baptized with fire...

I baptize you with water...

but he will baptize you with fire!

That's what John the Baptist says, knee deep in the Jordan River, crazy-eyed prophet guy.
Quite frankly he scares me.
That baptizer is wacky. He dresses weird. He tells me I have to change.
He calls people terrible names.

I don't know what to do with him. I stand on the banks of the river and stare, frozen in fear that maybe this guy is going to grab me and force me under the water against my will...shake me until I give in and part of me dies there...I'm afraid I will look like him...crazy.

Never mind the fact that for more than fourteen years I have worn that title "pastor" and suited up Sunday after Sunday in my robes, ambled into my pulpit and delivered sermon after sermon about Jesus, God, and our duty as Christians...I'm still afraid of John the Baptist.

I can only speak for myself and my ministry; but I wonder if maybe this fear of John and his proclamations holds us back. John's baptism was never meant to be an end all. It was never meant to impose a status of never ceasing righteousness and eternal life. It was intended to be the way through which we were prepared for that coming fire of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ...my fear of the Baptizer holds me back from truly being gripped by that fire and dissipates the way and message of Jesus into a tepid intellectual exercise that makes me look good.

Is that our problem?

I can only think of John Wesley's advice to his preachers so long ago: "Catch fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn."

Its time to be all in, to let ourselves be prepared to recieve the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Its time to be all in...
its time to burn.

the occupy movement

I don't get the occupy movement. There. I've said it. I have friends and colleagues who are passionate about the movement, but I don't get it. Nobody has been able to explain what the occupiers hope to accomplish in this movement. From the sounds of several, the bottom line is they are protesting corporate greed and feel victimized by the failure of the banks to protect them from the market implosion...

So they are angry and want to be heard...great. But will their movement make a difference? What are the goals they hope to acheive and will camping out and waving signs and chanting actually accomplish those goals? I just don't see how it will.

Greed is a huge problem in our society...but it isn't all corporate. It lives in the lives and hearts of the everyday American who, even if their career or occupation arc isn't going to lead them to wealth, still strive to at least appear wealthy. I remember driving past the beat-up apartments of Huntington Beach, watching people drive their late-model Mercedes, BMW's, and Cadillacs, all customized and chromed out, home from work. Bad investments. Poor priorities. Exchanging financial security for the appearance of being wealthy.

Greed lives in the heart of everyone who lived beyond their means and assumed that their homes would increase in value at an annual clip of eight to twelve percent every year, that very three to four years they would be bailed out by a home refinance...

Eventually it catches up...and it did...

We just have to be honest...the same greed that drives a CEO to take a thirty percent increase on an already massive financial package when the company is laying off employees is the same greed that causes a homeowner to sign a loan the pulls the twenty-thousand dollars of appreciated value from their home to pay of credit card bills and debt spent on throw-away items that provide only the appearance of wealth and status...

That greed lives in all our hearts, and until we as individuals get a grip on it, it will always be a problem. Here-in lies my problem with the occupy movement: to me, it places blame on the easiest target, and provides few or little answers to the wider problem.

I serve as a pastor in the United Methodist Church, and I honestly feel that the message and way that Jesus brought has a far greater chance of impacting that deeper cause than the occupy movement. So I will work hard in my setting to make a difference...and for me, well, no occupy for me.