I was invited to lead worship and preach yesterday. I'm not normally one to post sermons, but this one turned out pretty good. Thought I'd share. In the mean time...live well...laugh often...love always. Delibrio Animousus, Sir Aquinas ----- I grew up on a farm. It’s the kind of childhood I wish I could grant to more kids of this age. Because it was a childhood of dirt and grime. It was a childhood of long summer days and hard work. Of building hay bale forts in the barn and exploring creeks and sloughs. Of seed ticks and chiggers. Mine was a childhood of filthy and calloused hands. Primarily, we stuck to raising cattle in the early days, but in addition to being a farmer, my father was also a produce broker. One year he got the idea that he wanted to expand his portfolio. So in a cooperative venture with some friends we planted ten acres of cabbage. There was just a little problem. We weren’t dirt farmers. We grew cows not plants. We didn’t have the infrastructure or the experience. So it wasn’t long before the weeds started growing up over the cabbage and dad had us out there with garden hoes. And it wasn’t long after that that the rabbits discovered this culinary wonder which led to my older brother riding on the front tractor axle with a shotgun through the fields. Try getting this sort of entertainment on a Wii And then the beavers moved in. Yes, the beavers. The beavers began to reek havoc on our cabbage. Every single morning we would find more plants eaten down to the root. The problem was that they were doing most of the damage at night. So we tried different remedies from dogs to hanging transistor radios from trees in desperate attempts to scare them away. Nothing worked. It came down to one and only one solution. The cabbage patch became a combat zone. We were put on nightly patrols armed to the teeth. Well... some us were armed to the teeth. I was armed with a BB gun. Sure it was a piece of savage blue steel fury, but it was a BB gun non-the-less. One night a friend of mine came over to help me with the midnight patrol. Otherwise known as the graveyard watch. We’re sitting there in the deathly silence and somewhere off in the distance is the faint song of a transistor radio. BB guns at the ready and flashlights in hand. We were ready for anything. Rodents of terror, bring your worst. Hours passed. Nothing happened. . We just sat there quietly talking. And talking. And then the inevitable thing happened when two ten year old boys are sitting in a cabbage patch at two o’clock in the morning. We freaked each other out. And not just a little bit. We reached the pinnacle of freaked-out-adem. There’s another critical piece of information you may want to know about this particular field which is relevant to the context of this story. It bordered the Fourche La Fave River. And as we were sitting there facing the darkness of the cabbage patch, our backs were turned to the bank of the river. You know...where the beavers lived. In retrospect I now understand this to be a mistake. Because then it happened. It’s hard for me to adequately describe our bottled terror any more than it is possible for me to describe the moment before a Mentos falls into a diet Coke. But the reaction was pretty close to the same. It started with this whining sound and then BAM! BAM! BAM! Now as an adult I realize this was the sound of beavers slapping the water. As a ten year old boy it was nothing less than the sound of a giant creature coming from the murky waters to eat us. And it was enough to transform two brave ten year old boys into a couple of swearing and screaming six year old girls. You know how when we were kids, the road runner cartoons had their own laws of physics? Like when Wile E. Coyote would fall off a cliff there would be this moment when everything but his eyes fell, but the eyes would stay in suspended animation, look at you and blink a couple times before plummeting off the cliff. The rate at which we abandoned our post would have left the road runner out of breath. We were moving. It was probably a quarter of a mile to the house from that field. A quarter of a mile down a very dark and foreboding dirt road. My buddy Nathan was in the lead pointing his light and gun in front of us while I was following on his heels with my gun and light pointed behind us expecting to see some horrific beast crashing through the darkness at any moment. And then one did. But it was in front of us, not behind. It’s a bit of a blur now, and really all I remember is flashes of screams and lights and flailing arms. But what actually happened is that on our sprint to the house we startled a sleeping cow who jumped up in front of us. I don’t know how many times we shot her. Let’s just say it’s a good thing we had BB guns and not automatic weapons. But all we could focus on in that moment was the light of the house in the distance and making it there with our lives. Turns out my parents were still up and really before my memory went blank the last thing I could remember was my dad just about falling out of his recliner laughing. This is a pretty round about way of saying that I have a certain “heightened” appreciation of the situations our dear shepherds found themselves in. “Don’t be afraid” You have GOT to be kidding me. But here’s the part I love. It’s absolute terror combined with absolute hope. It’s God coming to ordinary people with a new story. And that story is, “It’s going to be ok. I’m going to walk with you from here on. I’m going to show you the Kingdom I’ve been dreaming about.” I know you’re scared. I know you are hurting. I know the world has forgotten you. I’m coming to make it better. But not just that. I’m coming to show you how to make it better for others. I’m going to show you how to bring My Kingdom to earth. To hear stories of the Methodist movement in the early days is be a part of something amazing. They were these people traveling around this country on horseback and living off the kindness of strangers. They established communities, proclaimed the way of Jesus to masses in open fields. They built schools, started hospitals, took care of orphans and widows. One thing is for sure. Where the Methodists were, the Kingdom of God was at hand. But then time moves on and the organism that was the Methodist movement became an organization called the Methodist Church. Still growing, still doing lots of good, but lacking the passion and risk of its early days. Focus turned toward getting people to ‘come’ to church rather than the ‘church’ going out to the community it served. There are places like Congo where the danger still is a very real phenomenon and Methodists are risking their necks to bring the Kingdom to the remote places of the world. In fact one of the times I went to Congo I met a teenage boy named, Pascal. Pascal used to come to my house every day to practice his English. On the last day of my stay he stood in front of my video camera and made me promise him that I would put him in the video. I thought it was a pretty bold statement and so I asked him why. I’ll never forget his response. He said, “Because I don’t want to be forgotten.” What do you do with something like that? What do you say? Because it’s not that he just wanted me to remember him, it’s that he needed to know there was hope. He needed to know that someone outside Congo knew his story and would tell it to others. Our faith from the very beginning has been about confronting fear with hope. At knowing that no matter how awful our circumstances are, there is always hope. And just as importantly it is in our DNA to offer that hope to others. It’s risky, and it’s filthy. It’s sometimes irritating and frustrating, but it is who we are called to be. You’ll notice there is a bowl of dirt up here by the altar. There’s nothing special about it. It’s just dirt. But before you leave here today I’d like to ask you to do something for me. I’d like you to wash your hands in it. You’ve all heard of holy water, perhaps then you might consider this “Holy Dirt”. It’s to be a reminder that ours is not a faith that is only interested with how clean our noses are, but equally how dirty our hands are. It’s the dirt that comes with getting low to help someone else up. It’s the dirt that comes with recognizing the humanity in the homeless. It’s the dirt that comes with helping someone rebuild their life. With the 2 a.m. call from the addict. It’s the dirt that comes through the act of giving someone hope. Plain old, nasty, dirt under your fingernails hope. So fear not. I bring to you good news of great joy that will be for ALL people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. You have not been forgotten and I bring you hope. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen | 
Speaking of November, we've hit the holy month of sportsmen, otherwise known as deer season. It was a beautiful weekend, pitiful in terms of actual results, but I got a lot of reading done. I started reading the biography of John Adams. There's been a lot of talk lately about the state of the United States, the church, etc. and I'm as guilty as anyone else about spouting off what my personal views are which are primarily backed by scattered quotes and memories of history classes. So I figured it would be a good idea to go back to the beginning and try get a better understanding of the 'spirit' of the original documents by the the men who crafted them. The big thing that's jumped out at me is the differences between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Both brilliant, both entirely different types of men. Adams was outspoken and very concerned with factoring in the "human condition" while Jefferson was much more methodical in terms of a scientific mind, yet held much less value in the factors human nature would play in the role of law.
