Just Sit There!

Several years ago, I first heard the now famous story of Larry Walters, a very simple, very bored 33-year-old truck driver who decided he wanted to see his neighborhood from a totally new perspective. So he went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons. That afternoon he strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which several of his friends tied the now helium-filled balloons. Grabbing a six-pack of beer, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, a CB radio and a BB gun, he took off – figuring he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land.

Can’t you just imagine the scene?

Walters, who assumed the balloons would lift him about 100 feet in the air, was caught off guard when the chair soared more than 15,000 feet into the sky—smack into the middle of the air traffic pattern at Los Angeles International Airport. Entirely too high and wildly now too frightened to shoot any of the balloons, he stayed airborne for more than two hours, forcing the airport to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights from across the country.

Soon after he was safely grounded and ticketed by the Long Beach police, reporters asked him three obvious questions:

"Were you scared?" "Yes." 

“Would you do it again?" "No." 

"Why did you do it?" 

"Because," he said, "you can't just sit there." 

I love that! I love this story for all sorts of reasons. 

I love it simply for its comedy value.   I smile as I picture some bored guy and his goofy buddies getting this utterly silly idea and daring Larry into it (although history tells us it was actually all Larry's idea). Though avoiding airliners while floating along in lawn chair and weather balloons is the ultimate “don’t try this at home” moment, Lawnchair Larry, as he came to be known in the 80’s, had an absolutely amazing adventure.  He got to experience something few people ever will (or ever should!).  He may well not have been the very brightest bulb on the tree, he may not have been the kind of guy with a lot of answers to life's biggest questions, but his “you can’t just sit there” reason for taking action still makes me think... 

You can’t just sit there. I think those are very motivational words for some of us. Some of us have found a place of comfort in life and, either intentionally or unintentionally, we’ve made the decision to just sit there. Just sit in our church pews. Just sit in a relationship going bad. Just sit in a job situation we find truly meaningless. Just sit in front of our televisions, computers and devices. Just sit and blithely watch children struggle while we do nothing. Just sit in a world coming apart at the seams and quickly going to hell. Just sit in a life we’ve found sad but safe – trivial but tolerable. How truly awful! Is that what our Christian hope is supposed to offer? A good sit? If you’re in this “just sit there” position, perhaps it’s time to start strapping some spiritual weather balloons to your lawn chair and see where God might take you. Perhaps it’s time for a wild and wonderful adventure. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider what your hope in life truly is; why God created you and what He has uniquely qualified you to do. Don’t just sit there; get hopeful and get exploring! 

You can’t just sit there.  On the other hand, these oddly simple "just can’t sit there" words also bring to mind thoughts completely contrary to everything I’ve just said. 

For some people, I believe “you can’t just sit there” is a phrase almost tyrannically bad; perhaps even demonically evil. Some of us are already so ridiculously busy, so absurdly pulled and fractured into so many different directions that “just sitting there” may well be exactly what we need to do most. Some of us are so busily religious, so busy with jobs, families and other good and bad entanglements, we literally have no time to “just sit” and listen to a God longing to spend time with us; a God longing to fill us with the hope we need to adventurously persevere. Perhaps some of us need to understand that what we need most in the world is some extended time to “just to sit there.” If you’re in this second lawn chair side of the story, whatever you do, don’t just do something, sit there! 

You can’t just sit there. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what some of us should do.

May God help us clearly discern which sort of lawn chair decisions we should be making!

Amen.

___________________________ 

Postscript:  Sadly, Larry Walters took his own life in 1993 at the age of only 44 by shooting himself in the heart in the Angeles National Forest.  It wrecks the whole story, doesn’t it?  How terribly sad!  How utterly tragic that someone so hungry for life and adventure couldn't find the hope necessary to continue his adventure to the end...

When The Church Prays (Acts 12)

Anyone knowing me for any length of time knows my life is little more than a cherished and often odd collection of stories. If you want to get to know what makes Kevin Hanson tick, just ask him about the time he got four haircuts in one day. Ask about the Budweiser beer cap in a barracks toilet bowl. Ask me about the kid who prayed me out of the 82nd Airborne Division or miraculously well timed phone calls or dramatic, 3AM answers to prayer God has graciously given me over the years. The Apostle Paul once told a young friend to “always be prepared to give an account for the hope you have within you.” Be ready to tell your story. God gives each one of us stories that change not only our lives, but are useful in changing lives around us.

I believe our Scripture text this morning is one such story. I believe our Bible passage today is a story the early church savored so deeply they repeated it constantly; they loved it so much they included all the tiniest details making good stories fun, memorable and meaningful. This wonderful passage is one of those great stories told so many times to so many people we forget and tell it over again to some folks who’ve already heard it. And yet this story is so very precious and tender, people don’t seem to mind hearing it again. This is one of those stories!

Dear God (Matthew 6:5-15)

When I say the word “prayer,” exactly what images come to mind? For many of us, we picture a quiet, old man sitting down at the kitchen table with his Bible and his God, hands joined together as he seeks to join his heart with heaven. It is a lovely image. And by the way, this is a truly Minnesotan image of prayer – it was originally a photograph taken in 1918 by Eric Enstrom of Bovey, Minnesota of a poor peddler who came to his home selling foot scrapers. The photographer liked the image because it showed an old man’s grateful heart at a time of great poverty, deprivation and suffering. It was a simple grace…

And yet this gracious image of prayer has become familiar stereotype and ritual for us. When I googled images of prayer on the web this week, these clasped hand postures of prayer were everywhere. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this, but it does cause me to wonder how ritual has come to dominate/influence our prayer lives. It appears even the animals have figured out how to properly talk with God. Please, oh please, can’t we do just a couple more minutes of laser dot, Pastor? Please, Daddy, please?




Oh dear LORD, please don’t let mother find out what Bowser here did to Daddy’s shoes!




 


Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the LORD my soul to keep. And if I should die before I wake, I pray the LORD my soul to take. Amen.

We all say our little prayers, don’t we? We think we know how this thing is supposed to work. We have some shockingly common and consistent ideas of what is good and bad prayer. Even the least spiritual among us have a pretty good idea what prayer is supposed to look like and how prayer is supposed to work. Prayer is asking God for stuff and getting it. Right?

I read the lovely, answered prayer story this week of a family trying to sell a car to raise money for an expensive surgery. No dealer was willing to offer much money for the car and so, the family stopped at a restaurant to pray about it. Even as they were still praying, a woman walked over to their table and asked them if they might possibly be interested in selling their car. Apparently, she had been looking for a particular, inexpensive car for a family member and couldn’t find it. So she stopped at the same restaurant for lunch and was praying about what to do when she saw them pull into the parking lot with the exact car she was looking to buy!

We love prayer stories like that, don’t we? Asked and answered – bada bing, bada boom! Those are the prayer stories we glory in – these stories just sound like little things we know our loving Father would do. There’s certainly nothing whatsoever wrong with savoring prayer moments like that, but are prayer experiences like that typical? Does good prayer usually work like that? Is our prayer conversation always supposed to work like that? Is this normal? And if it isn’t, pastor, then what is prayer? What are we supposed to expect?

The Blessing (Numbers 6:22-27)

Today we gather for another of our “blessing services.” For those of you who haven’t been around Elim very long, this quiet service is a worship time we set aside at the beginning of every year to intentionally pray for God’s blessing. We seek His blessing on Elim Church, on the ministries that take place here throughout the year, but more than any of that, we set aside this day each year to seek God’s blessing on each of us individually. For many of us, this time each year has become a precious opportunity to gather closer to God and closer to each other.

This year, as I was thinking of a biblical theme for our time together, my attention was drawn to one of the most famous biblical blessings of all time. In the book of Numbers, after the Israelites had come out of their bondage in Egypt, Almighty God, with the help of Moses his faithful servant and leader, were establishing the uncompromising standards by which His people would govern their lives thereafter. Our God was carving out a people for Himself. And in the midst of these lists of legal instructions, Almighty God tells Moses how Aaron and all his priestly sons are supposed to bless the people. We hear this blessing all the time, but I wonder if we recognize what God is actually saying. Listen carefully to exactly what God said: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’ So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

This is a lovely blessing. This is a wonderful way of helping us focus our thoughts as we enter into our own annual time of blessing. But this blessing is also enormously revealing…in this blessing we discover some wildly important things about God’s perspective and desires.

Beautiful Community (Eph 2:1-22)

I’m sure many of us took a new bunch of family photos over the Christmas holidays. Since all of my siblings were actually together this year, we took a lot of pictures before we went our separate ways. I suspect this is probably the biggest week of the year for family pictures. And so it was particularly humorous to me that one of my Christmas gifts this year was Mike Bender and Doug Chernack’s bestselling book “Awkward Family Photos.”

As I chuckled my way through the book, remembering my own awkward family photo moments over the years, it occurred to me that these family photos might actually be a true and humorous metaphor for church families. Some churches are somewhat odd-looking, but at least everyone seems to belong. They might seem a bit colorful or strange to outsiders, but at least they wear the same shirt. Their behavior might even seem occasionally inappropriate (joy in the graveyard?), but at least they’re all smiling, right? But then there are family pictures just a little bit off – most of the people seem to fit together nicely, but there’s that one troublesome, hairy rebel standing up oddly in the back row. Hm... And then there are those truly uncomfortable family photos where almost everyone in the picture seems utterly miserable, some even scared, while those in charge of holding everything together seem strangely content, even bizarrely joyous. And then there are those families where you don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there’s at least one brutally honest, dead-eyed girl in the front row willing to speak up in her misery.

We have our own awkward collection of family photos, don’t we? Last July, we talked about what a church family is supposed to look like. This morning I thought it would be good to revisit that theme, here on the first Sunday of the New Year. But today I’d like to look at our church photo album from a slightly different angle – a broader biblical lens. Open your Bibles to the second chapter of Ephesians. This wonderful, gushing little letter (the first ten verses of our passage today are actually one long, run-on sentence in the original Greek); was written by the Apostle Paul mostly to help early Christians more fully understand and more fully enjoy their new and glorious true identity in Christ and His body, the Church. This letter helps us better understand and enjoy what we truly are. As I read from the NLT Bible today, listen closely…

Truly Coming Home (Luke 2:1-21)

Michael Green told the story years ago of a little boy and girl singing their very favorite Christmas carol in church the Sunday before Christmas. The boy concluded "Silent Night" with the words, “Sleep in heavenly beans.” “No,” his sister corrected, “not beans, peas.” Isn’t that cute? There are times when our mistakes about Christmas make us smile.

But then there are times when our odd behavior at Christmas time makes us wonder. We watch crazed shoppers using pepper spray on each other for a better place in a WalMart line and we just have to wonder.  We watch people brutalizing each other over Air Jordan tennis shoes (or apparent disrespect at the Mall of America!)  Stuff happens and it makes you wonder how people could so completely miss the point of Christmas.

Some bored researcher actually did a study in 1989 related to just one, odd part of our Christmas behavior. He discovered Americans used 28,497,464 rolls and sheets of wrapping paper, 16,826,362 packages of tags and bows, 372,430,684 greeting cards, and 35,200,000 Christmas trees during just the 1989 Christmas season. Seriously?

Nothing intrinsically wrong there I suppose, but…

It is so easy for us to get off track, isn’t it?

In December 1903, after many attempts, the Wright brothers were successful in getting their "flying machine" off the ground. Thrilled, they telegraphed this message home to their sister Katherine: “We have actually flown 120 feet. We’ll be home for Christmas.” Katherine hurried off to the editor of the local newspaper and excitedly showed him the message. He glanced at it quickly and said, “Oh, how nice. The boys will be home for Christmas.”

We chuckle at that story because we think the newspaper guy missed the big point. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe coming home for Christmas was actually much more important than flying 120 feet through Kitty Hawk wind. Coming home for Christmas is always more important.

But I’m not talking about Christmas road trips and grandma’s house. I’m talking about truly coming home to the truth of this day we celebrate every year. Let’s come home again to Luke 2:1-21...

Go and Do Likewise

“Which of these was truly a neighbor

to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

~ Luke 10:36 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is and isn’t my job…

I’m sure many have seen this wonderfully vivid, painted roadkill picture that has floated around the internet in recent years. When I received it in my inbox, it was entitled simply, “Not My Job!” I know the image is somewhat earthy, but it does make for quite a thought-provoking metaphor, doesn’t it? How much death and damage goes unattended in our world because people decide it isn’t their job to address it? How much icky stuff gets painted over because people think it just too gross to clean up?

Moments before Monica and I left our apartment for a suppertime walk a few days ago, a full size pickup rear-ended a little Mazda econobox passenger car on Central and 22nd Street. The backside of the Mazda was really smashed up and large pieces of its worthless plastic bumper and other assorted car parts were scattered all over the right lane of the street. The largest section of bumper was about three feet long and a foot or so wide; a very good sized chunk of car. Yet as Monica and I walked closer to the accident, we saw a jaw-dropping thing. Not only did no one stop for the accident, the cars on Central began to simply drive right over the wreckage and damaged pieces of car lying in the street! One vehicle actually had some difficulties for a moment as a large chunk of bumper wrapped itself around its right front axle and wouldn’t dislodge. I was stunned and disgusted! My dad would have been thoroughly unimpressed! When we got to the intersection, I couldn’t help myself. I stepped into the street for a quick moment, grabbed up the largest pieces still lying in the road and tossed them over to the curb. It only took a moment, but I’m surprised I wasn’t run over by the unconcerned and utterly un-Samaritan drivers…unbelievable!

I’m always ranting here at Elim about people forgetting to turn off lights and lock doors. As I was rambling away about these tedious things with somebody recently, I remembered a funny moment from my soldier days. I once had a soldier show up in my platoon formation at Ft. Bragg years ago with his boots mostly untied. When I looked down at his sloppy appearance and undone boots, this good old boy, Army private actually looked me in the eye and exclaimed, “Well Sarge, ya never told me ‘ah had ta tie da’ boots!” Now that, my friends, is irresponsibility writ large, don’t you think? Forget roadkill, roadside accidents and church locks and light switches; when we can’t even find the initiative to take care of our own obvious needs, the car is truly coming off its axles!

In the coming year at Elim, we’re going to talk an awful lot about what it means to be neighborly and lovingly involved. We’re going to talk about what it means to be a community of people who don’t walk right on by the troubles of the world on their way to church. We’re going to think prayerfully together about our hope and how we might better offer that hope to the world. We’re going to spend some extended time in the parables of Jesus, thinking about how living in relationship with Him affects our living in the world. We’re not going to walk by the troubles around us. We’re going to figure out better ways of “going and doing likewise.”

Elim is a church that already does this pretty well. We aren’t typically in the habit of painting over roadkill or avoiding our responsibilities in the world. We’ve got an awful lot of good folks here working hard to remain engaged. But let’s not be naïve; the coming year is going to test our willingness to get involved. This is going to be another messy year filled with icky, roadkill issues we would rather not pick up.

But that’s just too bad, because we’ve got a job to do. We’ve got love to share, hope to offer and a world in desperate need of janitorial assistance. We can’t be prissy about these things. We aren’t following Jesus because we crave pampering. We live in relationship with the One who loved us and stopped His car for us while we were little more than icky roadkill in the street. The One with whom we have to do thinks every icky thing and every icky person matters infinitely. He always notices lights left on and dangerously unlocked doors. If we love Jesus, we will love who and what He loves – we will do what He would do. If people like us don’t learn to love stepping forward to be neighborly, who will?

Love never drives on by.

May God bless our neighborly efforts in the coming year!

Amen.

Merry Christmas

I know this is last year's favorite flash mob video, 

but I still love this glorious moment!

May the love of Jesus fill your heart this Christmas!

Lovely Christmas Music

We enjoyed our annual senior's Christmas brunch this afternoon.  It was, once again, a very nice couple hours of good food, music, friends, fun and seasonal reflection.  A wonderful time was had by all.  The cheerful reindeer ladies bearing candy at the end sealed the deal!

One of the most refreshing people on the program was a harpist named Nicolas Carter.  To say we enjoyed his music would be gross understatement - his contributions were beautifully done.  Peaceful, Christmas fun with a little bit of Latin flair worked in around the edges...really nice.

As I was talking to him after the program, I learned he and some friends will be offering a concert on December 17th at 7:30 PM at the First Covenant Church (2201 First Avenue S in Minneapolis).  He will be joined by four other musicians (strings, Andean flute, guitar, percussion and vocals).  It looks like a wonderful evening!

It took Monica about three seconds to decide whether or not we're going.  So if you care to join us for a nice evening of South American music, go to the website and order your tickets ($12 in advance/$15 at the door).  You won't be disappointed.

Always Winter, Never Christmas

So I get this opportunity to go to the Vikings game yesterday.  

The game gets rescheduled earlier in the day 

because the Vikings are doing so poorly this year.

Two rookie quarterbacks have an interesting day, 

lots of yards, lots of firepower

but mine comes up the loser.

Sigh...somehow December often feels this way up here in Minnesota.

Lots of winter, but way too little Christmas...

But thanks for the game, Brad; still lots of fun!