Week 5
2012
Lenten Guide
Occupy: The Silence of Good People Our schedules are becoming busier and busier. On February 4-5, we had to move our 30 hour famine youth activity from 12 PM to 6 PM on Saturday because the majority of our teenagers had sports games and practices. Providing meaningful opportunities outside of our regular Wednesday and Sunday night programming is becoming harder and harder at our church. Too often, I’ve heard that someone didn’t come to church or to youth group because they were having family time.
of it, just like most of the rest of us, so I don’t stand on a soap box to preach to the unfaithful. Nor am I intentionally trying to condemn anyone. Rather, I am struggling alongside as a minister who has his own schedule and his own family who have their own schedules. I really do believe that our youth ministry is doing some great things at PRBC (if you disagree with me, just keep it to yourself; as my momma said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say…”); however, in our youth ministry, which is probably more programmatic than other ministries in the church, it is becoming more and more difficult to find times to do anything outside of our current Wednesday and Sunday night programming. For example - when can our group participate in a mission project? We usually do something on a Wednesday night and, because of time constraints, we aren’t able to do as much as I had hoped.
How can one argue with family time? Certainly, having time with your family is important. I do want to ask them why they couldn’t have family time on Tuesday night. My guess – because the kids have tutors and the parents were working late and there was basketball practice and there was homework and they had to have time to watch Austin Rivers make the last second shot to beat UNC (Sorry to I’ve always tried to encourage our teenagers that their faith journeys you Heels’ fans). don’t begin on Sunday morning The weekend has become a time before Sunday school and end afto catch up on things left undone– ter youth group on Sunday night. on homework not done, on family Our hope and prayer is that their time, on sleep. Maybe if we had faith speaks to every part of their church on Tuesday night… lives. There isn’t a part of their lives Please don’t hear me calling any- that God doesn’t care about. Take one out. I simply struggle with the up your cross daily and follow me, busyness of our culture. I’m a part Jesus says.
One of the questions for this week is “when should we speak and when should we keep silent?” The writer of Ecclesiastes does say that there’s a time for everything under the sun, including a time to speak and a time to keep silent.
I do think that a lot of people of faith tend toward the time to keep silent part of the teaching – silence either with their actual voices or with how they let their lives speak or both. The arguments for some are:
There is just too much to do in my life. I can’t put something else on my schedule, no matter how important it is. I just can’t get to the school board meeting to let my voice be heard about what CMS says about free and reduced lunches. I just don’t want to offend anyone, so I’ll keep quiet. I just can’t help in the nursery for the worship hour once every 3 months – just too much expected of me at church, and this just adds to it. How am I to be found faithful? I need to start being more vocal with my voice. I want the courage of those disciples that, upon hearing Jesus’ invitation to come and follow, they dropped their nets and followed (Mark 1.17-18).
about those things that need to stay in my life, and in putting those ideas into action, that those nice ideas in my head will grow legs.
I’ll leave you with 3 pearls of wisdom – one from the Nature Boy Ric Flair (wrestler), one from my My prayer for myself is that, dur- dad (OB/GYN, who actually is preting this Lenten season, I will be in- ty wise but I only realized it after tentional in thinking about those more than 3 decades of life here things that need to be let go on earth), and one from in my life, and in Reinhold Niebuhr thinking (theologian)
•
If you’re gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. ~ Naytch (a.k.a Nature Boy Ric Flair)
•
You have time to do whatever is important to you. ~My dad
•
Serenity Prayer God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Sing Down, by Kyle Matthews
~ Reinhold Niebuhr Wives and mothers, a Priest, a farmer A Bright young preacher with a dream Set out to walk from Selma, AL To a promise land that they would never see The men held hands just to keep from running As the buckshot whistled past their ears They had no choice but to raise their voices So the marching songs were all that they could hear Try to sing down the dark clouds, choke back the fear Try to sing down their anger over all the lost years Try to sing down the one sound that was most loud and clear Silence of good people ringing in their ears Now I was raised in a quiet suburb Where we oppressed ourselves We nursed the poison and stoked the hatred And prayed to God that things would turn out well 1 or 2 made a break for freedom They knew their only hope was down that road God could move them beyond the silence To sing the songs that all God’s pilgrims know. Try to sing down the dark clouds, choke back the fear Try to sing down their anger over all the lost years Try to sing down the one sound that was most loud and clear Silence of good people ringing in our ears
John 15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Mark 8:31-37 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?
James 2:14-26 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
inspire, enrich & embody community
http://hyaets.org seed@hyaets.org 704-391-8529