You Are Not Alone

"I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising..."

These are lyrics to a song I can't get out of my head. The song is haunting and sad and hopeful and this line is sung over and over again.

I connect with these words. In some ways I'm sad to admit this. And in some ways I'm free in admitting this. Whenever I'm faced with pain, or sadness or injustice or brokenness, I find myself right back in the hollows if this song, my visions of God challenged by the hurt and chaos I see around me. At ENCM, I often feel ill equipped to do more than sweep up the pieces of the broken lives I'm confronted with, then bandage up the small scrapes I get in return. Very rarely do I get to the place where I can put these pieces back together, and even now I'm not so sure that's even why I'm there.

About a year ago, I sat down at Ministry of Hope and introduced myself to a man I'd never met. I asked him how he was doing, to which he promptly replied that it didn't matter how he was doing. He proceeded to tell me the story of how he was sexually abused as a child and how his parents were killed by his abuser.

I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising...

Later I befriended a lady battling mental illness. She never talks much about her past, but she loves just hanging out with me, and in our casual time together, somethings about her past will mistakenly slip out, as if she were simply asking me to pass the butter. Like the time she told me she wouldn't get on an elevator with me because elevators have scared ever since her father would lock her and her siblings in the basement for days at a time.

I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising...

Then there's the man, that just days ago died on the streets of Nashville from exposure to the cold. He quite literally froze to death.

I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising...

These stories have the power to stop me, mid stride of my comfortably etched out existence. And because I know these people, they aren't just stories on an after school special, or the movie of the week, and my heart actually aches and my stomach turns under their weight. All too often, my circumstances are what lay the foundation of who God is, and what his character is. And when I say things like, "you're never alone" what it means is, if you're sad or if you've had a bad day, God is there to help you. The problem with this is that my experiences are not big enough, or hard enough to create a God that is brave enough to deal with the pains of this world. I can not, in the same voice, say to the man freezing on the streets of Nashville, "you're never alone."

So when I hear these stories, I'm newly challenged to allow who God is to shape my experiences, rather than my experiences to somehow shape who I think God is. And when I hear these stories, I check my shallow ideas of God at the door and ask Him to help me see Him as he really is. And I ask him the hard questions, like where exactly was He when that man lay freezing to death on the streets, or when that woman and her sisters cry at the bottom of the basement stairs wondering if they'd ever get out.

Then, all of the sudden, to say "you are not alone" means I have to believe in a God that suffers. And instead of characterizing God based on whether or not I get a Christmas bonus, I begin to see his character as it's revealed in something as harsh as a baby, being born in a dirty stable because there was no where else for his mother to deliver him. A baby that was weak, and small and needy and dependent. Or a common man enduring shame he did not deserve, dying a death no man deserves to die, or rather all men but him deserve to die. To believe in this God is a hard thing, but it honestly means you are not alone. You're not alone because Jesus came and visited us here, because he wore our broken flesh and lived our life and died our death.

I'm not saying that you have to have these terrible stories in order to believe in God. What I'm saying is that the God we serve is not absent in these stories just because we are too afraid to read them, or to face them or suffer with those who suffer through them. And that if we are brave enough to wonder where God is in all of this, and to ask him where He is and to suffer with those who are broken, we find a God much deeper, much more vast, much bigger than the God molded and shaped by our circumstances. We find a God who can help mold and shape our circumstances, whatever they are, because he endures them with us.

So I do sing Hallelujah and Advent helps me remember what it means and who I am praising. And I can even praise Him while I sweep up the brokenness and bandage the cuts and weep and scream and embrace and love, hopefully the very same way He did and does today.

Grace and Peace

And Merry, Merry Christmas,

Melissa

Things Linda Teaches Me About Jesus: John 10:37-38

This is the closest shot we could get of Linda Finnegan, our volunteer extraordinaire, master of all things food bank related. Why? Well, she never stops. Our Co-op Cafe, which is simply an effort on Wednesday mornings starting at 7am to offer coffee shop casualness without the steep cost, for volunteers, neighbors, and friends, is the only time we can get Linda to actually sit still for a few minutes. As a matter of fact, I literally had to make a pact with her: before she gets to situating the food bank on Wednesday morning, she has to sit for a minimum of 5 minutes just to, well, sit and be still. She agreed, and if we're lucky we can squeak 10 or 15 minutes out of her. The point, though, is that she doesn't stop moving. She doesn't stop tidying her space. She doesn't stop doing exactly what she wouldn't stop doing for this picture: packing boxes in the East Nashville Cooperative Ministry, Main Street site food bank.

In John 10, specifically the narrative just before the titled verses, Jesus is at the same time displaying his mastery of the Hebrew Scriptures, refuting the claims of blasphemy, and putting a twist on the adage "you are what you eat": he says, instead, "You are what you do!" Specifically, in this case recorded by John, "I am what I do!" I like to think that Jesus, unlike most of us, did exactly what his convictions dictated. Or differently said: there was no disparity between what he believed, felt, and followed through on! Imagine living this kind of coherency, consistency. What peace we would have with ourselves, with those we encounter, with our Creator.

Linda shows me how this looks (notice I didn't say, "Linda teaches me how to do this," both because "teaching" has a verbal connotation and she has little time to talk, and, really, I don't do what I'm learning very well). So, Linda shows me how this looks, how Jesus taught and lived WHO he was. She's busy. She's busy because she comes to he Co-op to give back to the community and help folks that remind her of herself when she and her children were struggling. She's convicted that giving back the kind of help that she could have so desperately used years ago is how she can thank God for her current blessings. So what does she do? Well, she does the works of the Father--believe the works, so that you understand and believe the Father is in her (v. 38).

I hope I can learn to busy myself with the God that is in me, and my works show who I really am.

I'm sitting at my desk, drinking a dangerously good cup of coffee (by dangerous I mean so good I could be addicted) and thinking of the whirlwind that has been the last few weeks/months at ENCM. Every corner I turn at the co-op leads me to another adventure in either relationships or responsibility, making my life at the very least exciting, and most often deeply rewarding. I've said it about a million times, but I'm always amazed at how revealing the simplest moments are. How a trade of smiles or a handshake can make you feel like you just crossed a border of what is allowed or expected into the territory of dangerous, scary, exciting and amazing shared life.

Several months ago I had a crazy idea pop into my head. What if we planned a huge benefit concert? What if we threw a big artistic party with performers and musicians and artists and food and ferris wheels and clowns and okay, maybe not the clowns, but what if we told one amazing story in an event and people came and they were moved and donated a million dollars? Wouldn't that be AMAZING! These are the times that my ideas become brightly colored helium balloons soaring in sky to heights unmanageable and inside the balloon is a super hero that saves the world.

The problem with sharing my enormous ideas with Ryan, director of a non-profit, is that those ideas inspire him and excite him and then he says YES, go do it! Usually, I throw my ideas out so that someone else will be inspired to take them and run with it. I'm always content to own the idea, but a lot more leery of trying to make it happen. I get away with that by calling myself the idea person and surrounding myself with the movers and shakers that make the ideas happen. Unfortunately, Ryan is so overworked that he shines the mirror of my ideas right back at me and then does something terrible.... expects me to make them happen.

So, with the feeling that maybe I should have kept my idea to myself, I started doing what all people with great ideas do at first... organize meetings with smart people. This allows you to share your idea and get feedback that may inform your next step. And for me, this big idea was going to have to be a step by step sort of thing. I transformed my big picture superhero idea into something slightly more manageable. And then I really did surround myself with smart people like Jeremy Lee and Jonathan Moore to help me get one step further, then one more step further. Than I did the unthinkable, I asked my best friend to be the main performer the night of the event... deplorable, I know. I'm realizing that the longer you work at a non-profit, the more comfortable you become calling in favors and asking for help.

So, fast forward to a few months later (longer than a few months because I procrastinate when I don't know what to do) and here we are, a week away from an event that somehow, with the help of my friends, is planned and happening and I'm about as nervous about it as one person can get. Standing By: A Benefit For East Nashville Cooperative Ministry will be at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre on October 28th at 8pm. The event is being sponsored by all kinds of local organizations and we have 3 local acts playing and even a local taco truck serving tacos for dinner before hand. And I've even had a bunch of people say that they are coming. I have no idea what to expect. I just hope that we get a lot of people in one room so we can accurately tell the story of the crazy things that God does with a bunch of slightly incapable but willing people.

The lessons are still piling up faster than I can share them. This time I learn that if your courageous enough to follow through with a crazy idea, and ask for help in the process, one step turns into ten steps then fifty and somehow things get done and then you feel courageous and like God somehow did an amazing thing with your small hands and your tiny brain. He turned a few fish and a loaf of bread into a benefit concert. How does he do that? I don't know, but being caught in the middle of those kinds of miracles is like stepping out of your house on the first cold day of fall without a jacket on. You're taken by surprise by the way the cold feels on your skin, the way you can see your breathe, somehow acknowledging that you are in fact breathing in and out, that you are in fact alive, awake.

Friend, Neighbor, Chef

Osborne "Bugz" Waters

He brings together every commitment we have at the Co-op, someone from whom I am learning so much. Osborne will be our one of our teaching chefs when we formally provide cooking classes to the community, both because he pleases the Southern palate and because he creatively uses fresh ingredients from the garden, donated ingredients from neighbors, and non-perishables from the food bank. So he's capable of teaching delicious-cooking-on-a-budget; He's equally capable of teaching us how to give of our lives for our neighbors. Osborne heals with his presence--with good food and extending genuine affirmation. Oh how I hope that one mark of Christians is that we heal people with our presence. Oh how I pray this is East Nashville's experience of the Co-op. Osborne is helping us learn how to do this better.

Saving Lives

I had a friend say the other day: "Pastor, you know, you're doin' a good thing here, givin' people food and all, you know, feedin' people and all, but y'all might be saving peoples' lives too." Interpret it as you will--that lives are being saved from hunger, lives are being changed through the experience of acknowledgement and friendship, lives are being eternally saved through preaching of the gospel and the reading of scripture--but sometimes words are our verbally clumsy way of expressing a more articulate body language. To avoid tripping over myself, then, I'll quickly say what I saw him telling me. He looked at me confidently, though his shoulders were slouched, as one might be just before a confession--courageous but defeated. When we engaged each other, my hand touching his hand, and made eye contact, he stood a bit taller, as though this connection validated his feelings. His face lit up, and he said (as I interpret): "The food was good, but this whole experience has given me new life." Food as fuel that sustains life, keeps our engine going? No. Food and table as a medium by which we give and receive life together, tell truth into each others lives, be mutual, be friends, be the gospel? Yes. We're saving lives because God is present in us at the table. And the food just so happens to be good.
Ryan

I got friends in low places

Being 31 and single presents me with all kinds of challenges. Friendships become harder to maintain as those your close to get married, start families. There are times when it seems like you've made permanent residence in no-mans-land. I'm always so tempted to re-evaluate and compartmentalize my relationships. I wonder if I should make more single friends. Shouldn't I spend time with the people in life that are where I'm at? It's so much easier to maintain friendships with people that have the same schedule, lifestyle, finances as me. I don't have to work as hard when I can surround myself with people that can just do what I want to do...

This morning I went to a breakfast honoring Mrs. Juanita McCoy. She's devoted so much of her life working at ENCM, helping the community of East Nashville. I haven't gotten to know her as well as some of the other volunteers, but the times that I have met her have been blessed and the things I hear of her service are noble, to say the least. Her footsteps seem more than worthy to be followed. And now she's retiring. So... a bunch of us all got together to cook, eat and fellowship and to say, as humble as possible, thank you. There were all kinds of people in the room. Many were older than me, some where younger, some were married, some were single, some had kids, some did not. Some where white and some where black and some were from California and some where from right here in Nashville. All this diversity, in one meagre room, celebrating a life spilled out.

This got me thinking about my thoughts on the kinds of relationships I peruse. I think I'm asking the wrong questions. Do I need a community with more single friends, more friends my age, more friends that are like me... wrong questions. It's important to have a community that you have stuff in common with, but if I've learned anything in my time so far at ENCM, if there's one common theme that threads itself through my stories so far, it's that God is very pleased to take what I think I need, place it on it's head and redefine it all together, especially in regards to community and relationships. The lessons I've learned over and over again have been that when you open yourself up to the other, to the different, you see God work in ways you've never seen before.

So maybe the question is how do I open myself to all kinds of relationships, and how do I see the ones that have so much potential but are framed by the differences that most people allow to keep them from deep relationships? How do I let God direct my path in such a way that my friends, and my community exist of so many different kinds of people that I'm constantly learning and teaching new things? And most of all, how can I be an active participant in that kind of community?

Mrs. Juanita influenced all kinds of people, not just the ones that looked like her and had the same life experience as her. That doesn't happen by compartmentalizing and categorizing people. It's done by being open to some pretty amazing, diverse relationships, given by an amazingly creative God. And what I'm learning is that it starts in giving. It starts in being poured out. That is so hard. I don't want to be poured out because I'm afraid of being empty. That's the truth. I'm afraid of being empty. Me of little faith... Thank God for saints that go before us, living a life wide open for us to learn from. And thank God for his faithfulness.

Every Sunday evening I get to church a little early to help set up for Emmaus fellowship. To the casual passer-by it looks nothing like a church service. There's no choir, no pews, no hymnals. There isn't really a pulpit, no one is wearing a suit. The smell of body odor replaces the typical newly bathed and perfumed congregants in a typical church service. There isn't one person standing in the front while everyone sits watching him wax religious.

That's not to say that Emmaus Fellowship isn't a church service. It is church.

You know how Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed? I wonder why he chose something so small. If you threw that mustard seed into a jar full of other seeds, you would have to look really hard, and really close to find it. At Emmaus I'm learning to look past all the things I used to think classified God's work or His moving and I'm realizing that He moves in small ways and seemingly insignificant ways and he turns a meal with homeless and working poor people into a church service.

So last night after we ate, we sang a few songs, some were impromptu, then Ryan got up to read Scripture and start our time of prayer. Our friend TomKat was leaving, probably because he was done eating. He hadn't yet realize that we were offering more than a full stomach at Emmaus...so Ryan reminded him we were going to read Scripture and pray and invited him to come and sit. He did and sat right in front of Ryan. Ryan read the scripture about how Jesus says he's the bread of life and if you feast on him you will never go hungry. Then we started to pray...

At Emmaus we start by praying for our service and ministry, then we move onto praying for our communities, then we pray for ourselves. After that we take and offering and then have dessert. During the second stanza of prayer, TomKat prayed out loud. Then he ended his prayer with the most sincere "I love you, Jesus" that I've heard in a while. He then began to cry and confessed to all of us that that was the first time he's ever prayed. He's probably in his 60s.

WOW. I've been to a lot of church services with amazing music and dynamic preaching. I've heard the most eloquent and beautiful prayers. I've seen the sun shine through the most beautiful stained glass windows. And all of those things are wonderful, but they are easily turned into the seeds in the jar that I expect, the big ones I notice, and sometimes the ones that are hiding the mustard seeds. In some way, last night I felt like I was all wrapped up in a mustard seed kingdom.

Grace and Peace,

Melis