Special Recognition

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him,
'Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; I want to stay
at your house today.' -Luke 19:5

The red plate is coming out at the Hamon house today. We are celebrating a birthday. We've had the red plate for years. The red plate has an inscription around the brim that says, You are special. I must confess as hokey as it may sound to you, it is something that has become quite a tradition for us.

Everyone likes to be recognized. We like to hear our name and have others notice something we have contributed if it is only another year of life. I believe that is why anniversaries of all sorts are important to us. Anniversaries help us recognize, not only milestones, but who we are and what we do.

Not all recognition is welcomed. Zacchaeus was a tax collector for the occupying Roman government. So, it goes without saying that he was unpopular. I would imagine that the recognition Zacchaeus usually received was negative. He was probably shunned by about everyone except his fellow tax collectors.

Along comes Jesus who gives him some hope that in spite of what he does, God recognizes him as a person of worth. This positive recognition made Zacchaeus happy. In fact it changed his whole life and the way he did business. He did not give up tax collecting, instead continued his career in a way that was fair and just.

I'm not claiming that the red plate will turn my life around. I do know this-it will remind me that I am loved and that alone will help me, at least for this day, to be more loving of others.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for the reminders each day that you care for me. Help me to look for them in the small ways they often appear that I may accept your invitation to be fair and just in my treatment of others. Amen.

P.S. While you're waiting for that recognition from someone else, perhaps there is someone waiting to receive recognition from you.

Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana

It's What's Inside

Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and do
not sin again. -John 8:11

I heard an old religious man
But yesterday declare
That he found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair?
-William Butler Yeats

The first quote is from scripture where Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery. It was an act of unconditional love-soul love. The poet Yeats speaks of the same thing-looking beyond the exterior to the interior person.

There is a part of psychology that deals with becoming a self-actualized person. Such a person is so comfortable with themselves that they do notice appearances but see only the unfolding of God in each person they encounter. I must confess that I have known very few such people over the years. Most of us will notice the yellow hair-whether it is styled or not. We'll notice the earrings and their placement or whether they are dressed properly for the occasion.
Jesus asks us to look beyond that. He looks into the soul of the woman and sees something that is lovely in spite of her unlovely circumstances. It is so with each of us-even when our souls are not what we would wish, God looks into each of us and as St. Augustine wrote, loves us as though we were the only one to be loved.

Each one of us desperately wants to reach a point of being our actual self, at least before God, that we can experience what being loved for our self alone is like. I would imagine when we truly experience that it will be less of a challenge loving others for themselves alone and perhaps less difficult tackling whatever the challenge before us may be.

Prayer
God of grace so let me set before you my soul with all of its light and dark hues that I may experience this day your love for me, meet the challenge that is before me, and so seek to love others in the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana

What Does Your Heart Think?

As a person thinks in their heart, so they are. -Proverbs 23:7

It is interesting to see how many times Jesus uses the word think in the gospels.

Think not that I have come to destroy . . . .
What are you thinking in your hearts?
You think in these you have eternal life?

Jesus says a lot about what we think in our hearts. Where our hearts/minds are there will be our treasure. Where our hearts/minds are will determine what comes out of our mouths. Where our hearts/minds are will say a great deal about who is our real God. Jesus knew to be true about us what the poet wrote, My mind to me a kingdom is.

What we think and how we think determines our response to both opportunities and challenges. If we have decided that we shall think in terms of compassion, when we feel compassion fatigue, our thinking will enable us to be compassionate. If we have decided in a thoughtful way to be forgiving, then when we set out on its path forgiveness will be our eventual destination. If we have decided to follow Christ, then when the challenges of life assail us, we will keep Christ as our companion even though we may stray.

So how are you thinking today? What decisions in the midst of opportunities and challenges will reveal where your mind/heart ultimately rests?

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what
is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. -Romans 12:2

Prayer
Gracious God be in my mind and in my understanding. Instill in me this day a right way of thinking that in the midst of the challenges of the day, I may serve you with all heart, soul, and mind to the glory of Christ. Amen.

Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana

Have Mercy

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. -Matthew 5:7

Nothing new about this teaching of Jesus. We have heard so many sermons over the years praising the qualities of mercy. Shakespeare celebrates it in Hamlet:

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,-
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

We read and hear the altruism in the words of the poet and of scripture, and we embrace it in the general, but find it so difficult in the particular.

By the particular I mean the couple who has abused their child; hearing our son confess their abuse of alcohol; hearing that our daughter understands sexual activity more permissively than we do; learning that our neighbor has embezzled funds from their employer; reading that another government employee has been arrested for this or that offense. The list goes on.

Could it be that God meant mercy for certain sincerely penitent people or for everyone who has personally offended us? I think it was a pretty universal mercy he was talking about-everyone, who upon confession, is deserved of punishment. Jesus understood what Shakespeare expressed that mercy frees the one who offers it perhaps more than the one who receives it.

I'll wager that today somewhere in the midst of it, you will be challenged to extend mercy whether at your place of work, among your family, on the road, or in something you see or read. Jesus knew that extending mercy frees us from the sadness of carrying an eternal torch of punishment and judgment. Jesus knew that when we show mercy we are in possession of one of God's greatest attributes.

Prayer
Gracious God this gate to life is so narrow and the road so hard that I wonder at times if I can travel it. Alone, I know I cannot. With you I know all things are possible-even an act of mercy to one I may feel is quite undeserving in the name of Jesus. Amen.

C. Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana

Aim High

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there", and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. -Matthew 17:20

The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. -Michelangelo

Michelangelo lived a few days shy of eighty-nine years, still sculpting, painting, writing, and designing. When I see the size, the majesty, the spirit of his statue of David it is a work of hope. When he was asked how he could create such a masterpiece, he replied that David was already in the marble, he simply had to chip away the excess to allow him to escape. I believe sculptors are that way. They are people of hope who aim high.

We have read or heard quoted this passage of scripture where Jesus talks about mustard seed faith and wonder-how can such faith be possible. I believe the point of Jesus, like Michelangelo, was to aim high-see the possibility in the mountain before us and with God's help release the hope within it.

I see people do this who face incredible odds. We have witnessed the people working in the Chilean mountains as they tried to release the miners, exhibit this kind of hope. A pessimist might look at the challenge and throw up their hands in despair. Others looked at the mountain and saw in it the possibility for the miners to be released from it. And they were.

Okay, perhaps you are facing a mountain of challenge today. Aim high. Try to vision the hope in the midst of it that is trying to be released. The mountain may not move, but I'll bet something can be released from it that will free you from the despair that otherwise might entrap you.

Prayer
Gracious God, help me to look at the challenges of this day with faith sufficient to work with you lest I fail to see the hope that may be waiting to be released. Help me to remember that in my own life you are the potter and I am the clay. Mold me this day after your will in the name of Christ. Amen.

Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana

Patience

.. . . these are the ones who, when they hear the word [of God] hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance. -Luke 8:15

Infinite patience produces immediate results -from A course in Miracles

Both of these quotes address what is perhaps an attribute which many of us lack-patience. I hear more people wishing for patience than perhaps anything else. This desire for patience arises in a conversation when we are usually discussing issues around work and family. It often has to do with wanting to have something in our time rather than the time it will take for the topic in question to mature.

Several years ago a parishioner was telling me about their little boy. It seems the child was eager to plant a garden. Among those things he planted were radishes. As the first green leaves of the radish plants began to sprout, the little boy got very excited. His patience began to wane as he awaited the plant's further emergence. When it did not happen in his time, he started pulling on the leaves. He pulled so hard that the tender plant came up with no radishes on the end.

There is an Oriental proverb which says, With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown. It the throes of wanting our children to hurry up, we would do well to remember this. Like the plant we place in the ground some things by nature are geared to their own time rather than ours.

Jesus was talking about the patient endurance of nurturing our faith. The statement is drawn from his parable about the farmer who planted seeds. Sometimes we treat our faith like the little boy treated his radish. We want a stronger faith and as soon as we begin to see it emerge we believe it ought to be ready for anything that comes our way. So we stop feeding it and when the winds and rains of challenge and doubt assail us, there is nothing there to sustain us.

The playwright was essentially saying the same thing though it sounds quite contradictory on the surface. Infinite patience continues to build a reservoir of patience such that when the challenge comes we have the immediate reserves to draw from in order to meet them. Like plants, faith needs an enduring patience that feeds it daily if it is to bear the kind of fruit we need in tougher times.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, may I allow sufficient time today to nourish my faith with prayer and reflection that I may have the faith needed for the challenges of life. In the name of Christ. Amen.

Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

For just as the body without the spirit is dead; so faith without works is also dead. —James 2:26

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough. —Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa, the diminutive spiritual giant who worked daily in the streets of Calcutta, seeing Jesus Christ in all of his distressing disguises, as she put it, offers us some profound wisdom. Words that are not backed by action as James says become simply a preaching point. If we want to make a point, we may need to create a meeting point with new and effective behavior.

The old aphorism, I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand, applies not only when we want to learn, but also to how we wish to be treated (Matthew 7:12). The most effective way to teach anyone what we would like them to know is through behavior, not words. The music teacher cannot teach us to sing by telling us how it is done—they must help us use our voice which gives birth to the notes. Eventually the student in driver’s education has to get out of the classroom and behind the wheel.

Our children will more often than not do as we do rather than as we say, which causes many of us a lot of frustration when they emulate those traits we do not like in ourselves. Someone said this experience is best expressed by the phrase, What you do speaks so loud, I can’t hear what you say. This point was vividly made one evening when watching a person being interviewed utter some of the most belittling, near hateful words toward those with whom she disagreed while wearing a cross around her neck.

We can preach the unconditional love of God for humankind, but if we are hateful or resentful toward those who see faith and life different than we do, then our words belie our actions. The scripture puts it this way:

Those who say ‘I love God’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for
those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love
God whom they have not seen. —1 John 4:20

Prayer
Almighty God you will come to me this day in some pretty distressing disguises. Help me to meet you, disguised as you may be, in such a way that I will be to them a word of grace and hope. In the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.


Mac Hamon, Senior Pastor
Castleton United Methodist Church
Indianapolis, Indiana