 -Pastor Melissa Fain- Have you ever met someone who is so perfectly named for their job? Like a carpenter named Smith, or a jeweler named Diamond? You’d think something like that only happens in cartoons in comics. Maleficent literally means to cause harm on a supernatural scale. Lafou, from Beauty and the Beast, literally translates to “the fool.” Cinderella comes from the joining of “cinders” being the last of the dying coals, and “ella” meaning beautiful. When these things work out in real life, you begin to wonder if their names influenced their life choices, or if those names really were perfect for who they would eventually be. Becoming FainWhen I realized I would be Pastor Fain, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.I l already aware of the word, “feign.” It is pronounced the same and means to fake, pretend or invent.
Being a minister of anything with the last name of Feign would be unfortunate indeed. But my name isn’t “Feign,” it’s “Fain.” To “fain” has a completely different meaning than to “feign.” To fain is to do something with pleasure, or willingly under the circumstances. When I learned what “fain” meant, it immediately felt incredibly right. It is extremely hard for me to feign anything. I am uncomfortably real. I hate pretense, and feel like a charlatan among the pomp and circumstance. Yet, the above is what people naturally think when they hear my name, and probably think even more when they realize the ministry is online. “Oh, your Pastor FAIN?! You mean Pastor Fake! You’re just pretending to do church, I see. Stop playing pretend and go do some real work!” But, Pastor FAIN isn’t Pastor Fake. That would be Pastor Feign. I’m Pastor Fain, and despite the overwhelming lack of support for a growing number of people attempting to find God in this ever growing wilderness, I take my call with joy and (mostly) willingly. I am faining love in a world that mostly feigns it. So you see? I married into the perfect name to be an online minister. I'm Pastor Melissa Fain. I'm real, and I don't feign anything. -Pastor Melissa Fain- 4 Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, 5 it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, 6 it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. 7 Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. -1 Cor 13:4-8a CEB Do you know the number one phrase I hear when I leave a group or organization? “We should have supported you more.” No one can do it alone. No. One. Even Mr. Rogers was well aware that his show was not the work of him alone. He had a team that made it happen: “My hunch is that anyone who has ever been able to sustain good work has had at least one person- and often many- who have believed in him or her. We just don’t get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.” The Opposite of LoveThe opposite of love is not hate. Hate shows someone is thinking about you. Hate is not love, but it’s also not the opposite of love. The opposite of love is nothing. Not that there are no objects, feelings or things that sit opposite of love, but that the non-action, non-feeling, non-doing for people is the opposite of love. I don’t normally just sit in a group. I am rarely passive. I see something that needs to happen, and I act. If I can’t act, I find someone who can. The idea of just watching something broken continue to break, baffles me. The apathy alone required to watch something not work boggles my mind. But when I leave an organization or group- I’ve given so much of myself, and never saw the same support in return. When that happens I don’t think about what I deserve or want. I think how all the resources are now out of my hands, so there is nothing more I can do. It’s like tossing a ball to a friend, and the friend just saying thank you and walking away. I have no more balls to throw, so my job here is done. So, the statement, “We should have supported you more,” is a realization that they didn’t show the same amount of love I showed them. They didn’t consider how I attempted to create a relationship. They just wanted my resources to do what they wanted to do. They nothing’d me. My value was only to achieve their goals. I used to lament with the group or organization when this would happen. It’s just this phrase has been said to me so often, I just shrug my shoulders and move on. They might as well be saying, “You loved us, and we didn’t love you.” Love is a healthy relationshipJust know, no relationship is completely and totally healthy. Sometimes we lose our cool, or forget the needs of those closest to us. Part of love is understanding the true nature of our actions and being there when we mess up. In that way, love is patient and kind. Also know, we don’t require the person or people all the time. We and they have lives beyond us. Sometimes they may need people with a different skill set than us. Sometimes they may get something that we secretly want for ourselves, but we’re happy for them. In that way, love isn’t jealous. When we are in a relationship for ourselves, we want the world to see our actions. Real love acts for the person, and isn’t concerned about who sees it. Love doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints. But love can hurt. Deeply hurt. In the act of seeking the Truth, many accidentally or intentionally try to stop it. When someone loves, they seek it anyway. It’s one of the most uncomfortable parts of love, but in love it must be explored. Love will seek what is just and right. Love is what endures when everything else ends. Christmas Eve there will be an event at www.Facebook.com/FigTreeChristian. 10 pm EST there will be a "bringing in of the light." It will be a telling of the Christmas story.  -Pastor Melissa Fain- Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! Zephaniah 3:1 My childhood church had something called, “Children’s Moment.” It’s a moment in worship where all the kids are brought up front, and an adult teaches them a very-important-lesson. This particular lesson happened one of the Sunday’s leading up to Christmas. The lady teaching us had a bag full of tiny presents. The lesson was simple, as all these lessons were: Jesus is the real present for Christmas. She then gave us one of the wrapped presents, and the lesson was done. I think it took about three hours before I had to know what was behind that wrapping paper. It was a piece of wood. It was nothing. When a good illustration turns badAs an adult, I know the present couldn’t be a real present. As a kid, my brain started seeing those fake presents in department stores, and under Church trees as the wrong “Jesus.” I knew they were just beautifully wrapped empty boxes. "There’s Jesus." /s I’m sure the little old lady who led that Children’s Moment would be mortified to know that’s how my brain worked, but not too mortified. I was an Uber-Christian back then. I knew Jesus wasn’t empty boxes, but it didn’t stop my brain from constantly making that connection. But honestly, y’all! I’ve seen so many empty box Christians out there! They are all focused on making the wrapping work, they forget that God doesn’t trick us with empty boxes. God’s present is NEVER empty. The inside, the purpose, the meaning is what's important; not whether the sound system is on point, or the lighting is tight. God’s present usually doesn’t always come with beautiful wrapping paper and a nice bow. God's present is always meaningful and real. Yet, we get so caught up on the wrapping, we forget the present within. It’s all beautifully wrapped emptiness. Highly produced nothingness. No Jesus here. Look at it and move on. This is what happens when one tries to go straight to Joy; attempting to skip Hope and Peace. It’s not real and it can never be real. Real Joy happens when you break through the shadow of Peace and actually see that Christmas light for the first time. That’s when you realize the Hope you found back when you had no idea what God was giving you, is actually real! Only the people who have actually taken God's hope, and walked it through peace know what I'm talking about. You can’t sing yourself to it. You can’t decorate yourself to it. You can only get there by taking the long path through Peace. Stop planning your joy. Just stop.It's like a rollercoaster. You can be at a park and choose to walk to the coaster. You can stand before the coaster, and choose to get in line. You can't control the experience once you are strapped in for the ride.
That's Godly Joy. It's unpredictable, and happens because you made that initial choice to follow God's call and began the hard work to reach that call. After that, you can't plan or work to reach it. Godly Joy doesn't happen because it just happens to be our Christmas season. It doesn't happen because we watched the correct Christmas movie combination, or listened to our favorite Christmas jams. You can't bake or wrap your way to it. It will happen when it happens. The real gift is Jesus, but Jesus isn't a beautifully wrapped box of nothing. Jesus was, is, and always will be real. -Pastor Melissa Fain- Be still, and know that I am God. -Psalm 46:10- This scripture is one of my favorite Christian songs. It’s sung in a round, and each level loses a word. Peace, be still, and know that I am God. Peace, be still, and know that I AM. Peace, be still, and know. Peace, be still. Peace. Be. Peace. As the words are lost, new meaning is gained. The sacrifice of words, for the understanding of faith. This is how Advent Peace works. We have accepted our call to adventure in accepting God’s Hope. It means we must find peace with what can no longer be. Simply put- to go on a journey, it requires letting go. We all want to skip this step. No one really likes tearful goodbyes, especially this time of year. Let me write the most important line of this meditation: Being at peace with loss is different than being calm or silent. People have used the word “peace” to silence hope. Know that God’s peace will never silence God’s hope. God’s peace will always follow God’s hope. Therefore, God’s peace always seems a little more melancholy than the hope that preceded it. Peace is an acceptance of what can no longer be and a movement towards what could become. To come to terms with what can no longer be is vital to God’s process. God’s peace is the most difficult step to accept in God’s plan. I believe this is because, as Hope is accepting the call, Peace is actually moving towards it. You can’t move towards something without moving away from something else. Movie reference time. In the movie Labyrinth, Sarah is forced to babysit her baby brother, subverting her own plans in the process. In her anger, she wishes the Goblin King would take her little brother. When he does, she willingly accepts her call to adventure to go on a journey to save her little brother. That was her hope, to save her brother from the Goblin King. Her peace doesn’t come until ¾ of the way through the movie when she meets the Junk Lady.
She hadn’t gone anywhere up to that point. Sure, she gained a few new friends, but she was still anchored to what she wanted before her call. The Junk Lady’s only purpose was to remind her what she had to let go of in order to move on. It almost worked, and in real life, it almost always works. Wanna thwart God’s plans? Just lay out what must be left behind to move on. Worked on the newly freed Israelites. They wanted to go to the Promised Land, but they remembered how slavery had people to care for them and feed them. That was it, and it was enough to halt their journey. Then they had to spend a very long time unlearning what it meant to be a slave. I submit that the second week of Advent is the darkest of the four weeks. It is the shadow of the Christmas light. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the beauty of shadows. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. In relation to Advent, the bigger the Hope, the more intense the Peace will be. Once Sarah was willing to let go of her past, she was allowed to really move towards her call. By giving her things to the literal garbage heap, she finally was able to move on. It took three-quarters of the movie, because she had to be ready to make that level of sacrifice, and that always takes time. For us, we are moving towards a different kind of sacrifice: power turned on its head. The King’s power will be held by those around him. A Mother and Father; shepherds, and sheep.The call to smite the enemy will be transformed into love your enemy and pray for those who wronged you. There’s so much sacrifice in those words, and Christian Hope is built on that King. It's a huge Hope, and that means it’s a very intense Peace. During Advent we explore it for a week; it might take you weeks or even years. It cannot be skipped. Peace. |
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