Thoughts Along The Way

Some thoughts along the way….. I was reading an article the other day and it was talking about various obstacles in sharing the good news of God in Jesus, the Christ. At once I thought about Cursillo and Kairos, both ministries have talks dealing with various obstacles to Grace or in my words “a relationship with God through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.” The article named three obstacles: language, culture and one’s beliefs or non-beliefs. Then I read an article talking about the Church in Nigeria with the title, “Will I lose my life at church today?” Not an everyday thought for most of us living in the states. Some of us are checking our watches to see if we can make it the golf course in time or miss one of the sports events that might be coming on. But in getting ready to go to church and asking the question, “will I lose my life at church today?” is not on our list. However, as a priest who loves to preach, I pray that all of us will indeed loose our lives in Jesus so that we can truly live for Him. But I don’t even ask the question or have a fear of someone coming through the doors of the church to kill you or me. However, that is a way of life in parts of Nigeria these days. Please pray for our brothers and sisters throughout the world who can literally lose their lives by going to church or by being a Christian. At the moment, I am living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; a place where I don’t speak the language, I don’t know the culture, and there are many who do believe in Jesus and many that believe in things contrary to the good news of Jesus, the Christ. So, how do you advance the gospel in these conditions? There is no clear path. The road is narrow with a lot of challenges along the way. Several years ago, I did a spiritual gifts inventory to find out what my spiritual gifts were. I found out that my top three gifts were: faith, giving and helps. But out of 28 possible gifts, mercy was one of the bottom three! Not Good!!!! I mean as a priest I’m sure that one of the expectations of us is to be merciful and full of compassion. Talk about an obstacle to the gospel, a priest with no compassion!!!! God Forbid!!! So, I had to go before the Lord and ask if He would give me the ability to have compassion and mercy. I think He did it in a strange way really. It was a three step process as I look back on it. The first step is that He needed me to go to Cursillo. Cursillo is a three day event designed in a way that one will experience corporate worship, basic teachings of the Christian Faith, too much food, and some time for reflection (though not much). Cursillo is not a retreat because you can talk and in fact encouraged to talk after each teaching is presented. There is some time for silence, but don’t think of Cursillo as a three day retreat, because it’s not. Yes, you will retreat from the norm of your everyday life, but that’s about it. The intention of the 3-days is to give one an experience of the Body of Christ. And that is what happened to me. I encountered the living Christ during those three days. I was born and bred a Baptist. I began going to church before I was born. I was baptized at 10 years old just like everyone else in my little town of Estill, SC. I came into the Episcopal Church when I was in college. After Tina and I were married, we went back to Estill to live and I was the lay reader for our little Episcopal Church that sat on 50 acres of a piney wood forest. For those Episcopalians reading this, you might want to know that we had 3 wardens and not 2. We had a Senior Warden (one who looks after the spiritual well-being of the congregation when the priest is not available), a Junior Warden (one who takes care of the physical property) and a Game Warden (most congregations don’t have this one but we needed someone to make sure that the deer stands were available during deer season). Don’t ya just love country living??? Let me back up a couple of years. When I was 16 years old (well, a little more than a couple of years), right after my junior year of high school, I was run over by a tractor and trailer. The doctors gave me 4 days to live and when I passed the 4 day mark, I remember hearing a doctor tell my mother that I would never be able to play football again or any other type of contact sport. At 16, football was my god!!! This was around the end of June and football practice was only a few weeks away. I said to myself, “that will never happen!!” I was out of the hospital in 2 weeks. I had had 5 broken ribs in three places (15 breaks) and a punctured right lung. But, by mid-season, I was playing football. Not only that, I played a year of college ball as well. I had to quit playing college ball because of my knees, but still enjoyed playing flag ball and running. Somewhere right after the tractor and trailer ran over me, I had what is commonly referred to now as an outer body experience. What I experienced was a visit to a festival in Heaven!! It was more like a huge picnic with this massive table that contained every food that you can imagine. The table was surrounded by people dressed in white robes. Though I did not recognize anyone around the table, I did noticed that they were all laughing and having a great time; and I had a tremendous sense of wholeness and peace. Then out of nowhere, I remember hearing myself finishing the Lord’s Prayer. I looked up but couldn’t see anything because my eyes were packed with dirt. Then someone asked me how I felt. I’m sure they didn’t expect what they heard from me, because I told them that I felt like dying. And I did for I had just had a small taste of Heaven. But I was not about to tell anyone about this experience for years, because I didn’t want to end up on Bull Street in Columbia where the mental institution was at the time. You would think that that would have made a deep impression on me in a spiritual fashion, but it really didn’t because you see, football was my god. What I did come away with was no fear of dying. To this day, I have no fear of death, I just don’t like it! Back to Tina and me living in Estill, where my family had lived for generations. My mother had given us the old home place to live. That was my dream home and I was so thankful that we had the opportunity to live there. And so life was good, but during our third year of marriage I just didn’t feel satisfied with life. So, I went to the community cemetery which our farm surrounded to seek help from God. I went to the cemetery because that’s where my daddy was buried. He died when I was 4 years old of a massive heart attack and the community always told me what a godly man my dad was. So, I figured if God was to be found, He would be at the cemetery with my daddy. I left the house on a dark night. No moon. No stars. Just dark. Very dark. I didn’t need a flash light, because I had spent a lot of time in the cemetery growing up to hang out with my dad. I stood on his grave looking up to the heavens and told God all the good things that I was doing for Him and asking why I was so miserable. Then I yelled at Him and asked, “What do You want of me!!!???” When I was a small boy, maybe 10 or so, I remember riding home from church one day with my family. And I was wondering why God didn’t speak to people any more like He did in the Bible. The sermon must have been on Moses and the burning bush. I can see that time like it was yesterday. Amazing how our minds can work sometimes like that. Well on that dark, dark night some years ago as I stood on my daddy’s grave looking into the heavens; a light appeared and from the light, I heard the Lord say, “I want you to go to seminary.” My only response to Him was, “If you want me to go to seminary, then You are going to have to open some doors because you know that I’m not a good student.” His only response to me was letting me experience “the peace that passes all understanding.” Never in my life have I ever experience the depth of peace as I did that night. And so, I knew that if I ever wanted any sense of peace in my life that I would have to go to seminary. So, once again at Cursillo, I encountered the living God and now there is no denial to what I experienced, only acceptance of His mercy and grace that He offers to all who would come to Him. The encounter I had with Jesus that week-end was life changing for me, because it was the first time that I had ever felt loved by God. Here I was, a priest in His Church, and it was the very first time that I had felt the love of God in and through His son, Jesus!!! I felt like a limp wash rag. Step two began the very next day after the Cursillo week-end. Tina and I went to a conference at St. Paul’s, Darien, Connecticut. It was a 4 day event on the Holy Spirit. You know, number 3 in the Trinity that we don’t talk too much about in most traditional churches. Well on the last night that we were at the conference, our host family wanted to pray for us to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He went through a short explanation of the Holy Spirit, but the phrase that caught my attention was that He was the one who helps us to be Christ-like in the world and I needed that big time. So, there in their living room, Tina and I were baptized in the Holy Spirit. (An aside, I know that when we are baptized that we receive the Holy Spirit; the issue is not whether the Holy Spirit is in me or not; the issue is whether or not the Holy Spirit has permission to work in my life. Remember, God will never ever take our free will from us.) So, Tina and I both gave the Holy Spirit permission to work in our lives to the glory of God. Life has never been the same for either of us. Three years later, the final step: Kairos, an ecumenical prison ministry using the Cursillo format, a very big obstacle for me here. When I was in the seventh grade, our field trip was to the state penitentiary. The first place they took us was to the electric chair. One of the guards (security officer now days, but still a guard to me) told us, “If you are bad this is where you are going to be!” Shucks most of us kids from that time on feared the “chair” more than we feared God!!! So I had no inclination to do prison ministry at all. The few times that I “had” to go to check on someone made my skin crawl. So I was much relieved when one of my parishioners asked me if I knew of a prison ministry that SHE could be involved. I told her no, but that I would let her know if something came up. Well, several weeks later, I get a phone call from a friend of mine through Cursillo asking me if I would be on the task force to get Kairos into SC. I can see it like it was just this morning. I was standing up and I put the phone down by my side and looked up and said, “You sure do have a sense of humor!!!” I then told my friend that I would be glad to help out in any way that I could. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that enabled me to respond in such a manner. But Kairos has taught me what God’s Grace is all about. I’ve overcome more obstacles in my life through the Kairos ministry than I can count. I’ve learned how to Listen, Listen, Love, Love. I’ve learned not to take offense and I’ve learned to be compassionate, because of the One who showed compassion to me. The main obstacle to proclaiming the good news of God in Jesus Christ is fear. In John’s first letter to the Church, he stays, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4.18) Therefore, I need to give way to the fears that I have about others in order that I can love them enough to tell them that they are loved by God; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we don’t have a love for the people who need to hear this good news that is available to them, then we have nothing to offer. The very thing that they need to experience and receive is the love of God that is offered through His son, Jesus. If we don’t love the person, why should they even want to listen to what we have to say? Don’t get me wrong, loving someone and approving what they do are two different things. Loving the sinner and not the sin is easier said than done, but that’s what we have to try and do. So, what are the obstacles, the fears, in your life that keep you from loving people? First of all, you can’t love anyone properly on your own, you need help. And that’s the work of the Holy Spirit. To turn you into a lover of souls for Jesus!! That’s why I’m sitting here in a country where I don’t know their language. I don’t know their culture. But the Lord has called Tina and I here to minister to those who believe and those who don’t believe. We’ve been called here to demonstrate the Love of God in and through Jesus, the Christ. Our call is to be in those places where the Lord needs us to be for Him and to show forth His love to all people no matter what!!! Our ministry purpose statement is Wherever I’m Needed – Go Serve, therefore, WIN-GS. I was thinking what it would look like if I inserted “you are” in the place of I’m: Wherever You Are Needed – Go Serve. It would read WYAN-GS. Sounds like I talk, but I think it is best just to stick to WI-NGS. Bottom line is this: you need to be where the Lord needs you to be for Him and do the things that He needs you to do for Him and Him alone. Be Blessed to be a Blessing, Fr. Joe