What's in a Name?

Note: The content of this article was written as a collaborative effort between ideas expressed through emails between myself and Abby Henegar who is a senior psychology major at TCU, a amazing servant of God and calls me Dad. 

If you Google First Christian Church you will find 114 million hits. So what is in a name that is so common that there are 114 million others? The one thing our Centralia community has the most of per our population is churches yet our community seems to be in chaos and fear. So the problem arises if there are so many churches and things are getting worse then what can we as a faith family do to be more effective. What will make our name carry significance and respond accordingly?

First and foremost we will not panic nor fear. It was out of chaos that God created the world in which we life. It is in the chaos of our lives when Christ is the closest to us. God’s love and mercy has always hovered over chaos. Now is no different.  We Also need to realize our community is not unique. We have had an increase of deaths not by natural causes. However in my home town of Memphis in one evening fourteen people were killed. Two children were shot and killed in a drive by shooting while they slept in their beds. Every child should feel safe in their bed. I say this not out or disrespect but to note that evil is everywhere. It is now just trickling down to our community. We need to acknowledge that every life matters. Each life needs to matter to us regardless of age, race, religion, or social class. Why? Because each life matters of Christ so as a follower of Christ it needs to matter to us.

We will continue to preach and prayer that's been echoed it basically all scripture that Jesus, is in fact, alive and well. Alive and well in all of us that call ourselves Christians. We will continue to serve the countless number of families that visit the food bank, fellowship meal, and Salvation Army on a weekly basis. We will be intentional on focusing on the youth who are trying to fill the void in their life with sex, drugs, alcohol. It’s a void that only the peace of Jesus can fill. We will remain serving the adults who ended up with a life they never wanted or deserved. We will continue to focus ones in Centralia that lack an understanding of relentless, forgiving, unconditional love.  We will be an oasis where one can find a real relationship with the One who gave them life.  We will provide a place for those who yearn for a faith that fancy coffee bars, energetic PowerPoints, and rock bands cannot satisfy. We will be a place of refuge were everyone is not only welcomed but cherished.  We will proclaim if anything  that Jesus is living in Centralia today.  Jesus befriended the hurt, the broken, the least of these, the ones that society would not even give a chance.... Jesus is running this town, He always has been.  Jesus runs through us though, its his method of operation.  Jesus was a part of saving Murray Center, he was a part of Centralia Group Workcamp, and Jesus was running the streets of Centralia supporting the families and friends of those with cancer and other illnesses. This town is run by Jesus through our actions. Always has, and always will.  It is our job to make sure that we aren't distracted by personal pride and ego in our attempt to serve our city and serve our God... When we serve ourselves instead, the Jesus in us is counterproductive. We must shine God's light - not our own. Because it isn't ours to shine. Our name will not be a brand. Jesus did not need video promos, cool graphics, or tattoo drawn t-shirts. So nether shall we. Christ had himself and his father. So, what do we have in common with Jesus? - Ourselves & our Father. We are responsible; we are the future, with God’s will running through us, their will running through our city. We will cultivate disciples of Jesus. We will be more than a t-shirt wearing disciple. My goal is that someone can come to know hope, love, justice, and the presence of God by being myself, being a light of God our Father. Speaking for the next generation for disciples 20 year old Abby writes “I want to get on outreach: serving the poor, comforting the hurt, broken, and sick. I want to use our money not to be a billboard for Jesus, but use it to be blessing for someone else. I want to use myself not as a billboard, I want to use my talents and gifts God gave me as a hand-holder to the broken.”  

In reflection of the chaos we are enduring. Let us begin to respond accordingly so our name shall be synonymous for a faith family that consistently communicates the message of forgiveness, restoration, and hope. Then God's will to be with us through both the mountains and the dark valleys.

Peace, Love and Happiness: Tommy 

Sinning Like A Christian: Lust

This week we end the sermon series Sinning Like a Christian with the last deadly sin: lust. The sin of lust is the trickiest of them all. Sex or lust specifically is the least talked about subject in the Bible. Money is the most talked about subject but you will hear more preachers in many mainline churches speak on the evils of sex or sexual orientation more than they will address money, hunger, helping those in need.  Church and sex have been sort of taboo. However in this day and time we have more curiosity in sexuality or sex than Jesus did. We often overlook the simple fact that for survival all creatures must procreate. It’s natural part of our humanity. Lust has always been around from King David voyeurism of Bathsheba to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Today the highest grossing commerce on the internet is porn. Addiction to pornography is the fastest growing addiction for both male and female.  This is because accessibility, no accountability, and full anonymity.  50 Shades of Gray sold over 100 million copies as well as one of the highest grossing movies.  What use to be only a male dominated consumption now there are as many women as men indulging in porn commerce. This is a way of saying that even though sex has been always been around since creation, none the less, times are a changing. Lust has expanded over time and generations.  The problem with the sin of lust is the simple fact that according to Jesus, there needs to be no action. Jesus says the sin of lust happens in the heart. It is no difference from sleeping with a person than looking at a person lustfully.  Desire is good. Desire is a God given thing. But desire misdirected, misused, leads to sin. Sexual improprieties will be the leading headline every time. As a society we are intrigued by headlines of celebrities, politicians, and famous people caught up in sexual wrong doings. The church and society rather spend time debating, defending, and arguing over sexual orientation than sharing God’s love, mercy, and grace with those struggling in life. The thing about lust is that it doesn’t grow. You hot for someone or our not. But love grows. And as love grows in a committed relationship, lust doesn’t increase; true love will intensifies and sustained the desire throughout time.

So no matter what our sin is, whether it is one of the seven or another, God wants to hear about our sin. God wants to hear it so we have to tell it to Him in order to be forgiven of our sin so that we might compass the full depth, the great height, and the breath of God’s love. Confessing to God, or repenting whatever you wish to call it, releases us of the burden of sin. We are saved by God’s grace just as we are. Not how God or others want us to be. Jesus Christ said upfront and honestly “I have come to seek the lost, to save the lost.”  And here he found people like you and me. Christ seems to have rather remarkable transformed a basic deceitful person into sort of a saint or a better person. That makes us a miracle. We are a surprising work of God. Yet we are still learning how to see ourselves as God sees us. We are still transforming. We are still holding up the mirror of truth that makes us look at ourselves. We are still learning to see the imagine God sees in us. Mired in the muck of sin and yet destined by God to stand up and shine as the blessed children of God. There will always be tension in the Christian life as we find ourselves stretched between two poles, having two natures, torn between two alternatives. Yet there are also the quiet convictions that gradually, day by day, decision by decision with God in Christ leading us, coaxing us, sometimes dragging us kicking and screaming into a better life and into a better self.

Gluttony: Sinning Like a Christian

Gluttony is a hard sin to grasp. Even though it’s hard to define it can be more than we think. The church has forced this link between food and sin. It may come from Genesis and the whole eating of the fruit thing. Regardless we should take it serious because Jesus took it seriously. If you recall the first temptation of Christ was after he had fasted for forty days in the wilderness was the temptation of food. The first charges against Jesus by the church leaders were not his theological principles, his teaching, or his preaching. The first charges brought against him were surrounding the eating habits of his disciples. The religious leader asked Jesus why does John the Baptist disciples fast and your disciples eat and drink? Jesus answer was vague but we cannot deny that Jesus talks a lot about parties, feasts, and eating in his parables. When Jesus ended his ministry, not his life but his public ministry, he did it with a meal: Bread and a cup. He said that the food and drink stood for everything he was and is.

So what is gluttony and why is gluttony a sin? Jesus' concern is not what gluttony does to your body but what it does to your soul. There are times when the gut becomes more important than the soul. Most of us believe that we are created in the image of God. When we indulge of excess of food we exchange the image of God in us of that of a slug and a pig. We become purely eating machines. Just like every other animal. We lose self-control. We lose the only thing that singles us out from other animals. Here me clearly. This has nothing to do with weight, body image or body size. It’s about self-control or the ability or inability to stop when we feel satisfied.

Gluttony is sinful to the degree that some of us consume too much in a world where others don’t have enough of the bare necessities of life. I heard somewhere by someone a lot wiser than I say “in the world we don’t have a hunger problem only a compassion and distribution problem.” But sin of gluttony is not limited to food. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Netflix, can be just as harmful or more harmful as over eating. Addictions are the umbrella of gluttony. We have food network channels, people take pictures of their food and share it with their friends, there is even a term called Food Porn and Foodies. But gluttony is not about overeating. People who obsess over food, people who count calories, people who try to tell you everything that is bad in the food that you are eating. Obsessing over food in either way is gluttony. So when does our concern for food become too much concern? That is what concerns Jesus C.S. Lewis describes gluttony as “getting what you want regardless however troublesome it is to others.” So where’s the sin? We all have to eat to survive. We can’t quit cold turkey or we will die. It is not the sin we despise as much as it’s the results of the sin. It’s not that we eat too much or obsess over food too much but the fact that the result is an overweight or unhealthy body that makes this sin unpleasant.  It’s the guilt, shame, and sadness that accompanies gluttony that makes it similar to other sins. How many of us would be the first to admit to the fact that if we could eat whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, as much as we wanted and never gain a pound or still have a healthy functioning body? I am all in. If we could indulge and not feel the after affects we would never see it as a sin. The problem is when we look in the mirror and sin looks a lot like us.

Shalom:

Tommy 

Greed

If we look at our current social climate it is one can see that greed is worst enemy. Out of the Seven Deadly Sins greed is the one that hard to grasp because it fuels other sins. Greed is the gasoline on the fire to sins. Greed turns love into lust, leisure into sloth, hunger into gluttony, honor into pride, righteous indignation into anger, and admiration into envy.  Greed tends to be private, stingy because there is something about Greed that puts us in competition with our neighbors and ultimately in alienation from them.  We all want more. We live by the motto of is a little is good then a lot is even better.  Simply stated the more we have the more we want. To feel better about our own greed is we tend to justify it by deflecting to corporate greed.  Isn’t the real problem of with our society is those fat cats on Wall Street? They are greedy, not us in church. The problem is desires have a way of mimicking need. In the marketing game the trick is to move us from what we desire to what we need. We live in a society ruled by the Constitution that gives us all certain rights. The sole purpose of this democracy is to give us our rights. Perhaps we are among  the first generation in our society to realize that desire has a way of being elevated to the level of need and needs gets further inflated to the level of rights. Our rights are this ever expanding list because our desires are bottomless.  I means isn’t it everyone’s right to own a cell phone. Perhaps we should starting thinking about the church as teaching us about our desires. It is here we learn how to want the right amount, things in the right way and in the right proportions. We need the type of character that is able to look at the world and all it has to offer and at certain key moments simply say, “Thank you but I am now satisfied.” It takes a huge amount of moral stamina to say, “yes I can afford it, but we are not going to buy it, because it does little to contribute to the basic goodness of our lives.” The Christian faith says that church is not about getting what we want but rather getting what God wants. When we do this God has a good time. We grab and consume, to a great degree, because we do not really know what we want, and so we grab everything in desperate fear that we might say no to the one thing that might give our lives some meaning. We need to as Jesus put it “have in mind the concerns of God and not the concerns of humanity.” Jesus reminds us that while the two maybe as one, the world in which we live in will constantly try to stretch, wear down, or erode their commonality. Greed will slowly drag us into other sins. Let us not be trapped. Let us teach our children and grandchildren well and let us receive the joy and peace that is only found in God’s way.. Join us as we uncover the dangers of sin and what we can do so God can have a good time..

Hope to see you in service..

Shalom,

Tommy 

Anger

Anger is a self-evident sin. It is a sin that we tend to hold on to for a very long time.  It is ironic that the only single time Jesus displayed anger it was not at murders, drug addicts, prostitutes, tax collectors or thieves, but with the religious folks. Jesus “lost it” in the temple with the practices of the church. That is a sobering thought that we seem to overlook when we recall Jesus’ anger. If Pride is the most dangerous and Envy the sneakiest, then Anger is the most deadly of all sin.  In the wake of all the Ferguson and now in Baltimore, we have seen the destructive effects of anger. Anger in the hands of protesters and rioters is a way of excusing them from responsibility for their actions of destruction.  It can cause demolition instead of true change. However it prompted me to ask a police officer what causes them the most fear. He responded, “Anger is my greatest fear. The bloodiest crimes, the most unpredictable calls are domestic crimes of passion. When anger is the cause of a crime, things get horribly, terribly, bloody real fast.” He said he feared anger in himself because if he didn't keep saying “I’m only doing my job” and kept his emotions in check it becomes personal. He said, “The very minute I get emotionally involved, the time when I think too much about the criminal and the crime, then I am apt to do the same, some very bad things.”  I must admit I respect his brutal honesty. Anger is only an emotion but it has the potential to lead to deadly acts.

I meet many people who when you strip away the layers of pain, uncertainty, or addictions are really just angry. Many are angry at a great injustice that has happened to them that was never resolved.  Many are angry at God. I can understand why Jesus was angry the religious leaders because many leaders today paint a picture that we are not to be angry with God. Nothing could be further from the truth. God can handle our anger. Anger is natural and necessary response in the face of injustice. It is an acknowledgement that it is not the world as God meant it to be. Anger should be expressed, preferably in a faith community, in prayer, and in conversation with God. God can handle it. God will not punish you for it. We have a God that is good enough and great enough to receive our anger, to take raw human emotions and weave them into His purpose. Anger should be expressed but not acted upon in an unconscious manner. Anger in our hands, righteous outrage practiced by us, is a deadly thing but in the hands of God our anger can bring about significant peaceful change. Join us Sunday as we look a Anger an what we can do to give it up to God and allow real change in our life..

Peace, Love and Happiness,

Tommy 

Gift Cards

Gift cards have become increasingly popular, so much so that in America 97 billion dollars is spent on gift cards each year.  Gift cards have a money value that has already been paid in advance, but their value can only be unlocked when they are used. Someone pays the price for us to dine at some establishments and a card is exchanged and we are free to choose when and what we eat.  In fact each year around 8 billion dollars’ worth of gift cards goes unused. Some cards are lost, some are used and forgotten about, and others just simply expire after non-use. It seems foolish to have that much goes unused when so many of us are hungry. We who are hungry need to bear in mind we have a gift card at our disposal if we choose to use it. 

In the midst of the build up to Easter and trying to get everything perfect, we tend to forget that Easter is really a gift. The empty tomb is proof that Christ has opened the door between this world full of pain, suffering, and disappointments and God kingdom. The empty tomb is our gift card. It is a gift from God. Between the worship services, palms, egg hunts, special music, and the sadness of the crucifixion, sometimes that idea of the gift can be lost.  We lose the fact that the empty tomb is a gift. A gift that never expires however we must redeem it or it’s useless. So as we approach Easter let us remember this priceless gift. Let us remember, even if it’s as painful as Good Friday, what we have been saved from. As painful as it maybe only then can we truly find the joy in our salvation and redeem the gift of an empty tomb. 

Meet you at the tomb... Tommy 

Dinner is Served

It is our natural human tendency when we hear the words “Dinner is served” to fixate on the object of the sentence dinner. We tend to gravitate or focus on the dinner and what is being served. There is something about food that can spark the deepest part of our soul. I text my siblings to see what their favorite meal our mother prepared for us growing up. I got an immediate response. For my oldest sister it was our Mom’s Chicken a la king.  My other sister it is was our Mom’s Chinese meatloaf. My brother’s favorite was her roast, potatoes, and carrots.  For me it was many but I loved her chicken casserole or her chicken and dumplings.  We all had different favorites but the undisputed consensus of us all was our grandmother’s coconut cake, in the metal cake pan and our Mothers birthday cake. It was heaven. Sometimes it wasn't just one dish but the combination of different dishes that made the meal memorable.  I can still recall my mother in law’s meal combination of ham, potato salad, beak beans and her chocolate chip cookies that did it. I am sure if you took a moment you too could recall something that your loved one cooked or prepared for you that strikes a great memory. Maybe the food is only the catalyst that solidifies the memory of when life was easier or that person was still vital in your life. I don’t know what it is but something about food can spark a memory that sticks with us. My siblings and I universally agreed more important than the food what we missed the most was the time we had around the table as a family. But when it comes to the food we can all remember the finished product. We easily skip over the process, the labor, and love that the one person put into making the meal for us. We just dine on the finished product and ignore the process. Our human nature is to not focus on the effort it took to prepare the meal. So this week as we look at another meal with Jesus we divert our attention away from the dinner and focus on the serve. In the most known meal with Jesus according to John, Jesus begins the meal by serving before dinner is served.  This meal is mentioned in all four of the gospels although some may contain more details than others. Some call it the Last Supper or the Lords Supper. As we revisit this, let us not forget that for the Christian faith the word serve and love are synonyms. The word love and service for Jesus were and are one and the same.  When the world looks at anyone who calls themselves Christian, the identify characteristic should be our service.  To be a disciple of Christ means we should be consumed with doing things for others instead of doing things for ourselves. It’s like the love of a mother cooking supper for her kids that last a lifetime. So Jesus knowing this is his last Passover meal wants, needs, desires to leave a lifetime lasting impression. And that impression is one of a servant.
Shalom: Tommy