Since January of this year, I've had braces.  The invisible kind. I've had crowding on my lower teeth all my life and then earlier this year noticed the uppers were becoming more misaligned as well, and that was that.  I have an orthodontist friend at Good Shepherd and while I usually don't mix church and personal business, this was too easy not to do. I don't wear them on Sunday morning for preaching (see #2 below), but almost every other day of the week, I have them on the prescribed twenty-two hours a day. Here are five things I've learned about Invisalign Treamtent: 1.  It works.  And quickly.  Only seven months in, I could quit today and be happy with the results. I won't, mind you, but I could.  Each week brings a new mold to my teeth, and each new mold brings them closer and closer to orthodontic nirvana. 2.  It gives you a slight lisp.  This is the funniest part -- those early weeks and months didn't impact my speech so much.  Over the last few weeks . . . well, I have to think on my feet to avoid all the words with multiple "s" in them. 3.  It puts an end to snacking.  Eating while in Invisalign treatment is an ordeal.  You have to remove the molds, wash them with soap (using toothpaste on them clouds them up, making them less invisible), store them while you race through a meal, brush your teeth well after eating because you don't want to put the molds on over stray food bits (bleh), and then put them back on.  And you have to go through the same process whether it's a steak dinner or a mid-afternoon Nutrageous.  So it's been bon voyage to the snacks.  Yes, I've lost weight.  (Invisalign + Ab Roller!) 4.  It can make you fish through a public garbage can.  Back in May, Julie and I stopped for a quick lunch while on the way home from Chapel Hill.  I had forgotten my container, so simply placed them on a napkin on our table.  Bad move.  That napkin found its way into the trash with all its non-Invisalign-holding napkin friends when we cleared the table, and I had to spend several anxious and smelly minutes fishing it back out. 5.  It's not over when it's over.  Even when the treatment ends (probably in early to mid 2016), I will still wear a retainer at night to make sure my teeth don't creep back to their original disobedience.  There is some kind of theological/religious/preaching point in that, I'm sure, but I'll let you reach those conclusions yourself.      

For yesterday's message . . . what happened in the lobby afterwards was more important than what happened in the Worship Center during; the church got to learn a new word; the church was able to celebrate its own remarkable history of generosity and impact; the bottom line intentionally contained a grammatical no-no; staff and volunteers coalesced to get hundreds of people involved in Outreach ServeTeams, a pivotal part of our strategy; we realized together that when you marry anger with action what emerges is beauty.   Here it is:  "Behind Enemy Lines" from Psalm 129. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am SO excited today. You know why? I get to teach you all a new word! Would you like to know a new word, a bona fide word used primarily by religious PROfessionals? Here it is: imprecatory. How many of you used that word at work in the last week? (Liar!) You know what it means?  You’re driving along, you get tailgated and then passed by someone going at least 20 mph over the speed limit and so you call out in your otherwise empty car, “Lord, PLEASE let there be a PO-lice car up there so he can get what he deserves!” That’s imprecatory. Or you see someone cut in line at Disney or Carowinds and you utter this silent prayer, “Lord PLEASE let the park officials see them do that so they get booted out of here and I get my rightful place back!” That’s imprecatory. Or someone at work boasts too much or cut too many corners and when it catches up with them you do this little celebration dance inside. “Thank you Jesus for seeing my righteousness! And . . . can I have their office now that they're gone?" That’s imprecatory. It’s speaking curses, praying misfortune, longing for ill-will for your enemies and taking all that stuff to God. And we have those feelings, we utter those prayers, and most of the time we keep it secret because we’re a little ashamed to be acting . . . so small. And the darndest thing is that those types of IMPRECATORY prayers made it into the bible. 36x in the Psalms alone! The same bible where Jesus in Matthew 5:44 tells us to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors has 36 occasions of praying pain and punishment down on them! Who knew that the bible was so . . . unstable? Because if it’s a library, these 36 imprecatory psalms are its “I’m tee’d off!” section. And one of the best of these is Psalm 129. Can I just show you how it ends because I love it so much before we circle back around to how it starts? And so you know: when it refers to “they” or “them” in Psalm 129, that’s a way of referring to one and all of the many, many oppressor nations who through the centuries were the enemies of the Jews: Egpyt, Rome, Babylon, Amalekites, Philistines, and so many more. So look at Psalm 129:8:  May those who pass by not say to them,     “The blessing of the Lord be on you;     we bless you in the name of the Lord.” I love that! God I hate them so much please make sure NO ONE ever says ‘Have a nice day!’ to them! Father, I detest them so much that please make sure when they sneeze, NO ONE EVER says, ‘God bless you.’ May those things never be! That’s how 129 ends. So what is going on here? How did we arrive at that concluding imprecatation that really just heaps hot coals on an already burning head? And how does a song that, remember now, is being sung by pilgrims on their way UP to worship the Lord God at the Jerusalem temple . . . how does that song end up being such a gigantic ½ a peace sign to Israel’s enemies? And what does it have to do with us and our imprecatations? Well, look at how it starts in 129:1-2: “They have greatly oppressed me from my youth,”     let Israel say; ² “they have greatly oppressed me from my youth,     but they have not gained the victory over me. READ Israel has ALWAYS been under assault, from Egypt & Babylon then to anti-Semitism, Iran, and ISIS now. But I love that defiance of 129:2b – tuck that away because we might just come back to it. Then this graphic image of 129:3: Plowmen have plowed my back     and made their furrows long. That is every bit as gross as it sounds. The psalm writer envisions his nation personified in an individual lying on his stomach with a sharpened plow moving back and forth across. Implausible, impossible, disgusting. That flayed back is one of those images that easily transferred from the national to the personal; from Israel to Jesus.  That's what happened to Jesus' back when he was flogged!    So: Israel is always under attack, its enemies continually assaulting it, and then 129:5a cuts to the core of it all: May all who hate Zion     be turned back in shame "Hate Zion" is code for hating God, opposing the things of God and the values of God. Which suddenly puts the whole Psalm – including the closing DON’T have a nice day! – into perspective. This is not some kind of personal vendetta; this is wrestling with people and institutions who are actively working to thwart not just God’s people but God himself. People & movements who hate God. Those who profit from that which defames God and defiles his people. What do you do with the kind of righteous indignation you feel at that?! (Even more, what do you do when you are one who loves God on the one hand and falls prey to that which defames him and defiles his people on the other?!) What do you with the justifiable anger you feel at people & movements who are flourishing by flaunting their hatred of God? Like you know what kind of things make me mad? Get my blood boiling? And I am a very patient person? But what makes me Psalm 129 mad, where I wouldn’t want anyone to wish anyone involved a “good day” or a “God bless you”? Girls swept up in the rape for profit industry which is euphemistically called human trafficking. Let’s call it what it is: they are being raped. For profit. Xns in India who come home to broken houses. Hunger in an affluent city like Charlotte. The UMC heritage betrayed by people making false claims about it and then declaring it’s God’s new will. I see those realities at work and then realize that this psalm which SEEMS so distant is actually so immediate. Because look again at the defiance of 129:2b: READ. Couple that with the God-saturated truth of 129:4: But the Lord is righteous;     he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.” READ. Know what happened there? The cords connected the plow to the ox were cut and so nothing was happening. Evil people think they’re still having an impact against God but they’ve been disconnected from their own machinery! Plowing without cords is like driving without gas. And then at 129:6: May they be like grass on the roof,     which withers before it can grow; READ … which is a way of saying that the victories won by the forces that hate God are short lived and ultimate drift away. Like you know why we don’t all speak German, right? The Nazis – killers of whom? Israel! – lost. And so I put all those pieces together from this psalm and realize it’s not so much about petty wishes that people will have their sneezes go UNBLESSED by God. It is instead about harnessing the power of righteous anger. Making anger into something beautiful by melding it with action and with generosity. Not like King David who Scripture tells us merely got angry with his children AND DID NOTHING ABOUT IT. Not like those parents you see out shopping (Wal Mart maybe?) who ignore their kids, ignore their kids, ignore their kids, and THEN explode with screeches and slaps and THERE! consider that they have done some good discipline. No, not that kind of anger. I’m talking about the anger that fuels action. Those times when you realize I can’t take God being mocked for another moment and so I’m going to do something about it! How else to you think the writer of Psalm 129 had so much resilience in 129:2! Not because he felt angry; because he acted on the emotions he had! Here’s my take-away, people: Get working on what you get mad at. (And yes, I finished a sentenced with “at”!) I’m not talking household anger, I’m not even talking what you do when you shank a golf shot or lose a bet; I’m talking about righteous indignation when you see God defamed and his people defiled. Get working on what you get mad at. Isn’t it interesting, these things you find are actually IN the bible? God allows us to express all kinds of things that might not be all that . . . godly. He allows much of what he does not endorse to appear on the pages of Scripture. He gives us the grace to be brutally honest with him; to express emotions that aren’t all that holy. I think that’s the beauty of why IMPRECATORY psalms made it in the first place.  Get working on what you get mad at. But in this case, there’s more and there’s better. There’s the recognition that when you marry anger and action the result is beauty. A furious, active, redeeming kind of beauty. And you all at Good Shepherd actually have a pretty phenomenal record at harnessing your righteous anger to make a radical impact in the world. Like earlier this year, you got ticked off and local hunger and you set the all-time record for area churches in terms of food collected. You! Last year, you got angry at famine in Africa and packed 254,000 meals in one day with SHN (AV). (Actually, an Asheville pastor asked a rep of that org what’s the biggest you’ve ever done and he answered, “Good Shepherd.” The A-ville pastor was Rich Tuttle!) And then you got angriest of all in early 2013 when we told you about the rape for profit industry growing in the Carolinas and you worked on it to the tune of $400,00 in a single day for the Hope House. Get working on what you get mad at. But you know, ministry there didn’t stop when construction did. In fact, that’s when it started. And there are ways that you, today, can still REFRAIN. That’s why I have asked Emily Fitchpatrick, president of OEWM to sit with me for a few . . . INTERVIEW on how people can still get involved.   Now: I realize the rape for profit industry might not be the best fit for all of you to get working on what you get mad at. Some of you might get mad at addictions. That’s why we have Charlotte Rescue Mission representatives in the lobby. And some might be angry at the fact that children who are abandoned. That’s why we have our Children's Attention Home team in the lobby.   Or veterans who become homeless.  That's why we have our Open Arms Team in the lobby.   We concluded with a dismissal into a mini Ministry Fair for Outreach Serve Teams in the church lobby.

  But you have to admit, it would have been fabulous.

William Faulkner  once famously noted, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” I wonder if he ever spent time in my office. People bring a lot of baggage from their past that ends up poisoning their present. Both things done to them and things they’ve done to themselves. Sometimes I despair of helping people break free of the hold that the past has on them. Which is why as both a pastor and a pilgrim, I’ve got to hold on to Paul’s testimony in I Timothy 1:13: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.” Think of all the words you could substitute for blasphemer, persecutor, violent man — drug addict, gang banger, adulterer, abuser, victim. Those words matter much less than the ones that follow: shown mercy. That’s what I need when I become mired in my past. Perhaps you do as well. Mercy that’s undeserved and unending. So with that mercy as our fuel, perhaps we may be able to prove William Faulkner wrong after all.

After over 25 years of full-time pastoral ministry, I believe I have a reasonably good understanding of how it works. Or how it doesn’t. So what are those things that a pastor needs to avoid if he or she will have both an effective ministry and a vibrant spiritual life? Here are some thoughts . . . 1. Listening Too Closely To Your Critics. And To Your Fans. The reality is that most pastors are neither as “bad” (or sinful or heretical or egotistical) as their critics claim. Neither are they as “good” (or holy or impactful or humble) as their fans declare. Making ministry decisions or deriving personal identity based on the words of either group is asking for trouble. 2. Acting On Impulse. Most major mistakes of my time in ministry have occurred when adrenaline got in the way of wisdom. 3. Fear Of Failure. On the other hand, my tendency towards vacillation when it comes to big picture items has not served the church well. 4. Reading The Bible Only For Sermon Prep. Our recent Text Message series was a revelation for me and in me. It got me reading Scripture out loud every day. It’s the best way I’ve found to meditate on God’s word in a fashion that has nothing to do with Sunday’s sermon. 5. Lack Of Personal Generosity. I know of pastors who seldom give or give very little to the churches they serve. Wow. How can you grow a generous church without making that personal commitment as a leader?