James Hopwood James Hopwood

Renewing, not wasting away

What things do you do to renew your spiritual life day by day? What things do you do to strengthen your spirit?

Even though our bodies may be wasting away, the Apostle Paul says we an be renewed in the spirit day by day.

Here are a few thoughts on how we might do that.

See the complete post on the blog tab.

What things do you do to renew your spiritual life day by day? What things do you do to strengthen your spirit?

 Here are some thoughts from a message I gave at Resurrection Spring Hill on June 9, 2024. My core text is 2 Corinthians 4:16. “So we do not lose heart,” the Apostle Paul says. “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”

 Getting old is not for sissies.

 I’ve heard that saying for many years, and I’ve listened to many older people say that it’s true. Since I’ve started getting older myself, I can now testify directly that it’s true.

 Call it a statute of limitations. After a certain age, each year seems to bring a new set of limitations.

 For instance, I’ve had periodic back issues for a long time. Lately, though, they’ve been more regular than periodic, and they have become more limiting in what I can do. I do not like this development.

The other day I was leaving K&M Barbecue at the same time that a woman was entering who I thought looked old enough to be my mother, if not my grandmother. She smiled sweetly and held the door open for me. I smiled in return and said, “Thank you.”

I will gladly accept any help I can get it, when I need it. But it sure galls me to admit it when I need it.

In the passage we just read from Second Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is not speaking directly to the indignities of getting older. But I think it’s one of the things he has in mind when he talks about our outer nature wasting away.

A bit earlier in his letter, he suggests that the gospel is both a fragile thing and a strong and resilient thing. “We have this treasure in clay jars,” he says, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (4:7)

Hear that? The power of our message belongs to God. It is strong and resilient. We who proclaim the message are fragile. We’re like clay pots. We’re useful, but we break easily.

Lately I’ve become fond of an old saying that was popularized by New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle. He said: “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

I’m never going to run a marathon or have muscles like the Rock, Dwayne Johnson. But there are a lot of things I can still do to take better care of myself: more exercise, healthier diet, less salt, much less processed sugar – you know the drill.

One day, I’ll breathe my last. I can’t stop that from happening, but I can work to postpone it as long as possible.

Meantime, as Paul says, I do not lose heart. Even though my outer nature is wasting away, my inner nature is being renewed day by day. Though my body is growing weaker, my spirit is growing stronger.

That’s what I want to focus on now. What things can we do to renew our spiritual lives day by day? What things can we do to strengthen our spirits regardless of how much our bodies challenge us?

Some things are obvious to those of us who are schooled in the Wesleyan way. We automatically think of what John Wesley called the “means of grace.”

These are the channels that God normally uses to convey God’s grace to us. When we open ourselves to these channels, by acting in certain ways, God’s grace can more freely flow to us.

Some of these channels are of obvious spiritual value. We pray often, and we read scripture, sometimes daily. We worship with others weekly and receive Holy Communion frequently. At a good opportunity, we talk about our spiritual progress with other seekers.

Sometimes we even fast or engage in other acts of self-denial to prove to ourselves that we can live without some things but never without knowing God’s presence.

Other channels of grace are things we do in our daily interaction with other people. These acts fulfill our pledge to do no harm to anyone but to do good to everyone. They might be simple acts of kindness or compassion – such as holding the door for someone – or harder things such as working to feed hungry people or fighting for justice for those who are oppressed.

 Sometimes we do these things out of habit – and there’s nothing wrong with a good habit. Habit is just intentionality that’s embodied, that’s drilled into us through repetition. Such habits help us grow more like Jesus. They build spiritual muscle so that we can be stronger Christ followers.

 When I was a kid, I read a story somewhere that has stuck with me since then. A boy says to his grandfather, “How can I get muscles like yours?” His grandfather says, “Well, let me think about that. Meanwhile, could you chop some firewood for me?”

 Day after day, the boy asks the same question, “How can I get muscles like yours?” Day after day, the grandfather gives him some chore to do. Finally, the boy gets frustrated and asks, “Are you ever going to answer my question?” The grandfather says, “Let me see your arm.” And the boy’s eyes open wide when he sees the muscles he’s developed, through daily exercise of them.

 We build spiritual muscle the same way, by practicing the means of grace day by day. You may not realize it, but when you are intentional and habitual about your growth in grace, you are daily growing closer to Christ and closer to that blessed state we call sanctification.

Some of those means of grace that I mentioned, I’m just not good at. Ever try journaling to keep track of your spiritual progress? I’ve tried it, and I’m terrible at it. Can’t keep it up longer than a few days at a time.

Just the other day, I tried to remember something and discovered that I just couldn’t tie it to a particular time or place. Maybe at the least we should do is keep a journal-style listing of events, and when and where they happened.

Or as one woman suggested in our discussion at worship this morning, you can record big events on a calendar and keep transferring them to a new calendar every year. Whether you are turning the pages of a journal or a calendar, such “tickler” entries could well trigger deeper memories.

Thankfulness is another way of keeping our spirits alive to the work of God in our midst. Maybe especially important here is thankfulness for loved ones whom we know will not be with us much longer. What can we do to cherish and enrich the time we still have together?

Another person suggested self-guided meditation. I should have followed up more on that one, Dale. Meditation and contemplation, though not the same, are time-honored ways of connecting our spirits with the Holy Spirit.

I must confess that I’m not as good as I want to be at daily Bible reading. I can easily do a deep reading in the gospels or one of Paul’s letters, but maintaining a daily reading habit seems to be beyond me right now. I need to keep working on this.

Ever try reading the whole Bible in one year? Several people in our group this morning have done it. What a marathon! I did it once, and I vowed to never do it again. Too much pressure to read too much at a time and not enough time to absorb what you’ve read.

I read a Bible-in-a-year version of Ken Taylor’s Living Bible. It was a paraphrase of the Bible, not a real translation, and it was not always a faithful paraphrase.

I kept running across passages I’d never heard before, and I kept saying to myself, “I never knew that was in the Bible!” Then I looked up those passages in several Bible translations, and I discovered that those things weren’t in the Bible at all. They were just Ken Taylor’s imagination.

As to fasting – I’ve never been very good at it, and after I developed diabetes I’ve been advised to avoid fasting, so I guess I’ve got a good excuse to skip it. You don’t have to fast for long periods, such as several days in a row. A one-day fast, from sundown one day to noon or sundown the next, is one time-honored way of fasting.

OK, let’s wrap this up.

Regardless of how much our bodies are serving or failing us right now, and how much we have or haven’t been working on building spiritual muscle, still, Paul says we do not lose hope. Why is that? Because it ultimately depends not on us but on God.

We need to trust in the extraordinary power of God working in and through us. It doesn’t come from us. It comes from God. But it can flow through us in the same way that God’s grace flows into us.

Each of us is, perhaps inevitably, focused on our personal weaknesses and the ways we cannot fulfill God’s mission in our lives. But it doesn’t all depend on us, does it? Our story is important, but each of us has just a small part in a greater story – and that is God’s redemption of the whole world.

We look only at what we can see, and that is very limited. What we cannot see is God working throughout the universe making good things happen in ways that are visible and ways that are not visible, through actions large and small, sometimes taken by people just like you and me.

So we don’t lose heart. Indeed, we take heart because we know we serve an awesome God who is in charge of making good in all things.

 

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

In the wind

The wind of God’s Holy Spirit is blowing fiercely these days but we can misinterpret God’s work as mere historical event.

Witness three ways the Spirit is moving in the Great Plains Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.

One: Spring Hill UMC is no more. It’s soon to be Resurrection Spring Hill, the latest satellite of Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.

Two: Redistricting is happening in the Great Plains. It’s about time.

Three: General Conference has the potential for putting us back on track as a church.

(Read more in the Blog page.)

God’s Holy Spirit is always on the move, but not always in ways we can see or understand.

 In Chapter 3 of the gospel of John, a religious leader named Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. In honor of the Nickelodeon TV series, this scene (John 3:1-8) has long been known as “Nick at Nite.”

Why does Nicodemus approach Jesus at night?

It’s not because he’s afraid to be seen with Jesus in public in the daytime. That’s a sad bit of antisemitism poorly disguised as biblical commentary.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and Jesus often differs with Pharisees sharply, but they get along well enough that Jesus dines with them frequently, and in Luke 13:31 we read that Pharisees warn him when Herod plots to kill him.

 No, Nicodemus visits Jesus at night because he’s a genuine seeker.

 He simply wants to have an extended conversation with this exciting new teacher. Evening is the traditional time for such conversation. Work’s done for the day. Everyone’s tired physically but eager to engage mentally, so they get together and talk about God.

 Nick is no slouch. He goes directly to the source – and he gets a lot more than he bargained for.

 I’m going to skip over the part about his confusion over what it means to be “born again” or “born from above.” That’s a whole other conversation. I want to focus on Jesus’ statement about the work of the Holy Spirit.

He says: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

You live in Kansas, so you know about wind, don’t you?

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving south to Paola from my home in Spring Hill. I drove into a stiff and sometimes nasty south wind all the way. By the time I left town, the wind had shifted. Now it was blowing from the north. I drove into a stiff and sometimes nasty north wind coming home.

In our spiritual lives, it sometimes seems like we are moving with the wind of the Spirit, and sometimes it feels like we are driving against it.

This morning I want to talk about a couple of ways that United Methodists in Kansas are trying to move with the Spirit and are sometimes buffeted by a wind from somewhere – from where we may not be sure.

The first topic is Spring Hill United Methodist Church. It’s only a few minutes from our home, and Linda and I have become active there over the last year and a half.

In February, the church voted to close so we can become the seventh location of Church of the Resurrection. While some renovation is done on the main building this summer, services are conducted in the education wing. Linda and I and two others are leading worship until we reopen in the fall as Resurrection Spring Hill.

Angie McCarty, who has been our part-time pastor, will become full-time pastor and provide pastoral care and leadership. Resurrection pastor Adam Hamilton will preach most of the time via video screen.

This is a difficult transition for a church that’s 165 years old, but it offers great hope for a United Methodist presence in southern Johnson County, and Linda and I are happy and excited to be part of it. I’ll say much more about this in coming days, so stay tuned.

The second topic is redistricting in the Great Plains Conference. Several years ago we formed the Great Plains Annual Conference. We did it by combining  three smaller conferences – Kansas East and Kansas West and Nebraska – into one huge conference. Since then we’ve had this administrative nightmare involving too many districts and too many district superintendents.

When our annual conference meets later this week, lay and clergy delegates will be asked to reduce the number of districts from 17 to 10. That’s still a lot of districts, but we’re covering a huge amount of territory here.

The Five Rivers District, where I have served for nearly 20 years, gets split in half. The northern half, where I live, is combined with what is now the Kansas City District and part of the Topeka District. The southern half is combined with what is now the Parsons District.

The new district lines mean that a couple of longstanding charges are split.  Parker, Beagle & Fontana is no more. Beagle and Fontana stay with Paola in the northeastern district, but Parker goes into the southeastern district. Similarly, the New Lancaster-LyCygne charge divides, New Lancaster moving to the northeastern district and LyCygne to the southeastern.

The proposal also calls for an annual District Conference. That’s just what we all need, isn’t it? Another church meeting.

However you look at it, change is ahead. We have to trust the Spirit that good things are in the wind, even if it takes awhile for them to become apparent.

Understand, I’m not endorsing this new district map as the work of the Spirit. I’m just saying that however good or bad it is, the Spirit will be working for good in it. Whether a church structure is new or old, the Spirit is always working for good in it. Sometimes the new makes the Spirit’s work easier. Sometimes it makes it harder.

The next topic I want to mention is the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

It concluded several weeks ago. Though it occurred in 2024, it’s technically the 2020 conference, but it was long delayed by covid and the related problems of overseas delegates having trouble getting visas so they could attend.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about General Conference, and I guarantee you that much of what you have heard is a lie. The biggest lie you’ve probably heard is that the church is now turning gay, and that thousands, perhaps millions, of gay people are going to start flooding our doors to get in.

What actually happened is that the church is no longer violently anti-gay. But it is not now even remotely pro-gay. Rather, it is now more or less neutral. Our status is now a kind of a theological beige.

And for that change in direction do you really think gay people are going to come streaming into the church? Gimme a break.

For the last 52 years, the United Methodist Church has told gay people that they are dirt. We did it in 1972, when the first bit of anti-gay language was slipped into the Book of Discipline by a last-minute gambit at the end of our first General Conference after the merger that created the church in 1968. At every general conference since then, anti-gay forces have tightened the screws. It happened in 1976, and 1980, and 1984, and 1988, and 1992, and 1996, and 2000, and 2004 and 2008 and 2012 and 2016.

Given that track record, why would any gay person want to be United Methodist? Remarkably, a few stayed with us the whole time. Even more remarkably, a few who were kicked out of the church have decided to come back. Most will not.

 After giving you a little background, I’ll tell you what I think really happened at General Conference. In what follows, I will use the terms “conservative” and “progressive” only for convenience, because I think both terms are very misleading.

 At the 2016 General Conference, conservatives prevailed yet again. This time they passed what they called the Traditional Plan. It’s traditional only if your tradition includes the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.

 One example: Under this plan, If I as a pastor were to give a cup of cool water to a gay person and someone filed a complaint against me, I would immediately be hustled out of my job and out of the church without trial, without right of appeal, without any form of recourse.

There’d be no talk of my faith in Jesus Christ because that would be irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that I violated someone’s standard of purity regarding gay people.

Having passed this awful Traditional Plan, conservatives allowed churches that disagreed a way out: a path of disaffiliation. Then there occurred a seismic event that they did not anticipate. It was a wave of reaction so intense that it was obvious that progressives were going to undo all this garbage at the 2020 General Conference.

So conservatives bailed. They took the exit plan they’d devised for progressives, and they left the church in droves. Many of them went to the new Global Methodist Church.

That 2020 General Conference finally happened this year, in 2024, and progressives undid a lot of the damage conservatives had done over the previous 50 years. Time will tell whether it is enough to keep the church alive and healthy.

One thing the conference did is allow the ordination of all qualified candidates for ministry, regardless of their sexuality. This means that gay and lesbian pastors may soon be appointed to serve in our churches. But they will not be appointed to churches that might reject them because of their sexual identity.

This is longstanding practice. The bishop and the cabinet always work for a good match in appointments. They are not going to deliberately create a situation where church and pastor are at odds.

In fact, gay and lesbian pastors have been serving in our churches for years, and you haven’t heard much about it because the churches they serve have accepted them for who they are, whatever their sexuality.

The conference also removed a ban on clergy from officiating at homosexual unions and churches from hosting such events. However, clergy are not required to perform such services, and churches are not required to host them.

Again, this is just good practice. You cannot tell people to do something that goes against their conscience; you must allow everyone the opportunity to act on their conscience.

A lot of other things happened at General Conference. Not everything had anything to do with human sexuality. But the church has been stuck arguing over this stuff for more than 50 years, and it has greatly distracted us from doing genuine ministry.

(If I believed in conspiracy theories, I would argue that distracting us from our task was the whole point all along. )

We’re supposed to keep the main thing the main thing, but we’ve been sidetracked for a long time. Now finally we have cleared the deck (pardon the mixed metaphor), and we should be able to focus on what we’re supposed to be about, which is becoming and making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Change is always hard. As I said earlier, however good or bad a change proves to be, the Holy Spirit is always working for good in it.

And the Holy Spirit is always working for good in you as well. The question is how much you are cooperating.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, frequently asked his followers: “How is it with your soul?” Are you at peace with God and at peace with your neighbor? What is your relationship with God? What is your relationship with others? Is your heart filled with love, or has it been tainted by other things?

These are key questions in our spiritual life. They are far more important than our opinions about human sexuality. If you want to focus your spiritual life on the sex life of others, that’s your concern. But kindly keep Jesus out of it.

(Parts of this post come from a message delivered June 2, 2024, at Paola United Methodist Church.)

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

Special spaces

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is one of the world’s most magnificent structures and also a “thin space” between heaven and earth.

Here you can almost hear God speaking to you.

It’s a wonderful place, one of the spaces I’d always wanted to visit and got a chance last fall.

But Turkish officials have now severely restricted outside visitors from seeing the site. It’s a terrible blow to international understanding and religious tolerance.

Is there somewhere that’s a “thin space” for you, where you can hear God’s voice?

(For more, visit the blog page.)

I really don’t have a “bucket list,” though there are a few places I have always wanted to see not in a photograph but with my own eyes. One of those is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

 Linda and I got to tour it during our “Second Missionary Journeys of Paul” cruise last fall. (No, Paul never got there, but when the cruise starts at Istanbul, you go to Hagia Sophia.) It was our first day off the plane, and I was feeling a little jet-lagged, but it was still a wonder-filled experience.

 Turns out, it’s a good thing we saw it when we did. Turkish authorities have now severely restricted visits by foreign tourists.

 Two reasons are normally cited: “overtourism,” and the desire of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to show off for his constituency.

 “Overtourism,” I get. To get inside, we had to stand in a long line (I didn’t time it, but the wait was at least an hourlong wait), and once we got inside, it was wall-to-wall people. The noise of voices and the constant jostling of people all around us made it difficult to fully appreciate the experience.

Still, it’s such an awesome place that just being there was enough for me.

Some background: Hagia Sophia began its life around 325 AD/CE as a Christian church built over a pagan temple. Over the years, earthquakes or fire destroyed the church several times. Finally, in 537, a magnificent Byzantine structure was built that has lasted to this day, though repaired and restored several times.

When Constantinople passed from Christian to Moslem control, the church became a mosque, and several minarets were added. When the Turkish government took a secular turn in the 1930s, it became a museum. In 2020, Erdoğan made it a mosque again, to considerable international uproar. Moslem symbols now conceal many Christian symbols, but until early this year the mosque was still open to all.

As of Jan. 15, Erdoğan tightened control over it. Foreigners now have to pay 35 euros ($37.80 at the current rate) just to get in, and they can’t enter the main area where you get the best interior views of the structure.

That’s a shame for tourists, though I imagine Muslim worshippers appreciate being able to pray in a space that’s no longer crowded with gawking visitors.

Some spaces are just special. They have an essential holiness about them. Hagia Sophia is one of those spaces. It’s a “thin space” in the Celtic vernacular – a place where heaven and earth meet and are so close together that you can feel vibrations from the other side.

Yes, it’s a magnificent structure. But it’s more than that. It’s a place where you can hear God whispering, “I am here” – and more: “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

I am sorry that more outsiders will not have the experience of standing in the heart of the Hagia Sophia and feeling God’s presence. It’s the result of a shortsighted policy pushed by an authoritarian leader.

Usually, buildings don’t “do it” for me. The Blue Mosque near Hagia Sophia is also an amazing place. Also amazing were many of the churches and other holy sites we visited last fall in Greece – especially the chapel of the Varlaam monastery built atop a sandstone monolith at Meteora.

But I generally prefer the outdoors for spiritual experiences: Spence Field off Thunderhead Mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains, or Lake Isabelle in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of Colorado.

Is there a special place where you can feel God speaking to you? If you don’t have one, maybe finding it should be on your “bucket list.”

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

It’s a new day!

It’s a new day in the United Methodist Church!

General Conference 2020 (delayed until 2024) concluded Friday. It was truly a historic occasion. For the first time in 52 years, my 56-year-old church is free of harmful language regarding human sexuality.

We have been set free from the albatross that has been weighing us down since the first General Conference, in 1972, when the first condemnation of homosexuality was jammed into our Book of Discipline by last-minute vote.

Now we are poised to stride into a future of vibrant ministry in the name of Jesus Christ.

See blog for full post.

It’s a new day in the United Methodist Church!

 General Conference 2020 (delayed until 2024) concluded Friday. It was truly a historic occasion. For the first time in 52 years, my 56-year-old church is free of harmful language regarding human sexuality.

 We have been set free from the albatross that has been weighing us down since the first General Conference, in 1972, when the first condemnation of homosexuality was jammed into our Book of Discipline by last-minute vote.

 Now we are poised to stride into a future of vibrant ministry in the name of Jesus Christ.

 Understand, please, that General Conference actions do not make our church “pro-gay.” But we are no longer militantly anti-gay. We are now simply neutral. That’s a huge turnaround.

 Getting here wasn’t easy, and the price was high. In this fight, the UMC lost one-fourth of its churches in America, and some overseas as well. More work remains, and certain forces (WCA, GMC, IRD) will continue their efforts to destroy the church. As we proceed with jubilant caution, we need to understand what was done, and what wasn’t done, at this conference.

Here’s an outline, compiled from UMC sources and from valued voices who were on the front lines: chiefly Adam Hamilton, Mark Holland, Amy Lippoldt and David Livingston. Any errors or misinterpretations are mine.

General Conference…

 ·    Eliminated the church’s 52-year-old condemnation of homosexuality. The vote was a decisive 523 to 16.

 ·    Adopted revised Social Principles that address current social concerns in a balanced way and removes all the anti-gay sections inserted by “conservatives” in conference after conference since 1972.

 ·    Removed exclusionary policies and Book of Discipline language concerning gay and lesbian people, including prohibitions against the ordination of otherwise qualified candidates for ministry.

·    Removed a ban prohibiting clergy from officiating at, and churches from hosting, “homosexual unions.” The conference specified that clergy cannot be required to perform such services, and churches may vote not to host them.

·    Affirmed a carefully nuanced new definition of marriage designed to meet the needs of people in both “conservative” and “progressive” ministry contexts. We now define marriage as “a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith (adult man and adult woman of consenting age or two adult persons of consenting age) into a union of one another and into deeper relationship with God and the religious community.”

 ·    Approved a regionalization plan that gives each of the church’s four global “regions” more say in tailoring church life to its own customs and traditions. This plan must be approved by two-thirds of the voting members of annual conferences over the next year. The plan does away with “central” conferences, which were designed in the 1880s to disenfranchise Black people. There also is momentum to do away with jurisdictional conferences, which also were largely racist in intent, but that awaits later action.

 ·    Eliminated the pathway to disaffiliation that was created in 2019. It also directed annual conferences to develop policies for inviting disaffiliated churches to return to the fold, if they wish.

 ·    Sketched a path for clergy to regain credentials they lost in the sexuality fight.

 ·    Approved full communion between the UMC and the Episcopal Church. Final action awaits the next Episcopal general convention in 2027.

 ·    Authorized to ordained deacons to preside at the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion in their ministry settings. Previously, only ordained elders could preside at sacraments. The move blurs the distinction between deacon and elder, so more work here must be done.

 Also of note:

 ·    The conference disqualified all petitions from individuals, churches and conferences no longer associated with the UMC. Other clear efforts by bad actors to derail conference work were stopped.

 ·    Five delegates from the Great Plains Conference were elected to leadership positions on the 15 legislative committees, four as chair.

 ·    Great Plains Bishop David Wilson received a standing ovation as he became the first Native American bishop to preside over, and to preach during, a General Conference session.

 ·    The conference also did some other things regarding funding and the number of bishops, but those are too technical for me to explain (let alone understand).

 Delegates described the atmosphere at this conference as positive, hopeful, inspiring and full of grace – a sharp contrast to other recent conferences, which were marked by rancor and distrust.

 “It is difficult to describe the spirit here,” said Mark Holland, executive director of Mainstream UMC, a “progressive” lobbying group. “It is a remarkable mix of joy, exhaustion, and disbelief.”

Surely, after 10 grueling days, delegates must have been thoroughly worn out, but clearly most of them were happy with the outcome.

“This is an historic conference,” said Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey of Texas. “I believe God is doing a new thing.”

After five decades of being sidelined by peripheral issues pushed by bad actors, maybe we can finally pursue our real purpose: fostering a worldwide community defined by the love of God through Christ.

And so I pray. General Conference 2020/2024 is over. Praise God!

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

Now what?

When you tell a story that everybody’s heard before, you’ve got to make it as significant for them as it is for you. And that means, first of all, that it has to be significant for you.

If it’s not life changing for you, you can’t expect it to be life changing for anyone else.

So before you try to answer the world’s “So what?” question about Jesus’ Resurrection, we’ve got to answer that question for ourselves.

You’ve got to know what difference it makes for you.

Christ is risen! What does that mean for you, personally, in your daily life as well as for all eternity?

Read full post on Blogs page.

Before we testify to the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection, we have to fully trust the message ourselves.

 — A sermon preached at Louisburg United Methodist Church, Louisburg, KS, on 28 April, 2024, from 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. —

 We are now in the fifth Sunday of the Easter season. We consider Easter a season rather than just one Sunday because the event is so significant.

 There’s a lot to celebrate and a lot to take in, no matter how many Sundays we devote to it. In fact, I think that even today, nearly 2,000 years later, what happened at Easter is so far beyond our expectation and so far above our understanding that we still grasp only a small part of the meaning of it.

 For much of my active career in ministry, I suffered from what I call PED, or Post Easter Depression.

 It’s a common ailment among pastors. On Resurrection Sunday, we proclaim that the resurrection of Jesus makes all the difference in the world, and it changes everything – and the next morning we discover anew that for most of the world, nothing has changed at all. Most of the world simply does not care.

 We proclaim, “Christ is risen!” The world shrugs and says, “So what?” It’s deflating. It’s depressing. And I suspect that pastors aren’t the only ones who suffer this way.

 I’m sure that each of you remembers the day after a special loved one died. That day, you saw life radically differently than you did 24 hours earlier. But it quickly became apparent that most of the world did not know about your loss, or much care about it either.

 Our sadness in death is mirrored by our gladness in the Resurrection. We have a great message for the world – and the world doesn’t much care to hear it. We shout, “We’ve got good news!” And the world yawns. “Heard it all before. Tell me something I haven’t heard.”

 I heard an old, old story, we sing in that old Baptist hymn about “Victory in Jesus.” How do we best convey the truth of that story to others?

 When you tell a story that everybody’s heard before, you’ve got to make it as significant for them as it is for you. And that means, first of all, that it has to be significant for you. If it’s not life changing for you, you can’t expect it to be life changing for anyone else.

 So before you try to answer the world’s “So what?” question, you’ve got to answer that question for yourself. You’ve got to know what difference it makes for you.

 Christ is risen! What does that mean for you, personally, in your daily life as well as for all eternity?

 We tend to focus on the eternity question. If I trust in Jesus, will I spend eternity with him? I consider that question answered. Emphatically, yes, we will spend eternity with Jesus if we trust in him. That’s the promise we have, and as far as I’m concerned, that settles it.

 I know that some preachers like to go on and on about how short this life is versus the vastness of eternity, but I think, as some folks say, that puts the accent on the wrong syl-LA-ble.

 Jesus never said much about eternity. He said a lot about how to live today, in light of eternity, in the eternal present. And I think that’s where we ought to put our emphasis. It’s not pie in the sky when we die but the bread of life and living water right here and right now, not only for us but also for all those we meet.

 If the Resurrection of Jesus doesn’t change how we live now, then it fails the “So what?” test. Actually it’s not the Resurrection that fails the test. It’s us, if our response to the Resurrection is so tepid that it doesn’t radically change our lives.

 Let’s turn to our gospel reading as it comes to us this morning not from the four documents we call gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – but from the Apostle Paul.

 His summation of the gospel in First Corinthians chapter 15 contains not only the heart of the Christian message but also the earliest way it was preached, by Paul, 20 to 30 years before the other gospels were written down.

 Paul begins, “I remind you of the good news that I proclaimed to you.” You received this proclamation from me as the very truth of God. It’s a truth that still anchors you firmly, and through it you are being saved by the grace of God, if…

 If – oh, look out! “If you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you, unless you have come to believe in vain.”

 Whatever does it mean to believe in vain? We’ll return to that, but for now let me note that the word that is almost always translated in our Bibles as “believe” actually almost always means “trust.”

 There is a huge difference between belief and trust. You can believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and flying saucers and all sorts of other things, and none of those beliefs alters your basic orientation to life.

 Trust is another matter. Trust is a wholehearted whole-life commitment – in this case a wholehearted and whole-life commitment to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

 The good news that I received, Paul says, is what I passed on to you. That is the news that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and he was buried, and he was raised on the third day, all in accordance with the scriptures.

 Paul does not go into detail here about how any of this was in accordance with the scriptures. Parsing that out can be quite a chore. If you read the Hebrew Scriptures straight through from the beginning, you won’t see many clear signs that point directly toward Jesus. It’s only when you look backward, from Jesus to Genesis, that it starts to make sense.

 In his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians, Paul calls this the mystery that was hidden for the ages but only lately has been disclosed in Jesus. The signs were there, but we didn’t know how to read them clearly until Jesus came along.

 Paul also says little here about how Jesus died, though he makes much of that elsewhere, and he makes no mention at all of the empty tomb – only that Jesus was raised on the third day.

 Not only was Jesus raised from the dead, but he also appeared to Cephas – that is, Simon Peter – and to his other closest followers, to his brother James, and to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive when Paul is writing.

 “Last of all,” Paul says, “as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

 By untimely born, he means that he came to faith in Christ later than all the others he’s mentioned. Most of these appearances are not recorded in the four written gospels. We know of them only through Paul’s mention of them here.

 There is possibly one difference. While the others saw the Risen Jesus in the flesh soon after his Resurrection, Paul’s encounter with Jesus came long after Jesus ascended to heaven. Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus may have been more of a vision than a physical Resurrection appearance. Or maybe Paul is claiming a special revelation of Jesus that’s no different in kind from the others.

 Whatever exactly he means, by including himself on that list of Resurrection witnesses, Paul leaves room for us, too.

 Remember the story of Thomas? It has long been fashionable to slander him by calling him Doubting Thomas. I consider him Faithful Thomas because he is always a stalwart defender of Jesus.

 On the evening of the Resurrection, Jesus appears to his followers who are huddling in fear in the Upper Room. Thomas is absent for some reason; we don’t know why. When the others tell him what happened, he says, no, I won’t trust you on this until I see him myself.

 He wants the same experience they had. He wants to see the Risen Jesus in person.

 A week later, he gets his chance. Again everyone is assembled in the Upper Room, and again Jesus appears to them. Thomas doesn’t just say, “Master, it’s so nice to see you.” No, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”

 Jesus says: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still place their trust in me.”

 That is the essential Easter experience that is proclaimed as gospel, as good news, by Paul in First Corinthians and in the four gospels. Only about 500 people were able to experience the Risen Jesus in physical form. Blessed are those who missed that bodily experience and yet believe. Blessed are those who have not had that direct experience and yet place their trust in Jesus.

 That includes us, doesn’t it? At least I hope it does. Maybe the real question is this: Have you had a life-changing experience of the Risen Jesus?

 I suspect you probably have, though you may not think of it that way.

 Haven’t you, so many times, seen the Risen Jesus in the eyes and actions of others?

 Haven’t you, so many times, seen situations that simply could not be resolved, and yet, amazingly, were resolved in healthy and beneficial ways?

 Haven’t you seen two people reconcile who once were snared in a net of misunderstanding and distrust, and your only response could be, “Thank you, Jesus”? Haven’t you seen the Risen Jesus at work all around you, every day, in so many thrilling ways?

 And if witnessing those things does not change your life, I can’t imagine what might.

 I think that’s what Paul means by believing in vain. Believing has to change your life. Mere belief isn’t enough. Even strongly held opinions don’t count. You have to trust. You must have skin in the game. You have to put something of yourself on the line.

 When I say that Jesus Christ is risen form the dead, I am not stating a mere belief. I am stating a firm conviction. I trust that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. I stake my life on it. I stake my present life on it, and I stake my future life on it. That’s what trust is all about. Trust risks everything. It’s a wholehearted and whole-life commitment.

 It’s not until we make such a commitment that we begin to feel the deep truth of the Resurrection. There’s a line in the sand that we have to cross, and until we step across that line, we really can’t know, in the deepest sense of knowing, that Christ is alive.

 Until you step across that line, you really can’t see all that has changed because Christ is risen. It’s like putting on a new set of glasses. Now you have Easter Vision. What was fuzzy is now crystal clear.

 We are all witnesses to a life-changing encounter with the Risen Jesus. We can testify to the truth of those encounters. We know that our testimony is true.

 The question is no longer “So what?” The true question is “Now what?” Whatever are you going to do with this new life you’ve been given? How are you going to live in light of this momentous event?

 That’s the deepest question of all. We know that Christ is risen from the dead. What difference does knowing that make in our lives? What difference does knowing that make in the lives of those we encounter on the street and those we live with most intimately?

 Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Praise God! Now, what do we do about it?

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It’s already been rejected by Abingdon Press, the United Methodist publishing house. It says it has other similar works already in process. I’ve always given Abingdon the right of first refusal on all my book proposals, and I’ve always been rejected. I think it’s time to put some other publisher at the top of my query list.

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Three KU profs are under fire for allegedly faking their Native American ancestry. Kansas City Star columnist Yvette Walker confesses that her family also had unconfirmed stories about a Blackfoot ancestor.

“For as long as I can remember, I believed I had Native ethnicity,” she writes. “I even thought I knew which tribe I supposedly belonged to because it was a part of my family’s oral history.” To test the family memory, she took a Family DNA test. Turns out family oral history was wrong.

My family also has an oral tradition that a woman several generations back was Native American. Not exactly the classic “Cherokee princess” story, but close enough.

I’m about all who’s left to carry on family oral tradition, and my searches on Ancestry.com have found nothing to corroborate this story. I once assumed that it was because racists in my family conveniently “forgot” about the Indian ancestor until it became more socially acceptable to claim her, but by then all details were lost in time. Maybe it was a myth all along.

I did have an uncle who was Native. He married into the family. Sadly, he died relatively young as an alcoholic.

Whether I have any “Indian blood” in me matters less than how I view and treat Native Americans. Since childhood I have been fascinated by various Indian cultures. The more I learn about the genocide campaign against Native tribes, the more I am appalled by the tragedy of racism.

If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest reading The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk. Actually, I wasn’t capable of reading all of it. I had to skim parts. It’s well written, but many parts will simply break your heart.

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Back to school time nears already. Where did the summer go? Weren’t summers longer back in the “good old days”? Granted, summer child care can be a chore for busy parents. Maybe advancing age fools me on the passage of time, but I wonder if today’s kids suspect they’re being cheated of days in the sun.

Linda and I just bought school supplies for a Spring Hill 9th grader. We deliberately did not keep track of how much it cost. I can’t imagine the expense of having two kids in high school right now, let alone one. Tell me: Why does any high schooler need five two-inch three-ring binders?