Be Converted

In all of our lives there are mini-conversions and mini-resurrections, in which God works through our lives to bring about transforming change in us and the world. Jonah was a reluctant prophet who learned about conversion.

Below is reflections on the experience of Jonah by Melissa Lauber, Communications staff with the Baltimore-Washington Conference, UMC

Then God assigned a huge fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah was in the fish's belly three days and nights. Then Jonah prayed to his God from the belly of the fish. He prayed:

In trouble, deep trouble, I prayed to God. He answered me.From the belly of the grave I cried, 'Help!' You heard my cry.You threw me into ocean's depths, into a watery grave,With ocean waves, ocean breakers crashing over me.I said, 'I've been thrown away, thrown out, out of your sight.I'll never again lay eyes on your Holy Temple.'Ocean gripped me by the throat. …
When my life was slipping away, I remembered God, and my prayer got through to you, made it all the way to your Holy Temple.Those who worship hollow gods, god-frauds, walk away from their only true love.But I'm worshiping you, God, calling out in thanksgiving!And I'll do what I promised I'd do! Salvation belongs to God!"

Then God spoke to the fish, and it vomited up Jonah on the seashore.
Next, God spoke to Jonah a second time:

"Up on your feet and on your way to the big city of Nineveh! Preach to them. They're in a bad way and I can't ignore it any longer."

This time Jonah started off straight for Nineveh, obeying God's orders to the letter.

Consider:
In what ways are the people you are in ministry with like Jonah?
How might you be reluctant about embracing your call from God? What would it take to shake you out of that reluctance?

Today we pray for the churches and people of the Baltimore region.

Good Fruit

The following is excerpted from a sermon preached this past Sunday, October 11, 2009 at Union Memorial United Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD.


One of most important set of memories I have of my youth was the way my sister, brother and I spent our summers. We were raised mostly in the city – in Washington, DC - but each summer – until I was about thirteen years old, we traveled to Madison Heights, Virginia (just outside of Lynchburg, Virginia) to spend the summers with my grandparents.

There are many things that I remember about Madison Heights and those summers. I remember our large extended family (all of our uncles, aunts and cousins, and those we thought were our cousins). I remember that the doors of my grandparents’ house were seldom – if ever - locked, and I remember that we would run and play outside without seeming ever to worry about anything or anybody.

I remember my grandmother’s cooking, and I remember my grandfather’s large garden. He called it a garden, but it seemed like a farm to me. I also remember that my grandparents had several fruit trees in their yard. One of the fruit trees was a large peach tree. I can remember – every summer - watching that peach tree, and waiting until the middle of summer when the peaches on the tree would be ready of picking and eating. Sometimes, we would pick the peaches, and eat them right off the tree – right at the tree. We didn’t think to wash them – we would just eat the peaches off the tree. It was good fruit.

I realize now that such good fruit did not emerge instantaneously. The good fruit of that tree emerged within the context of a peach seed that had been planted many years before. It was a seed that had been planted in good, fertile soil - soil that had been watered by consistent rains, which with the sunlight that beamed down on it, served to nourish the seed, and helped the seed grow into a fruitful tree over the years. As a result of all of this, the tree that eventually emerged that would bear good fruit.

The lesson that Jesus is trying to teach here in what has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount is a lesson about good fruit. In Matthew 7:17, Jesus says, "You will know them by their fruit." Here he makes a clear distinction between two types of fruit - good fruit and bad fruit. Good fruit is born from a good tree; good fruit cannot be born from a bad tree, and bad fruit is born of bad trees.

These words afford each of us an opportunity to take stock of how fruitful our lives are. In other words, what kind of tree are we? And what kind of fruit are we bearing? Are we bearing good fruit or bad fruit?

Thinking back on my grandparents’ peach tree, we knew as soon as we bit into a peach from the tree, whether the fruit was good or bad.

The nature of bad fruit is that it is either overly ripe and rotting, or not yet fully developed. Overly ripe and rotting fruit has lost its texture and its flavor has become a distortion of what it would taste like if it were still good. And if it is underdeveloped it is hard and usually hasn’t developed the full measure of what it would taste like if were allowed to grow to maturity.

Indeed, bad fruit manifests itself in many ways around us. It is born in the racism, sexism, classism that afflicts our world, and even many of our churches. It is born in our inattention to the poor and oppressed among us. It is born in self-interest and self-centeredness among too many. It is born in materialism and greed. It is born in what Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund has called the dis-ease of “affluenza.” We possess too much that is worth too little.

Bad fruit is born of our collective inattention (or silence) amidst the wars in our midst, and violence on too many of our streets. It is born in our inability or unwillingness to heed the words of the psalmist, and to “seek peace and pursue it.”

In light of this, Christ points us to how we can bear good fruit. At another place in the Sermon on the Mount, he reminds us to “seek first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness, and all other things will be added to it.” He reminds us in the beatitudes that “blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.” And he points out that we are to love not only those who look like us, think like us, believe like us, worship like us, and agree with us – but that we are to love even our enemies.

The apostle Paul said that the “fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, long-suffering, generosity, and self-control” (Galatians 5:21-22). In other words, these nine things are the marks of fruitfulness for Christians.

May God grant us, in the living of these days, the grace, strength and courage to bear good fruit.

UNPACKING HOPE

by Rev. Wanda Bynum Duckett, Baltimore Hope Fellow

This past summer I was blessed to travel to Zimbabwe, Africa to participate in the Pastors’ School and an international partnership summit. What a discipleship adventure! I met some of the most amazing people and was able to connect with a part of myself that is deeply rooted in my cultural heritage and history. I am still unpacking lessons and gifts from this trip as I continue to reflect on the many moments of growth and inspiration. One of the most powerful gifts I brought back from this journey was a new and revived sense of Hope. So often we base our hope on things seen, that which we expect to follow as a result of what we believe to be feasible given a certain set of resources, gifts, or talents. But the bible tells us that our faith is about a different kind of hope. Our faith is now faith. It is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It is hope that lives before, without, nevertheless, and in spite of.

In Zimbabwe, I saw the very substance and evidence of that kind of hope. I saw hope come to fruition as Bishops Schol and Nhiwatiwa dedicated a new church that was built on nothing less than hope and faith. The people had a vision and a mind to work. Most of all they had hope that if they started moving toward their vision, God would see it through. The Zimbabwean people believe in the principle of chabadza which says that if one is engaged in productive work, God will send others to help bring it to completion. In the spirit of chabadza, the women of Muradzikwa made bricks with which to build this new church. The team planned and prayed and worked with their vision ever in mind. And when they had come to the end of their resources, Hope kicked in! God allowed our Hope Fund dollars, combined with the work of the faithful people of Zimbabwe, to contribute to the completion of this magnificent new worship space in only 13 months.

I came home from Zimbabwe unpacking a new understanding of hope. This hope is not in grants, or numbers, or in the bent minds and wills of public officials. This hope is the bright eyed hope of children who value the privilege of attending school. This hope is the hope of people who work and give, often without knowing whether or how much they will be paid. This hope is the hope of pastors who live without what we might deem the bare necessities of life, but preach and teach as if Jesus is on his way this very hour. This hope is the hope of students who study at Africa University to equip themselves for leadership, and the families that support them as the hope for the future. This hope is the hope of mothers and grandmothers who dance in grateful celebration for the life-line of malaria nets to protect their families from the deadly disease that kills a child every 30 seconds. This hope is the hope that doesn’t need an organ or pulpit to be the church, but will gather around a rock or a tree to form a congregation and band together to feed a community. These things I recall to my mind and therefore I have new hope for Baltimore. This new hope is brick-making, stronghold-shattering and death-defying! With all of the resources at our disposal, when we embrace the spirit of chabadza and work collaboratively and faithfully, we can realize our vision to make disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world right here in Baltimore.

Brick City Documentary

Check out the youtube clip from the new Brick City documentary series which is airing this week, and documents community efforts to address violence in Newark, New Jersey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc-aiSQcjqo&feature=player_embedded

The Premiere last week in Newark also made news at Drew University as a result of the work of the United Methodist Church's Communities of Shalom Initiative in Newark: http://www.drew.edu/Default-Content.aspx?id=67314.

Hope is Alive in Baltimore

Check out the article on the Baltimore Region Urban Ministry Convocation, Hope for the City-Redeeming the Dream at http://bwcumc.org/content/hope-alive-baltimore. The Convocation was held September 18-19, 2009 at the Maritime Institute of Technology.

CHOOSING CIVILITY

A bumper-sticker in one Central Maryland County offers the simple words, “Choose Civility.” Each time I’ve seen the bumper-sticker over the past two years or so, I have taken a moment to think about the role of civility in my own life, and in the lives of those around me. Events of recent days remind us how challenging these two words are: from the heckling by U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson (South Carolina) during the speech of President Barack to the joint session of the U.S. Congress; to the threatening, expletive-filled tirade of tennis player Serena Williams toward an tennis official at the U.S. Open; to the inappropriate comments of hip-hop artist Kanye West, directed toward fellow artist Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards – we are reminded of the lack of civility among us, and the potential for harm found in our words and actions. Perhaps the words of British poet, Rudyard Kipling in his 1896 work “IF” are words that we can all use as a means of pointing us back toward civility:


IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Hope in Hard Times - The Race Debate in America

During this week, President Barack Obama addressed the nation on two occasions: first in a speech to students returning to school across the nation, and second in a speech on health care reform to a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Debate on both speeches points to the deep political, racial and ideological divisions that remain endemic in our nation. Two weeks ago, my daughter began her college studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, and in one of her courses was asked to compare and contrast the views of President Obama and former Congressman Newt Gingrich on race and racism in America. I thought that her reflections were particularly timely in light of where we find ourselves as a nation. I share them with her permission:


Race in America:
A More Perfect Union Versus The Obama Challenge - by Kristen E. Hunt, College Park, MD

In the speeches "A More Perfect Union" and "The Obama Challenge," two notable politicians express their stunningly conflicting views on the presence of racism in today’s society, and its effect on the American people. After Reverend Jeremiah Wright, declared his uncompromising opinions regarding race in America, Barack Obama responded with the speech A More Perfect Union, in which he gave a remedy to heal the malady afflicting the American population. Among a variety of issues, Obama spoke about the prevalence of racial tensions which continue to define the relationship between the black and white communities. In response to Obama’s proposals intended to combat racial prejudice, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, pronounced his opinions in the speech The Obama Challenge. After reading and analyzing both speeches, it is evident that Gingrich and Obama assert views which differ significantly.

Within the contexts of both speeches, Gingrich and Obama explicitly state their respective approaches on race. Surprisingly, both men agree that the anger contained by the black and white communities plays a considerable role in the discussion of race in America. However, this is conceivably one of the only similarities shared by the politicians. On one hand, Obama argues that to simply shelve anger or “wish it away” could prove to be completely detrimental. Contrarily, Gingrich contends that dismissing this anger and moving on is the only way that the American people can progress concurrently as a nation.

In "A More Perfect Union," Obama goes on to argue that the “black experience” is made up of a series of contradictions, such as “love and bitterness” and “fierce intelligence and shocking ignorance.” Unambiguously, the President believes that race factors into the chances provided to each American citizen. To support his belief, he notes that the inferior school systems today are often the ones that were segregated fifty years ago. Obama feels that racial tensions were undeniably the origin of the lack of opportunities for African Americans, and that it still continues to play a substantial role. Accordingly, it is both achievable and necessary for all Americans to unite and battle racial prejudices; people of all races must recognize the historically oppressive and tyrannical nature of the black experience in America.

Conversely, Gingrich challenges Obama’s outlook by reasoning that corrupt government and wayward culture are to blame for the discrepancies in today’s society. Race, according to Gingrich, is unquestionably not a current factor in the prospect for each American citizen. He notes that although one’s racial background may have lead to the denial of opportunity in the past, race is no longer an issue in the discussion of biased opportunity. To support his platform, Gingrich merely assumes that if every poor person were to move away from the areas which present “bad culture and bad government,” they would become affluent and prosperous. In order to become an even stronger nation, it is necessary to reform the corrupt culture and government leading the nation astray.

Personally, I find Obama’s views to be both accurate and relevant when examining race in today’s society. It is undeniable that the racial tensions in America have not been completely eradicated. Gingrich fails to discern this verity. Collectively, however, the American population has made definite progress in addressing the nation’s problems concerning race. Not only does Obama clearly and succinctly define the racial dilemmas which currently confine both black and white communities alike; he also provides a sensible resolution to further mend the condition of the American people. By making significant strides towards a more emancipated nation, it is clear that we, the people of the United States, are drawing nearer towards a more perfect union.