iBelin

“And Are We Yet Alive…” An Annual Sermon

// October 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // preaching, storytelling

The Tennessee Annual Conference will be held in Columbia, Tennessee this week and I am excited.  I want you to know why it is such a meaningful experience for me, so I decided to share the Annual Sermon I preached in 2007 when the Conference was held in Nashville at Greater Bethel on South Street.  This sermon is the best I can do to express the significance of the Annual Conference to me an other Methodists around the world. (Click the title below to hear the sermon.)

"And Are We Yet Alive… "

In 1749 Charles Wesley penned a hymn that his brother John would use to begin annual meetings of Methodists. This great hymn of the church was written during a time when itinerant preachers rode the circuit on horseback preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes they preached in churches and, when congregations would not receive them, they preached outside in the elements. The weather, the terrain, undomesticated animals and threatening diseases all conspired to make life even more uncertain for the Methodist preachers who sought to preach the power and unsearchable riches of the Gospel to a lost and ruined world. And so, when these had lived through a year of pain and promise, passion and peril, they made their way to the appointed meeting place where they could be refreshed, revived, renewed and have the fire in them rekindled. They did not arrive by planes, trains and automobiles. They did not have the luxury of cushioned seats and carpeted floors. They did not have sophisticated sound systems and lush music provided by numerous instruments. But they were glad when they heard someone say, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.” They did not have emails to inform them of the passing of their colleagues in the Gospel ministry so I imagine they entered the meeting place looking around and waving and greeting and seeing who was there and who was missing. While their hearts may have been heavy for those whose voices were silenced from answering the roll, I know that those who had survived that year were excited to join together and sing with uplifted voices, “And are we yet alive and see each other’s face, glory and praise to Jesus give for His redeeming grace.” It is a joyful declaration of thanksgiving for the sustaining power of God. But it is also a statement of committed relationship. “See[-ing] each other’s face” is a reunion and a responsibility. I cannot see you without seeing what you have and what you lack. Your eyes are the mirror to your soul. I cannot look into your eyes and walk away if I see a hunger there because I am duty bound to see what I can do to satisfy it. Nor can I walk away if I look into your eye and see the fire of joy, I then duty bound to celebrate with you.

This meeting, this annual conference for them as for us, is the opportunity to see, to hear and to discern, yea to judge how the other members of the body are doing. What condition are they in? What troubles have they seen? What conflicts have they past?

• It is an annual answering of the question, “How dost thy soul prosper? How is it with your soul?”
• It is to submit to a thorough examination of motives and action.
• It is to undergo a spiritual peer review.
• It is to be scrutinized by the old and experienced and observed by the young and expectant.
• It is to step onto a theological scale and to weigh in so as to be sure that during the course of the year out there in the world that some fancy sounding fables and fictions did not affix themselves to your faith.
• It is to be vigorously interrogated like iron upon iron so as to sharpen intellectual faculties, ecclesiastical commitments and theological beliefs.
• It is to crouch down and kneel like sheep scurrying under the shepherds crook seeking to get into the sheepfold while the shepherd examines the sheep one by one to ensure that no injury endangers the life of the sheep.
• It is to hear some testimony to the overcoming power of God.
• It is to hear a good report that preaching the Gospel still saves the lost.
• It is to hear the old soldiers declare, “I once was young but now I’m old…”
• It is to be reminded that God is a battleaxe in the time of war.
• When you have been battered, broken and bruised by meetings and misunderstandings and miscommunication, when your good is evil spoken of, when you’ve done the best you can and your friends don’t understand… it is to be reminded that there is still a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.

And so, a conference call cannot suffice. That’s why we can only answer the roll by letter a limited number of times. You’ve got to show up. Email and text messaging cannot properly convey all the information that must be gathered when we come together. We can’t get what we need from CDs and the minutes. We have to show up and We have to look at each other eyeball to eyeball. We’ve got to feel the strength of the grip and the warmth of the embrace

I told the congregation I am privileged to serve a few weeks ago in a sermon that when I was in college I didn’t want to and often refused to come home during the breaks. Because I knew that if my mama and daddy could see me and look at me in my eyes they would know I had been into something I had no business being into. So I stayed away. I did not want my father to catch a whiff of where I’d been. But there came a time when I was forced to come home and sit down at the table. I had to submit to being looked at and looked into. I had to answer questions and to fidget while they read the subtext to my answers. But my dear Christian Friends, if I had not gone home to submit to the rigors of that examination and to sit at the table to celebrate who I am and whence I came I could have been destroyed. It was hard but it was what I needed. There was some salvation at that table.

And this is the nature of the gathering of which we are a part today. So befitting too that we celebrate the Holy Communion in this opening service, for this sacrament typifies who we are together in this meeting. We are the Body of Christ. This conference is a time to come together and see each others’ face, a time to discern the body . Something happens when the saints of God gather in the house of worship to sing the songs of Zion and to lift high praises to our God. I’m telling you there is power in this gathering when Christians come together in unity and in fellowship. Healing flows in the room when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity like the dew of Hermon and the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion. God has commanded a blessing upon us when we come together in a Holy Communion of love and mutuality, responsibility and accountability – for this is discerning the body rightly.

• A ministry can be saved in this communion if we discern the body rightly.
• Dead churches can be resurrected…
• Sick folk can be healed….
• Broken people can be made whole….
• Damaged people can be restored….
• Those who have left the church can be reconciled to the church….

If we discern the body rightly the weak can say, I am strong and the poor can say I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us.

This is what Paul argues for in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. The occasion for this part of the letter is crucial to the life of the church. The members of the church upon reading it would have to clarify their intentions. Do they want to build up the church or destroy it? Are they concerned only for themselves or do they really care about the Body? Paul is writing to combat division. The members of the Church at Corinth were in danger of undermining the very essence and meaning of the Lord’s Supper. They were allowing divisions to come into the church and because of this what should have been a Holy Communion was becoming nothing more than a common meal. But what’s more, the members of the church were not even regarding the usual practices of hospitality. It seems to be that people of a certain level in society would arrive at the site of the meal earlier than the others and would then eat and drink the provisions before the poor folk and the slaves could even arrive. The rich folk would be full and drunk while the poor folk arrived to empty tables and picked over food. This was a travesty of the Lord’s Supper.

The Lord Jesus came to tear down the walls that would divide us, to obliterate class distinctions and to create of community of people who loved and cared for one another, who were responsible for one another and who were accountable to one another. In this way, wrong folk would be corrected, sick folk would be ministered to, hungry folk fed, lonely folk comforted, mean people loved, outsiders brought in and the fallen lifted up. The supper of the Lord was instituted to remind the Body of Christ of this. But the folk devolved into class-ist, elitist behavior…

And Paul is careful to point out that those selfish, greedy ones who refuse to care about the poor and the sick and the destitute and the outcasts and the others and the differently-abled are no different from those who drove the nails in Jesus hands and feet and pierced Him in His side. But when we come to the table we must examine ourselves and recognize that if it had not been for the Lord on our side we don’t know where we’d be. When we come to the table we must examine our own lives and come to know that we didn’t earn a seat at the table but it was His grace and His mercy. When we come to this table we must take an introspective glance and realize that it was God who made a way for us out of no way, that it was God who picked us up out of the muck and the mire that was our lives, that it was God who saw us when we were sitting under our fig trees, that it was God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. “But let a man examine himself,” says Paul, for when you look at yourself you can look at others differently. “But let a man examine himself” for when we look at ourselves, Paul suggests, we will know how to eat the bread and drink of the cup. Judgment ensues when one eats and drinks without judging the body rightly. Discerning the body rightly is love and mutuality; responsibility and accountability.

God is calling the church to intentional intimacy. God is calling the members of the church to really become a family and to gather around the family table to develop mutual relationships in which we shoulder responsibility for one another and hold each other accountable and not just talk about one another. When we do not do this then we are not judging the body rightly. And this is why some folk are lethargic, some are sick and others are already dead.

The Holy Communion is not just a meal, not just a ritual. It is an appointed means of grace. We are to invest meaning in our coming and kneeling and thanking and breaking and giving and receiving. This is an enactment of our unity. This is an embodiment of our interconnectedness. This celebratory re-membering of the love of God in Christ Jesus has power to bring healing and deliverance. What we do here is not magic. The power is in the Presence of God manifested in the love and care and concern and mutuality and respect and recognition and celebration of each one for the other…. For the other… for the other. For other, the one not like you: rural and urban, rich and poor, sick and well, in and out, up and down, high and low, high yellow and honey dripper, wide and narrow, the good, the bad and the ugly. It is to come together and to be the church whether you’re bringing a bank roll or the widow’s mite.

Paul says, when you come together you have to take care of one another. Paul says the church cannot go merrily along full of itself and intoxicated by the “wine of the world…”

• While 800 children age out of foster care each year, many of whom are turned out into the street without housing, healthcare, sufficient education or employment.
• While there are about 10,000 children in states custody and only about 3000 approved foster care homes
• While HIV/AIDS continues spreading in our community
• While this country spends billions upon billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq and while refusing to provide healthcare for millions of Americans and finding suitable housing for the homeless.

Yes, we have been promised life more abundantly, but we cannot live high and let others die.

And so, this is the crucial question, “And are we yet alive and see each other’s face?” Do you see me sitting next to you on the pew or are you trying to be seen? Did you see me in the parking lot or were you trying to get a space? Did you see me in the doorway or did you walk over me to get your program? Did you see my face in the aisle or were you just trying to get a good seat? Do I matter to you? Do you care about me? Don’t you know that we are members of the same body? And if you discern this body rightly we can move beyond the question to the celebration:

Grandma Albirda’s Whiskey Cake

// October 23rd, 2009 // 11 Comments » // family, storytelling

Since it’s Fall, I thought it was time to start baking. Growing up there was always a cake or pie in the house but especially in the Fall and through the holidays.

EXCURSUS

My mother is an exceptional cook and was an exceptional baker. After my parents lived in Capetown with Katie, a cook who lived in, she lost her touch. We discovered this at a huge holiday dinner with many, many guests when they had moved to Little Rock. After dinner, I went into the kitchen to help bring out the dazzling offering of cakes. We sliced the first and the knife didn’t glide through. A cook knows this does not bode well for the texture of certain cakes. One by one, through caramel, jam, coconut and pound cakes we cut to find assortments of rubber, cornbread and gelee’. She was visibly shaken. Unable to gather herself, I suggested we serve the sweet potato pies which were brought by a guest. She hasn’t rarely baked a cake since. That was 1989.

AND WE’RE BACK…
While I was in Atlanta recently I bought the ingredients and my mother and I went into the kitchen to bake Grandma Albirda’s Whiskey Cake which is rich in spices, pecans, molasses, family memories and love.

One might underestimate what is required to bring such goodness to the family table, but as I stood there examing each and every single pecan (while Mama was examining me and my work) which went into that cake to ensure there were no stray pieces of hulls or any pecans that were dry, I no longer take this deliciousness lightly.

My great-grandmother, "Birda" as her grandchildren called her, used to make these cakes every year and ship one to each of her children’s families and with them love and lessons and memories of their childhood in Vicksburg. My mother, great lover and champion of tradition that she is, continues the tradition. (She used to ship these cakes to her parents, sister and brothers.) I joined her in this endeavor so as to mitigate against any non-cakelike textures by serving as her talisman of sorts.

The cake must be made at least a month before it is to be eaten so that the Jack Daniels sugar syrup can be poured on weekly and soak in. One might argue that anything (or anyone) would be good soaked in Jack Daniels, but this cake is really delicious, rich and perfect for the holidays.

Once while we were all still living at home in Nashville, we found one of these drunk cakes in our pantry several months into a new year. This was quite possible because the always overcrowded pantry could conceal any manner of treasure (or terror). The pantry was so full of food and other items (that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else) that you could search for what you desired and another something could fall out… like the time Henry went to the pantry searching for something on a high shelf and a huge can of raw honey Daddy used in his tea crowned him right over the head and the honey anointing ran down to the ‘skirts of his garments.’

(Notice the grip on my face in the pic above. You will see the same grip on Mama’s face when she is measuring flour a little farther up.  This grip is essential to completing any task.  Toni and Henry also use this grip, though Toni will not admit it just as she won’t admit we have the same nose.)

So we found this cake which had been stored away for months and we laughed while mama wondered how it had escaped her (as though she didn’t know what a thicket that pantry was). We looked at the cake and each other all the while knowing what we’d do. We had no choice but to open and try this old drunk of a cake. We would not be Belin’s if we didn’t try to eat it!

Mama unfolded the foil first and then held up the cake still wrapped in plastic wrap and looked through for I’m not sure what. We could already smell the Jack Daniels. This had to be a good sign. Then she peeled off the cellophane to reveal a cake that looked no different from the others we had eaten during the previous holiday season. I was already holding the serrated edge knife deemed by Mama to be the only suitable knife with which to cut such a cake and any other would "butcher" the cake thereby rendering it inedible. I passed the serrated edge knife to mama. She cut into it and gave the so-far-so-good look (experienced bakers know how a cake is liable to be by the way it cuts). She looked at the slice and broke off a corner of this precious end piece. There were only two ends on this loaf cake and they had absorbed the most Jack Daniels so whomever got the ends got the happiest. Of course, I always got an end since Henry hates nuts and Toni doesn’t eat raisins they were not in the competition.

Well, the cake was fine though a little drier than at it’s peak. But, it taught us the value of Jack Daniels and sugar: if you pour enough in, you’ll last longer.

My parents are strong and vibrant and we are blessed and I’ve no doubt that Mama could have pulled it off without me. But, baking those cakes with her reminded me that at some point we all have to pick up traditions from older ones so the younger ones will be situated in their powerful history and gain strength there.

In a few weeks, we’ll open a cake and cut into it. I’m thinking Mama will remember Birda. ‘Bootsie,’ Mama’s sister Shirley has already requested one. I know this means that Mama will bake cakes for the rest of her family too. I’ll help. It’s a long process but traditions are not made quickly.

“This Is My Story” 37th Annual National Storytelling Festival

// October 19th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // storytelling

I love good conversation. Not the surface, polite, obligatory, formulaic crap you get from too many people, but deep, meaningful, substantive conversation filled with passion, wisdom, sarcasm, truth, wit, hyperbole and even ridiculously believable lies. So, my trip to Jonesborough, Tennessee for the 37th Annual National Storytelling Festival was an awfully good use of my time.

I stayed in Johnson City so I didn’t get to see Jonesborough until the next day. I wanted to get there early because I didn’t know what to expect and I’d heard there has been 10,000 people attending during the course of the weekend prior. I got in and got registered and started walking and scoping out the city. Jonesborough is really a beautiful city.

I learned it is the oldest city in Tennessee. Got lots to say about the city and shops and restaurants but this post is about storytelling…

The telling takes place under huge tents. Since I’m not big on waiting, standing in line or sitting in the back, I got to the tents as early as I could. Surrounded by veterans of the Festival, I settled in with my moleskine, favorite pen, water and ginger cranberry biscotti with white chocolate (made fresh by a women who looked to be in her early 60s who stayed up all night to do so. I learned this when she informed a young man that she would not be making the sandwiches to be sold at lunch).

Donald Davis, “born in a Southern Appalachian mountain world rich in stories, was the first teller I heard. Well-known and very entertaining, he shared about his childhood and his loving torture of his little brother.

Niall de Burca from Ireland was good, if not theatrical in his telling. He was even more dramatic in the Ghost Story concert in Mill Spring Park.

Gay Ducey was great. I heard she shared about her experiences living through a breast cancer diagnosis in another tent in a very compelling and moving story.

Jennifer Armstrong (above) was amazing. I’m not sure how to describe her telling. It was a weaving together of what sounded like an ancient song with stories and poems that evoked pathos and hope. Her telling situated the listener in the tension of a powerful past and an expectant future. It had an otherworldly quality that was simultaneously familiar.

Baba Jamal Koram is like a part of the family. He is the uncle who looks into your heart and loves firmly and corrects warmly. Seeing school children in the audience, he told a story suitable for them and us. Any sound they made, he seized and effortlessly pulled it into his telling. They were captivated and afterward they flocked to him like he was passing out money to his nieces and nephews.

Roslyn Bresnick-Perry shared with us her experiences of working in the garment district in New York and how she overcame dyslexia to become earn a college degree as an older student. She is an inspiration.

John McCutcheon is a friggin wizard. He plays every instrument I the world, I guess. He sings beautifully. His humor is sharp and incisive. His political commentary is biting. McCutcheon is the business. I go to bed at 11. He didn’t start until 10:30 but I wouldn’t have missed this man. He is simply a masterful teacher, poet, musician and teller.

Charlotte Blake Alston (not pictured) was awesome in the Ghost Story Concert. The timbre of her voice and her delivery of the story set on a slave plantation was chilling. I would love to hear her tell Biblical stories. I’m going to stalk her and hear her again.

Kathryn Windham is the grande dame of storytelling. Her telling is enthralling. I heard her on Saturday morning. In her 90s, she stood onstage next to a stool just in front of a mic like an elegant and diminutive statue like those you’d expect to find in an antique store standing alone on a two-lane highway somewhere in the south. I was not even under the tent but was standing in the sunlight on account of my uncharacteristic tardiness so if she moved at all it was imperceptible to me. She just stood there telling stories about her aunt and family members as though there were only two or three of us in her kitchen. She told us about her coffin she had made when she turned 70 figuring it was time since she was only promised “three-score and ten.” It rests in her garage filled with unused china where it has been waiting for her for 20-some years.

Ms. Windham told us that she would be buried within 24 hours of her death and be wrapped in a simple quilt made by someone, she said, who “made every stitch in love.” She invited all of us who were available to come to her funeral and join the others in singing “I’ll Fly Away.” At this, she led us in singing this old song and made her exit off the stage. We were mesmerized. People stood and cheered with tears streaming down their faces, I among them, for a good while before the mad dash to other tents and the treacherous stop at the nuclear waste site a.k.a. port-o-potties.

My emotions ran from soup to nuts during my time in Jonesborough. I’ve never had another experience like it. It is empowering as it demonstrates for us how just the telling of our own stories elevates our experience to the divine. My sermon the following Sunday was titled, “Tell Your Story.” I’ll tell you about that in another post. In the meantime, it is important to tell our stories because they not only give us life, they give life to the hearer.

(This is a pic of twitter friends who came together for a tweetup. Sadly, the Festival organizers are stuck in a timewarp concerning the taking of pictures in the tents. This circumstance prevented us from sharing pics which could have more vividly conveyed the wonderful experiences we shared. Hopefully, this policy will change before next year.)

BarCamp Nashville ’09

// October 17th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Nashville, social media, technology

Learned a lot at the high energy Bar Camp Nashville today. The venue Cadillac Ranch on Broadway is amazing, huge, odd, fun, dark… (I would love to have church services in there. In fact, they could really accommodate 5 moderate sized churches at one time!) I volunteered because I believe in the concept of folk sharing knowledge and experience for free!

@MarissaBenchea rocks! She is sharp, warm and engaging. The coordination of volunteers was good. Work with some really smart people today. I love Nashville.
@justwinston the video coordinator is really cool. I know he worked hard but seemed unflappable. Wore a nice chapeau too!
@joshtheoak was the official photographer for the day. He was everywhere but never in the way. Can’t wait to see his work.

My volunteer partner who works for @emmaemail was the best! While I was imprisoned to the video camera, she was going above the call of duty making sure attendees in our area were in good shape.

Presentations (I’ll provide links to their stuff when they put them up):
@bobhutchins offered a rock solid presentation: How to use social media viral marketing to reach your target audience. He works closely with faith communities and business seeking to market to people of faith.

@cotton1 was inspirational as he share how he teaches kids game programming. Gave me a lot to think about with my planning for my children @kairosame. He works with Young Scholars Institute in Franklin.
@scottschwertly of www.ethos3.com gets the best in show ribbon! This man can present his butt off. Kept a quick pace but never seemed rushed. I’m gonna study him and his stuff.

The takeaway of the day: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s all about relationships. Guess what? It’s (still) all about relationships. To create and nurture relationships you have to be yourself. These manufactured, overly-polished online personas are easy to see through. It’s like the guy whose hand you’re shaking while he’s looking at the next person he’s trying to get to. FAIL! Be present. Be engaged. Be yourself. You don’t have to be charming, just be sincere.

To create and nurture relationships you have to be in conversation. Listen and talk and listen and listen and listen and talk. Listen deeply and then share something of yourself. Admittedly, not every conversation is a good use of your time. You’ve got to determine that for yourself. And remember, silence communicates too.

Why I Love to Cook

// October 16th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // family, recipes, storytelling

The best days of my life were summers when my grandmother would come to visit from Baton Rouge for long periods of time. My cousins Connie and Karlean would come too. When I was very young they would come on the bus. I would always look for the hatbox in my grandmother’s hand because that was a sure sign she had brought a cake with her. Somehow she had rigged the box so the cake wouldn’t move. Around the cake sometimes would be teacakes or pecan cookies that had the texture of a dense cake and were browned just on the edges where there was a slight buttery crunch.

I was always surrounded by family in Summer when my grandmother visited. Stories and laughter were always a-plenty. Connie and Karlean, 10 years older than us, would tell stories about high school friends. Grandmama would tell stories about how she met and came to marry “Rev. Belin” (which is what she always called my grandfather who was 30 years her senior) after the love of her life, Ellis Pressley, died leaving her alone with my Aunt Mae Ellis. My father would tell us how he began to work in the 1930′s at age 7 or 8 on the back of an ice truck (much of this, I suspect, was to emphasize how, comparatively, we were living on “flowery beds of ease”) and was kicked off once while the truck was in motion by the evil “white man.” My mother often demurred from telling stories unless prompted by a direct question, but when she started, her eyes glistened while she talked about listening to her “Poppa” (which she called her grandfather) tell them stories from his rocker by the wood stove. Henry, Toni and I shared stories on various subjects too, but we were (and still are) at our best with bathroom humor, to Grandmama’s dismay.

The best family time seemed to always be spent in the kitchen. It was here the stories were told. I still see the pictures I created in my imagination of what Poppa’s “front room” must have looked like and the street where Grandmama was standing when she asked, “what’s old Rev. Belin looking at me for?” and my father as a little boy crying and hurt as he lay in the street behind the ice truck while the evil “white man” laughed. These pictures come back when smell greens cooking. Every time I hear the cornbread sizzle as it hits the grease heated to “smokin’” in the oven in a black skillet I am transported to another place in time. When I stew tomatoes down with way too much sugar to go along side my breakfast, I bring a wonderful time in my life into my present.

Last night, I cooked a pot of soup: stew beef with vegetables. I hoped and prayed I remembered how to do it like Mama does. It took the better part of the evening waiting on the beef to get tender. But later, when it had simmered long enough, I began to smell a familiar smell that signaled that the soup was done. Then, I heard my mother’s voice in my head say, “it’s time to make the bread.” And so I did.

Here’s how I made the soup (don’t ask for amounts, you just have to pray as you go):

Beef Vegetable Soup

Cornbread

• Put your oven on 400
• Pour your oil into a black skillet and put it in the oven until the oil is smoking
• Get some self-rising white cornmeal
• Add an egg
• Add some oil. Add some more.
• Add enough buttermilk to make it like pancake batter
• Open the oven, pull the rack toward you and pour the batter in the hot smokin’ grease. If it doesn’t sizzle, you screwed up and I wouldn’t eat that.
• Close the oven door and cook until the bread is good and brown. Don’t nobody want no high yella bread!
• When you take it out, we professionals just flip the bread into our hands and back into the skillet, those with tender hands flip onto a plate. This is so you can have that magical crunch of the edge of the bread. If you don’t flip it, it will get soggy.
• Slice it in wedges and eat it down off in your soup.

Be sure to come back on this page and thank me when you make this ’cause this is perfect for this time of year.