Category Archives: Discipleship

Did Baby Jesus Cry?

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During a Christmas visit with grandchildren almost twenty years ago, our preschool granddaughters were role playing the nativity. Megan and Emily took turns playing Mary, and I was enlisted to be Joseph. The pretend baby Jesus was a plastic doll that mechanically made baby sounds.

Megan pushed the sound button, and the baby began to cry. She gently cradled Jesus in her arms and tenderly said, “It’s all right, Baby Jesus. Don’t cry.”

Emily responded emphatically, “Megan, baby Jesus didn’t cry!” A profound theological discussion between cousins ensued.

“Yes, he did cry. All babies cry,” Megan said confidently.

“But Jesus was different. He wasn’t like all babies,” thoughtfully countered Emily.

“I know he was different, but he still cried,” protested Megan.

They then glared toward the pretend Joseph to settle the dispute. Little did they realize they were engaging in a vexing centuries-long theological quandary:  the mystery of the Incarnation, the eternal God becoming flesh in a vulnerable little baby.

Emily was right! Jesus is truly different! He is the Son of God, the Logos/Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us!

Megan was also correct! Jesus was truly human. Baby Jesus did cry! He nursed at Mary’s breast, had his diaper changed, suffered, and died!

Emily’s declaration that baby Jesus didn’t cry likely came from the Christmas carol, “Away in a Manger.” It’s understandably popular, especially among children. The second verse contains these words, “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes….”

It’s a lovely carol, but it falls short of expressing the meaning of the Incarnation by denying the full humanity of Jesus. In fact, such an interpretation was declared a heresy and runs counter to the New Testament witness.

Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus died (John 11:35). He wept over the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). I suspect that he wept often throughout his life as he experienced the inevitable pain, disappointment, loss, disappointment inherent in being human. Furthermore, as the Christ, his weeping continues for a world filled with grieving people and wayward cities.

Why is it important to note that baby Jesus cried? It is tempting to deny the humanity of Jesus and thereby remove him from the real world of human beings with all our struggles. It is far easier to sentimentalize the baby Jesus than it is to humbly enter the profound mystery of God coming among us as a vulnerable, helpless, whimpering baby.

Only a baby Jesus who cries and an adult Jesus who weeps can be the Savior of a broken, suffering, sorrowful, sinful, and weeping humanity. Only a Jesus who cries can understand and redeem our tears.

The Gift of Presence

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The absence of loved ones is keenly felt during this season when presence with family and friends dominants expectations and schedules. Yet, Advent/Christmas is about Presence amid Absence as God enters the darkness and absence in the form of Incarnate Love. Norma Sessions beautifully captures the essence of that comforting presence amid haunting absence.

Images and Reflections

As the anniversary of Dale’s passing approached, the “lasts” grew vivid. Remembering the evening I last heard his voice was the most painful. His exuberant presence had always filled a room; his absence created a cavern.

A loved one described it well: “There’s such gone-ness.”

That sense of void dominated my early days of grieving.

I had thought that the many losses of the previous decade would prepare me for this final one. With each disease-related change, there was an aspect of Dale that I missed. I had learned to live with absence amid presence.

But there was no preparation for the final loss: Complete absence. Emptiness. “Gone-ness.”

There were times when the darkness and emptiness seemed total…when the absence felt too much to bear. I missed him—every version of him. I still do. However, now I see that throughout these months, I have been accompanied. Although…

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All means ALL!

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All means ALL! To treat some as less than–or as an aberration or abomination–is in violation of the Gospel and incompatible with Christian teaching.

I preached these words at First United Methodist Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (website) on November 20, a pivotal Sunday in the liturgical year and in this congregation’s history.

Christ the King Sunday pivots the liturgical year from the culmination of Pentecost to the expectancy of Advent. Added to the significance of this particular Sunday was the fact that this was the congregation’s first opportunity to vote on whether to join the Reconciling Ministries Network (website). A “Reconciling congregation” openly welcomes all, including LGBTQIA+ people, into the full life and leadership of the church.

It is a pivotal period in my own life too! I just marked my 82nd birthday and my 62nd year of ministry in The (United) Methodist Church. It has been an ever-expanding journey from narrow provincialism, rigid moralism, and dogmatic exclusivism to a sense of mystery before an expanding cosmos created by a loving God; ongoing experiences of grace upon grace; and ever-deepening friendship with Jesus the Christ, who is “all in all.”

Since Christ is all in all and has reconciled all things, the usual categories by which we evaluate people and build dividing walls of hostility and exclusion no longer apply.

“There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free,” male or female, gay or straight, traditionalist or progressive, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican! All are one as beloved children of God.

Here is the link to the service. The sermon begins at approximately 39 minutes, but I encourage you to experience the entire service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0VvaIVEtE

“What’ll I Do…

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This latest blog by Norma Sessions has implications beyond the grieving process. What do we do when life feels disorienting and uncertain?

Images and Reflections

…when you are far away, and I am blue, what’ll I do?“

I found myself humming this Irving Berlin song recently, and then realized that the lyrics reflect my feelings as I adjust to life without Dale. What will I do? How do I fit in this world without you?

Although episodes are not as intense or as frequent as they were in the early months of grieving, there are still times when I feel acutely disoriented. In my mind’s eye, I see myself flailing about, as if suddenly swept up by an ocean wave, and I struggle to find my footing, to sense anything solid.

The physical presence of the one who so often extended his hand to help me with balance is gone.

Not only is he gone, but my daily focus—my purpose, even—is gone, too. During the last years of Dale’s life, my role as…

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Where Are You?

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This is one of the most beautiful and meaningful expressions of the grieving process that I have read. It poignantly describes my own journey as I seek to weave the love Linda and I shared for sixty years into the fabric of a future without her presence. Norma Sessions has a special gift for using images to capture the deepest and most profound insights and experiences.

Images and Reflections

I was at a meeting for Alzheimer’s caregivers when Dale called. There was fear in his halting voice: “Where…are…you?”

It was a first.

It was also a last. I could no longer leave him alone.

Now I am alone, and Dale’s words are mine: Where are you?

Weren’t you just here? Wasn’t I just preparing your lunch…singing and laughing with you…helping you get ready for bed? Where are you?

Although the words come directly from my grieving heart, they also seem crazy. I was with Dale when he died. I composed his memorial service. I helped bury his ashes.

And yet, the feeling that he should still be here can be strong. It’s easy to “hear” his resonant voice, to “see” him sitting next to me, or to just assume he’s resting in another room. All of our years…working, living, loving together…wove countless threads of a shared life throughout my…

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Gratitude and Grace

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“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look the the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.”

Isaiah 51:1

The June 5-8, 2022, gathering of Holston Annual Conference marked my 61st year attending annual conference sessions. This year’s meeting of my home conference was especially poignant and a reminder of how much the Methodist Connection has shaped my life.

It was thirty years ago, June 1992, that Holston Conference endorsed me for the episcopacy, and six weeks later my membership was transferred to the Council of Bishops. I distinctly remember looking back from the stage at Junaluska after being elected as a bishop to the delegation from Holston Conference. I felt a keen sense of loss! I was leaving the community that had birthed, nurtured, and deployed me as a Christian disciple and pastor.

As the 2022 conference session opened June 5th with “And Are We Yet Alive,” tears welled up! I realized that I never really left home. Holston Conference has continued to do what it has done since I was baptized and received into membership at McKinley Methodist Church more than seventy years earlier. It has nurtured me in faith and sent me forth into ever-broadening circles of connection and expanding experiences of divine grace.

Throughout the four days of “Christian conferencing,” feelings of profound indebtedness and gratitude dominated my experience. As I conversed with longtime friends and colleagues, shared in the worship services and study sessions, listened to reports and debates, and observed the superb leadership of Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett, I realized in greater depth the immeasurable contributions Holston Conference has made to my life.

It was Holston Conference and the Methodist Connection that

  • Changed my image of God from that of an abusive landlord who held me over a rain barrel at age five to teach me to “respect” him to a God who is a Good Shepherd who rescues lost lambs.
  • Launched me on a faith journey grounded in boundless LOVE rather than in fear of eternal punishment and damnation.
  • Believed in me enough to elect me as president of the small youth group at McKinley Methodist Church, believing in me more than I believed in myself.
  • Provided my first experience of “connectionism” as part of a sub-district, district, and conference youth activities.
  • Sent me to a National Youth Convocation at Purdue University in 1958 where I heard my first African American preacher, Dr. James S. Thomas, who later became a colleague bishop, mentor, and friend.
  • Granted me a “Local Pastor’s License” at age 18.
  • Appointed me at age 19 as a student pastor of Watauga Methodist Church, which considered “giving young preachers a start,” as part of their mission.
  • Provided a Conference Youth Assembly where I met a beautiful young woman, Linda Miller, who would become my love and life partner for sixty years.
  • Educated Linda at Emory and Henry College and through her and others taught me that theology “unites the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety.”
  • Equipped me with a solid theological education at Wesley Theological Seminary.
  • Appointed me as a student pastor of the Hunting Hill-MacDonald Chapel Charge where I was first confronted with institutional racism within the very structure of the church and inspired me to address my own white privilege.
  • Ordained me Deacon (1962) and Elder (1965) and welcomed me into conference membership.
  • Appointed me to congregations that would shape me far more than I influenced them: Elizabeth Chapel, Pleasant View, Concord, First Oak Ridge, and Church Street.
  • Elected me as a bishop and assigned me to the Nashville and Jackson Areas and provided unimagined opportunities for growth in leadership, fellowship, discipleship, mission.
  • Selected me as a faculty member at United Methodist related Duke Divinity School and the opportunity to help form future pastors for the church, one of which, Sarah Varnell, preached a marvelous sermon at the 2022 Annual Conference.
  • Included Linda among those remembered with thanksgiving during the Memorial Service in 2020 Annual Conference.
  • Taught me in word and deed that the heart of the Gospel is GRACE, the presence and power of God to create, liberate, restore, forgive, and transform human hearts, communities, nations, and the entire cosmos in the image and reign of Jesus the Christ.

I lament and grieve that the Methodist connection is threatened with schism and disconnection.

But while I grieve, I also give thanks. With all its imperfections and failures, I am profoundly grateful that Holston Conference and the broader Methodist Connection continues to transform lives, expand horizons, broaden the circle of love, and give hope that Christ’s reign of justice, compassion, generosity, hospitality, and peace will come to completion.

The decisive victory has already been won in the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ. God grant that we will live now in the light of that victory!

Jesus’s Crucifixion and Other Victims of Execution

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Amy-Jill Levine’s recent book, Witness at the Cross, includes a chapter entitled “The Other Victims.” It is the account of Jesus’s interaction with the two anonymous men crucified with him. Dr. Levine aptly suggests that the inclusion by the Gospel writers of these two condemned men forces us to consider those awaiting execution in today’s prisons.

Over my years as a pastor and a bishop, I have spent many hours sitting with men condemned to be executed. Unlike the men in the Gospels, the ones I have visited have names. I have known some of their families. I listened to the anguished cries of a mother who watched her son executed by the state. She loved her son no less than the mother of the person he had murdered. In the name of “justice for the victim,” the state created additional victims and added to the culture of violence that plagues our world.

South Carolina is set to resume executions later this month. Since the state has had difficulty obtaining the lethal drugs needed to put Richard Moore to death, he must choose between the electric chair and the firing squad. Below is a letter I have sent to the governor requesting that he stop this barbaric action.

May Jesus’s attentiveness to the two other victims of state-sponsored execution on that fateful day two thousand years ago cause us to remember the approximately 2500 persons awaiting execution in our prisons today. From my understanding of the Incarnation, their execution will be a repeat of Jesus’s crucifixion!

It was for the two “bandits,” those participating in the execution, and us that Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34 CEB).

The Honorable Henry McMaster
State House
1100 Gervais Street
Columbia, South Carolina 29201

Dear Governor McMaster:

               I wish to strongly urge you to stay the execution of Richard Moore, currently scheduled to take place April 29. While Mr. Moore’s crime is a grave tragedy for which accountability is appropriate, it does not reach the level of premeditation and heinousness for which the death penalty is intended. From the news reports and court records, he entered the convenient store unarmed and his offense was fueled by drug addiction; therefore, the resulting murder was not premediated and took place in a struggle over a weapon.

               During this Holy Week for Christians, we relive the state sponsored execution of Jesus the Christ. As a retired United Methodist bishop, pastor, and seminary professor, I strongly support my denomination’s opposition to the death penalty. No evidence exists that executions are a deterrent to crime, and death inflicted by the state only adds to the culture of violence that permeates our society. Having visited persons on death row over more than fifty years of Christian ministry, I can testify that it only adds to the number of victims of violence as the families and friends of those executed are victimized by the state.

 I hope that before you make your decision whether to stop this barbaric act that you will exercise courage and visit with Mr. Moore and his family. As Jesus was attentive in his dying hours to the two men executed with him and offered forgiveness and assurance, I hope you will be attentive to Mr. Moore as a fellow human being, made in the divine image and redeemed in Jesus Christ. As one who has publicly declared as being “pro-life,” please be consistently pro-life and respect Mr. Moore’s right to life.

               Please be assured of my prayers as you discern the fate of Mr. Moore. May you bear witness to the justice and compassion as made known in Jesus the Christ, whom you and I seek to follow and serve.

Prayerfully yours,

Kenneth L. Carder

Epiphany and the January 6 Violent Insurrection

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What an interesting coincidence that the violent attempt to overturn the presidential election of 2020 occurred on the day Christians celebrate Epiphany! On the first anniversary of that ugly day and as another Epiphany arrives, it seems appropriate to reflect on the relationship between them.

Epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning “appearance,” “manifestation,” or “revelation” and is commonly linked with the visit of the Magi to the Christ child (Matthew 2:1-12). The Magi, from the region of what we know as Iraq and Iran, were foreigners who studied the stars for signs of divine presence and revelation.

An implication of Matthew’s story is that the God made known in Jesus the Christ reveals God’s self in multiple ways and to ALL people. God’s saving presence is not limited to our religion, our race, our nation, our culture, our political party. God is sovereign over ALL!

Matthew portrays Jesus’ birth as a threat to prevailing political power. He specifically declares that the babe of Bethlehem is “king”! That’s an obvious threat to King Herod, who ruled the known world with brutality, violence, and cruelty.

Maintaining power was Herod’s priority and he would go to any length to hold onto that power, including killing members of his own family and innocent children. He was deceptive by pretending that he was only wanting to pay homage to the newborn king. His methods were calculated, brutal, and catastrophic.

Herod’s actions were motivated by fear of losing power and he considered instilling fear in others a necessary means of control. He was enabled by throngs of supporters who, too, were afraid and who had bought into the lie that Herod ruled by divine authority.

Matthew’s story of the nativity and Herod’s response is as contemporary as today’s news! It is about more than Jesus, the magi, and Herod. It is about the human condition and the exercise of power and control, especially political power.

Power is addictive! Fear fuels the addiction, the fear of losing control. It’s present in all of us to varying degrees. However, when maintaining power and control results in deception, coercion, bullying, and violence, the results are pervasive and lethal for individuals, communities, and nations.

The storming of the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was a blatant attempt to hold onto power and control. It was fueled by fear and a “big lie,” and it was enabled by some members of Congress, political advisors, and even some religious folk who believed that the former president was divinely anointed.

Jesus and Herod represent two “kingdoms” and two expressions of power. Herod represented the power of the Roman empire with its political and military clout. Jesus embodied “the kingdom of God,” the reign of love, justice, generosity, and peace/shalom. Herod was committed to the love of power. Jesus was committed to the power of love!

The insurrection in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, was an epiphany, a manifestation or revelation that Herod’s fears, methods, and abusive exercise of power remain with us.

Epiphany Day in the church year, however, reveals another kingdom at work in our world. It represents an alternative to the deception, coercion, bullying, and violence rooted in the fear of lost power and control.

That alternative is the way of compassion, justice, honesty, and service on behalf of the common good. It is the way shown to us by Jesus of Nazareth, about whom the Apostle Paul wrote: “. . . though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—-even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).

May our celebration of Epiphany and the remembrance of the Insurrection of January 6, 2021, include renewed commitment to follow the One who transforms the world through the power of self-emptying love.

A Helpless Baby as Savior?

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When did Jesus become the Savior?

It’s no idle question reserved for abstract thinking by academic theologians or reflective pastors. Was the vulnerable, helpless baby Jesus the Savior of the world or only the potential, future Savior?

Much of Christendom limits Jesus’s saving acts to the three years of his public ministry, with the decisive actions taking place the last week or even his three hours on the cross.

Only Matthew and Luke make direct reference to Jesus’s birth, though John describes the Incarnation in philosophical language (John 1:1-14). Other New Testament writers place the emphasis on his teachings, death, and resurrection as indicators of his identity as “Savior.”

Does that mean Jesus became Savior at his baptism and not at his birth?

Some in the early church believed that Jesus was “adopted” as the Son of God at his baptism, or crucifixion, or resurrection. His birth and early life were mere prelude or preparation for becoming the Savior.

“Adoptionism,” however, was declared a heresy by the Synod of Antioch and the first Council of Nicea in 325 AD. But the notion of Jesus’s birth and obscure years as being inconsequential to his role as Savior remains prominent in today’s understanding and practice of Incarnation.

At the core of the meaning of Incarnation, however, is that the sovereign, infinite God of all Creation became flesh in a helpless baby, born among the homeless of an unmarried teenage peasant girl in a faraway corner of the earth. He spent the first two years of his life as an immigrant. He grew up in a working-class family in a backwoods town, without any notoriety, doing nothing newsworthy or particularly noticeable.

Jesus was no less the Son of God as he nursed at Mary’s breast than when he was hanging on a cross. He was the Savior while having his diaper changed AND while feeding the multitudes and healing the sick. He was Emmanuel, God with us, while learning the Torah in the Nazareth synagogue as when he was teaching the disciples on the hillside. He was the Word-made-flesh as he worked with his hands in the carpenter’s shop as surely as when his hands were nailed to a tree on Golgotha.

The Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth is more than a story of how God came in human flesh two thousand years ago. It is a description of how God comes NOW. God continues to come in vulnerability, powerlessness, poverty, dependency, and obscurity. And it is through vulnerability, weakness, powerlessness, and obscurity that Christ SAVES us.

Another name for the God who became human is LOVE, and love is a relationship of giving and receiving. Another way to describe it is as a dance. Dancing involves both leading and following. Sometimes love requires that we lead, even lift the other; at other times, we follow, and are lifted off by the other.

In the last years of my wife Linda’s life, she was totally dependent on my care and that of others. Her vulnerability, weakness, and powerlessness called forth our acts of love and devotion. Through her vulnerability, the “fruits of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23) grew in those of us who loved her: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Jesus the Christ still saves us through the vulnerable, weak, powerless, and dependent. Our most transformative celebration of Christmas is to meet him in those he called “the least of these”–the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the imprisoned, the sick, the grieving (Matthew 25:31-46).

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An Enjoyable Interview

Brennan Hurley, a pastor in Taylorville, Illinois, invited me to join him in a conversation about dementia and the church. Brennan does interviews each week with a persons representing different experiences and topics and the conversations are shared with his congregation. I appreciate the opportunity to share my journey with Linda and lessons I have learned,

You may access the 45-minute interview below. Your feedback is welcome.