Chris Yaw

Welcome! I’m an Episcopal priest serving a congregation in Metro Detroit... With a passion for gun safety... A zest for online Christian formation... A zeal for video blogging... A budding writer... A heart for those who have unintentionally harmed... A commitment to workforce housing... A love for marrying people... And a wonderful wife, three kids, and a cat... If we have common interests or not, I'd love to connect with you.

Can I LOVE My iPhone?

It’s been said that people who believe that money can’t by happiness don’t know where to shop.

That, or they’ve never seen the looks on the faces of little kids when they come down for Christmas. Or the ecstasy of a teen with a new iPhone. Or the smile of a spouse when they get a new car.

We understand that we were designed by God to enjoy material things, in the right way of course. The point though, is that there is a right way.

In Sunday’s Gospel Jesus warns us about the perils of greed, that it can lead to selfishness and ignorance of the plight of the needy. But more importantly Jesus opens us up to the possibilities of living more fulfilled and purposefully by longing for something else.

Mark Zuckerberg famously said about his company, Facebook, that, ‘we don’t help people connect more efficiently to make money, we make money to help people connect more efficiently.’ In other words, it’s not about the money, it’s about the mission.

And this seems to be what Jesus is saying – go ahead and have your new iPhone, but don’t let your new iPhone have you. It is a capricious and unfulfilling God (as all Verizon customers know…) and it will cause you to focus on the wrong thing and become less of the person you want to be.

So if it’s not about the money but the mission, how do you define your mission? If you can’t, what’s that mean? If you can, what’s it calling you to focus on right now?

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Reading

Robinson Crusoe – Daniel DaFoe

The Good of Affluence – John Schneider

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger – Ron Sider

Why Pray?

A chaplain friend was visiting patients in a hospital when he stopped to see a woman who had just been admitted. At the conclusion of their conversation he asked if he could pray for her. She told him very politely, “No thanks, I don’t believe in prayer. I don’t believe it does anything and I think it’s a waste of time.” My friend heeded her request, they continued their conversation, and then parted on a pleasant note.

This Sunday we hear from someone who had a much different take on prayer. As we know, Jesus was a serious pray-er. He often went to solitary places and stayed up all night to pray. Jesus was so convinced of the necessity of prayer that He taught us what became the most famous prayer in the world: The Our Father. Jesus articulated exactly how we should pray, what we should ask for, how persevering we should be, and how apt God is to respond. In contrast to the woman in the hospital bed, Jesus seems convinced that prayer does things, it is not a waste of time, and God does seem to care about our piddly concerns.

So from the perspective of someone who never prays, we hear how useless it is. While from the perspective of someone who prays often (and happens to be God...) we hear it is a lifeline. This may lead us to ponder that the reason we don’t see the importance of prayer in our lives may be because we’re not doing it enough.

Perhaps we're being encouraged to spend less time questioning prayer and more time doing it.

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Reading

Robinson Crusoe – William DeFoe

Free – Mark Scandrette

Practicing Resurrection – Eugene Peterson

Dealing with Distraction

Just sitting down to write you this morning has been an exercise in distraction all its own – emails, phone calls, and text messages are just the start. How about your morning?

The truth is that our lives are full of potential distractions – jobs, family, media, and free time (what’s that?)… And in Sunday’s gospel we hear how we might deal with them.

We pick up our story with a visit from Jesus to a friend’s home, where Martha and her sister Mary played host. It’s commonly assumed that Martha was busy taking care of guests while Mary just sat around - hence, Jesus chastised Martha for her distraction and commended Mary for her attention. However that’s not what the text says. We get no indication that Mary didn’t have as many tasks to tend to as Martha. What we do get is the idea that Martha allowed these tasks to distract her.

The importance of this distinction is that you and I often feel like the spiritual life is one in which we lock ourselves into solitary confinement, shunning responsibility, and wearing such heavy blinders that we’re oblivious to all that might divert us.

As we know, this is not our present reality. We can never prevent distractions, but we can improve the way we deal with them. Mary’s good decision wasn’t that she was bereft of distraction, it’s that she did not heed them, Mary put aside her diversions and focused on what was most important: Christ’s voice in her life.

What are we allowing to take us away from the voice of Jesus? How are we allowing the less important to supplant our awareness of God’s presence? What priorities need resetting and precedents need reexamining? Distractions are often only distractions when we allow them to be so.

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Reading:

Practicing Resurrection – Eugene Peterson

Switch – Chip and Dan Heath

Resilient Ministry – Burns. Chapman, Guthrie

Chris Yaw

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