Guest Preacher: Matt Russell

Next Sunday June 6 (Ascension Sunday for you liturgical peeps) I will be away on vacation and my friend Matt Russell will preach. Matt just finished a PhD at Tech where he did his doctoral work in the spirituality of drug and alcohol recovery.

A lot of his research was based upon his experience at Mercy Street, a church he helped found whose mission "is to create a safe harbor for the hurt, the lost, the seeking so that we might experience the radical grace of God!" A lot of folks in recovery have found Mercy Street to be the kind of church they needed - a community of Jesus-like inclusion and grace.

Here's a link to Matt talking about Mercy Street. Matt is the blonde guy, but I would love to hear the big, burly, biker-dude below preach also.

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All Things Working

The Scriptures say “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28) and in recent weeks I’ve seen it is so.

My friend James Ray passed away in the fall, but before he passed he made it a point to help me out with some mission projects. I was looking for bicycles for some of our homeless friends to get around town on and James rounded one up for me. It was really inspiring to see someone in his last days thinking of how he could still make a difference.

The bike James found for me was a children’s bike and a little small for the adults I was trying to help. But I knew it was just a matter of time before I would find some kid who could use it. Then back in March, Second B’s Children’s Ministry hosted a children’s car seat and bike safety check sponsored by Covenant Hospital and they were giving away free bicycle safety helmets to children. Reginald, one of our Kids Hope kids came and I asked him if he had a bike helmet. He told me that he didn’t. “Well, now you’ve got one so you can be safe on your bike,” I said. “I don’t have a bike,” he said. You can now hear the bells going off in my head. “I think I can do something about that,” I said.

So I call up Jerry Bailey, Second B’s resident bike expert, and I asked him to fix up the bike. The next thing I know, I walk in the door and the bike is sitting bright and shiny in the middle of the church office. It’s as good as new.

Two days later I took Joey Marcades, one of our graduating high school seniors, went with me to deliver the bike. He helps me get it out of my car and then Reginald comes out of his house with his never-before-used bike helmet on his head. Joey and I watch from the yard as Reginald takes off down the sidewalk. “What do you say?” I yell after him. “Thank you,” he yells back.

When I get back to the church I tell Susie White our secretary about all that had happened. First James, then the Children’s Ministry, then Kid’s Hope, then Jerry Bailey, and then Joey Marcades. “Sounds like a God thing to me,” she said. “It sure does,” I said.

And then the postscript. We were sitting in staff meeting when Basil and Carroll Melnyk show up at church. They had heard about Ray’s bike. They had come to bring me another one. They wheeled it in. It is adult size – and one of my homeless friends already has first dibs on it.

The Scriptures are right, “All things work together for good.” And that’s a God thing.

Extraordinary Forgivness

More on Forgiveness:

Irie has an interesting post on her A-J blog. Though I am sure the husband to which she refers is strictly hypothetical.

My question:

Can we forgive only because it is in our nature to forgive, or can we learn to forgive? If we can forgive only if it is in our nature, can we change our nature? Can Christ?

9/11 healing: The mothers who found forgiveness, friendship | Video on TED.com

When Mother's Day was first conceived it was a day set aside to call on the nations of the world to work for peace and to end all war. It was a recognition that our common humanity binds all women in their love for their children.

The following video of two mothers' love for their sons is at once both encouraging and challenging. Reconciliation is such hard work. I admire these women for their strength and witness.

9/11 healing: The mothers who found forgiveness, friendship | Video on TED.com

On the news of a terrorist's death

News of the death of Osama bin Laden has dominated the headlines since President Obama's address to the nation on Sunday night. Bin Laden's death brings to an end a decade-old, world-wide manhunt begun on September 11, 2001. When he was buried in the Arabian Sea on Sunday, ten years’ worth of unresolved grief was buried with him.

Earlier this week the Vatican issued a statement saying bin Laden's death is cause for reflection, not rejoicing. In my heart of hearts, I know that to be right. We humans are all made in the image of God. To gloat over the death of anyone — even someone as sick and cruel as Osama bin Laden — is to celebrate the death of a child of God.

I cannot imagine God’s celebrating the death of any of his children. Instead I see God's heart breaking much in the way that David's heart broke when his own sick and cruel son Absalom was killed. David's own son had become his enemy. In reading the text it is clear that Absalom cannot be stopped unless he is killed. He will either kill or be killed; there is no other option. Nevertheless, when David learns of his Absalom's death, he weeps for him as a son and not as an enemy. It is not cause for celebration but lament.

"Absalom, Absalom," David cries. Surely this is how God must weep at the loss of any one of His children.

And yet, I must confess my own ambivalences, even as I write. I have not mourned for Osama bin Laden. I shall not. I mourn rather for the terror and enmity he wrought upon this world.

I lived in New York in the spring and summer of 2001. It was an idyllic summer spent with one of my best friends -- two boys from West Texas living it up in "The City." We had the world by the tail. When I departed New York to head to seminary I sat on the tarmac and wrote the following words in my journal: "I can always come back to New York; but I will never come back to right now." I had no idea how true those words would be. A month later two planes would bullet through the Twin Towers. New York would never be the same. Neither would America. Neither would I. Gone with 9-11 was my youth and all the sense of safety, security, and innocence it affords.

But so many people lost so much more on that fateful day. Three thousand plus lives
were lost on that day. And it was their loved ones and their own much deeper and more painful losses that came to mind on Sunday night when President Obama gave his address. I prayed that this news might bring them some sense of solace and closure. The wages of their loved ones' killer was death; he can hurt them no more.

Ultimately, the task of the pastor is to point the way to where God is. In times like these it is difficult to speak with clarity. Whose side is God on? Perhaps that is not really the question. Perhaps the better question is for whom does God's heart break? And the answer, of course, is God's heart breaks for us all. For the families that lost their loved ones on 9-11. For the Navy Seal bravely fighting for freedom halfway around the world. For the pastor groping for words. And yes, even for the terrorist whose evil sins have now found him out.

"Osama, Osama," if you had only known God's love. If you had only known.