Prayer for Children

Below is a prayer that I cobbled together and offered for our Noah's Sunday following our week long Vacation Bible school which focused on introducing our kids to the issues surrounding our friends on the streets

A Prayer for Children

Lord of Life,
We pray for scampy children
who sneak popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.

God of Compassion,
We pray for children
who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never play tag or go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.

Loving Father,
We thank you for the children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we hurt for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who don't have rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
whose monsters are real.

Gracious God, help us be gracious to children
who spend their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and
whose smiles can make us cry.

Almighty God, help us bring justice for those children
Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything
Who have never seen dentist,
Who aren't spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the One who welcomes children, may we do so as well
We pray for all children
Who want to be carried, who don’t want to be carried and for those who must,
We pray that we would never give up on any of them
And that you would gather them up,
Cuddle them like lost sheep
And release them to be your love, light, and salt in the world.
For we believe Lord in your kingdom – your playground
Where goodness is stronger than evil
Love is stronger than hate
Light is stronger than darkness
Truth is stronger than lies
We need not be afraid.

Alternative Giving Campaign Kick-Off

Below is the speech that I gave for the Kick-Off of the Alternative Giving Campaign Press Conference on April 20, 2010. To check out the website see http://www.realchangesb.org/

Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) would like to thank Mayor Schneider and the City Council for their year long work on the critical problems of poverty and homelessness in our community. We also appreciate their ability to gather diverse stakeholders including the business community, social service workers, and faith communities and believe that this collaboration remains critical if we are to create real change. But we also recognize that WE are the city. The problems of poverty and homelessness are not only a concern for governments and social service agencies but for all of us.
CLUE supports the fundamental premise of the Alternative Giving campaign that the problem we face is not panhandlers. We support neither demonizing nor romanticizing those who are daily struggling on our streets. The campaign, then, creates an exciting challenge for all of us - the challenge for our community to give – creatively, abundantly, and responsibly to HELP our neighbors on the street.
But what does such neighborly giving mean practically? Where does your money go? The point of the Alternative Giving campaign is to encourage caring and thoughtful individuals to give directly to programs that connect those in need with local social services. It means that the dollars that you donate in local area businesses, from church budgets, or through text-giving, go directly to helping hands –to street outreach workers who seek to:
1) help people off the street and into more permanent, stable housing with services; (2) secure food for the hungry; (3) provide more space in shelters and critical medical care; (4) offer freedom from addiction and substance abuse. CLUE particularly encourages faith communities to join the city in this effort to encourage compassionate giving. Yet we believe that dollars are not enough. We urge everyone to go out into the streets to greet and recognize our brothers and sisters who need our help. Caring for the most vulnerable people in our city – the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, those without homes – needs to continue and increase. Compassionate action is neither exceptional nor optional. It is a fundamental expression of what it means to be human. It is our spiritual duty. And it is within our reach. Thank you.

90° Initiative

We at MCC endeavor to take seriously Jesus’ command to all those who would follow him:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ Matthew 22:37-39

By coupling the second commandment “to love your neighbor” with the command “to love God,” Jesus is saying that these two actions are indelibly linked. This divine connection is the ideal that we as a church are working towards an active love that seeks nothing less than the holistic transformation which touches all parts of life (spiritual, economic, emotional, and physical needs). On February 28th, I will be promoting the 90° Initiative - loving God ↑ and loving others →. This initiative seeks to help people discover how they can partner with organizations to experience and express the good news of a gospel life – where their deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. The kick-off will involve a survey to assess current volunteer trends within the community and to connect interested parties with specific, relevant opportunities that fit their schedules and skill-sets. Please pray for this work as we seek to engage opportunities for service that embody love and initiative of Jesus.

Working as a Waiter in the Kingdom of God: Sermon Podcast

To listen to the sermon, visit http://drop.io/miketech


If you would like a printed version, simply email me at gospelaction@mcchurch.org.

Peace,
Jon

The Community of Promise: Repair, Rebuild, & Reveal

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus quotes a passage from the scroll of Isaiah to express who he is and what he is doing. Reading aloud from the scroll he said,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 3:18-19, cf. Isaiah 61:1-2).

That passage is a fantastic declaration of Jesus’ calling, but do you know the rest of Isaiah’s passage? Aha, I didn’t think that you did. The passage goes on from this prophecy about the servant of the Lord who would save Israel to a people who will follow his way. Isaiah writes,

“They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (Isaiah 61:3-4).

To remember that we believe Jesus was foretold about by the book of Isaiah almost 600 years before he arrived is certainly cool. To be reminded that he came to proclaim “good news to the poor” gives us pause as we try to follow his way and heed is message. But to realize that the prophet also wrote about us leaves me empowered and humbled in a way that’s hard to articulate through words and ink. As I write this, the steady stream of news too horrifying to compute continues to pour out of Haiti where the death toll from a recent earthquake has left the country “devastated” with “ruined cities” and a death toll that will almost certainly be the “devastations of many generations.” It was for such events as this that you and I were promised by Isaiah to be a “planting of the Lord” that repairs and rebuilds, revealing the glory of God who cares for all. As we begin the new year will you join me in declaring this to be the year of the Lord’s favor as we seek to send ripples of kindness and grace (that were promised so long ago) out into our communities and wider world. Join with me in reading aloud Isaiah 61:3-4 so that we can express who we are and what we are doing and say like Jesus, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 1:21). Let them hear this prophecy in Haiti, on State Street, on Westmont Road as well as the West side and around the world, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

"How to Save the World"

"What would happen if aid organizations and other philanthropists embraced the dark arts of marketing spin and psychological persuasion used on Madison Avenue? We'd save millions more lives." ~ Nicholas Kristof, Outside Magazine (December 2009), 87

Nicholas Kristof's words elicit a visceral response in most. But before you weigh in on the merits of his remarks let me summarize his brief argument as fairly as I can and then reflect upon our response as Christians.

Kristof, far from being a media exec on Madison Avenue, has spent the bulk of his life on the front lines of disasters as a reporter for the New York Times covering such devastating travesties as the crisis in Darfur, the ravages of AIDS in Swaziland, and crimes against women in Pakistan. He writes as someone with great experiences from the trenches with a credibility in humanitarian circles that is difficult to match. Despite covering these many atrocities, however, Kristof is also quick to acknowledge that the experience of apathy and collective shrugs from people who read his work led him to question his approach: logical arguments about the scale of suffering, withering statistics which promote guilt and expose the opulence of American culture, and consistent descriptions of victimization of countries and peoples through horrific stories. Instead, Kristof turned to the work of social psychologists and came to two simple realizations:
1. "We intervene not because of stories of desperate circumstances but when we can be cheered up with positive stories of success and transformation." He points out that average people find greater pleasure and are therefore more likely to give when we focus our attention on smaller numbers rather than large, full-scale disasters which overwhelm people creating apathy. The higher the number of desperate people, in other words, the less likely people are going to be motivated to do anything about it.
2. The solution, he says, is for storytelling to focus on individuals with personal stories of triumph in the face of disaster, rather than groups. People know that AIDS is devastating and catastrophic, he points out, and depressing stories only leave them with little hope of doing anything. The work of social psychologists reveal that people are much more willing to give when they know that they can change one life than when they might help a large number of people or even a person who represents a suffering group. As we all know, he declares, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths, a statistic. Or, quoting Mother Theresa, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

The challenge, Kristof acknowledges, is to recognize both the desperate needs and also the very real progress in devastated areas, the prospect of improvement in real people's lives if the help goes forward. We are moved not by statistics, he writes, but by fresh, wet tears, with a bit of hope glistening below. Moreover, he writes, we look for heroes and not victims.

Kristof's argument is quite compelling. Why shouldn't we give hope and utilize the tools of marketing to help people find that helping others is as "every bit as refreshing as, say, drinking a Pepsi?" Of course, the problem for many of us in a media saturated world is that we often equate marketing with false advertising which Kristof is in no way advocating. As a Christian, I am tempted to use Jesus's opening words for his own ministry to explain Kristof's saavy thesis. In the beginning of Mark's Gospel Jesus declares, "repent and believe the Good News." Softened by Kristof's argument and the belief that one should accept the truth from whomever gives it, Jesus words hit me squarely between the eyes. How often I think of "repent" in a moralizing way - a stop doing this now and feel bad about it you filthy, little sinner sort of way - but Jesus' statement, I believe, goes much further. That word repent comes from the Greek word metanoiete. It is based upon two words, meta (beyond) and nous (mind or spirit), and thus, in its simplest form, means something like "go beyond the mind that you have." The Catholic theologian Robert Barron writes, "Jesus is urging his listeners to change their way of knowing, their way of perceiving and grasping reality." What is he asking people to see? "Good news!" The call of Jesus isn't from a life of sin into an eternal life of dreary, eternal guilt. He seeks to heal us by calling us to accept a different reality, a transformation of sight where we jump to action not because of guilt, sadness, disillusionment but because of hope and good news. Now, anyone with a smidgen of knowledge about first century Palestine would know that the facts on the ground were desperate. And yet Jesus declares "good news." Shouldn't we? Isn't Kristof's point of positive stories a parallel that we should readily embrace because of who Jesus is and what he has done? I think so. Moreover, shouldn't we heed Kristof's words about personal stories precisely because the Bible itself is filled with them. Isn't our own spiritual narrative promoted by the Bible a litany of personal tales of disaster and triumph as God works in people lives? Finally, doesn't Jesus tell us that the good shepherd is willing to leave the 99 sheep and look for that one who is lost (Matt. 18:12-13). Kristof is telling us, "write about that one!" Jesus calls us to repent and see the good news. He promises us hope and Kristof reminds us that that's the story we should tell. Can such a story change the world? Yes, it can.

A Magnificat Christmas: A Helpful Guide for Celebrating Christmas Differently

A Perspective for Celebrating Christmas Differently:

Read Luke 1:46-55

Questions: What ideas or phrases in Mary’s song catch your attention? Does her song reflect your understanding of Christmas? Why or why not? What carols or Christmas traditions echo her vision of Jesus’ birth?

A Reason for Celebrating Christmas Differently:

Ipsos-Reid reports that 77% of North Americans said they didn’t need anything for Christmas, while only 36% said there was something in particular they actually wanted.

A 2006 survey done by Leger Marketing reported that when respondents were asked to name their favorite aspect of Christmas – 26% said “gift giving” compared to 8% who said “gift receiving.”

Questions: Are you surprised by these statistics? Why or why not? Apart from gifts, what are your favorite things about the Christmas season? What is your favorite Christmas memory?

A Prayer for Celebrating Christmas Differently:

Dear God,
Christmas is your light breaking into the darkness. We confess that we are sometimes blinded – not by your glory – but by consumerism, greed and the oppression of packed schedules. Help us, this year, to do Christmas differently. Strengthen us to resist the lure of getting more in a world where so many have so little. Equip us to use this time, to set aside moments to remember your birth, to think about how we might do your will here on earth, as it is in Heaven. By breaking into human history, you showed us a different way – the way of reconciliation, redemption and resurrection. As we celebrate how you came, help us remember why you did. And live differently because of it.
Amen

A Way of Celebrating Christmas Differently:

Make a mini-documentary about your parents. Interview them on video about their memories (childhood, adolescence, courtship, marriage and family life), interview other relatives and friends about your parents; include family photographs and heirlooms in the video and use your parents' favorite music as background. Give copies as a gift to your parents, siblings and relatives.

Collect quotes that make you think of someone. If you are feeling more creative, turn it into a small scrapbook, that can easily be carried in a backpack, briefcase, or purse.

Assemble a box of vintage dress-up clothes and accessories from grand-parents’, aunts’ and uncles’ closets. This box of shoes, bow ties, pants, hats, funky bracelets, clip-on earrings guarantees hours of creative fun for girls and boys aged 5 to 10.

Write stories (with illustrations) with your children and/or nephews and nieces as the chain characters and read it to them aloud as you are gathered around the Christmas tree.

Make a scrapbook for your son or daughter (e.g. memories of ages one to 10), which includes photographs, mementos and stories about them.

Bake holiday cookies, pies or cakes and deliver them to family and friends before the Christmas rush.

Make a recipe box, which includes family and personal favorites on note cards and put them in a personally decorated box.

Take your nephews and nieces, elderly relatives, or your harried neighbors' young children out on a special day in December to give their parents and or/caregivers a much-deserved break. A half-hour walk in the park, with a thermos of hot drinks, freshly-baked goodies and good conversation will keep everyone warm. You can also visit a museum or just go for a ride around town at night looking at Christmas lights and eating munchies.

Celebrate an international Christmas by having an afternoon tea with homemade cookies from around the world (you can feature a little flag on each plate). Check out http://www.christmas-cookies.com/recipes/bycountry for recipes. To make it more lively, play a Christmas trivia game by assembling a set of questions about Christmas (the Web has 163 million entries for "Christmas" alone).

Visit the elderly in nursing homes and be prepared to sing some Christmas carols.

Help out at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter on Christmas Eve.

Prepare a Christmas basket for someone who is going through rough times.

Use cartoon pages of newspapers and colorful pages of magazines as gift wrap.

Give a daughter, niece or granddaughter, the pair of earrings or necklace that she has always admired.

Collect tins from relatives and friends and return them as care packages (e.g. stuff them with chocolates, scented candles, baked goodies).

Shop at fair trade stores like the Mennonite-run Ten Thousand Villages (online), which sells products that provide employment to co-operatives in developing countries.

Suggest a spending limit of $10 or less; challenge everyone to stick to it and be creative.

Check out the online catalogues of church and non-profit Organizations which suggest alternative gifts: e.g. www.covchurch.org/cwr, www.unicef.org, www.oxfamamerica.org, www.beyondborders.net, www.worldvision.org, and www.invisiblechildren.com.

To discuss different opportunities or to find out more about how to serve Santa Barbara this Christmas season contact Pastor Jon Lemmond, jonucsb@yahoo.com