Mission away / Mission at home

I’ve been on two trips in the last few weeks: Two separate “mission” trips—one to the Twin Cities, serving alongside an inter-generational crew for a couple days in St. Paul and Eagan, and one to northern Idaho serving alongside sixteen youth and 6 adults at a camp for kids (and adults) with special needs. These trips are inevitably the highlight of my year every year. I don’t have to go on these trips; I get to go on them. And they just so happen to be the A#1 time I get to see progress in the life of faith among people whom I pastor. They are incredibly rewarding: spiritually, emotionally, and also professionally. I have few metrics by which to reliably measure my performance as pastor, but these trips allow me to feel like I’m doing something right, which I need more often than I admit.

            There are also tremendous needs for service at home. This is very true. And I hear somewhat frequently about how we should be doing more for people in our own backyards (sometimes with the implication that these trips to other places are unnecessary). We absolutely do need to be helping people here in Kittson County more than we do, but the more I go on these trips the more I realize there is absolutely no substitute locally for what we experience outside of this place. Part of spiritual and emotional growth requires leaving our bubble of safety and comfort behind.

            This is also where we discover the big secret about serving other people: When we serve others we often make less difference in their lives than they make in ours. Jesus came to serve, not to be served, because the path to a good and meaningful life is being the server not the one being served. This is why so many people who receive something—food from the food pantry, rehabilitation from addiction, meals when a loved one dies—spend their time trying to pay that gift forward when things are settled again. When we receive some unmerited gift we feel compelled to give back, and the biggest unmerited gift was Jesus dying on the cross for us so that we might have salvation, and so our entire lives are spent living in response to that grace. Service is part of who we are. You might say it is all that we are.

Know Thyself!

2 Corinthians 1:1-11

            We read this scripture—well, a portion of this scripture—at Philip Dow’s funeral last Sunday, which is quite a coincidence if you believe in such things. And, no, I didn’t pick or even suggest the scripture for the funeral; it was selected by the Dow family on their own having no idea we would have it this following Sunday, which presents me with what might look like quite the challenge: Namely, preaching the same scripture at a very tough funeral and then at a light-hearted, fourth of July weekend, Sunday-service for the approximately seventeen people who show up on Sunday, the 3^rd of July.

            This might seem difficult, but, as with most really deep scriptural words, it didn’t really turn out that way for me, because Paul’s greeting to the church at Corinth in his second letter to that church (which we now call 2 Corinthians) is simply about being honest with ourselves about where we stand, and this is something that should happen at funerals and on Sunday morning and on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and so on and so forth. We need to be honest. More honest than we are.

            Most of the time when the subject of consolation comes up we imagine ourselves consoling before we imagine our need to be consoled. I can’t tell you how many people I visit who are really sick or dying or facing some extreme misfortune and yet what do they say, again and again: “Well, other people have it much worse!” It’s like watching the Twins play baseball and saying, “Well, the ’62 Mets had it worse.” It’s strange comfort that things can, in fact, be worse. Instead, we need to own our emotions, to be honest. I mean, you can acknowledge that other people have had it rough, too, but that only tends to deflect from what you’re going through. Own the sucky-ness of it. I don’t want to watch the Twins play terrible baseball—well, maybe there’s that really cynical, troll part of me that does enjoy it when they are really, truly awful, but for the most part, no, I want to see good baseball, not bad baseball. And so it is that you are in need of consolation regardless of the comparisons you make with other people.

            We need to own our need of a Savior, because sucking it up and downplaying our brokenness inevitably leads to worse problems down the road. Then, when the crap hits the fan all the pent up emotion comes out in precisely the moment when nobody is in any position to deal with it. Be honest about your feelings now. It’s no badge of honor to hold in your pain until it overwhelms you. Actually, it’s selfish.