by klamathfumc@gmail.com | May 26, 2022 | Articles
I grew up singing these lines in Sunday school:
Read your Bible, pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow. And you’ll grow, grow, grow. And you’ll grow, grow, grow. Read your Bible, pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow.
These lines can have a moralistic ring to it as though real Christians are the ones that read their Bible daily and make time to pray, the rest of us who are less consistent are somehow less than. I try to carve out devotional time, but I miss days and sometimes play catch-up. I pray every day, but often in a haphazard, occasional way. Something comes up and I pray about it. Other days I have a time set aside to spend with God. Those are the good days, but my practice is not perfect.
But let me share something I am learning about daily prayer: doing it daily makes it easier. Have you ever let the pots and pans pile up from the weekend and then you go to do the dishes, and it suddenly a much bigger job? Or one I am dealing with right now is weeding. I have a garden plot that fell into disuse, and I have spent hours pulling weeds, turning the soil, and trying to get it ready for kale, zucchini, and tomatoes. And I am not there yet! Once my garden is in, weed management becomes much easier. I will already be there watering and tending the plants, harvesting lettuce and herbs every day. Pulling weeds will become just a thing to do when I am out there already and not something that requires heroic effort.
Prayer is like that. Do you find it difficult to pray? Does God feel distant? Do you long for a deeper, more satisfying prayer life? We all go through seasons where prayer feels less easy and we wonder where God is, but as we learn the habit of daily prayer it becomes less work and more enjoyable. We have more time to water and tend and harvest the things which God has planted in our lives. Daily does not have to mean drudgery. By establishing intentional routines, we get to experience all God has in store for us. And we grow, grow, grow.
Pastor James

by klamathfumc@gmail.com | Apr 28, 2022 | Articles
Wendell Berry’s poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front, ends with this delightful exhortation: Practice Resurrection.” In Berry’s poem, he contrasts the death-dealing social expectations we are each handed by our culture, and he invites us to do things everyday that ‘doesn’t compute,’ that does not make sense in the system and social order we find ourselves in. By practicing resurrection, we are trying on a new way of being in the world.
What does mean for us to practice resurrection? Sometimes we practice the things we are trying to learn or get better at. Sometimes, we practice the things that are our calling, the way a lawyer practices law, or a doctor practices medicine. Practicing resurrection is both about relearning and living into our calling as beneficiaries of abundant life in Christ.
We have spent two years worrying about a virus. We were vaccinated and did our part to slow the spread of the virus. We also felt manipulated, and cajoled by the system, impinged upon by guidelines and mandates, and restrictive regulations. We have watched children suffer socially and academically. We ourselves have felt anxious and isolated. None of this has felt particularly life giving.
The wisdom of the church calendar is that we need more than one day to practice resurrection. It takes time for us to get it! We celebrated Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday (April 17th this year), but Easter is not over yet! There is more resurrection for us to practice together! The Easter season begins on Easter Sunday and stretches over seven Sundays, culminating on Ascension Sunday (May 29th). This is the longest named season in the church calendar, dedicated to exploring what it means to live in light of Christ’s resurrection
I encourage you to take time to press into this season of resurrection. What are the things that are giving you life right now? How is Jesus empowering you to live a new way? What ways is Jesus calling us to live a life that is different from our culture? We may not be able to answer these questions, but as we practice resurrection, we are free to imagine new possibilities and try them on. And as Romans 8:11 tells us, Christ’s resurrection power is in us, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”
So, Practice Resurrection!
Pastor James

by klamathfumc@gmail.com | Mar 31, 2022 | Articles

Spring has sprung and we have already seen the signs of the world’s reawakening: wildflowers in the grass, buds on the trees, and bird song in the crisp cold of the morning. The grey-brown hillsides suddenly are full of verdant greens and wisps of color. As Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God!” The earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness thereof!
Spring always catches me off guard, especially this year, after what has been a fairly mild winter. The lack of snow on the mountains, and our low water table means the possibility of another dry, hot summer. But before that we have the gift of Spring, with its promise of new life.
The Christian church in the northern hemisphere celebrates Easter in the Spring, when these metaphors of resurrection are close at hand. The crocus, the tulip, and daffodil rise up from the earth, the Flora and Fauna reappear, and bare branches of the plum trees come alive, and teem with blossoms. We watch the world wake up, and we are reminded yet again of the Creator’s handiwork.
It was two years ago in March 2020 when everything shut down because of COVID-19. We were then in the season of Lent and the church was already exploring the rhythms of fasting, deprivation, and doing without. Nobody then knew what these past two years would cost us (we didn’t know it would be two years!). We didn’t know the things we would miss out on, the loneliness and hard times. But here we are, it is Spring of the Year of the Lord, 2022. Jesus has been raised from the dead, and the world around you is full of new life, and the old life that our seasons forgot. The world again is alive!
Make sure you take time to enjoy the sights and smells and all the splashes of color that Spring has brought in her wake! This is the season of resurrection, and it is worth enjoying and celebrating! Yes, there will still be hard days ahead and there are issues we are still facing as a culture (e.g. a reeling economy, the peril of war, the menace of summer wildfires, etc.) and personally. The faith that carried us through some difficult days this past two years, will still be a reservoir we will need to draw on. But let’s not rush ahead of ourselves. There is life all around us ready to fill our hearts with wonder. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Pastor James
by klamathfumc@gmail.com | Mar 17, 2022 | Articles
“Are you giving up anything for Lent?”
Traditionally, the season of Lent has been a time fasting as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter. But why give something up? Why fast at all? Does God like you better if you fast from something? Are you more holy? Is God more likely to listen to your prayers if you do not eat chocolate for six weeks?
Fasting is a spiritual discipline which Christians have practiced for the past 2,000 years; however, often people practiced fasting in ways which were unhealthy, both physically and spiritually. No, giving up food does not make God like you more, you are already good enough. God is not impressed by our heroic self-discipline, and it does not move God to be more attentive to us.
New Testament scholar Scot McKnight says, “Fasting is a person’s whole body, natural response to life’s sacred moments.”1 We fast as a response to the things God is doing or has done in our lives. It is a way of bringing our whole self to God. During Lent, we fast so we can attend more fully to the reality of the cross and the glory of resurrection as we prepare for Easter. So, if we give up something, such as food or beverage, social media, or another habit, the purpose is not so much to change that part of our life, as it is to cultivate our awareness of God in this season. We choose for a time to not do something so that we may give our attention to what Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection instead.
Fasting, done right is a type of self-care. If you have medical issues, you should not give up anything, or fast in anyway which would compromise your health. But I would encourage us to explore if there is something we can give up which will help us mark this time as sacred. Is there a food or practice we use habitually as a life-coping mechanism? Perhaps consider giving that one thing up (you can cheat on Sundays) and when you feel a craving towards it, let God’s Spirit call you to prayer. In past Lenten seasons, I have given up meat and used the season to think about our food systems and injustice. This year I plan to give up snacking.
Or consider doing the Wesley Fast.2 Through Lent. John Wesley would fast weekly, from Thursday after dinner until Friday dinner. Instead of breakfast and lunch on Fridays, Wesley would take the time to devote himself to prayer.
Whatever you choose to give up, or however you chose to mark this season, remember the purpose is to help us pay closer attention. Fasting reveals our hungers and the things we rely on, and it helps us pay attention to Christ’s presence. The God who poured out his life for us in Jesus is with us in this time as always.
Pastor James
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1 Scot Mcknight, Fasting, (Nashville, Thomas Nelson Press, 2009), xiv.
2The Wesley Fast — Methodist Prayer – https://www.methodistprayer.org/wesleyfast
by klamathfumc@gmail.com | Feb 3, 2022 | Articles
The season after Epiphany, like the Season after Pentecost is named Ordinary Time, so called, because each of our Sundays are numbered (i.e., ordinals) not because these days are dull. And yet there is something to the ordinariness of it. We are no longer living the joy of Christmas lights or the happy surprise of Epiphany. We are not yet journeying with Jesus on the road to the cross. These days, all the days in February this year, just are.
And our ordinary time is full of an unsettling new normal. We are two years into a pandemic, and we are still having to contend with masks, social distancing, staff shortages at schools and local businesses, and overfull hospitals. We have yet another mild winter with not enough snow on the mountains to keep our water table healthy. The political divisions deepen as Republicans and Democrats both peddle their own versions of reality. Everybody speaks their truth. No one is listening. The anxiety of the age has become our everyday life—our Ordinary Time.
One of the hazards of these anxious times is that we find it so easy to find things to worry about. With nostalgia tinted glasses, we remember the way things were and we bemoan the state of things. We complain about having to contend with ongoing restrictions. The numbered Sundays of Ordinary Time are an invitation for us to see Christ, not just in the special seasons and the Church’s high-holy-days, but amid our everyday life. It is a summons away from anxiety to awe, as we grow in grace as disciples of Christ.
My prayer for us in our anxious Ordinary Times is that we would lean into Jesus and, in the words of 1 Peter 5:7, we would ‘cast our cares on him, for he cares for us.’ And that we would awaken to wonder as we sense Christ’s abiding presence with us, our ordinary transformed into something extraordinary!
Pastor James