I NEED FOOD

One of the things our entire church’s staff share in doing in the absence of a receptionist/church secretary is to pick up the phone when it rings. After lunch, as I updated the church’s facebook page to announce our Christmas Food Hampers Drive, the phone rang. I picked up it up and for about four or five seconds all I heard were children crying in the background. For moment I thought I answered a prank call, when suddenly a woman, with a discernible tone of reluctant shyness, asked, “Is it possible to ask your church for some food?” I asked again to confirm what I thought she said. “My apologies for the inconvenience, sir. But is it possible to ask your church for some food?” asked the woman. “I am a single mom. I’ve been out of a job for three months now and I have six children, my youngest is 17 months old. My kids are in desperate need of food, and some diapers. Can you help me, please?”

There I was, updating the church’s facebook page to inform the faith community about our Christmas food drive for needy families when someone calls the church asking help for some food. All of which happened just after having lunch at this new restaurant that served me a humongous burger that I didn’t even get to finish. This morning’s devotional reading for me, incidentally, was Matthew 25:31-46, where Jesus puts a face on the faceless and nameless needy. He says, “the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless– when you extend help to them, you’ve done it to me!” By identifying himself with the persons we pass by and/or ignore, Jesus asks a very simple one word question of our claim to love God, to follow him, to want to serve him faithfully:  Really? When all is said and done it comes down to this:  as you did it to one of these forgotten or overlooked, you did it to me.

In a city as affluent as Lloydminster to see a homeless person or receive a call from a family in dire need, is fairly uncommon. And so there is a tug within to see or hear about such. In bigger cities like Toronto, where I was recently, homelessness is so common, people can get jaded to such a reality. So I decided to walk around St James Park in downtown Toronto to see what I’d recently seen on the news about this group of people living in tents and cardboard boxes, dubbed “Occupy Toronto.” I sat on a park bench and met a young man who finished law and lost his job at the height of the economic downturn and was never able to recover. He had been living in his tent around Toronto for months now. He’d relied on churches’ soup kitchens and shelters since.

A picture I took of St James Park during OccupyToronto

But beyond my own backyard, around the world there are people and families that are in even deeper need– a matter of life and death kind of hunger. Unlike the situation in North America where there are jobs available for the taking for anyone who isn’t too picky and in many ways despite the economic downturn still experiences overabundance of food, the hungry of Africa and Asia have no way of finding jobs within their own countries and cities.

Such experiences must lead to thorough assessment of the content of our lives.  We’re challenged to ask, “How have I lived?  What have I done, not only for myself but for others?”  We’re asked to take stock of our lives, of our commitments, of our priorities.  It’s an invitation to join in God’s judgment of the world.  Will you join with God and with your brothers and sisters and seek to make the world right?  Will you seek to make the world whole?  Will you be a part of the healing of the world?

When those questions are asked, what else is there to be said?  Very little.  But there’s much to be done.

(jlas.vieras)

“Did I overwhelm you with my awesomeness?”

As I walked home from Tim Hortons where I hung out with a little group after watching a high school band concert, I remembered what I overheard a student whom I have never met before tell his friend as we walked out out on the snow-laden parking lot, “Was I awesome or what?” “You were! Pretty good!” answered his friend. “Pretty good?! Just pretty good?! I think overwhelmed you with my awesomeness!” retorted the student. Well, first of all, it was a band concert. Band by definition is a group of musicians who play together. So to take personal credit for something a group achieved is not fair. Second, the person wasn’t all that bad, but the person was not phenomenal either.

Oh, such hubris reminds me of my high school and university life– a fraction of time in ones life when I believed I knew it all, and actually thought of others as hopeless idiots. Hubris is when one says, “I am awesome, you’re not! No one else can be better than I.” I was smarter than my teachers and even my dad. I remember writing a debasing article that sparked out of a little debate I had with my Social Studies teacher who insisted that Morocco was in South America! I knew I was right so I fought for it. I was right, but it was no reason for me to harshly criticize my teacher. I was all set to get my article lambasting the teacher printed out. A few days before my article came out, I remember my discipleship group leader who knew nothing about my plans, made me read Philippians 2. Verse 3 spoke so loudly that evening to me, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,…” I remember going to my senior editor the next day taking back what I had written.

But the hubris of youth should just be within a fraction of ones lifetime. Technically, the more we mature the more humble we must become, that is, if maturity happens within the context of grace and Christ’s lordship. Hubris is part of our fallen nature, and as long as we live in our mortal fallen bodies, hubris remains. In fact, it grows along with us! The more successful and intelligent we become to more hubristic we turn. We will always have the tendency to think we are better than others. We will always take egocentric pride on our accomplishments. We will always brag about what we know and what we have. We will always the inclination towards looking down on people. Growth in God’s grace helps people take control of their egotism with help from God’s Spirit, and eventually sees changes in perspective about one’s self and the people around her or him. One day, truth will have its way with us for good. The truth is: the only good there is is God, everyone else is trying to be or act like him. When that day finally arrives I suspect many will wonder why they had waited so long. They had been pretending and posturing with life when all along they could have had their real self in God.

Time to wake up to ourselves, to see ourselves with as much clarity as possible. To take it all in–the good, the bad and the ugly. No more dancing around the actual content of our life. No more cover-ups and pretense. No more hemming and hawing. No more rationalization, no more excuses, no more costuming and make-up. The day is long past for all of that. Way long past. End hubris, we’re not as awesome as we think we are.

LIFE IN THE POST CHRISTIAN WORLD

Sunday mornings at the Las home when I was growing up always included “The Hour of Power” TV program playing on the background as we readied for church. Service at the Crystal Cathedral was always spectacular and star-studded! Famous people got interviewed for testimonies, recording artists were featured for special music! Broadway musicals pale in comparison to its Christmas and Easter productions. Last Friday, it was finalized. The world-renown Crystal Cathedral will be sold.

I was a little kid when churches’ heyday began to wane. If I had not been raised in a church-going family, I would probably be like any other person in my generation of the de-churched. Now that GenXers are all grown up and many are raising families, having little or no church exposure growing up, do not know any better, just like their Boomer parents who didn’t bring them to church very often.

Now that I live in what is considered Canada’s Bible Belt it’s interesting to note that churches around here aren’t even half full on a Sunday morning, or worse, some have even closed their doors. There seems to be better things to do and places to be at on a Sunday morning- a hockey game, the mall, etc.. In a city of 28,000 that has 21 churches with a collective Sunday attendance of 2,000, ours is not exactly a churchgoing town. A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday morning following my sermon, a woman came up to me to say, “I didn’t think of coming to worship corporately with the church was important until today. I’ve always espoused the idea that I can always worship alone, and didn’t have to go to services with others, especially when it’s not convenient for me. Truth be told, I always went to church out of convenience, hence my adult kids have the same idea.” My recent trip to Toronto to attend my denomination’s annual convention corroborated this generic view of church life. Church and Christianity just no longer belong nor fit in to the wider culture.

Collectively pretending the spiritual realm doesn’t actually matter does not make it any less real, just less regularly accessible.  And here I’m guessing my readers would be community of people who are supposedly hip to this.  We know that sometimes life interruptions can re-animate the spiritual realm in real time, and Christians and churches can be those interruptions to people’s lives that can rekindle spirituality. Our existence and our lives should lead people to ask about God, the Bible, Christ and spiritual life and the possibility of change. Does a community like the Church really matters? How it cuts against the grain of the wider culture bearing a message that dignifies our humanity and elevates our concern into the realm of the things that matter most?  Can you see how important it is to have friends to help our becoming courageous agents in a world that values far lesser things?   Have you felt the downward tug of the lesser things?  And can you now feel the upward pull of the better things?  Can you see what’s at stake out there as well as inside your own heart? Are you willing to take Christianity to the streets of the Post-Christian city! Are you willing to make your church a “city on a hill” that cannot be hidden?

Once mighty now closed and abandoned church in Michigan

SPOILER ALERT.

Across the street from where I used to live were two malls with seven cinemas. On any given evening or whenever possible I come out of the condo building to watch a movie.

The condo’s white-gloved evening shift doorman always knew what played each night. Being friends with security guards and box office personnel in the mall, he got to sneak in to watch any movie of his choice each night after his shift. So the next evening he always made great movie suggestions, but he also gave out spoiler comments. It started when he learned what my job was. I tried to share the Gospel with him on the day I moved into the condo! That was when he described himself to me as a lay pastor of a small Pentecostal church who loved finding good sermon illustrations in movies!

Earlier in the year he suggested, “Sir, ‘Transformers 2′ is a nice movie! Optimus Prime dies but don’t worry, he resurrects later because of the matrix of leadership!” One November evening he suggested, “Sir, ’2012′ is out already! It’s a very nice movie. It’s like Noah’s Ark, only ten times better!” One day he said, “Sir, ‘Avatar’ is the best! The main guy became a Navi’i in the end!” I was like, “Mang Henry, why do you have to do that?” He asked, “Do what, sir?” “Make suggestions then spoil them!” I said. “Sorry, sir. It’s a hard habit to break!” he replied. Mark, my student in Bible College who used to sleep over at the condo a lot flipped when he heard Mang Henry say that! We both had a habit of watching movies. He had the horrible habit of spoiling movies for other people and for some strange reason, I had an even more horrible habit of always taking his suggestions!

Moving to Canada, I no longer watch a lot of movies as I used to. The last one I saw was ‘Captain America (July), and even dozed off inside the most awesome Lloydminster May Cinema. It does seem like a very long time since I followed ‘Mang Henry’s’ suggestion. The last movie he suggested to me was ‘The Clash of the Titans’ which he spoiled for me complete with awesome fighting action and called the “Kraken” “Cracker’” instead!
I miss a lot of people from home, but I didn’t think I’d miss the spoiler!
Blessings on you, Mang Henry, wherever you are!

My old home on Eastwood City Drive!