Archive for category: Chaplain’s Corner

“Facing Your Nineveh”

So how did the Prophet Jonah end up on a Mediterranean beach smelling like a tin of sardines?  It all began with a call from God that, in Jonah’s mind, was definitely not his dream job.

 

“Up on your feet and on your way to Nineveh!  Preach to them.  They are in a bad way and I can’t ignore it any longer.”  But Jonah got up and went the other direction to Tarshish, running away from God.  He got on a boat in Joppa and proceeded to get as far away from God as possible.”  (Jonah 1-3)

 

Nineveh which was east of Israel was the capital of Assyria, one of the ancient world’s evil empires.  The Ninevites were decidedly lacking in people skills.  After they annihilated an enemy city, Assyrian soldiers would typically leave behind a pyramid of human heads as a warning to their neighbors.  Jonah was so excited about working with this group of people that he immediately headed in the opposite direction.

 

So Jonah bought a one-way ticket to the farthest point west he could imagine.  At that time it was a place called Tarshish.  We don’t really know where Tarshish was located exactly.  Presumably it was near Spain.  King Solomon imported from Tarshish gold, silver, ivory, monkeys and peacocks.  In the popular imagination it became a synonym for paradise.

 

Perhaps God has called you, in one way or another, to go east.  But all you want to do is head west.  Perhaps you made a promise to be there for a life partner or a friend in sickness.  But you didn’t realize how hard it would be to love that person when actual sickness, sorrow, and want showed up.  Now you’re standing in line to buy a ticket to Tarshish, where you’ve heard that relationships are problem free.

 

Right here at Westminster Village God may be calling you to make a new friend or spend time with a resident that is struggling with loneliness because they are new to the Village.  Perhaps you have some ideas for activities or the administration but feel you won’t be heard and so it’s easier to not listen to God’s call within you to be a difference maker.

 

But as the story of Jonah reveals, sailing west when God calls us to go east means heading into turbulence.  In Jonah’s case that became a literal experience.  A violent storm overtook the boat on which he was making his escape.  So Jonah made a difficult choice.  He cancelled his trip to Tarshish.  “Throw me off the ship,” he told the crew.  They were terrified to do so.  The prophet may have assumed that his life was now over.  But as Jonah 1:17 tells us, “The Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah.”  Three days later the fish barfed him up on the shoreline of the most compelling Scripture texts for any kid who’s ever felt bored in Sunday School.

 

You may need to make an exceedingly difficult choice too.

 

Stop believing the many lies on the news today.  Face your shortcomings.  Believe the Gospel of grace and love.  You’re not a victim.  The running stops today.

 

Jonah showcased one of life’s key lessons:  It’s always safer to be treading water in God’s ocean than to be on a cruise ship heading in the wrong direction.

 

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor, Chaplain

“Do Your Best”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is deservedly regarded as one of the great musical composers of all
time.  During his own lifetime, however, Bach was largely ignored.  He did not have a university degree.  He had a reputation for being difficult to work with.  He became the musical director of four principal Lutheran churches in Leipzig, Germany, but only after the search committee had failed to hire their first three choices.

His music was considered imitative.

Bach worked in obscurity most of his life.  Few people grasped the quality and the quantity of the music he was creating.

Take Bach’s cantatas.  A cantata is a fully orchestrated composition which often involves a choir.  It may last from 30 minutes to several hours.  These days an average church choir may perform one cantata a year, but only after months of preparation.

Bach wrote at least one entirely new cantata-length work every week for seven consecutive years.  Many of those numbers were performed only once, after which they were never heard from again.

Today we have in our possession about 200 of Bach’s cantatas.  Hundreds of others have vanished.

After his death, Bach’s family was in dire straits financially.  They sold off unknown numbers of his
compositions.

And then there’s the Brandenburg Concerto.  In 1712, Bach was casting about for a new job.  He wrote to a German official, the Margrave of Brandenburg, advertising his availability as a musical composer and
performer.  Bach decided to create an artistic resume.  So he wrote a series of six concerts.  In a cover letter he said they represented the “little talents which Heaven has given me for Music.”

As far as we know the six concertos were never performed for the Margrave, since he didn’t have enough
court musicians on hand.  They were eventually filed.  And then forgotten.

When the Margrave died in 1734, the one and only copy of the concertos was sold for the modern
equivalent of $24.  They wound up in the Brandenburg state archives, where someone finally stumbled upon them 112 years later.

And then for the first time they were played. The world has been staggered by their beauty ever since.

Until a century after Bach’s death, no one knew the Brandenburg Concertos were one of the world’s great musical treasures.

Most of us have never been mistaken for musical geniuses.  But in other regards we may feel a bit like
Bach.

We’ve worked hard on things and nobody even noticed.  No one said thank you for the support you have
given during a difficult time.  Or when we knocked ourselves out trying to reconcile quarreling family
members, but it’s as if our best efforts were filed away and forgotten.  But we know for sure our efforts are not unknown.
At the end of his compositions Bach personally inscribed three Latin words:  Soli Deo Gloria  (For God’s Glory Alone)  He never lost sight of his true audience.

Even when it seems no one is paying attention, our call is still to do our utmost.  To please the Audience of One.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

“A Prayer for Our Time”

Gracious Lord, we dream of a world free of poverty and oppression, and we yearn for a world free of vengeance and violence.  We pray for your peace.

When our hearts ache for the victims of war and oppression, help us to remember that you healed people simply by touching them.  And give us faith in our ability to comfort and heal bodies and minds and spirits that have been broken by violence.

When the injustice of this world seems too much for us to handle, help us to remember that you fed 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish.  And give us hope that with what we have to offer will be enough too.

When fear of the power and opinions of others temps us not to speak up for the least among us, help us to remember that you dared to turn the tables of moneychangers.  And give us the courage to risk following you without counting the cost.

When we tell ourselves that we have given all we can to bring peace to this world, help us to remember your sacrifice.  And give us the miracle of losing a little more of ourselves in serving you and our neighbors.

Walk with us Lord, as we answer your call to be peacemakers.  Increase our compassion, our generosity and our hospitality for the rest of your children.  Give us the courage, the patience, the serenity, the self-honesty and the gentleness of spirit that are needed in a world filled with turmoil and terror.

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor, Chaplain

 

“Never Alone”

A large, high-tech icebreaker departed Cape Town, South Africa several days ago. It then headed south,
battling rough seas on its way to the only land mass south of South Africa:  Antarctica.  The mission of the Endurance22 Expedition is to locate the wreckage of a wooden frigate that has been lying at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, under a mile and a half of freezing cold water, for 107 years.  The organizers of the trip hope to locate, survey, and take a complete set of 3D images of Endurance, the boat that carried Ernest Shackleton on one of the greatest polar adventures of all time.

In 1914, the British explorer set out with 27 other men to attempt the impossible:  walking from one side of Antarctica to the other.  They didn’t get very far.

Shackleton knew that the Weddell Sea, where it joins the Larsen Ice Shelf is the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world.”  His assessment proved to be prophetic.  Endurance never even delivered the explorers to the Antarctic shoreline.  It became trapped in solid pack ice and was crushed over the next 10 months by shifting movements of gigantic ice plates.

When it became clear that the ship could not be saved, the men spilled out onto the ice holding their
possessions.

They now had no shelter and no way whatsoever of telling anyone else about their condition.  Imagine being in the middle of one of Earth’s most forbidding wastelands and having no cell phones, internet, or GPS-let alone a post office where they could drop of “snail mail” cries for help.

Incredibly, they would all survive-but rescue was still almost two years away.  Shackleton gathered the men.  Speaking with the utmost conviction, as Alfred Lansing puts it in his book Endurance, “Shackleton pointed out that no article was of any value when weighed against their ultimate survival, and exhorted them to be ruthless in ridding themselves of every unnecessary ounce regardless of its value.

Leaders need to lead the way.  That’s exactly what Shackleton did.  “After he had spoken, he reached under his parka and took out a gold cigarette case and several gold sovereigns and threw them into the snow at his feet.”  He was also carrying a Bible that had been given to him by the Queen of England.  It also had to go.  But first he tore out one chapter and put it into his pocket.  If you could hold on to just one chapter of the Bible, what would it be?

Shackleton chose the 23 rd Psalm, presumably because it includes these words:  “The Lord is my Shepherd.  I shall not want…Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, For Thou art with me.”

Maybe your life feels shipwrecked now.  Every step seems like another step into the wilderness, and you
wonder when you will ever find your way home.

But even if you have nothing, you still have everything you need.  You are not alone.  His Presence will go with you.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

“You Are the Salt of the Earth”

The Jesus following life doesn’t begin with a list of “you ought to be’s.” It starts
with the words “you are.” This is a big deal. People are typically prepared to hear
a track coach or military general or even a Bible waving preacher set out the
territory urging us to become one or be conquered. “Here’s what you’re going to
have to do, and it’s not going to be easy.” We are used to being challenged to
become what we should be.

But Jesus comes at things from the other direction. Before He tells us what to do,
He tells us who we are. Rather than urging us to become what we ought to be, He
simply states we should be what we already are.

According to the Sermon on the Mount, if you’ve thrown in your lot with Christ,
you are exactly what the world needs. But since modern Americans have become
anxious about their sodium intake, is it really a happy thing to be identified as
salt? It is indeed. When Jesus’ original listeners heard him say they were the salt
of the earth, as many as five things might have come to mind.

First, salt was a symbol of Purity. The salt crystals that we shake onto our green
beans are almost totally intermingled with other compounds. Salt was valuable
enough in the ancient world to be used as a form of payment. To this day someone
might say, “He’s worth his salt.” The word salary itself is directly related to those
little crystals.

Second, Jesus’ mention of salt connoted Flavoring. Salt provided seasoning in a
nearly spice-free diet. Salt makes almost everything taste better. We are meant to
be the spice that flavors society; that takes the edge of the world in which we live
and bring joy and pleasure and a heightened sense of taste wherever we go.

Third, salt was the finest Preservative known in the ancient world. Salt kept good
food from going bad. Salt was just about the only way to keep meat and fish safe to
eat.

Fourth, salt as known to advance Healing. Most of us have experienced that
momentary sting, but then the soothing comfort, of plunging a skin wound into a
saline solution like the ocean.

Finally, salt Kills. Those of us who live in a part of the world where streets are
routinely salted during the winter months are aware sodium chloride’s ability to
help melt snow and ice- and to leave behind a “death zone” where weeds and grass
will struggle to grow next spring.

Purity, Flavoring, Preserving, Healing and Cleansing. That’s what it means to be
the salt of the earth. The problem is that we’re not much good to the earth if we
spend most of our hours inside a salt container-even a beautiful one like a church
sanctuary or a cozy spot in your apartment where you can read or watch TV.

Our grandparents called their little bottles of seasoning “salt cellars.” We
must get out of the cellar and into a salt shaker-into any ministry or relationship
that challenges us to do what we’ve always been called to do.

Our call is to be a healing, cleansing, preserving and flavoring presence wherever
we go. Jesus, after all, would definitely be the first person to say, “Please pass the
salt!”

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain