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February 2012
The season of Lent begins next Wednesday, February 22nd. Lent is the 40-day – not counting Sundays – journey to the cross of Jesus’ death. The forty-day period mimics the time period that Jesus spent in the wilderness following his baptism. For centuries the purpose of Lent was to call Christian believers into a deeper commitment to following Jesus Christ as Lord.
Lauren Winner, professor at Duke Divinity School, has never been taken with the tokens that many of us swear off for Lent – chocolates, sodas, deserts, coffee or alcohol. One year she gave up reading for pleasure. For a bookworm, doctoral student this was a huge sacrifice. In her latest book, Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis, she recounts her last Lenten sacrifice: anxiety.
In a revealing manner Winner talks about the common variety anxieties she often carries with her – leaving the stove on at the house, fear of forgetting an appointment, losing her driver’s license or credit cards. For Lent she will give up for what some would get a prescription. (This is spiritual advice, not medical.) Whenever an anxiety began creeping up on her she would use a trick she learned in Al-Anon – tell the obsession (fear, craving, anxiety, etc.) that you won’t think about it for 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes you can choose to go back to your craving or fear or whatever, or you can choose to put it off for another 15 minutes. Winner adds, “I still live by quarter hours.” In place of her anxiety she will add short prayers. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” “Be pleased, O God, to deliver me; O Lord make haste to help me.”
What if this Lent rather than giving up tokens – gummi bears or caffeine – you gave up that which really disrupts your relationship with God, or your relationships with others, or your own self-health? What if you gave up the negative things you say about yourself when you do not excel? Or complaining about politicians or the media or life in general? Or the worries that you carry like a burden on your back? What if you gave up bragging for Lent, won’t mention your latest accomplishment, but will listen to your friends instead? Or give up unwanted advice? Or saying “Yes” in an effort to please whomever asks? What if this Lent you gave up something that cripples you spiritually or emotionally, so that at the end of Lent you can celebrate resurrection in a more profound way?
June 2011
Recently, I’ve been reading “prison letters.” I find the experience of reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison depressing. It has been a very different experience than reading MLK’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail, Elie Weisel’s Night, or Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place. Each of them was a survivor. Bonhoeffer never walked free again. Though during the first year of his imprisonment, he wrote to his fiancé and to his parents of hope that he would have a trail date and would be released on the trumped up charges the Nazis had created, it is clear by the second year that he is aware that he will probably never be released and his only earthly hope of getting out alive is a quick end of the war.
It is however in the second year of his imprisonment that his writing takes on a much deeper level. In the first year of his imprisonment his writing is focused on his assimilation to prison life, concern for his fiancé and family, hope for a trial date, frustration when trail dates are postponed and, most obviously, a hope for being released from prison. By the second year of his imprisonment such “hope” is gone. It frees him write to philosophically and theologically in a more unattached way. It is almost as if he is already an outside observer to our human existence. In one sense he is already dead. The life he knew before he was arrested, before the plot to assassinate Hitler, before the foundation of the Confessing Church as a protest to the Lutheran Church, which supported Hitler, this life was gone. He was buried alive in prison. He could write to family and friends from the grave, even have short, supervised visits with a few of them once or twice a month. But they were visiting the living dead. Bonhoeffer admits in one letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge that he purposely focuses his attention to thinking and writing to avoid his own personal desires, which would be “simply self-torture.” In this way he lived beyond his life.
Christian mystics describe something like Bonhoeffer’s experience. That in the hours, or days, of meditation and solitude they transcend their own lives – forgetting their desires, detaching from their lives – which opens them to God in new and profound ways. But then, of course, their period of meditation ends, and they return to their lives, return from the dead. It is however different for Bonhoeffer, who knows he is under a death sentence. In that sense his writings are sacred, words shared from one whose life is gone but whose heart still beats. It’s also why reading “prison letters” are unlike any other reading.
January 2011
I have attended several funerals lately, which vocationally speaking has afforded me the opportunity to move from behind the pulpit to a seat the pew. The power of stories has been one common thread in these memorial services. Usually family members shared these short snapshots from life, adding to the emotional impact of the stories.
In one sense all of these stories were unique to each family and deceased loved one. A son’s overheard conversation, accidentally witnessing the depth of his father’s integrity. A daughter’s remembrance of a Christmas bicycle when the family couldn’t pay the winter bills. A grandmother’s listening ear when mom and dad were filled with too much advice and too many expectations.
In another sense they were all the same story. Love, trust, forgiveness, acceptance, loyalty, integrity, joy, and patience are universal qualities contextually experienced in thousands of ways. A story, though, takes those universal qualities and puts flesh on them where they can be touched by heart and soul. Therapists tell us that childhood stories, once recalled, can unlock bottled up emotions and start a patient onto a pathway towards health and wholeness.
Stories have the ability to transport us from one time and place to another. So, even if we are struggling in the midst of tough days, a story can instantly carry us to brighter moments and the love and joy of those days suddenly becomes as real as when we first experienced them. Wayne Wike told me that even when his father’s health was weakest the mention of a former family pet’s name brought a smile to his dad’s face, and the retelling of one of Rebel’s stories brought a chuckle. Even if the story is not your story, somehow the visualization of another’s tale brings to life similar instances from your own life.
Cultivate the stories of your life. Write in a journal. Keep mementos from trips and vacations – consider them as memory starters. Sit down with an older relative and ask her to tell you a story from when she was young. This may be the secret of Jesus’ incarnation. God came into the world as a baby born into Bethlehem in order to be a part of the story. To remember is to touch the edge of eternity.
August 2010
“Hope always precedes change.”
So said Jim Wallis in his book, Faith Works. He could have been summarizing the apostle Paul who told the Christians at Rome, “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts….” [Romans 5:3-5]
Paul saw a connection between suffering and hope. What he didn’t say is that there’s a fork in the road between suffering and hope. There is also a connection between suffering and despair. The road from suffering to hope comes to a fork in the road; one path leads to hope, the other path leads to despair. Suffering, in all its forms of tragedy, injustice, grief, and loss, does not directly lead to hope, or to despair. Suffering leads us towards both of them, towards the fork in the road, where one or the other must be taken.
We choose hope or despair. Suffering does not cause it. It leads us to the fork in the road, from which we must choose our path: hope or despair.
Suffering causes great pain – emotional, spiritual, physical. It is easy to understand how despair can slip into our daily outlook. Despair is the easy path at the fork in the road; it’s a down hill slope. You really don’t have to do anything other than live into your suffering.
This is why hope always precedes change. It must be chosen, freely. Hope is the up-hill path at the fork in the road. We zip up our backpack full of the grief, loss, tragedy, or challenge that created our suffering and toss it over our shoulder and head up the road towards hope. It is a faith choice. We choose to believe in God’s redemptive love that can make all things new again. And we start climbing up that path, praying, thinking, imagining what’s going to be up ahead because of our hope.
And the change happens inside of us before it is even visible to the human eye. We become the change that transforms our lives, and it all begins with a choice to hope.
July 2010
How do you read the Bible? That question may bring puzzled looks. “What do you mean, ‘How do I read the Bible?’ I just pick it up and read it.” But the question is legitimate.
We read comic books in a different manner from classroom textbooks. We read novels or murder mysteries with a different eye than we read history books. We read political opinion essays differently than we do professional journals pertaining to our jobs.
So, how do you read the Bible? Do you read it like a history book? Or a novel? Like a classroom textbook, or a spiritual cookbook? The approach you take in reading the Bible will affect what you get out of it.
Brian McLaren, in A New Kind of Christianity, says that most of us read the Bible like a constitution. We act like lawyers and treat it as a law book. If you want to know about divorce, lying, care for the poor, tax policy, or any other subject you look in the Bible to cite passages that declare God’s view on the subject – just as a lawyer uses a constitution and written law to state her case. Of course, treating it this way dissects the stories of the Bible into unrecognizable bits and pieces.
McLaren recommends that we read it as a library, which is an old idea. The word “Bible” is Latin for “library.” Since we’ve been calling it a library all of our lives – even if we didn’t know it – maybe we should approach it from that perspective. In “the Library” there is a song book, a collection of love poetry, sermon books written by prophets, essays written to new Christians and churches, short stories and longer theological histories. If we approach these books in “the Library” like we do books in a library – in other words reading the song book lyrics like we read poetry, reading the short stories like we read a fascinating short story, and so forth – it will open up the Bible in a new way for us. We may begin to see it as a whole, rather than in bits and pieces.
The amazing thing about reading “the Library” as a library is that we soon realize that the Bible is much more like a divine conversation than it is a divine constitution. And the great thing about conversations is that you can always jump in and join them, which is exactly what God is hoping you’d do. So, go ahead, jump in. The conversation’s great!
April 2010
Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 – 1109, once wrote, “I do not seek to understand [in order] that I may believe, but I believe [in order] that I may understand….”
Understanding and believing dance with one another, and it is not so easy to tell which one leads. We live in a world where if things cannot be explained, tested, or understood, then people think they should not be believed. Yet, Anselm, the saint from Canterbury, said that belief opens the door for understanding.
Whether we realize it or not, most of us agree with Anselm. Our beliefs and values, our expectations and presuppositions determine our understanding. Take the recent Health Care Bill signed by the President. The general population had strong, yet disparate opinions about what the bill contained and how it would affect health care. Your understanding of the bill was largely pre-determined by your own political views. Belief directs to understanding. We interpret events and facts by our beliefs.
The only way to see things “objectively” is to temporarily suspend your belief, take on the beliefs of someone else and compare. This is like walking in someone else’s “belief” shoes, and it is difficult to do. Some would argue that it is so difficult that no one can be completely “objective.”
Even those who remain doggedly committed to the scientific method of concluding only that which can be tested and evaluated are operating under their own self-selected belief or value system. They choose not to include supernatural phenomena.
Belief is the set of eyeglasses through which we see the world.
Belief is the language by which we speak of life.
Belief is the context for our understanding.
Choose your beliefs and your values carefully, because they will direct the way you understand God, yourself and how things operate in this old world. Only when you are open to changing your beliefs can you see the world and yourself and God in a new light.
January 2010
Walk down the science isles and the Christian isles of your favorite bookstore and the number of books will surprise you where those two subjects intersect. Several years ago most of the books that talked about those two subjects did so from adversarial positions. Christian writers talked about the dangers of Darwin and scientists would write about the need for a separation of science and religion.
That seems to be changing. There are books by scientists who welcome the questions faith brings to the pursuit for truth – The Faith of a Physicist and The Language of God – and there are books by Christians singing the praises of science – Thank God for Evolution and The BIG Questions in Science and Religion and Quantum Theology – just to name a few. Even popular science books, written for the average reader, understand the two topics are better suited as admirers than adversaries. Stephen Hawking ends his classic book, A Brief History of Time, by saying, “If the universe is completely self-contained… and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as Creator… If we do discover a complete theory… then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.”
I think these convergences are a good sign. For too long popular religion in America revolved around fundamentalism, either to follow it or refute it. Even the latest critic of Christianity, self-proclaimed atheist, Richard Dawson, is largely arguing against a God created by 20th century fundamentalism. Maybe it is more difficult to attack a faith that welcomes scientific truth.
What these books in the bookstores signify is that there is a widespread hunger to understand our world, to understand life. People want and will seek the pursuit of truth wherever it leads them. Here are signs that people of faith and people of science have truths to teach each other for the betterment of both. And this is the kind of news, the kind of pursuit, that people want to hear.
The Psalmist prayed, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; [I think] what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” [Psalm 8:3-4]
October 2009
Prayer is the most universal spiritual practice. Christians, Jews and Muslims pray. So do Hindus and Buddhists. Native Americans that practice the religions of their ancestors pray through rituals passed down for generations. Shinto and Sikh, Confucian, Unitarian and Baha’i all use prayer as a practice. Tribal religions in the most remote parts of the world offer prayers as sincerely as pilgrims at St. Peter’s Basilica or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
You could say that human beings are praying animals, the practice is so common. This means, of course, that the Christian practice of prayer is not so unique. This can be unsettling for some folks. One response is to claim that prayer has to be done a certain way for it to be valid – that way you can stake an exclusive claim to “real” prayer.
This is what happened a couple of decades ago when the President of the Southern Baptist Convention stated that “God does not hear the prayer of a Jew.” Today, a statement so raw with bigotry and narrow-mindedness would almost immediately be lampooned or roasted across media outlets. (Given the fact that nearly everyone who prayed in the Bible was Jewish, that would be an easy target.) But of course, what he was grasping to do was to set aside Christian prayer from the ubiquitous human practice of prayer. That’s easy for any faithful person to do from any religion. We would all like to think that our way of praying is the right way. Whether you face Mecca fives times a day, or walk a labyrinth, look at an icon, or burn incense at a shrine, you’d like to think that your prayers are getting through to God.
I find it comforting that nearly the whole world prays, regardless of their religious heritage. It certainly says something about our desire to be in communication with God – a desire that God may have placed inside us from the beginning.
I’m not really sure that there is a wrong way to pray. There may be better methods of praying than others. There might be wrong motives for going through the motions of prayer. And I guess that’s it, the ways of prayer aren’t for God anyway. They are for us – practices, rites and rituals that open our spirits and emotions so that what is inside our heart and mind can flow through our conscience to God Almighty. God accepts what’s deep inside of us no matter how it’s packaged.
September 2009
Let’s be honest. A mad Jesus makes us nervous. When he turns over the tables at the Temple courtyard, throws the traders’ money as far as he can toss it, and runs off the sacrificial animals by cracking a whip, we take spiritual cover. Who knew he could do such things? And if he did that, what else could he do?
Anger is hard enough to handle; its unpredictability, though, may be the worst part. What will set it off is the big unknown.
There seems to be a lot of anger around our country these days. Maybe it’s just the product of nearly two years of recession, but I think there’s more to it than that. It doesn’t help that the news media is stoking the flames. Anger at some point loses reasonable bearings. Typically, it ends discussion, chokes off dialogue and negotiation.
Which is what makes “righteous anger” so perplexing for most of us. How can something so destructive be “righteous”? The bible has many examples of “righteous anger,” more frequently among the prophets.
Righteous anger isn’t about blind referees, or political passions, or aggravation at not getting your way. “Righteous anger” is an outrage over injustice. It is a fury at watching the weak being overpowered by the strong, and the innocent charged guilty while the guilty go free.
The purpose of righteous anger is to first empower the powerless and then to mobilize the comfortable. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that the biggest “stumbling block in the stride toward freedom” was not the actions of the so-called bad people, but the apathy of the so-called good people.
Righteous anger moves us from a warm and comfortable personal faith, through an acute awareness of the suffering of others and the realization that personal faith cannot develop separated from that suffering.
The practice of righteous anger doesn’t mean we all stay mad till we need high blood pressure medicine. It means we actively acknowledge injustice in the world, take that anger to God and then wait to see where God takes us. When Jesus starts turning over tables, you see, you want to be following behind him, not in front of him.
March 2009
The Bible tells us the body and spirit is one. There is a common notion that we have a spirit, or soul, hiding somewhere in our bodies and that is the “us” that we think of when we think of ourselves. In the end, this might be the way it is. It’s just not what the Bible says.
The Bible’s term for soul also means body. It more literally means breath. In the second creation story, when God breathed into the human’s nostrils, it became a living being (or body, or soul, depending on which English word you’d like to choose). [Gen 2] A living body is soul. Without soul the body is dead. Without body the soul is dead. You do not have a body; you are a body.
Many of us would like to separate ourselves from our bodies. Nearly all of us have wished such a thing during our teenage years. Coming of age means in part to come to terms with our bodies/selves. We start noticing how others look and how we look in comparison to them. It doesn’t help that magazine covers, movies, music videos constantly show us “beautiful people” as ideal men and women. (Of course, our face doesn’t get airbrushed when we look in the mirror.)
The media’s obsession with projecting very select bodies as beautiful effects each of us – whether we watch television or keep up with the movie stars or not – because all around us are people who accept such notions.
Coming to accept our bodies – the pimples, the flab, the aging wrinkles, the disabilities, the chronic diseases – are a part of accepting ourselves as children of God. Whatever failures we have made in taking care of our bodies is part of what we should bring to Lent, as well as the guilt we sometimes carry for things that were never our fault (like the DNA great-grandma passed onto us). We should bring such things to God during Lent to receive God’s grace and mercy, when so often we are hard and unforgiving to ourselves.
Everything we experience, we experience as bodies. If we are give ourselves to God in discipleship, that means we give our bodies – hands and feet, mind and soul, heart and strength – back to God, who first made us as a body.
Maybe if we accept the Lenten promise of God’s love, grace, mercy and forgiveness for our bodies, we will finally see that we are a part of God’s “beautiful people” after all.
September 2008
When many of us were growing up the picture of a good Christian was someone who believed in Jesus, went to church every Sunday and Wednesday and then “didn’t do” stuff.
The stuff was a different list depending on the generation or the region of our country. (In North Carolina drinking was definitely on the bad list, but smoking was okay; while in brewery-rich Ohio it was smoking on the bad list while drinking was okay.) Economics has always affected morality lists. In my grandmother’s day Christians didn’t play cards and they didn’t go to movies. In another generation they didn’t dance or cuss. You probably could name three “don’t do” items without any problem.
The problem is that a “don’t do” list doesn’t help very much in knowing who you are supposed to be. It might help if we could talk about what Christians do, instead of what they don’t do.
Ancient Christians focused on living their faith through several practices or habits – often called spiritual practices. Christians were people who approached life through different disciplines. Christians were people who kept the Sabbath and fasted (used to be on Fridays). They were people who celebrated holy days and took pilgrimages. They were people who tithed their incomes, giving to both the Church and to the poor. They were people who had a regular time for prayer and went to confession.
Of course the point wasn’t just to do these things in order to check them off your “good person” list. The point was to allow those practices to transform your life. To let your life be guided not by the marketplace, but for it to be marked by the Christian seasons of the year and rhythm of the weekly Sabbath rest. To let your life be guided not by how much money you could spend on yourself, but by how much you could generously give.
The only way you can learn to play the piano, or run a marathon, or speak another language, or swim the length of the pool is to practice. Taking a test about the piano, or memorizing the last twenty winners of the Boston Marathon won’t help much. You have to get in the water and just do it; there is no substitute.
So it is with faith. You have to hop in it and practice it.
July 2008
One of Jesus’ paradoxical sayings (of which there are many) looks towards the idea of leadership. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” [Mark 10:43-44] The idea that a great leader should be a servant seems ludicrous in our culture of exorbitant CEO pay and touchdown dancing athletes. But Jesus’ words may have more common sense than we realize.
In Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, in which he and a team of researchers studied businesses that made leaps to greatness and compared them to good companies that remained just good, he describes a difference in the leadership of those companies. The leaders in both the “good to great” companies and the “remained good” companies had great drive, amazing vision, excellent organizational skills, and were motivational communicators. They were all effective leaders. The ones who were transformative leaders had one additional quality. They were humble. Now, don’t mistake humility for mediocrity. Their leadership skills were unquestioned. But…
They didn’t bask in the spotlight. In fact, they shined the spotlight on their associates. They celebrated, appreciated, lauded the contributions of their leadership teams and their employees throughout the company. They talked about how lucky they were to have such great team players. They shied away from business magazine covers and interviews that focused on the CEO. Their ambitions were for the company, not for themselves.
Interestingly, many of these great leaders came up through the ranks of their companies. Some were first criticized for not being famous. And what of news-making, celebrity status CEOs hired from the outside to take a company to a new level? None of the “good to great” companies were managed by that type of CEO. Though, many were on the “remained good” company list. Some celebrity CEOs did take a company to new heights, but then when they left the company, it crashed, leaving things worse than before.
So, maybe Jesus’ idea of servant leadership is not so crazy. If the leaders of the best companies possess a personal humility and see their job to empower their employees and to serve the company – not to be served – what does that tell us about how we could do our jobs, live in our families, serve in our church and community? “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” [Mark 10:45]
February 2008
A study in Science magazine several years ago claimed that children who are able to delay gratification scored higher years later on college SAT tests.
The study put preschoolers at a table in front of a marshmallow or an M & M. An adult told the child that he had to leave the room for a few minutes, but that if she could wait to eat the marshmallow or M & M until he returned she would be given extra treats to eat. The study then measured how long the children could resist temptation up to pre-determined intervals – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. The information was recorded and then years later their SAT test scores were compared along with their family history since the marshmallow test.
The results? Those kids who were able to distract themselves and do other things while the yummy M & M sat on the table scored higher than their peers who could not wait. Those who made it a full 20 minutes would later score over 200 points higher on the SAT than the children unable to resist. The parents also rated these children as better able to cope with stress, stick to goals and resist temptations.
Undoubtedly, DNA has something to do with this. But there are many things we can do to encourage self-control in our children and grand-children. Many of these are tried and true techniques for generations – dessert only after finishing the meal (vegetables included), TV only after your room is straightened up, 30 minutes of video games or computer only after chores and homework are done.
This study also has implications for religious faith. Christianity is faith rooted in delaying your gratification. The moral imperatives of honesty, chastity & fidelity, justice, holiness each in their own way tell us that disciplined waiting will bring greater rewards. Those who cheat and lie may get undeserved quick rewards and the temptations of teenage years often lure those looking for quick, pleasurable experiences. If we can teach self-control early, maybe our children will be better able to resist temptations and remain true to a faith with long-term rewards.
We have a saying at our house: “Worst is first, best for last.” I didn’t realize it was a statement of faith. (Now, if it’ll just get us a few college scholarships!)
January 2008
There’s a reason local television news leads their half hour broadcasts with crime. If there wasn’t a murder or violent crime in Charlotte metro area, the news station will import one. It boggles my mind how many times we are told about a small town murder in Wyoming, or a tragic conflict that kills a couple in Maine. Terrible events, surely, but why is that on local news in Charlotte?
The old adages, “If it bleeds, it leads” and “If it thinks, it stinks,” seem to be true for television. But too often that’s true around the office water cooler, and the bench at the playground, and in neighborhood gossip, and at the school cafeteria.
When someone’s name comes up in a conversation, how often are you apt to talk about one of her character flaws compared to how often you would discuss one of her better qualities? When someone comes up to you and in an excited voice says, “Did you hear about __________?” Is the news that usually follows more likely a juicy tidbit of some naughty deed, or a word of praise about some commendable deed?
An amazing thing happens when you start talking about a person’s good qualities and praising their best efforts. You start treating them differently. And often that person rises to the occasion. Criticism, on the other hand, even if never heard by the other person, builds up animosity around us that infests those who come in contact with our atmosphere.
The apostle Paul was convinced that the way to know God’s peace was the pathway of our thoughts and words. “Whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things… and the God of peace will be with you.” [Philippians 4:8-9]
I don’t mean to say that we should pretend terrible things do not happen. That would be foolish. The world is full of problems and every one of us has character flaws and moral lapses. But dwelling on what goes wrong does not enable us to see how things can be made right. Seek out the things that are honorable and commendable; focus on things of excellence. See if it does not drop your anxiety and boost your confidence in the future. Be a person of good cheer.
August 2007
We live in an age and culture built on coveting. So is it any surprise that we live out of balance?
Our consumer driven economy could not continue to hum at the high rate of its revolutions if we only purchased the items that we needed. Our level of living – for those of us who can play the game – is built on desire. It is the job of advertisers to market their products in such a way that we covet them, desire them, feel inadequate without them until finally we transform a want into a need and we buy them. This is the way we keep Wall Street reaching new highs, Wal-Mart’s shelves stocked and unemployment low.
Of course we covet more than just consumer goods. Marva Dawn, a popular Christian theologian, writes in Unfettered Hope of times when she has coveted a friend’s house (who had a larger study), the huge number of copies someone else’s book sells, the recognitions of others. Barbara Brown Taylor, one of the best preachers in America, wrote in her faith memoir, Leaving Church, that she coveted the parish of another Episcopal priest. When the priest died sometime later, she felt guiltily horrible and jubilantly hopeful at the same time. Guilt couldn’t hold back desire for long as she waited a mere three days to inquire about the opening. And so several months later she became that church’s priest with a spiritual secret she held in silence for awhile.
There is a reason coveting ends up ending the Ten Commandments. You could make a case that it is the root for most human failings, sins and regrets. Coveting begins with our own inadequacy. It looks at what someone else has (in possession or for sale) and damns us insufficient, out-of-style, ordinary, less than. Coveting is a symptom of unease, unease with ourselves.
“If I had their possessions, her charisma, his looks, then I would be somebody.” But coveting is a wicked revolving door. Its spells are never ending, because the unease upon which it plays is never quenched by acquisitions.
Marva Dawn suggests we break the cycle with gratitude. That we begin with thanksgiving for the blessings we have. That we work at wanting what we have, rather than desiring to have what we want. That we say with the Apostle Paul, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.” I Cor. 15:10
June 2007
I was reminded this past week of the power of forgiveness – a power to offer hope for the future. We often think of forgiveness as an act that deals with the past. We forgive past words and actions. But in dealing with the past forgiveness paves the way for a future. Forgiveness is about the future even when there is no reconciliation to accompany forgiveness. The bridge that is built is not between two persons, but one that enables someone to let go of the past and cross over into a new future.
Sometimes we carry old grudges, slights, hurts to the point that they suffocate parts of our lives. We cannot move on because we are still nursing wounds from the past, or in blaming another we take on the role of victim rather than claim the role of survivor. Others have realized that until they let go of the anger, in a strange counterbalance the perpetrator of the wrong still held a power over them. Forgiveness frees you, while revenge holds you captive.
Bishop Desmond Tutu spoke of this reality so powerfully in his book, “No Future Without Forgiveness.” Here he writes of the work of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to repair the country after years of apartheid had brought so many injustices to so many families. The point of the commission was to get at the truth of as many hostile actions as possible. Amnesty was available for those who came forward and truthfully confessed their part in the murders, kidnappings, and abuses of apartheid. On the surface such a commission seems a perversion of justice. But when you look at Iraq and Palestine and Sudan you realize the forgiving power of truth and reconciliation is so much better than tit-for-tat justice.
Tutu captures this reasoning after an especially emotional testimony where a former police officer begged family members to forgive him for the day he and other officers shot into a crowd killing several and wounding more. His cries of “I’m sorry,” were met with an eruption of applause. When the euphoria died down the Bishop said these words, “It isn’t easy, as we all know, to ask for forgiveness and it’s also not easy to forgive, but we are people who know that when someone cannot be forgiven there is no future. If a husband and wife quarrel and they don’t one of them say, ‘I am sorry’ and the other says ‘I forgive,’ the relationship is in jeopardy.”
Forgiveness of others and of self is what makes a future possible.
June 2007
This Sunday we as a congregation will vote on calling a candidate to serve as Associate Pastor of Sardis Baptist Church. In one sense this is a simple act of church business – a motion is made, discussed and votes counted. In another sense it is a radical statement of faith in the Holy Spirit.
In some churches a bishop or another church official appoints pastors to churches, or senior pastors name their associates, or maybe a board or committee selects the associate pastor for the congregation. Nothing wrong with any of those ways. At Sardis, however, we try to live out our faith in the historic Baptist way. We make congregational decisions – meaning in this case that you read information, pray about the candidacy, meet the candidate, listen to the Search Committee, discuss the matter openly before one another and then decide and believe, believe that the Holy Spirit works in and among and around the whole process. It’s a crazy way to make such a big decision. It would be much simpler if a bishop made the decision for us.
Personnel decisions are always in some ways a gamble. Mandy and her husband, Mark, are taking a risk every bit as much, if not more, than we are. The Search Committee sees potential in her. We’ve talked to professors, and pastors, who’ve given glowing reports. We’ve talked to her for hours and I more than the rest. But, of course we won’t know if this is the right course for a few years. Likewise, Mandy has checked us out. She’s googled my name and the church’s and talked to persons with connections to Sardis. But as much as she’s found out about us, she really won’t know this is right until she becomes a part of us. The information you’ve read about Mandy England Cole and the conversations you’ll have with her on Saturday night or Sunday morning won’t be enough. You’ll have put some trust in the committee and go with some intuition and listen to your heart.
This is the wonder of being Baptist. That we believe the Holy Spirit works in the midst of our lives collectively in mysterious ways and that through the wisdom and faith of all of us together – and that means all of us, from Yassa Washington, our newest member, and Mattie Newson, our youngest member, to one of our most revered members, say, a Jarvis Warren or a Don Hill – we take this leap together. Each of us with one voice and one vote. And we’re asking Mandy and her family to leap with us.
Folks, we gotta be nuts!! ... Thanks be to God, we are.
April 2007
When it comes to morality and ethics, the Bible says more about care for the poor and outcast than any other single issue. (It talks about worshiping God alone even more, but that’s in the area of devotion to God, not morality between human beings.) However, as Christian disciples we often struggle with this moral issue. We’ll hand a few dollars over to the person on the street corner, or help with a Habitat House, or with Room in the Inn, but it is hard to get at the deeper issues.
There are big divides between rich and poor in our country and it’s even bigger around the globe. There are systemic problems that involve governments, international corporations, exchange markets, educational institutions and cultural tendencies. Helping the poor is a moral issue that’s hard to get your arms around. We like to think of America as a place where everyone gets an opportunity, where we all play by the rules, and if you just work hard, you’ll get ahead. But “playing by the rules” doesn’t always mean that you are playing “fair.”
Suppose for a minute that we put together a church baseball team. It would be a mix of teenagers, middle-aged men and former softball-playing-women. Then suppose that we were matched up in a game, not against another motley crew of church-goers, but against the Atlanta Braves or the New York Yankees.
Kent Van Til, writing in The Christian Century, imagines just such a scenario. “The rules of baseball are well established: each team gets three outs, there are three strikes and four balls possible in each at-bat, you must tag up on fly balls, and so forth. All the baseball teams throughout the world agree to honor all the rules… when the game is played.” But even if our church team and the Braves agreed to play by the rules would it be a fair game? Van Til summarizes the point well, “Following the rules will not necessarily create justice.”
Christians believe morality is summarized by, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Living that phrase towards the poor will take more than a few hand-outs. Our attitudes about the poor must change as well as our feelings of entitlement for the wealth we possess. And we’ll have to start imagining creative new ways to educate students and create fair economic opportunity. We have to start thinking outside the box and demanding our government do the same. Playing by the rules isn’t making the game fair.
March 2007
The classic saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,” has been attributed to Edmund Burke, an 18th century Irish-British politician who was sympathetic to the American colonies. The fact that this grand proverb has been attributed to him all these years, yet has never been found in his many writings, may be a testament that when good people do finally do something they might get more credit than they deserve.
Martin Luther King, Jr. used the saying to prompt the good people of this nation to get off their sofas and get out in the streets to promote justice for all Americans. Mohandas Gandhi used a variation of the saying to describe the inaction of India’s “good people,” whom he called a “curse of timid decency.”
The truth of the phrase is that evil lives in a co-dependent environment. Evil cannot reign simply by the efforts of evil people. It must receive the apathetic permission of good people. The bully on the playground rules only as long as the observers remain silent and still. If that co-dependent relationship is broken evil tumbles with it.
This is why evil tries to isolate. We are much more likely to be silent in the face of injustice and evil when we feel alone. It works its power through self-doubt, fear and loneliness. It tries to divide, separate, create conflict. Community is the enemy of evil. Evil fears community, because community empowers individuals to act together.
Unfortunately, the laws of physics apply to community as well as objects in nature. An object at rest will remain at rest unless moved by force. Inertia in community is an aid to evil. For community to combat evil it must act, together. Otherwise, it will be plagued with the “curse of timid decency.”
In this Lenten season, when Christians are called to repent from their sins and shortcomings, let us not only name our acts of selfishness and betrayal, but let us also speak the shame of our inaction, our sins of omission. The good deeds not done. The voice kept silent. The charity left in the wallet. The refusal to rock the boat.
Confession and repentance, when shared in community can be the force that moves an object at rest, and the starting point of breaking evil’s co-dependence with good people.
February 2007
The great thing about having three elementary school-aged children in the house is that you get to hear about everybody’s business. Countless times a week I hear the phrase, “Daddy, so-and-so is ….” The amount of indignation I hear in the voice is an indication of just how juicy the information is going to be. After carefully noting things in my “Daddy mental file” I usually respond, “Now, is that really your business?” Which is then followed by an encouragement to my informant to take care of his or her own business and let Mommy and Daddy watch over every thing else. I’ve heard of a teacher, who upon receiving similar information asks, “Now, did you get a paycheck from the school today?”
Elementary school-aged children can hardly help themselves. They are learning to follow the rules and do what is expected of them. Their minds are working overtime to figure out what is fair and right amid all the nuances of the lives we live. Those of us who have been around for a few decades forget what an overwhelming amount of information it is to sort out.
In an indirect way tattle telling is their business. If so-and-so is breaking the rules – especially if it is in a way that really looks fun – they have a dilemma. They can either, join in and risk getting in trouble, or they can tell an adult who will stop the tempting behavior. (I mean, if I can’t do that, then you shouldn’t get to do it either!)
Tattle telling is a subtle way of objecting, “Hey, I’m trying to follow the rules, here, but you are making it really hard by not enforcing the rules. Now, go do your job!” Tattle telling demands that life be fair, that rules be always enforced by all seeing and all knowing authorities. Unfortunately, life is not like that. The trick is to learn that life is not fair, while still believing that we should play by the rules, anyways.
If the rules aren’t enforced, the informants give up and join the others in breaking them. If informants’ reports clamp down on everything, snitching becomes a virtue. Learning that life isn’t fair, but it is still worth it to follow the rules blooms in that in-between environment where you are told, “Mind your own business,” while the rules are regularly, but not overly, enforced.
Jesus once said, “You will be judged with the judgment you make.” [Matt. 7:2] And he wasn’t talking to fourth-graders.
February 2007
It’s the cold and flu season – as your sniffles and sneezes have already informed you. For most of us it’s time to wash our hands over and over again. Keep plenty of OJ in the frig, and have an ample supply of cold remedies available. More nuisance than threat. Our immune system with its amazingly resilient biological warfare tactics fends off most colds or flu within a week or two. This was not always so. Our immune system is a gift from our ancestors. I’m not just talking about folks on our family genealogical trees. Go further back to 10,000 years or more. The genetic history in our immune systems has been passed down from anonymous ancestors who became sick with smallpox, the black plague, typhus, influenza, measles, pneumonia and managed to survive. Their suffering and survival became our protection.
Native Americans at the time Christopher Columbus arrived on the Island of San Salvador in 1492 did not have such an immune system. The Western Hemisphere had been a Garden of Eden, free of the diseases and viruses that had struck countless generations in Asia, Africa and Europe. Cut off from the rest of the world for over 10,000 years, Native American people did not have the immune systems to fight off smallpox, typhus, measles, or influenza.
Before Columbus arrived the population in the Americas rivaled that of Europe. But our diseases decimated the population. Within weeks of an outbreak whole villages would become ghost towns. The Pilgrims home at Plymouth in 1620 had just two years earlier been the Indian town of Patuxet, which had been wiped out by an epidemic virus unknowingly brought by some traders. Charles Mann in his book 1491 estimates that roughly 90% of the native population of the Americas was eventually lost to European diseases. Being separate had saved them for generations from experiencing the suffering the rest of the world knew in those diseases. But the delayed confrontation nearly brought them to extinction.
I wonder if we have spiritual and emotional immune systems as well. Where healthy spiritual and emotional growth comes by facing the hard knocks of life and learning to trust God’s presence, love and guidance at such times, and where avoidance and denial of such matters leaves us weaker in the future. Hiding life’s sorrows from its joys leaves us spiritually and emotionally defenseless at later crisis moments in life. The sniffles and sneezes this season are preparing you for greater challenges.
January 2007
It was easily the most memorable of the thirty worship services I attended last year in addition to our regular worship at Sardis. And it broke all the rules set by the church-growth crowd.
First of all, this service was at 9:00 on a Sunday night. Then, the service did not use any electronic media. Only the sanctuary’s acoustics amplified the sound. Most of the music was sung a cappella. Briefly an organ, the most obsolete of instruments, lightly accompanied the ensemble. This church used old style pews for seating, but many people sat on the stone floor against the walls or pillars.
This service did not have a charismatic preacher with a nifty set of pointers to change your life; in fact there wasn’t a sermon. It did not have smiling greeters at the door. It did not have childcare available. It did not seem to be doing anything to draw a crowd. But that night the sanctuary was packed and most of the worshipers were younger than 30-years of age.
It was an Episcopal Evening Compline Service. This monastic prayer service was sung and chanted by an 18-member male ensemble. Their unaccompanied voices bounced of the hard stone walls of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle. It was a wondrous sound. As I closed my eyes I imagined that this is what worship would have sounded like a thousand years ago in some medieval monastery. I was being transported to another place and time.
Maybe that’s why those hundreds of young adults came each week to that service. To be transported. To do something ‘spiritual.’ And this felt spiritual, felt holy, felt sacred.
Which may explain why you didn’t hear a whisper, or a cell phone, or the rustling of a candy wrapping paper. You didn’t hear a sound, other than the voices of the ensemble. The worshipers obviously had a lot of reverence for the service. How different the service must seem from their cell phone/ipod/ PDA world. I wonder if that is part of the allure, which would be ironic.
For the last decade or two churches have been searching for ways to be more like the world in order to attract more persons. What if for a whole segment of the population being unlike the world would be most attractive of all? Maybe if we work on making worship attractive to God, the rest takes care of itself.
January 2007
I was reading the sports page the other day when I came across an interesting quote. One basketball team had just won its game by making all of its foul shots in the last minute of the ballgame. The player who sank the last shots with everybody watching, making those solitary shots with no one guarding him, said, “I take 200 foul shots a day. If I miss one in a game, I shoot an extra 200.”
I found that to be interesting sports mathematics. Two to four hundred a day for two to four in a game.
I used to hate to practice foul shots. Boring. Boring. Boring. Then in high school I missed six straight foul shots and literally cost my team the game. So, I started practicing foul shots. They were still boring, but humiliation was far worse. I decided boring wasn’t so bad.
Much of life is about practice. Creating habits. Developing a discipline. Making a routine. So that when you need it, when it’s ‘game day,’ practice has made instantaneous decisions and actions routine. Whether you are dealing with 2nd grade math, or writing computer code, making a speech before a crowd, or hitting a vein to take blood, it is practice and routine that makes it look effortless. Two to four hundred a day for two to four in a game.
I am convinced the same is true with prayer. God is always available to hear our cries of remorse, fear, or petition, whether we pray regularly or only on Easter Sunday with a congregation. If we want more out of prayer than an occasional plea for help, though, making it a practice, a routine, a discipline is essential.
The New Year is a great time to set aside fifteen minutes a day – in the morning, just before bed, lunch break, whenever possible – to start practicing prayer. Make time for praise and thanksgiving. Open yourself to the idea of repentance. Seek guidance for your life. Envision a world where God’s peace and justice reigns. The routine of prayer may not be so exciting, but it disciplines the soul so that when extraordinary moments come they may be handled with experience.
Two to four hundred a day for two to four in a game.
July 2006
My memory must fade over the course of a year, because every year I am amazed by what the teenagers from our church accomplish during their annual mission trip. I thought this year I had enough challenges lined up that surely we’d have so much work that there’d be stuff left over by the end of the week. In fact, two of the jobs we took on were the kind that if we didn’t finish it would not be a big deal – just in case.
Oh me of little faith.
Not only did the teens and their team of leaders finish the tasks for the week, but a couple of days they knocked off a little early and they even lost a couple of leaders who returned for Louise Edwards’ funeral. (I wasn’t much of a loss, but Danny Phillips was one of their engineering brains.) The camaraderie of their teamwork was especially productive.
I have no doubt that the teens worked harder this past week than they have in the past year, possibly since the last mission trip! After a couple of days some of them were even complaining about their aches and pains and strained muscles. They sounded like some middle-aged folks who did too much on their weekend to-do list – not that I would know anything about that.
Of course, had the same tasks been on their parents’ chore list you may have had trouble getting them awake in the morning, or if they’d been doing the same work for pay I’d guess it’d take them twice as long. The difference? Last week, they worked like folks who believed they were on a mission from God, like people who had a calling, a purpose.
Much of the time we are inspired not by what we are doing, but by why. Many times in life we cannot do anything about the whats we are doing, some things just have to be done, like it or not. We can change the whys, simply by altering the motivations in our minds, refocusing our vision.
So a dreary task changes from being demanded by an ungrateful boss, to being the means of sending a beloved child to college. Instead of working for a faceless company, work as if working for the LORD. If I reconfigure why I am doing this, it can bring value to even the most menial tasks.
May 2006
When the apostle Paul linked faith, hope and love at the end of his poetic chapter on love – “and now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” [I Corinthians 13:13] – it wasn’t happenstance.
Faith, hope and love are linked in the way they operate.
To be hopeful is to have a faith for the future. To love someone is also to carry around hope for him or her. To have faith in God is to love God.
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