Oxford Nazarene Church

On the other side of the highway from where I turn to go toward my neighborhood there is a large clearing of several acres. A few years ago it was leveled but just recently the deep red soil has begun to be moved around again. Several giant machines appearing strangely prehistoric have made this big tract of land their interest, scooping and pushing in the working hours and dozing in the off. It could be part of a highway project long talked about, but I’ve forgotten where we are in that venture.

It is fascinating to see the terrain take shape from day to day. A vision of what the area is to become will slowly make sense. For now I am just amazed at the ability of these machines to make such a big difference in such little time. There are enormous mounds now where there were none before. The earth appears soft and fallow in places it was once packed and hardened. A kind of elevated ramp appears to have emerged. All of these fashioned in the southern red earth with the ease of a child mashing clay.

I enjoy seeing the changes and the progress in a tangible way that is often not as observable in the religious activity of prayer, scripture, and counsel.  These, by nature, beckon us to a level of faith we aren’t always comfortable with. We trust that our prayer is heard and effective. We trust that as we live and move about shaped by the Holy Spirit, the contours of our surroundings are also being formed by Spirit intention. This activity demands of us, too, having the eyes of faith to see it with.

The life of prayer and faith in a believer introduces into an environment a new lay of the land. The terrain has been altered because of the previous work of redemption in our lives and the present work of restoration in others. We may not notice the change as much, but those observing from a distance can see it. I imagine the pushers, scoopers, and dozers have an immediate perspective of the earth that keeps them from seeing great advances. But when I pass on the highway I see major developments.  

So, when we operate out of a life of prayer and forgiveness we can actually foster in an environment the same attitude in others. The terrain of their spiritual surroundings has been adjusted. They are beckoned to maneuver about with the grace they have observed. After all it is easier to navigate down roads someone else has beaten down for us. Likewise, our pessimism and negativity can unfortunately have the same effect, or someone else’s on us. We are called to be architects of this new reality presented in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God. We share in the optimism of grace.

“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” ~Jesus, The Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 17, verse 20.

Keep tipping the world toward Christ,

Pastor Chet

The other day I was having lunch with a friend when we noticed something on the table. The knife and fork of my silverware seemed to be attached side to side.  I slid the knife toward the edge of the table and the fork slid with it, slid the fork back toward the wall and the knife followed alongside, both pulled by an unseen connection with its counterpart. They had somehow become magnetized.

A server was not far so we pointed out the relationship between the two and asked him what might establish the magnetic draw in one or the other. “Well, I have a magnet on the outer rim of the trash can and when I toss trash away it catches anything metal I may have missed,” he said. Evidently, one or both of these had been grabbed by the magnet and inherited a draw itself.

As a child I remember at a Michigan grade school creating homemade compasses out of paper clips I had magnetized by rubbing the north pole of a magnet against the straightened edge of the wiry office tool.  Inevitably, when placed on a cork floating in a cup, that paper clip would turn toward Canada. We had tapped into the unseen forces of nature. Of course we experienced the unseen forces of nature in gravity every time we fell on the playground, too, but this seemed much more magical.

I am drawn to this analogy because a very real feature of this magnetization is the possibility that neither of those pieces of silverware had ever been caught by the trash magnet. Once magnetized a piece has the capacity to magnetize another. A magnetic knife can magnetize a fork. A magnetized fork can share its pull with a spoon. Thrown into a large bin together silverware has the opportunity to rub its navigational interest off on one another.

Christian community is a lot like this. Saved from the refuse and rescued from confusion in the rubbish one may be captured by Divine grip. The saved then have the ability to communicate the Divine attraction. A communal cohesion occurs with others who also inherit the draw toward north. Still others may experience the attraction, too, if we share it.

Keep tipping the world toward Christ,

Pastor Chet

I imagine their engagement was typical for that day and time, a young man and woman with a future ahead of them; Joseph, with a good name and known for his craft, and Mary known for her character. They talked about future hopes and plans, I bet.

Perhaps they paced off where their house would be that Joseph would build when they saved up enough money. Maybe they zoned out where the garden would be, which window would face the rising sun, where they would eat and who they would have over for dinner. Maybe they would sit in the cool of the evening after a long day of work, the two of them catching some privacy in a grove of trees or garden, and Mary would talk about the events of their wedding. She always did have an eye for detail at weddings.

Whatever it was they did, and I doubt it was too different from what you and I would have done, it was greatly interrupted by an unexpected visit one day. A messenger brought news of God’s hopes, God’s plans, God’s blueprints for their future. They were just trying to start their new life together…but God was also looking to do something new.  God was coming to earth in a new way.

Imagine your greatest ambition – your marriage, your job, your project, your studies, (your body!) – hijacked (I can’t really find a less invasive word, here) by God. Have you ever stopped to consider the difficulty of her words in response? “Here am I…let it be with me according to your word.” Those words don’t just fall out of your mouth; not when you have dreams of your own.

Her “OK” might be easy for someone who had no plans, who was low in ambition. Mary and Joseph had a vision, though. I am sure their dreams even included children. God’s timing seemed off. Her “OK” required one of God’s favorite virtues in His people: Trust.

What if we practiced a lifestyle informed by Mary’s trust?… “Let it be.” I want you to go… Let it be. I want you to pray… Let it be. I want you to give… Let it be. I want you to stay… Let it be. (If you are inclined, allow the Beatles tune to carry these words through your heart and mind this Christmas season.) The Holy Spirit enables us to trust God. The Holy Spirit helps me to let it be with me according to His Word.

Keep tipping the world toward Christ,

Pastor Chet

We share a global experience these days. When an earthquake strikes on the other side of the world we see firsthand video. When a group of protesters demands an ear with a distant government we usually hear them first.  Our access to eyewitness is overwhelming.

Earlier this year we saw Japan get hit by a devastating tsunami that leveled several towns and destroyed a nuclear plant.  Now, 7 months later, researchers have tracked a massive stretch of debris carried by the ocean current.  TVs and refrigerators are among the 20 million tons of wreckage expected to reach Hawaii by early 2013 and the northwest coast of the US by 2014. In time Japan’s garbage could wash up on our shores.

Can you imagine this 2,000-mile-long stretch of debris, possibly contaminated with nuclear waste, bobbing across the Pacific Ocean?  Disasters often claim far more victims than originally thought.  The closer the damage comes the more empathy we share with Japan. No doubt there will be a wide variety of response. Some may grow in compassion for the losses of the small Asian island. Others may express anger and frustration at another country for sharing its devastation. 

We experience this kind of floating debris in more personal ways, too.  We often call it “baggage;” the clutter a person brings with him or her into a relationship. I think “floating debris” may even be more accurate, because it denotes that one does not even need to be near the sufferer in order to perceive their trauma. My telescopic intuition spots it in the water long before my shores are in danger.

Many are surrounded by the trash of a broken life. Floating refuse creates a buffer that repels others from risking relationship with the sufferer. Jesus offered a different response, however. When leprosy rode the wake of first century Palestine Jesus broke the barrier and touched the leper.  When a torrent of bad decisions isolated a Samaritan woman from sharing a well with the other women of the community, Jesus cut through her immorality, as well as the racism and sexism of the day, so that he might rescue another soul.

We share a global experience these days…with islands on the other side of the world and with our neighbor.  Jesus taught us compassion is the response of his disciple. He taught us that “they should have known better” and “this is their pain, not mine” lack Kingdom perspective.

It’d be nice if all that garbage could be intercepted before it reaches our land. To an extent we’ve been invited to feel another’s pain, on a global scale and in our interpersonal relationships. Jesus taught us compassion.

Keep tipping the world toward Christ,

Pastor Chet

It’s harvest time in cotton country. Traveling to the Delta for a funeral this weekend I followed a heavy truck on Highway 6 between Batesville and Clarksdale.  While I waited for my chance to pass on the narrow, two-lane highway the sixteen-wheeler kicked up a blizzard of cotton remnants littering the brown pavement.  White flurries swirled about so that it appeared to snow from the ground up.

The highway divided fields at various stages in the harvest process. One side of the road was ripe and full while the other exposed a stand of naked, brown stalks. Still other fields had been chopped and gleaned clean as a freshly shorn sheep.  Giant, behemoth-like machines slowly combed through row after row of cotton crop.

It occurred to me what a complex process allows me to wear my freshly-pressed, white shirt.  The ground scraps are many steps removed from a cotton button-down. Each boll endures a lifetime of removal, cutting, pulling and spinning in order to share its destiny as one thread among many woven into the fabric of a shirt. I wonder how many different fields have collaborated to produce the clothes I’m wearing now. The flurries on the street, dropped during the gathering, are unlikely to ever be grafted into a garment.

I tend to go about my day fairly unaware. I don’t know a lot about the textile industry even though I dress every morning. I don’t know how my computer connects with yours but we still communicate on a regular basis. And I don’t know the hidden psyche of the person I meet in public but I’m sure he and she could tell, given a chance, about his dreams and her ambitions.

We categorize persons with relative ease. This one is saved, that one is lost. She is successful and he is a loser.  This one made it into a Joseph A. Banks shirt and that one has become highway trash. Each starts out the same. Each has potential, the seeds of hope deeply embedded in the fiber of his being by the Creator.  We’re talking about people but it sounds like we’re still talking about a cotton boll. Perhaps we can agree to: never underestimate another’s struggle. We just don’t know all the reasons why someone is where he is.

We can take great confidence, however, in a God who is deeply interested in seeking out and finding the least of these. Christ told story after story of God’s desire to gather those that seem to have missed the harvest. God wants these and He yearns for the religiously minded to look at the world with new eyes, hopeful ones full of optimism and grace. For surely it is His desire that we all be peacefully woven into a communal fabric of spotlessness, clean and ready for His righteousness.  (Ephesians 5.7; 2 Peter 3.13-15)

Keep tipping the world toward Christ,

Pastor Chet