Never let the truth get in the way....

There is a picture that hangs in my house of my Grandmother, Pinky. She is 17 in the picture and she says it on the road to Demascus in the exact spot where Saul was converted to Paul. My Grandmother grew up in India, her parents were missionaries there, and she tells the story of traveling across the Middle East and all of Europe after leaving this spot with two of her friends back to the United States all alone. She talks about the horror of being put on a boat and told who she would meet where and when- having no clue of who many of these people were. She calls that a great journey of hers and laughs as she tells the story.

Now, if you know my grandmother you know that I call her Nani and you also know that one of her favorite lines is "never let the truth get in the way of a good story". I can't tell you if she actually stood in the exact spot where Saul became Paul or if she actually travleled for months across the world with only 2 friends and zero parents but these are her stories.

Stories are what make up our lives, they are what create a legacy for our families and our lives and they are often the foundation of who we are.

This last month has been a whirlwind for my family. My Nana, Nani's husband, was diagnosed with a rare form of bladder cancer. Between er visits, appointments with urologist and oncologist we know that this is a rare form of cancer and the success rate is not that good.

Yet he is fighting the best he can. Chemo is too harsh for him. He has fought and beat cancer 3 other times and this time he feels as though chemo is just too much for him. He had surgery yesterday to remove the cancer from his bladder but it will likely come back.

The past few days I have been thinking of all the stories my grandparents have told me over the years. The stories that make up their lives and the ones we will tell our children and their children. My grandfather grew up a preacher's kid. His parents were young when they got married and quickly had two children. They had their surprise child when my Nana was 16 years old. My Nana will tell stories of him and his brother Kent being told to come home at dark and that they would go play in the Rio Grande all day every day without anyone watching them or checking to see if they were okay.

He tells stories of going to college prepared to be pre-med, meeting my Nani and kissing her under the tree by Alpha Chi and then deciding (when it was too late for Nani to run for the hills) that he wanted to go to into the ministry.

His whole life has been filled with faith. The faith that God would lead him on his next adventure with my Nani and their three children and the confidence that no matter what they would be provided for and taken care of.

He tells the story of seeing a UFO one night in Sabetha, KS and not a lot of people believing him. He tells stories of counseling young people who were suffering from mental illness and just needed someone to listen to him. He tells stories of riding horses with his son, Robin and how he loves to go out to Robin's ranch whenever he can.

His stories make up his life and the legacy that he will pass on to each of us.

The stories of my grandparents and their parents are who define me. My Nana is a retired Methodist Pastor so you can see where I get that from. My Nani was a teacher and a woman who defied the "rules" of a Pastor's wife and did what she wanted to do with her career and raised her kids how she wanted to despite societies norms, you may be able to see where I get that independence from.

These two people have helped to shape who I am. They are two of my best friends and I know that God continues to be present in their lives and my mine every day allowing us to grow as a family and in relationship with one another.

As I get older, I will never know if my Nani actually had servants in India, if there were actually monkeys running around everywhere, if she and her sisters ever actually stripped down to nothing and walked up and down the streets yelling "we are the mud sisters", and I don't want to know. These are our stories and our family and I will tell them as long as I am able.

Besides who cares if they are true or not we simply can't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Blessed are you

I was able to be in my garden a few times this week.  Being in my garden is one of the places I feel the closest to God.  I can be pulling weeds, digging in the dirt or planting flowers and no matter how short amount of time I get I still feel peace.

I feel connected and I feel blessed. 

The other place I go to feel this connection is to scripture.  

Over the years I have learned that certain passages will come to you at times you least expect and at times when great hurt is going on in our lives and world. Monday I woke up, made my coffee and turned on Good morning America. It has become my favorite thing to do in the mornings even if children are running around demanding things.  

Yet, Monday wasn't a normal day.  I woke up to the headline "At least 50 dead and 500 wounded in the largest mass shooting in the history of the United States" We know now that number increased to 59, including the shooter, dead.  

My heart sank but at the same time it felt 'normal'. I wasn't surprised that it happened and that stung me.  How can I not be shocked?  How could I not be more consumed with grief for those that lost their lives?  

That came later as I processed the shooting but my initial reaction was "it happened again, what next?" Scripture came to me that day.  Scripture that is very known to most of us and is something that spoke to me differently than it ever had. 

The beatitudes set a stage for the entire ministry of Jesus-  they talk about humility, meekness, hungering for God in our lives, peace, justice and being persecuted for your believes.  

But here is the thing that strikes me the most about them- they are not instructions on how to live out your live as people of God, no, they are exclamations.  Jesus is telling his followers that if you have God in your heart these things will also be in your heart and you will like a life that is humble, that thirst for more God, that is peaceful, that fights for justice and that stands up when being persecuted.  

The three that spoke to me the most this week are probably the obvious ones-  

blessed are those who mourn,  

blessed are the peacemakers  

and blessed are those that are persecuted 

Blessed are those who mourn.  

Have you heard the phrase- grief is the price of love? "For God so loved the earth he gave his only son"  God loved us all so much that Jesus came into our world to minister the lost and lowly, to offer love, grace and mercy to all of God's people not just the ones that they all at the time believed deserved it.  

And God mourned for the loss of Jesus, God mourned for all of us, for we were so loved the ultimate sacrifice was made.  

I've experienced grief in my life but I can't imagine the grief that people felt the day of the shooting.  

The sheer terror of- is my love one dead?  

Did they make it out?  

Why aren't they answering the phone?  

59 people killed, 500 plus wounded.  

And I want to point out that I do include the shooter in that number because that was also a life lost, a child of God that strayed away at some point in his life. His life mattered- and we are taught that through the teachings of Jesus Christ.  

Grief is the price we pay for love.  

When tragedy strikes our lives we often shut down.  We close ourselves off to the possibility of love with others because it is a way to protect ourselves, a way to put on a shield in order to not have to grieve again.  

But life doesn't work that way.  We are human.  We love.  And if we open ourselves up to the possibility of having God in our lives and the holy spirit present with us while we are grieving we open ourselves up to the possibility of experiencing more love in our lives through the grace and mercy offered to us by God.  

Blessed are those who mourn- for they know the true price of love.  

Peace. Blessed are the peace makers.  

Now before you get too worried, I am not going to preach today about gun control and your 2nd amendment right.  That isn't what I am going for.  I do believe that we all have the right to bear arms as long as we are of sound mind and keep them locked up out of the reach of those that should not have access to weapons; children, people who don't know how to use them and those that would use them to harm others.  

I am married to a Lieutenant in the Johnson County Sheriff's office so it is a given that there are guns in our home.  My dad and grandfathers were hunters so I grew up around guns. 

However, I never had a desire to use them. So I never knew where they were stored or if I did they were locked up and I didn’t have the code to the gun safe for obvious reasons.  Gun violence is so common in our world that people are becoming complacent to it however Jesus is asking us live a life of peace- a life of non-violence. He displays this even in his final days as he is being arrested. Jesus tells Peter to put down his sword. To not fight what is happening. He is living out non-violence even as he knows what is going to happen to him. 

So how do we do that?  

When a mass shooting happens we all say "I pray for the lives lost"  And while prayer is important it isn't enough.  Jesus is calling us into action to promote peace in our homes, our lives and our world.

  

One of the most common phrases in the Bible and the most misinterpreted is "turn the other cheek".  

What many people do not know is that phrase is actually a sign of resistance to an oppressor.  At the time of Jesus, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person "turned the other cheek," the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. The other alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, they argue, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect demanding equality..  

Demanding equality in a time where oppression was everywhere people looked.  

Of course we don’t have to worry about that now, do we?  We are all equal, no one is oppressed and our lives are all deemed to be as valuable as the next.... I hope you can sense the sarcasm in my voice.  

In order to turn the other cheek today we all have to recognize our own privilege.  All of us in this room are white, we are all likely middle to upper class, live in Johnson County, KS and have likely lived a life of privilege in comparison to other people in our community.  

Recognizing your own privilege is the first step to living a life of action, a life of peace.  

When we are able to do this we are able to live out this beatitude by offering equality to all of God's people.  

At our church we offer a peace academy twice a year for children ages kindergarten-5th grade.  During this peace academy children learn about racism, bullying, diversity, and equality.  They learn how to be an 'upstander' vs a 'bystander'.  These children are practicing peace every day.  They are taught to sit with the kid at lunch that no one will sit with.  To befriend the new kid.  To talk to kids that maybe don't look like them or aren’t from the same type of family as them.  

And here's the thing- they actually do it.  

They live their lives as upstanders, a life of peace, combating those that put others down and living as Jesus calls us to- in action.  

We all need to strive to be like these children.  

To recognize that our world is not equal and we have to stand up for those being oppressed.  

We have to live out peace by being in action in our everyday lives. By talking to each other about hate, racism, bullying and equality. As Christians this is what we are supposed to be doing everyday. It can be hard, it can be daunting but it can be done.  

A colleague and friend of mine, Emily Robnett wrote this earlier this week and it perfectly sums up what I am saying 

"Prayer is two-fold just as faith is two-fold. Faith without works is dead. Prayer without action is dead. A faithful prayer calls us to action; it mobilizes us to movement. As we pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," we know we are called to take part in making this prayer come into fruition. It is a commission. So it is not either "thoughts and prayers" or "action." It is "thoughts, prayers, AND action." May your will be done, O God. May we grow closer to reflecting your loving, compassionate nature"  

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.  For centuries Christians have been persecuted for being Christian, for speaking out their faith and for living as followers of Christ.  

In the early church, followers of Christ were imprisoned and told they must change their ways or they will face dire consequences.  As time has gone on there have been wars over faith and groups of people, not just Christians, have been persecuted for simply practicing their faith in a world that refuses to acknowledge our shared oneness and creation by a God that loves all of us.  

Recently I was a coffee shop and was admiring two young girls reading their Bibles and discussing the book of John.  I was in awe that they were in public doing this.  It didn't appear that they were doing it for church or class but simply because they wanted to.  

Realizing that they may think I was judging them for being Christian, I introduced myself and told them how beautiful it was to see them studying the Bible.  They both smiled and thanked me and one girl said "I love the Bible, it’s my favorite thing to read and helps me grow as a Christian".  

I then realized how incredibly heartbreaking it is that we live in a society where we often hide our Christianity.  

We hide our love for Christ because we fear what others may say.  

We fear that we will be persecuted for being "out" as a Christian.  

Christianity has gotten a negative rap in the last few decades.  People professing their Christianity by putting others down, by judging those that don't believe in Christ and by preaching a God that is full of wrath and violence has become the "face" of Christianity.  

But that isn't what God or Christianity is.  As believers of Christ we must stand up to those that persecute us for our beliefs. We can do this in ways that aren’t harmful to others and perhaps in ways that show the love, grace and mercy of Christ to those against us.  And in hope that maybe just maybe they will see a God of love vs hate and want to know more.  

59 people killed. Over 500 people injured.  

Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peace makers, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness. 

Blessed are YOU.  

Each of us in this room is here for a reason.  

Perhaps you have been a Christian and church goer your whole life. Perhaps you simply wanted something to do this evening.  Perhaps you are experiencing hardship or great joy in your life and wanted to be in worship with people that can offer you love, grace and mercy. 

For whatever reason it is, we are all here together.  

Worshipping a God of love.  

Worshipping a God of grace and mercy and worshipping a God that allows us to live out the beatitudes simply by living a life where the holy spirit is in us every day and strengthens our oneness with each other and this world. 

Go forth today knowing you are loved, knowing you are strong and knowing that you are have the ability to live out these exclamations every day. Amen.