

Meditation on Mark 10:46-52

Pastor Karen Crawford

Oct. 24, 2021

Link to live-streamed service, with adult and children’s messages:

https://fb.watch/8Rse7nEUhk/

Downloadable bulletin:

We gathered for a service of Communion on Thursday afternoon at Windsorwood Place in Coshocton. We were in Velma Hoffman’s living room—Margie Baird, Jan Kobel, Janet Ashman, Velma, and me. The room was warm and inviting. After confirming that Velma doesn’t pay for utilities, we turned on every light in the room to help us all to see the prayer of confession on small slips of paper. And help Janet read our passage of Scripture—the one from the gospel of Mark that we read today.

I studied my friends’ faces as Janet read the story of Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus—sitting beside the road. Begging as he always did. For he was blind. Then he hears Jesus of Nazareth is coming. He begins shouting to Jesus, asking for mercy! “Son of David” he cries two times—his cries revealing that he recognizes who Jesus really is—the anointed one, come to heal and save the world from its sins.

When Janet finishes her reading, we talk about the scripture—Velma, Margie, Janet, Jan, and me. It occurs to me that these four widows understand exactly what happened in Christ’s time—and what it all must mean for us as we seek to live eyes wide open to spiritual truths with the power to transform hearts and minds today.

 They are strong, godly women. All of them caregivers since their marriages and the birth of their children.  All of them still seeking Christ in faith, wanting new and abundant life, even in this season of simplicity and, at times, separation from those they love the most.

Margie has been there only 2 weeks. She enjoys coming out to be with the folks for meals and activities, though the meals seem kind of repetitive, she says. The food isn’t seasoned, so it doesn’t taste like meals at home. And they serve a lot of beans, she adds, and the others laugh in agreement.  “Well, I guess they’re good for us,” she says with a smile. “High in protein.”

 More than the home cooking that they miss, their greatest loss, 99-year-old Velma says, is their independence.  When people ask what she misses the most in her new life at Windsorwood, she says, “My wheels. I miss my wheels!” Giving up her car means that whenever she wants to go somewhere—a quick trip to the store to pick up one thing or to go to church on Sunday morning, she has to rely on someone else to take her.  She doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone.

The story of Bartimaeus speaks to this wonderful group of thoughtful, smart, sensitive women, who often feel, much like the blind man in Jesus’ time, on the margins of society.  We talk about what Bartimaeus’ life must have been like before meeting Jesus–dependent on others for everything. Begging his only choice for survival.

And the crowd of people—many of whom are sighted, with homes, jobs, and full stomachs—sternly orders him to be quiet! Not only is he blind and silenced, he might as well be invisible—an outcast from the crowd.

But when he meets Jesus, and asks for mercy, in an instant, with a word, a blind man’s world goes from scarcity to abundance, darkness to light.  

Velma marvels at how it must feel to suddenly be able to see after being blind, perhaps for a long time. “What would he see?” I ask. Faces and people, Velma says, where he had only heard voices. He would see sky, birds, and trees.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks, after calling for Bartimaeus to come near when he hears Bartimaeus calling to him for mercy.

“My teacher,” the blind man answers. “Let me see again.”

***

 This is the second and final time Jesus will heal a blind man in the gospel of Mark. The first time, in chapter 8, when Jesus and the disciples come to Bethsaida, some people bring a blind man to him and beg Jesus to touch him. He takes the blind man by the hand and leads him out of the village; and when he puts saliva on his eyes and lays his hands on him, he asks him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looks up and says, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” So, Jesus lays his hands on his eyes again—and the man’s sight is restored.  Notice these details—we never know the man’s name, he doesn’t ask for help or healing for himself, and it’s Jesus’ touch and saliva that heal him, not completely at first, but after a second try.

 What’s different about the story of Bartimaeus? Well, we know his name, for one. Most people Jesus heals are never named. They are the poor, the blind, the sick, the lame and demon-possessed.  Bartimaeus is a Greek word that means “son of Timaeus,” which seems oddly repetitive when we read the phrase, “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus” in verse 46.

William Placher, prof. of philosophy and religion at Wabash College in Indiana,

says the repetition is to call attention to the name of the person seeking healing.  “Timaeus” could mean “one who was purchased or bought.” Jesus has just foretold his death and resurrection, saying just before the beginning of today’s passage, “For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Now, Placher points out, “we encounter a son of one who was purchased or bought who needs help.”

The word call is key to this passage; this is the first time Jesus has called anyone since he called his 12 disciples and Levi early in the gospel. This is a call story! Not just a healing story! What does Bartimaeus do in response? I almost missed the significance of this detail.  He throws off his cloak when he comes to him! This cloak, probably his only one and his protection from weather and harm, could easily be lost in the crowd and never recovered.He gives up his one precious possession, leaving behind almost all his material goods—with the exception of the few remaining clothes on his back.

 What a contrast this is to the rich man who approaches Jesus earlier in chapter 10 and asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life. He lacks one thing, Jesus says. He needs to sell all that he owns and give the money to the poor, then come and follow him. That man doesn’t immediately follow Jesus in that call story. He goes away grieving—”because he has many possessions.”

 With Bartimaeus throwing off his only cloak and coming to Jesus for the healing only Christ can give, what does the Lord say is the cause of his healing? Faith. Bartimaeus’ faith has made him well. That word translated well could mean physical or spiritual health. So one could say that Bartimaeus’ faith has also saved him.

This passage, indeed this whole section beginning at chapter 8 with the healing of the first blind man, isn’t really about physical blindness.  It’s about spiritual blindness—something that plagues the disciples from the getgo. They never seem to understand what Jesus is trying to say. Even Peter, the first to say that Jesus is the Messiah, rebukes him when Jesus explains that he will be tortured, die and rise again.

James and John have just come to him with a request beginning in 10:35, revealing their spiritual blindness.  “What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks. They want him to say that, in his glory, they will sit at his right hand and his left.  “You do not know what you are asking,” he answers.

Now, when Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” the blind man simply wants to be able to see again—and believes that Jesus is the one, who, in his mercy, can do this for him, when no one else can.

 “Here, just before Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, is someone who gets everything right,” Placher says. “He recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, gives up everything, asks only for his sight, and follows Jesus on the way. Who is this perfect disciple? A blind beggar, sitting by the roadside, yelling his head off.”

***

Today’s passage stirs us to see ourselves in the story of Bartimaeus.

 Are we the disciples who were called and responded—but are suffering from spiritual blindness? Are we focused on the things of this world, getting stuck in worry, rather than trusting in the things of God?  Are we the ones choosing to live in scarcity and fear, not quite understanding the miracle of our salvation and the new and abundant life in Christ available right now?

 Are we like the crowd, not seeing or wanting to see or be bothered by the blind beggar by the side of the road, crying out to Jesus?

 Are we like Bartimaeus, willing to let go of even our prized possession, as Bartimaeus dropped his one cloak in the crowd when he heard that Jesus was calling for him? Are we ready to follow him, though it may mean sacrifice, it always means sacrifice, truly giving all of ourselves to His loving purposes?

Brothers and sisters, Christ is with us now. And he wants each of us to have the healing our Savior and Messiah offers to all.  He wants us to live eyes wide open to spiritual truths with the power to transform hearts and minds today.

The one who came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many is asking us the same question he asked his first disciples and his perfect disciple—Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus:

  “What do you want me to do for you?”

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for opening our eyes to the truth of your Word. Let it dwell richly in our hearts and transform us, more and more. Help us to never overlook people living in poverty, on the margins of society, like blind Bartimaeus, just trying to survive from day to day. Help us to see, befriend, and meet the needs of others as you lead us. Bless all our widows and widowers of our community who continue in simplicity of lives to minister to others with their wise and loving ways. May they never feel alone or lonely. Fill them and us with your joy. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

October 21, 2021 Edition

Pastor Karen Crawford

Meditation on Job 38:1–7 (34–41)

Pastor Karen Crawford

The Presbyterian Church in Coshocton, OH

Oct. 17, 2021

Link to live-streamed service, including message: https://fb.watch/8Js-bLzvP4/

Download bulletin:

 

I like to read autobiographies. How about you? I enjoy hearing people’s stories, especially the stories of people of faith. I am reading Jen Bricker’s story— Everything Is Possible: Finding the Faith and Courage to Follow Your Dreams.Jen, author, aerialist and speaker, believes that everything happens for a reason and for a good purpose. Everyone has unique gifts or superpowers, as she says, to fulfill God’s call on their lives.

     Jen was born to Romanian parents in a hospital in Salem, Illinois. Her heart was on the right side of her chest instead of the left.  And she was born without legs.

    Camelia, her birth mother, never actually laid eyes on her. “That’s because my birth father, Dmitry, didn’t allow it,” Jen says, “not even for a split second.”  A relative says the doctor who delivered Jen told Dmitry that she would die.

     “All I know is that he took one look at this tiny infant with two appendages where her legs were supposed to be and decided she’d be better off with someone else.”

    Jen isn’t angry about it because they gave her the greatest gift of all, she says—a family that needed her as much as she needed them. Her mother had given birth to 3 boys and desperately wanted a girl, but couldn’t have anymore.

   “This was exactly how God planned for it to be,” her adoptive mother, Sharon Bricker, began telling her when she was old enough to understand. “You were an answered prayer, a miracle, for us. They gave us a gift. They gave us you.”

      After she was placed with the Bricker family, doctors at a St. Louis hospital gave a bleak prognosis: they wanted to make a bucket for her to sit in.  They said she would never be able to sit up, crawl, or move from place to place without being carried. “My mom sat in the doctor’s office and cried her eyes out. But my dad did not agree with their prognosis,” Jen says.

   They took her to Shriners Hospitals for Children in St. Louis, and the news was more encouraging.  “Mr. and Mrs. Bricker,” the doctor said, “this little girl is going to do things you never imagined would be possible.”

   Jen had two surgeries before she was 5, but her strong, confident personality didn’t allow physical challenges/differences hold her back from doing everything she wanted to do. And she wanted to do everything! She learned to talk, spell and read at an early age. She excelled in many sports—swimming, basketball, volleyball, softball, roller skating (she did it standing on her hands) and her favorite of all—gymnastics.  

    At 6 years old, she decided she would become an Olympic gymnast when she saw Dominique Moceanu on TV. Dominique was tiny, dark, and Romanian—like Jen. I told myself, “One day, that will be me.”

    But the focus of her book isn’t all on her dreams or accomplishments. It’s about hers and her family’s faith forged through trials and difficulties. It’s about forgiveness, healing, and finding joy. She wants to inspire others to find God’s purpose for them and not let anything hold them back. Her message is  “dream big; embrace what God has given you; bring light where there are shadows; spread hope, faith, love and peace.”

    The simplicity of her prayer life spoke to me as much as her empowering story. Many people struggle with prayer and worry needlessly that they aren’t doing it “right.”  As if there is a right or wrong way. We only have to look to examples of ordinary people of faith who have nurtured a personal relationship with the Lord and walk with Him each day. Jen emphasizes honesty, trust, and vulnerability when she talks with God.

      “Just open your heart and speak what’s in it,” she says. “For me, praying instantly brings me back to my purpose and connects me to Him. It’s a feeling of instant peace and calm. Jen, you don’t have to worry, you don’t have to stress. God’s here. He’s listening. He’s got your back.” Let your heart do the talking,” she says, “God will get the message loud and clear.”

***

     The Bible is full of examples of the faithful talking with God. They speak from the heart, embracing honesty and vulnerability before God. I think of the prayers of Moses, leading God’s people through the wilderness, terrified that the people were going to stone him! Or the prayers of Abraham, whom James calls a friend of God.

Abraham was constantly waiting for God’s answer —looking up the stars, longing for the offspring that would be so numerous they couldn’t be counted.

And then there’s the prayer life of Hannah, unable to bear a child, praying for a miracle in the temple. She reveals her vulnerability when she doesn’t care what she looks like—praying emotionally, moving her lips without making any sound—to the point where the priest Eli accuses her of being drunk!

      God answers all who persevere in prayer and faith. God answers all! Abraham and Sarah will have Isaac.  The people of God will have water from a rock, bread from heaven, and eventually reach the land flowing with milk and honey. And Hannah will give birth to the would-be prophet and priest, Samuel.

      In the 42 chapters of Job, we hear cries from the heart, honesty and humility from the one who was “blameless and upright,” fearing God and turning away from evil” though he was faced with great loss. The death of his children and loss of herds and flocks, servants, property, all his wealth—and then his health leads him to such grief and pain that he wishes he had never been born.

    Job stirs us to lift up the age-old question, “Why does God allow suffering? Why do terrible things happen to good people?”

    In today’s passage in chapter 38, the Lord finally breaks a long silence and answers his servant, Job.  It’s about time! We have slogged through page after page of dialogue between Job and his 3 friends trying to make sense of what has happened and what all this must mean theologically.  In the end, they come up with nothing, only that it must be his fault.

   When the Lord finally answers “out of the whirlwind,” I am relieved that our Creator is speaking, but I don’t understand. How could his questions for Job about Creation and the wonders of God answer Job’s question of, “Why has God allowed such suffering?”

    God sounds angry to me, and I don’t know the reason for it. Job is only being honest and vulnerable with the Lord whom he loves and fears.

    He sounds angry to a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, too.  “Is this the loving God that we know,” writes Timothy Adkins-Jones in Christian Century, “puffing out their chest and putting Job in his place? Is this the response we need when managing our own suffering? We aren’t God, we weren’t there, and we can’t make lightning? It angers and pains me.”

   But then he finds himself rereading the passage through a lens of love. And so do I…..And it changes the meaning.

     The One who is speaking of the wonders of Creation truly cares for us in our afflictions. Our compassionate God desires to comfort us when we grieve and help us to trust Him completely for everything.

    God is reassuring Job and all of us that we aren’t supposed to understand what God knows.  It’s not only OK that we don’t know God’s plans; it’s part of God’s plan!

 “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord in Isaiah 55:8-9. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

***

     Jen Bricker, author, aerialist and speaker, has experienced great blessings, many of them unexpected, in her life.  

She has overcome challenges to do amazing things and inspire others to share their superpowers with the world. And it was a wonderful surprise when she discovered that Olympic gymnast Dominique Moceanu is her biological sister and that she has a younger sister, Christina, as well. The reconciliation of the family, stirred by a letter from Jen, was nothing short of a miracle.

The Moceanu daughters didn’t know that Jen existed; they didn’t know she was born without legs or that their father had left her at the hospital. Dmitry has since died of cancer.

    “I hope he found peace and took comfort in the fact that God is good,” Jen says, “and wanted our family to finally be whole.” 

      The only way to grow her relationship with her new found sisters, she said, was to invest time in it—talking things through and being open and honest with their feelings.

    Come to think of it, that’s exactly how we grow our relationship with the Lord, investing time, talking things through, being open and honest with our feelings,  trusting that we won’t understand all the mysteries of God—and that’s part of God’s plan.

     I leave you with the words of a young lady born without legs, abandoned by her birth parents, but loved and cherished by God and destined to be an aerialist, author, speaker, and follower of Jesus Christ: “Dream big; embrace what God has given you; bring light where there are shadows; spread hope, faith, love and peace.”

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your love and for the mysteries that are all part of your good plan for us and the world, mysteries that we may never understand. Thank you for your desire to be closer to each one of us, to spend time with us, and for us to be honest and vulnerable with you in our prayers—trusting you enough to humbly but boldly share our hearts, questions, and feelings. Let us follow in the example of your faithful servants, Job, Abraham, Moses, and Hannah. Lord, help us to be more like Jen Bricker and others who are courageous and fearless, willing to take risks for your glory and for the sake of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

October 14, 2021 edition

Pastor Karen Crawford

Meditation on Mark 10:17-27

Pastor Karen Crawford

Oct. 10, 2021

Link to live streamed service with message:

https://fb.watch/8BrvB_1QCv/

Download Bulletin:

I’ve been unhappy with my furniture lately. I find myself admiring the furniture in other people’s homes and feeling dissatisfied with mine. That ever happen to you?  Jim and I have had conversations about his big, green, leather recliner. Sure, it’s comfortable. I’ll give him that.

But it doesn’t go with any of our other furniture or the dark brown carpeting. And it’s well- worn from years of use. The leather is cracking on the seat. Every time we move, I tell him, “We’re not going to bring the green chair.”

He gets a kind of pained expression on his face.  “Do you know how much they cost?” he always asks me. Next thing you know, we are moving the green chair.

And I am admiring other people’s furniture, again… Wishing for more…

We encounter a man in the gospel of Mark today who is eager to meet Jesus and find answers to his questions. I confess that this passage convicts me, for his one problem is, shall I say, close to home.  He has too many possessions! Too much stuff and he likes it too much.

The passage begins with Jesus and his disciples starting out on a journey.

We learn in verse 32 that he’s on his way to Jerusalem. What awaits Jesus in the Holy City? The cross— and the work of God for “us and our salvation,” as we say in the Nicene Creed.

 This encounter with a man anxious to talk with Jesus is an interruption on their way to their destination. Jesus not only allows the interruption, he uses it as a teaching moment for his disciples—and for his followers, in every generation!

Isn’t that how ministry often happens? As an interruption to what WE have planned to do.

Isn’t it curious that the disciples don’t stop the man from approaching Jesus? After all, they just tried to shoo away mothers bringing their children to Jesus for a blessing.  Have they learned their lesson about who is important in the kingdom of God? No, they haven’t. They let this man approach Jesus and join them because he is rich!  With great wealth comes status in Jesus’ society, much like It does in ours today.

Now this man of many possessions IS trying to be faithful. He isn’t a Pharisee trying to trick Jesus into saying something that will get him arrested. He has come to Jesus for answers to his burning question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That word “inherit” catches my attention. What do we have to do to inherit something? Nothing. We receive inheritance when a close relative dies.

Jesus lets that comment go by. He corrects his address of “Good Teacher” –for nobody is “good” but God, and then lists some of the commandments for the man to follow.  “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” As the apostle Paul will say in his letter to the Romans, the sum of the 10 Commandments is LOVE.

The man who interrupts Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem eagerly tells Jesus, “I have kept all these commands since my youth!!!!” He is expecting Jesus to say,  “Good job! Yes, you have done everything to inherit eternal life.”

Instead, Jesus says, “You LACK one thing.” Listen to HOW the Lord speaks to him. In verse 21, he looks at him and loves him before he speaks the hard truth.For the “one” thing the man lacks, Jesus gives a multi-step solution:

1. go, sell what you own
2. give the money to the poor,
3. you will have treasure in heaven;
4. then come, follow me.

In case we think this is one obscure saying of Jesus in Mark, we find similar instructions in Matthew 19:21: “Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” And in Luke 12:33: “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.”

How does the rich man respond to Christ’s invitation? He goes away from Jesus  “shocked” and “grieved” because of his many possessions—and the mistaken belief that wealth and prosperity are the Lord’s rewards for our faithfulness. Therefore, if you are poor or sick, it must be because you or your parents have sinned.

This is the choice Christ has laid before him:  He can have:

                       a: the wealth and status of his life in this world OR

                       b: treasure in heaven

We are left wondering if the man has been changed by his meeting Christ, in spite of his departure in grief and shock.  How can we not be affected by Christ’s loving gaze and invitation to follow him?

We don’t have to wonder how the disciples respond to Christ’s teaching. They are “perplexed” when he says, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” They are “greatly astounded” when he says, again for emphasis, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!” and adds,  “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The disciples ask one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus overhears—or knows the question in their hearts. He looks at them with love, just as he looked at the man with many possessions.  “For mortals it is impossible,” he says, “but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Peter speaks up for the group after that, declaring, “Lord, we have left everything and followed you!” He is still missing the point. “We have done what you asked,” he is saying.  “Haven’t we done enough to be saved?

Friends, we can learn much from this passage. First, we should never allow wealth or possessions take the place of God in our lives.  Stuff isn’t going to make us happier. When we get more stuff, we just want more. I speak from experience. What’s the point of new furniture when you have cats with claws? You end up having to cover it to protect it!

We have heard Jesus say in Matthew 6:24,  “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” But there’s more to this passage than a caution against collecting possessions and loving money. The Lord wants us to hear, once again, that second instruction—after Jesus tells the man to sell his possessions– give to the poor. The Lord is concerned for our needy neighbors and wants us to be concerned, too. This is part of answering Christ’s call!

There’s even more to be learned from today’s gospel lesson. The main message of  the passage, I believe, and indeed  the whole of the gospel is about our Creator’s love and grace. Human beings don’t understand God’s grace! We struggle to forgive ourselves and one another, so we assume God is struggling to forgive us, too.  But God isn’t keeping record of our failures or holding them against us.

And human beings don’t understand God’s unconditional love. Why? Because we don’t love that way and we don’t often see unconditional love in this world. Listen. You need to hear this. As Philip Yancy has written, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”

Brothers and sisters, there’s also nothing we can do to add to Christ’s work on the cross for our salvation.  All of us are sinners; none of us could save ourselves, even the earliest disciples who “left everything to follow Jesus.”

For mortals, it is impossible. But not for God. For God, all things are possible!

Let us pray. Holy One, thank you for Jesus, who shows and tells us how to love you and our neighbors, even those who might be hard to love. Forgive us, Lord, for our obsession with possessions. Remove our desire for more things that never satisfy us. Stir us to care for the poor as you do— to share ourselves, our friendship, and our resources with those in need. And Lord, help us to understand, accept, and receive your love, mercy and grace. Assure us that you have done everything needed for us and our salvation through the sacrifice of your perfect Son, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Lord. In His name we pray. Amen.

Pastor Karen Crawford