June 15th, 2016

​This past week I attended my second Penn Central Conference Annual Meeting in Selinsgrove, PA.  It was a good experience primarily because of all the many friends and colleagues I was able to see and visit with again.  As was the case last year, the Hearts and Minds Bookstore had a display with the latest in books designed to make a pastor salivate.  I managed to get away this year for under $100 – quite an accomplishment for me!
Of the thousands of books on display, I happened to pick one up entitled “Room to Grow,” by Martin Copenhaver.  Rev. Copenhaver is the President of Andover Newton Theological School and a United Church of Christ minister.  I had never read him before but was interested in the books premise – it was described as a book of pastoral meditations that offered insights into the countless ways we try to live the Christian life.  In a time when there is so much division in our country and in Christ’s church, it seemed like a good way to discover how God can, and does work uniquely in the lives of so many diverse people.  The last line of the description especially appealed to me – “...these reflections will renew and inspire Christians in their daily walk.”
Being a pastor is sometimes difficult so things that might “renew and inspire” are always worthwhile.  Many clergy encounter times of discouragement and burnout when after months and years of trying to preach and teach the love of Christ, we see people do exactly the opposite.  Rather than becoming that voice of compassion and understanding in a very broken world, we too often contribute to the conversation of disunity and bitterness.  Rather than listening to learn from others, we attack and shout at one another in a spirit of intolerance.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m as guilty of this as the next person!
But not to be too depressing rarely a week goes by that I don’t come to face-to-face with one of the great equalizers – death.  This week, all of us have had death thrust upon us once again as we’ve witnessed another senseless killing in Orlando, FL.  It’s not been the first terrorist attack and it will certainly not be the last.  I may have more to say about these attacks later but as I read Rev. Copenhaver’s very first chapter, I came upon these words: “Death is a teacher, and among the things it can teach us is the wide and often tragic gap between the questions “What is important to you?” and “How do you spend your time?”  Experiencing the death of a loved one or pondering our own death can provide perspective on our lives and help us see what is truly important and worthy of devotion and what is not.”
The reference verses for this particular meditation are from Luke 12:16-21.  In these verses, Jesus describes a farmer who spends his life building larger and larger barns to hold his bountiful harvest.  The farmer promises himself that when he has accumulated enough, he will take his ease, relax and enjoy the fruits of his many years of labor.  But in an instant, all that becomes irrelevant, as God tells the man, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.”  Copenhaver goes on to surmise what the subsequent visit to the man’s wife might have been like.  In the quiet reflection that such times bring, we often stop and ask the question, “What was truly important to this person?” and “How did they spend their time?”
This week has been a swirl of emotions to include grief, anger, sadness, and fear.  As I’ve thought about the families of those killed in Orlando, read and listened to the opinions of politicians and people in the news and social media, I’ve also encountered death and dying on a more personal level.  Through all of this, the reality is we all have a finite amount of time on this earth, and the events of this week should perhaps prompt all of us to reflect on our mortality and the priorities in our lives.  How are we spending our time?  Is it to encourage and comfort one another?  What is important to us?  How do we treat and speak to others? Perhaps we should take to heart Copenhaver’s observation that one of the crowning ironies of our lives is the fact that the most important things in life, are also the most easily postponed.