Just the Way I See It:

Here’s what I think:

Every single time one uses the phrase “the Bible says,” one should precede it with “I believe that…” or “The way I read it…” or “According to my interpretation…” or some such clarifying phrase. Especially with issues upon which there is well-documented disagreement, like homosexuality.

Actually, I kind of thought we were past all of the “the-Bible-clearly-says-this” versus “oh-no-it-doesn’t-it-clearly-says-that” skubalon (Look it up – Philippians 3:8). But apparently not. I’ve read comments on a few online posts recently that are filled with it. Whatever comes after that phrase, the point is weakened because the author has demonstrated they are unwilling to hear any other perspective.

Question: How in the world am I supposed to take your point seriously if you are so blatant about your unwillingness to take anyone else’s seriously? Seriously.

Not to mention, there is a kind of arrogance in claiming to be privy to what the Bible clearly says or not. I am reticent to make such a claim myself; I take the Holy Scripture far too seriously to even remotely hint that I understand it completely. My wisest wisdom is utter foolishness with God. I believe that God’s Word is too big, too complex, too omni-everything to be codified or contained in a list of doctrines. And I know that the only interpretation I ever have is the one God has revealed to me, and spiritual maturity means learning how to deal with the fact that sometimes my interpretation is different than yours.

Looky here. Be clear about what you believe. Be firm in that belief. Claim it! And at the same time, be willing to hear reproof, rebuttal, admonition, and even affirmation. If your belief is really that strong, another perspective will be no threat to it! And maybe, just maybe, you will actually learn something and end up better for listening. That’s why we are supposed to do this Christianity thing together, as the church, just as “one body has many members,” because no single one of us, no single group of us, no single denomination of us, has an exclusive hold on the full truth of God.

(And now let’s get to the nitty and/or the gritty, whichever you prefer.)

Specifically, I am tired of being accused of not loving Jesus, or not regarding scripture as God-inspired, or not being a faithful disciple of Christ, and so forth, simply because I am in the group of Christians who do not believe that homosexuality is a sin. To be clear: I love Jesus. I believe scripture to be inspired by God. I am a faithful disciple who is working out my own salvation with fear and trembling. And so forth. And – I do not believe that homosexuality is a sin. (Side note: Yes, there are a lot of Christians who feel this way.)

At the same time, I have dear friends and colleagues who do believe homosexuality is a sin. I do not think they are hateful people. I do not think they do not love Jesus. I do not think they are unfaithful or “wrong” or homophobic or anything like that. I think that they are faithful disciples of Jesus who love God and neighbor just like me, and who happen to have come to a different perspective on this issue than I have.

There are other examples, too. This one happens to be one of the most sensitive. I have written a lot about it before, and you are welcome to click around my prior blog posts to read what I’ve written at various times over the past few years.

The larger point of this post is to issue a plea that we might “provoke one another to love and good deeds” in the way that we disagree with one another, a plea that we might set at tone of grace and respect in every one of our conversations. Journalism is not setting that tone; politics is not setting that tone; business is not setting that tone.

And sadly, neither is the church. But maybe we could. Maybe we should! Please, “if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” At least that’s the way I see it. If you disagree, I just ask that you do so respectfully!

Communion: The Holy Polyseme

I learned a new word today. Polysemy. It means "a diversity of meanings." Isn't that a cool word? It seems to me that a lot of things that have to do with faith and God and religion and church are polysemic. For example, the sacrament of Holy Communion.

World Communion Sunday is this week. That means not only will we have the holy privilege of celebrating the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in worship, but we do so knowing that Christians all around the world will be sharing the Eucharist meal together on one remarkable day.

I like to imagine a wave of Holy Communion sweeping over the world, as the planet spins into the sunrise and Christians gather together in one time zone after another. Our sacrament in Springfield has been preceded by the sacrament happening to the east, and will be followed by the sacrament as it happens to the west. It is like a “grace wave” that washes the world with its gentle strength, one bite of bread and sip of juice at a time.

To prepare for this week, I asked the congregation some prayerful questions in my newsletter article …

What does the sacrament of Holy Communion mean to you, personally? What do you bring with you to the table? Is the meal simply a symbol? What does it symbolize? Is it a historic reenactment of a moment Jesus shared with his friends? Is it a foreshadowing of the heavenly banquet table God is preparing for all people? Is it an entry point for the grace of God into your life? Is it a time of shaping the communal identity of the church? Is it something else altogether?

Of course, any of my questions could be answered in the affirmative. The truth is, Holy Communion is all of those things and more. The event has shades of meaning that emerge differently for different people. And similarly, Communion can mean something different to you at one point in your life than it might mean at another point. That means the sacrament is kind of a “Holy Polyseme.” It is one of the numerous polysemic aspects of Christianity.

It's too bad the ambiguity apparent in polysemic things makes people so uncomfortable. This discomfort leads us to strive for monosemy, the fact of having only one meaning. Of course, problems arise when my monosemy doesn't match your monosemy! We then have a choice to make; we either fight about it until the winner gets to declare his or her monosemy to be correct, or we agree that the thing we are fighting over may very well be a polysemic situation.

See how great this word is? So useful.

Please don't read this as a blanket affirmation of any and all perspectives. I am comfortable with ambiguity, but not all ambiguity is created equal, if you know what I mean. For example, I am not remotely tolerant of perspectives that are harmful to another person. So if a child is being abused, I will in no way shape or form say, "Well that's just another person's definition discipline. It's not how I would do it, but hey, they're entitled to their point of view." No way! I'll stick up for the kid, every single time.

There is a place for certainty and a time to say, "This is not right!" or "That's just how it is, period." Part of spiritual, emotional, and social maturity is discerning when those times are.

Holy Communion is not one of those. It's meaning is richly polysemic, and I love every bit of it! And this coming Sunday is one of my favorites, every year. Just thinking about the significance of a global sharing in the sacrament, so many millions of souls gathered around Christ's table together ... wow!

Lost / Found

In Luke 15, Jesus tells a series of parables about being found: one sheep out of a hundred, one coin out of ten, and one prodigal son who “was lost and has been found.” In each parable, an extraordinary effort is made for the sake of the one who is lost, an effort that seems disproportionate to the rest of the story.

A shepherd leaves 99 perfectly okay sheep behind to find one stray. A woman sweeps up her whole house to find a coin and throws a party for her neighbors when she does. And speaking of parties, a father puts on a blow-out fiesta celebration for a son who squandered his entire inheritance.

Why the imbalance? Surely it isn’t fair to the 99 sheep who stayed home! Surely the woman can make do with 9 coins out of 10! Surely the older brother deserves just as big a party as his irresponsible, prodigal sibling! I mean, come on! *Stamp foot indignantly*

Of course, as understandable as such indignation may be, it only serves to emphasize the larger lessons Jesus is teaching in these parables. He tells them in response to a challenge; namely, that he “welcomes sinners and eats with them” (v. 2). And rather than say simply, “Well, of course I do; that’s kind of why I’m here!” he tells a series of parables designed to help us figure that out for ourselves.

What we see is determined by where we are standing. Grace may create indignation for the 99 sheep who stay in the fold, but for the one who is lost, there is no greater bliss than realizing the shepherd has come looking for you!

Reconciliation

The “Letter of Paul to Philemon” is a short book of the Bible tucked into the late part of the New Testament; if you blink you’ll miss it. But it is a powerful letter that is the backdrop for a story of a fresh start, a second chance made possible by the grace of God.

Philemon and Onesimus had been estranged; the letter does not reveal the reason. Paul is now writing to Philemon to encourage him to reconcile with Onesimus, to be in relationship again, as a beloved brother.

There is power in reconciliation. In the same way that forgiveness does not condone the preceding harm, reconciliation does not ignore the estrangement that precedes it. Reconciliation simply moves on from there. Reconciliation is a fresh start on a relationship that carries its baggage along for the journey.

With whom do you need to sense the power of reconciliation? A family member you’ve been fighting with? A friend you haven’t seen in weeks or months? There’s no need to pretend that the estrangement didn’t happen. In fact to do so would be unhealthy. Why not take a risk, reach out to them, and let them know you still love them?

The baggage of the estrangement will be heavy at first, but over time it will lighten. The burden will grow less and less as the relationship is nurtured in grace, until it will be all but imperceptible. And then you will be so much closer to living the life God desires for you.

When we are struck by grace, we can only barely begin to imagine the possibilities of what God might do.

First Stone

Here's what I wrote for my newsletter article this week:

I have a stone on my desk. I got it a long time ago, so the writing on it is faded a lot. But you can still just barely make it out, if you look closely and squint.

It says, “First.”

I keep it close to me, to remind me of the story from John, chapter 8, where Jesus calmly addresses an angry mob saying, “Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone.”

I keep that stone on my desk because there are times that I really, really want to metaphorically hurl it in the direction of some person with whom I am angry, or who I feel is in the wrong somehow, or even sometimes who is just bugging me. Most of the time I can catch myself before I let loose; a glance at the “first stone” on my desk will remind me of that shocking story in John 8.

That story is shocking not because an innocent woman was about to be stoned by a crowd. It is shocking precisely because the woman really was guilty of the sin the crowd had accused her of, and yet Jesus himself did not condemn her. Earlier in the Gospel, John has reminded us that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the word, but to save it (3:17).

And so, if Jesus himself did not come to condemn guilty people, but to forgive … maybe we should try to follow that lead. It’s funny, isn’t it? We can see ourselves in the crowd, we can see ourselves as the woman forgiven; but how often do we see ourselves as Jesus? How often do we realize that Jesus doesn’t condemn the would-be stone throwers, either?

To borrow a well-worn cliché, it’s either forgiveness or it’s not. Or said another way, forgiveness is either there for everyone or no one. Now, that would be a shock!





As usual, I've been thinking about it a lot since I wrote it. What came to mind this morning was this - we often use forgiveness as a schlocky self-help technique, and remain blissfully unaware of the raw power of grace. How often do we say, "You've got to forgive others ... " or "The hardest thing to do is forgive yourself, but you have to ... " so that YOU will feel better?

It is as if my act of forgiveness is intended only to erase my emotional response to some event that has offended me, and make everything my-pretty-pony shiny and happy again. The more I think about it, the harder it is to swallow.

Our model for forgiveness is Jesus. He did not forgive others for his own benefit. His forgiveness was given so that the one who was guilty would be set free to live a new life. His oft repeated nudge to "go and sin no more" at the end of so many episodes reveals his desire that the one who has been forgiven is now expected to live differently. Sin matters to Jesus, and his standard operating procedure is not to beat people up with how sinful they are, but to forgive them and then release them to do better from here on out.

Another thing I'm thinking about - I absolutely LOVE to throw stones at stone throwers. You know what I mean? When I percieve that stone throwing is happening, I am happy to wade into the fray, if not outwardly, at least in my mind, and often in long gripe sessions to the captive audience of my wife! But in this story, Jesus does not throw any stones himself. His desire seems to be to set the would-be stone throwers themselves free to live a new life, as well.

That's hard for me. Because there are times, when harm is being done, that we have got to stop it from happening. And there are times when the most effective way to stop it is to directly confront the one doing harm. And yet there is no denying that, in John 8, Jesus' approach was effective; he prevented the stoning from happening, got the crowd to confront their own sinfulness, and charged the woman to go and live a new life. Not that I am surprised that his approach worked; he is, after all ... well ... Jesus.

I don't have a pithy conclusion to all this musing. It's just musing, working things out, trying to figure out what questions I need to ask. I would love to hear any thoughts that you might have about forgiveness, condemnation, passing judgement, and the power of grace. To be continued...

Hello, Little Girl

We set up the crib this week. Covered all of the outlets, got down the high chair again, dusted off the stroller. We have exchanged all the nice books on the living room table for board books, and found all of the lids for the sippy cups.

There were three voice mails waiting for us when we got back from vacation, three case workers asking us about placing five kids who needed a foster home. Before we could follow up on any of those, we got two more calls in quick succession the next morning.

Anyone reading this still not have an idea as to the desperate need for more foster families?

We said yes to a seventeen-month-old little girl who is as easy going as she is energetic. She’s toddling into every corner of the house, exploring everything, and reaching her arms out to everyone she meets, asking to be picked up, which is impossible to resist, of course. She has already been in foster care for two months, having lived in two homes in that time. She eats any food we put down in front of her, goes right to sleep when we put her in the crib, and sleeps all night long.

Funny how even though we have only known this little person for two days, we somehow seem to love her already. So much of this feels so familiar, riding a bike –ish; after all she is number 14 on the list of foster kids we have cared for. And yet at the same time it feels brand new, scary and uncertain; after all she is a singular person we barely know and have a lot to learn about.

We set up the crib this week, the same old, familiar crib with a brand new, wonderful kid sleeping in it. I can’t wait until our church family meets her and starts loving on her! And as usual, we’ll provide a safe space, healthy food, and all the love we can muster, for as long as we need to.

Life Unplugged

I am going to preach about healing on Sunday. And as it happens, I am using the idea of “unplugging” from the things that bind us in order to be healed. How fortuitous that I found this super cool article about how unplugging from the world actually helps our brains function like they are supposed to!

When we roll from one screen to another, be it desktop or laptop or phone or TV or whatever, our attention wanders. Our brains actually cannot pay attention to one thing for a long time, say some hypotheses. Others are skeptical, of course, and science is still exploring this brand new field of inquiry.

But personal experience (as in the last ten days) lends itself to support of this idea. I spent the vacation unplugged. No phone, no texts, no facebook, no emails. (In full disclosure, I did go online one time, to confirm a reservation – but that was all.)

And I felt the “third day syndrome” that the article talks about, as time slowed down and each moment became larger in my awareness. It was very cool. I never once thought, “Well where did that day go?” Time never flew by. Even as busy as we were seeing sights and doing all the camping stuff, the 10 days stretched out as I experienced them, they did not rush by.

So Jesus unbinds a woman from the disease that has been bending her over for eighteen years (Luke 13:10-13). Then the synagogue leaders display how bound they are by the rules of their religion by criticizing Jesus for his healing (v. 14). Then Jesus illuminates their hypocrisy by pointing out that they themselves unbind their livestock on the Sabbath, and so why should a woman of God not be unbound (v. 15-16)?

In other words, healing is all about being freed from bondage in this story. And that is helpful, I think, in distinguishing “healing” from “curing.” One does not have to be cured of an ailment in order to be healed. Being healed might be being released from anxiety about the ailment, even while still suffering from it. Being healed might look like relief of pain, even as the disease continues to ravage the body. Being healed might even feel like being ready for death, and at peace with God.

Being healed may very well be analogous with being cured, as well. God is infinitely powerful and is able to do abundantly far more than we can ever ask or imagine. And so sometimes healing and curing happen at the same time, and when they do, the stories people tell are called “miracles” or evidence of “blessing.” However, just because we don’t see a cure does not mean that healing has not happened.

Think about what binds you. Is it technology? Television? The giant tubes that comprise the internets? Your Blackberry Curve? (Ouch.)

Now wait, I’m not intending to say that all technology is bad all the time. Technology has connected us to one another in remarkable ways. But those connections can quickly become sticky strands of webbing that do not allow us to function as God intends. From time to time, we need to heal, to be unbound from what traps us in a kind of existence that really isn’t the abundant life Jesus came to offer.

Life, unplugged.

See Ya!

We are packing today, and leaving tomorrow on the Bryan family vacation, version 2010. This year, we are going west: Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Great Sand Dunes. We'll be tent camping in all three parks, and at this point I should highlight the depth of love I hold for my wife Erin, who is quite convincingly acting as though she is not going to be dreading every minute of it! :)

This time, I am unplugging. No Enter the Rainbow, no Facebook, no email, no text messages. We have our cell phones so that we can be reached in emergencies, but that's gonna be it. I'm not even going to be bringing my pedometer!

However, we know that my grandfather is having surgery today, and we are worried about him. The timing isn't great; this is a re-scheduling of his surgery from an earlier date, and our reservations are made. So we are not totally gone, since par of us will be in Dallas with him. He is surrounded by family right now, so that's good. But we still are feeling torn.

And at the same time, the weather forecast in northeastern Arizona and southwestern Colorado for the next two weeks is for highs in the low 80s and lows in the mid 50s. My amazing family unit will be together in the midst of some of the most beautiful area of God's earth. The pace will slow down, we'll have space to stretch and time to breathe deeply, and unwind our minds for a while.

See ya in two weeks!

The High Life

“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2)

When an athlete is experiencing a particularly good streak, she is often said to have “elevated her game.” Or sometimes we would say he has “taken it to the next level.”

Of course, the athlete in question is still on the same plane, feet on the same field as the rest of us, but we use the metaphor of elevation to describe something better. Higher is, generally speaking, better – at least when it comes to metaphors.

So it is with the verse from Colossians above, and the idea of God being “up there” somewhere above us. Of course we don’t really believe that God is “up” but we use the metaphor of “up” to describe and address God. How many of us have gazed upward at some point in order to lament, “Why me, Lord?”

God is all around, within and among, above and below and in between. “There Is No Place Where God Is Not,” reads the first line of a Charles Haddon Spurgeon poem. God is everywhere, not just “above” us. When this scripture calls us to look above in order to find Christ, I think it is using the real direction as a metaphor for “better.” Simply put, when we follow Jesus we are supposed to live better lives than when we do not.

And what does this “high life” look like? Paul paints a picture with words later in the chapter: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and above all, LOVE! Love is the force that runs throughout the elevated life in Christ, that “binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Elevate your game. Elevate your life. Seek that which is above, where Christ is.
This Sunday, we’re going to talk about Elevation.

"What's a Emeny?"

One preschool chapel, I was telling the story of the Good Samaritan. When I got to the part about the Samaritan seeing the guy in the ditch, I explained that Samaritans were enemies of people from Jerusalem. One adorable little girl raised her hand with a question. “What’s a emeny?” she asked, just as sweet as you could ever be.

How beautiful is it to not know what the definition of “enemy” is? I mean, she didn’t even know how to pronounce the word, since she had never used it in her entire life! I didn’t know whether or not I should define it for her, like I was crushing a new rose bud just beginning to open. As nearly as I can remember it, I went with something like, “They weren’t really friends” or “They didn’t know each other,” something along those lines.

What if the guy who asked Jesus “And who is my neighbor?” in Luke 10 had asked instead “Who is my enemy?” After all, one of the things he asks his followers to do is “love your enemies.” What about a follow-up parable, Jesus? “And who is my enemy?” What kind of parable would he have told?

People have a propensity toward love, I believe. I see it in kids. They are so, so much more ready to love than us grown-ups are. For example, foster kids come to our home having been horribly neglected or abused by their parents, and yet by some unfathomable mystery, the kids still seem to love them. Kids love their parents, no matter how crappy the parents may be. Kinda sucks sometimes, but there it is.

As we age, something seems to kind of grind the love right out of us. Over time, we are systematically and carefully taught who, exactly, our enemies are. The result is a slew of artificial enemies, people who aren’t really our enemies but we think they are because we have been taught as much. I wish Jesus had said to us, “Love the people you think are your enemies because you have been taught as much, but they’re really not they’re actually your neighbors so saying ‘love your enemies’ is in point of fact just the same as saying ‘love your neighbor’.” But Jesus wasn’t that wordy.

Of course, what I am NOT saying is that we should be naïvely trusting of every single person we meet. That could be dangerous. Teaching kids about “enemies” can be a safety thing. But I also notice a confusing double standard parents routinely teach kids. We warn kids about “stranger danger” but at the same time insist that they “be polite” when someone talks to them. That’s got to be a bit bewildering, don’t you think? When equal parts “Don’t talk to strangers” and “Can you say hi?” come out of our mouths, we are sending mixed messages, at best.

The truth is, a stranger is not automatically an enemy, and an acquaintance (even a family member), is not automatically a friend. 80% of child maltreatment perpetrators are parents, another 6.5% are other relatives, another 4.4% are unmarried partners of parents, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. For many kids, when your parents warn you not to talk to strangers, it’s because they don’t want to get arrested.

We have fostered kids who never should have had the experiences in their lives that they had, kids whose eyes look a lot older than the rest of them. Their propensity to love is out of whack because of the tendency toward violence that their lives have been, BUT it is STILL THERE. Sometimes the mixture of love and hurt is just too much, and it overflows in terrible, heart breaking ways.

They know exactly what an enemy is, and you had better believe they love them.

Mandela, Invictus, and Loving Enemies

Sunday was Nelson Mandela’s ninety-second birthday. Even a cursory reading of his biography amazes and astounds. Imagine being imprisoned for 27 years, then upon being released finding it within yourself to forgive the people who held you prisoner.

In Matthew 5:44, Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Mandela, experiencing adversity and persecution for his whole life, somehow found it within himself to show love and respect to people who otherwise might be his enemies. The movie Invictus explores one way he did that, and convinced so many others to do so, as well.

“Love your enemies.” It is surely one of the most difficult things Christians are supposed to do, isn’t it? We would much rather love the ones who love us in return. And of course, it’s not that Jesus doesn’t want us to do that, but rather that loving people who love you is kind of a no-brainer, anyway. As he puts it (with a bit of a wry grin, I imagine), “Even tax collectors do THAT!”

To truly be doing what Jesus wants us to do, we have to love “enemies,” a very strong word indeed. It means “hated” or “odious” or “hateful.” One who is “hostile” and “opposing another.” Not just annoying or grumpy or bitter people (although to be sure, we are supposed to love them too!), but people who are openly hateful. Whoa!

It is staggering enough to think of such an idea personally, but then consider inspiring others to think the same way, as Nelson Mandela did, and we are left shaking our heads. But if we are to take the Great Commission seriously, to “make disciples” of all, that is exactly what we are supposed to be doing – not only loving others as Jesus loves, but inspiring others to do likewise.

Well, let’s get to work!

Embrace Life - always wear your seat belt

Life needs more opera!

The Author of Life

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
- William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”

Sometimes it is tempting to think of life as a drama that is being played out around us. We slip into a kind of existential “role play” in order to get by from one scene to the next. There is an assumed script for life and our job is just to speak our lines, make our entrances, hit our marks, and exit the stage at the appropriate time.

On the other hand, there are times that life seems random, even chaotic. We wonder why things happen, we question our own choices, we seem to be tossed to and fro, blown about by trickery and craftiness and deceitful scheming.

There are people who believe that God has every single moment of every single life planned in every single detail. There are people who believe that everything is random, guided by people’s choices and nature’s whims.

In the movie “Stranger Than Fiction,” one man becomes a case study in free will. Harold Crick’s life is being narrated, and he knows it. Is the narrator describing what Harold is already doing? Or does the narrator control Harold’s actions with her words? Is he free, or not?

What does it mean to call Jesus the “Author of Life?” (Acts 3:15, NRSV)

These are the questions, and so much more, we will be asking this week, in our ongoing series, “Campbell at the Movies.”

I hope that you will choose to come and worship God on Sunday morning!

"UP" - It's About Love!

This week, Campbell UMC is watching “UP” together and our worship service is drawing from themes out of the remarkable movie. When I asked my daughter what she thought “Up” was about, she said without hesitation, “It’s about love!” And you know, she’s a pretty smart girl.

How many impulses can be attributed to the underlying human inclination to be in relationship with another person? To be known, to be affirmed, and to be thus connected to another human being is our life’s core purpose. The fulfillment of this purpose is experienced as being loved.

The flipside, by the way, is to know, to affirm, and connect to another person. The inclination toward relationship is mutual, and when the energy flows outward, we understand what it means to love. To love and to be loved, it seems to me, motivate just about everything we do.

These impulses flash in both positive and negative ways, though they arise from the same source. Consider Carl Fredricksen, the old man in “Up” whose wife Ellie dies after a lifetime of wonderful happy years together. They dream of adventure, imagine traveling to exotic locales and eventually building their home at the top of the near-mythical “Paradise Falls.”

Carl’s impulse to act at the beginning of the movie is a desperate longing for Ellie and a deep regret that their imagined adventures never happened, and it leads him to obsessively preserve their house and all of their possessions – even their mailbox. When the mailbox is knocked over by a construction worker, Carl’s frantic desperation (grief) causes him to physically attack the worker as he attempts to repair it.

This violence is completely out of character for Carl, who has been seen up to this point as a quiet, solid, and dependable man. But the impulse for his action is his powerful love for Ellie, a longing that has for so many years been easily fulfilled that he cannot redirect it after her death. It makes him do something he would never ordinarily have done, and he even seems surprised by it.

Russell is a boy who is trying to get his “Assisting the Elderly” badge for Wilderness Explorer Scouts, and so knocks on Carl’s door to ask him if he needs any help with anything. Russell is looking forward to the ceremony in which the badges are awarded, when “all the dads come” to be with their sons. We quickly learn, however, that Russell’s dad is out of the picture, and the longing that Russell feels is for the paternal relationship that he so deeply desires but does not have.

Russell longs for affirmation. Carl longs for adventure. And so, in their meeting and the development of their relationship, Russell becomes Carl’s adventure as Carl becomes Russell’s affirmation. Each knows the other and is known, each affirms and is affirmed, they connect deeply with each other and their relationship is a beautiful picture of love.

Jesus saved his last few words with his disciples for, “Love one another.” Paul says that the entire law is contained in the phrase, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 1st John 4 reveals that God’s very identity is somehow comprised of love. There is no more significant idea for children of God than love; everything else starts there – grace, peace, justice, forgiveness – without love none of these even make sense.

Love is supposed to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. Or so Paul would have us understand. But what in the world does that mean?

Maybe it means, in part, that there is a “no-matter-whatness” quality of love. To bear, to endure all things – I get this. But to believe all things? …to hope all things?

All things? Really?

Maybe it means there is an attitude of openness in love. Not naïveté (believe anything you hear), but faithfulness. Knowing that, in a loving relationship, whatever happens is going to be okay. So you’re open to it, not afraid, ready for it.

In all things, I will have faith. In all things, I will have hope. Because of the love, you see. Because I am known and it’s okay, because I am being affirmed, because I am connected to another person in a positive, uplifting relationship. And at the same time I risk knowing another, affirming another, and connecting to another to uplift them and build them up, too.

That may be why love is the greatest of these.

Reflections After Church Camp: *Smile*

Amazing things happen at church camp.

I remember a meeting once in which a colleague said, “All I ever hear about church camp is sort of emotional, sentimental reactions to it. But what actual good is it doing? What does the church get out of it? Why is it worth putting so many resources into?” I think I understand where he is coming from, and I honestly do not believe he was trying to make my stomach turn over and my jaw drop open with shock, even though that was my reaction.

He’s coming from a place where bigger, slicker programs with well-known presenters giving workshops in air-conditioned meeting rooms are more important, more effective, or more meaningful than spending a week in a hot, dirty, tick-ridden forest slathering sunscreen on top of bug spray. I get it. I’ve even been there.

But I’ll tell you, if you have experiences like my family and I had this week, you just don’t even think to ask questions like that. You don’t need to, because you know.

You know as you watch fifty-plus people from 10 families grow closer to God and one another as they stroll through a series of spiritual stations set up in the woods.

You know as you listen to a second grader singing softly to herself, “God is amazing!” as she colors a picture of a joyful moment.

You know as you catch the energy of a dining hall filled with more than sixty 3rd and 4th graders who are learning that God loves them no matter what, and having a great time doing it.

You know as you see the love of grandparents who desire to share their faith with their grandchildren so deeply, wanting the kids to grow and learn and feel God’s grace like they have.

I knew this week as I watched my wife Erin lead the singing for worship and saw the unmitigated joy on her face as she did so, knowing others were sensing that joy, too.

I knew as I embraced people whom I had not even met three days prior, feeling the connection of the Holy Spirit among and around and within us, strangers who had become friends.

These experiences and a thousand-thousand others, this week, all summer long, and all year-round, no way to account for each of them, no tally sheet that could ever possibly convey what they all mean, all of them happening because the United Methodist Church in Missouri believes that amazing things happen at church camp.

Sentimental? Emotional? Yes! No doubt about it.

“Worth” it? Absolutely! Every penny.

It was a great week at church camp – I experienced growth personally, Erin and I grew as a couple, we grew as a family, and as a larger community of faith. If what the Missouri Annual Conference is supposed to be doing is “leading congregations to lead people to actively follow Jesus Christ,” then supporting church camp is one of the most powerful and effective ways to do that. People come home from church camp with energy, focus, momentum, renewal, and they bring life and joy into their congregations in powerful ways, in addition to energizing their own active discipleship.

It sometimes feels like church camp is in the ongoing position of having to stick up for itself, and I can’t figure out exactly why that is. Here in Missouri, our United Methodist campgrounds are Camp Galilee, Camp Jo-Ota, Blue Mountain Center, and Wilderness Retreat & Development Center. At each of these four wonderful places, hundreds and hundreds of lives are changed, relationships deepened, spirits lifted, disciples formed, and commitments to Christ strengthened every year.

Church camp is truly an amazing time, where transformation is happening on a regular basis, and the church of Jesus Christ is strengthened in deep and abiding ways. I thank God for church camp, and for the people who make it happen. And I wish everyone would go so they might have the kind of experience we have every single time we’re there!

A Pattern of Discipleship: Part 3

In response to my last post, my friend and colleague Shawn commented:

What I'd like for you to say more about is resisting “oversimplification in favor of true simplicity”. Are you pushing against step-by-step approaches to discipleship in general (if so, how does Live-Grow-Share address this concern) or is their something bigger here you hope to move away from? Perhaps to be more clear, what do you mean by true simplicity?

I would say fundamentally, oversimplification ignores complexity whereas true simplicity addresses it.

Oversimplification will not acknowledge that subtlety or nuance exist, let alone value them. True simplicity takes on subtlety, nuance, and complexity, reorders it, and emerges with a-whole-nother perspective on things.

I’ve been intrigued by this idea ever since I read “Church Unique” by Will Mancini. A few weeks ago I wrote this:

In the past few years, there has been a push for clarity, simplicity, and focus. I dig that! But in the rush for simplicity, sometimes we go too far and become simplistic. Have you noticed that many congregational "Vision Statements" are essentially re-arranged versions of someone else's? Will Mancini says that churches get bogged down in complexity and never move through it into the happiness of true simplicity because "the tunnel of chaos is too unbearable." So maybe the "simiplistic church" (constrasted with the truly "simple church") fails not because we go too far, but because we don't go far enough. Rather than shy away from complexity, perhaps we should push through it and discover where we end up on the other side.

In terms of Christian discipleship, a strictly linear approach does not come to grips with the complexity of real life. Sometimes I feel like I’m “back at square one” with God. You know how, for example when something bad happens or you are highly stressed out about something, God can feel really far away sometimes? Or you really screw something up and have to come crawling on your knees to God to beg for forgiveness?

If I’m thinking linearly, that could be perceived as a failure. It translates as God being somehow “further away” from me. However, if I’m thinking cyclically or seasonally or MC Escher-ly, then I know that the feeling of being “back at square one” with God is not the same “square one” as last time. Something has happened in the interim. I am different now than I was then. It is not a failure, it is a new opportunity, and God is as near to me as ever.

So, I think I’m answering Shawn by saying “yes” to both – I’m pushing against step-by-step discipleship and also trying to get at something bigger. I believe there is value in acknowledging, engaging, and moving through life’s messiness so that we might emerge on the other side of it with newfound clarity. True simplicity wouldn’t pretend that life isn’t complex; true simplicity re-prioritizes that complexity and “so orders our lives” that we are able to flourish in the midst of it.

Let’s make it real. One week I am in worship, loving God and loving neighbor, feeling groovy and all that. Having thus renewed the covenant, I head out into the week to grow in my love and knowledge of God and share that love by serving my neighbor. Then I experience a heartbreak, something deeply personal that makes me want to withdraw from the world and just wallow for a while. The next Sunday I come to worship, but I feel disconnected and angry, and I don’t really want to be there at all.

Now, if I’m thinking of my Christian journey as a straight line from point A to point B, how do I process this week? A detour? Sliding backwards? Things are supposed to just get better and better, as I get closer and closer to the bull’s eye, so what went wrong?

But if I could think of my Christian journey as a set of stairways, each one leading to the next, going ever onward and imprinting a life-pattern on my heart, I would be able to take the messiness of this week and incorporate it into my walk. Maybe I could even manage to think of the heartbreak of this hypothetical week as one of the steps on the journey, and now that I’m back to worship God, I have taken that step and discovered that God is right there through it all. I’m in a different place, but never far from the presence of God.

Okay – I kind of just wrote out those last few paragraphs as a stream of consciousness exercise to see how it felt. So, does it make sense to anyone? (I’m not even sure yet it makes sense to me, so if you are inclined to comment, feel free.)



Addendum:
Or, I might say it like this, "The fruitful, God-related life develops with intentional and repeated attention to five essential practices that are critical for our growth in Christ." - Bishop Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Living, p. 8

I would emphasize "intentional" and "repeated."

A Pattern of Discipleship: Continued

Foreword, of sorts:

For this rambling, I will use two terms that are in need of a bit of definition, for clarity's sake. The first is "Bordenian," in honor of author Paul Borden. A Bordenian approach to discipleship assumes there is a bull's eye, we are supposed to do nothing except hit it, and eschew everything else that detracts from doing so. I neither love nor hate Bordenian discipleship, it is what it is. But the reality is, a Bordenian approach is very, very popular right now, and so the question is not "Do you like it" but rather "What are you going to do with it."

The second term is "organic," which is terribly cliche, but I couldn't think of another word. I will use it to describe an approach to discipleship that emerges from within the community, and includes as much as possible the messiness, subtlety, and nuance of real life. This kind of discipleship sees inherent value in each moment without needing it to lead to anything, resists oversimplification in favor of true simplicity (which may be too subtle of a distinction, perhaps), and tends to value identity over activity.


OK? Those two terms may not be crystal clear at this point, but I'm moving on, so if you are still with me, here we go:

I hope to use Bordenian energy to orbit with an organic discipleship pattern.

See, I don't really think in terms of aiming at a bull's eye when it comes to discipleship. I think in terms of being conformed to the image of God. I think in terms of clothing ourselves in Christ. I think in terms of desiring to be perfect, by the grace of God, as the heavenly Father is perfect. These are the scriptural images that inform my perspective on discipleship.

Translated, in means being imprinted with a Divine pattern. Poetically, it means we clay vessels are shaped by the hands of the Potter. Pragmatically, it means living an intentional life-pattern that allows ourselves to be shaped by God. That's why there are holy orders - that's why there are divine offices - that's why there are monastic rules - to engage a pattern of living that might open up a way into the pattern of the Divine. The pattern itself is not the point; like an icon the pattern serves to orient us toward God.

And so I would like for the discipleship plan we are creating to articulate the pattern clearly, in Bordenian terms even, but avoid the linear thinking that narrows the possibilities to "first A, then B, then C.." etc.

Said another way, I would like for the path itself to BE the bull's eye. The journey IS the destination. The discipleship plan itself is a life-pattern, and engaging the pattern is what facilitates the imprint of the Divine pattern on each of us, and on the community.

"How do you measure growth?" I hear someone ask. "If there's no bull's eye, how will you know when you hit the target?" or "If there's no destination, how will you know if you are making progress on the journey?"

I answer, Spiritual growth is imprinting the pattern more and more deeply. Rather than a linear path toward a destination in which one leaves behind one moment in order to get to the next, this pattern utilizes the naturally occuring cycles of life - days, weeks, seasons, years, lifetimes - to grow organically. Every morning we wake up, but it is not the same day as yesterday. Every Sunday we worship together, but it is not the same week as it was lat week. Every summer we feel the heat of the sun, but we are different than we were the year before. Every year there is an Advent, but our anticipation each year is shaped by what has happened to us the year before.


Here are some things I know:

There are people who come to church exhausted, dragging themselves out of bed to attend worship, carrying the heavy burdens of their lives with them and hoping to unload them.

There are people who are quite comfortable in life, successful even, who come to worship when it doesn't interfere with their overflowing schedules.

There are people who come to worship only when they have some specific job to do (usher, greet, sing, etc.), but rarely otherwise.

There are people who come to worship because it's just what you do every week.

There are people who come to worship because it is the primary gathering of the community of faith, intended to renew our relationships with God and one another, and designed to facilitate a genuine encounter with the Divine.

There are people who participate in some kind of ministry (service, mission, community), but do not see any need to attend worship of any kind.

There are some people who neither worship nor serve, but exist on their own, without any church involvement whatsoever.

And so forth ...


I hope that the LIVE - GROW - SHARE pattern, or whatever it eventually ends up being, might be helpful for any and all of these people, as we all seek God and try to live the best lives we can. As we all try, as my mom used to pray at my bedside every night when I was a kid, to "be the kind of people God wants us to be."

(If you have put up with this rambling so far, I welcome your comments, questions, suggestions. Thanks!)

A Pattern of Discipleship

Here is a synopsis of the spiritual growth plan that I was inspired to create at Annual Conference this year. I owe a great deal to Rev. David Conley who led a workshop I attended, Rev. Melissa Dodd who is a fantastic collaboration partner, and Kory Wilcox who is rarely ever inside the box.

Please take a look and let me know what you think, does it make sense, will it flow, could it work in a local congregation to help people grow in faith, etc.? Thanks!


A Pattern of Discipleship – A Metaphor for Spiritual Growth

There are 3 Stairways:

*Live – (Worship)
*Grow – (Faith Development, Fellowship)
*Share – (Mission & Service, Hospitality, Generosity)

- Walking up one of the stairways always leads you to the next, like an MC Escher painting.

Living unleashes growth; growing inspires sharing; sharing enables living.

Stairway #1:
*LIVE – People are created in the image of God, so in a sense we are created to worship. Worship of God is the heartbeat of the church.

And spiritual growth doesn’t stop with worship, it begins there. We worship, which then unleashes us to grow, so we turn the corner onto the next stairway:

Stairway #2:
*GROW – The possibilities expand, to Faith Development (growth on a personal level) and Fellowship (growth in relationships). Faith Development and Fellowship are like the head of the body.

Spiritual growth doesn’t stop there; discipleship is a community event. When we experience growth, it inspires us to share, which is the next ascending stairway:

Stairway #3:
SHARE – The possibilities expand even more, encompassing Generosity (sharing our resources with others), Mission & Service (sharing our time and energy for the sake of those in need), and Hospitality (inviting and welcoming all people). This aspect of spiritual growth comprises the hands and feet of the body.

Sharing leads us naturally back to living, as the pattern of discipleship comes full circle. We find ourselves at the foot of the next stairway, which is the first stairway, and we worship.

FRACTAL Pattern
*But it is not the same, this time*
This time around, our worship is shaped by the growing and sharing that have preceded it.

And so the pattern of discipleship is a fractal; each smaller piece is the same shape as the whole.

Discipleship is much more than just repeating the same activities over and over again. Spiritual growth means moving up the fractal pattern of the 3 stairways, expanding ever outward as we grow closer to God.



OK - what do you think? Comments are most welcome...

Annual Conference Wrap-Up 2010

With Vacation Bible School and other events happening at church this week (read all about it right here), I haven’t had much of a chance to reflect on Annual Conference this year. This was my 10th Annual Conference (not counting a handful I went to as a kid), and it was very good. Maybe top two or three.

And what made it so good? NOT format. Content. And let me say it again – Content! There was nothing new or innovative about the format – big meeting rooms, worship, plenary teaching sessions, workshops, lots of paper with lots of names and numbers in lots of notebooks. But the content was great, focused on growing deeper in our relationship with God.

Actually, there was one innovative session the format of which was unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of before. Friday night, we met around Tables of Grace and Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher led us in holy conversations as we shared our meal together. It was very cool. I was one of three people providing some musical accompaniment for the event, but I got to share in some of the conversations.

Coordinating all of the conference content on spiritual growth, deepening our relationships with God, set a tone for the weekend that was grace-filled and … dare I say it … holy! There was none of the divisive rancor that can from time to time characterize our meetings. Now, the flipside of that, of course, may be that there are some significant issues that we have been avoiding talking about for a while. But on the other hand, I believe that sessions like this one will make conversations about potentially divisive issues better in the future.

This year, I knew almost all of the ordination class, and many who were being commissioned. And at the same time I knew many of the retiring pastors, including my dad. It was a strange “sandwich generation” kind of feeling, watching people I know and love retire and watching people I know and love be ordained or commissioned. And thinking about how every one of them is starting a new chapter of ministry.

This year we heard a lot about the Healthy Church Initiative. HCI has generated a lot of gravitational energy in Missouri, and other conferences have noticed and are starting to request the program for their own congregations. Now, I have heard some colleagues who have been a bit skeptical of HCI, especially when words like “effectiveness” get tossed around rather flippantly, without sufficient definition. But ever since I read the book Orbiting the Giant Hairball, I have no trouble at all with being a part of a complicated, highly structured organization like the UMC. The key learning of that book for me was how to use the energy of the organization to orbit around it, neither getting sucked into the gravitational pull nor drifting aimlessly in the vacuum of space. That has been my approach to participating in the HCI as a Pastoral Leadership Development I teacher, and it has led to some wonderful moments of insight and spiritual growth. I will always be grateful to the person who introduced me to that book, and I commend it to anyone who works in a large organization, company, or denomination.

Melissa, Donna, Kory, and I came home from Conference this year renewed, and with some inspiration and insight about spiritual growth in the church. I have a whole spiritual growth process in my mind that is based on an MC Escher painting! We were inspired by Mike Slaughter to focus relentlessly on the mission of Jesus Christ. My friend Rob Barringer encouraged us to percolate through Christ so that we take on his aroma (great metaphor, Rob!).

In short, there is motion in the Missouri Conference, in a positive direction. I like it! Bish Schnay-Z has led and continues to lead in a way that inspires and energizes me for ministry. It truly feels like the false distinctions among evangelism, social justice, personal spiritual formation, and sacred community are dissolving. I am hopeful, and pray that God will reveal the best way to bring it to life in the phenomenal congregation I serve.

One of Those Weeks - VBS!

I love Vacation Bible School! What a great week. I don't remember ever having VBS on the week immediately following Annual Conference weekend, however. It's pretty exhausting, and it's only Wednesday!

And when you add in a few other things - stepping into the middle of a parental confrontation in Fellowship Hall, leading a funeral service complete with military honors at graveside, an afternoon filled with bringing holy communion to people unable to leave their homes - and this can truly be called "one of those weeks!"

And it is one of those weeks where, at the end of the day as I sit in my home with my family all around me, the tired that I feel is one of those good kind of tireds where you know that you're doing good stuff. You know what I mean? Sure I'm tired, but it's because I've been doing ministry, and that tends to wear a person out.

And at the same time, I am grateful, so unexpressably grateful, for the people with whom I am serving. Campbell UMC is such a phenomenal congregation, and the people that I have witnessed in action this week are truly my heroes. Here's a few of them:

- Melissa, Scotty, and Wendy are amazing in the Bible story room. We are definitely having a blast together!

- Kristi and Jill and their crew of people serving at VBS are fantastic. I have seen so many grown-ups talking and laughing and playing with the kids this week, and it makes me smile.

- We have more youth helpers at VBS than we know what to do with, and they are all great.

- I told a church member who is a police officer about the confrontation at church and he immediately gave me his personal cell phone number and told me to call him any time. Many others have taken extra care during "pick up" and "drop off" times to keep an eye on the kids.

- At the funeral, 50 or more members of the 101 Sunday School class were there to sing a tribute for their friend, and Bobby gave a moving eulogy.

- Donna, who coordinates the home communion visits and goes with me to assist, is so gracious and gentle with all of the people we visit, I am inspired by her every time we go.

And the list could just go on and on and on...

Ministry is hard, but at the same time a deep joy. And when you have the privilege of being in ministry with so many incredible people, ... well there's just nothing much better than that in the whole world, is there?

Making Idea-Machines Inside Your Head

"Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense at all because they can't all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they're needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgements, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything." - Orson Scott Card, "Xenocide"

The quote above is from the sci-fi novel I'm currently reading (again), and is spoken by an alien who is able to communicate telepathically with the main character, Ender Wiggin. The alien is remarking to another alien about what she has discovered in Ender's mind. And she is amazed by what she has found there.

I was floored by these sentences when I read them last night, and I read them over four or five times. I am caught up by the idea of conceiving new universes to live in every hour, of building an entirely new "idea-machine" to respond to every different situation. At a time when there are literally thousands of different ideas being submitted to BP as ways to stop the disastrous oil leak (which now has its own Wikipedia entry, btw) in the Gulf of Mexico, and nothing so far actually working, it may be a strange time to celebrate the amazing, unlimited potential of human creativity. Or maybe the current "case study" clarifies, sharpens things.

Here's an article that says the human mind has brainstormed all of these ideas - more than 30,000 have been submitted - and BP has kind of "triaged" them so that a couple hundred have made it to a team of engineers to see if they might work, and the few ideas BP has tried (each of which was an idea from their own organization, none from those submitted, btw) have been to no avail.

What's happening here? Truly, is the human mind capable of imagining a way to extract oil from 5,000 feet deep in the ocean but incapable of imagining a way to stop it from leaking? This is like figuring out how to put a astronauts on the moon but not knowing how to get them back to earth!

But back to my larger point: given the right atmosphere, human beings are capable of almost unbounded ingenuity. When given permission, people can become so much more than we think we're capable of. And when that ingenuity is unleashed in a community of people on a mission, like the church for example, what happens borders on miraculous! (You knew I'd bring this back to the church, right?)

The trick for the church is to define the mission in a way that allows for the ingenuity to happen in a creative rather than a destructive way.

For me, the time has come to stop making jokes whose punch line is "But we've always done it that way" and start just doing things differently. I cannot imagine that God created us with such wonderful minds, only to have us minimize everything down to it's basest level. I celebrate innovation! I celebrate nuance! I celebrate obfuscation, if necessary! Just be different, for the inherent value of difference.

I've thrown down the challenge to the staff here at Campbell - think differently, do something new in ministry, innovate! I've preached about it, too - asking people to be bold and take risks in ministry ON THEIR OWN, for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I figure, if it's truly inspired by the Holy Spirit and it is focused toward the end of realizing God's mission in the world, my approval or disapproval (or the approval/disapproval of any particular church committee, either) isn't going to matter anyway.

In the past few years, there has been a push for clarity, simplicity, and focus. I dig that! But in the rush for simplicity, sometimes we go too far and become simplistic. Have you noticed that many congregational "Vision Statements" are essentially re-arranged versions of someone else's? Will Mancini says that churches get bogged down in complexity and never move through it into the happiness of true simplicity because "the tunnel of chaos is too unbearable." So maybe the "simiplistic church" (constrasted with the truly "simple church") fails not because we go too far, but because we don't go far enough. Rather than shy away from complexity, perhaps we should push through it and discover where we end up on the other side.

So I'm going to be making "new idea-machines" in my head from now on. I'm sure that most of the ideas I generate will bomb. But I'm also sure that a few of them will succeed! Bring on the complexity ... new ideas ... it's innovatin' time!

Here's Hoping

When the TV series “Lost” ended last week, millions of viewers were watching. One thing that “Lost” did was play around with the rules of time; viewers were never quite sure if the scene we were watching was past, present, or future. Past moments foreshadowed future events, present experiences paralleled happenings of the past, and ultimately the series ended in a kind of timeless moment that could have been any time, and every time.

The Holy Spirit also plays around with the rules of time a little bit. This week, I'm thinking about HOPE, a profoundly future-oriented theme. And we experience the future-focus of hope in the present moment because we recall what God has done in the past – past/present/future are all contained in this one timeless idea.

To help think about what hope is, there's a passage in Romans 5 that tells us “…hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The source of Spiritual hope is God’s love. Knowing that God’s love is given, we may envision the future with confidence, imagining the possibilities that God has in store for this remarkable creation.

In that last episode of “Lost,” just before operating on his spine, Jack says to Locke, “Everything is going to be okay.” When Locke asks him if he really knows for sure that everything is going to be okay, Jack responds, “No, I might kill you. I was just saying that to make you feel better.” And they laugh. None of us really knows exactly what the future is. No one. Having hope doesn’t mean we know for sure, it means that whatever happens, we’re going to be okay.

We Didn't Start the Fire?

The fire of the Holy Spirit will always find a way to burn.

The thing is, it’s either going to burn in spite of us, or because of us.

That’s my Pentecost sermon this year. Reading the familiar Acts 2 story this year, here’s what came to mind. The Holy Spirit had a message to get to all those people, and it was going to be heard. God was not going to let a little thing like linguistic, ethnic, or national barriers get in the way.

Yes, the voice of the Holy Spirit will always find a way to be heard, and the question for us is will we be translators or inhibitors? It really doesn’t matter in the long run, of course. If God wants a message to get out, it WILL get out. I guess I’d rather choose to be a translator, if at all possible.

People are really, really good at categorizing one another, noticing our differences. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. What gets us in trouble is when we take it too far, and make judgments based only on those categories, believing one category better than another in some way. Instead, I think those differences that we notice among one another are, in fact, exactly the way God wants things to be.

I say that in part because of this remarkable Pentecost story. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit sees the differences among the people gathered, and neither pretends they are not there nor uses them to divide. In fact, it seems to me that the Holy Spirit speaks to the crowd through their differences, as if the diversity of nation, language, and ethnicity were themselves the language the Spirit used to speak.

The voice of the Holy Spirit WILL find a way to be heard. The fire of the Holy Spirit WILL find a way to burn. That’s not the issue here.

The issue for us is, are we going to resist it or help it along?

Immigration: What Place Hospitality?

Is there any way to apply the scriptural principle of hospitality to the current conversation about immigration?

It’s easy enough to lift select verses from here and there and apply them to various arguments. For example, one might quote Leviticus 19:33-34, “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” And then from that one might extrapolate a position on immigration that might call for amnesty for all, for example. Just sayin'.

The problem with that is that it takes two verses out of context in order to “prove” one’s point of view. Simply put, the socio-political context in which Leviticus was written is so different from ours today, it is impossible to do a simple apples-to-apples comparison. I try really hard not to do that with any of the “hot button” social issues of our day – homosexuality, war, health care, whatever it might be.

It’s called “proof texting” – coming in with a preconceived notion and then doing a quick concordance search to find a handful of verses that reinforce your belief, and citing them to back yourself up. Proof texting is surface level, bad theology, and does very little to facilitate respectful, grace-filled dialogue about matters of faith.

So, getting back to immigration and the idea of the “resident alien” in Leviticus (and Exodus, too, btw); there is nothing in scripture nor in anything I’ve read about the historical context of the ancient near east that would lead me to believe this passage is about people who have entered a foreign country illegally. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that national boundaries really didn’t work the same way then as now. In fact, I don’t think the scriptures have much to say at all specifically about the issue as it exists today. The world is just a vastly different place now than it was then.

And so I turn to the underlying themes that unify the entire scriptural library. One of those themes is hospitality. I don’t mean greeters at the church door hospitality, I mean hospitality as God intends, as Jesus lived, and the Holy Spirit empowers the church to embody. Bishop Schnase calls it “a quality of spiritual initiative, the practice of an active and genuine love, a graciousness unaffected by self-interest, an opening of ourselves and our faith community to receive others” (5 Practices, p. 20).

This is the hospitality Jesus lived as he traveled around teaching and healing and feeding. It is the hospitality he is trying to illuminate for us when he says in a parable, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). An “active and genuine love” would be the love that “desires and seeks their happiness as sincerely and steadily as your own,” as John Wesley put it in his sermon 139, “On Love.”

If hospitality, the “practice of an active and genuine love” is a scriptural touchstone for a life of faith, how might it apply to the conversation about immigration? I believe that God’s desires transcend national laws, and it seems to me that there is something about loving one another in the way God wants us to that would tend to preclude checking one another’s papers to determine citizenship status. Wouldn’t our unity as children of God seem to make such distinctions meaningless? …or if not meaningless, then at least insignificant by comparison?

Immigration is a very complicated issue. It is nowhere near as simple as “break a law = suffer the consequences” nor “complete amnesty for all right now.” I have been in ministry with enough immigrants to know that the system is inconceivably complex and difficult to wade through. I know that there are people who abuse this complexity, preying on immigrants by promising to help, for a price, of course, and then taking their money, leaving them broke and alone and “illegal” with no options. I know that there are people who do exactly what they are told to do in order to immigrate into the U.S. legally, but either get bad info or fill out the wrong form or call the wrong office or whatever, and still get into trouble anyway. The system needs to be fixed.

But as our society works together to fix it, the question of how to treat one another remains. Must we construct walls and check papers? Or can people of faith manage to muster a bit of hospitality? Or maybe: as walls are constructed and papers checked, can people of faith manage to muster a bit of hospitality?

(I’m hopeful that there will be some conversation here, and I ask that it be offered with love and grace. I have written before about immigration – here and here and here – and the comment threads have been very good, clearly and respectfully pointing out places of disagreement. So I am hopeful that reader comments here will also display "graciousness unaffected by self-interest.")

Have You Ever Wondered ... ?

What if this phenomenal congregation I serve could cultivate a reputation for respectful and grace-filled dialogue? What if that could be this congregation’s “niche” in the community? The experts say you need to claim a niche, a unique identity to cultivate. So what would it look like if that could be ours?

It would be a safe zone for asking questions – whatever questions you have. It wouldn’t be an “either/or” congregation, it would be a “have you ever wondered” congregation. I’m talking about an ethos, or an atmosphere, or maybe a culture. It’s an ethos of openness and curiosity, and a suspension of judgment for the sake of mutual inquiry.

So, if the life questions you have are leading you in a different direction than I am going, that’s just fine, let me walk with you for a while and we’ll see where we end up. I would want to hear your questions with the same respect and graciousness that I would want you to hear mine. But the point is that we would be walking together during the journey, no matter what.

There would be intentional opportunities to discuss things over which there is disagreement, and these intentional opportunities would be sacred moments of Christian conversation, or even worship! These moments would be surrounded on all sides with prayer. We would neither avoid talking about the issues we disagree on, nor fight about them, but rather we would discuss them like rational people who love one another.

We may even joke about them from time to time, poking fun at our tendency to label one another this or that or the other. But we wouldn’t bristle or take it personally. Our relationships with one another would not be threatened by our disagreements, but maybe even made richer by them.

Campbell UMC is doing a 3 week class on Evolution/Creation now on Wednesday nights, and it was very well attended yesterday. And as far as I know, nobody threw a chair or rent their garments or anything dramatic like that. So I’m wondering, what if we had things like this four or five times a year – on the separation of church and state, or immigration reform, or marriage, or health care, or war, or the environment, or gun rights, etc. – not as advocacy but just as conversations?

They would be conversations about issues that we know people have questions about, and that we tend to disagree about. The goal of these conversations would not be to convince but just to communicate. Could we do it? It would be radically counter-cultural! But isn’t that what the church is supposed to be, anyway?

So I guess I’m pondering on two levels. First, is creating that kind of ethos possible? Second, is that ethos the kind of thing a congregation can claim as it’s “niche” in the community? What do y’all think?

Donor Sabbath Service

This morning Campbell UMC hosted an event for Mid-America Transplant Services. It was a Donor Sabbath Service, and it was the first time I had been a part of one. I had spoken with others about them, and knew they were very meaningful, but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how moving it was.

It was an amazing experience. I was humbled to be included, offering a simple word of welcome at the beginning of the time. The morning featured several particularly memorable moments. There were slideshows of pictures of organ donors scattered throughout the service. People were moved to tears, seeing their loved ones on the screen.

A woman who had received a cornea transplant was there to say thank you to the families of the donors for their gifts. Because someone decided to donate tissue, she is now able to see her grandchildren. She began to cry as she spoke, and they were beautiful tears of grief and joy that many shared with her in that moment.

The father of a boy who had received a donated liver 5 years ago told their story, very heavy with emotion, then introduced his son who ran up to the podium. He ended his very powerful presentation by thanking the families for their decisions to donate life, saying that a decision like theirs was what made it possible for him to be standing beside his son this morning.

There was a moving candle lighting ceremony in memory and celebration of life in which the family of an organ donor lit a candle, then the recipients of donated organs lit candles in response.

The most poignant moment for me was when the families of the donors were able to come forward one at a time and speak aloud the name of their loved one who had died. They then each received a gift, handed to them by an organ recipient. The gift was a pin, a star shape with a spiral in the center, itself designed by an organ donation recipient. The parents of the boy from whom her kidney and pancreas had come told her that there was a certain star in the sky that represents their son, who is watching over her. And so in the pin, the star is for him and the spiral is to symbolize the continuity of life.

As each family came forward to speak aloud the name of their son, daughter, wife, husband, the song “You Raise Me Up” was being played on piano and flute. After all had come forward, the main speaker said, “I have one more name that I’d like to include in the list.” She then spoke aloud the name of the father of the flutist, Rachel, whose dad was able to be an organ donor when he died.

The whole service was so powerful. It struck me how, no matter where each one had come from, no matter what the life experience of each one was, from a variety of perspectives and situations, they all had a common bond that is deeper than can be expressed. As the names filled the sanctuary, one after the other, everyone present was moved in some way. Tears and smiles at the same time – a unique feeling that simply cannot be described, only experienced.

I do not think I have ever been closer to truly understanding what resurrection is than during this incredible moment. I am hopeful that we can continue to host the Donor Sabbath for a long time.

As a part of the service, a doctor spoke about the facts and figures of organ and tissue donation in our nation. The numbers went by really fast, so I didn’t get them exactly, but he indicated that there are more than 107,000 people waiting for organs today. He also cited the number of people who die while waiting, which I cannot remember exactly, but it is way high.

He also told us how many deaths there are where there would be the possibility to donate tissue or organs, then indicated that (if I remember right) less than half of those people actually do. Again if I remember the numbers correctly, the number of waiting-list deaths is less than the number of donation-eligible deaths who decide not to donate. I inferred (though he did not say it outright) that if more people would have donated, those deaths need not have happened.

Please let your family know right now that you want to be an organ and tissue donor when you die. Tell them now, tell all of them, and remind them often. Register with your state donor registry, do the driver’s license thing, carry a donor card, and tell your loved ones exactly what you want to happen. After the Donor Sabbath, I immediately went home and told Erin to make sure every single part of me that it is possible to donate, I want to be donated.

Click here for more donor info.

Each person who becomes a donor can affect the lives of up to 50 other people! It is truly an amazing gift.

Attitude Matters

I believe that how you live matters more than what you do.

(“How you live” is your approach to life, your attitude, your demeanor.)

(“What you do” are the specific words and acts that you accomplish or don’t.)

I also believe that most of the world believes the opposite: that what you do matters more than how you live.

We might not put it that way exactly, but I’ve noticed how we construct our systems and order our lives toward accomplishment, advancement, measurable goals, and growth. In other words, we place a high value on the end, sometimes to the neglect of the means. So concerned about “what” we are doing, we tend to neglect the “how” and may never even consider the “why.”

Get good grades. Win the game. Meet the deadline. Make the quota. Come in on budget (or even better, under). Set a specific, attainable, measurable goal and then assess at the end of the predetermined time period whether it has been met, rinse and repeat. So many of our values seem to be skewed toward prioritizing our accomplishments, what we do, over anything else.

But every now and then something happens to shake up that value system. Like last Sunday, when Brian Davis came in second at the Verizon Heritage golf tournament. Jim Furyk was the winner; he’s the one with the big accomplishment. But Brian Davis is the one the news was buzzing about the next day.

You’ve probably heard the story by now; he came in second because he called a two-stroke penalty against himself.

He chose to do the right thing, even though the infraction was accidental and so miniscule that it may have been overlooked by the officials had he said nothing. That reveals how he lives, more so than what he did. Oh sure, second place at a PGA tournament is a pretty big accomplishment, as well. But that’s not the point.

The point is that Brian Davis placed more importance on how he lived than what he did. He has never won a PGA event, and had a chance last weekend. Tied at the end of the day, in a playoff with Furyk, a rare opportunity he may never have again, Davis could have caved in to the pressure for accomplishment. But he didn’t. And I think that’s pretty cool.

Of course, disciples of Jesus Christ need to think about what we do, and be sure that we’re doing good stuff, stuff that God wants us to be doing. But is it okay to do good stuff with a bitter, resentful attitude? 2 Corinthians 9 doesn’t say that God loves a grumpy giver, does it? In fact, Jesus tells us to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

Doing good stuff is supposed to be like letting an inner light radiate outward into the world, a light that inspires people to worship God. That says to me that our demeanor (our attitude, our approach) is at least as important, if not actually more important than the particular action we happen to be taking at the time.

Preaching Thoughts

If I was going to say some things about preaching, I might say these:

- The best sermons are ones you can say in a sentence. Everything that happens in that sermon should illustrate, support, or elucidate that sentence.

- Preparing to preach and planning worship are the same thing. Sunday morning is all sermon. Everything has to fit together.

- The key to preaching better is to preach less often. If a preacher is preaching more than 40 times a year, it becomes a grind. Let someone else talk for a change, and take some weeks where you help lead worship but do not preach. It makes a huge difference.

- The best sermon feedback comes from your children. Especially if they are, say for example, 9 and 12 years old. But seriously, if you say something that sticks with teenagers, you have really said something.

- Life is sermon prep. But sermon prep is not life.

- Yes, use visuals - images on screen, props in hand, objects in the room, etc. No, do not use gimmicks. And know the difference - a visual enhances, a gimmick distracts.

- Practice out loud a lot.

- Frequently listen to and/or watch your self preach.

- Teach a Bible Study on the scripture you are using in the upcoming sermon on the Wednesday evening before you preach it.

- Be ready to throw the whole thing away and start over if something happens in your community, area, nation, or somewhere in the world that impacts people in a significant way and focus on that instead.

Just some thoughts. What would you add?

What Peter Said...

It was a pretty bold move on Peter’s part, actually. “We must obey God rather than any human authority,” he said. What made it bold was that he was speaking directly to the “human authority” at the time. He was taunting the lion while his head was in the lion’s mouth.

The apostles had been warned to NOT teach anyone about Jesus anymore in Jerusalem. And yet they had “filled Jerusalem” with “the whole message about his life.” And so, as the story in Acts 5 goes, they were again brought before the Jerusalem council to answer for their actions.

“We told you not to, but you went ahead and did!” the frustrated high priest says, sounding quite a bit like the parent of a toddler.

But this is no toddler. This is Peter, who used to be called Simon, back when he was a fisherman. But now he is the Rock, the guy Jesus said the church is going to be built on. And Peter looks right into the eyes of human authority and tells them that they don’t matter; he obeys another authority altogether.

Ironic, isn’t it? The authority that Peter is so boldly professing to follow is the very authority that the high priest himself is supposed to represent. So I’m sure that didn’t tick Caiaphas off or anything, did it? (Yeah, right.)

It’s even more radical, since the high priest of Jerusalem was in charge not only of the religious life of the people, but of their temporal life as well. He was the convener of the Sanhedrin, which held executive, legislative, and judicial authority. And he was installed by Rome, who didn’t really care who served, as long as they kept everything flowing toward Rome.

Peter may be looking at Caiaphas, but in a sense he is looking through Caiaphas directly into the face of Caesar himself.

It is a revolution in a sentence. We obey God, not you.

However …

I seem to remember a little snippet of Paul’s … may have been the Letter to the Romans … perhaps chapter 13 of said letter … hmm … what did that say again?

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

Right, of course this passage is about rulers who are “not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.” Just do good things, says Paul, and you won’t have any need to fear. All of those laws you follow, he goes on to say, are really just expressions of one overall rule: Love one another. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”

However you think about it, there seems to be a tension between what Peter said and what Paul wrote. And I think it is very, very important to note that tension, because it is precisely the kind of tension stirring in our nation these days. There is anger at the government, suspicion, distrust, and even threats of revolt. Duly elected representatives are threatened, spit on, and their offices are vandalized. Clearly this runs counter to what Romans 13 says.

On the other hand, those who are expressing this anger toward the government probably feel like Peter, standing up to an oppressive ruling class, at least in their perception. As far as I know, the people who seem to be the angriest see their anger as deeply patriotic and perfectly justified.

One of the big differences, of course, is that the government of the United States is nothing at all like the government of ancient Israel. Our transfer of power happens peacefully, every few years, when we go to the polls to vote. And we vote locally, as well as at the state and national levels. There is no foreign empire appointing puppet rulers to keep things under control.

At the same time, we should never forget that Pax Romana is not Shalom, and that means there will be a time for people of faith to stand against a government, acknowledging allegiance to a higher power. Along with that is the reality that we live in a global connection that calls us to be in solidarity with the poor who are routinely oppressed by ruthless governments, or at best totally ignored by inept or corrupt ones.

And so, there is the tension. Do we stand with Peter and obey God, or do we listen to Paul and obey earthly authority? As with so much of life, the answer really depends on the context, doesn’t it? It depends on what lies under the decision, our motivation, the “why” behind our action.

Is it for God’s sake? Is it for the sake of the Gospel? Is it for love? Truly? Real, grace-filled, unconditional, agape love? The kind of love that fulfills the law? If so, then whatever it is, you’ll probably be okay.

Why I Didn't Write Anything About Health Care

Why didn’t I preach about health care? Why didn’t I write about it? The question of whether to raise the issue of health care in any venue has been eating at me for months. I feel strongly about the issue, but have remained silent. I’ve been wondering why.

I think it may have to do with my underlying belief in respectful, grace-filled dialogue. Simply put, I think that as soon as anyone utters the phrase “health care,” all kinds of walls and labels go up that make true dialogue impossible. It has become a loaded term. If I were to preach or to write about the issue, I thought, the chances are slim that anything helpful would happen as a result, thanks to the way in which the national conversation has been degraded in these last few months.

John Wesley taught, “First of all, do no harm.” I actually think that to voice my opinion on health care reform would do harm. I just do not believe that an open, honest, and truthful conversation can happen on this topic with the kind of respect and graciousness that I value. It just seems like people get angry and resort to denigration and belittling of their opponents so quickly, and that’s not good.

So if it wouldn’t do any good, and in fact it would do harm, I have decided to just let it be.

To be clear, I’m not worried about someone getting mad at me. The harm that I’m concerned about is not harm to me personally, but rather to the relationships around me. They call them “wedge issues” for a reason; they split groups apart. They split people apart. For me, that’s not worth it.

“But what if the status quo is causing more harm than discussing the issue would cause?” I ask. “Good question, me,” I reply. Let’s say that the status quo was such that thousands of people were getting sick and dying because they could not afford health care. Hmmm… do we dare compare the harm of thousands of people dying with the harm of a potentially divisive conversation?

Oh, if only that were a hypothetical question…

Can I just say that we seem to have misplaced the goal? The goal should be healthy people. Affordable health care, access to insurance, all that stuff – just means to the end. Healthy people, you know:
- people who don’t get sick just because they are poor,
- people who don’t have to choose between dinners for their kids or a visit to a doctor,
- foster parents who don’t have to wheedle their way into a doctor’s care on behalf of their kids because of the hassle the doctor’s office has with Medicaid,
- children who can go ahead and visit their doctor because a mid-level bureaucrat somewhere hasn’t deemed their condition “pre-existing,”
- and so forth.

The objection may be, “I agree that the goal should be healthy people, but the reforms don’t achieve that.” Then we might go off into specifics of how I think it does and you think it doesn’t and so on, which I am all too happy to do if we can do so with respect and graciousness.

What I’m not going to do is engage any idea that ascribes an insidious agenda to another person. I do not want to wrestle with straw men. I really believe that elected officials at all levels are there because they want what’s best for their communities, but they just happen to see things differently. Is that naïve? Maybe. But here’s how I think of it:

I think that otherwise well-intentioned, good and decent people kind of lose their heads when the spotlight is on them, and they end up saying things that sound differently than they would if you were having a one-to-one conversation with them at a coffee shop. Honestly, that’s what I think. I believe that power corrupts, but I believe that notoriety corrupts even more. Unfortunately, average people like us will never know, because the only time we hear from a politician is when they are in the public view, and they know it, so they act differently.

It happens to everyone, teachers, preachers, journalists, people speaking from the floor of Annual Conference, etc. We tend to veil our true selves with a public persona when we realize that attention is focused upon us, sometimes without even being aware of it. And for a politician, for whom so much is at stake every single time she or he speaks, it is especially noticeable.

One of the most apparent ways this phenomenon is manifest is when people act or speak with limited information. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” said Tower of Power, and they got that right on! I went to the library last night and was stopped by a woman who wanted me to sign a petition to change the way judges are chosen back to a partisan election rather than appointment. I told her no thank you, then I went on to say that we could vote to retain judges every so often, anyway. She looked at me blankly and said, “We can? I didn’t know that.” Yikes. She didn’t know the current system that she was volunteering her time to get changed.

Nobody is going to argue for less healthy people. (I don’t think.) It’s really just the means to that end that we don’t agree on. And that’s okay! Its okay to disagree on stuff, but it is not okay to label and slander and denigrate other people, people who happen not to agree with you. So if you disagree with me on this, I invite your response. (I invite your response if you agree, too!) But please do so with respect and grace. Thanks.

Getaway

Isn't it amazing how you sometimes don't realize how much you need a rest until you are actually resting?

Erin and I dropped the kids off at my mom and dad's house Sunday afternoon and then headed up to Rocheport for two nights at Yates House B & B. It was wonderful. We did nothing for two days. It was like a Seinfeld episode. Two days about nothing.

We did stuff, of course. But it was stuff that we did because we wanted to and we could, not because we had to or it was expected of us. Which is what makes all the difference. We walked on the Katy Trail and shopped in a used book store and stood under the interstate and watched Revolutionary Road and Shakespeare in Love and sat in comfortable chairs to read our books.

There was a goose who thought he was an eagle and a squirrel that risked it all for the last nut on the branch and a host who always kept his shirt tucked in. There was creme brulet french toast and a sweet pepper stuffed with goat cheese and freshly baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. There was a wonderful bottle of wine made out of grapes grown just a few miles away.

Erin and I talked about our kids and our jobs and our dreams and our vacation plans and the mud and the sunshine and how small towns were really nice to visit but we would never want to live there. I'm not sure, but I think I may have fallen in love with her again.

But mostly we just rested. I think they call it sabbath. I encourage all of you reading this to take every opportunity that comes your way to rest. Not "vacation" - rest. It was truly wonderful, and I didn't realize just how much I needed it until we were there.