Tears

by Jason Byassee, January 20, 2014

Jason Byassee

I’ve been feeling kind of weepy lately. And I blame you. I keep seeing instances of faithfulness among God’s people. And since from my vantage I get to see things the rest of you don’t get to, let me give you a glimpse. Bring a tissue.

I noticed it first when I was checking out of one of our local grocery stores. My checker outer is one of our college students. We were chatting when she sprang this on me, “We’re tithing now!” I almost couldn’t speak. Here’s a student working her way through college at whatever wage our grocery stores pay. And she’s taking 10% of that hard-earned hourly wage and committing it to God through our church. What a charge for those of us who spend that money in kingdom work, to take care of every penny. What an example for the rest of us to do likewise.

That same day I was in conversation with one of our recent college graduates. I had noticed a certain lack of initiative in moving away from Boone, and told him I assumed a ladyfriend in his life was to blame. He dissented. “I refuse to leave my guys,” he said. He’s a volunteer in our youth group, and has led his guys through from 7th grade until now, 11th. And he’s not leaving until they graduate. Because these boys have seen too many men leave: dads and step-dads and others. He doesn’t want to add to the list of beloved elders who find something else more important than them and so move on. Again tears came and almost overflowed.

I might have first noticed this problem a few weeks back. A family in our church has been sitting vigil by the bedside of their matriarch. They have been shuttling back and forth from Boone to a city with a larger hospital for the sake of her care. I arrived at church around 8 a.m. one Sunday and there they were, setting up chairs and partitions and tables for Crossroads. Three hours early. Didn’t they need to be in a hospital room two hours away? “This is what we do,” one said. “We set up for worship.” They wouldn’t even be there that day–they had to get back on the road. Offering service for others, most of whom would never see it or know it. Tears again.

I’ve noticed the weepiness again in conversation with committee leaders. This work is often unsexy, undramatic, uninteresting, and absolutely crucial. One committee chair just rotated off after redoing his group’s bylaws. This is a book-length document that hadn’t been attended to since the first Clinton administration. He’d gone through, line by line, updating everything. Who would ever know, outside a few committee members and I? He wasn’t working for thanks or recognition, but for a ministry he believed in. Likewise another committee chair of a group that oversees significant funds. He inherited a grab bag of different accounting systems that others had found impenetrable. He simplified it enough that we can make it work now. He’s no longer a part of that group. But every time I look at that budget I give thanks for his doing of that old fashioned word: “duty.” Tears of thanks.

Why tears? I think because I find it moving beyond words to see God’s people stepping into their baptismal identity as those beloved and healed by Christ and working for his kingdom. In these examples they do so quietly, without fanfare, for the benefit of other people, most of whom they will never know. It’s enough to think Jesus still has work for us to do. That God is not finished with us yet. That the Holy Spirit can mold people even as self-centered as us sinners into outwardly attentive saints. There is nothing more beautiful than God’s glory working itself out among God’s people.

Cue the tissues.

Totally Byassee’d January 2014

by Jason Byassee

Jason Byassee

Friends I want to tell you about two things you may not have heard about that took place during Advent.

One, a man posted a threat on Craigslist that he intended to commit suicide in one of the larger churches in Boone during a Sunday sermon. We don’t know that he had our church in mind, but he could have, or he could have meant Mt. Vernon, First Presbyterian, Alliance. There was here a sort of ecumenism of the threatened–we pray for our sister churches’ safety as they pray for ours. This poor man was convinced the church has mistreated him and his overwhelming troubles in life are the fault of hypocrites in robes and pews. If he were in his right mind, we could have told him that hypocrites are the only kind of people God has to work with. We are on our way to being saints, but aren’t there yet.

Yet this man was clearly not in his right mind. Most people I know have someone in their family with mental illness. We pray for them and hope they will one day be “clothed, and in their right mind,” in the presence of Jesus. Thankfully Boone PD seem to have apprehended him. We will have security at church for the near future just the same. We give thanks for those who protect us, including our own Bobby Creed and Brandon Greer. We also know our security in the deepest sense is in God alone. Thank you to Jennifer Whittington and our trustees who worked hard on this, as they always do, to take care of our facilities and of us.

A second thing is a brief retreat I took with some church folks recently to Mepkin Abbey in Monck’s Corner, SC. I have retreated there before years ago, and wrote of the abbey in my book An Introduction to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Trappist monks go to church 8 times a day–they pray for a living. And a handful of college kids, our lay leader, our chair of worship and of our prayer team and some others joined them, to chant psalms at 3 AM. Jaylynn and I saw a monk we knew years ago named Father Christian, age 99, whose bright mind reminded me of Tom Cottingham. As a group we prayed for our church (including after we heard of the threat above). These Catholic monks were impressed by how diligent we Methodists were in attending worship! I trust they came back refreshed and ready to serve and lead in our church, their jobs, our community, and their lives.

I hope to take more of you to Mepkin in the future after this first, experimental visit. Let me know if you are interested. Being with them reminded me of why we’re called Methodist. We are methodical about prayer, practicing it as often as we can, like a convert to a new sport, like someone who has fallen in love, we want to sneak away and pray at every opportunity.

Advent is about the hope of God breaking into the world, first in Christ, then in our hearts, soon in the entire universe in a way that will draw all flesh to worship him. Let us pray for those most lost, those who protect, those who pray, and all of us to be drawn anew into Christ’s tiny and world-commanding arms.