Pixie Sticks and Schadenfreude!*

 Hot Summer days spent by the pool with 50 other kids in embarrassingly small swimsuits… miles of Pixie Stix consumed six inches at a time from a paper straw, unless you had the supreme sugar rush inducing 21 inch Giant Pixie Stick from a plastic tube, or the cheapskate version of sweetened Koolade powder eaten right from the sleeve… giant dill pickles from a giant pickle jar… sunburn, sunscreen, and near sun stroke… semi-soaked, then sun dried towels that smelled of chlorine, sweat, pickle juice, and Pixie Stix… hair bleached by the Sun with a tint of green from the pool chemicals… the excitement of cheering on a team member in a close race, the thrill of victory and agony of defeat… of course, I’m describing Summer Swim Team. For many Summers of elementary school and pre-teen years my sister and I swam with neighborhood friends for the University of Tennessee Faculty Club, The Senator's Club, and for the Fountain City Lions Club swim teams. Every morning we headed to the pool to practice, grow stronger, and learn more about fast starts, flip turns and best ways to breath between strokes…if we were listening. Our parents worked the ribbon tables, stopwatches, and served as water-cat herders to get kids to the blocks for their events. They tirelessly spent hours and hours at the pool for practice and meets to watch us swim events that were typically less than 1 minute long. Many of us were mediocre athletes, but it kept us active, gave us a group to belong to, and friends to cheer on. I still have glad memories of time spent with friends around the pool. Swim is one of those team sports that is mostly competed individually, but scored as a team. We had to figure out how to compete against a clock, to get a faster time than our last swim, rather than considering others that we raced against as our “enemy.” Schadenfreude can come easy when we are competing… we may be glad when someone else has a bad race, so that we do better. We may even begin to hope for someone else to have a bad race so we can defeat them, and blue ribbons can become more important than good friendships.

The church can sometimes become a place where Schadenfreude can come easy too. We may think of our faith walk as a competition as opposed to a team sport. We can begin to think that because we may have more Bible knowledge, think we are morally better, or think we are outserving others, that we are superior to other people, and we can get a little feeling of satisfaction when others don’t know as much, or they mess up, or they don’t do as much as we do “for Jesus.” Apparently the early church was struggling with some of these things too and Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had to remind them that belonging to Christ and each other is more important than being the best. He says, “ For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” (Romans 12:3–5) I am challenged to remember that Christ came for our victory in relationships. First, he came so we can have relationship with God the Father for all eternity. He also came to connect us in healthy ways with all those people He loves (everyone). Jesus didn’t come to make us a better version of ourselves or even better than others, He came to make us a new creation that acts like Him, connects with Him and loves people well. If we have been gifted in certain things, we hafta remember that our gifting is a tool to build up other people, not put them down, or humiliate them when they fail. Our world places value on the being the best, the fastest, and the strongest, because the world’s economy is based on the predatory model of “survival of the fittest,” exploiting the weaknesses of others for our own benefit. God’s self-sacrificial plan is a plan to rescue people, change their lives, protect them in their weakness, build them up, and love them forever and teach us to do the same.

Hang in there people! God is Glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Does It Have Any Value?*

 When my kids were young, we tried to have a family adventure each week, like trips to a local attraction, the YMCA pool, fishing in the pond, or a family bike ride. We had our plates full: Anita had 4 preschoolers all day and I had the shepherding responsibilities of a mostly aging flock: 3 sermons a week, hospital visits several times a week, and a funeral or two every month. We had finally bought, collected and repaired enough bikes, and bike-baby seats for all 6 of us to ride on the Shelby Bottoms trails in East Nashville, including one bike that we had to recover from the creek after being stolen off the back porch of the parsonage. (East Nashville has since returned to its former glory, but at the time in the early 2000’s, it was still kind of the “hood,” with gang activity, a 90% high school dropout rate, and nefarious characters sometimes roaming the streets at night. When I first arrived as pastor, I wondered why there were bars on the parsonage windows, then a young man in the church told me my family needed to be aware of our surroundings, he had been shot in the church parking lot a few years before). After an hour of pumping tires and tightening chains, sliding handles back on handlebars, I was ready to load all the bikes on the bike hitch and put the bike trailer that would carry our picnic basket and cooler into the Minivan. Anita piled the helmets and kids inside, buckled car seats and we were ready to go. Once at the parking lot, which was less than a mile from the parsonage (there were no sidewalks to ride from the house), we were quite the spectacle apparently. People stared as the kids seemed to keep piling out of the van like a VW Bug stuffed with clowns at the circus. We sunscreened, sunglassed, and helmeted all the kids, put two on bikes and two in bike-baby seats, attached the trailer to my bike with our picnic basket inside and we were ready to roll. Our son, the oldest child, was eager to go fast and explore, so we had to signal for him to come back closer to us with a loud curled-lip-whistle when he was about to get out of sight, which, to this day he recalls, was frustrating to his budding adventurous spirit. He did seem to understand we needed to stick together as a family and not everyone could pedal as fast as him. We finally made it to our picnic spot with a picnic table, swingsets and monkey bars. The kids ate their pb and j’s and deli sandwiches, whale-crackers (which were the cheaper, Aldi knock-off version of GoldFish), sliced apples, cheese sticks, sectioned oranges and juice boxes. Then they played for a while. The youngest seemed to be enthralled with the idea that there was a cinder block bathroom painted white, right in the middle of the park with one side for boys and the other for girls. We knew that we had to save some energy for the ride back, so after several minutes it was time to head back. With only a couple of minor injuries, tears, and tantrums (a few of them being my own) we made it back to the van. We were covered in a thin layer of the mud cake that forms with the mixture of sunscreen, sweat, and Nashville pollution, which consisted of traffic grime, wind blown Steiner Lift scrap-metal yard, rust-dust, glitter particles, and then add some playground dirt. This mixture is then dried onto our skin in the bike breeze like a janky mud beauty treatment. We reloaded everything for the short van ride back, and in spite of the short ride, our youngest was asleep (my daughter-in-law now calls this “carcolepsy,” like narcolepsy, but involves falling asleep anytime you ride in a car). We get them home, splash and wipe them down with a washcloth, which, by the wipedown of the fourth child looks like it was washed in a mud puddle. Even after the cloth is rinsed and wrung out, the last kid’s dirt just gets smeared around a little and it makes them look like they just got a bad spray tan on their lily white Euro descended skin. Exhausted, we put them down for a nap and offload the bikes and gear, clean out the van, cooler and picnic basket. Then we take a short nap, wake up and order pizza for dinner. Sometimes I wondered did this have any value? Was it worth all the effort to get us all together for a family activity? Was it worth the sweat, mud-cake baths, and tears to try to make some family memories that would help define our family, and remind us that we belong to each other, look out for each other, and that it’s important for us to have fun together. I have since learned that healthy growth and maturity emotionally and spiritually requires having the joys of belonging and having fun together, not just the “thou shalt nots.”

The early church was struggling to know whether it made a difference to keep acting like Jesus and keep doing good. The society around them didn’t always seem to care that they treated people differently than most, nor did they seem to care that because they identified as those who belong to Jesus, that they were kinder, did good deeds and loved people like no one else. The apostle Paul reminded them that it does matter that we keep on doing good, that even if we don’t see any noticeable results right now, it will have an impact in the long run. He says, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9 ESVi) As people who belong to Jesus, it is what we do, it is how we act, it is in our character to keep doing good for our family, for our community, even for those with whom we don’t always agree. I am glad that now our adult children want to “be there” for each other, do good for others, and have fun together whenever they can. I screwed parenting up more than I got it right. I was especially bad at it when I was exhausted… which was most of the time, but God always sent His people from church at just the right moment to help my kids keep growing. They also encouraged me: to keep acting like Jesus, keep on loving, keep on having family adventures, keep on parenting, keep on doing good, that it will all make a difference in the long run. Just don’t give up!

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Grafted In: a Lesson Learned from a Weeping Cherry Tree*

 Every Easter at the home of my adolescence, my Mother would host the family Easter gathering after church. There was usually ham, sweet potatoes, a congealed salad, green beans, red velvet cake, and sweet tea. There was lots of laughter and fun. The Easter Egg hunt was what my cousins and I looked forward to, even into our tweenage years. (We also enjoyed dying the eggs the day before.) We couldn’t wait to take off our Easter “Sunday Best” clothes and put on some more comfortable “egg huntin’ clothes” and compete with our cousins in the annual decorative colored oval orb quest in the front yard. BUT before the meal and the egg hunt was the family picture in our Easter clothes… ugh. This happened in the front yard, usually in front of the Weeping Cherry tree if its blooming corresponded with Easter that year. Though I probably didn’t acknowledge it at the time, this tree was beautiful. Its weeping branches filled with copious pink cherry blossoms looked like a mushroom fountain of flowers spraying up and over and running to the ground. It wasn’t until a storm broke a branch from the tree and it became just a tree no longer weeping, nor producing as many pink flowers…actually kinda ugly… that I learned what had to happen to produce this kind of beauty in the first place. My Dad explained that at some point, the trunk had to be cut and branches had to be grafted-in and the wounds of the tree and the grafted branch had to heal and grow together to make a new tree that was both weeping and produced a beautiful fountain of flowers. 

 

As I think back on that tree, I’m reminded that our broken humanity is just sad, disappointing, and ugly until we are grafted into the Divine through the scars and death and resurrection of Christ. We are redeemed to be a new creation that is compassionate, connected, and beautiful. Easter communicates to us what God had to do to graft us into His beautiful family, adopt us as His, so we could become beautiful like Him, and belong to Him. God had to cut, bruise, and wound His own Son Jesus, in order that we could be forever firmly attached and grow with Him. He says, “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands...” (Isaiah 49:16a NIV) God’s disappointment with our ugly, rebellious, meanness doesn’t overcome His loving desire for us to be His children forever. “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5 NIV) When our stiff-necked pride is broken and we confess our failure and sin and ask God to forgive us and connect us with Him, He takes our broken and helpless self and attaches us into Jesus’ humble but perfect self and our wounds heal and grow us together. He was cut and broken for our sake. On that first Resurrection morning the new growth from the grafting begins… Paul uses the symbolic language of grafted trees to tell us what happens when we let God attach us to Himself through Jesus. We are connected to God as His people forever. He says, “…and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root… ”(Romans 11:17 NIV) We become a new creation, capable of both weeping and beauty, compassion, love, connection, and great joy that spills out to be shared with all those around us. We then continue becoming the full God-redeemed creature that He had in mind to make us from the beginning. 

 

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Maundy Thursday, What Is It?*

When I was a young Baptist kid, I only knew of two days of the Holy Week, Palm Sunday and Easter. One involved Palm Branches and a Hosanna song, clapping our hands and stomping our feet, and the other day was shared by the Easter Bunny and Jesus (kinda like Christmas being shared by Santa Claus and Baby Jesus). I imagine I loved making the Easter scene with popsicle-stick-Jesus, Mary of Magdala at His feet, and an Angel, including an empty toilet paper roll and a construction paper stone to roll away. I also loved dyeing, hiding, finding eggs, chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Egg commercials (bok, bok). This Christian/Pagan yearly ritual could be confusing.

But then I learned about Good Friday and Maundy Thursday. There was always a mention of the cross and Good Friday, but I never knew why it was called GOOD Friday, especially if Jesus was beaten and killed that day (I later learned that it was called “God’s Friday,” the day He redeemed the sins of the world for all who would belong to Him. Some speculate that it is similar to the farewell words, GOOD bye, that were a shortening of the traveler’s blessing, “God be with ye.”) And I just thought "Maundy Thursday" was the expression of some confused Southerner trying to say Monday, but remembering it was Thursday. Then I learned the most marvelous thing… That "Maundy" comes from the Latin rendering of the word “Command.”

Many wonderful things happened on Maundy Thursday, Jesus showed us what humble leadership looks like by washing the feet of His disciples. He summed up the most important parts of His ministry with the Last Supper and His last words to those who belong to Him. He reminded us to keep the most important commandments to Love God and Love Others, by remaining IN Him. He tells us we Love God by honoring the boundaries and expectations that He lovingly gives us. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”(John 14:15 ESV) He also tells how we will be known as someone who belongs to Him, this is where we get the “Maundy” from. Jesus says, “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 ESV). Notice He doesn’t say, you will be known as my disciples if you: have superior scripture knowledge, have better behavior, never mess up, pray more, have more quiet time, go to more religious rituals, are more righteous than others… You won’t be known as His disciples by the number of converts you make, or if you can prove why you are right. He tells us that the proof of being known as one who belongs to Him is balanced on the fulcrum of loving each other, and He adds, “as I have loved you.” He really upped the ante with this statement, because Jesus had just modeled how to love people by washing their feet (even Judas, who betrayed Him). Jesus loves everyone, even His enemies. So Maundy "New Commandment" Thursday is an important life altering day in the Passion Week. Jesus was reminding us that day, how it is like “those who are His,” to act.

So, Happy Maundy Thursday People. Let’s love one another!

So, Happy Maundy Thursday People. Let’s love one another!

When Things Don't Go Our Way...

 When things don’t go our way… In elementary school, I participated in Royal Ambassador basketball. “Royal Ambassadors,” or “RAs,” was a Baptist missions organization for boys. Every week we had a Bible Study and learned about people who were telling the Good News around the world. Every winter we had RA basketball where we competed with other RAs from other churches around the city. We had some great coaches who were quite good at basketball and they invested their time in teaching us the game. We practiced on Sundays after church, which was kinda weird for the time (early 70’s) in Knoxville, TN, because there were still “blue laws” and Sundays were set aside for church, rest and Sunday drives to the country-side. However, no one could practice any other time during the week, so we brought our tennis shoes, knee socks, shorts, and t-shirts to change into from our “Sunday Best” and had practice after church. McDonald’s was open on Sundays. So, after leaving church, we would run to McDonald’s, get a Big Mac and a Coke, devour it quickly, change clothes, go to the gym and hopefully not hurl it back up when running laps. Before our church had its own gym, we went to the local school to practice. We learned to dribble, pass, shoot and learned the rules of basketball. One year, our coaches were so good we defeated all the local teams and were invited to the state RA basketball tournament in Nashville. We were all giddy. We got there and as I recall, won our first game on Friday night. Then we were all wired up about being in a hotel for a sleepover, juiced up on Coke and Cheetos, we somehow coerced our coaches into letting us watch “Crack Through the World'' movie on television. It was a disturbing late 1960’s apocalyptic movie about how the earth was destroyed by an ill-fated plan to harness the Earth’s geothermal energy by shooting a nuclear bomb deep into the earth. This of course, as you would guess, began the earth ending crack through the world. The movie showed many people dying in horrific ways (landslides, train wrecks, molten hot lava - to which one of the boys quipt “fried to a crackly crunch. Cheetos, cheese that goes crunch!” We all laughed, but kind of guiltily.

Of course, I didn’t sleep at all because I was so disturbed by the images seared into my brain, not to mention the copious amounts of fizzy caffeine and sugar that I consumed. Needless to say we were all tired the next morning. We played our next couple of games and won, which should have made us RA State Champions, but the host church decided that their team needed one more chance to defend their title against us with their best player who had not been able to play the earlier game. So they required a short play off game. I knew that this was not right and in my sleep deprived, elementary school immaturity, I threw a tantrum and began to cry, stating that I would not play another game...not that my playing had any impact on the team, I wasn’t that good, but I wasn’t bad at dribbling, passing or defense. I gave myself a free pass to act badly, because I perceived someone had disrespected us. The coaches tried to remind me that we had come to play basketball and agreed to the rules of the tournament. They also reminded us that we needed to represent God and our church well. So, in my “self-righteousness,” I still sulked and sat on the bench, while the rest of my team battled the title holders. The host church’s plan worked, they won the short winner-take-all game and we went home with a 2nd place trophy and my little tantrum, justified or not, did nothing but make me look like a crybaby and abandon my team.

We were supposedly “Royal Ambassadors,” we represent The King of Kings. Our motto was, “we are ambassadors for Christ,” taken from 2 Corinthians 5:20. Paul was reminding the young and immature church at Corinth, that they belonged to Jesus, and they represent Him now, so their behaviors had to change. Their own selfish, childish ways in which they used to live were not okay anymore. Paul tells them, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”(2 Corinthians 5:17–21 NIV) Things don’t always go our way, but that is not a free pass for us to act badly. When we belong to Jesus, we act like Him even in difficult situations, when sleep deprived, wronged by someone else, angry, tired or _____. Our identity changes when we are "in Christ," and we mature into acting like Him more and more regardless of our circumstances.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Why Are We Still Here?*

Why are we still here? I sometimes wonder how kids survive ‘til adulthood. I had gotten an archery set for a birthday in elementary school, not the rubber stopper arrows, but actual practice tip arrows. Not sure what my dad was thinking, because the whole BB gun thing had gone badly a couple of years before (you can see that story here: https://williampmcg.blogspot.com/.../parents-dont-run...). Eventually, after shooting my arrows at the target for a while, I became bored and began shooting at "other things." Then, I don’t know what possessed me, but I decided to shoot the arrow straight up into the air. Once I released the arrow and it disappeared from view in the Sun, the realities of Newton’s Law came flooding into my pre-adolescent brain… “what goes up, must come down”… Oh no! The panic set in and I began running as hard as I could aimlessly to try to avoid being impaled. Odds of getting hit by said arrow would probably have been better had I just stood still. Thinking about it now, it was silly that I didn’t run under the protection of the carport. Thank goodness I heard the thud of the arrow as it stuck in the moist ground several feet away. So, what did I do next? Not take my bow and arrow and put them in time out until I could use it more responsibly… NOOOO!, I did it AGAIN! Thank goodness Mr. Gravity and the soft spot covering my yet to be fully formed brain didn’t join forces for a significant injury. I later heard of kids in a neighborhood across the lake who did this as a group activity. Standing in a circle, the kid in the middle shot the arrow into the air and everyone ran in all directions as soon as the arrow was released. One poor kid was taken to the ER, impaled by an arrow through his neck and shoulder. Fortunately it didn’t hit any vital vessels or organs. In spite of my reckless childhood thrill seeking, God had plans for my life. Why is God so gracious to us when we willfully challenge the laws He has put in place physically, relationally, or spiritually? He must have plans for us.

I’m encouraged by the words of Moses as He talks about how God protects His people for His purposes, sometimes even when they were not being so smart. God has us here for a reason, to be His people, to represent Him well. Moses could look back and see the many times God had taken care of His people as they escaped from Egypt, from plagues, armies, pestilences, starvation, thirst, and other terrors. Moses tells God’s People, “The one who lives under the protection of the Most High dwells in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say concerning the Lord, who is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust: He himself will rescue you from the bird trap, from the destructive plague. He will cover you with his feathers; you will take refuge under his wings. His faithfulness will be a protective shield. You will not fear the terror of the night, the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in darkness, or the pestilence that ravages at noon. Though a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, the pestilence will not reach you.” ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭91:1-7‬ ‭CSB‬‬ Satan misrepresents the second part of this passage to Jesus, when he was tempting Him in the wilderness. Matthew 4:5-7 says, ”Then the devil took him to the holy city, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will give his angels orders concerning you, and they will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." Jesus told him, "It is also written: Do not test the Lord your God."

I am so thankful for God’s grace, all the many times, against better judgment, we test His gracious compassion and protection for us, in ignorance or by willful rebellion. God has plans for those who have chosen to belong to Him… we are to be His people, to love and represent Him well, and to love those He loves. He will protect and keep us so we can represent Him until it is time for us to come Home.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Who Has The Keys?*

Who has the keys? In my tweenage years in the Summers, I was outside playing most of the time, playing pickup football, basketball, stickball, tennis, fishing, or riding my bike. Occasionally, I would return home and find that I was locked out of my house. One day, I had gone to the churchyard next door to play football with the local “gang.” The game ended and I climbed the steep grassy hill for home, sweaty and grass stained. When I got home, the house was locked up. Every door was locked, and no one was home. This was before there was an exterior garage door key code panel, so, I did what I usually did when I was locked out, I looked for the “spare keys.” But whomever (probably me) had used them last had failed to return them to the top secret and secure location, i.e.under the doormat, just like most other people. So, then I went to my usual plan B, which was climbing up the side of the house to the balcony, jimmying one of the sliding glass doors and getting in. However, this time, the sliding glass door security pole (a.k.a. sawed off broomstick) was securely in place, but it allowed the door to open just enough for the alarm to sound. In a panic to get in and silence said alarm, I jimmied the other door, but it too had the failsafe broomstick. Then, I was in a real mess. The alarm was obnoxiously alerting the neighborhood that someone was breaking in the McGinnis house and I was stuck on the balcony. BTW climbing up the side of the house is much easier than climbing back down. Once on the ground, I tried all the doors again, but to no avail. In spite of all my best efforts, I was still outside, alarm blaring, I had exhausted all my efforts, I realized I was helpless. Finally, in despair, I sat down in the grass, and cried until my mother returned with the keys, turned the alarm off and let me in. Glad to be inside, I washed my dirty tearstained face, and appreciated the benefits of belonging in the McGinnis home. From that day on we made sure a set of keys was available.

Six times in the book of Matthew, Jesus indicates that outside of heaven there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” He tells all who will listen that entry to God’s kingdom is not about our efforts, knowledge, goodness, cleverness, or anything else we can do, it's about a loving faith relationship with Him. I’ve always wondered what gnashing of teeth meant. One commentator says the word connotes "extreme anguish and utter despair." The apostle John, as he was writing to one of the early churches, says, Jesus, the Holy One, always has the keys to let us into a secure relationship with God. No one can lock us out from being with God when we belong to Jesus. He says, ““Write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia: Thus says the Holy One, the true one, the one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and who closes and no one opens: I know your works. Look, I have placed before you an open door that no one can close because you have but little power; yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”(Revelation 3:7–8 CSB17) Apparently, it is very important that we remember Who we belong to, that we identify with His name. The keys to God’s Kingdom are granted by our loving attachment to God through Jesus, who died and rose again to secure that relationship with Him forever. What is the evidence that we have the keys?... We are an insider; we belong to God, we are His child, we are in healthy loving connection with God, we love God and treat everyone in the ways He tells us in His Word. There is no jimmying the door, there is no spare key, there is no pretending nothing is wrong, the alarm is sounding and there are no other ways into heaven. Jesus says, “I am the Way.” Our salvation is not a problem to be solved, it is loving attachment to God to be secured and grown and the key is loving, trusting and belonging to Jesus.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!