Just Add Water

          “¹In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ²Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1: 1&2 (NIV)

Just add water.

“¹On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, ²and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

⁴”Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”

⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

⁶Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

⁷Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

⁸Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

^9aThey did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the waster that had been turned into wine.” John 2: 1-9a (NIV)

Lord, there is a bushel full in those readings. My friends and pastors Andy and Lee could probably preach half a dozen sermons from them and not repeat each other. Early this morning the LCPC Men’s Ministry group read chapters 2 through 5 out of the Gospel of John and a couple of things struck me about Jesus’ first miracle. Hopefully, I won’t be steeling the pastors’ thunder.

Water plays a huge part in Biblical writings starting with the first couple of versus when God created the orb we live on and covered it with water. Water continues to play big through to the end of the New Testament with Jesus’ baptism, his first miracle, the man by the healing pool that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the Samaritan woman at the well where Jesus started a revival in the town, just to name a few NT stories.

Jesus’ miracle was very simple, just add water and take it to the banquet master. This basic miracle would never have happened without Jesus’ mother taking the bold step of faith and first commanding the servants to obedience to Jesus. First the servants obeyed Mary, then they twice obeyed Jesus and the miracle became evident to kick Jesus’ ministry into high gear and giving us a story rich in allegory, abundant material for generations of sermons.

What step of faith do we need to take? What act of obedience to we need to make to precipitate a miracle in our lives and the lives of those we’ve been called to love?

         

In His Grip,

jerry

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Mother’s Day Sunday brings out a host of sermons about what it is to be a mother and many point to Mary as a shining example. All the pastors really need to do is lean a photo of you on the easel up front and have them give me a call; I’ll tell them all about you and how you’ve become and been the model mom. There is plenty that I can tell them and whenever I can, I brag about you and tell people how fortunate that I am to have a mom like you.

People sometimes ask me, or sometimes they don’t and I tell them anyway, what inspires me to youth ministry. Before I tell them it’s in my heart and I feel called to it by our Lord, I tell them it’s genetic, both my mom and dad were youth advisors to me while I grew up and my mom in particular carried on over many years – ‘carried on’ being such a descriptive phrase for how we are when we are in youth ministry. We carry on is so many ways; goofy, pragmatic, doggedly, silly, tearfully… You have been a guiding light to me with the pathway having been lit to what looks to me in the rearview mirror to have been a lifetime of youth work in one form or another with the times that I’ve felt most alive and most in tune with the Holy Spirit having been while working with young people. Thank you.

You have been an example of selfless love that you show us by your actions, the way you set up your priorities, how you go about Christian service – your lifestyle. The Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, is your guidebook, your itinerary for living and it’s etched upon your heart.

You are the mother to two of the greatest treasures I have, Stacey and Denise. Sisters, as annoying as siblings can be to each other, are priceless and you have done a wonderful job with them, not so much like a sculptor with mallet and chisel as like the river washing away the roughness, leaving behind smooth stones, graceful and elegant, water and rock, perfect compliments, one to the other. Thank you.

You are and have been a bonus mom to my friends, my wife, and anyone I’ve loved and brought to the house. It has been an open door for the three of us and your extended family has grown and I know, has blessed you in return many times over, that’s the way giving of yourself is. Thank you for being there for my friends and caring for them as you have. We have a few bonus kids of our own and understand the appeal and fun of it; thanks for that as well.

By the way, your mom job as translated into a very nice gig as Gramsey and now GeeGee, hasn’t it? Thank you for being such a wonderful example to my own family unit. I am so grateful that God brought me a woman who has also been a great mom and reflects many of the same qualities as you. I’m quite certain that she would agree that you have influenced her on this in a very complimentary fashion with her own mother.

Thanks mom, I love you.

jerry james

Dear Graycen

Dear Graycen,

Graycen and her mom Christen

Princess Graycen Rochelle Rogelstad has a very nice ring to it. Welcome to a wild and wonderful place – the McClelland/Rogelstad family. As the newest little princess in the household there are a few things that you should know.

Your appearance today, April 19, 2015, was a few days beyond the due date and in your own good time thus proving that medicine is as much practice as it is a hard science. Well done young lady. Your new family, extended family and friends, and their friends and family have been eagerly anticipating, hoping for, and praying for your arrival and now with it, you have brought us all much joy and the best sort of tears; tears of joy, gratitude, and heartbreaking thankfulness. It seems that a few of them have found their way onto my keyboard. Thank you.

It is an expressive group that you’ve joined as a family member; loud and raucous, joyful and loving, and they can be rather creative in their expressions of it. It will be fun to see how you can in one moment trigger a wild display and in the next inspire them to shush people to let you sleep while they want to dance and play at the same time.

By way of a quick introduction, I am one of your Grandpa Mac’s best of friends and I love your family to pieces. In case you haven’t grasp it yet like you’ve already grasped a dozen of their fingers, that includes you. Thanks for making us all so happy.

You’ll be bringing some changes beyond all the diapers. I will enjoy watching my friends as they morph into something even more complete as humans. Good hearted people always change when they hold a baby in their arms. Your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and great aunts, uncles, and grandparents are all very lucky fortunate people to have you in their lives. Please find fun ways to remind them of that as you grow up.

You will be an inspiration. You will inspire prayers of thankfulness and intercession, pleading and hope. It seems to be the destiny of children born into families of lovers and believers to be such an inspiration. I’m sure that you have sensed that those prayers and hopes have been ongoing since before your first sonogram. It’s a big burden for such a little person so bear; just smile, nod, and move along; the chapters you write will be full of plot twists but the characters in your life will help you along very well.

And this is my prayer for you; that you live a long and glorious life of inspiration. May you find your own stroke and learn to plain it out in a yardage eating pace and that when you arrive at destinations you have just enough energy to appreciate getting to wherever it is that you’ve gone and have enough strength to do whatever it is that you need to do when you get there. May your egg-beater kick keep you comfortably above the chop and allow you to see over the action and control the zone. May you always have those around you that love you, allow you to try and fail and to try and succeed, and may you always have the ability appreciate what you’ve learned while doing them both. May you find an abundance of health, love, excitement, and peacefulness. Amen.

I am looking forward to meeting you and shaking your little hand.

In His Grip,

jerry

MAZ '15 Post 5: My Treasure Chest

From my notes of Tuesday, March 17, Day 4:

          The huntsman keeps me company through the night; Orion’s constellation is often the first thing that I see from my cot when I am awakened throughout the night here at the Gila River Indian Community. It always makes me smile as Orion is the first constellation that Cindy shared with me when we were dating.

From my notes of Thursday, March 19, Day 6:

          I missed a couple of days of note taking, or was it just one? That’s what can happen out here, getting caught up in a hectic pace, moving the team from there to here and back again. Maybe though it was more of a focus on the lesson that I delivered Tuesday night along with the rain coming in as a beautiful distracter.

          I felt Kim’s urging for me to share my little testimony but really had no idea of how to relate it to The Treasure in the Field or The Pearl of Great Price. It wasn’t until I had started my talk and was partly through the scriptures that I was able to find the parallel. If it reached anyone, it was God’s grace and His Holy Spirit at work.

          We reviewed the scriptures of the two parables and the group shared their experiences of giving up some stuff in order to get the good stuff. Then I gave my literal interpretation of The Pearl from Matthew 13: 45 & 46.

          Read verse 45 and stop: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.”

         

          It says that the Kingdom is the merchant who is searching. 

         Then in verse 46 he sells everything he has and buys it. “When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

          Jesus is the merchant and when he finds us, he gives his very life in order to have us in His Kingdom. Jesus’ treasure chest has been filled with his people at the cost of everything he had, his blood, his life…

          Then I related my story of finding my heart again and obeying God’s voice to come on my first MAZ thinking that I’d found a pretty cool rock, a little caked in mud and covered in dust but fun to have nonetheless. Later during our time in Arizona that year we were asked to share our testimony with the students and I shared the pain and bitterness that I had been carrying against God for years and how the bitterness had driven a wedge between me and God.

MAZ '15 Team @ Stotonic
in front of the new vatu
Photo courtesy of Paul Hofmann
a gem of a guy himself

          As I finished my story that evening on my first MAZ the group of twelve and thirteen year-olds along with the adult advisers gathered around me a prayed over me. I was healed of the bitterness and that was when I found that the rock was really a Jewel, my Pearl of Great Price. Those kids and those adults then, every team in between, and the kids and adults on this year’s team occupy my treasure chest. It doesn’t feel like sacrifice to have them in my life.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

         

In His Grip,

jerry

MAZ '15 Post 4: Wake Up Call

From my notes of Monday, March 16, Day 3:

          I woke up before my alarm this morning – actually it was hours before my iPhone would chirp me awake or any biological imperative would make itself known to me. Perhaps it was the cricket that tried a kamikaze-suicide by running full-tilt into my head that was just barely sticking out of the top of my sleeping bag or maybe it was the anticipation of waking up nearly thirty teammates for our first full day of work.

Vah Ki Before Sunrise

At any rate, I was fully out and patrolling our camp well over an hour before sunrise. I was followed closely by three of the girls asking if they could work out and then Jacob asking if he could run laps. Anna, Sinclair, and Emily worked out and Jacob ran while I quietly moved the dogs out in a widening perimeter; my path was basically designed to keep watch on the athletes. Jacob’s self-defined route took him in and out of the early-morning gloom. I was thankful that I was able to pick up his return earlier with each lap as the sun inched its way over distant mountains.

          I walked through the dorm that we established under the huge meeting arbor by pulling together benches and setting them face-to-face to make what could be cozy bunks. They keep us off the concrete floor and away from the creepy-crawlies. Early on in my MAZ carrier when my daughter Lauren would be sleeping next to me as a young elementary school child, we would simply spread out a tarp and lay our air mattress on it until one morning I was woken up by one of the reservation dogs licking my face. We joined the kids on the bench-bunks that night. Nowadays I use a cot as do several of the other adult advisors. Age and experience have helped define our comfort levels here in the Sonoran Desert.

          Walking from the pink section (girls) to the blue section (boys) and seeing them all wrapped up like cocoons I didn’t feel like waking them up, a rare occurrence for me. I felt more predisposed to let them sleep, even if only for fifteen minutes longer.

Wake up!

My humane wake-up calls were met with heavy resistance from a couple of bunks. I imagine that waking up with my face inches from theirs while asking if I was “getting through” to them paid dividends later in the week. It couldn’t have been pleasant waking from their dreams to see this face. Brad Pitt or Jennifer Lawrence? Sure. My face? Not so much.

In His Grip,

jerry

MAZ '15 Post 3: New Testament Style

From my notes of Sunday, March 15, Day 1:

Vah Ki bell and church

This morning, Sunday, March 15 2015, our MAZ team worshipped with the Vah Ki United Presbyterian Church. By ‘this morning’ I mean barely morning as their Sunday service starts at eleven a.m. That left the team time for an impromptu fellowship/quiet time and ‘light’ work around the buildings to neaten things up for our friends. I took a crew out to the Stotonic Church to scout our upcoming project to pour a concrete slab build a new vatu on top. A vatu is a small arbor to provide shade. We found the Stotonic worshipers in service right at ten a.m. so we did a drive-by scout and scooted back to add what we needed to Paul’s growing materials list.

The Vah Ki and Stotonic churches are yoked organizationally and missionally, sharing pastors as well as materials and equipment when needed but they maintain a distinct set of elders and deacons serving their specific congregations. The last time that I can remember these churches being under the care of an ordained pastor was well over a decade ago and even then she was a retired pastor mostly taking care of the duties requiring pastoral ordination; baptisms, officiating communion, and moderating session while only occasionally preaching.

The congregations are not now under the care of an ordained pastor and teaching elders provide messages from the pulpit on a weekly basis and in some sort of rotation. With each of the churches holding a Sunday morning service as well as a midweek service the elders have gained a lot of experience leading the church. The Presbytery supplies a moderator, occasional ‘pulpit supply’, and helps provide for regular communion.

This is the way that I imagine the Church during the times that the letters and gospels were being written that now make up our New Testament Bible; elders teaching the Word and running the church in the hopes that a pastor or even an Apostle would travel to minister to the congregation. I can see how the elders would be elevated and installed as Pastors to congregations as they grew. And, I can also see why the letters comprising the bulk of the New Testament needed to be written. Can you imagine a letter from Paul or Peter arriving and the elders of the church pouring over it to bring nuggets of wisdom and teaching to the people gathered in the common room of someone’s home? It is working here on the Gila River Indian Community now though I imagine that they struggle from time to time but what congregation doesn’t?

I imagine that this organizational structure and way of Christian life is very similar across our country in rural and poor areas and in ‘third world’ countries as well. It is how I imagine that church is being done where Christians are under persecution and how the church here could survive if authentic Christian worship is driven underground. We don’t require an organized church to reach the Father; a simple gathering of believers with authentic faith, worship, and love are needed for personal accountability, comfort, and to meet the minimum requirements that I see in two scriptures.

Matthew 18:20 (NIV): “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."

John 14:6 (NIV) “⁶ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

It seems to me that a letterhead is not necessarily required.

In His Grip,

jerry

MAZ '15 Post 2 - Leaders Players and Snakes

Morning of Day 1, MAZ '15:

Kim and Jakob Riffing

I get a sense of personal fulfillment when a young adult returns to Mission Arizona as a leader; I have to hope that personal fulfillment is permitted while in service to the King. Seeing them transform from a twelve year old student finding their way from one place to another on the reservation and figuring out just how much work they can do and that they really can pray aloud in a group into an adult leader is a very special thing to be a part of. It confirms to me that their lives were touched as students and that God’s Spirit has driven them to be a part of yet another group of student’s lives as they in turn experience the short-term mission life.

Their commitment to serve children, and so to serve Christ, tells me that they are on a right path. There is no denying that they also like to have fun while on the trip and that it’s not some unbearable yoke of drudgery to them. Leading, service, and joy walked hand-in-hand with them throughout the week.

This year we had three such servants including one of our new Youth Directors, Kim Cox. Looking back on the week, she did an excellent job of being out front and leading. She handled a bunch of adult old-timers very well and our adult team worked nicely together. Kim’s heart for the mission trip, for the kids, and for worship blended for a great overall experience.

Hofmann Estate

Jakob and Brian, college students and cousins, were a big presence during the week. Jakob’s guitar playing with Kim was a treat. Brian’s approach to a tricky problem of installing modern waterless urinals in an aging cinder-block restroom was invaluable. I especially liked watching the family interaction in and around Hoffman Estate with Jakob’s dad, Paul, and his sister, Mackenzie.

Afternoon from Day 1:

          I was the first on the scene to find a rattlesnake for the first time in my twenty-plus years of going to the Gila Indian Community; others have found the few rattlers before I was called to the scene, if at all. Paul is our lead snake handler and re-locater; he reported that the one I found came equipped with seven rattles; I estimated that it measured four feet or so in length – a sizeable old veteran.

          Somehow being first on the scene gave me more of a pause for concern. I don’t know why I was moved to peek behind the old 4X8 foot plywood sign leaning against the tool shed; perhaps it was only to have the snake quietly removed from the camp. In any case, I am grateful that the snake is now doing its job far away from the church campus and wasn’t found in a circumstance that was a danger to anyone and that it was the only snake reported for the week.

          I was reminded of the first rattler that I had seen during a MAZ experience. It was dead and its head was in a shovel having already met its demise at the hands of marauding teenaged boys on the hunt for just such a prize. My ensuing response seems to have made its way into the lore of old MAZ trips.

          All of this followed the quietest night with a score of teenagers that I can recall under the arbor. What a wonderful place!

In His Grip,

jerry