In three weeks we will be together in Des Moines for our
annual Convention. We have designated this past year as one of Revival, and
certainly the imaginations of many have been stimulated as each Revival 2017
weekend has come around. It seems to be reaching a crescendo as we come into
the home stretch. Some have been amazed that we stuck to the program
consistently through the whole year. Every congregation has had the opportunity
to use this time to consider its own life in the Spirit of God. And it has been
a joy to see the variations on a theme that have arisen.
I knew that Revival would also catch up on me during this
time, and on several occasions, I have experienced my personal renewal with
God. I did not foresee however that I would meet the joy of the Lord in the
bouncy house at St Paul’s, Council Bluffs. Brought in for the children, we
expected it to add a carnival atmosphere and keep them occupied while we adults
prayed and communed with God. But Jesus expects us to come to Him as a child.
Let me tell you that there is no dignity to be found or
preserved in a bouncy house. But laughter? I think the half an hour recovery
time after the bouncing was as much from the laughter than anything else. And
of course the laughter was only after falling on one’s face and not being able
to get back up on your feet so readily. I laid there laughing, and I think God
laughed with me. Donna and I have traveled throughout our ministry with two
pictures of Jesus developed as illustrations for the Living Bible. The one we
have at home is of Jesus laughing among children; and the second hangs in my
office and depicts Jesus in the middle of a huge belly laugh. Sometimes I have
had to look at the picture and say strongly –“what are YOU laughing at?”
Normally the response is “Looking at you, taking yourself so seriously.”
Is God to be found more readily when we try and bounce and
when we fall flat on our faces? That would seem to be the case. God is also
more readily available when we are defeated by the kind of horror of Las Vegas
or Charlottesville. As we lament and mourn, God is there too. At both ends of
our emotional spectrum there God stands – weeping with those who weep, and
rejoicing with those who rejoice.
Revival is about becoming more open to God’s extremes. It is
not about the Church as you have known it. It is about becoming God’s agents
for loving change now and moving forward. That is why at Convention we will
talk about following up this past year in intentional ways, and about learning
what we have to say as good news found in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
How do we carry God’s renewal of us forward, and how do we learn to let it take
us beyond ourselves into the world we are now experiencing? Revivals produce
leadership and leadership brings change. Change can transform things around us.
See Convention as one great bouncy house, and let God laugh
with you as you take on the impossible of being God’s people of love and
reconciliation. Bouncing high with the Spirit will land you on your front and
your back, and will not be very dignified, but you will laugh and in your
laughter maybe the world around you might lighten up itself. For, without you
knowing, it will be God’s light penetrating dark and wild places. It will be God's light that shines
through you in that vulnerable moment of self-forgetting that is our laughter.
In the peace and love of Christ,
+Alan
The Rt. Rev Alan Scarfe
Bishop of Iowa
In the peace and love of Christ,
+Alan
The Rt. Rev Alan Scarfe
Bishop of Iowa
