My Easter sermon.

“Of course it’s ridiculous!”
Mark 16:1-8

I think the Netflix is one of the best modern inventions. I have a basic, no-frills subscription, where they send me a movie, I watch it and send it back, and they send me another one, just one at a time.

Last one I had was Religulous. You know, that thing the comedian Bill Maher put out last year, with the apparent hope of pointing out how ridiculous it is for modern people to have religious faith, so we’d all see the error of our ways and become converts to reasonable atheism. But his examples were all from the fringes of religious belief—things that even many other religious people would tend to think are weird. And therefore, they weren’t really going to convince many religious folks to come over to his way of thinking.

But you know, there’s a sense in which Bill Maher is telling the truth. We are here today, on Easter Sunday, celebrating an event that, by all reasonable standards, is ridiculous. Really! Have you ever sat down and thought about it?

I’m not talking about what happens in hospitals pretty often nowadays, where someone whose heart has stopped is brought back from the brink with CPR or a defibrillator. That’s not resurrection. Resurrection is someone taken down from the hanging tree, wrapped in a shroud, laid in a tomb, a heavy stone rolled over the doorway, everyone gone home; and then a couple days later the tomb is empty and there’s someone sitting there pointing to the slab the dead man had been laid on, now unoccupied. And that just doesn’t happen, right?

Right…?

Bill Maher and his like-minded fellows have got a point. Even the women in the story—the original version, the one we have here in Mark’s Gospel—know the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.

The “young man”—like the man Jacob wrestled with at the ford of the Jabbok, back in Genesis 32—is enigmatic: is he an angel, or just some random kid who happened by at the right moment? And the women don’t do what he tells them to do. They don’t go and tell his disciples and Peter that he’ll be going ahead of them to Galilee. They run away in terror and amazement, and, as the text ends in the original language, “they said nothing to anyone; they were afraid, you see, for…”

For what?

It’s bad enough when a book of the Bible ends with a question, as the book of Jonah does: “And I should not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

But the original ending of Mark ends in the middle of a sentence. Later scribes decided this couldn’t be right, so they added two other endings, with appearances of the risen Christ, disciples commissioned and sent out, all the usual stuff that’s supposed to be there. But originally, Mark ended by saying, “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone; they were afraid, you see, for…”

For what?

For it doesn’t compute. For it’s ridiculous. For that’s not how it happens. A tomb where someone’s been laid after being executed in the most horrible and violent way that the ancient world could conceive of doesn’t just turn up empty!

But it did.

That’s the reality the three women who went to the tomb at oh-dark-thirty that Sunday morning were confronted with. So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone; they were afraid, you see, for…

For it can’t be true, what the young man said: “He has been raised; he is not here.” It can’t be!

But what if it is? What if it is?

What if Jesus truly was raised, if this astonishing, completely ridiculous thing truly did happen? What else that we take for granted could be stood on its head?

They were afraid, you see, for if Jesus truly has been raised, then nothing, but nothing, will ever be the same again!

The Jesus Anthology

I haven't posted a God Sighting in quite awhile, but this one may be a little much for my other blog. It may become a sermon one day, but at this stage I'm just getting some musings down so I don't forget them...

This weekend I've had the privilege of hearing Amy Gopp, the Associate Director of Week of Compassion (www.weekofcompassion.org) speak to a group of pastors and laypeople at our Regional Church's annual School for Congregational Learning. Last night she spoke just to the workshop presenters and other event leadership at a dinner meeting. Her Scripture reading was the last chapter of the Gospel of John. She invited us to hear it as if for the first time (for us preachers, especially, this is a very familiar passage), and see what might jump out at us.

John 21 is a very rich text, including several scenes: the disciples fishing all night and catching nothing, then having someone tell them from the shore to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, whereupon they catch so many fish they can't get the net into the boat; the threefold questioning of Peter by Jesus, "Do you love me?" and threefold instruction of "feed my lambs"/ "tend my sheep"/ "feed my sheep"; Jesus' prediction of Peter's death; and clues as to who the Beloved Disciple and the author of the Gospel might be.

But what leapt out to me was the last verse: "But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." I've always thought this verse was a bit humorous, but last night something else came to me.

So there's lots more that Jesus did. John leaves the story hanging, almost as much as Mark does in his original ending, which just almost trails off in mid-sentence, with women running from the tomb and saying nothing to anyone. Only Luke (and the longer ending of Mark, which may well be copied from Luke) feels a need to bracket the story with the Ascension. As far as John, Mark, and Matthew are concerned, the story continues. (This oversimplifies the matter a bit; as it turns out, Luke continues the story, too, with Volume 2, which is Acts.)

So I wonder: those "many other things that Jesus did," could they be going on even now? Could Jesus still actually be doing things among us? Could he be acting in and through each of us who call ourselves his disciples? And if so, should we perhaps be talking about that? If you were to write your entry in the Jesus Anthology, the story of what Jesus has done in and through you, what would it say?

Lest we forget...

This is the address that I will be delivering at the local VFW post's annual Memorial Day ceremony tomorrow.

I am honored, and also humbled, to be standing before you this morning. I honestly never thought I’d be given the opportunity to speak at this service, for a variety of reasons—a major one of which is that, as some of you know, my political leanings tend not to be in keeping with the mainstream views of rural Iowa.

But over the days and weeks since Commander Irwin asked me to speak, as I’ve thought about what I’d say today, I’ve been reminded that this day is not about politics. It’s not about my political views, or yours. It’s not about the last vote in Congress, or what the President said in his last press conference, or what a candidate might have said in a stump speech. It’s not about the latest editorial in the Sac Sun or the Messenger or the Register or any other paper. It’s not about what Congressman King said in his last article in the paper.

No, this day is about things far more important than politics. It’s about honoring the memories of our brothers—and, increasingly, sisters—in arms who gave their lives for this country, for the sake of each of us. It’s about sacrifice, and heroism, and deep comradeship tested by fire.
I don’t necessarily have any words of wisdom to bestow on you. Truthfully, wisdom ought to flow in the other direction—from you to me. I have never been called upon to lay down my life for a friend, for an ideal, or for my country. To you who have, I owe a great debt. But I have no wise words for you. I can only speak of others I have known, whom I honor and remember today, who have sacrificed greatly on behalf of our nation.

In the late 1930s, when she finished high school, Ann Meloy wanted to attend college.Her parents had put her brother through college, but in those days it wasn’t terribly common for parents to do the same for a daughter.She was able to get enough training to become a nurse; then, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, she enlisted in the United States Navy. She cared for those who were wounded in the Pacific, on hospital ships and at Mare Island.

Like many who served in the Second World War, Ann doesn’t say much about her experiences. Her son has heard a few of the stories, heard her express the anguish she felt at seeing young men, who to her twenty-something-year-old eyes seemed like “babies,” come to her maimed, wounded, sometimes mortally. Ann—my mother-in-law—ended her career with the Navy as Lieutenant Ann Meloy White; the things she saw and experienced remain with her to this day. For better or worse, her experiences have shaped her into the person she now is.

One day, hopefully not too soon, Ann will rest at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, perhaps beside some of the boys she tried to put back together at Mare Island, perhaps with others she cared for during her many years as a psychiatric nurse with the VA after she was finally able to attend college thanks to the GI Bill. Like them, she will not be forgotten as long as there is a Memorial Day.

Don McCord fought in a completely different sort of a war from the one in which Ann served. He was a classmate of my dad’s in high school; they graduated together in 1959. In 1963, he finished his time at Coffeyville College, where he was a columnist for the monthly magazine, The College Dial. As soon as he graduated, he left for the Army.

I don’t know if it’s true—don’t know if it even worked this way—but the story around town was that when he received his draft notice to go to Vietnam, he decided to join the Green Berets. Figured he wouldn’t be coming back, evidently, so he decided he’d grab all the glory he could on the way out.

No one in Coffeyville—with the possible exception of his mother—saw or heard from McCord after that, until he drifted back into town in 1979 for his 20th high school reunion. In the meantime, so the story goes, when he finished his tour in Vietnam he lived for a time in Los Angeles, working as a deejay there. Local folklore says when he lived in LA, he had a roommate, a struggling actor by the name of Howard Hessemann. When Hessemann got his big break, playing Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati, supposedly he modeled the character on his roommate, Don McCord.

Whether or not it’s true, if you’ve seen Dr. Johnny Fever, you know what McCord looked like when he reappeared in Coffeyville in 1979: satin jacket with the sleeves pushed up, sunglasses at all hours of day or night, mustache and several days’ growth of beard, hair that could use a barber’s attention—dark shot through with grey, though, instead of blonde like Howard Hessemann’s. He went to work at the local radio station, where he was the voice of my early adolescence. He was the one who was on the air on December 8, 1980, when the news came that John Lennon had been shot in New York.

McCord was something of a hero to me, although I’m sure I got on his last nerve, getting in on all the radio contests and generally being a smart aleck as only a twelve-year-old can be. To get me out of his hair, he’d let me come down to the station and pick out records from the box of demos they had in the back room, stuff that didn’t fit the station’s format so they’d never play it, or things they’d gotten duplicates of. Some of my best vinyl came out of that box.

By the time I left for college, McCord’s alcoholism—a good friend of his later said he drank because it was the only way he could get any relief from the horrors that had haunted him ever since his days in Vietnam—had gotten the best of him, and he’d lost his job as well as his wife, a fellow deejay at KGGF. He went to rehab, but it didn’t stick. Eventually he got a job working nights at the little liquor store up the street from the house where I grew up.

And then one morning, the owner of the store arrived to find the door unlocked and all the lights on. When she went inside she found McCord in the back room, dead of an apparent heart attack. He was 48, and it had been more than a quarter century since he wrote his farewell column in The College Dial—still every bit as funny today as it was when it came off his typewriter in 1963—and headed off to the Army; but he was a casualty of the war in Vietnam as surely as those whose planes were shot down, as surely as the man I knew in Oregon who died of cancer he believed to have been the result of exposure to Agent Orange.

I didn’t know—I was too young to understand, even though some of my earliest memories are of watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News with a map of Indochina floating over his right shoulder. I have no idea what McCord experienced in Vietnam, no idea what my mother-in-law experienced at Mare Island. Many of you do, and while our political views may not agree, I have a feeling we all have in common one deep longing: that one day there will be no new battlefields, no new impromptu memorials of rifle and helmet set up by those who have had to watch a brother or sister in arms die, no more families receiving the terrible news that the one of whom they are so proud will never come home.

We don’t know when it will come, but let us honor the memory of those who have given their lives by praying and working for that day, as described by Micah, a prophet of God…

In the days to come
the mountain of the LORD's house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it,
and many nations shall come and say:
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths."
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

Amen. May the day come soon; but may we, in the meantime, be found worthy of the sacrifices that have been made so that we might live and be free.

To Your (Mental) Health!

This is my column for the latest issue of our local paper. Obviously, I'm not a doctor, so I apologize if I don't have all my facts exactly right--if you believe you have depression, don't make decisions based on my one little blog entry; talk to your doctor.

It’s no surprise to any of us that men and women are different. We think differently, we use language differently, we are different when it comes to friendships and even simple things like the way we use the telephone.

It took a long time for the medical community to recognize that men and women are very different in some very important ways that go beyond our plumbing and hormones. For instance, many years ago most research on heart disease was done on men, and women were assumed to be just the same in the ways heart disease affects us, the symptoms we have, and so forth. Then it was discovered that this isn’t the case. The classic heart attack symptom—crushing pain in the chest that radiates to the arm and jaw—is common in men, and when a man appears at a hospital ER with this symptom it’s immediately recognized as a heart attack and treated accordingly. But women don’t always have this symptom when they have heart attacks; they may have nausea, or more vague complaints, so for a long time ER staff would not immediately recognize what was going on, but might diagnose anxiety or indigestion. Fortunately, as doctors have learned more about the differences between men’s heart attacks and women’s heart attacks, this is changing.

There was a cover story in Newsweek magazine recently about another health-related difference between men and women. It has to do with depression. For a long time it was assumed that many more women than men suffered from depression. But here lately we’re finding that depression, like heart disease, is an equal-opportunity illness. It just manifests itself in different ways. The classic symptoms of depression, such as spending lots of time crying or sleeping, are more commonly women’s symptoms. Men with depression tend to lash out with anger, or drink too much, so we don’t always recognize them as depressed. One man in the article said something like, “I had no idea I was living with depression. I just thought I was a jerk.” But once his depression was correctly diagnosed and treated, he wasn’t such a jerk anymore.

Why is this important? Just like heart attacks tended to be fatal for women more often before we came to understand the different symptoms women have, depression tends to be fatal for men more often as far more men than women successfully commit suicide. Men tend not to seek treatment for depression, partly because it’s still seen in our culture as “unmanly.” Or they might deal with the alcoholism or drug addiction that has become part of their lives as a result of trying to self-medicate their depression, but not deal with the depression itself. Or they might not realize they even need treatment—who goes to the doctor complaining of being a jerk?

Depression is an illness, just like heart disease. It’s not a character flaw but a brain disease that can be treated with medication and therapy. There is no more shame in having depression than there is in having the flu. Men, this goes for you, too. Talk to your doctor.

Another old sermon

Ron McCreary, UMC pastor in Florida, asked me to post this old sermon so he could link to it. It's on the Gospel reading for this Sunday.

January 18, 2004
Partypoopers
John 2:1-11

One of the best stories Tony Campolo tells has to do with a time when he was in Hawaii for a speaking engagement. Now, since he lives in Pennsylvania, there was quite a time change when he went to Hawaii, and he found himself up wanting breakfast at 3 a.m. So he went out walking to see if he could find someplace that was open, and the only place he could find at that hour was a place that gave new meaning to the term "greasy spoon." He ordered the safest thing he could think of in a place like that—coffee and a donut—and as he ate, a group of prostitutes came in. They talked pretty loudly, and so Tony couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.

One of the women mentioned the next day was her 39th birthday. Another one said to her, sarcastically, "What do you want, a party?" And the first one, far too calloused for such a remark even to sting, said, "No, I don’t need to have a party. No one’s ever given me a birthday party; why would I want to have one now?"

Well, after the women finally left, Tony said something to the fellow who ran the little diner, "Do they come in here every night?" The guy said they did, and so Tony asked, "Why don’t we throw her a birthday party tomorrow?" Well, as they talked, they both got really enthusiastic, and then the woman in the kitchen—the wife of the owner of the diner—got involved too. They planned decorations and stuff, and the fellow said he’d set the grapevine in motion to get the word out about the party—it was going to be a surprise—and insisted on making the birthday cake himself.

So the next night, Tony went back to the diner, a little earlier, and they decorated it up and waited. Didn’t take long before what seemed like every prostitute in Honolulu showed up; and then when the guest of honor arrived, they all yelled, "Surprise! Happy birthday!!"

The diner guy brought out the cake, with 30 candles all lit up. And she just stood there and cried. "No one’s ever given me a birthday party before."

They urged her to blow out the candles so they could cut the cake. But she said, "Do you mind if we don’t cut it right away? I’ve never had a birthday cake before. I’d like to look at it a while longer. Can I take it home?"

Well, sure, that was fine—there was plenty of other things to eat—so she took the cake home. While she was gone, and all the folks standing around not really knowing what to do in the meantime, Tony said, "What do you say we all pray for her while she’s gone?" They didn’t see why not, so he led them all in a prayer that she would come to know Christ, that her life might be transformed, that God would bless her.

When the prayer was over, the diner guy asked Tony, "Are you a preacher or something?"

Tony said yes, he was.

"What kind of church?"

Tony says, "The kind of church that throws birthday parties for hookers at 3:30 in the morning."

And the guy says, "There isn’t any church like that. If there was, I’d join." In that filthy diner in Honolulu, in the middle of the night, it was Epiphany.

That’s what the story of the wedding at Cana is really about, you know. Epiphany. The wine ran out, and Jesus made some more. We can talk about how he met the needs of the host—because running out of wine in the middle of a wedding celebration was a major social faux pas that would haunt him the rest of his days. But that’s not why Jesus did it, and to leave it there would cause us to miss Epiphany just like the chief steward missed it, just like everyone in the story but the disciples missed it. We can talk about how Jesus was one who loved a good party, and so he changed the water into wine to keep the party going. Well, that gets us at least pointed in the right direction, but still we haven’t gone quite deep enough.

In the other three Gospels, Jesus starts his ministry by preaching. Mark summarizes his message like this: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." But John’s way of telling the story is a lot more poetry and a lot less proposition. Instead of having Jesus make a speech, he puts him at a party and has him turn a bunch of water into about 800 bottles of wine. Jesus could have figured out just how much wine would be needed for the number of guests there were for the rest of the party, and made that much. But he didn’t! He made a ridiculously extravagant amount of wine, far, far more than was needed.

I keep telling people that you get a lot more out of the New Testament if you have a good grasp of the Old Testament, and this is one of those times. Because wine is a very theologically loaded substance. At the end of the book of Amos, which is a brutally pessimistic book, there is a short proclamation of a hopeful future. And one of the things that is said there is that there will come a day when the mountains will drip sweet wine, a time when there is abundance and what is ruined will be rebuilt with much celebration. There are other passages like that in the prophets, and in some of the later Jewish writings that didn’t make it into the Bible—by the time of Jesus, abundance of good wine was believed to be a sign of the messianic age. When the disciples saw Jesus turn water into fine wine—better than the wedding host had served even at the beginning of the party—they remembered this, and a light came on in their minds.

Instead of having Jesus say, "The kingdom of God is at hand," John has him make wine, which is a sign that the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s a lot more subtle—but it points to something important.

The story I told at the beginning of this message comes from Tony Campolo’s book called The Kingdom of God Is a Party. Tony was looking for a new image to describe the kingdom of God, one that was both scriptural and understandable to modern people. We who count ourselves as citizens of the kingdom are supposed to be party people, Tony tells us. We follow the Christ, whose first miracle was at a party, the sudden appearance of an extravagant amount of the best wine. And so whenever two or three of us are gathered, it’s supposed to be a party!

But our minds rebel. We’ve seen parties—we’ve been to parties in this world, parties of the sort that we’d really like to keep our kids from going to. Parties where people’s clothes come off when they should be staying on. Parties where too many intoxicating substances are consumed. Parties where people go home feeling worse than they did when they came. Parties that cost way too much and create more stress than they do enjoyment. That can’t be what the kingdom of God is like. We don’t want to go to a party—we want to go to heaven. And if that makes us partypoopers, then so be it.

We’re like the mother of one of the online pastors, who came home from mass on Christmas morning. When her daughter asked her whether she had fun at church, she said, "Church isn’t supposed to be fun." It’s not fun—it’s work, and reverence, and quiet.

But if that’s really what God expects, why do the mountains drip sweet wine? Why does Jesus perform his first miracle at a party? Why is keeping the party going a sign of God’s glory?
One reason: Tony is right. Ever read the end of the book of Revelation—where we have the beautiful poetic images of what it will be like when evil is done away with? Once the world is remade, and the light of God’s glory shines forever into all the corners of that world, everyone is invited not to work, not to quiet and meditation, but to a wedding feast—a party. It’s a different kind of party from most of the parties of this world.

Cana is a preview, a foretaste—a glimpse of that glorious day. It’s Epiphany—a thin place where the barrier between this world and God’s glory gets a little tear in it. And Cana reminds us that we are surrounded by thin places like that, if we’d just open our eyes and watch for them. They don’t just happen in church, and they don’t just happen when times are good.

On an episode of the TV show Joan of Arcadia, Joan and her mother attended the funeral of a little boy Joan had babysat. The little fellow was like nine or ten years old, and he had cystic fibrosis. After he’d said what he needed to say at the graveside, the priest invited others to speak and remember the boy.

Joan got up and began to talk, and began to laugh as she remembered things he had said and done. Her mother was appalled—this wasn’t what was supposed to happen; Joan wasn’t behaving right at a funeral; she was going to upset the little boy’s family. The priest stood there looking uncomfortable. But the boy’s mother also began to laugh, and she and Joan hugged, laughing and crying at the same time.

Maybe that was Epiphany.

Many years ago, you probably remember hearing about a woman who’d paid a fortune for a lavish wedding reception, but her fiancé dumped her at the last minute. It was too late for her to get her deposits back for the hall, the band, the food, any of it. Now, she could have slunk off in shame, tail between her legs. But she didn’t. Instead, she said, we’re going ahead with the party. She called up the local agencies that worked with homeless people, and invited all the homeless people in town to her party. They had a wonderful time, made something beautiful out of the mess that woman’s fiancé could have made by dumping her.

Maybe that was Epiphany.

Maybe Epiphany happens somewhere every day—but like at the wedding in Cana, only some of the people see it, only the ones whose eyes are open, who know what they’re looking for. It’s the party people, not the partypoopers, the ones who have fun in church, not the sour-faced saints, who can see Epiphany when it breaks in.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be one of them.

An interesting coincidence?

This morning I got into an e-mail conversation with a friend of mine who says he doesn't believe in God. As I left work I was mulling over his latest message and thinking about what my response would be.

I had to run down to Carroll this afternoon to see someone at the hospital. Before I did, I decided to stop at the gas station. Even though I still had more than a quarter-tank left, I thought it would be good to fill up because of this run to Carroll and a trip I have to make up to Cherokee for a Lions meeting.

In my bag I had three five-dollar ethanol certificates that were going to expire in a few days. I started the gas pumping, and stood leaning against the side of the car, enjoying the warmish temperature and watching the numbers on the pump. The total price was inching closer to the $15 and I was getting ready to get out my billfold to pay for whatever the ethanol certificates didn't cover, but the pump shut off at exactly $15.00. I couldn't have done that if I'd tried!

A God sighting? Maybe, maybe not. But it was sort of interesting that it happened just at that moment.

Disciples DNA: People of the Chalice

(Through October, as we observe Heritage Month, I'm placing an insert in the bulletin each week describing some aspect of our church's history and identity. This is the first one, for October 1.)

From the very beginning of our church, Disciples have celebrated the Lord’s Supper together each Sunday. And from the very beginning the table has been open to all, no matter what church they belong to. “It is the Lord’s Table and, therefore, not the congregation’s prerogative to allow or disallow participation,” says Guin Stemmler in Disciples Mini-History. All are welcome at Christ’s Table.

But there’s more. In some churches, only ordained clergy are allowed to preside and pray at the Table; in others, no one but ordained clergy may even handle the elements. That’s not the case in the Christian Church. We believe this is a family table, and any member of the family—men, women, and youth—may preside, may serve, may pray at our Table. While there are good theological reasons for this, there are also practical benefits: in the early days of our church, out on the frontier where professional ministers were scarce, the fact that any Christian may preside at the Table meant that we didn’t have to wait for one of the few professionals to appear before we could share the Lord’s Supper together.

Rational people though Disciples are, our founder Alexander Campbell could still wax poetic about the Table. In 1852 he wrote:

Each disciple, in handing the symbols to his fellow-disciple, says, in effect, “You, my brother, once an alien, are now a citizen of heaven; once a stranger, are now brought home to the family of God. You have owned my Lord as your Lord, my people as your people. Under Jesus the Messiah we are one. Mutually embraced in the Everlasting arms, I embrace you in mine: thy sorrows shall be my sorrows, and thy joys my joys. Joint debtors to the favor of God and the love of Jesus, we shall jointly suffer with him, that we may jointly reign with him. Let us, then, renew our strength, remember our King, and hold fast to our boasted hope unshaken to the end.”

Over a century later Disciples pastor and musician David Edwards set those words to music in the beautiful communion hymn “When You Do This, Remember Me.”

Although there is nothing in the New Testament that specifically says Christians are to observe the Lord’s Supper each week, it does appear, according to Colbert Cartwright in People of the Chalice, that the observance was central in early Christian worship. Therefore Disciples, who had as one of their earliest goals the restoration of the New Testament church, place Communion as central in our own worship. Although Alexander Campbell refused to suggest any specific order for Christian worship—in keeping with an early Disciples motto, “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent”—he did insist on the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, and that observance shapes and colors the entire worship service.

From the beginning, Disciples have also been committed to Christian unity. In his Declaration and Address, written in 1809 to explain the purpose of the new group he had started, Thomas Campbell said, “The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.” Another founder, Barton Stone, expressed similar sentiments in the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. We understand that we are not the only Christians; and so it is with joy that we Disciples observe World Communion Sunday on the first Sunday in October each year, remembering that we join together with all Christians around the world when we gather at the Lord’s Table.

Why Does Disciples DNA Matter?

(My congregation is celebrating Heritage Month in October. This is my column from the church newsletter kicking it all off.)

Some years ago, the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had before it a resolution that has caused trouble ever since. The resolution asked the Assembly to vote “yes” or “no” on the statement, “Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.”

My memory fails me just exactly what happened (it’s been well over a decade ago), other than that the General Assembly did not pass this resolution. And since then, folks have tried to cause trouble in churches and other areas within the Christian Church by telling people, “Our denomination’s leaders don’t believe Jesus is the only way to salvation.” And people hear this, and they wonder, “Do we really want to be part of a denomination that doesn’t believe in Jesus?”

But here’s the problem: We aren’t part of a denomination that doesn’t believe in Jesus. The Design, which is sort of the constitution and by-laws of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), begins with this statement: “As members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), we confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world.” That’s a version of what we ask each person who presents him- or herself for baptism or for church membership to affirm. Of course we believe in Jesus!

What we don’t believe in is a denominational structure that allows decisions about what we believe, beyond the statement above, to be made for us by our leadership in Indianapolis, at General Assembly, or anywhere else. Had the resolution “Jesus Christ is not the only way to salvation” come before the General Assembly, it would have been voted down too!

There’s a reason why people can come to our churches and cause trouble by saying, “The General Assembly refused to say Jesus is the only way to salvation—therefore the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) doesn’t believe in Jesus—therefore if we do believe in Jesus we had better separate ourselves from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).” It’s because we’re not as familiar with our identity as Disciples as we should be. From the very beginning, Disciples have believed each Christian has the responsibility to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” (see Philippians 2:12); therefore, we do not look to our leaders in the regional office or in Indianapolis or at General Assembly to tell us what we believe.

This is why I believe it’s important to spend some time this month rediscovering our heritage as Disciples. If folks in these churches where someone’s causing trouble over “what Disciples believe” knew what Disciples really believe, they’d be able to say, “No, that’s not who we are.”

But there’s more to it than that. A San Diego new church pastor who led a workshop at the Portland General Assembly said that if we could just get the word out about who Disciples are and what we believe, our churches would explode with growth. We are what the world is looking for. But how will they know that, if we don’t know it and therefore aren’t able to tell them?

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is unique, and uniquely qualified to reach the world we find ourselves in today. Let’s get in touch with who we are as a church this month, so we can live out our mission: “to be and to share the good news of Jesus Christ, witnessing, loving, and serving from our doorsteps to the ends of the earth.”

Pollution

This is my column for next Tuesday's edition of our local newspaper.

When I was a child I lived a few blocks from a smelter operated by the Sherwin-Williams paint company. The school I attended was right across the street from the smelter, which ran day and night, removing from ore the minerals that give color to our paints. There was a smokestack that continuously poured foul-smelling, dark brown smoke into the air.

We lived west of the smelter, so we escaped the worst of the effects of that smoke. Nevertheless, it discolored and ruined the finish of the white car we owned for awhile, and on the occasions when the wind came out of the east that smoke would settle down over our school playground, burning our lungs as we breathed it in. Those who lived downwind had even worse effects: Some of the properties east and north of the smelter have had to have all the dirt in their yards removed, hauled off and replaced, because the constant onslaught of that smoke left poisons in the earth. People who lived there are unsure whether health problems they have experienced might have been caused by exposure to that pollution.

Finally new rules went into effect, and that smokestack was replaced with a new one fitted with a “scrubber” that removed most of the pollutants before they could find their way into the air. But the damage was already done.

We know a lot about the dangers of pollution nowadays, considerably more than the folks who built that smelter in Coffeyville did. We have taken many steps to reduce the pollution that finds its way into our air, water, and earth. But there is one form of pollution we have not reduced. That pollution is anger, and it is causing great harm to our world.

There is anger in public and private life. There is anger in city government, anger in Congress, anger in international relations. It’s anger that is causing Ku Klux Klan flyers to be placed on cars and in churches in our area. Anger seems to fuel most public discourse today, especially among the screaming heads on cable “news,” but also in press conferences held by our nation’s leaders. Tiny things set us off: a quote taken out of context from a papal address, the request to have a sign reading “God Bless America” removed from a California post office, a store clerk wishing us “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” traffic, someone else’s cell phone ringing at an inconvenient time, slow service at a restaurant, etc., etc., etc.

What’s going on? Why is there so much anger afoot in our world?

Part of it is fear. We find ourselves in a world we did not choose, a world where terrorism is more deadly than ever and we can’t seem to do anything about it, a world that is changing much faster than we can keep up with, a world where the optimism of the 20th century has given way to the sure and certain knowledge that we have not eradicated disease, hunger and poverty or ushered in world peace. We’re afraid because the world seems to be out of control.

Scientists tell us that when any creature—including humans—is threatened, the body produces chemicals that spur a “fight-or-flight” response. Fear and anger are both part of that response, and so are very closely related. This is, of course, normal and healthy if the threat is immediate and our response gets us out of the threatening situation. But when the threat is undefined and constant (or is being exploited and made to appear constant), fear and anger do not dissipate.

So what can be done about the pollution of anger? First of all, we need to strengthen our relationships with one another. Modern people too easily become isolated, and when we do not know our neighbors we are prone to fear them. We need to make the effort to get to know others: our neighbors, those who don’t look and act like us, those who are of a different faith from ours, immigrants and strangers in our midst. When we can think of people as neighbors and friends, not some nameless, faceless “other,” they’re not nearly as scary.

We also need to slow down. When we’re hurried, we’re stressed and less patient, and less likely to take a deep breath and count to ten when an irritant presents itself. A slower pace would reduce anger a great deal.

But above all, we need to turn to God. There is no need for fear when we trust in God—the One who brought order out of chaos at creation will not let chaos take over again. In the midst of the anger that pollutes our atmosphere, let us remember that God is God, so that anger and fear do not dominate our own lives and relationships.

An old sermon

Someone asked me to post this old sermon (from September 21, 2003) so he could link to it from his own site. Although it's old, it is based on one of the lectionary readings for this week.

September 21, 2003
Blue Ribbons
Mark 9:30-37

Fair season is just about over, I think. Some of us have entered different things for judging—crafts, flowers, food, musical presentations, all sorts of things, in the friendly competition at the fair. Growing up, I used to go out to the fair at home and look at the exhibits. My grandmother always had something entered—usually some candy, or a cake, or something like that, and she usually got a blue ribbon.

One year I decided I’d like to enter something in the fair. So I thought, “What do I do pretty well?” In my family, it was my job to make the biscuits for breakfast on weekends. So I made a batch of baking-powder biscuits, using my grandmother’s recipe.

Well, my sister and I tended to be a little bit competitive—and she tended, as a younger sister, to want also to do whatever I might be doing. So she decided to make biscuits to enter in the fair too. Up until this point she’d shown no interest whatsoever in cooking anything, really. She got out the Betty Crocker cookbook and made a batch of buttermilk biscuits, the first biscuits she’d ever made in her life.

We took our respective batches of biscuits out to the fairgrounds, filled out the paperwork and paid our dollar entry fee. Then we went back after the judging to see how we’d done.

On my plate of light, tall, perfectly browned biscuits made from my grandmother’s recipe was pinned…a red ribbon. Second place. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that next to my biscuits sat Carrie’s plate of very-first-try, Betty Crocker Cookbook biscuits—proudly wearing a blue ribbon.

As they walked home, Jesus and his disciples had some time alone. Jesus had made sure of it, because there were some things he wanted to teach them. For the second time, he tried to explain to them what would be coming up for him—telling them about his betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection.

But as before, it didn’t compute. They didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him to explain. Maybe they were like we sometimes are when we’re in a class and don’t understand something—each of us is afraid we’re the only one who doesn’t get it, and don’t want to look stupid in front of everyone else, so we keep our mouths shut. What we don’t realize—what the disciples didn’t realize—was that no one understands, and if one of us would ask the question, all of us would benefit.

But the disciples didn’t do that. Instead, they talked among themselves about it. I wonder if their conversation might have sounded like this:

“Why does he keep saying that? He knows the Messiah won’t die—he’ll establish his kingdom here, throw out the Romans, and rule forever.”

“Beats me. Maybe he’s slipping.”

“Remember when he said this to us before,” Peter might say, “and I tried to help him understand what it really meant to be the Messiah—and he called me Satan! There’s no way I’d ask him about it again after that.”

“What if something does happen to him? I suppose one of us will have to take over as the leader, and keep this thing going.”

“Yeah, but which one?”

And then maybe they fell silent, imagining what it would be like on that last day, Jesus placing his hands on the chosen successor’s head—and, of course, each one thought it would be him who got the nod.

Then the conversation would resume.

“It sure couldn’t be Peter. He’s too much of a loose cannon, always speaking before he thinks.”
Peter might answer, “But I’m the only one who knew he was the Messiah without him telling us. And I’m one of the few he had up on the mountain with him that one day when Moses and Elijah showed up.”

And John might chime in, “Well, James and I were there too on that day. I bet he’d pick one of us.”

Then James might turn to his brother and say, “Well, it would have to be me, not you, because you’re too young to be in charge.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

And maybe Judas would interrupt this argument before it turned physical, saying, “Well, you guys are all hicks from Galilee. I think Jesus would pick someone a little bit more sophisticated, someone who could relate better to people in Jerusalem.”

“So I suppose you think you’d get to be the leader, then, Judas,” Thomas might chime in. “You’re the only Judean. But why would Jesus think a Judean was better than someone from Galilee? Remember that he’s a Galilean too!”

Then Matthew might jump in. “I think he’d pick someone who’s financially secure, who maybe could support all of us. Running all over creation teaching people takes money, you know. And I’ve got more money than any of you.”

“Well,” Peter might say. “I think your past would probably come back to haunt you. There’s no way the Pharisees would listen to a former tax collector. As far as they’re concerned, you’re still a filthy collaborator.”

Now, I don’t know how long this argument might have gone on, with each of the twelve giving their reason why he should be the leader, and each one of them getting shot down by someone else, but you get the idea. Maybe it went on until they got home, as Jesus walked ahead of them a few paces, and they all figured he was lost in his own thoughts, or even in prayer, and probably—hopefully!—not listening to them. Because they must have known somewhere in their heart of hearts how ridiculous the argument was.

But no such luck. When they got home, Jesus asked, seemingly innocently, “What were you guys talking about?” I remember my mom asking similar innocent questions when I was a kid and doing something I shouldn’t have been doing—and knowing full well she knew the answer before she asked.

And the disciples probably looked very intently at their feet right then. But Jesus didn’t chew them out, like he had not too long before when they hadn’t been able to do anything for a father who brought his epileptic son for healing.

Any of us who’ve ever been teachers know about “teachable moments.” Those times when something happens and we throw out the lesson plans because we’ve just been presented an opportunity to teach something we hadn’t planned to teach. Jesus saw a teachable moment here. The disciples’ reaction when Jesus asked them what they were talking about told him they were ripe for being taught another way to think about greatness. So he sat down—as a rabbi would to teach.

He said, “You know, the world thinks about greatness the way you were doing on the road. Who’s the most qualified, most powerful, best at the stuff on the job description? Who has money, who has the right ethnic background, the best political savvy? But you guys have been around me long enough to know that’s not the way I see it, and that’s not the way my Father sees it.

“In the Kingdom of God, the one who is the greatest is the one who serves everyone else. In the kingdom of God, the ones given special honor are the weak, the broken, the insignificant, the powerless.”

And then, for the visual learners among them, he called a little child who happened to be walking through and took that child into his arms. Maybe he had the weun sit on his lap for a second. And he said, “If you welcome one like this in my name, you are welcoming me—and in welcoming me, you welcome God.” That’s true greatness, he said.

Some preachers are using this text to talk about how we treat children in this country. And that’s certainly a worthwhile conversation to have. But it’s not the whole point.

To understand Jesus’ point we need to know a little bit about what it meant to be a child in his day. Childhood wasn’t seen in those days as an ideal time of innocence, a time of play and wonder. Children weren’t seen as precious, but as necessary nuisances, to be fed and clothed and put up with until they were old enough to be of some use to the family. In a time when many kids didn’t survive even to age five, it just didn’t pay to get attached to them. They were weak, powerless; they had no say in what happened to them; they were completely at someone else’s mercy, completely dependent on someone else to provide for them.

So when Jesus said, “Be servant of all, welcoming all, even a child, and you will be great,” he was really saying, “True greatness is welcoming and serving the lowest of the low.”

We learned from Jesus—not just from his words but from the way he lived his life, the Son of God coming as a baby to an ordinary, poor family who lived in the sticks of Galilee, taking as his followers fishermen, tax collectors, sinners, broken people, poor people, even women and children; and eventually dying naked on a cross—that the way of the Kingdom is the way of service, of humility, of being prepared even to give up our lives for others who probably don’t even deserve to be served or welcomed like this.

The way of the Kingdom is to welcome and serve the lowest of the low. In serving these, we serve Christ, and in serving Christ we serve God.

Now, I think it’s easy to welcome and care for some children, at least—the ones who behave, who have manners, who are cute. But that’s not all Jesus meant. It’s not so easy to welcome and care for children who don’t look like us, who don’t know how to behave, who have issues, who aren't cute, who are obnoxious. But those are the ones we need especially to welcome.

And he might have set a child on his lap to teach them; but he wasn’t talking just about children. He was talking about anyone who has low status, is powerless, anyone with whom we’d rather not associate. He was telling his disciples—telling us—that how we treat these little ones, these poor ones, these weak ones, these invisible ones is how we treat him.

In a way, when we encounter one of these little ones who needs us to welcome and love them, we are encountering Jesus; we have a chance to welcome Jesus, to care for Jesus.

So the question for each of us is this: How will we treat Jesus when we meet him this week?

Another blog worth reading

Check out Ohio Presbyterian pastor Thom Shuman's most recent blog entry at www.occasionalsightings.blogspot.com. We in the church talk a really good line about being welcoming to all, but what happens when the rubber meets the road?

Real Biblical Values?

Perhaps you’ve seen the new Monday night program on TLC, Shalom in the Home. For many folks this is the first introduction to an Orthodox Jewish rabbi by the name of Shmuley Boteach. I had heard of him, but didn’t know a whole lot about him, and I haven’t watched the TLC show for one reason or another.

But Rabbi Shmuley also writes a regular column on the website Beliefnet, which he calls “Rebbe with a Cause.” The column that was there this past week began with his musings on The Da Vinci Code controversy and ended with his opinion that he can relate a great deal more to a Jesus who was human than he can to the way Jesus is often portrayed. (Christian theology says Jesus is fully human and fully divine; but since our minds don’t handle paradox well, we often find ourselves thinking about Jesus as more divine than human, or vice versa.)

Now, I don’t want to get into the whole controversy about The Da Vinci Code here; I have read the book (found it mildly entertaining, but definitely not a classic work of literature) but haven’t seen the movie, and I’m not really up on all the intricacies of folks’ objections to it. But in the middle of Rabbi Shmuley’s column he made a very interesting observation. He said that part of the appeal of the book and movie stems from a desire not only for a more human Jesus but also for more humane forms of religion.

He gave an example: Evidently one of the families he worked with on Shalom in the Home was a lesbian couple with children. Right after that another Orthodox rabbi said Rabbi Shmuley should not be allowed to read Torah at the synagogue as a result. (Lest we fall into the trap of shaking our heads at “those legalistic Jews,” Rabbi Shmuley pointed out that we Christians have not been totally innocent of similar charges either—and he’s right. He also pointed a finger at Muslims, but that’s a subject for another day.)

Rabbi Shmuley said, “Faith has become so harsh in our time, so inhuman, that hundreds of millions have turned to the New Age to accommodate their spiritual needs in utter rejection of organized religion…Many Christian evangelicals believe that the essence of Christianity is best captured in condemning gays.” (It’s my understanding that Orthodox Judaism isn’t exactly open and affirming toward gay and lesbian people, either, but his point is still valid.)

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, even though they admitted up front that it would not pass, the U.S. Senate devoted time, energy, and taxpayers’ money to debating a Constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage once and for all. (A certain element of the Senate seems to believe they need to raise this issue in an election year solely to energize their “base.”) On the cable “news” shows, the usual suspects appeared to explain that this ban is needed to “protect traditional marriage”—I have not yet figured out just exactly how my marriage or that of my parents or grandparents is truly in danger because there are two men or two women somewhere who also want to be married. God is brought into the conversation, and Christian values are appealed to.

I know there are a few passages in the Bible that seem to condemn homosexuality, and since they’re in the Bible we at least have to struggle with them. However, there are far, far, far more passages in the Bible that say a nation stands or falls not based on how stridently they denounce homosexuality but on how the most vulnerable in the society are treated. The Old Testament prophets, for instance, speak volumes about their people’s guilt before God—and their sin is not tolerance of gay people in their midst but “[trampling] on the poor” (Amos 5:11, and many other places in that book, for instance).

If we as a nation truly are committed to being a Godly nation, we’d spend a lot less time screaming at one another about gay marriage, and a whole lot more time treating one another—especially the poorest and most vulnerable among us—with care and compassion.

Far too often in this country religious faith is becoming a club with which to beat one another, instead of a means by which we are able to encounter the love and grace of God—most generally through the words and actions of one another. I agree with Rabbi Shmuley that it’s high time to put a stop to that, and perhaps to return to true Biblical values, such as love, grace, and faithfulness.

Family Values

The first year I was in college in Wichita, I had a friend, Tom, who was a piano performance major. When I learned that there was going to be a concert by a famous pianist in Tulsa, I asked Tom if he’d like to go down to see the concert, which was on a Sunday night.

Well, it just so happened that my dad’s restaurant was severely short-handed at the time, as a result of a couple of cashiers’ health and family problems, so I was driving from Wichita to Coffeyville every weekend to work there. So Tom drove down from Wichita Sunday morning, and met me at the cafeteria. The same day, we had a family birthday dinner at my aunt Sue’s house, before we went to the concert. Tom was welcomed to the table for Sue’s famous spaghetti.

That’s the way my family operates: if someone appeared at suppertime, whether it was a relative or one of our friends or someone my sister or I was dating, we set an extra place at the table and they joined us. The neighbor kids were in and out of our house and yard so much that one summer my mom tried to lay down the law about how much time they could spend there (it didn’t work). My grandparents, when I was little, lived in a neighborhood full of kids, and we’d play together all morning on Saturday, then Grandma would fix us a picnic lunch of cheese and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, which we’d eat on the picnic table in the backyard, washed down with Kool-Aid made by the mom of some of the neighbor kids. One of my high school boyfriends was beaten badly by his father one night, and he came to our house to be safe and get help.

When we hear politicians talking about “family,” oftentimes they use the term in an exclusive sense. “Family” means certain kinds of people, and not others (as if those others somehow sprang unaided into existence without parents, siblings, or other family members), and any who don’t fit the mold are defined out. I think, based on my own family, that they define the term much too narrowly. My family may not be terribly diverse ethnically or racially, but we’re still a pretty variegated lot.

My family includes couples who’ve been married for decades, divorced folks, people who haven’t ever gotten married. There are gay and lesbian people in my family. We have foster children, stepchildren, adopted children, and children who arrived in the “usual” way—and there are households where there aren’t any children at all. We are professional people, homemakers, teachers, bankers, tradesmen, management and union folks. Four generations of my family have had careers involving food. We live in cities and in rural areas. We are teetotalers, alcoholics, and everything in between. We have a variety of political, social and religious views. Yes, we sometimes get on one another’s nerves, sometimes we argue, but we’d lay down our lives for one another if need be, protect and defend one another in whatever way is called for. And the door’s always open to welcome relatives and friends alike, with grace and love and good things to eat. (Too many good things to eat, in a lot of cases.)

Often we hear church described as a family. If that’s the case, I hope we’re a family like mine.

Spring Training

Someone from the Midrash preaching e-list asked me to post my sermon for tomorrow so folks could link to it from his website. (for more information on Midrash, go to the joinhands.com website.)

February 12, 2005
Spring Training
1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Are you watching any of the Olympics?

In the time leading up to the opening ceremony on Friday, we’ve heard a great deal about some of the people who are going to be competing for the United States in Turin. One of the rising stars right now is the skier Bode Miller. He’s actually in trouble, mostly, because of some less-than-diplomatic comments he made about drug testing of athletes, and also because he said there were times he has skied impaired or hung over—which isn’t funny, even though he acted like it was during an interview on 60 Minutes, because skiing is a dangerous sport, and he could be seriously hurt skiing drunk.

Not one of the best examples for a young athlete to set—but you have to cut him maybe a little slack because of that one word: young. He actually reminds me a little of what Andre Agassi was like when he first appeared on the scene almost 20 years ago. I remember seeing him on David Letterman or the Tonight Show, I forget which, when he was about 22, talking about how he’d never, ever play at Wimbledon, because he wouldn’t be allowed to wear denim on the court. And, of course, he outgrew his attitude, and eventually did take off his denim and play at Wimbledon. So, although I do think it’s extremely stupid of Bode Miller to be skiing drunk, I don’t see the point in getting too riled up about some of the other things he says or does. (If he’s still saying and doing the same things when he’s in his 30s, then I’ll worry.)

Right now, at least from what I’ve heard, this guy is a shining star because of his incredible natural talent. Sort of like when Tiger Woods was a college kid winning the U.S. Amateur tournaments, and folks were talking about his potential, and looking back we discovered that he was a golf prodigy even as early as five years old. (We can only take this comparison so far, though, because unlike Bode Miller, I think Tiger has always been pretty careful about what he says in public, and has for the most part kept his nose clean.) And Tiger turned pro, and immediately won some major tournaments. But now we’re several years after that, and while Tiger is still very good, he doesn’t win every tournament he plays in—sometimes he doesn’t even make the cut. And he’s had some trouble with his back, and amazingly enough, he has to practice, just like any of the rest of us would.

Now, golf is a different sort of sport than many of our professional sports today, like football and baseball. A football player can’t plan on having a very long career. It’s just too hard on the body. With baseball, folks can play until they’re a little older before retiring, but still you don’t see too many pro baseball players older than mid-40s. But a golfer like Tiger can expect to play professionally for as many as 40 years!

He’ll have to do some things to make sure he can do that, though. He will have to take care of his body. He’ll have to eat right and exercise—paying special attention to the parts of the body that golf can be hard on. He will also have to keep his mind sharp—because as any of you who play know, golf is as much a mental game as it is a physical one. He will—and this goes without saying, really—want to stay away from drugs and alcohol and other things that would impair his mental and physical abilities. And he’ll have to continue to practice, continue to work on the various skills that go into the game of golf. As long as he intends to continue to play golf, he will have to do all these things. His training won’t end. It will always be a part of his life.

To be truthful, no athlete who intends to continue being an athlete can say one day, "I’ve trained enough now. I’m not going to show up for practice anymore. I’m not going to report (as pitchers, catchers and injured players will do this Thursday) for spring training this year. I’ll just come to the games, and that’ll be fine." Training, and practicing, and conditioning, cannot stop, or the athlete’s career will also stop.

Some of us women preachers—at least the ones of us who have no athletic ability, like myself—object when we hear a sermon filled with illustrations and images from sports. And certainly it can be taken too far. But there are some times when talking about sports and athletics is exactly what’s called for. One of those times is when we’re working on some texts from Paul’s letters, because Paul uses a lot of athletic imagery to talk about what the Christian life is like.

In the case of our text from 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the analogies of boxing and running because Corinth was host, every two years, to an event called the Isthmian Games—second only in prestige to the Olympic Games themselves. No doubt there were a number of events that athletes could compete in, just like at the modern Olympic Games that are going on right now. The winners of the competitions at the Isthmian Games, like the winners at the Olympics and other ancient athletic events, received wreaths of greenery as prizes. What was unusual about the Isthmian Games’ wreaths, though, was that they were made out of withered celery. Imagine you bought a stalk of celery at the grocery store and left it in your refrigerator a couple of weeks, until it started to droop and turn brown. Then you made a wreath out of it: that was first prize at the Isthmian Games. I hate to think what the second- and third-place awards were like.

Paul says these athletes compete to receive "a perishable wreath"—very clearly perishable from the moment it was put on the winner’s head. We—and by "we" he means Christians—have our eyes on an imperishable, an eternal, prize. So how much more should we be training and practicing for our own races? How much more should we be disciplining ourselves in order to be in the best possible shape for the life Christ has called us to live? How much more—and read in context this is Paul’s point—do we need to lay aside our desire to have our own way, our indulgence in attitudes and behaviors that impair our ability to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the community of believers established to live and proclaim that Gospel in the world?

See, this text comes in the midst of a discussion Paul is having with the Corinthian church over the question of a Christian’s freedom. He has talked about the issue of Christians eating meat that has been offered to idols. Some of the Corinthian Christians had major concerns about this, and others thought it was no big deal and that the ones who had the concerns were superstitious rubes who needed to get over it. But Paul told them that, yes, we are free to eat this meat, because we know that idols are phony gods and can’t help or hurt us—however, if exercising that freedom might cause other Christians to fall, then we would do well to lay it aside.

What he is trying to say to the Corinthians is that a faithful Christian life is a disciplined life, a life of self-control. It isn’t a life of unbridled freedom, where we can do whatever we want because Christ has set us free from the demands of the Law. It also isn’t a life of rampant individualism, where all that matters is each believer’s personal relationship with Jesus. The faithful Christian life is a process of being shaped and formed more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ. And it’s a life lived among others who are in the same process, in a community where we all help with the training and formation of one another in the context of mutual love and grace. Our training won’t end. It will always be a part of our lives.

The training of a Christian involves a number of activities. Like an athlete, we need to make sure we take good care of our bodies, including eating well, exercising, managing our illnesses and other conditions carefully. We need to avoid substances and behaviors that detract from our physical, mental and spiritual health, like excessive use of alcohol and drugs, and inappropriate sexual expressions. We also need to take good care of our minds, studying and reading and learning all the time, reading our Bibles alone and with others. And we need to strengthen our spiritual lives, by practicing the spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation, worship, confession, celebration, and stewardship.

These things aren’t always exciting. Sometimes they’re downright repetitive and boring—sort of like lifting weights or running laps or hitting balls at the driving range or in the batting cage. But if we are going to receive that imperishable wreath Paul talks about, we have to keep ourselves in shape for the race we’re called to run.

War on Christmas?!

This is my contribution to the hot air that's being generated by the current controversy over Christmas. It will be published in our local newspaper next week.

Mike and I have a habit of watching some of the cable news shows that are on in the evenings. At 7:00 most nights, we switch back and forth between Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News. (We like Keith better, because he tends to treat most of the news with a little humor—and people don’t come on his show to scream at one another and be browbeaten by the host.) Lately one hot topic, particularly on O’Reilly, has been the “War on Christmas” that secular forces in our culture are supposedly waging.

O’Reilly told his TV and radio audiences recently that there were two school districts in the U.S.—one in Texas and one in Michigan—where the students have been barred from wearing red and green because those are Christmas colors. The Texas district, it was reported a few nights later by Keith Olbermann (who, admittedly, has a bit of a feud going with O’Reilly year-round), had to call parents to let them know that it isn’t true! Someone, somewhere, made it up. The superintendent of the Michigan district, sitting (as Olbermann described him) in his office beside his Christmas tree, in his red shirt and Santa Claus tie, has demanded a retraction from O’Reilly. It’ll be interesting whether he gets it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m having a hard time feeling that I’m being persecuted because I’m a Christian and celebrate Christmas, because some individuals and businesses are saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas,” because some misguided folks are calling it a “holiday tree” rather than a “Christmas tree.” There are other places in the world where people are killed or jailed or tortured because they are Christian—it seems almost insulting to those Christians for us to spend a bunch of time being upset because someone in a store somewhere wished us “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Our adult Sunday school class has been studying the Gospel according to John this fall. Last week we arrived at chapter 13, in which Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, and then gives them a new commandment: “Love one another.” Then he elaborates a little bit: “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Nowhere does Jesus ever say, “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you yell at one another about trivial matters and spend the season when you’re supposed to be celebrating my birth walking around with your nose out of joint because somebody didn’t wish you a Merry Christmas.”

The fact of the matter is that even those of us who are Christian celebrate more than just one holiday during this season. The holiday season begins with Thanksgiving, and continues on through Christmas and New Year’s Day. Why can’t we simply assume the person saying “Happy Holidays” is being extravagant and wishing us Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year all at once, instead of getting all exercised because someone didn’t say the word Christmas? How is it that Jesus says people are supposed to recognize his disciples? By the chips on their shoulders, or the love in their actions?

Being a follower of Jesus means that if we’re going to get angry about something, we should be angry about the things that make him angry: ungrace and self-righteousness on the part of religious folks, sickness and death too often caused by poverty and the indifference of far too many people to that poverty and disease, and the continuing tendency even of those who claim to be his followers to place other things before our commitment to him—like greed, materialism and phony controversies about a “war on Christmas.”

Let’s let folks know we are disciples of Jesus Christ for the right reasons during this holiday season!

When Christians Act Like Christians

It could have been terrible. It could have been nasty. People could have come away hurt. It could have damaged our church’s witness in the world. But thanks be to God that it didn’t go that way.

I’m talking about the special regional board meeting we had this past Saturday. For the uninitiated, the region is our middle management—between the local churches and our national organization. Our region is in the midst of some major transition right now. We’re not alone in this; all of our church’s regions are going through similar struggles, as are the “middle judicatories” of just about every church denomination. And it’s a lot more common than we’d like to admit that these struggles often result in criticism being focused on our leaders—in our case, on our regional minister—and often in the less-than-loving removal of those leaders.

This could have happened in our meeting on Saturday. The meeting was called by a board member who wanted us to talk about whether or not the regional minister’s leadership was appropriate for our region’s needs—and between the lines we understood that a decision was desired whether or not we wished his leadership to continue.

When I first learned about this meeting, I mentioned it to my husband, who has not been as deeply immersed in church life as I have been since childhood. His response was, “It amazes me how you church folks can be so un-Christian sometimes.” And he’s right! It could have been this way Saturday. I went to the meeting unsure whether we’d behave like Christians or something else.

But it turns out that the meeting was very constructive, and we all behaved lovingly, not just toward one another but toward our regional minister. Yes, there were criticisms, things that will need to be addressed; but we were able to see that all the blame for our anxiety and uncertainty about the future could not be laid at the regional minister’s feet. When it came time for the regional minister to join us, after we broke for lunch, we determined what would be the best way to communicate with him, so he didn’t feel like he was being ambushed.

What was different in this meeting than in so many other meetings that are called for the same reasons? The only thing I can think of is that this meeting was bathed in prayer. Folks were praying for us and for the meeting itself for weeks beforehand. We began the meeting in prayer and ended with Communion. We had an extended time of prayer after lunch, before the regional minister joined us.

The fact of the matter is that we Christians cannot always behave like Christians on our own. Real and human fears, desires for power and control, and other issues often interfere even with our best intentions to be Christlike. But if we call upon God, and commit ourselves to being led by God, it can happen.

We still have anxious times ahead of us. But we now know that if our conversations and discussions are surrounded and infused with prayer and a desire to do God’s will, we will be all right. Thanks be to God for guiding us and for helping the Christian Church be truly Christian.

On Really Becoming a Dentist

It happened at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 22, 2005. Now, I think I would have preferred it happened at a little different time—like when he was drilling in someone else’s mouth—but it wasn’t my choice.

The dentist here in Sac City is a pretty good one. He’s young (only two years out of dental school), and outgoing. While he’s working, he’s chatting and joking with his assistant, sometimes singing songs, and generally having a good time. (One of the assistants told me once that sometimes she forgets she’s actually working, because they have so much fun there.)

But my dentist really became a dentist yesterday afternoon, while he was giving me a filling. While he was working on the cavity (which turned out to be worse than it had looked on the x-ray), he remarked that one of his professors had told him and his classmates they’d come out of school with the facts, and skills, and concepts they needed to do the work—but they wouldn’t really be dentists until they learned to follow their intuition as they cared for their patients. (His intuition has led him to want to drill another one of my teeth, but that’s a story for another day.)

That’s the way with just about everything we might do, I think. When we first learn to do something, we have all the steps written down, or we follow the recipe or the instructions exactly. But eventually there comes a point when we’re comfortable enough with the basics that we can apply them to new situations, or improvise on them, or know without looking it up what’s needed in a particular time or circumstance.

But for us to get to that point, we have to learn and practice the basics. We have to follow enough recipes to know how things are supposed to taste, what ingredients do what, and so forth. We have to have read enough x-rays to know what we’re supposed to see before we can recognize when something isn’t right. We have to have seen and identified a lot of common, everyday birds at our feeders before we’re able to recognize when an unusual one appears. As I used to tell the students I tutored at the English lab at my college, you have to know the rules of grammar before you know how and when to bend or break them.

It’s the same with our faith. We have to know the Bible stories so we can interpret our own stories in light of God’s action in the world. We have to learn what Jesus did do before we can answer the question, “What would Jesus do?” We have to know the commandments before we can figure out how to apply them to our own lives. Religious education is very important, because it builds the foundation. But the moment we really become Christians is when the habits and the stories and the instructions of our faith have become so ingrained that we don’t even have to think before we act in Christlike ways.

Greatest American

I suppose this isn’t a God sighting per se, but it’s on my mind. The Discovery Channel has been running a series where they are counting down to the “Greatest American,” based mainly on viewers’ voting. Any countdown like this is going to have some suspect folks on the list—not because they’re great, but because they make it into a “greatest” list mostly for the reason that they’re in the news right now. Pat Tillman is one of these. I do not discount the man’s patriotism or his sacrifice, but I don’t think he’s on a par with Dr. King or Thomas Jefferson. John Edwards made the top 100, as did Barack Obama—perhaps in a few years or maybe even decades they might be considered among the greatest Americans, but right now they mainly have potential, rather than actual accomplishments that would make them great.

There are a few I would include in the list that are not on it. Thomas Jefferson made the top 25, and Alexander Hamilton made the top 100, but James Madison did not, in spite of having been the principal author of the Constitution and, with Hamilton and John Jay, one of the chief apologists for the federalist system of government. Because of my own political bent, I would not include Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, and I believe history may vindicate my belief about both these presidents.

When I cast my vote for the one person who stands out as the greatest American, it will be Abraham Lincoln. I will not boil it down to one simple phrase, as many do: “He freed the slaves.” Certainly he did do that, and he deserves to be recognized for it, although his own writings and those of others seem to indicate his motives were somewhat more expedient than altruistic. But the reason I believe he deserves the top spot has more to do with his having led this country through its worst crisis, bar none, in the Civil War. He made extremely difficult decisions that were necessary to preserve the United States of America.

What I have read and heard of Lincoln demonstrate that he was truly a man of prayer and a deep faith in God. It was not simply something he said in order to attract certain segments of the public, but something on which he leaned at every point in his life. He did not profess the certainty that God was on any one side in the conflicts of his day—as a matter of fact he didn’t seem entirely certain whether God approved or disapproved of the war. Rather, he suggested the more important issue was not whether God is on our side, but that we do our best to be on God’s side. Lincoln struggled with God’s will, and with humility and much prayer tried to do what was right.

Abraham Lincoln certainly deserves to be honored as the “Greatest American” under the definition this program and list are using. However, there are millions and millions of “greatest Americans” using a very different definition. These are the men and women of every age who have done their best, worked hard, raised their children well, stood up for freedom in large and small ways. They are the ones who built communities, wrote and spoke about the ideals our nation stands for—even, perhaps especially, at times when the leadership of our country failed to live up to those ideals, looked out for one another, and did all of this without even a thought that their names might one day end up on a list of the “greatest Americans.” But that is who they are. We are a country founded and governed as a nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” in Mr. Lincoln’s words. While it is important to have heroes that stand above us, like Lincoln, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others, we must also remember that in a nation like ours, each one of us has the opportunity to be one of the “greatest Americans” through our actions every single day.

Me and My Shadow

It’s been a hard couple of days at our house. Yesterday morning I found one of our cats dead. I won’t go into the details of how it happened, except to say that it’s one of those times when you dwell on the things that, if you had done them differently, would have changed everything.

Shadow was Mike’s favorite of all our cats. He lived in this neighborhood before we did (Mike liked to tell people that “he came with the house”), but chose to come and live with us. He would come in the house in the winter when it was cold, but very rarely did he stay for more than a few hours. In the summer he didn’t come in at all, and no amount of coaxing would get him to change his mind. But he always would come out and greet us when we came home, even climbing into the car for a welcome-home rub. If he happened to be around in the mornings when I left for work, he would walk partway down the hill with me, every few steps throwing himself to the ground in front of me for a tummy rub.

When I found Shadow yesterday morning, I called Mike, who was in the process of getting ready for work. And I will never forget the sight of my big, barrel-chested, bass-voiced, mustache-wearing husband cradling Shadow, sobbing like a baby, and not caring who saw him doing it. He loves his cat-kids. I heard someone say once that “real men don’t kiss cats.” Don’t you believe it.

It’s much too early to try to draw meaning from what happened to Shadow. I won’t even try. But a few months ago, one of the children in my congregation came to me after church and asked, “Do dogs and cats go to heaven when they die?” And I told him that I trusted God to take care of even the tiniest critters—it says so in the Bible (see the end of the book of Jonah, for example, as well as Matthew 10:29). I firmly believe that, when God makes all things new on the last day, that means all things, including animals. And if there aren’t any cats in heaven, I’m not going.

We’ll get through this. It’s not the first time, after all, that either of us has lost a pet. We know that God is with us, and that Shadow is in the care of the God who can be trusted to watch over all of his creatures. That helps.

Living in Community

This is an offering meditation I wrote for our worship service this Sunday.

If you’ve ever seen pictures of rural areas of the British Isles, you’ll remember the stone walls that divide the fields. Did you know that those are dry stone walls? There is no cement or mortar holding the stones together. They are carefully fitted together so that they will stand strong even without the use of mortar.

Sometimes the one building the wall will find that a stone almost fits in the place where it is to go, but not quite. So the builder will take that stone and simply rub it against the one it will go next to, until their edges match up and they fit together perfectly.

Living in community with other people sometimes is like that—and the church is a community. We are all different, and sometimes those differences create tensions among us. But it is only through being in community that God is able to smooth out the differences that make it hard for us to fit together. Whenever we let our differences divide us, we miss out on the chance to become part of a strong, eternal building called the Body of Christ.