As I am beginning to reflect on what honesty means for all of us, I am also wondering how much I really want to explore honesty myself. Every message I preach causes me to spend a number of hours reflecting on the topic and especially where that issue intersects my life. I wouldn’t call myself dishonest most of the time but there are times when honesty is hurtful to others- what is better: to hurt people or be dishonest? Of course then begins the slippery slope of never being honest which is also a tremendous challenge. I want to explore how honesty becomes a reality in everyday living. Can it be so without alienating everyone around us? Why do we tolerate dishonesty in society, in the name of tact or politeness? What would God want from us and what does the Bible say to us.
I’ve tried to have a policy in my life: don’t ask if you don’t want to know (the truth). Still at times I have fudged that policy when I deemed it was expedient. Clearly, this is an isue worth working out and worth saving for the end of the Character Series. How do you feel about honesty?
”I remember that commandment, James, ‘Thou Shalt Be Transparent.’” Okay, it is not one of the commandments but I believe that it is clearly part of what we as Jesus followers are called to be and live in everyday life. Looking at Matthew 5:13-16 where Jesus calls us to be the light of the world (and salt too), I try to unpack what I am thinking about being transparent and why it is important for each of us.
Monday night was United Methodism class again and once again it was an opportunity to be stretched and forced to face some realities as well. We were talking about our founder’s (John Wesley) understanding of Christian conferencing as a means to get closer with God. Our modern Charge Conference (local church annual meetings) and Annual Conference (big meeting of United Methodist in a local region) have their origins in the idea of Christian conference- I say origin because when the class pressed me a bit about what Christian conference is really like, I said the class we were sitting in much more so than what happens most of the time in big “business” meetings where theology and mission are words used but the focus is getting the business done.
I was more than pleasantly surprised by Charge Conference this year. (I might add that so were all of the members who came to Charge Conference!) We did a grouped conference with three other churches roughly our size. We worshiped together, had 5 minutes of business, and shared ideas that had worked in our congregations so that we might learn from one another. We came away energized and encouraged by the ideas and work of ministry in other churches and our own. If that is the future of Charge Conference, then I have more hope for the revival of Christian conference in United Methodist circles than I did before.
To be fair, I think Christian conference is easier to make happen on a smaller scale, in a local congregation when people debate and discern God’s direction and discover new truths about faith they had not seen. Get 50, 100, 3000 people in a room together and it’s hard to do much but read reports and celebrate Robert’s Rules of Order. Of course, God can work in anything, in any place. Re-learning Wesley’s approach to ministry and his principles which guided the founding of the Methodist Church can help to keep us honest and perhaps remind us of who we are and can be as God’s people in the world who have chosen to be called United Methodists.
I am talking about real, live benefits. I get to spend time with any number of folks who are at various places on their journey of faith, some who would even say that they are on no such journey. Sometimes though, I get to spend time with a deep soul, a soul that opens my eyes to the wonder of a God bigger than I thought I could imagine, a God who embraces me in new and humbling ways. In moments like those, I can only thank God that I get to experience the goodness of God in such tangible ways. In a world sometimes caught up in hating and anger and blaming, I get to be with people (sometimes) who take the changes life offers in stride and who hold on to a bigger picture that more of us could stand to cultivate.
Those moments are humbling as well because they remind me that no matter how far I THINK I have come, I still have a long way to go, that my perspective on God is ever-growing and I ought not get too complacent about where I am now.
We need each other on the journey of faith. Sometimes it reminds us of where we have been and other times it shows us the promise of where we may yet go. Still other times it offers a chance to be thankful that we have not had to walk the path some other have.
When was the last time you thanked someone for walking the journey of life with you?
I am convinced there is a difference between being invisible for Jesus and being “see-through” for Jesus and it is more than semantics for me. Invisible is being completely unseen (and perhaps unseeable) where as see-though is about people both seeing a person and the essence of the person. The more I follow Jesus and the better I get at following Jesus through God’s work in me, the more my essence is Jesus-y essence. It is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get, who-you-see-is-who-I-am kind of thing. As a Jesus-follower, I hope people will see Jesus through me.
I would say I am not interested in transparency for transparency’s sake (thought that may be good); I am interested in being open and clear about who I am and who I am is connected to Jesus. Now it’s all starting to sound like semantics. It is terrible to know what you mean and not be able to make clear what that is.
I believe one thing Jesus calls us to be is transparent, that is part of being people who bear his message. His love needs to be evident in and through us. What do people see when they look at us? I’ve begun to look at issues of transparency and stories of transparency in the Bible. For instance Jesus taught that it wasn’t necessary to swear by God or anything else, that our “yes” ought to mean “yes” and our “no” ought to mean “no.” We are called to be “lights on a hill.” I am working on where that all will take us as we search the Bible for clues about being transparent in Jesus’ name.
This past weekend as I was preaching I began to tie in a movie I had seen recently, Grace Is Gone. I could not for the life of me remember why I had begun to relate the story. It was a piece in the movie about how the younger daughter kept a sense of connection with her mother who was deployed in Iraq- both mother and daughter had their watches programed to beep simultaneously across an ocean. They both would be thinking of one another at the same time. It was to have been a leaping point to talk about a different kind of reminder for adding disciplines (like prayer) to our days, perhaps adding an alarm to our datebook or clock or phone or watch. That is where I was going when I lost my train of thought…
This message about discipline talked about how important it is for to be people who develop discipline as a way to living more faithfully in Jesus name. Listen and respond to our poll about the most important discipline…
Filed under: Thoughts — Tags: faith — James @ 10:07 am
Recently I began teaching a class (really more collaboration than teaching) at Saint James about what it means to be United Methodist. Sometimes in the daily grind of doing administrative and other tasks, I find that I forget the richness of the faith community from which I come. Don’t get me wrong, I am first and foremost a Jesus-follower; my Jesus-following happens to find its expression in the emphases of United Methodism and more specifically in the teaching and focus of the founder, John Wesley.
John Wesley came to see that it is not nearly enough to believe something, anything, even in God. Anyone can, quite frankly, claim to believe in God. Wesley was very much interested in the practical application of faith in everyday living, something that has become the focus of our congregational life at Saint James. Wesley was much less interested in developing a list of beliefs than seeing those beliefs that are central become part of the way we make it through our lives, the way we treat the world and people in the world, the way we express ourselves. No doctrinal purity checklists for Wesley, only lists of good to be done and harm to be avoided. The letter of James captures the core of faith in saying faith without the working out of faith in life is dead faith, maybe even no faith at all. Faith is only faith when it stretches beyond self-interest into God-interest and God-interest is focused on the world which God loves.
Wesley’s call to a method of faithfulness in life, marked in his own methodical approach to living, is a wonderful reminder that what I believe, what I think, who I am in relationship to Jesus, needs expression beyond the occasional and initial words, “I believe.” I think as my class continues I’ll have more to say about this Wesley fellow and what he is re-teaching me about my faith.
Okay, maybe this one is NOT my favorite character trait but it is an important one none-the-less. If perseverance is pressing on even in bad circumstance or discouragement, discipline is “pre-deciding” what it is we will do and be and then allowing for no excuses. At least that is my current take on it. I suspect that I’ll be hearing from others about their thoughts regarding the same trait from other perspectives and the collaboration will enrich us all.
I do think that “discipline” has gotten a bad rap. In my most disciplined moments, I hold to my boundaries, I hold to my values, I keep my focus on the important priorities in my life (keep Jesus first is the biggest piece in that!) So while I may not love the discipline of living faith, I see the positive results. When I exercise, I feel better and reduce my stress, see clearer, understand more. I don’t “want” to do it sometimes but always find it worth it when I go ahead and do it anyway. That is the essence of discipline- doing it anyway.
