Podcast: Bumping Up Against Grace

The Practicing The Presence Podcast

With Guest: Dr. Mark Stamm

Practicing The Presence is a podcast from Arapaho United Methodist Church. This episode (Episode 2) features Pastor Blair Thompson-White and Perkins’ School Of Theology Professor Dr. Mark Stamm as they talk about John Wesley feeling “strangely warmed” and the practices that we can use in our daily lives to get close to God or as he puts it, to “Bump up against Grace.”

About Dr. Stamm

Dr. Mark W. Stamm is a Professor of Christian Worship at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He is a graduate of Boston University (Th.D.) where he served as a research associate and consultant on the Boston University Worship, Music, and Religious Identity Project.

Dr. Stamm is an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, he came to the Perkins faculty in July 2000 after serving seventeen years as a pastor of local congregations in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. At Perkins, he teaches courses in liturgical and sacramental history, theology, and practice. As Chapel Elder, he gives oversight to the school’s chapel program. He also served eight years as Abbot of the Order of Saint Luke.

He has written several books related to the theology and practice of the sacraments including Let Every Soul Be Jesus’ Guest, A Theology of the Open Table (Abingdon Press, 2006) and Devoting Ourselves to the Prayers, A Baptismal Theology for the Church’s Intercessory Work (Discipleship Resources, 2014).

He is married to Margie Stamm, a nurse in the Dallas Independent School District, and they are the parents of two adult children.

A Cross-shaped Community

A Cross-shaped Community

We must see on the cross our call to action and our responsibility. We must see on the cross the people who are suffering today, those with whom Christ identifies with today. Can you see who is there today? 

I see the migrant children who are separated from their families and I see LGBTQ+ persons who have been marginalized by the church and I see children who are starving to death in Yemen because of war and I see the poor who cannot afford to go and see a doctor, and I see those who are discriminated against because of their race or their gender or their religion and can you see who is on the cross with Christ today? 

Seeing leads to feeling leads to action. We are called to see Jesus on the cross and to see like Jesus from the cross, to see a world where there is no more war and no more oppression and where everyone has what they need to thrive and to do something about it, to be foolish enough to think we can make a difference.

Citizens Of The Kin-dom

Faith & Justice Series:
Citizens Of The Kin-dom

Pastor Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, a fellow Methodist minister in D.C., makes this profound and challenging observation that instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans who happen to be Christians as we have tended to do in recent decades...

"The extraordinary alternative is for Christian communities to claim primary citizenship not in America (or the nation in which they live) but in the Kin-dom of God." 

To say yes to Jesus and yes to His kingdom is to say 'no' to the standard behaviors and standard operating procedures of the kingdoms of this world which means we will stand out a bit. I have been returning to this question again and again as I have been thinking about what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, from Ginger Gaines Cirelli:

If churches are seeking to live as citizens of God's Kin-dom, then why are so many Christian people barely distinguishable from anyone else in their values and priorities? 

The Practice Of Saying No

The Practice Of Saying No

For a while now, spiritual leaders have been saying that the greatest spiritual problem of our time is busyness. Some have pointed out that the Chinese character for being busy is made up of two elements: heart and killing. Busyness kills the heart. That is a violent image...busyness kills the heart. Thomas Merton says that our overwork is a pervasive form of violence today.

Busyness is causing harm to ourselves and our world.

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence...activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

- Thomas Merton

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Video used during sermon:

Encountering Others

We are the ones to see and treat each person and each encounter as holy, to go out of our way to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are all connected. Do you hear Christ even now? 

I am being bullied, stand up for me.

I am separated from my children, help me.

I am failing in school, tutor me.

I am Muslim, welcome me. 

I am homeless, listen to my story.

There is no such thing as those people. There is no such thing as other people or other people’s children or other people’s problems.

Watch the video used during the sermon:

Paying Attention

When Moses notices the burning bush he could have said, “oh wow look at that,” and just kept going with his sheep. Or “that’s interesting but I don’t have time to check that out, I have an agenda to keep, I’ll come back later.” Or he could have been busy looking down at his phone and glanced up and thought, meh, and gone back to the captivating cat video he was watching.

The point is if he had decided to just keep on going with his sheep or if he had decided to come back later, he wouldn’t have been Moses. He would have just been another guy, just another shepherd. Instead, he is paying attention and turns aside to see the great sight of God and because he does, he becomes this great partner with God who gets to work with God to set people free.

Practicing The Presence Podcast with Diane Bricker

Practicing The Presence is a podcast from Arapaho United Methodist Church. This episode (Episode 1!) features Pastor Blair Thompson-White and Spiritual Director Diane Bricker in a conversation about how to experience the presence of God through life and spiritual practice.

Walking The Earth

Walking is an act of disconnecting and reconnecting. As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we remember the walks of the civil rights movement - they walked to disconnect us from a system that was designed to keep one part of us separated from another.  They disconnected themselves from thoughts of their own safety, because many of them were beaten and some of them died.  

They walked disconnected from a destination but reconnected to a purpose.  

They reconnected to each other and found courage in struggling together.  They reconnected to a sense of dignity and worth as people created in God’s image. And they walked with God, the God who executes justice for the orphan and the widow.  The God who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. The God who requires of us that we walk in those ways.

Waking Up To The Presence Of God

If I could summarize what the spiritual life is, I would say it is learning to see. It is earning to see the holy in the ordinary - learning to see that everything is spiritual.

The Bible is a collection of stories, poems, letters, written by people who experienced God, people who saw God and were so transformed by what they saw that they wrote about it, they passed it on to help generations that followed to see God too, to learn how to see God’s presence in our world, in our lives every moment.

Because the Biblical witness and experience and reason all point to the truth that everything is sacred and that our journey towards becoming our best selves is really about learning to see the holy everywhere. Learning to see.

Your Light Has Come

The birth of Christ is the light that has come into the world not just for the people of Israel but for the whole world, and the three kings represent that, they are foreigners from a foreign land who see the light and receive the light and pay homage to the light, too.

This light that has come into the world, this light that has cut through the darkness, is for everyone. This new day, this new dawn that marks the beginning of the end for the dark things of this world is for everyone. Salvation is for everyone.

Magnify The Lord

May you dare to believe that you are capable of magnifying the Lord and may you say: Here I am: here is my body, here is my mind, here is my present, here is my future, here is my soul, it is yours. Let me be exalted for you or brought low for you. Let me magnify your name.

Change Your Mind

Change Your Mind

Have you ever made a decision that led you off the path? Ever made a mistake that led you off the path? Ever had a feeling you were going the wrong way but you’ve been too stubborn, too hard-headed, to stop? And there is this moment when you go: oh this isn’t good. This isn’t right. I don’t have peace. I don’t have contentment. I’m not experiencing joy. You come to see this isn’t the life you were meant to live, you are off the path.

The Bible reveals this truth about the human experience--that we are good, and we start out on this path--but we tend to wander from it - we are prone to wander off the path or we think we know a shortcut or know better. Whatever the case, we end up going the wrong direction but it doesn’t change our inherent goodness, we are still good. We just are not walking in the way that leads to life and God wants that for us. God wants us to thrive. So God does everything in God’s power to help us to return.

Sermon Media:

Click Here to Watch Video From Sermon

Picture from Pastor Blair’s Hike:

Choir Christmas Cantata

On December 9, 2018 the Arapaho United Methodist Church Choir alongside the Philharmonic Orchestra of Texas presented "The Many Moods of Christmas" - a collection of traditional Christmas songs arranged by Robert Shaw and divided into 4 suites. You will also hear testimonies from Sungmoon Lee, Kasey Cummings and Eric Snyder.

Stand and Lift Up Your Heads

There are forces in this world that want us to stay numb and inside our houses wrapped in warm laundry and eating bread. There are forces in this world that would rather us not be woke.

No. We are woke because of Christ. Because the Christ in you and the Christ in me stands up in the face of fear, and in the face of suffering, and in the face of dehumanization and says: I will not look away, I will not back down, I will not sit down, I will not let it go...not until the poor have good news and the hungry are fed and the sick are cared for and the stranger is welcomed.

click here to watch the video used during the sermon

Agreement Verses Change

Has this ever happened to you? You see a problem that needs to be solved but you can’t solve it by yourself? So you let your manager know and they agree but then you wait for change? And you wait and wait and wait. You have gotten agreement but what you really wanted was change. In our scripture today James is saying that if you agree on who Jesus is then there will be a change.

The Good Samaritan

There's a great saying from author Anne Lamott that you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.In today’s text we read about when a lawyer asks Jesus a question. This lawyer, is really good. He knows the law.  And when Jesus asks him what the law says, he says: 

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself." 

And Jesus begins his response with…

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead."

Covered By Grace

You are covered…do you know that you are covered…maybe you don’t believe you are covered, like maybe you feel like you’ve done something along the way and your coverage got dropped…

 No, no you’re still covered. So you messed up, so you think you aren’t worthy of coverage… maybe you’ve forgotten that this isn’t a divine points game, this isn’t about earning or achieving, I mean the rest of the world is into that but God isn’t into that…and we know that because of Christ crucified, because through him, success is redefined, weak is the new strong…the way up is the way down…

Watch the clip used in the service below

The Radical Thing About This Table

We may disagree on the issues, we may have conflict with one another, but we never ever stop seeing one another as brothers and sisters.

The pull of tribalism is strong now...it is strong and it is trying to influence us to treat one another as less than human beings, it is trying to get us to name call and to have closed minds and mean spirits…but it is no match for the power of Christ that is present at this table and in this bread and cup that compels us to love our neighbor.

Eager To Give

Talk about what money you have, learn about where it is and where it is, your 401ks and your IRAs, and your Roth IRAs, and your debt, and track your spending and your saving, because if you don't each know what you have and where you are spending it and why, if you don't talk about it, money will be your master, instead of your servant. 

Money will possess you--I am being intentional with that weighty word--Money has this incredibly power, and if you don't think about it and talk about it, you'll argue about it, you'll fight about it, it will come between you, it will rule over you, yes your relationship with money, your attachment to money, can take over your marriage, it can take over your life.

God knows the power money can have in our lives, I think this is why Jesus talks so much about money, teaches about money, invites us to see money in a different way: God knows we human beings struggle with consumerism. 

All In

Pastor Blair woke up with laryngitis on Sunday morning, so she reworked her sermon. In addition to her raspy voice, you'll hear testimonies from Pastor David and Kelly Carpenter and have time to reflect on your own response to the question: 'What would going on 'all in' with Jesus look like in my life?'