Rick's Green Grass

Saturday, February 28, 2015

After my post about dreadful ways to celebrate Lent with your kids, here are some serious suggestions I found on the web that would be fun and meaningful for kids!

Make a paper chain countdown: Anticipate Jesus’ resurrection! Remove a link from the chain each day to illustrate the passage of time until Easter.

Create a Lenten calendar: Make a calendar that indicates Ash Wednesday, each Sunday of Lent, and Holy Week, and let your child mark one spot each day (or print this one!) You can also use the ones supplied by Trinity.

Revitalize your prayer/devotional routine:

Learn a new prayer. Selecting a new bedtime or mealtime prayer can be a great way to get kids to really think about the meaning behind their prayers, rather than just reciting words without thought. Stuck? Prayers for mealtime can be found in the Book of

Common Prayer on p. 835. There are also some simple and cute prayer kids on the Internet if you Google “Prayers for Kids”. They’re simple and easily memorized.

Learn a new method of prayer, such as a walking prayer (Focus on seeing God everywhere), centering prayer (Pick a word like kindness. Sit in quietness with this word for 5 minutes. Share your feelings.), or color prayer (Think of what you want to pray about, and then color it.)

Learn a new hymn together!

Fasting (but not like you think):

The practice of fasting is an attempt to focus on life’s blessings, by pausing — to be mindful of our gratitude for family, time, and food. Here are some ideas…

Fast from fast food — Replace it with a dinner your kids help cook and eat together as a family.

Have a Fish Friday! Ever wonder where that came from? When fish was the cheapest

meal a person could have, it was suggested on Fridays that people eat fish, and donate the difference between this cheap meal and what they would have regularly eaten to the poor. Not a bad idea, but nowadays, we might have Mac & Cheese Fridays.

Fast from TV one day a week — Replace it with family reading and outings.

Fast from electronic games one day a week — Replace them with family games.

Fast from using the computer — Spend that time with your family.

Read the Bible daily: Read a different Bible story from your child’s favorite Children’s Bible each day. Or add some Easter or “God books” to your home library.

Start a prayer/devotional/gratitude jar: This can take many forms. Fill a jar with either prayer

starters or short prayers and read one together each day. Or leave slips of paper out for family members to write down people and things they are grateful for. Collect the slips and read them together during dinner or keep them for Sunday dinners, or wait for your Easter Sunday celebration.

Donate:

Food: Have your children help you pick one non-perishable food item to put in a box each day to be delivered to a local food pantry at the end of Lent.

Money: Collect a daily offering to be given to your church or favorite charity.

Toys/Clothes: Have your children sort through their things for toys that they no longer play with and clothes that no longer get worn. Donate the unused items to those who need them more.

Time: As a family, find ways you can volunteer your time to help others. Depending on the age of your children, it may be appropriate to volunteer at a soup kitchen or shelter. Other ideas include picking up trash at the neighborhood park, making cards to give to nursing home residents, helping elderly neighbors with yard work, or preparing a meal for someone who is sick or injured. Write a letter, send a card, or call someone who is lonely or shut-in. The possibilities are endless!

Become a better steward of God’s creation:

Make a bird feeder: Then hang it outside to help the birds in this late winter/early spring season.

Reduce/reuse/recycle: Brainstorm together ways you can take better care of the

environment. Can you take reusable bags to the store or use them in lunch containers? Can you start composting? Can your kids create something new out of those food containers you would normally toss?

Friday, February 27, 2015

For the 2nd Sunday in March, I was searching for ideas to get kids involved in Lent (prayer, fasting, and alms). Think of positive things like Coloring Prayer, Recycling, Visiting the Elderly, and Donating old Toys. But here are the absolute worst ideas I came across on the web (Yes, these are real... and sick! I'll be back in a week with some great ideas!):

Take your child to Stations of the Cross at Church, and then when you get home, say the Sorrowful Mysteries on the rosary (Oh, mommy, no, don't make us go outside and play! We'd rather do the Sorrowful Mysteries.)

Bake braided bread in a circle and stick pretzels (or more lethally, toothpicks) in it to create a tasty crown of thorns (Governmentally sanctioned torture never tasted so good!)

Visit a Cemetery: Find a family member in a cemetery and explain how Jesus died so this person could go to heaven. ("So... you better watch out, you better not cry..." sing on!)

Temptation Cookies: While baking cookies, tell your children about the temptation of Jesus in the desert. When the cookies are done, leave them on the table, but they cannot eat them. (Remember Aunt Mabel in the cemetery? Well, if you eat these cookies...)

Sunday, April 27, 2014

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the
twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’
But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in
his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side,
I will not believe.’— John 20

Poor doubting Thomas.
There ought to be a beatitude for the guy.

Blessed are the doubters... for they shall not be
suckered in... and though their phones ringeth off the hook during the dinner
hour they shall not fall for telemarketing fraud. Nor shall they be caught up in Wall Street
Ponzie schemes. Yea verily, though they
be compassed about on every side by friends and television commercials who
plead earnestly with them to do this or that, blessed are they, for they shall
check their facts and make up their own minds.

Blessed are the doubters, for once they have been
given the chance to live into their doubts, like Thomas, their faith shall be
all the deeper for it.

Some Christians are afraid that doubt is a sin, but
it’s not. Only humans are
offended if you doubt them God doesn’t
think like we do. Jesus doesn't
criticize Thomas for his doubts — he knew Thomas.
Thomas was brave and utterly dedicated to Jesus. In John 11, when Jesus
decided to go into terrible danger by returning to Bethany because Lazarus had
died, it says, "Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his
fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with
him.’" Thomas spoke his
mind. In John 14, Jesus said, "And
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to
myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the
place where I am going.’"
Thomas said to him, "‘Lord, we do not know where you are
going. How can we know the way?’"

Jesus isn’t offended. Jesus reacts as God does. He just opens himself up, allows himself to
be questioned, explored, examined. He
doesn’t argue with Thomas. He
has more of an attitude of, “Come and see.” In First John it says, "God is light and
in him there is no darkness." He's
not going to get angry or impatient. God
can take your doubt. God can take your
anger.

Doubt can be a tremendous gift from God, an
invitation to draw closer and touch the wounds.
Doubt can be a call to examine the Body beneath the skin, an invitation
to touch what I don't know and haven't seen, what I don't quite believe.

Thomas became a great believer in short order. But, some of us have created a Jesus we're
afraid to touch. We've made him into a
porcelain doll. We’re
afraid to doubt as if Jesus is so fragile, he might wobble off the shelf and
break. Baby
Jesus is fine at Christmas, but I'll tell you, in my life I need a grown up
Jesus. Thank you, God for giving
us a real Jesus! One that we can doubt
and touch and hold onto in life’s storms and have faith in. After all the doubt, Jesus gives an even
greater gift: He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The real Jesus meets us in our doubts. Theology is a fancy word priests and
academics use to describe sitting around, drinking tea, and chatting about what
we think God is like. Today’s
Gospel is about God meeting us where we live... in the flesh. This is called Incarnation theology. It is an understanding that the physical
matters to God and that God is present in the physical. Again in First John:

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what
we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and
touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.

God runs out and meets us in our doubts and our
unbelief and lets us touch and handle and see and try things. In my life, it always has seemed I recognized
God when I was most in doubt and most broken.
Has it been that way for you too?
When everything is going just fine, we skim along paying little
attention, but when everything falls apart, we cry, "Where is
God?" God has left heaven and
pitched a tent among us. God reigns here. God is not someplace else. The only way to know God is in the
incarnation, the real “stuff” of life: The rejoicing of springtime,
the resurrection of the earth, in our jobs, in our relationships and fellowship
with each other.

For so many Christians, fellowship with one another
is based on a long list of requirements: Do you believe exactly like I do on
all the major controversies of the day?
But in John 1, their fellowship was based, not a list of requirements, but on walking
together and a sense of being forgiven: "But if we walk in the light as he
himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
Jesus his Son cleanses us." Even
forgiveness of sins was changed in today’s Gospel: “If you forgive sins of any, they are forgiven
them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’" Forgiveness is no longer passive waiting for
God to act, but somehow embedded in our relationship with one another. We have an active role in the reconciliation
of the world and each other.

We don’t have a porcelain, fragile Jesus who goes all wobbly if we have human doubts and fears. We have a tough Jesus, a grown-up Jesus, a
real Jesus, a Jesus who comes to live among us.
Scripture points to the real Jesus, but it's not the real Jesus - let’s
not confuse the two. John says
everything has been "Written so that you may come to believe... and
believing ... have life." Many
other signs were done, but this is enough so you can have life. All of this is just to point us to real life
with our Lord. All the scriptural
proof-texting and theology done by all the theologians and priests and scribes
and rabbis did not lead to the revelation of the risen Christ. That revelation only came when the risen
living Christ walked alongside the disciples grieving his death on the road to
Emmaus, and he went in with them and broke the bread. That revelation only came through allowing
Thomas to doubt. That revelation only
comes through the sharing of bread and wine. It is in the bread and wine where Jesus comes
so close he breathes on you, as he did the early disciples, and says, “Receive
the Holy Spirit.”

Friday, January 31, 2014

As he walked by
the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew
his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will
make you fish for people.’ — Matthew 4

I have to admit I don’t know much about football, but
I heard so much chatter about the behavior of Seattle Seahawks fans, that I got
curious. There were stories of loud
yelling and Skittles being thrown on the field.
I even came across an article about the Seahawk fans causing an
earthquake. That was a bit of hyperbole; they simply stomped and made enough
noise to be picked up by a nearby seismograph — very different from causing an
actual earthquake.

There was a story about how, in one case, fans from
the two rival teams almost got in a fight, until one of them tried to talk some
sense into them all. He said, "You
realize neither of us is actually playing on one of the teams?" There’s a huge difference between being a fan
and being an actual player.

As people are looking forward to the Super Bowl,
perhaps we should ask ourselves the same question about our faith in Jesus,
"Are we just fans, or are we followers?" You may be Jesus’s greatest fan. You may be the one wearing the funny face
paint and the colored wig, waving your flag and throwing Skittles onto the
field for Jesus, but don’t kid yourself; there’s a huge difference between
being a fan of Jesus and being an actual player on his team.

It is here on this ordinary Sunday, somewhere between
Christmas and Easter that we read the Gospel account of how ordinary people
became star players on his team — how his church began.

Fishing was tough work. Much of their fishing was done at night,
using lanterns. In the morning, the fishermen would sort their catch (Luke 5:5;
John 21:3). When the fish had been sent
off to market, it would be time for the fishermen to clean and repair their
nets. Once this was done, they could
sleep and get ready for the next night’s work.

In our text today, Jesus is walking along the shore
early in the morning, and he comes to Simon Peter and Andrew while they are
going about their morning routine. And
something amazing happens… Jesus calls
his first disciples, the first players on his team. Renowned Rabbis didn’t go out and call
followers; they simply waited for followers to come to them. Not Jesus.
And if you know any of the stories about them in the Gospels, you know
these guys weren’t ready for prime time.

I already told you I don’t know much about football,
but my impression is it’s kind of tough to get on a major league team. Kids spend their youth playing on Pop Warner
teams, and then they compete to get on their high school football team. If they succeed there, they carefully choose
a college that has a great football program or will offer them a sports
scholarship, and then, they fight to get and to keep a position on their
college team. And they hope… just hope they’ll
get noticed by a scout for a national franchise. And most are disappointed.

The Denver Broncos do not select their players by
driving up to a couple of ordinary guys out fishing and say, “Hey, you! We want you to be on our team. Oh, bring your
brother too.” But that’s exactly what
Jesus did. “As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw
two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew... 'Follow me, and I will make you fish for
people.'”

I think it’s important to notice what Jesus did not
say. He did not say, “Follow me, but
first you have to believe in me.” He did
not say, “Follow me, but first you have to love me.” He did not say, “Follow me, but first you have
to be a perfect person.” There were no
preconditions in Jesus’ call to his followers.
You don’t have to have perfect faith.
You don’t have to understand everything.
You don’t have to subscribe to some list of required beliefs. When Jesus calls, he asks me, and he asks you
to step out into the unknown with him. He
asks us to follow even though we may not be quite sure of where he is taking us
or whether we are up to journey.

Peter, Andrew, James, and John must have wondered and
even been a little intrigued by Jesus saying, “I will make you fish for
people.” But as they heard him preach,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” they learned two things
about fishing for people: One, it had to
start with them. They had to be a
certain kind of people to bring in others.
It started with them wanting a new kind of life, a change. And the second thing they knew, it wasn’t
going to be too hard to get into this Kingdom of Heaven because it was nearby, right
in their midst. In one place it can be
translated, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

And as they followed Jesus day by day, learning to
live a new way, a way filled with hope instead of despair, and as they and the
multitudes who followed Jesus saw the Kingdom of Heaven breaking out within
them and among them, the prophesy of old Isaiah began to be fulfilled, “The people who
sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region
and shadow of death light has dawned.”

We need this light today every bit as much as they
did 2,000 years ago. Each of us has some
dark corners in our lives, places where we feel hopeless, lost, overwhelmed,
and alone. But when the great light of
Christ begins to shine, we move from darkness into a new day. But that light, that change of life, doesn’t
happen if you’re just a fan of Jesus, you have to be on the team. You’ve got to get out on the field not just
throw Skittles for Jesus from the grandstands.

Now, I’ll be truthful with you, it’s a lot tougher to
be a player than it is to be a fan. And
there are no guarantees that there won’t be dark times in our lives. But what we are promised is we are not alone,
and darkness is never going to win. Knowing
that, with God’s presence in our lives, we can walk through any darkness
without fear overwhelming us as we hold the hand of the one who walked
alongside the sea that morning so many years ago.

The part about “fishing for people” was always kind
of hard for me to understand because I’m a pretty bad fisherman despite my poor
dad’s best efforts. But I think maybe
that misses the point: If Jesus can use a fisherman, he can use me and he can
use you! He reached out to people where
they were in their lives. To exhausted
fishermen, he said, “Follow me, and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” To builders and architects and carpenters, he
says, “Follow me, and I will show you how to build up people.” To lawyers, he says, “Follow me, and I will
show you how to share the law of love with others.” To those who feel they might not have many
talents to offer, he says, “Follow me, and I’ll show you how talented you can
be bringing light to others.” And he
calls wives and husbands who work at home, and taxi cab drivers, and young
people who think they’re too young to have anything to offer, and old people
who fear they have nothing more to offer.
Jesus called ordinary people right in the middle of their ordinary lives
to do extraordinary things, and he still does this morning. You can do this where you are In fact, Christ needs you right where you
are.

Phillips Brooks was the Bishop of Massachusetts in
the late 1800’s. Most of us know him
only as the author of "O little town of Bethlehem," but he was also
renowned as an incredible preacher. Here’s
what he said in one of his sermons:

"It seems very
certain that the world is to grow better and richer in the future, however it
has been in the past, not by the magnificent achievements of the highly-gifted
few, but by the patient faithfulness of the one-talented many. “If we could draw back the curtains of the
millennium and look in, we should see not a Hercules here and there standing on
the “world-wasting” monsters he had killed, but a world full of (human beings),
each with an arm of moderate muscle, but each triumphant over (their) own
little piece of the earth... It seems
as if heroes (have) done almost all for the world that they can do, and not
much more can come till common (men and women) awake and take (up) their common
tasks."

We don't need one more Superman or Spiderman. The world doesn’t need any more Wonder Women
or Xena: Warrior Princesses. We just
need more ordinary people like Mary and Joseph, like Martha and John and Mary
Magdalene, and Andrew and Peter. We need
to stop merely being fans of Jesus and become followers. What the world needs… what God is looking for
in our time… is just folks like you and me living our ordinary lives, doing our
most humble tasks, sharing our love and our faith and our light with our
brothers and sisters as we meet them every day along our journey.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

You know, I suppose I should be more proper and call
it “Morning Prayer” as it is entitled in the Book of Common Prayer, but I just
can’t help but think of it simply as “Coffee with God” every morning. I do follow the readings and the format of
the BCP — I’m such a daydreamer, always haring off after random thoughts, that I
like how it makes me focus. Still,
although I follow the format, I still think of it as simply saying, “Good
morning!” and sitting down for coffee with an old friend. Would I look forward to it as much if it I
thought of it as formal prayer?

Sunday, December 29, 2013

I have come to the conclusion that I like the idea of
a White Christmas better than the reality of a White Christmas. I don’t like driving in snow, and I don’t
like shoveling it, and I don’t like walking across it once it’s turned into
compacted ice day after day. We’ve had a
couple storms this December, and we’re slated to have another next weekend. And when the storms come in, I don’t know
about you, but all I want to do is stay home and ride out the storm with hot
chocolate and a blanket. I think that
desire to go home is built into all of us.

It’s even built into my smart phone. All I have to say is, “OK, Google now! Go home!”
And wherever I am it will pop up a map and navigation to lead me home.

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, found out there was no
place like home. Of course it took her 1 hour and 52 minutes, a really cranky
witch, and a committee of flying monkeys to teach her, but she learned it.

Have you seen some of those Military homecoming
videos on the evening news or on YouTube?
I think the ones I love best the ones where the dad or mom has been away
in Afghanistan, and they surprise their kids at a school assembly. I guess those are my favorites because I used
to be a schoolteacher, and I would’ve loved to have been part of something like
that. But what if that mom or dad comes
out and no one recognizes them. What if
no child bursts into tears and runs into their arms? What if, instead of a welcome, the returning
soldier was met with both indifference and in some cases outright hostility.

How unspeakably sad that would be. How lonely. How empty.
That emptiness is exactly what John tells us Jesus experienced. Jesus was not recognized when he came home.

"He was in the world, and the world came into being through
him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own
people did not accept him." — John 1:10,
11

Of all people who should have been prepared to
recognize the Messiah, it should’ve been his own nation. Israel gloried in the commandments and ordinances
and prophecies of their Scriptures. Not
only had their own Scriptures prepared them for Jesus’ homecoming, his cousin
John the Baptist had tried to get them ready ahead of time to welcome Jesus —
he told them Jesus was on his way home. But
if Jesus was expecting a warm welcome, he was sadly disappointed.

I wonder why so many folks were not able to welcome
Jesus. Maybe they felt unprepared, like
they hadn't had a chance to clean up and present their best face. A lot of people are afraid to welcome Jesus
home today because they feel like they’re just not good enough. It’s almost like they think they have to
impress him or offer a spotlessly clean house and a perfectly tidy soul, before
Jesus wants to be home with them. And
they forget his words, “Come unto me all who are weary and carrying heavy
burdens, and I will give you rest.”
(Matthew 11:28) The only
requirement for being safe at home with Jesus is being worn out from trying to
handle everything yourself.

Sometimes, like the Jews of his day, we’re expecting
a different Jesus to come home. The Jews
of Jesus’ day expected someone a bit more like the Lone Ranger who would ride
into town on a white horse and shoot up the bad guys, the Romans. And when he did come home talking about a
spiritual reawakening, urging them to peace as opposed to violence, teaching
them to love their neighbor, whoever that neighbor is… it made them mad.

Sometimes we want a Jesus to show up who isn’t quite
so radical in his views about caring for the poor. And we’d rather he not harp on how we
shouldn’t be so materialistic especially so close to Christmas. And couldn’t he be a little more supportive
when instead of pursuing peace, we decide our first resort is to go for our
guns? We want a Jesus who agrees with
our politics, our priorities, and our spending habits. And when the real Jesus knocks on the door
and challenges us to rethink some of these things, we don’t recognize him. Sometimes we get mad, and we say, “I think you
got the wrong house.”

Some folks are just too caught up in the busyness of
their day-to-day lives to recognize just how much they need the new life that
Jesus came to offer. Sometimes, after a
hectic day, they pause late at night when the kids are in bed, and the house is
finally quiet. And for just a few
moments, they recognize there has to be more to life than just going to work,
coming home exhausted, catching a few hours’ sleep, and then doing it all over
again. But then they get caught right
back up in the rat race, and never find time to welcome Jesus home.

But this isn’t the Gospel — The Good News. The Good
News is found in verse 12: “But to all
who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of
God.” The Good News is Jesus knew his
children were longing for home, and he was determined that through the storms
of this life they would have a home with him.

Garrison Keillor well-known for his stories from Lake
Wobegon tells a story about what he called his "storm-home":

The principal of his school, Mr. Detman, fearful of a
winter blizzard during the school day, assigned each student from the outlying
county a "storm-home" in town, near the school. If a blizzard struck
during school hours, each child was to go to their storm-home. Here is how
Keillor told the story through his boyhood eyes:

Mine was the Kloeckles’, an old couple who lived in a
little green cottage by the lake . . . . It looked like the home of the kindly
old couple that the children lost in the forest suddenly come upon in a
clearing and know they are lucky to be in a story with a happy ending . . .

I imagined the Kloeckles had personally chosen me as
their storm child because they liked me. "Him" they had told Mr.
Detman. "In the event of a blizzard, we want that boy! The skinny one with
the thick glasses."

No blizzard came during the school hours that year.
All the snow storms were convenient evening or weekend ones, and I never got to
stay with the Kloeckles, but they were often in my thoughts and they grew large
in my imagination.

My Storm Home.

Blizzards aren’t the only storms and not the worst by
any means. I could imagine worse things. If the worst should come, I could go
to the Kloeckles and knock on their door. "Hello," I’d say. "I’m
your storm child."

"Oh, I know," she’d say. "I was
wondering when you’d come. Oh, it’s good to see you. How would you like a hot
chocolate and an oatmeal cookie?"

We’d sit at the table. "Looks like this storm is
going to last awhile." (She’d say.)

"Yes."

"Terrible storm. They say it’s going to get
worse before it stops. I just pray for anyone who’s out in this."

"Yes."

"But we’re so glad to have you. I can’t tell
you. Carl! Come down and see who’s here."

"Is it the storm child?"

"Yes. Himself, in the flesh!"

Although he was not welcome home, Jesus knew how
important home was. So he became our
storm-home and our strength. And you… you
are God’s storm-child. Like that kindly
couple who picked Garrison Keillor out to be their storm-child, our God, has
chosen you. You are the beloved. And
when the storms of this life get to be too much, you have a place where you are
always welcome... a home near the warm heart of God.