God Doesn't Play Favorites

So I heard this song on the radio this morning (Jason Gray- I Am New)

Now I won't deny

The worst you could say about me

But I'm not defined

By mistakes that I've made

Because God says of me

I am not who I was

I am being remade

I am new

I am chosen and holy

And I'm dearly loved

I am new

Who I thought I was

And who I thought I had to be

I had to give them both up

Cause neither were willing

To ever believe

I am not who I was

I am being remade

I am new

I am chosen and holy

And I'm dearly loved

I am new

Too long I have lived

In the shadows of shame

Believing that there

Was no way I could change

But the one who is making everything new

Doesn't see me the way that I do

He doesn't see me the way that I do

I am not who I was

I am being remade

I am new

I am chosen and holy

And I'm dearly loved

I am new

I am not who I was

I am being remade I am new

Dead to the old man I'm coming alive

I am new

Forgiven beloved

Hidden in Christ

Made in the image of the Giver of Life

Righteous and holy

Reborn and remade

Accepted and worthy this is our new name

This is who we are now...

Now I won't deny

The worst you could say about me

But I'm not defined



and it got me thinking about all the things I have done in my past that made life on earth the exact opposite of what God intended it to be. I could make a list of all things that I have done in my past but that wouldn't really make any difference in the world. God doesn't want us to attack ourselves for who we once where. He wants us to love the person we are right now in this very moment.

"I am chosen and holy" in the book of Colossians (3:12) "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience." In my past I did not clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness,and I was not at all patient. But God is molding me to be the best I can be.

"Made in the image of the Giver of Life" we are all made in the image of God regardless of what we believe. Because we are all created in the image of God we need to respect one another and the best way to do that is to "clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience" and "Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children  and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us.... (Ephesians 5:1-2).

To God it doesn't matter what we have done in our past, He loves each and everyone of us the same way. God doesn't have favorites regardless of what some people may like to think. When God looks at us He doesn't see all the evil that we have done, He looks at us and sees His child that He loves more than we will ever know.

Embracing Other Traditions

So I spent most of my day reading for my Islam class and let's just say that it was eye opening. I knew that there were Christians out there that were against Islam I just never realized how bad it was. Many Americans regardless of their faith belive that all people of the Islam faith tradition are terrorists. Saying that they are all terrorists is the equavilent of saying that all Christians in America and around the world for that matter are just as radical as the "Christians" of Westboro Baptist Church. For those of you who don't know anything about Westboro Baptist Church they are the group that protests soldiers funerals etc. I think we all know that not every Christian is radical like the members of Westboro and I think that is about high time we abandoned the belief that all followers of Islam are terrorists. I'm not saying that they are all peaceful but there are radicals in most faith systems. A lot of the reading for class was about what Christians mainly the Pentacostal denominations have said about Isalm and Muhammad throughout history the rest of it was about the the pillars of their faith and in reading about Ramadan I decided that I am going to fast a few times. I plan on using the time that I will spend fasting thinking about where I am spiritaully; examing the areas where I have grown and the areas that I need to grow in. I really liked the one idea that the book presented; a group of students at a college fasted during Ramadan and the money they would have spent on food they donated to charity. So I am going to use the money that I don't spend on food when I am fasting toward my OCC shoe boxes for this year. I would like to invite all of you to explore the Islamic faith tradition and to abandon the sterotypes that exist about it. If we all start living this way the world will become a better place and the Light of God will shine even brighter.

go in PEACE. be PEACE. live PEACE.

Snap-on, Snap-off

Yeasterday's sermon was on snap decisions and it got me thinking about snap decisions I have made in the recent past. A few of the decisions were made when I was still trying to be Superangie and when I stopped being Superangie the decisions were no longer needed and the people that they involved were no longer a part of my life. So I was doing really good at not being Superangie until today; I am still friends on a social networking site with one of the people who is no longer a part of my life and he messaged me today to see if everything was ok. Which in my world it is, but in the world of three people who are no longer a part of my life my not being prestent to treat like crud is a big deal. Part of me still hasn't completely abandoned Superangie and this part of me wants to try and fix things. Yet I know that fixing this would be going against everything that God made me to be and that is more negative than a few status updates about me on a social networking site. I made a snap decsion to let these people back into my life because I thought that I was doing the right thing. I obviously wasn't. Snap decisions can be harmful when we try to please ourselves but what I am slowly learning is that they can be even more dangerous when we try to please others. But some snap decisions can be good; like today I made the snap decision to get a bottle of water instead of a soda. Sure it would have been better if I had remembered to fill my Nalgene bottel but such is life. Snap decisions like the one I made to let people back into my life were not so good; infact they were negative for everyone involved. So as we all travel in this crazy world together I think we should all work on thinking about our actions before we do them; after all we only get to do this life once and it should be all about the "relentless prusuit of who God made" us to be.

go in PEACE. be PEACE. live PEACE.

Killing Superangie

So I found myself rereading Velvet Elvis this week and I got to the part where Rob talks about killing our "super whatevers." I realized that I needed to kill my superangie. I know it sounds absolutely morbid, but I swear that it is a good thing. Recently I have had to make many decisions regarding "friends." I spent much of my life trying to be the person that everyone wanted me to be and I'm getting better at being the person God made me to be; I struggle with it some days. I have spent the first year and a half of my college career attempting to save friendships that weren't really there any more and I have finally given up. Part of the reason why I tried so hard to save them was because I didn't understand how I was going to become a pastor and preach about loving others when I couldn't keep a few friendships intact. Then I realized that I don't have to be friends with everyone and that it is ok to let go. Sure it was nice to have friends and now I have four less friends on Facebook and there is the possibility that I will loose even more friends because I killed superangie;but what I have come to learn is that it isn't really about how many "friends" we have, what matters is how many of our friends are really and truly our friends. I have found an amazing group of friends at Cedar Crest, friends that I know will always be there for me, friends that will always support me, friends that are not using me to fulfill their desires. I am done being used and abused. In Velvet Elvis, Rob, talks about how living the life of someone we know we aren't is a sin because it isn't who God made us to be. He says that we become split. I was split for a very long time but I am in the process of super gluing myself back together because it is all about "the relentless pursuit of who God made me to be." And not that I foresee this happening but if for some reason all of my friends abandon me I will always have God. Because God loves me for I am. He didn't make me to be superangie He made me to be angie, nothing more and nothing less. I don't have to befriend one more person or save one more relationship to gain the love of God because I already have it and I will never loose it. I would like to thank all my amazing friends (you know who you are) for being there for me and loving me unconditionally.

Peace Through Victory?

"' Peace through victory' depended on which side of the sword you were on" (Rob Bell and Don Golden in Jesus Wants to Save Christians). "Peace through victory" is not a new concept in war. Many of the "great" leaders of the world used this concept and many of the "great" leaders of today also use this concept. If you are on the side that is conquering all the land then the idea seems pretty great but what if you are on the other side? What if it is your homeland that is being destroyed? What if it was your land that was being burned? What if it genocide was occurring in your village to your people? What if one night while you were sleeping another country thousands of miles away dropped bombs on you? How would you feel? Would be supportive of "peace through victory" or would you think that it was one of the dumbest ideas you had ever heard of? I'm going to with it being the dumbest idea that you have ever heard of because it is. Killing people gets no one anywhere. Killing people only leads to the killing of more people. The events of 9/11 turned many Americans into supporters of "peace through victory." The theory was "they [the terrorists] didn't care about our innocent citizens so why should we [the American people] care about their innocent citizens" and many people even went further and made anyone from the Middle East a terrorist. Sadly many people still harbor these beliefs. I have many issues with this theory a few of which I am going to share with you. First not everyone from the Middle East is a terrorist. Secondly killing people regardless of what they have done only causes more death and destruction. Thirdly what the United States did to the Middle East after 9/11 made us no better than the terrorists that attacked us. We grieved for the loss of complete strangers and for our own loved ones well so did the people in the Middle East whose friends and family have been killed because of stereotypes and fear. The fourth reason (also taken from Jesus Wants to Save Christians) is "...Jesus was a Middle Eastern man who lived in an occupied country and was killed by the super power of his day." "Peace through victory" does not work, it never has and it never will. God came to the earth to show us how to live in peace with one another and yet everyday more and more people are killed around the globe because of "peace through victory." Instead of "peace through victory" lets try "peace through peace" it works much better and Gandhi proved that it works.

Go in PEACE. Live PEACE. Be Peace.

Change the Batteries

So today at church a light clicked on in my brain. While the pastor was talking about the end of the world and how the United States is failing because of Liberals I thought back to the day I walked out of church for the first time in my life. It happened last summer. I had been going to church with my best friend for a few weeks and on this particular Sunday the pastor gave a message very similar to the one that I heard today. See there were things in their sermons that I found myself agreeing with, the problem is that their main idea well it isn't really that great. Today the sermon was about love and choosing Jesus; which is a great topic for a sermon when it is really about love and choosing Jesus. Today's sermon and the one over the summer were nothing but racism and a complete lack of love not only for mankind but for God as well. I don't think  I will ever understand how someone can claim to be a Christian and yet spread hate throughout the world. See we are supposed to let our light shine but what happens when we don't realize that the batteries for our flashlight are dead and we go right on using it. To many Christians are using their flashlights with dead batteries to "make the world a better place."  The parts of their sermon I agreed with were; 1. What happened to the ancient Israelite empire is happening in the United States 2. We need to choose Jesus above the things of this world. Let me explain: The ancient Israelite empire failed because the people forgot that God had choose them to be a kingdom of priests, they had slaves, and social justice was non-existent. Today in the United States the church forgets that it is to show the world what God looks like, slavery still exists, and many people are being denied their rights. Making the choice to follow Jesus means living in love with peace, justice, mercy, and grace not hatred, greed, and inequality. So in the following year let us work on making the world a better place by choosing Jesus.

Go in PEACE. Live PEACE.Be PEACE.

The Right To Life

So here in Luzerne County there is a man a trial for the murder of a baby girl and many people are calling for his execution. The thing that I don't get is that many of the people who are calling for his execution are the same people that protest outside Planned Parenthood. I'm not saying that we should let this man walk free but we can not execute him. We cannot say that this man has no right to life but that the little girl whose life he may or may not have taken had a right to life. In the eyes of  God the man and the little girl are equal and therefore they both have the right to life. One of the Ten Commandments is "Thou shall not kill" there is no extension to that command that says unless someone commits murder because in that case you can kill them. And yes I know that when the Hebrew people were wondering in the desert the Bible says that they killed many people but throughout the New Testament we are told that as Christians we are "to live in love as Christ loved us" and that we are to "be merciful just as your Father in heaven is merciful." One of the articles of the Declaration of Human rights is the right to life. Many "Christians" say that human life begins at conception and ends at death. I do not believe that we have the right to say that someone should be executed because they took someone's life. Because if we take a murders life it makes us murder and therefore by our own beliefs we must also be executed. I think you can see how this can get out of hand very fast. God loves us no matter what we do and as Christians it is our responsibility to love others just like God does.

Go in PEACE.Be PEACE. Live PEACE.

Maybe He Was Purple With Three Heads?

The other night while watching "All In The Family" with my grandparents a conversation about Jesus started up. So for about thirty minutes I sat there listening to my grandparents discuss what color Jesus was. According to my grandmother there was no possible way Jesus could be black. So I asked her how she knew this. Her answer, "a very smart preacher told me that there is no way Jesus could be black because of where he was born." My grandfather agreed with her.I wanted to end this conversation so I said, "Well he wasn't white either. He was either white or black." My grandmother goes, "He wasn't  black!" Ok so now I really want to bash my head off the wall; "I don't care if he was purple and had three heads he knew what he was talking about." It managed to end the conversation but left me thinking about what happens when we try to figure out what God looks like. One of the ten commandments  is "You shall not make for yourself an idol...." When I was little and even now, when someone tells me not to do something I ask, "why not?"So why doesn't God want us to make an idol? In the ancient world people made idols of their gods out of metal and worshiped them. But God made the Israelites a nation of priests and it was their job to show the world what God looked like; by loving everyone just as God loves everyone. Arguing about Jesus' skin color is like arguing about what God looks like; it takes the mystery out of faith. And without mystery there can be no faith.

Go in PEACE. Be Peace. Live PEACE.

Party On!

Luke 15:25-32 (The Parable of the Prodigal Son)
 ²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
   ²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
   ³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
 Today we are going to focus on the older son. The older brother is angry and jealous; angry at his father and jealous of his brother. He tells his father that he should be the one who gets the party because he has fully obeyed his fathers commandments. Parables have deeper meanings than what is on the surface so we have to dig for a while till we can fully comprehend what Jesus is getting at. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is about a family; the family of God (and in case you didn't know it we are all a part of the family of God). The father is obviously God and we are the brothers. The question we need to ask ourselves is "which brother are we?" Are we the brother that messes up and comes home or are we the brother that is jealous because we didn't get a party in our honor? After thinking about it for a while I came up with the following answer; everyone is the brother who runs away and many people after being home for a while morph into the second brother. I'm sure you have all seen this happen before. Someone is saved and they start judging everyone who isn't saved and sometimes they even judge the saved because they are different. Many people become saved and then walk away from God and from the Church. Many of these people say that the Church hurt them; well that isn't exactly true. A church is made up of people and people are the ones who do the hurting by being self-righteous. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he says, “The righteousness from God come’s through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.” What Paul is saying is that we are saved by faith and not by our actions and the in God’s eyes we are all the same.
    Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia was about self-righteous Christians. He tells the people that “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were  baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one Christ Jesus.
    In Ephesians we read about how we are to love one another, “Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” In I John we read more about this love that we are to have for one another, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us…we love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, he cannot love God who he has seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
    No matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey God loves us all the same; and there is nothing that will ever change that. At some point in our life we all run away and then we  arrive home and are given a party. The question we have to ask our selves is; “After we come home and are working in the fields following our Father’s directions do we go to the party for our brother who has returned or do we stay in the field pouting.”
  
PARTY ON! Go in PEACE! Live PEACE! Be PEACE!

The Pizza Connection

I once read somewhere that the reason the Bible is so powerful is because the stories that happened then  happen now; right here and now to real people. Have you ever paused while reading your Bible because you realize that you are one of the characters in the story that you are reading?I'm sure it has happened to all of you at one point or another: At one point in our lives we have all been Adam and Eve eating the fruit in the garden, we have all been Jonah avoiding God's commands, we have all had our own Goliath's, and let's not forget Peter loosing faith while walking on the water. But how many times have we been able to relate to the Macedonian Church that Paul speaks about in II Corinthians chapter 8; "And now brothers we want you to know about the grace that God gave the Macedonian churches. Out of their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own." How many times in your life, and if you have never done this you are amazing, have you not given money to a charity because if you gave them money you wouldn't be able to go out and eat or go to the movies or the one that I struggle with buying a new pair of shoes. Is that steak, or sitting in the theater for ninety minutes, or that new pair of shoes worth clean drinking water, an education, food, shelter, and/or clothing for someone you have never met before? I won't answer that question for you because I trust you all know deep down inside what the correct answer is. In his book Amazing Grace, Jonathan Kozol, tells a story about a little boy who shares pizza with a homeless man. Kozol asks the boy if his parents were angry with him for sharing their pizza. The boy looks at him with a confused face and says "Why would they be mad? God told us to share!" By now you are sitting there at your computer or phone or wherever you happen to be reading this trying to figure out what pizza has to do with the Macedonian churches. Would it help if I told you that the child in the story is a seven year old boy named Cliffe who lives in the South Bronx. For those of you who don't know anything about the South Bronx it is one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States . It is the deadliest prescient of NY. Death, disease, and drugs run rampant. The pizza that Cliffie's mother sent him to get was more than likely the only thing the family would be eating that day. One slice of pizza, I don't know about you but one slice of pizza is not enough to get me through the day. And yet this seven year old boy living in extreme poverty shared with a homeless man. If we gave Cliffie the passage in II Corinthians that speaks of the Macedonian Churches he would relate to the people of those churches who were in extreme poverty. The question I leave you with, the question we need to ask ourselves is "Am I like the people of the Macedonian Churches or am I like the farmer who hoarded his crops?"
Go in PEACE. Live PEACE. Be PEACE.