If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!

Happy Ascension Day! You may not be familiar with this feast day. To be honest, it seems a little bit under appreciated and under utilized. This is the day that we celebrate Jesus' Ascension up into Heaven! Pretty important. It historically takes place 39 days after Easter Sunday. (SIDE NOTE: Is there perhaps some significance in that number 39? We see the number 40 so often in the Bible that SURELY there is some reason for this being just one day shy of that holy number.) Now before I get ahead of myself, let me explain the title of this blog post. One of the Psalms appointed for Ascension Day is Psalm 47, and the first line of that Psalm says this:

Clap your hands, all you peoples;
shout to God with a cry of joy.

Which is basically the same thing as "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands". Just thought that was a funny coincidence. 

If you ask me, this may as well be another one of Jesus' miracles. Ascending in to heaven in front of your peers? That must have been an incredible sight. To me, that seems just as jaw-dropping as raising someone from the dead or forcing a demon out of the throat of a young boy or even turning water into wine. It had to have been an absolute spectacle. Acts 1 says that "he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.". And after that happened two men robed in white (hmm... I wonder who they could be?) showed up and said that Jesus would return to them in the same way that he left. That statement could be interpreted in several ways. Do they mean that he's going to return to Earth in a cloud? Or do they mean that he'll just return as a human? Regardless of what they meant, Jesus hasn't physically returned to Earth yet. At least as far as I know. 

Adoniram? I guess when he was younger they called him Adoni - lamb!

Did you know that April 12th is the Feast Day of Adoniram Judson? Have you
ever heard of Adoniram Judson? I hadn’t either until I looked at the Lectionary
for inspiration on what to write about for today. Adoniram Judson was a
Missionary! Now, just by knowing that you should be able to infer that this
dude is olllddddd. Being a missionary isn’t really a job that people have anymore.
So yes. He was old. In fact, he died more than 100 years ago in the year
1850. He was a missionary to Burma, which is a place that isn’t called Burma
anymore. It’s called Myanmar. He left a pretty profound legacy in Myanmar.
His Burmese-English dictionary is still in use today and at the time of his
death he left roughly 100 churches and 8,000 Christians in Burma.
Pretty impressive.

The epistle that’s designated for the feast day of Adoniram Judson is a
very interesting one.
It’s from Paul’s first letters to the Corinthians.

“If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive.
What should I do then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also;
I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.”

I love the message Paul gives us here. How often do we just go through the motions,
as they say, when we’re praying? I often find my mind wandering when praying.
Especially during the more routine prayers during a church service. The Nicene
Creed, the Confession of Sin, even the Lord’s Prayer. Over years and years
of saying those same words every week, perhaps they’ve lost their power a little bit.
Words only have as much power as you give them, so if I’m not focused on what
I’m saying I may as well not be saying anything. I have to make a conscious effort
to give those words power again. To appreciate their beauty. To let them make an
impact on me the same as when I first really heard them for the first time.

So. I invite you to pray as Paul invites us. Pray with your tongue so that the people
may hear. Pray with your spirit so that God may hear. And pray with your mind
so that you may hear.

What is love...?

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:34-35

This was the verse of choice of my confirmation mentor when I was in middle school. He loved it. He could prattle on about it for what seemed like hours on end. I remember not thinking much of it then. It’s almost an afterthought on Jesus’ part. It is, after all, one of the last things that he says to the Disciples before his death. Whether it was last minute or not, it’s profound. He makes a point to distinguish what kind of love is expected of his disciples. His kind of love. He’s making an addendum to the commandments that God handed down to Moses, which said to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s an important distinction. The original commandment concerning the love of one’s neighbor is lacking in a few ways. If I am to love my neighbor as I love myself, that still leaves room for hatred and disdain. Self-loathing certainly exists, so it’s absolutely possible to follow that commandment and still not love your neighbor as God originally intended.

This verse has more than one dimension to it. Jesus says “all people know that you are my disciples, if you love for one another”. I think that pretty much sums up what he’s all about. To follow Jesus, all that he requires of you is that you love one another as he loves us. We don’t have to stand on street corners and preach the gospel to passers-by, we don’t have to “share this post or go to hell”, we don’t need to overtly proselytize. All that we have to do is love like Jesus. When he says to love each other, he means to love all of each other. Rob Bell has this to say about that: Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. That’s important to realize. Our neighbor can be anybody, and our neighbor is everybody. You can’t pick and choose. You can’t love one person and hate another. I once heard someone say that Love and Hate are two sides of the same coin, which I think is an extremely cynical way to look at things. Love drives out hate. The two are incompatible. So when Jesus says to love our neighbor, he means to love all of them. He means for us to love them in the same way that he loves us. Unconditionally. Unequivocally. Undeniably.

Exorcisms, demons and Calling Out to God and One Another

Jesus and his disciples went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. Mark 1:21-28

It was a dark and stormy Saturday anyway, so the mood was right for a day of Exorcism

Movies. I watched Constantine, and The Rite, in which Anthony Hopkins plays a grizzled Welsh Jesuit priest who teaches a young protégé’ the skills for being an exorcist. Finally, I watched Priest, Paul Betany’s action movie about an order of priests who battle demonic vampires in a dystopic future. (He has a cool cross tattoo on his forehead, too!)  

I geek out on exorcism  movies  in the same way that others do for movies about policeman and firefighters. I like seeing people who “practice” the same calling going out and kicking evil’s butt. After all, what we are about in our “practice” of God’s goodness is proclaiming to whatever forces are out there that good, love and Jesus are of ultimate worth and power in a world that often seems otherwise.

Jesus does open battle with demons in the Gospel of Mark. We would probably be right in consigning many of the ailments the “possessed” people suffer from to illnesses like epilepsy or schizophrenia. If you are or I were to meet someone convinced they were possessed, we would be right in seeking out medical help for them. We don’t often seek out the exorcist anymore for people who are acting strange.

Yet, there is something pretty instructive for us in the scene. We can still “exorcise” stuff from our life with prayer, conversation and care for one another using Jesus’ “technique.”  Notice that Jesus has a conversation with the demons. Notice that they know who he is and recognize that they are powerless. Notice too that with Jesus’ help they depart. They are named, called out, and then banished!

You too can name-call out- and banish darkness from your life and the lives of others. You have already done it before, even.

When was the last time you had something on your heart or on your mind that felt heavy, or dark, or unbelievably sad and you prayed about it or talked to someone who loved you and you felt its power over you lessen or even go away?  When you did that- you “banished darkness.”

When we name our “darkness” or trouble it begins to lose its power over us. Remember, as you encounter problems or dark times, that you have a community of people in the Church who can listen to what is going on. You can be connected to resources like counselors and (if necessary) Doctors who can help in that work, too. Like the people in Jesus’ day, we have to recognize our need for one another and for God’s help, and open ourselves up to that help by “crying out” to God and to people who love us. The possessed man cried out, then Jesus could do his work!

[And by the way, know that you have in Joel and me two people who care about you who are always willing to be listening ears and a resource to help you find whatever help you need.]

Demons, whatever their form,  are powerless against the light, love and life offered by Jesus.

Tim