Do We Have a Good God? – Kurt Young reacting to Morgan Guyton’s Message

Greetings loyal blog readers.  We, for the size church we are, are truly blessed to have some incredible guest preachers come through our midst.  This week, it was Morgan Guyton.  Morgan is the author of “How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes to Toxic Christianity”. His blog Mercy Not Sacrifice is hosted at Patheos. He and his wife Cheryl are co-directors of NOLA Wesley, a Reconciling United Methodist campus ministry at Tulane and Loyola in New Orleans, LA.

               Now, Pastor Cheri loves to preach from a manuscript.  In part that is to make things a whole lot easier on your blogging team.  Don’t get us wrong, the Holy Spirit often takes her off the script, and you’ll know that, if you join us in worship, if you see myself or one of our team furiously typing onto a laptop.  We sit and follow along and then edit as the Holy Spirit leads her.  

               However, not all pastors preach from a manuscript.  Some memorize one and share with us.  Others draft an outline and we fill it in for you.  Others, like Morgan, have it all inside them and share with us.  They make our job more challenging, but our worship amazing, just like the other styles.  But, for those of us who want to give you written word learners a better long distance experience, we get to have a white knuckle Sunday on weeks like this.  But it’s worth it.

               If you don’t know, Pastor Cheri’s last church, before founding the Village was Central United Methodist Church.  She was the longest serving pastor in its hundred plus year history.  Central was, like us, a Reconciling Ministry church and did some incredible ministry in its neighborhood.  Sadly, five pastors later, Central has closed.  But some of its incredible contributions live on, including Morgan.   In to his book, Morgan credits Central, during Cheri’s time there, with saving his life and putting him on a path to his ministry.

 

               Our scripture this week was Luke 11:  1-13 for those following along on the web.  If you’ve not read it, do so before reading any further.  This one time where the analogies are very needed.  Done yet?  If not, take your time, if not read on.   And here’s my best attempt at capturing his amazing message from today:

               So when you ask for a fish do you get a snake instead? When you ask for an egg, do you get a scorpion instead?  I sure hope not.   But that’s what our scripture speaks about this week.  Let’s go with a more modern analogy.

Ever go to a white elephant party?  Morgan was at a church in Northern Virginia. They absolutely loved having them.  We’ve done some in my family and we’ve done one at the Village as well.  Morgan’s church really loved them.  If you do this often, there are always favorite white elephant gifts.  In my family it was a light up Virgin Mary.  At Morgan’s church, the favorites included talking gnomes, a singing and talking fish, and amazingly a bottle of Arbor Mist wine.

Imagine opening a Christmas gift from a loving parent and getting a snake or a scorpion.  Pretty bizarre to imagine a parent giving a child that. But look at our world, you see things like that every day.  Civil war and unrest and terrorism abound.  a world of plenty and amazing medicine we see hunger and death from diseases that we cure daily in our country.   Looking around our world, get to wondering if we have a good god?

Morgan comes from an evangelical background, so how this could happen with our loving God was easy.  The answer to that was and is always that sin was the answer.  And that works for some issues, for example the civil war in Syria is due to violence and hoarding and greed.  But we can’t explain all of that with sin. 

 Vincent who is eight years old, who Morgan met through a former church is battling brain cancer.  You can’t explain that with sin.  Vincent has a stint to drain fluid from brain.   Also has a shaved head, with crease in his skull.  He’s otherwise a vivacious kid with look of a cyborg per Morgan.  But he has a positive, wise attitude about life.  He can hardly see or hear, but is joyful. 

  

Like Morgan, it doesn’t make any sense to me that I’m privileged as much as we are, and we get our prayers answered.  We both have meaningful jobs where we get to help people and see the fruit of our works.  We both have roofs over our heads, cars that start when we ask, spouses and children who have what they need.  This, when there are kids in Syria or Sudan praying for peace, parents there praying for food or medicine or safety for their children and people all over the world whose prayers go seemingly unheard.  

It’s hard to see a good God, when you live in a world of snakes and scorpions.  And we’re not just talking metaphorical ones.  Morgan’s wife’s cousin has a ranch in Texas.  Unlike other animals, scorpions don’t need provocation to attack.  He and his wife were sleeping in a bed and they would come in and sting them with no provocation.  Not an experience I want to have.  And hard to see any good in that.  

               And it is hard at times to see any good in what is going on in the world.  What is God doing?  If you’ve asked that question, you’re not along.  Many of us have as well.  And Jesus has an interesting way of explaining things for us today, then again he was explaining it to people two thousand years ago.  

Jesus, in this week’s scripture story, makes analogy of neighbor trying to feed guests and pestering and persevering with neighbor to get food to feed them.  In the story he is telling, the message is ask and prayers will be answered, knock and the door will be opened.  But the question is what door will be opened.  It’s not always the door we expect will be open. Sometimes different than what we were asking for.  

God gives us the Holy Spirit when we pray.  May seem like an empty thing.  But it’s actually the most profound gift we can receive.  It changes everything about our lives.  When we receive the presence of God, everything changes.  

Morgan served as a pastor in hospital rooms, with people with cancer, with everything falling apart objectively.  He describes that despite that, they were at peace.  He was a chaplain in a Veterans Administration Oncology Ward. And he described not having a clue what to say or do to comfort the patients, but he said something amazing would happen. They would minister to me.  They would reassure me.  Share their witness to me.   Assure me of God’s presence.  

In 2002, Morgan was living here in Toledo. Specifically, he was living at the Collingwood Art Center.  Morgan Was living there for really cheap, as all artists could.  You had to pass an audition that you were creating some form of art.  He says though, the audition was really easy as they let me in.  Rent was very cheap, then again, got a cell in a former convent, a small bed and desk in room only.  It really is a cool concept.  The challenge is, that when get a bunch of artists together, where artists haven’t dealt with issues that make them such great artists, you get a strange brew. There were love triangles, self medications, etc. 

Morgan grew up in a church and he knew he needed a new church home.  He decided to walk blocks around the corner to Central United Methodist Church.   He had, to that point, believed God was there and loved him, because supposed to, but didn’t know in his heart, just his head.  

Growing up evangelical, he had never been to a church where gay people were there in large, open numbers.  But when he walked into Central UMC, that was what he was greeted with.  But he knew that meant they would not be fundamentalists.  But things went much further, the members of Central were the most welcoming he ever encountered.  Having been a member for a decade, I agree.  The only welcome in the ballpark I’ve received, and I’ve been warmly welcomed into every church I’ve attended, was an African American United Methodist Church in Harlem who welcomed Cheri and I on our first trip together as a new couple many years ago.   

At the time, Central was hosting a book study on Henri Nouwen’s “Life of the Beloved’.  And it connected Morgan to God like never before and him to the fact that he is a beloved child of God like never before.  He began trying to rise up to connect with God’s love for himself.  He wanted to rise up into his air, rather than slouch in the corner with his cigarette.  

Morgan’s message about the goodness of God is not about worldly accomplishments.  It’s not about getting the right job, having the right stuff.  It’s about the presence of God.  The peace of God’s presence.  And that’s what his time at Central showed him. 

One key thing he and I learned from the women who ran Central at the time, Cheri and our friend Tanya, was centering prayer.  If you’ve not experienced it, let me try to describe it to you.  You find a quiet, calm space.  For Morgan it was his room at the Arts Center.  For me, it’s my office with all of the electronics silenced and the door closed.  You then find a focal point, Morgan lit a simple candle, for me it’s different points in my office, a picture of my family, a memento from a client given as a thank you, or my imitation Samurai swords (the word translates to we serve).  

You then just breathe in and out.  Usually you pick a word or a phrase to repeat as you breathe in and out.  For me, it’s usually “here I am God” as I draw breath in and “make me your servant” as I breathe out.  The journey of spiritual growth and then going out in the world to change it for the better.  For Morgan, it was “God please clear a space for you in my heart”.  I only do this about 10 minutes per day, five days a week.  Morgan said that several hundred times a night.  He waited for days and days, but heard nothing.  

Last night, Morgan went to the Arts Center and sat down at a bench, where he smoked maybe a thousand cigarettes.  And he realized that his prayers were answered.  That absence then made him hungry.  It set him on a journey to find God’s presence.  It was, for him, a holy space last night.  As Morgan said, when you’re able to live in that presence, doesn’t matter what God throws at you.  You will know the goodness of God.  

Last Thursday, Donald Trump said as of January 20, 2017, we will be perfectly safe, all will be right with our country and world with his leadership and God’s protection.  I agree with Morgan, we don’t have that kind of God.  We have a god who will fill our hearts with peace.   When we knock, God will open a door.  We will not have a perfect world, but we’ll have peace with what we have. 

How have you tasted the presence of God in your prayer life?  Think about a place or a time where you felt perfectly at safe or at peace.  Where was there a prayer that was answered.  If you have answer you want to share, please feel free to post on our blog or Facebook page.  

And again, thank you to Morgan, his wife and children for joining us.  If you’ve enjoyed his message, his book “How Jesus Saves The World From Us” is available on Amazon.com or through Westminister John Knox Press at wjkbooks.com.