The Journey

Steve & Shirley

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” – Isaiah 40:1

The psychologist Susan Silk published an article about the psychology of comfort called “Ring Theory,” or, for short: Comfort In, Dump Out. It’s personal for her: after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and in the hospital, she got tired of having to comfort people who were supposed to be comforting her.

Ring Theory puts the wounded person at the center of a circle, and everybody else in concentric rings around the wounded. Their distance from the center corresponds to the closeness of their relationship: spouses are closest in, followed by family, close friends, work colleagues, and, finally, Facebook friends.

The rule of Ring Theory is that you have to comfort anyone in a circle smaller than yours, and get your own needs met by someone in a circle larger than yours.

The priest Henri Nouwen didn’t coin the phrase Wounded Healer—Carl Jung did that—but Henri popularized it. He said that we Jesus-people are called to put our wounds, once they have begun healing, into the service of the newly wounded, and he also told this story:

A Rabbi came to the prophet Elijah and asked, “Tell me, when will the Messiah come?” The reply, “Go ask him yourself,” surprised the Rabbi. “Where is he?” he asked. “He’s sitting at the gates of the city,” Elijah said. “But how will I know which one he is?” the Rabbi inquired.

“He is sitting among the poor, covered with wounds. The others unbind all of their wounds all at one time and then bind them up again; but he unbinds his wounds one at a time and then binds that wound up again. He says to himself, ‘Perhaps I shall be needed and I must always be ready.'”

If we are the hands and feet and wounds of Christ in the world, what does it mean to be “always ready”?

It has something to do with sitting among others who are wounded. 
It has something to do with only unbinding one wound at a time. 
It has something to do with acknowledging that we are not only here for ourselves, but might be needed, and called by God to respond to that need, at any moment.

Dear Lord, bind up my old wounds, and help me to get a grip, that I may comfort in, and dump out, as the day requires, in and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace

Steve

PS: Due to circumstances beyond my control and for the good of the church, I will be suspending my blog. Thank you for reading the blogs and devotions over the years. It has meant a lot to me to be able to share with you in this manner. God speed to all of you.

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Steve & Shirley

“To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. […] To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people . . . .” – 1 Corinthians 9:19-23

Dear Paul:

All things to all people?  Really?

Here’s the thing, Paul: you had a wonderful, tradition-inspiring gift for words.  You were, let’s be honest, the creator of the sound-bite.  But sometimes those 30-second snippets are misleading.

I am positive you were not a full-time tent-maker and traveling evangelist, while also being a loyal and devoted family-man, who took care of his relatives, made dinners, cleaned the house, and still had the energy to take his spouse out on a romantic date now and then.

You know why I’m certain? Because it’s not possible.  

I know plenty of people who try to do all those things (except, maybe, the tent-making) because they think it is their good, Christian duty. “I must,” they repeat, “be all things to all people.” They end up – frazzled, anxious, depressed, and suffering from one broken relationship after another.  

I know this isn’t what you meant. You know that being everything to everyone usually means nothing to anyone. I’m pretty sure you meant you were able to do one thing, with one person (or group) at a time.  And that one thing?  It was love.

Jewish, Gentile, weak, powerful – whoever, whatever, however – you loved them.  You joined people where and as they were, so they might know the love of God who joins them where they are.  

So can we publish a clarification – an editor’s note, of sorts?

You, Paul, called to be an apostle of God by Christ Jesus, were not all things to all people.  You were one thing – love – to one person at a time.

Yet, through the miracle of the gospel, that’s more than enough to reach us all.

Sincerely,

Steve (on behalf of the tired everywhere)

All-knowing, all-capable God, remind me I am not You – and you don’t want me to be. When I’m tempted to do it all, remind me it is (hard) enough to do the one thing you do ask of all people – to love the  person in front of me right now. And then help me do it, in and through Jesus.  Amen.

Grace and Peace

Steve

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Steve & Shirley

“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. 7a It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart….” I Philippians 1:3-5, 7a

Yesterday I was honored to preach the homecoming service at Ruffin UMC. This was the church I served while going to seminary at Duke. We spent five years there – stayed an extra year after school to allow our son to graduate from high school.

I am not sure that homecomings really meant all that much to me early on in life or in my career. I guess it is perhaps because I didn’t understand their importance to us as a community. Now that I am older, retired, and have been in ministry for 40 years, I understand and appreciate homecoming celebrations. It is a celebration of a time you spent together, perhaps a time that changed your life, but especially the people who surrounded you as you shared that time together. So we go back to remember as we walk those paths again with friends we have made and lives that have touched us with the love of God. We tell stories, laugh, maybe even brush back a tear. But we travel back to another time and appreciate time shared together.

Yesterday I spoke to a congregation about a congregation that cared for and nurtured me, a young struggling student pastor, and helped to prepare me for ministry and sent me on my way to serve others. Their guidance and nurture was a gift from God which the Ruffin Church did with such compassion and care. I had been at other churches who didn’t give a hoot if I became a good minister or not, who really didn’t care all that much about us. But Ruffin was a special church that accepted its calling to nurture young people preparing for ministry.

There may not be any rewards or recognition for what you have done here on earth, but God knows your heart is filled with compassion. He knows all the young ones you have tried to help prepare for ministry. And in God’s heart you are loved, you are appreciated, you are a great church.

Thank you Ruffin UMC for loving us, caring for us, and nurturing us in the direction of being a good servant of Jesus Christ.

Dear Lord, thank you for the people of the Ruffin Church, and people like them in churches all over the world, who take on the thankless and some time troublesome task of preparing the young for ministry. I thank you for them, O Lord, for they changed my life and blessed me for all the work ahead, in and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace

Steve

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Steve & Shirley

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” – Galatians 2:20

Once upon a time, a dandy named Francis heard the gospel. He gave away his own money, then stole his father’s to help the poor. Dragged before the bishop for judgment, he stripped off his clothes and, naked as a jay, strode out of town, a newborn. He’d been baptized as an infant, but this was the moment it took.

He became poor himself, suffering with the ragged on the streets. He sang about Brother Sun and Sister Water, preached to birds, did therapy with killer wolves, and lured the cream of Assisi’s youth into the evangelical madness of his mercy. To everyone’s revulsion, including at first his own, he embraced lepers, kissing their sores. Townspeople pelted him with stones.

He hung out in a ruined chapel, the Portiuncula. One day its crucifix spoke to him: ‘Repair my church.” Stone by stone, he rebuilt the chapel. Some say Jesus meant him to reform The Church, but Francis was literal-minded, inclined to the concrete, doable things in front of his nose.

Hungry for honor, he’d once gone to war. He returned traumatized, a haunted peacemaker. Which is why he’s the patron saint of stowaways, having hidden on a boat headed to Egypt where he crossed enemy lines, found the Sultan, commended the gospel to him, and tried to end the fifth crusade. It didn’t work, but the Sultan thought he was a rare lovely Christian and made sure he got home safely.

Francis loved everybody, even the luxurious Pope down in the holy cesspool of Rome (who’d surprised everyone by approving the Franciscan Rule). But most of all, Francis loved Jesus, following him with unhinged joy down to the last detail of Christ’s freedom and agony. One night, legend says, seraphim lasered the wounds of Jesus onto his scrawny flesh.

Before Francis died, naked on the ground outside the Portiuncula—dust to dust—he told his brothers, “I have done my part. Christ teach you to do yours.” He also said, “We have only begun to live the gospel.” We, even dying Francis, have only begun.

Now he’s in Paradise with Jesus. It’s said that in the morning mist, angels can’t tell them apart. His heaven teems with talking birds, repentant wolves, laughing water. The Pope’s there too, singing duets with the Sultan. And lepers, thousands of lepers, roses blooming on their skin where Francis kissed them.

Most merciful God, on this day when we remember your servant, Francis, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world, so that by following his example, we may delight in every creature with perfect joy, and seek a path to peace in all we do, in and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace

Steve

St. Francis Oct. 4, 1182

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