12 Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life. 13 Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. 14 The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. 15 Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer. 16 So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. 17 Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. 18 He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

If there is a generous or kind bone in our bodies it’s because there is a God of Love. He created me as a “one-off.” I would rather believe that God’s love and care for me is the one true touchstone rather than any other semblance of reality that there is out there.  The inimitable G.K. Chesterton was always quick to point out, “If there isn’t a good God, give me one good explanation for happiness.”

That said, there are many other unanswered questions in that real world. And a big question is the question of temptation.  I must face the prospect that though I am special in God’s eyes, I am also deeply flawed.  I know that is true because I have seen it in my own character and in the lives of others.  I have watched virtuous people turn on a dime and act defiant and petty.  In prisons, I have also seen the most violent offenders show tender moments of innocence.  A wise person sees both sides in others and themselves.

The sage advice of James in these verses is to put all of our stock and trade into the goodness of God and in the reality of our fallen state. It’s only then that we can begin to build a life of wisdom and character.

9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

A close friend is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Stripped of resources and paralyzed by incredible burdens, he’s finally returning to a question that he hasn’t asked in a while, “God, what should I do?”  I’ve listened to his mental process during the past year and I have noticed that he goes about ‘life’ exactly as I do.  That being, he makes most of his own plans and asks God to bless them.  Then when troubles arise, he asks for help.  His prayers are mostly directed at receiving the wisdom necessary to relieve the trial.

Double mindedness is really just wanting to continue to be the captain of my own ship while keeping God’s favor and resource in reserve.

James seems to be pointing out that trials are inevitable.  Wisdom is not the tool to avoid trials but instead the insights that should be exercised while IN the trial.  We all want relief, but James has offered something better. A dividend on the prospect of going through trials.

I’ve often said that I don’t ever want anyone to go through what I’ve experienced in the realm of difficulties.  But I do know that God was with me in those difficulties. I don’t want to go back and be the person I was before those difficulties came to visit.  I’ve learned too much about God’s immense love and goodness. It all came from the insight and dividend of those difficult times.

James motivates the person of faith from the very get-go by asking a hard question. Do we of faith really see a God of Love as our Heavenly Father? If so, then we must bring the issue of troubles to the forefront and face the reality that God has changed our troubles into trials. Troubles are endemic, trials are prescriptive. Trouble is tragic, trials are redemptive.

While we certainly cannot know the mind of God, a walk of faith predicated upon a loving God’s involvement means a disciplined re-orientation toward putting troubles into the trials category. This is a mental, emotional AND volitional enterprise. To that end, James uses the words; “Consider” and “all joy” to circumscribe the process we must use to move from an outlook where we have troubles to a place where we experience trials.

Trials, by definition, are stress tests, meant to mold and fine tune the element being tested. Reading through James with this lens in place will help the student understand the process God is using.

He was not always that way. In the books of Mark and John he was described as thinking his older brother a bit looney. But by the end of Pentecost following Christ’s crucifixion, he had wholly given himself over to the message and work that Jesus portrayed. His devotion was so marked that he was known for his “surfers knots,” the knobby knees that come from praying on one’s knees for extended periods.

The historian Josephus noted that in AD 62 James was stoned for his heretical devotion to Jesus and the concomitant influence James had on establishing the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem.

When James writes, “Consider it all (or pure) joy whenever you face trials of many kinds….” he knows of what he speaks. During the spring and summer months we will be exploring how this marvelous quality can be a possession of any and every follower of Jesus. The promise is that when we possess this type of faith, God can finish His work in us and we’ll lack nothing.

Geographical Scope: Oakmont is a senior retirement community of 5,000 residents situated in the Valley of the Moon area on the eastern portion of Santa Rosa, a community of 150,000. This community is within the Sonoma County, population 300,000, and lies north of San Francisco along the northern portion of the bay area.

Mission Scope: Oakmont Community Church is a fifty-year old congregation that has maintained services within the Oakmont community during the entire tenure of village life. In recent years the congregation has aged and is now comprised of about 120 members in their 80’s and 90’s. They are an active congregation but the fellowship now requires a direct pastoral attention while the senior pastor mobilizes a second congregation of baby boomers.
Job Pro-forma: The Associate Pastor will support the classic congregants’ spiritual and visitation needs while operating as a team member in the development of what might be called a honeycomb of efforts that emanate around a single mission vision. These efforts are outreach in nature and include programs to engage the wider Santa Rosa environ through the arts, missional projects, and alternative spiritual communities. This method of spiritual engagement is called transformational dynamic equivalencies. For further reading on this method you may refer to Ralph Winter’s “The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission.”

Timeline: It is expected that this position will be filled on or by July 1, 2012.
If interested, send resume to dan.melligan@gmail.com or by mail at OCC, P.O. Box 213, Kenwood CA. 95452. Resumes will be received until May 10, 2012.

Associate Pastor Contract Agreement
Oakmont Community Church
March 1, 2012
The position of Associate Pastor for Congregational Care (APCC) for the Oakmont Community Church in Santa Rosa, CA (OCC) is part time. The duties and responsibilities listed can normally be performed in 30 hours per week including Sundays. OCC is is a non-denominational church and is governed by the December 1999 revised edition of the Constitution and By-Laws. That document has been modified to allow governance by the EMT (Executive Management Team) by the membership voted January, 2012.

Benefits
Upon ordination, the Associate Pastor may receive a portion of salary in the form of a housing allowance. It is also possible for the APCC to have access to a parsonage provided the candidate meets the age requirements of senior community living.

Health insurance premiums will be paid as pre-tax benefit provided the insurance coverage is in force within California.

Two weeks of paid vacation accrued during tenure including two Sundays. Fifteen days of study leave may also be used for professional advancement.

A $1000 stipend may be used for that professional advancement.

Provided the candidate’s ordination allows for such work in a non-affiliated church, the APCC may participate in presbytery meetings or other denominational cluster groups. One day per month is allowed. Further participation in denominational activities must have the approval of the Senior Pastor.
Participation in community wide Christian efforts may also be allowed with the approval of the Senior Pastor.

Pastoral Duties
The APCC will serve as worship leader once per month as determined by the Director of Worship and Arts and by mutual consent.
The APCC will conduct services and present sermons on eight Sundays per year. The Sundays will be determined by the Senior Pastor and by mutual consent.
The APCC will contribute to worship planning for the year round schedule and will also lead off-site worship services and other sacredotal activities within the scope of the work done in congregational care. Such services may take place at Oakmont Gardens, Spring Lake and Mimesis related events.

Congregational Care will be designated as the pastoral care directed to the classic Oakmont Community Church membership. Job details will include:
Development and maintenance of a care network presently called LINKS.
Visitation and shepherding needs of the infirmed and dying.
Implementation of a new member integration plan.
Coordination of deacon responsibilities as they are presently performed by LINKS and Worship Guild.
Coordination of fellowship opportunities as it relates to the classic population.
Special classes scheduled for the spiritual training of the congregation.
Coordination and maintenance of senior resources for members and their families.
Compensation

Salary and benefits will total $52,000 per annum.
APCC compensation shall be reviewed annually by the Board chair, Senior Pastor and Treasurer. Recommendations will be made to the EMT and approved by the Annual Congregational Meeting.
The APCC shall be paid monthly, in arrears, on a schedule determined by Treasurer and Pastor.
Additional hours and compensation may be directed to the sister church effort, Mimesis, and a second contract or addendum to this contract may place that compensation in force.

Alot of people live up to their names.  I can’t count how many times I’ve seen someone named Scripture, Christian, Bible or Shepherd end up being a pastor:)  Others tend to live down to their names. Jacob was clearly one of them.  Jacob can best be translated “Grabber” because he was born hanging onto the foot of his older twin brother, Esau. Jacob spent his life, at least his early life, ‘grabbing’ things that weren’t his.

First he stole his brothers birthright by leveraging his brother’s hunger pangs. Then he disguised himself to smell like his outdoorsy older brother and tricked his aging, blind father into blessing him with the blessing of firstborn. He tricked his father-in-law, Laban, out of the best lambs of his flock.  Later he would wrestle with God and refuse to let go until God, “blessed him.”  All in all he certainly lived to the level of his name.  Until God gave him a new one. Israel.

Then it can be said, Israel lived up to his new name.  Mostly translated as ‘prince’ or ‘saved by God’, I prefer the hybrid of these two; Chosen.  Given that new name, the patriarch joined the line of Abraham and his children are the children of Israel that we have come to know as this great people.

In the story of Joseph, the passing of Jacob/Israel is a notable one.  It gives my older congregation the opportunity to look back on their lives and see that there is clearly a choice to be made.  Do we choose to live by the name we’ve made for ourselves or do we live by the name given to us by God.  Rarely at the end of life do we revel in the successes of work and play. The real celebration is in the gentle spirit that has visited us by grace.  We revel in the love of our family and friends. We also can experience the joy of being loved by God.  As I visited Jan yesterday in the last days of her life, she is joyful and unafraid. This is the joy that Israel experienced at the end of his life. These are the gifts of God that come with Him naming us as well.

A youthful memory I have is of the groundbreaking television variety show hosted by the Smothers Brothers. PBS has done an interesting biopic on the method with which Tom and Dick Smothers used their variety show to infuse social commentary into the evening programming. During the turbulent 60′s and 70′s, they offered many cutting edge messages to their skits. The genius of the method was from Dick Smothers, the one normally known as the goofball of the duo. Since Dick lives here nearby, I often see him at local grocery stores, the car wash or just out playing golf. Whenever I see him I always remember him throwing out the famous punchline; “Mom always loved you best!”

In our story of Joseph, chapter 48 summarizes the last few days of his father, Jacob’s, life. It recounts the moments when grandpa Israel (Jacob) meets his grandkids, Ephraim and Manasseh. During the blessing of the two boys, Jacob gets the boys mixed up and affords the firstborn blessing to the wrong boy. Joseph tries to correct him but Jacob won’t hear of it. He continues to steadfastly use his patriarchal authority to bless the one he wishes.

Stuart Briscoe’s commentary is insightful as he suggests that even Joseph, the grand Vizier of the might nation of Egypt, must bow down to the cantankerous moodiness of his own elderly father. Perhaps, too, there’s a bit of irony to be found in the way in which Joseph must now handle the prospect of the younger being blessed ahead of the older. Something which Joseph was a bit naive about in his youth (remember the coat of many colors?)

In any event, there’s plenty of blessing to go around and the lives of Ephraim and Manasseh have been properly prepared by their righteous and wise father to carry on their role in the world. It’s also one of the privileges of infusing our stewardship into a younger generation. When we make the effort to pass on not only our material legacy but also the fiber of our convictions for good, we see a rich blessing added to the cloth of our own coats.

Tracey was rescued from a drunken foster parent who had taken her into his home to entice her to marry a cousin living in the Philippines. One night in a rage he began shooting up the house with a .22 rifle. She ran from the house and called me because I was providing counseling at the time. She was six months pregnant when she came to live with our family and stayed with us for the next two years.

Though my wife and I had not yet had children we were thrown into the swarm of roaring hormones and cravings. Tracey was still a child herself but was soon to be a birth mother. Her deeply scarred background meant many long hours of listening and support. On a Sunday night in the middle of a church service that I was leading, Tracey rose, went outside and headed to the hospital. Four hours later she gave birth to a boy and twelve hours later that boy was adopted out to a family in Portland.

For eighteen years we talked about that young baby as he grew in the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. We prayed for him and for his adopted family. We prayed for Tracey, too, as she left our home and built a life for herself. Tonight as I was reviewing my sermon for tomorrow, I reached for and found a photo of the first time I met that same boy, Cory, as a young man of twenty. He was long, lean and very outgoing. He was headed to Cornell University to do his upper division bachelor’s work.

It makes me think of Joseph’s introduction of his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, for the first time to their grandfather, Jacob, . Having thought Joseph dead, it was a shock to Jacob to find his son as prime minister of Egypt. He is shocked all the more to discover he had two grown grandsons! His joy held no bounds as, in his old age, he was blessed twice.

One of the deep privileges we will receive when we wait on the promises of God is to discover how marvelously God has blessed our faithfulness. When we see that our life lived for God has blessed so many we will be shocked at how many “spiritual” grandchildren we really have. It’s one more blessing found in the life of grace.

The cool part about Facebook and other social media is that it has put me in contact with old friends from decades past. Once the initial howdys have been exchanged a new, real opportunity is created to pick up where old friendships left off. When these relationships expired in the first place, often it was a casual drifting by time and space. Others were because disengaged emotions left things sticky and difficult. It was better to skulk off than to work it out. Now with many more miles on the life experience, time has a way of softening many of the rough edges that kept things from being wholesome and edifying. I’m enjoying a whole new set of ‘ friends,’ people to whom I can say “I love you’ and really mean it.

When we were young, we had dreams of true relationship. Intimacy. A quality or desire for the quality of being loved and giving love in return. But most of time we lacked the proper delivery system to tease out the truly essential elements of living that dream. Hopefully with time and wisdom we are now at a place where we can really deliver on the dreams of living and loving. Placing fear and power aside, we can appreciate those differences we have with others and still find a way to laugh and live.

Joseph was given a true gift from God when his family came back to him in Egypt. He saw the opportunity as a way to pick up and work together on the family dream. He could have chosen to get even, to flaunt his power and success. Instead he used his life affirming wisdom to help his family prosper and to reconcile the broken relationships caused by his brothers.

The Apostle Paul had a similar softening in his later life when he asked for JMark to be brought to him. His willingness to pick up a broken relationship and to restore JMark to a position of trusted friend was no small feat for Paul and no small gift to JMark. I pray that we will see the chances we have to restore and will take the time to do just that.

After they had been in custody for some time, 5 each of the two men—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison—had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own.

6 When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected. 7 So he asked Pharaoh’s officials who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why do you look so sad today?”

8 “We both had dreams,” they answered, “but there is no one to interpret them.”

Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.”

Joseph’s place in prison for a crime that he did not commit prompts any thoughtful person to face the likelihood that we will all find ourselves in a difficult situation not of our own making.  Once the predictable angst and frustration is expressed, it probably serves us well to consider how best to thrive in a bad experience.  Certainly pouting or raging against the injustice has its limit.

Joseph’s story is filled with a gutty determination that conquers difficult moments. His imprisonment is the latest and it affords him opportunity to be introduced to the cupbearer and the baker of the Pharoah of Egypt. While in jail both of these men, (I presume they are men), have dreams that are so impressionable that each is pondering the dream long after waking.  As Joseph interprets these two dreams, one of the men receives good news while the other gets some not so good news.  But Joseph is honest and helps them face the circumstances that now stand before them.

The Good News of Jesus is that by his own actions he shows, like Joseph, his ancestor, that each of us has a dream and that dream has been poignantly placed into our heart and soul like a dna strand.  That dream is not a fluffly, ethereal piece of undeciferable code but rather a melody or imprint of story placed in us by a loving God.  This loving God tells us the truth about what leads to destruction and what leads to life.  When we listen we can face the dissonance between the dream and the present circumstance.  When we don’t, we will spend a lot of time hunting down another method for breaking the dream’s meaning.

Make no mistake, I believe that God created a beautiful story in my life and it is finished well when I finish with Him in mind.