Bishop Mike Lowry

Last Sunday (December 18^th) I attended my wife’s Sunday School class (New Hope) at  Arborlawn UMC.  James Nader (the father of two of our pastors – Joseph and John) is the teacher.  He does an excellent job and on the rare occasions I am able to go with my wife I thoroughly enjoy both the lessons and the class members.  Sunday’s lesson was on the birth narratives from Luke (using Ellsworth Kalas’s Christmas from the Backside).  It focused on the innkeeper and the famous line from Luke 2:7 – “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  I was following the lesson in my Bible which is the new CEB (Common English Bible) translation.  What caught my eye was the way the CEB translated verse 7 – “She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.”

Is it guestroom or inn?  The difference is intriguing.  NRSV says “inn.”  The NIV says “guest room.”  The KJV says “inn.”  I confess I was not aware of the disparity.  I am not even sure it makes much difference.  And yet . . . a guestroom implies intimacy. We have a guest bedroom in our house.  When you are there, you’re an honor guest, cherished company.

Cautiously, I am aware that we far too easily “villianize” the innkeeper (guestroom host?).  After all, to make room for the holy family, he or she would have had to kick someone else out.  A good case can be made that the innkeeper (guestroom host) did the best he or she could do.  Still, the translation “guestroom” lingers in my heart and mind.  Do I, do we, receive Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus has honored guests in our home this season?

St. Ambrose remarks, “He had no other place in the inn, so that you may have many mansions in the heavens.  He, being rich, became poor for your sakes, that through his poverty you might be rich.  Therefore his poverty is our inheritance and the Lord’s weakness is our virtue.  He chose to lack for himself that he may abound for all.”  There is much to reflect upon and learn from each time we enter the drama of the Savior’s birth.  The very nature and character of God is revealed to us.  And, we . . . , we are invited (or is it challenged) to host the Lord in our homes.

During this time Jolynn and I are going on an Advent journey.  In some sense beyond the physical, we are walking again from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  The common packages of the time go with us.  We have strung up lights and set a manger scene on the lawn.  We have decorated the house with nativity scenes and praying Santas (and yes, a Santa climbing the ladder day by day to Christmas Eve).  We have hosted two parties.  We have been bathed in wonderful Christmas music at worship and through the mystery of CD’s.  (I am currently listening to a new Christmas CD by Casting Crowns a contemporary/classical Christian group).

We have (as many of you have) been reading Adam Hamilton’s book The Journey.  The readings step us back into an ancient, and yet ever new, reality.  Once again we learn the truth of God.  In the swirling blessing of this preparation, I find myself pausing again to wonder at it all.  John says, “The Word became flesh and made his home among us” (John 1:14, CEB).  In the midst of our busy days, this truth penetrates in flashes of lighting and I find myself overwhelmed with God’s glory and love.  May the preparations bring us all to the foot of the manger.

Yesterday I received a special gift from Dr. Michael Patison, chair of the Central Texas
Conference’s History Book Committee.  Fresh off the press, Michael handed me a copy of The Central Texas Annual Conference 1866-2010: At the Center of Texas Methodism.  Dr. Patison (as Editor) and the whole Committee writing team did a wonderful job! I wrote in the preface that this “is a work that encompasses more than history.  It encompasses an Act of God – the birth and life of the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church.”

It is almost fashionable these days to believe that one can be spiritual without being a part of a local church.  It is not true.  The old phrasing comes to mind – “the church is of God and will be preserved to the end of time.”  The other phrase which comes to mind is the one from  Santayana, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In the special gift of this history few have lessons that may guide into the future God is even now preparing for us.

The Central Texas Annual Conference 1866-2010: At the Center of Texas Methodism will be sold at Annual Conference this coming June in Waco. Those who would like to purchase a copy earlier may do so either at the Conference Service Center through Nancy Schusler or by contacting directly Michael Patison (www.mpatison@charter.net) or Rev. Nancy Bennett  (npbennett1@yahoo.com). The cost is $25 for pick up; $28.50 for shipped.

We know December 7^th as “a day that will live in Infamy!”  Do you know what is special about December 6^th?

In a lot of ways, it is a much bigger day for Christians.  December 6^th is the feast day for a Bishop from Myra (a part of today’s nation of Turkey) in the 4^th century.  That bishop’s name was  Nicholas – St. Nicholas from which we get the original story behind Santa Claus. St. Nicholas was known as a champion of the poor and especially of poor children.  He is also considered the patron saint of sailors.  The list of his accomplishments and compassion especially for those in  need is long and distinguished.  Ironically, he originally stood for the opposite of glided  consumption. St. Nicholas gave away what he had to help those in desperate need.  (The story behind the stocking has to do with him putting gold coins in the stocking for poor young women so that they would have the money to pay a dowry for marriage rather than being sold into prostitution and slavery.)

Tuesday, December 6^th, I was Duke University attending the Episcopal Leadership Forum (a part of my continuing education with 24 other UMC bishops under the auspices of Duke  Divinity School and The Thomas Center for Business Leadership).  In the morning devotional and prayer time, we remembered St. Nicholas and invited him once again to teach us by  example.  Our morning prayer was entitled, “Remembering our brother Bishop, Saint Nicholas of Myra.”  It is as follows:  “Almighty God, who in you love gave to your servant Nicholas of Myra a perpetual name for deeds of kindness on the land and sea: Grant, we pray, that your Church may never cease to work from the happiness of children, the safety of sailors, the relief of the poor, and the help of those tossed by tempests of doubt or grief; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you. Amen.”

I have shared often how crucial Christmas Eve worship is as an opportunity to reach non- or nominal Christians.  A recent article in Ministry Matters (www.ministrymatters.com click on “Articles”, it was posted November 28^th) entitled “How Christmas Can Help Your Church Grow in 2012” caught my attention.  The authors listed 6 key ideas.  “1) Promote your January sermon series and other upcoming activities during Advent and Christmas services.”  2) Use your Christmas kids’ programming as an on-ramp for new families to get involved.  3)  Offer multiple mission opportunities. 4) Do the caroling thing. (The CEB New Testament Christmas Outreach Kit works well for this kind of outreach.) 5) Use your church’s small groups for outreach during the holidays.  6) Be creative and try new things.”  The authors, Betsy Hall & Shane Raynor, add: “Don’t settle with doing the same candlelight service year after year. Remember, Christmas Eve is prime time. Pull out all the bells and whistles. Get your most creative people on board and provide a worship experience that will make first time visitors want to return in 2012.” To which I add a hearty Amen! The worship of God is the first and most basic step on the path of discipleship.

I commend the article to you.  It closes with the challenging question, “What does your church do during Advent and Christmas that encourages growth in the months ahead?”

As you are lifting up the connection between Christmas Eve, making disciples, and church growth? Don’t forget alternative forms of communication as a way to reach seekers.  A church Facebook page and a twitter auto update are two (among many) different suggestions.  (Our younger clergy have been coaching me, and they are great resources to visit with about different options!)  Whatever you do, have Christmas Eve services featured PROMINENTLY on your  website!

While you are at it, another article from the Lewis Leadership Center is really worth your attention.  It is entitled “Asking Bigger Questions” and written by Keith Anderson. It is from The Lewis Center for Church Leadership online journal Leading Ideas dated November 30^th (www.churchleadership.com).

This year we have continued our special emphasis on the Focus Area – Imagine No Malaria
(INM).  Nothing But Nets was step one in this mission, and last year we expanded our efforts to INM.  We asked congregations to engage in special giving to this incredibly important mission emphasis. Our (the entire United Methodists Church’s) audacious goal is to, in the name of the Great Physician Jesus Christ, eliminate malaria. 

Well done Central Texas Conference!  To date the following financial support has been received by the Conference.

Imagine No Malaria

2010                                        $110,300.41
2011(to date)                         $112,903.70
                                                 $223,204.11

We will continue to be engaged in Imagine No Malaria as one of the four focus areas for ministry in the United Methodist Church. [The others are: 1) new places for new people – new church development and the transformation of existing congregations; 2) Combating poverty in ministry with the poor; and 3) Leadership Development.]  Together we are making a difference in the transformation of the world as we live the prayer “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Well done, thou good and faithful people!

Thanksgiving was great! We had much to be thankful for as our extended family celebrated
together.  And yet, we couldn’t miss the stories of people camping out to shop on Friday morning.  This incredible display of material addiction assaulted our sense and tempted us at every turn.  It didn’t end.  Monday it continued its rising tide with record reports.  The onslaught of things I (apparently?) need to fill the hole in my heart is both dazzling and
depressing.

And yet,  . . . in the midst of this onslaught came a true blessing.  I think there is something in the commandment to “Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.”  We went to worship Sunday (my bride of 35+ years was the lay reader at Arborlawn!).  I found worship settling to my soul and challenging to my spirit.  The music, prayers, preaching, and liturgy all were a blessing.  In a deeply perceptive bulletin insert article, Rev. Bryan Bellamy wrote on “Christmas Joy.”  “This [the message of Isaiah 64:1-9] stands in stark contrast to the commercially driven, over-the-top, Christmas ‘spirit’ that surrounds us presently – a message that pushes overspending,  overdrinking, over-hoping, over-getting and over-giving.”  He quoted Bishop Will Willimon. “The hope for us is that we are out of hope and we know it.  We dare not rush to greet the  redeemer prematurely until we pause here, in the darkened church, to admit that we do need redemption.  Nothing within us can save us.  Nothing can save us.  We’ve tried that before.”

Such wisdom is truly good news and genuine cause for rejoicing.  “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee!”  Honoring the Sabbath in worship put things back in perspective for me.  I hope it did so for you. Oh, and for those of you needing gift ideas.  How about giving to something in honor of a loved one as your gift?  As Michael Slaughter reminds us, “Christmas is not your birthday.”  You might try a life saving gift through “Imagine No Malaria.”  You can do so by giving through your local church to “Imagine No Malaria” (INM).  Just note on the check that the gift is for “Imagine No Malaria.”  Churches remit the INM funds to our office on a Remittance Form, Fund #622.  $10 saves a life.

The original Thanksgiving proclamation came at a request of both houses of Congress to President Washington.  Congress had asked that President Washington “recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.” (Taken from a copy of the original proclamation.)  But the history runs deeper.

In its origins, as both Congress and President Washington rightly recognized, Thanksgiving is not a secular holiday.  It is a special expression of human gratitude for divine deliverance.  As a distinctly American activity it happened first as best we know in October of 1621.  Governor William Bradford of the
Plymouth Colony “sent forth men fowling, so they might in a special manner
rejoice together after they had gathered the fruit of their labor.”  According to Bradford’s History Of Plimoth Plantation the hunters brought back a “great
store of wild Turkies,” and to this were added lobsters, clams, bass, corn,
green vegetables, and dried fruits.  The Pilgrims did not celebrate thanksgiving in 1622.  But, in 1623, after a rainstorm ended a summer drought and saved the setters’ crops, the Plymouth populace again observed a day of thanks, probably towards the end of July.  And in November after crops were gathered,
Governor Bradford ordered that “all the Pilgrims with your wives and little
ones, do gather at  the meeting house, on a hill . . . there to listen to the pastor, and render thanksgiving to Almighty God for all His blessings.” (William Bradford, History of Plimoth Plantation)

I find such history interesting.  But even more, I believe it to be instructive.  It
is a past which reminds us of the intent of this holiday or holy day.  It is so easy to get lost amid the plenty – the family and friends, the football and food – that we can unwittingly forget why we gather.

You see, the turkey on the table, whether for one or twenty sits there as a
signaling presence of the bounty we share.  To live as a Christian means to live in gratitude for what old Governor Bradford called “the blessings of Almighty God.”  To reach for the essence of this day is to soak in what President Washington meant when he called for us to offer God our “sincere and humble thanks.”

Did you know that old Benjamin Franklin wanted the Turkey to be the American bird instead of the eagle?  Franklin argued that the eagle was a scavenger – a buzzard of sorts – but that the turkey marked out a generosity of spirit for which we should be noted as a Christian people.

Our past remembered with gratitude beckons us to a future beyond Thanksgiving.  In fact, for Christians, thanksgiving is never enough.  Poverty, both physical and spiritual, is a reality today every bit as much as it was in the past.  Gratitude, genuine God driven gratitude, becomes the motive power for true Christian living and serving.  Generosity of spirit marks us out as the one who returns to be sent out again committed to God’s vision of a country and people renewed and reborn.  May it be so for us on this holy day.

In my recent Kairos event at the Boyd Unit (Texas Department of Corrections), I was once again privileged to see God at work through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Love trumps evil. Sacrificial love can crack the hardest heat. At Boyd, this wasn’t theological musing but practiced reality.

A team member shared his own story of struggle to turn his life around. He shared his story of 36 years of walking with Christ. Listening was a brother-in-white who had been in and out of jail for most of his adult life (something around 25 + years). God was at work in his life. Christ was claiming his mind and the Holy Spirit was restructuring his heart.

The next day, that brother in white sought me out as a clergy to talk to. He told me he had tried Islam and two or three other things that (as he put it) “didn’t work.” He’d tried to control his life and it “didn’t work.” He wanted to (and did!!!) surrender to Christ. Surrender wasn’t a nice church term; it was a heart-wrenching change. Christ as Lord meant for him to “turn over leadership” of his life to Christ. This wasn’t theological cotton candy but tough stuff.  He leaves the safe place of Kairos and goes back into the compound. This chapel is holy ground. It will be hard out there, and there will be trials. But I saw (see!) God at work.  (I learned later that after a dramatic public profession, announced to all and celebrated with great joy at Kairos, the brother-in-white told the chaplain to change his papers from Muslin to Christian.  News spreads fast in the prison community and his change caused upheaval for he was one of the leaders of the Boyd Muslim community.)

This may sound prosaic, but it isn’t.  Stories of heart-wrenching, risky change abounded at Kairos.  The cost and risk of being Christian is high.  It can (and does at times) involve beatings and persecution.  It is not an easy way but brings more true joy and freedom (even in jail!) than anything else offers.  We free-worlders have much to learn from the courageous faith of the brothers-in-white.  God truly is at work!

A thin ribbon of dawn sliced the eastern skyline in glorious splendor but what drew our attention was the stark, sharp concertina wire forming a deadly lace of metal on the outer fence of the Boyd Unit Friday morning as we waited to enter a series of gates, check points and searches to arrive at last to a gym that was transformed into holy ground.  In my devotional reading I had somewhere come across the phrase, “whenever someone new enters a room, Christ comes in. But oh, he comes in such disguises.”

Sunday night I returned exhausted and elated from a 4 day Karios at the Boyd Prison Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.  In our last small group gathering (the “family” table of St. James) the inmates (or “brothers in white”) asked us (the 3 free-worlders) what we got out of the Karios. My answer was simple.  I received blessings at Boyd.  The greatest of those blessings was to see God at work in transformative power.  I was blessed with new friends.  I was blessed by the Spirit far beyond what I had hoped.  The list goes on.  I do not do it justice but write in awe of the power and presence of God at Boyd through the work of Karios.  I also recognize the great battle that takes place daily in that location between good and evil.

Abstract theological concepts like sin and salvation, repentance and redemption, take on flesh and blood form.  They hurl about the room explosive charges of energy and anger, regret and renewal.  In a population where respect, love, and care are rare commodities, the gospel is truly good news.  We free-worlders are careful to honor the humanity and privacy of the brothers-in-white.  An unwritten but firm code is that one does not ask what action or sentence placed an inmate in prison.  We do not seek how long they have to serve.  Respect means willingness to allow a brother in white his privacy. They share but only when they have reached a point of spiritual development and trust.  As I grew in my own journey (blessed by the  brothers in white) the phase “there but for the grace of God” took on new depth.

Forgiveness is taken seriously here.  Anger is strong, and grace is not cheap.  They wrestle hard with the Lord’s Prayer, especially the phrase “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others.”  Some already profess Christ as Lord and Savior but face the reality of a deep failure to live the Christian life.  Others reject God.  Still others have readily given themselves over to the worship of other (false) gods including Satan and evil.  They make much of the distinction between being a Christian and being Christian!  I think we in the free-world can learn a great deal for them.  I know I have.

The inside team (brothers in white) who have been through Kairos, committed or recommitted their lives to Christ as Lord and Savior, and who are giving genuine evidence of walking in newness (righteousness) of life, were awesome sacrificial servants. I encountered two of the greatest missionary evangelists I have ever met at Boyd on the inside team.  One African American, the other Anglo American, they reached across gang, racial, ethnic, religious and other lines risking their own safety to share Christ in ways that truly put together love, justice, mercy and evangelistic passion. One of them was known simply as Demon before his conversion to Christ.  The other was someone who went around beating up people.  They are now living a level of sanctification that I hope in my better days to merely immolate.

I thank the men of Boyd for the blessings they bestowed on me.  I thank also my fellow team  members – both those on the inside and outside team.  They are heroes of the faith, not perfect, just walking in the way of faith.  I will write more in the next blog.