VBS 2008

Last week the children of Oxford & McDonough got to attend VBS at McDonough United Methodist Church. Our theme was Beach Party, and we had loads of fun singing, dancing, doing arts and crafts, and learning about God! Below are some pictures from the week:

Vacation Bible School definitely was a good time this year! Our closing program, on Friday night, allowed the kids to sing, dance, and show off what they learned in front of a crowd that filled the McDonough UMC sanctuary.

But I think everyone's favorite part of the week was when it was time to eat!

July 20th Sermon Capsule - What is Faith?

This week we tackled the topic of Faith. More specifically the question "What is Faith?" I decided to defer to several of you to help me answer this question and we got words like trust, confidence, belief, etc. It seemed that we had a pretty solid handle on synonymous words for faith, but when I asked if I could see individual's faith we hit a snag. Every person that I asked the question "Can I see your faith?" responded with blank stares and puzzled looks. This is where our sermon began in earnest.

Being 21st century, enlightened Americans, who also fancy ourselves as Christians, we tend to think of faith as merely an intellectual assent, a sort of mental excercise that once gone through is over and done with. Many of us tend to think of faith in these terms:
Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ,
Yes, I've asked him to be my savior,
Therefore, I have faith.
End of story.
Unfortuantely for us, this is not quite how the Bible understands faith. Our story of the blind beggar, (Bartimaeus), shows that faith is more than thinking, believing, trusting, or having confidence in, but that faith is also about action. Bartimaeus' faith was shown by his insistance to be known by Jesus and to in fact act Jesus for healing. In response to this bold and radical action in faith, Christ tells Bartimaeus that it was his "faith" that made him well!

This action of faith is what James talks about when he discusses faith without works being dead. The notion of a faith that drives the faithful to action is also what the Apostle Paul refers to when he speaks of the "faith" of the church in Rome and the proclaimation of it occuring throughout the world! Such a faith, characterized by action, would mark the people of God out, and truly make our faith known.

In Vacation Bible School last week, I conducted an experiment with the children, that involved water and rubbing alcohol. When several drops of water were placed onto a plate (the water had green food coloring added), we were left with a puddle. If another drop of water (or more) was added, the puddle just grew larger. When even one drop of rubbing alcohol was added, something amazing happened! The drops of water shot out away from the rubbing alcohol and we were left with a ring of water around where the rubbing alcohol was dropped. The moral of the story was that if we strive to be like everyone else around us, we will succeed and blend in, indiscernable from the rest of the world. If we strive to be like Christ, and live out our faith, we will stand out in a way that cannot be ignored!

My prayer for all of us, myself included, is that we act more like that drop of rubbing alcohol than that puddle of water. My hope is that people will not need to ask us to see our faith, because truly we will be living it each and every day, in a way that causes us to stand out as the people of Christ, Christians!

Things that Keep Us Up - DEATH

This week, for our weekly discussion (yes, that's right, "discussion" please feel free to post comments and make this an interactive thing) I would like to talk about death. I can think of no other topic that has kept me up more often in my short life, and therefore can think of no more appropriate topic for us to discuss in this space.

For many of us, death is something we try to avoid thinking about as much as possible. When we do find ourselves thinking about the subject, it's often at night, when we are in bed, when everything seems so bleak and hopeless. I can think of several such times for myself where I've actually cried myself to sleep thinking about death in general and my own death specifically. If this sounds familiar, then today's topic is for you, if not then save yourself a few minutes, stop reading and do something really important.

It seems to me that the problem many of us find when thinking about death, is that we know so little about death. As humans, we fear the unknown. It turns out, no living person knows much about death, and when you die, you can't really come back and tell folks about it! The Bible also offers little help on the subject. Sure the Bible mentions death a good deal, but it really doesn't tell us a whole lot about death, other than that it's good to be considered one of God's own when you die. Such a lack of knowledge has many of us straining to learn anything we can about death and the unkown. Such efforts lead many to reading books written by those who've died and come back, or even visiting/listening to fortune tellers, astrologers, mystics and others who claim to be able to communicate with the dead.

I recently read an e-mail, sent to me by Sue Marchetti (from McDonough), that got me thinking more about this. The point of the e-mail was that we should focus less on what we don't know, and more on what we DO know about death. It seems when thinking in this way that the Bible has much to say, most importantly things like the following passage from John14:1-7. Basically this passage, and others like it, proclaims that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, will be there when we die and in fact has already prepared a place for us. Such a reality begs the question what else really matters!?!?

I realize for many of us, we will still find ourselves dwelling on the uncertainty of death, and the fear that all of this might just be wishful thinking. Having said this, we can only control what we can control, and we can only know what we can know, the rest we have to leave up to God...that's what faith is for.

July 6th Sermon Capsule - Theodicy

So yesterday we dealt with the question of Theodicy. I discussed that many people refer to this as "why do bad things happen to good people" but then stated that more rightly it should be "why do bad things happen at all". Essentially Theodicy is just a fancy church word for people's attempt to understand how an all good and all powerful God, could allow evil or bad to exist in the world at all.

Whether people realize it or not, they struggle with this question throughout their lives, and most often during funerals. I told a story about a young girl (Kelly) who was only 1 week away from her high school graduation. Kelly was planning on attending college to be a marine biologist because she loved dolphins. Kelly had scheduled for her first semester of classes, spoken with her roommate to be, several times, and even filled out all that terrible financial aid paperwork. Everything was set for her to take that next step toward becoming a marine biologist. One day, Kelly was driving her four year old sister to pre-school when her car was involved in a terrible accident. Kelly was killed instantly and sister was seriously injured and air-lifted to the hospital. While in the hospital that night, with a broken and battered four year old, and two parents trying to cope with the reality that their oldest daughter was dead, I was asked this question "How could God let this happen?" This is what comes to my mind everytime the subject of Theodicy comes up. This is the question of Theodicy.

There are several potential solutions to this problem, but we will cover a few of the most common ones. Below is the list of potential solutions I covered and brief descriptions of how they solve the problem of an all Good and all Powerful God allowing evil/bad to exist:

1) There is no God - this solution solves the Theodicy problem, quite effectively. If there is no God, then there is no problem with evil or bad things existing in the world. The world is what it is, and only the strong will survive.
2) God is not all Good - in this solution, we just assume that there is a God, but that God is not necessarily good all the time. Therefore any bad or evil we experience is the result of a malicious or at least indifferent God.
3) God is not all Powerful - here God is good, but merely unable to guarantee that world will always be good. God is powerless in most instances to keep bad/evil out of the world.
*These three solutions were basically dismissed on Sunday, since I assumed that as a gathering of Christians we would at least be able to agree that there is a God, that God is all Good, and that God is all Powerful.

4) Humanity's definition of Good and Bad is wrong - basically this solution reasons that if we are mistaken about good and bad, then everything we call bad could really be good from God's infinite and all-knowing perspective.

5) All part of God's plan (Calvinism) - some things that happen may be bad, but ultimately they work toward God's perfect and good plan, so therefore it's ok. This solution gets very close to an "ends justify the means" mentality.
6) God as Divine Watchmaker (Deism) - this view was held by many of our founding fathers. It states that God created the world/universe with certain rules or laws, and set it up so that everything would run itself. Therefore if you break one of those rules/laws (ie, gravity) don't expect God to jump in, break the rules, and save you.
*If you find yourself attracted to one of these two solutions (5 or 6), then you won't be the happiest with a church like the United Methodist, since these two stand as examples of different understandings of God that are more accurately associated with other churches/denominations. Solution (5) might appeal more to a Presbyterian, while solution (6) might appeal more to a Unitarian Universalist.

7) Free Will - God created humanity with the freedom to choose to love God, or to choose things other than God. In the story of the Fall (Genesis 3) we find the result of this free will leading to sin and the introduction of evil/bad into the world. This solution states that all evil/bad in the world is a result of free will and humanity's sinful/fallen nature. In the Fall account in Genesis 3, it is stated that not only are humans affected by this fall, but even the Creation itself will be affected. Therefore even natural dissasters could be considered a result of the Fall and humanities free will.

8) No Answer/Solution - This final solution is no solution at all, and is by far the most unpopular. In Job 38, God answers Job's complaints basically by telling Job that he does not need to know why bad things happen. Sometimes when tragedy strikes, we seek for answers, but none can be found. We cry out to God and God seems silent.

When Kelly's parents asked me why Kelly died in that terrible car accident, why their other daughter was bruised and broken, swollen beyond recognition in the hospital bed next to us, I gave them the best and most honest answer I could..."I don't know". Sometimes we spend so much time looking for the right answer, trying to say the right thing, when the right answer is that there is no answer. Sometimes we don't know, we can't know, and we may never know.

Things That Keep Us Up

Our family recently returned from a trip to Maryland, and subsequently missed worship this Sunday. Since we were not here, I don't have a Sermon Capsule for you. Instead I'm posting a segment that I hope becomes a staple on this blog. It's entitled "Things that Keep Us Up" and it will focus on those issues/questions/worries that keep us up at night.

This week we'll deal with the ever increasing price of gasoline at the pumps. This is a hot topic for just about everyone, and my guess is that many of you spend much more time thinking about gas prices than you did even 5 short years ago. If you click on this link you will find a story dated February 10, 2003, where the author talks about gas prices skyrocketing to $1.60/gallon in the US! I bet most of you would welcome such prices now. I paid $4.15 this morning at Blue Ox in Oxford!

So what can we do about ever increasing gas prices? Well, as I see it, we have a few options, starting with complaining. That's right, you can complain and gripe to anyone who will listen. You'll either make yourself feel remotely better, or get yourself more worked up, but either way you won't really do anything to change the situation. The second option is you can try and come up with some sort of scheme to get around the gas prices. I've read many such plans, and even concocted a few myself. This option will almost certainly consume a great deal of your time, potentially get you into trouble with the law, and almost certainly not actually provide a viable solution to your problem. The third option, one that I'm suggesting, is to put things in perspective. Did you know that our neighbors to the north (Canada) pay on average roughly $5.00/gallon (link). If you think that's bad, check out this article (link) that reports people in Japan paying roughly $6.00/gallon and Europeans paying anywhere from $7.00-$10.00/gallon!* Basically by putting the whole thing in perspective, we can realize that we really don't have it nearly as bad as we think we do, and maybe instead of complaining or scheming we can begin to see the positives in these increased fuel prices.

You did read that correctly, I mentioned positives to high fuel prices. Just to name a few:
1)Higher fuel prices are forcing manufacturers to begin to look at alternative technologies that will in the long run be better for everyone (ie cleaner, cheaper, reuseable).
2)Higher fuel prices can encourage us to walk more places, or even ride bicycles to save money and get into better physical shape.
3)Higher fuel prices bring about an increased awareness of just how spoiled and wasteful we as Americans are in our thinking that somehow we have a right to drive cars, get cheap fuel, and complain if we are in anyway denied these things or inconvenienced.

I figure prices at the pumps will still weigh heavily on your minds, and that almost certainly many of us will still complain, but hopefully we'll all be reminded that it could be worse, and if we really don't like it, we can stop driving. Or maybe you've come up with the perfect fool-proof scheme to getting cheap fuel...if so let me know!

Matthew 6:25-34

*(All figures are US dollar equivalents)