Category: Short Articles

Brief observations and reflections.

Humane Society’s Holy Work

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short ArticlesLeave a comment

Humane

I wholeheartedly believe that the employees, volunteers and supporters of the Humane Society of Eastern North Carolina are doing the sacred work of God in our community.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Holy Scriptures admonish us to take care of all living creatures.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve, who represent all humankind, were instructed to be stewards over “every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-30).

Jesus said that God is like a shepherd who would risk much to save just one sheep that is lost (Luke 15).

The Apostle Paul wrote that God was redeeming the entire creation through Christ Jesus (Romans 8:22).

And in Revelation 4 we are given a beautiful picture of a lion, representing all wild animals; an ox, representing all domesticated animals; and an eagle, representing all birds gathered around the throne of God together worshiping God with humankind in eternity.

Last year, the Humane Society of Eastern North Carolina rescued and found homes for 382 animals. Still, over 2,000 animals were euthanized at the Pitt County Animal Shelter. The Humane Society, the area’s only no-kill facility, helped to increase the live outcome by 7%, as 70% of the animals that were adopted came from the county shelter.

The Humane Society of Eastern North Carolina receives no funding from local, state or federal government and receives no funding from the national office of the Humane Society. They operate solely on local donations.

Money is desperately needed to provide more resources to pull more animals from the shelter for adoption. The Humane Society of Eastern North Carolina has been operating at a 60% reduced capacity since 2012 because of limited funds.

As the Body of Christ in this world, I believe it is our responsibility to the Creator of every living creature to do all that we can, whenever we can, to be good stewards of God’s precious creatures. Supporting the Humane Society provides us with a great opportunity to fulfill our sacred obligation.

Click on the links below to help:

Humane Society of Eastern NC

Canine Crawl 5k

Without God, All Things Are Possible

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

lent

Perhaps we have all heard the hopeful words of Jesus recorded by Matthew, “With God, all things are possible.”

However, isn’t the opposite also true? It was the great 19th century Russian philosopher Dostoevsky who penned the phrase: “Without God, all things are possible.”

Without God, things are apt to go awry.

Without God, we have the propensity to spin out of control.

As the Psalmist insists—without God all behavior that is foolish and destructive is not only possible, it has no limits (Psalm 73:7).

Without God, selfishness, greed, deceit, resentment, malice, racism, sexism, homophobia, hate and despair are not only possible, they are probable.

Walter Brueggaman has correctly observed that: “It is the knowledge of the reality of God present and at work in our world and in our lives which sets limits to destructive possibilities.”

Lent is a time to acknowledge that we need God in our lives, for without God, all sorts of sin and evil are possible. The good news of Lent is that God has come to be in our lives through Christ Jesus our Lord. And with God, there is much that is impossible.

With God, unforgiveness is impossible.

With God, loneliness is impossible.

With God, being lost is impossible.

With God, spiraling out of control is impossible.

With God, despair is impossible.

With God, death is impossible.

Changing Denominations

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short Articles2 Comments

denominationsAs I am in the process of leaving my Baptist roots to be commissioned by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), here are my honest thoughts on denominations.

Tony Campolo tells the story of a proud Baptist preacher who was pounding away at the pulpit preaching that the only really true Christians in the world were Baptists.  In the middle of his sermon, he yelled out to the congregation: “Is everybody here a Baptist?”

A man several rows back answered, “No!   I’m a Methodist!”

“Why are you a Methodist?” asked the preacher.

“Well, my mother was a Methodist,” said the man. “And my father was a Methodist. So they raised me as a Methodist.”

“Well, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” said the preacher.  “If your mother was an ignoramus and your father was an ignoramus, would you be an ignoramus?”

“No,” said the man. “If my father was an ignoramus and my mother was an ignoramus, I suppose I’d be a Baptist!”

That shut the old Baptist preacher right up!

Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand me.  I loved being a Baptist. I am glad that I was Baptist.  However, I do not believe any of us should take belonging to any denomination too seriously. I believe the great 20th century theologian Karl Barth was right when called denominationalism a great “scandal” of the church. That the Church is so divided up confuses the world and is a direct contradiction to the will of Jesus Christ who prayed that we might be one. 

Through our baptisms, we were not born into a denomination. Through our baptisms, we were born into the one and only and true Church of Jesus Christ.  Through the baptismal waters we joined not only Baptists in the faith, but also Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Disciples of Christs, Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians and “whosoever believeth in Christ” and has committed to follow Christ.

 

All Means All

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Farmville Enterprise, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

all means all

Someone recently asked, “When a church says that it welcomes ‘all’ people to worship and to serve, who exactly are ‘all?’”

“All.”  Perhaps the only time this simple word is ever ambiguous is when it is used in a sentence with the word “church.”  For some very bad reasons, the most inclusive and encompassing word in the dictionary becomes exclusive when religion enters the syntax.

“All.” Ever since the Apostle Paul used the word when he said “And Christ died for ‘all,’ that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again (2 Corinthians 5:15), the word has been thoroughly questioned by those who are offended by such grace.

However, when a church says that it welcomes “all,” I believe that church is saying…

If you are the wealthiest business owner in town, we welcome you. If you have sold your food stamps to purchase alcohol and pot, we welcome you. You are welcome here if you consider yourself  “a church person,” “religious” or “spiritual,” or if you are one of those who believe organized religion is a crock. The color of your skin, your gender identity and your sexual orientation does not matter as you are welcome here with open arms. If you grew up in the church, you are welcome. You are welcome if you have never attended church and have serious doubts that God even exists. If you believe in a literal Hell, and you can name people who are going there, you are welcome. If you hope to God there is no Hell, you are welcome. If you believe in God only because you want to go to heaven, you are welcome. If living forever really does not interest you, you are welcome. We especially welcome you if you are Muslim, Hindu, Taoist, Jewish, atheist or agnostic. If you are married you are welcome. If you have never been married, been married many times or don’t even believe in marriage, you are welcome. Pro-life, pro-choice, pacifist, soldier, documented, undocumented, illegal, legal, you are welcome here with us because we are “all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

When a church says that it welcomes “all” people to worship and to serve, I believe “all” means “all.”

–Inspired by Rev. Dr. Kyle Bennett, St. Mark’s Episcopal, Marco Island, FL

Left-Handed Power

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Farmville Enterprise, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

sunset-road-iii-hdr-joelht-deviantart_405797

I recently had a conversation with someone who firmly believes God uses God’s power to either cause or avoid preventing tragedies in life in order to accomplish some divine purpose. The God who rules with “thunder in his footsteps” and “lightening in his fist,” as the song goes, will rain down cancer, heart disease, automobile accidents, hurricanes and earthquakes to accomplish the divine purpose.

Thus, when a school teacher and mother of two runs her car off the road and is tragically killed, people say: “God has God’s reasons.”

For me, this represents a gross misunderstanding of the power of God revealed through Jesus.

One day, a little boy and a father who were driving down the road admiring a beautiful sunset. The father said to son, “And to think, God created all of this just for us to enjoy.”

The little boy responded, “And to think, God did it all with God’s left hand.”

Puzzled, the father asked: “What do you mean, son? Where did you hear that?”

“Well, the little boy responded, “God had to use God’s left hand, because my Sunday School teacher told me that in heaven Jesus was sitting on God’s right hand.”

As they say, out of the mouth of babes.

The truth is, we have allowed the world to define “power” for us, instead of allowing Jesus to define “power” for us.

To the world, “power” means controlling.  Power means dominating.  Power means taking. Power means ruling.  Power means imposing.

However, the power of God as revealed through Jesus Christ is the exact opposite.  God has what the late theologian Arthur McGill called a “peculiar” kind of power.  You could call it a “left-handed power.”  It is a power of self-expending, self-giving love.

God’s power is not power that takes, but a power that gives.

God’s power is not a power that rules, but a power that serves.

Not a power that imposes, but a power that loves.

Not a power that dominates, but a power that dies.

And as Arthur McGill has written:

This is the reason that it is no accident that Jesus undertakes his mission to the poor and to the weak and not to the strong, to the dying and not to those full of life.  For with these vessels of need God most decisively vindicates his peculiar kind of power, his power of service whereby the poor are fed, the sinful are forgiven, the weak are strengthened, and the dying are made alive (See Reigning from the Cross).

Thus, the moment the school teacher in the accident took her last breath, God did not take her. The best way to explain it is that during that moment, God came and God gave. God came, and in a most powerful way, gave her the very best gift that God has to give, the gift of God’s holy self. God came and gave God’s self completely and eternally to her.

Thanks be to God.

A Runner’s Prayer

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short Articles1 Comment

MARTATHON-1

Someone recently asked me how she should pray for me this weekend during the marathon.

She even had the audacity to ask: “Do you want me to pray that you win the race?” 

First of all, let’s get something straight. The winner of the marathon will have time to take a shower, eat some brunch, update their facebook status, and take a nap before I cross the finish line!

Then she asked, “Or do you want me to pray that you don’t get injured and are just able to finish the race?”

Now, that is a better prayer.

However, I do not believe it is the best prayer.

The truth is that I ought to be grateful that I have the health and the ability to risk injury.

The real miracle on Saturday will not be that I finish the race, but that I have the opportunity to start the race.

So if you want to pray for me this weekend, don’t pray for my legs.

Instead, pray for my eyes.

Pray that my eyes may see the sheer grace of this mystery we call life, this miracle we call the world.

Pray that my eyes may see that all that I have and all that I am is an unearned and undeserved gift of God’s amazing grace.

And then, maybe, having seen the sheer grace and absolute glory of it all—the gift of my great friends, the gift of my wonderful family, the gift of my inexplicable life—I will not only run the full marathon this Saturday, but I will dance the 26.2!

Even if it takes all day.

A Silent Witness

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short ArticlesLeave a comment

840-casket-before-burialSomeone recently asked me: “What do you say to someone who suddenly loses someone they love?” His close friend had just lost his father. And he said that when he went to visit him, he didn’t know what to say. So he did not say anything.

I told him saying nothing was probably the best thing that he could have said. For how many times do people say things to us when it would have been best if they did not say anything at all?

People are oftentimes guilty of being quick to speak and slow to listen.  I know I often am.  It is surprising I can even speak at all as often as my foot is in my mouth. We have all been guilty of saying stupid things. And we have all had stupid things said to us.

When Lori and I lost a child during the twenty-third week of her pregnancy, people shared with me some of the most stupid and hurtful words I have ever heard.  Words like:  “It’s just God’s will, and you will somehow have to deal with it.” “God knows what he is doing. He doesn’t make mistakes.” “Maybe God knew that you are not ready to be a father at this time.”

Instead of providing comfort these words only stirred me to anger: “Did God want us to lose our baby?! Did God take our baby because I was immature? If so, why are teenagers who are hooked on drugs having babies daily?!”

Oftentimes it is best to keep our mouths shut. However as Christians, we often feel like it is our obligation to say something. We feel that we must be a witness. And we feel that we must especially be a witness during times of crises and pain. I believe that we must learn that oftentimes our best witness is to be silent, ESPECIALLY during times of crises and pain.

Many of us perhaps avoid funeral homes and hospitals because we simply do not know what to say. Perhaps the best advice is: “Do not say anything.”

Simply go and be there. Offer a warm embrace. Let them know through your presence that you are suffering with them. Shed a tear. Shake a hand.

For oftentimes our best witness is a silent witness.

Henri Nouwen beautifully wrote:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Got Jesus? O God, I Hope Not

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Farmville Enterprise, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

got jesus

If Jesus is something or even someone that we get, then church becomes just another product whose members are mere consumers. Thus, like going to a store, the spa, or the local cineplex, church becomes some place we go to get something. Some go to get fed. Others go to get nurtured and pampered. Some go to get entertained.

However, if it is Jesus who gets us, if Jesus is about us giving ourselves to the God revealed in Christ, then church means a radical, self-denying, sacrificial way of living.

If Jesus is about giving one’s life away, then the church becomes something much more than a self-help center offering self-improvement workshops.

Wednesday night becomes less of a time to get fed, physically and spiritually, and more of a time to pray for others, celebrate the joys of life with others, and even suffer with others. It becomes a time to build a community of selfless love and forgiveness with others. Bible study becomes less of a time to acquire more biblical knowledge than others and more of a time to consider how the scriptures inform our service to others.

Sunday morning becomes less about what God has to offer us and more about what we have to offer God.  When we eat the bread, we do not consume it. When we drink from the cup, we do not merely swallow it. We allow it to consume and swallow us, every part of us. And we commit ourselves to presenting our own bodies as living sacrifices for others, pouring our very selves out for others in the name of the God who emptied God’s self out for us.

And every day of the week, we become more than Christians who possess exclusive tickets to heaven in hand. We become the Light of the World.

Got Jesus? O God, for the sake of this community and for sake of this world, I pray not. Amen.

We Are All Preachers

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Short ArticlesLeave a comment
Barbara Brown Taylor
Barbara Brown Taylor

Our Nehemiah Bible Study this past week reminded me of something Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in wonderful meditation called The Preaching Life.  In it she stresses the need for all Christians to rediscover their preaching vocation.

Somewhere along the way we have misplaced the ancient vision of the church as a priestly people—set apart for ministry in baptism, confirmed and strengthened in worship, made manifest in service to the world.  That vision is a foreign one to many church members, who have learned from colloquial usage that “minister” means the ‘ordained person,’ in a congregation, while “lay person” means ‘someone who does not engage in full-time ministry.’  Professionally speaking that is fair enough—but speaking ecclesiastically, it is a disaster. Language like that turns clergy into purveyors of religion, and lay persons into consumers, who shop around for the church that offers them the best product.

Taylor writes of the need to revive Martin Luther’s vision of the priesthood of all believers, who are ordained by God at baptism to share Christ’s ministry in this world.

All we have to do is sit down and study he scriptures to understand that this is just how our God works in this world.  Nowhere in the scriptures do we find God saying, “Go into the world and make Christian lay people out of people.  Bring them into the church so they can sing some hymns, pray and listen to a sermon about being good, moral people.  Form a type of club.  Hire a full-time club president who is going to be there for the club members.  Her job will be to hold their hand and pray for them in the hospital, marry them, and one day bury them.

No, what we do find in scriptures is Jesus instructing us to go into the world and make disciples .  And what do disciples do?  Sit on a pew every Sunday?  Sing, pray, try to be good, religious?  No, they do what Jesus did.  They preach, teach, heal and exorcise demons.

But you say, “I can’t do those things.  I can’t preach.  That’s why we call you “preacher!”  “That’s why we pay you!”

Barbara Brown Taylor continues writing:

While preaching and celebrating the sacraments are two particular functions to which I was ordained, they are also metaphors for the whole church’s understanding of life and faith…Preaching is not something that an ordained minister does for 15 minutes on Sundays, but what the whole congregation does all week long; it is a way of approaching the world, and of gleaning God’s presence there.

Many of you are preaching every week, and you don’t even realize it.

We Do Not Light Our Candles on Christmas Eve with Optimism

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Advent and Christmas, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

candlelight-services

I was listening to MPR a while back and heard an interview with a psychologist who said that, according to her research, the single, biggest key to living a healthy life is staying optimistic.   In one of those voices that was so pleasant and friendly and sugary sweet that it got on your nerves, she said:

“Optimists have less stress, better marriages, and healthier diets. They tend to have a sunnier outlook on the world, which translates to positive self-esteem and self-confidence. Optimists generally believe that things are getting better, that humanity is improving, the world’s problems are being solved.”

And then, to clinch her point, she said: “We also discovered that optimists live longer than other people.”

As a Christian minister I thought: “If that statement about optimists is really true, then there is no way that Jesus could have been an optimist.  For he was dead at 33.”

While some Christians are always  a delight to be around, always cheerful and positive, Christmas hope is fundamentally different from optimism.

Christian hope has very wide and focused eyes on the devastation of the world, and Christmas hope readily acknowledges that things may not get better.  Christmas hope does not bury its head in yuletide cheer and artificial lights, but like an Advent wreath glowing stronger and brighter each week, Christmas hope pushes its way into the brokenness of this world, clearing a path in the darkness so that the true light might shine.

Christian hope has the courage to work for the Biblical vision of justice, healing and liberation, trusting that such working is a testimony, a witness to the Light: The light that came through Jesus to teach us that God loves us and God is with us and God will never leave us and never forsake us;  The Light that reveals God will stay by our side and resurrect all of our sorrow into joy, our despair into hope and our deaths into life.

Tom Long tells a story about rabbi Hugo Grynn who was sent to Aushwitz as a little boy.  In the concentration camp, in the midst of death and immense suffering, many Jews held on to whatever shreds of religious observance they could without drawing the attention of the guards.  One cold winter’s evening, Hugo’s father gathered the family in the barracks.  It was the first night of Chanukah, the Feast of Lights.  The young child watched in horror as his father took the family’s last stick of butter and made a makeshift candle using a string from his ragged clothes.  He then took a match and lit the candle.

“Father, no!” Hugo cried.  “That butter is our last bit of food!  How will we survive?”

“We can live for many days without food,” his father said. “But we cannot live a single minute without hope.  This is the fire of hope.  Never let it go out.   Not here.  Not anywhere.”

It is Christmas Eve.  These days are darker, both literally and figuratively.  We are surrounded by never-ending questions of pain and sadness—a world groaning for salvation. Tonight we light our candles, hear the Christmas story and say our prayers, and wait for the coming Christ.  We wait for the Light that will never go out.

We are not being merely optimistic.  But in Christ, we possess an abundance of faith, trust and confidence that God is Emmanuel, God with us and God for us, and the day is coming when God’s Light will come and rid this world of darkness forever bringing forth a new and glorious creation!