Sermon: "Choreography"

This is a sermon that I preached at Metropolitan Memorial UMC on Sept 22. I also gave a slightly modified version of the same message at Crossroads that same day. That one involved actual dancing. 

The texts are Wisdom 7:22-30 and John 1:1-5, which you can read at this website if you're interested.

But why read  a sermon when you can listen to it? A podcast of it is posted on Metropolitan's website, here. 

Here at the Metropolitan Church, we are in the middle of a sermon series called “Dancing Partners.” The sermon series is about the Trinity, that characteristically Christian doctrine that names God as Three in One and One in Three. It’s a tough topic, one that throughout the history of Christianity has been the cause of many disputes, skirmishes, and excommunications.

            Now at Wesley Seminary, where I’m a student, we have a year-long class called Systematic Theology, in which we spend a rather significant amount of time poring over this idea of the Trinity, rehashing what voices throughout the history of the Church have said about God as Three in One, One in Three. Discussing whether this doctrine has scriptural merit. Debating gendered language and metaphor and image.

This class took up a significant percentage of my time last year, and so when Charlie asked me to preach this Sunday my mind immediately went to that class and what I had learned. That class really did help me makes sense of the Trinity, but not in the way I would have expected.

You see, last December, I sat down in my old house in Northeast DC to write my final paper for Systematic Theology. I had the requisite stack of writings next to me—mainly church fathers and some old German guys, with a few feminist and liberationist voices in there for good measure. And I stared at the computer screen and, as seminarians are wont to do, overthought the thing again and again.

My housemate, a more practically-minded guy than me, was baking bread and listening to the radio in the kitchen. I had sort of tuned the voices on the radio out, so I wasn’t really listening to what was being said, but I noticed a sudden change in the tone. I don’t know how many of you listen to NPR, but there’s this certain sort of cadence to NPR-speak that tends to have a bit of a lulling effect on me. It’s always like, “And now, with an unconventional take on a topic of interest, here’s a reporter with a quirky name.” But the voices on the radio seemed to have sort of dropped that NPR-speak, and so I started paying attention to what they were saying. And I, along with many of you, began to learn about a shooting at a school in Connecticut that most of us had never heard of before. An elementary school called Sandy Hook.

When things like the shooting at Sandy Hook—and I think it should anger us, it should disturb us, that I can say “things like Sandy Hook” and you know what I mean, that we have a whole category of events, Sandy Hooks and Virginia Techs and Columbines and Boston bombings, and now we can add DC Navy Yards, a whole backlog of senseless violent tragedies—when things like the shooting at Sandy Hook happen, my first response is always silence. I never know what to say. And I sat, as did many others, by the radio or by the computer or both, refreshing news websites, hanging on rumors and misreported details, imagining the fear of children, and feeling paralyzed.

There was, of course, nothing to be done. The time would come to talk about gun control, an important conversation to have; and to talk about mental health, also such a vitally important topic. But now was the time for shock, for silence, for not knowing what to say.

And there I sat, with a half-started Word document and a stack of theological texts. And I didn’t know what else to do. So I scrapped everything I had written and I started to write it again.

The very little that I could try to do on that day is the same very little that I can try to do this morning. And that is to try to make some sense of theology—that is, to make some sense of the way in which we talk about God—in a world where kids are targets.

To try to speak about God in a way that can make any difference in a world in which, from the suburbs of Connecticut to the mountains of Pakistan, children can be pieces in the violent games of adults.

--

So what I want to talk about this morning is not exactly a doctrine of the Trinity, but instead the way that God models for us and invites us into a way of being that overcomes alienation. By talking about God as a Trinity, we are talking about God’s very self being comprised of relationship, of community, of communion.

This idea is important because I think that ultimately what I see when I see the news about Sandy Hook, and the DC Navy Yard, and Syria, is alienation. It’s our ability to distance ourselves from each other, and from God, and from ourselves, and from the Creation that we are a part of.  I see the chasms that exist between us, the objectifications, that allow us to hurt each other. The isolation that allows personal darkness to fester into violence.

            This alienation is everywhere. It’s in the loneliness that stalks the halls of Sibley Hospital and American University. In the violence that we read about and see in our city and our world. In the stigmatizing of mental illness. In sexism and racism and heterosexism and all the other -isms that hold so much power in our world. In the distance we feel from our neighbors in DC. In the reality of homelessness in our city.

And then we look to God, and rather than a distant, monolithic Other, another object separated from us by a chasm, we can instead see a communal dance, an intertwining reality, the overcoming of distance.

This sermon series is called “Dancing Partners” because one of the ancient metaphors used to describe the Trinity is a dance. The Greek word is perichoresis. The word is from peri-, as in perimeter. That means “around.” And chorea, dance, from the same root as choreography. So, something like, “to encompass with dancing.” So the idea is that the mutual indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity, the way that they deeply relate to each other without losing their personal distinctions, is like a dance. There is movement. Moving closely with each other and then spinning out. Opening and closing, stepping and leaping.

It’s a dance we’re invited into. Western Christianity has gotten so used to thinking of salvation as a personal thing that we forget it’s about reconciliation, an inherently communal act. We are invited into the dance of the Trinity, invited to be reunited with God-As-Community and thus to become part of a healed and reconciled community here on earth. Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff writes, “If God means three divine Persons in eternal communion among themselves, then we must conclude that we also, sons and daughters, are called into communion. We are image and likeness of the Trinity. Hence, we are community beings.”

Don’t worry introverts. This doesn’t mean you can never be alone. In fact, it’s perfectly possible to be in a crowd and still feel alienated, still feel isolated. It just means that as we live more and more into the image of God-As-Relationship, we grow more and more aware of how deeply we are all interconnected, how we are all intertwined. How we are all dancing together.

--

We heard two passages of scripture today. One, if you’ve spent significant time in churches, is probably pretty familiar to you. The other is likely new. See, the second passage, the first words of the gospel of John, is often read around Christmas. It describes Jesus as the Incarnate Word, present at creation. John’s gospel goes on to tell us that this Word becomes flesh, making itself known to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s a radical claim that John’s gospel makes, not found in any of the other gospels. That Jesus is not just a human being but the manifestation of God, through whom all things come into being.

Now, those of us who are comfortably ensconced in Christian circles are so used to hearing this that we forget what an outlandish idea it is. If you think about it, why anyone would choose to believe that a human being, from a particular place and a particular time, is also somehow that which brings the world into existence, is pretty hard to understand.

The first reading gives us some hints, though, about the paradigm in which the gospel of John comes into being. It’s from a book called the Wisdom of Solomon, a book that is not included in Protestant Bibles, although Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox believers count it as part of their scriptures. It’s a Jewish text, but written, as is the gospel of John, from a distinctly Greek thought-world. The text emerges not, as it purports to, from the world of King Solomon, but rather from persecuted Jewish communities living in Alexandria around the time of Jesus. In an environment of hostility and violence, the author of this text draws on the ancient Jewish archetype of Lady Wisdom--the Greek word is Sophia--to make the argument that devotion to God is more important than the wisdom and philosophy of the day.

Ok. Here’s where things get really interesting. The Jewish image of Divine Lady Wisdom is often understood as a predecessor to the Christian image of the Holy Spirit. In Eastern Orthodox theology, the Spirit is often understood as feminine, just like Wisdom in Jewish thought. In fact, later on in the book of Wisdom, in Chapter 9, Wisdom is described as God’s holy spirit. In the passage that we heard today, she’s described as “a breath of the power of God,” images of breath also being characteristic of the Christian understanding of God’s Spirit.

But notice that Wisdom is also described as the “Fashioner of All Things.”  In scriptural tradition, it was generally understood that Divine Wisdom was present with God at the beginning of creation. Does this sound familiar? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This iconic description of Christ from John’s gospel sounds an awful lot like the image of Divine Wisdom, which in turn predates the Christian image of the Holy Spirit. Wisdom is also described in this morning’s passage as “a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.” This sounds incredibly similar to the description of Christ found in the first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, in which Christ is called “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” So in describing Christ, the early Church was drawing on images of Wisdom, which in turn were the predecessor to images of the Holy Spirit.

Oh dear, have I lost you yet? All I’m really trying to say here is that, even before the early church agreed on a formal doctrine of the Trinity, it had at hand images of God that were interrelated, that—while being distinct images—moved in and out of each other. The early church already had a sense of God as a community of diversity. And these interrelated understandings of God were not closed off from humanity, a sort of distant doctrine to be pondered, but rather were intimately related to creation. In John’s gospel, all things come into being through the Word, the Word who becomes flesh in Jesus. We come to being through Christ, are creatively connected to Christ. And in the book of Wisdom, Wisdom is “penetrating through all spirits;” she “renews all things.” So here we have God—God as Creator, God as the feminine Divine Wisdom, God as Incarnate Word—intimately involved in God’s creation. Participating in our lives. Overcoming separation and alienation and choosing, instead, closeness. Relationship. Love. It is this God who we are made in the image of. One Charles Wesley hymn describes us as “transcripts of the Trinity.” We are made to reflect this communal God. We are made for intimacy.

But we wake up one morning to news of chemical attacks in Syria, and another morning to news of a shooting at Navy Yard. We move through worlds of loneliness and loss. We experience the division—including of our churches—along racial and economic and political lines. In the face of all of this, it is a radical claim to make that the world is meant, not for alienation and division, but for community and relationship.

--

            Part of the idea of this sermon series is to talk about Metropolitan Memorial UMC, and Wesley UMC, and Crossroads at St. Luke’s, three particular church communities that have become one church community in three separate sites. We are still working out what that means and how that all works logistically, and that’s ok. It will take some time. But what I want to point to this morning is that our task is not just a logistical one, but a theological one. We are not just working together by having one shared church council or shared ministry teams. We are working together by trying to overcome division. We are trying to create community across lines of age and race and class. And we are trying to do so, not in a way that closes us off, but in a way that opens us up to those outside of our walls—to the people of Brighter Day ministries in Southeast DC; to the people of the Washington Interfaith Network as we strive together for affordable housing in this city; to the students of American University; to our mission partners in Nicaragua and South Africa; crossing all of these separations to be in community with each other, to be dancing partners with each other.

--

Friends, if any of you walk out of here not too sure about the doctrine of the Trinity, that’s actually ok with me. What I hope, though, what I would count as a God-given success, is if you walk out of here feeling a sense of call into community. A call into intimacy, into relationship, by a God who, in God’s very self, overcomes the alienation and distancing that is so much a part of our broken world. Here at Metropolitan, we might begin living out this call in small ways, taking steps across small barriers. So if you haven’t worshiped at Wesley or at Crossroads, why don’t you give it a try? If you haven’t joined the Campus Ministry team over at American University for one of our monthly dinners, why not come along with us? Meet some of the folks across that surprisingly wide barrier that is Nebraska Avenue. Learn some of their stories. Take a little step to beat back the isolation that we fall so easily into.

In the face of great violence, I know it sounds like such a little step. But little steps can make up a big dance. Little steps can bring us into close step with the great divine choreography, with the dance of the Trinity. And we read, today, that “against wisdom evil does not prevail.” We read, today, that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” So let’s dance. Let’s dance in the face of gun violence, in the face of racism, in the face of international conflict, in the face of hurt and loss and pain. Sometimes it will feel like we are dancing, alone, in the dark. But God invites us in, so that we are dancing together. 

And the darkness does not overcome.

Sermon: "No, you can't."

This is something like the sermon I gave last night at the Thursday night healing service at American University. The text is Philippians 4:10-20. I had a hard time landing the plane on this one, but these things happen:

I suck at to-do lists.

I’m seriously the worst at them. First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever actually completed a to-do list in my life. I write them, and then I add to them, and most of the time I add something just to cross it off so that I feel like I’m doing something. But the list keeps getting longer.

Then, I forget to even look at my to-do lists. And then I lose them, so I have to start new ones.

Needless to say, to-do lists do not actually help me organize my life very much.

Now this is a shame, because like most of us—if not all of us—I sort of have a lot to do. And since I’m not good at to-do lists, and I sort of suck at calendars too, it’s pretty common for me to forget to do something. To forget a homework assignment, or a church gig, or a birthday. Oh gosh. Is it any of your birthdays? I’m so sorry. I’m happy you were born.

Anyway, this is all very troubling, because I—and my guess is, many of you—grew up learning that it was very important for me to Do Things. My identity is wrapped up in the things I accomplish. When people ask me about myself—this is, by the way, particularly true in DC—I tell them where I’m a student, where I work—what I do. I don’t necessarily share with them what I believe. I don’t tell them that I believe that love runs the world despite all evidence to the contrary, that Jesus is someone worth following, or even that I like cheese. I think people would just look at me sort of funny. I give them some pertinent points from my resume.

What’s more, I—and, I guess again, many of you—have grown up being taught that I can do anything that I set my mind to. We’re Millennials—sorry Mark—and so the world is at our fingertips. No Generation X cynicism for us. We can be President. Run an NGO. Start an innovative new company. And we’re going to get around to doing all that as soon as we graduate with our high GPA and our monumental list of extracurricular activities and internships.

Well, I have good news for all of us who are living with huge to-do lists. We can get everything done! We can accomplish it all! I know this to be the truth because the Bible says it, in a verse that gets posted on Facebook walls and printed on coffee mugs and bumper stickers. Right there, in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, it says it—a verse that’s familiar to anyone who has a bit of immersion experience in Christian culture. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

That’s a relief, right? With Christ on your side, you can do all things. You can accomplish everything.

Here’s the thing. I’m saying this to Paul, and to you: No you can’t.

You can’t do everything.

I’m really sorry. It’s just not possible.

My to-do list is too damn long for me to get to everything and still take care of myself. If I go at this thing like I can do it all, I’m destined for a big crash. And I’ve already some of those. I don’t want another one.

So I want to take a look at this commonly quoted verse, and the passage around it, and see if we can glean some sort of truth about it that isn’t just an affirmation that our stressed-out, anxiety-packed, to-do list driven lives are the way things are supposed to be.

It’s first of all worth noting that Paul is not saying that we can do everything on our own steam. We need God in our lives—the God who empowers us and makes us whole. But we’re not so good at figuring out the practical implications of that. Does that mean that if I pray over my to-do list it will all happen? Does that mean that as a Christian I can accomplish more stuff than my non-Christian friends? The problem, of course, is that I look at my life and know that it’s just not true. My prayer or my faith doesn’t necessarily make me more productive. In fact, I hope that by the end of this sermon, you might agree with me that faith might make me less productive, at least in the sense that we usually understand it.

So, back to square one. I’m a good seminarian, so when I get stuck in a corner with a verse I head to different translations to see if I can squirrel my way out. And in fact, there’s some interesting stuff going on here in the Greek. We heard this passage tonight from the New Revised Standard Version, which is the translation we like to use over at Wesley Seminary. But the Common English Bible, the translation that we use here at Kay on Sunday nights, says this: “I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength.” In Greek the key word here is is-khoo-o. It means, “to be strong,” or, “to have power.”

Now that’s something different from being able to DO all things. That’s not about getting my to-do list finally accomplished or adding another line to my resume. Enduring or having strength or power, that’s about making it through, surviving, knowing that the Spirit of Christ is with me, accompanying me, standing in solidarity with my struggles. That’s certainly a comforting thought.

But it doesn’t actually get me out of this bind I’m in with this popular verse, because the idea that we can endure all things if we have Jesus is a bit of a problem in itself. If you’ve been around in this community for a while you might remember the sermon that Mark gave last year, challenging that popular piece of Christian advice, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” I understand this sermon achieved recent Reddit fame. The problem with “I can endure all things” or “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” is, of course, that we know people who are not enduring all things, who in fact seem to have more than they—than we—can handle. I learned recently that suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students. That more than 1,000 students kill themselves annually, and that something like 1 in 10 college students have had a plan for suicide at one time or another during their time in college. Those stats keep me up at night. What do we, as a Christian community, have to offer to people who are hurting and alone, who feel like they’re drowning?

Surely something different than telling them to just lean on Christ and they can endure anything. Surely that’s not the Christian response. What about all the people who seem not to be able to endure? What do we say to them, to their families? Surely this verse from Philippians isn’t enough.

And it isn’t. It isn’t enough. Not on its own. Which is why I had us read a larger chunk of this passage, not just the verse that we like to put on coffee mugs. See, what Paul is doing here is thanking the community in Philippi for their support in a time of violence and persecution—their prayer support, yes, but also their literal material support, their financial gifts and their companionship. Paul says that he’s not thanking them because he really needs anything, but you know what, Paul? I think you’re wrong. I know, I know. We’ve had this conversation before. But you’re not always right, Paul, and I’m calling you out on this one. You did need the support that the Philippians gave you. You don’t actually think we can do this Christian journey thing on our own. I know that to be true, because the only times you write to individuals instead of communities, you are writing to the leaders of communities. All of your writing, all of your theology, happens in deeply communal contexts. I know that we need each other, that we can’t do things, that we can’t endure things, on our own. I know this from experience, but I also know because you’ve taught me that, Paul.

But even as a community, we can’t do everything. Part of coming to understand the good news about grace, about God’s gratuitous love for us, is realizing that we are limited. That this life is not about what we can accomplish, but rather about what God accomplishes in us and in the midst of our community.

This is Methodist Heritage Week, so I can’t finish this sermon without putting a little bit of Methodist founder John Wesley in here. One of the distinctive characteristics of Wesleyan theology is an idea called total sanctification, or Christian perfection. Wesley didn’t come up with this idea, but he emphasized it in his preaching and teaching. The idea is that if salvation is about more than getting to heaven when we die, if it is actually about the healing and redemption of our whole lives; if God’s grace is active in our lives, transforming us; then we can reach a state where we have been healed, transformed, freed from the brokenness and alienation of the human mess.

Now, when I first heard this idea, I hated it. It seemed to counter to everything I believed about grace. We are all a bit of a mess. We all have hurting and broken parts. None of us is perfect, and, contrary to how I have often acted, I don’t think we should try to be. So I pretty much rejected this idea of Christian perfection.

But I had the chance to take a class on United Methodist theology this summer, and I got to explore this idea more. I really have come to love it. First of all, it really shouldn’t be called “perfection.” The concept is more like “maturity” or “wholeness.” Wesley taught that we would always make mistakes, we could always get sick or fall down. But what he was talking about was growth in love. That tomorrow, by the grace of God, I can wake up and love a bit better than I did today. That God’s grace can have a real effect on me and the community that I am part of, growing us together in love.

And I love this idea. Because I think “Christian Perfection” can actually save us from the worldy perfection that so many of us are striving for. The idea that we can do it all and we can do it all correctly and that we can excel at everything that we do. That that’s the goal of our lives, to achieve and to accomplish and to do it all perfectly.

Wesley would reject that, and I think Paul would, too. I think they’d argue that growth in love trumps a growing resume. Earlier in his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes “This is my prayer: that your love might become even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight. I pray this so that you will be able to decide what really matters and so you will be sincere and blameless on the day of Christ. I pray that you will then be filled with the fruits of righteousness, which comes from Jesus Christ, in order to give glory and praise to God.”

Richer in love. Aware of what really matters. Sincere. Filled with the fruits of justice, which come from God. Able to give glory and praise. And all this by the grace of God. There’s a to-do list, and one that we will not accomplish on our own.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in you all. I think God is going to do incredible things through you. I think the world will be a better place because of the amazing work that you will do. But you can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t try, and at the end of the day it’s love, not achievement, that matters.

So this semester, I’m quitting a few things. I’m dropping a class, and doing this a bit slower than I had intended. I’m backing out of a campus leadership position that a lot of people asked me to take, because it’s just not helping me grow in love to overload my schedule.  

Friends, the good news is not that you can do everything. The good news is that you don’t have to do everything. That God’s grace, not our frenzied activity, is central. That we are not alone, not isolated atomized units trying to accomplish the world, but a community bound together by God’s love.

Soon, we will gather together around this table. And we will do something so remarkably simple that it, if we think about it, sounds quite silly. We will take a small piece of bread and dip it in a bit of juice and call it a feast. And, in so doing, we will again experience what it is like to be part of a body, a community that shares life with one another. We will experience what it is like to not have to do everything, because that which is most important is being done in us and through us by a gracious God. And that, I think, is very good news indeed. 

Honoring MLK and beating the drums of war

It is a historic day to commemorate, and a day to rededicate ourselves to the struggle for racial justice. The speakers were inspiring, reminding us how far we've come and how far we have to go.

But my stomach is uneasy, and in the background I hear that beat again, steady and aggressive, the pounding drums of war.

We remember the "I Have A Dream Speech"--forgetting its much more critical original title, "A Cancelled Check"--as a soaring song of racial cooperation. We forget the radical King, the anti-war, pro-labor critic of militarism, materialism, and racism. We forget that King, and we look across oceans and continents, and we begin to beat the war drums again.

I am not an expert on Syria. Other, wiser people will have more to say. There are some people who I respect who have written articles that I have found helpful, like this one in The Nation from David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis (who were on the steering committee of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation while I worked here; David is an executive at Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church); or this one at Mondoweiss from Syrian-American Ramah Kudaimi. Kudaimi reminds us not to buy into "there are two sides" rhetoric when there is such a huge power imbalance, but at the same time points out the hypocrisy of our war-drum response in a region where we contribute to violence.

Assad is a murderer. The Syrian government is largely to blame for the massive casualties and the refugee crisis. The rebels are right. Syria is a horrendous tragedy, a bloodbath, a failure of humanity. I just can't imagine our cruise missiles helping the situation. Can't imagine that this time, our military intervention in the Middle East will lead to peace. Especially when we continue to support all sorts of other murderers in the region, military dictatorships and monarchs and apartheid regimes, with billions of dollars a year in made-in-the-USA weaponry.

Today, I am thinking about what I can do to live out a dream articulated, at the urging of Mahalia Jackson, 50 years ago. I do not know what I will do. But, with Suheir Hammad, I know what I will not do: I will not dance to your war drum.

 

On the pope, gay people, and being a judge

So the pope has made some waves, I hear. He's gone and said that he's not in a place to judge gay people who are seeking God. That's pretty cool.

Now if I understand the context correctly, he was actually talking about gay priests who have to be celibate anyway. So--and again, this is if I understand correctly, which I might not--there's still a certain air of, "Well, it's fine if you're gay, just as long as you don't go and do anything about it."

But still, a pretty powerful statement from the leader of the Catholic church. And one that certainly resonates with biblical texts, what with "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged" (Matt 7:1 or Luke 6:37) or the whole "the one who judges being the one who was judged unjustly" thing.

But I actually disagree. I think we're in a pretty competent place to judge.

It's just that we've been flat out judging wrong for a really long time.

We've got all the resources to make the correct judgment that LGBTQ folks are created in the image of God, gifted by God, and called by God. We've got plenty of reasons to judge that the church shouldn't for one second think about getting in the way of that image, those gifts, and that call. We've got all the information we need to judge that gay people are human beings, and that they deserve rights and dignity and love. We've got the church membership data and the biblical texts about God's extravagant welcome to those "on the outside" and the answer to the question "Who's my neighbor."

Do you know who else is in a position to judge? Gay people. They're in the position, in my opinion, to judge society and to judge, perhaps particularly harshly, the church. For being exclusive and narrow-minded and downright mean. With every friend I know who leaves the ordination process or switches denominations because the church won't honor their call; with every young person I talk to who sees the church as basically a haven for bigots; with every church trial I hear about, I am again reminded: we are being judged.

And things are not going in our favor.

It's time that we discern something more in-depth than "we agree to disagree." It's time to judge, justly. Which should have been the point all along.

Deep Well: Morning Prayer (a bit grudgingly)

Here's the deal. I'm not a morning person.

Anyone who's ever lived with me knows that I'm pretty much ok sleeping through the morning. I'm not one of those people who feels like I've "wasted the day" if I don't get up early, go for a run, and get cracking on my to do list. 

I hear sunrises are very lovely, and I've even seen a few great ones (although I've also had more than a few "well, I guess it's too cloudy to see the sun" experiences). But if God could just let me know once a year or so that there would be a really beautiful sunrise, that would be about enough for me.

So when my friend Rachel suggested that we do morning prayer together, I was a bit skeptical. 

This is the second time I've attempted this, the first being with my housemate Jen. I don't remember how long I lasted before I started sleeping through it, but it wasn't very long.

But one doesn't create a more disciplined spiritual life by sitting around waiting for it to happen, I suppose, so one evening as I was hanging out in Rachel's room I made a decision. "Ok," I said, "what time are we getting up tomorrow for morning prayer?"

We settled on the prayer in the United Methodist hymnal even though Rachel's Presbyterian because the Presbyterian one was sort of unwieldy. We wanted efficiency. My eyes are sort of blurry in the morning, so I didn't want to have to choose between a lot of prayer options. 

We've been doing this for about a week now, so don't get too excited. There is yet time for me to cop out and stay in bed: "C'mon Jesus. Just one more hour."

And I certainly haven't turned into Gandhi or Dorothy Day; haven't started levitating, either literally or in the figurative sense of floating above the world's problems. Maybe after two weeks.

But I do think it matters, starting the day off with this:

"New every morning is your love, great God of light,

   and all day long you are working for good in the world.
Stir up in us desire to serve you,

   to live peacefully with our neighbors,

   and to devote each day to your Son,

   our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord."

Instead of with this (at around 10:30): "I wonder what important emails I have. Oooo....and Facebook notifications!"

I do think it matters, starting the day with praying for the community, the church, and the world. In particular, praying for those people in my community, church, and world who I am inclined to disagree with or be disagreeable to. The people I pray for a bit grudgingly. 

I've been blogging, more sporadically than intended, about things that point me to the deep well of spiritual strength that I see in my heroes drawing from, the MLKs and Peter Storeys and Jean Vaniers. 

I'm not exactly basking in the glow of the Spirit every morning. Half the time I'm distracted and grumpy.

But this is a lifelong thing, and sometimes, you've just gotta start dancing, no matter how grudging you feel. 

"Who's in charge here?"

Our bass player at Crossroads was away this Sunday, and we were supposed to have a substitute bassist. 5pm rolled around; no bass player. So we started the service, which was fine.

During the sermon, I was sitting in back when a well-dressed gentleman came in. I went to greet him.

"Who's in charge here?" he said.

"Uh...what do you need?" I said.

"I mean, who's in charge of the service?"

"Well, what can I help you with?"

Turns out it was the bass player. He had gotten turned around on his way from VA (which just goes to prove one of my most important rules about living in DC, which is to try as hard as you possibly can to avoid driving in Northern VA) and wanted to let someone know why he hadn't showed up on time. I thought that was pretty considerate of him, so I thanked him, and then he left.

And I chuckled to myself about my complete inability to answer the simple question, "Who's in charge here?"

I mean, there's Dottie, the lead pastor at Crossroads, who was preaching at the time.

There's Christian, who leads the band, and Justin, the drummer, who is often responsible for communicating with substitute musicians. 

There's me, the "pastoral associate," whatever that means.

Then there's the nine or so lay people on our leadership team. 

I doubt any of us has the illusion that we're in charge.

Now, there are times in any organizational effort in which someone has to be "in charge," or at least organizing and facilitating the damn thing. But I kind of like that, at Crossroads anyway, nobody's in charge, or at least there are a whole lot of people in charge.

We're not what's called a "flat church" with no paid leadership. We don't exactly make decisions entirely by consensus. But there's still a feeling that we're all in this together, all doing this together, all creating and learning and serving together. 

Theologically speaking, we recognize that it is a homeless, executed Palestinian Jew who is the "head of the Church"--a paradoxical position for a failed messiah. That's who is supposed to be in charge...and he tended to do a lot of rejecting of the whole "being in charge" bit. (John 6:15, or Phil 2, for example) The rest of us, every last one of us, are just ministers. 

I hope, for you, whoever and wherever you are, a community that is getting less and less sure about the answer to the question:

"Who's in charge here?"

--

Shameless promotion: If Crossroads sounds like kind of a cool place to you...well, it is! Check out our website, or just come on by the St. Luke's Mission Center at 5pm on a Sunday to see who we are and what we do. 

Lightning Storm

The plane, a few tiny lights against a massive backdrop of clouds.

Lightning, multidirectional, strobe-lighting the sky.

A reminder:

"You can create magnificent things.
     But your magnificent creations
        are held by something vastly prior
             Creation itself."

Deep Well: Ocean

I'm at the beach with friends, and we're heading back to the ocean in just a few minutes.

The ancient Israelites were scared of the sea. For them, it represented chaos. Void. It was untamed.

But the ocean speaks to me of God. The vastness of it, the unchangingness of it...but the constant change. The dynamic, shifting, evolving reality.

Yesterday a run of fish jumped and jumped in front of our eyes, saying "Life, life, life."

Perhaps it's a tad bit literal, but the ocean is a deep well, waiting for us to immerse ourselves.

Deep Well: Church (no, but really...)

(A brief caveat. I really like a lot of the worship that I experience each week. But this post is about how I don't think whether I like it or not is the key question.)

Church is sort of a much maligned thing these days.

I'm not just talking about the fastest growing religious affiliation in the U.S. being people who mark "none" under religious affiliation. (This has led lots of people in church growth circles to talk a lot about reaching out to the "nones," a phrase which emergentyish author Christian Piatt--in an article I don't entirely agree with but is still worth reading--points out is quite problematic. One pastor in this area has actually started referring to this group as "the unheard" because their voices, including their valid critiques of the church, are often ignored by the church.)

I'm not just talking about people who are "spiritual but not religious," who want a spiritual life of some kind (whatever that means or looks like) but distance themselves from organized religion.

I'm talking about people who still identify as Christian, who might even attend church regularly, who are pretty critical of Sunday morning (or evening, or whenever) services.

And why not? There's plenty to critique. If it's not boring, it's cheesy. If it's not a small dying church, it's a massive impersonal one. If it's too enthusiastic it feels cultish; if it's not we tune out. The hymns are dry, or they're the theological equivalent of cotton candy. There can be hypocrisy and politics and sometimes bigotry and outright meanness. There is certainly plenty of division along lines of race and socioeconomic status and political belief. There is certainly plenty of stuff that makes people wonder what church has to do with this Jesus guy, anyway. There's all sorts of things wrong with church.

"Why go to church," people wonder, "when I feel more of God watching a sunset or hiking in the woods? Why go to church when I don't have a spiritual experience there?"

But I need church, and here is why.

I, too, have often experienced God while marveling at the magnificence of nature, the stunning beauty of God's creation. I, too, have often experienced God while serving outside of the walls of a church building.

But every Sunday, or just about every Sunday, I sit down (and stand up and sit down again) in a group of people that I did not choose to gather around me, and we name the presence of God in our lives together.

I do not like all of the people I am in church with. I would not naturally choose to go on a hike in the woods with many of them.

And here I am, singing songs and praying prayers and passing the peace, sometimes with strangers.

Here I am, trying to learn about Jesus, in exactly the sort of messed up, flawed way that any of us can ever hope to do so.

The sunsets and the hikes in the woods are great for my own, individualized spiritual experience. But my own spiritual experience can happen just as easily without you, whoever you are, thank you very much. And if it does include you, it's probably because we share a common interest. We're part of the same club. As much as church gets a bad rap for turning into a social club, the rest of our lives are divided up neatly into clubs, too.

I need church, because it reminds me that God is present in our common life together, and not just when we "feel" it to be so. Now, don't get me wrong. Feeling is important. I'm a Methodist, which means I place importance in the experience of God's presence. (The Methodists on the frontier used to be referred to as "those shouting Methodists." My, how times have changed). But it also means I value reason, and tradition, and try to anchor that in scripture, and these things are not based on what I feel or who I like.

So yes, there are many problems with church. Yes, we can do more to create authentic worship, to foster a space of vulnerability and accountability and transformation. Yes, we absolutely have work to do to break down boundaries and overcome division.  But I think all of that is worth it, because there are just so few places in our lives where we come together in this way, not necessarily based on a common interest but instead on a common desire to be open to the workings of the Spirit in the midst of unlikely community.

Even on Sundays when I don't "feel" it--when I'm distracted during the sermon and I don't like the hymns and I sort of wish I had just slept in--I believe that the Spirit is at work, drawing us to that deep well that can sustain us and make us whole.

Deep Well: Imagination

When I was a kid, I used to tell stories about Martians.

My parents would listen to my stories and help make them into illustrated books. I'm sure we still have those somewhere. Monuments to childhood imagination.

I met my best friend because I was reading a book about monsters at the pool. Instead of, you know, swimming, like normal children do. Not only monsters--a game about monsters. You could pretend to be the monsters! Dan and I hit it off right away.

We were trying to defeat this guy. He was mean.

Dan and I were talking about this recently. About why we're so attracted to science fiction and fantasy, to flights of the imagination. So I was thinking on it, and then ended up pretending to be a wizard while playing a board game with some friends here at Wesley (I was the worst wizard ever. I died three times and lost us the game).



And I was reflecting on the fact that both in college and here at seminary, I have a lot of friends who like to do this. Who still like to play make believe. And I hope we can all hold on to that, because we need imagination.

---

This is Homs, in Syria. Envisioning a healed Syria, for example,
takes a lot of imagination.

Now I'm sure that a lot of the reason that a lot of us are attracted to this kind of thing is escapism, which is fine. We all need a little bit of that sometimes. But I'm also sure that imagination is a necessary ingredient in any sort of belief that another world is possible. I remember a few years ago my bible study at the time was reading a section of the book of Revelation (speaking of pretending to be dragons) and I was wondering out loud whether I even had the capacity to imagine a city renewed, a city without "unhoused neighbors" and "food insecurity" and "social safety nets" and all the other images and euphemisms we throw around to try to describe the fact that this is a city bursting with need and hurt. I wonder if that's a feat of imagination against which undead dragons sort of pale in comparison.

So today I'm reflecting on imagination, on the connection between pretending to be a wizard and the deep well of spiritual sustenance that we are all going to need if we're going to be in this "hope" thing for the long haul.

Deep Well: Music

A couple of days ago, I decided that for the next few weeks I'm going to post on here, each day, about something that I've witnessed or experienced that day that, to me, points the way to the deep well of spiritual strength that I witnessed when I heard Peter Storey speak.

Yesterday was a frustrating day, for no particularly remarkable reason. Some days are just frustrating, is all.

So I took about 30 seconds in my dorm room to just focus on something good. And what I focused on was music.

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the time with having to pick songs, or at least help pick songs, for two different worship services this weekend. And feeling a bit overwhelmed about this is a bit problematic, since this is not a rare occurrence.

But it sort of struck me all of a sudden what a privilege this was. That I have this opportunity to help create a musical environment that invites people into a more hopeful, more imaginative way of living.

I don't know if I succeed at that, and I really do believe that any success any of us have in doing something like that is through grace. But to even have the opportunity to try is a pretty amazing thing.

So I sat down with my guitar and played a few chords, and remembered how magical it is that I can make something that sounds like music with my fingers and some wood and steel. I just took it in, for a little bit, the miracle of music.

Without a doubt, music helps point me to a deep well of spiritual nourishment, and I am grateful for it.

On Peter Storey, not getting tired, and needing prayer

Last night, Rev. Dr. Peter Storey spoke at my church. Storey was the Methodist Bishop of Southern Africa during the struggle against apartheid. He was a powerfully prophetic anti-apartheid voice, a pastor of a church in District 6, and served as Mandela's chaplain during his imprisonment at Robben Island. He was on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He's...uh...he's pretty cool.

His talk was fascinating, consisting of an overview of South African history, an analysis of current South African politics and the need for the church to recover its voice, as well as personal stories of his work in South Africa and his encounters with Nelson Mandela, a man he obviously deeply admires and respects.

At one point during the talk, he mentioned the role of outside economic pressure in challenging apartheid. "Whenever I speak to a crowd of people with gray hair," he said, "I feel the need to thank you. Because it was your economic pressure that made a difference."

Well, if you know me or have read me since my City of... days, you know that this was a bit of an opening for me. After the talk I approached him, thanked him, and asked him what he thought of the role of economic pressure in a just peace for Israel/Palestine. What did he think about the modern day BDS movement?

He had been smiling, and suddenly grew very serious. "Oh yes," he said. "We support that." He went on to tell me how he and others in South Africa recognize their own struggle in the struggle of Palestinians for freedom. "It's about justice and injustice," he said, "and we South Africans have the t-shirt for that. We recognize that. So we support the boycott."

I will not pretend to be a saint: I felt pretty vindicated, particularly after the discouragement of our annual conference resolution on divestment being tabled at the end of May. I left church feeling really good. And I kept feeling really good throughout the evening. And as I reflected on it more and more, I realized that I wasn't feeling good because Peter Storey agrees with me about a contentious political point (though that helps, not gonna lie).

The reason that I felt so good, and feel so good today, is this man, after five decades of struggle for justice and reconciliation in his homeland, is not only not tired of that struggle but isn't tired of standing in solidarity with other people's struggles, either.

He is not tired.

And I get so tired.

Now, Storey himself spoke in his talk about how he believed South Africa needed the Truth and Reconciliation Commisions to happen at the local level, and that it was the church who could have done that. "We didn't," he said, "mainly because we were so tired." So I don't mean to make him or other antiapartheid activists into superhumans. But nevertheless, there he was, after decades of work, emphatically and passionately defending a movement for international justice because he saw it as the right thing to do.

And what I realized listening to him--and the reason I left feeling so good--is that he is only able to do this work out of a deep, deep well of spirituality. That he draws on spiritual resources for this work.

And that what I want is that deep well of spirituality. That why I'm in seminary and why I want to work with churches and why I want to have conversations with people about faith, because I want to be part of the process of pointing the way to that deep well.

And that is a confirmation of what I am doing, here, even if I often forget what I'm doing.

And that made me feel good.

So I think that this summer, while my coursework load is pretty light, I'm going to try a little project. For the next few weeks I'm going to post on here, each day, about something that I've witnessed or experienced that day that, to me, points the way to that deep well of spiritual strength.

I'll never be Peter Storey, or anyone like him, that's for sure. But I hope and pray that I can learn how to draw from that same well.

On "What does a pastor do?" and the missio dei, or something like that

I was at the doctor today, getting my routine physical for the ordination process in the United Methodist Church. (As a brief aside, I'm glad they care about our mental and physical health, but this stuff is not for the poor. Ordination is expensive. Jesus would be less than impressed).

So my doctor asks why I need a physical, and I tell her I'm going to be a pastor, and she asks me the inevitable first question, which is "Can you get married?"

"Yes, I can get married."

"Well that's good. I mean, if you want to. It comes with it's own set of problems."

I chuckled at her response. 

"So, what would you do as a pastor?" she asked.

Now, in fairness, as she asked this she was simultaneously sticking a light up my nose, so you will perhaps forgive me for stumbling through my answer a little bit. But I pretty much told her I would plan and lead worship, organize the work that the church does, and counsel and visit people who need counseling and visiting.

When she left the exam room, it hit me that I had given her an answer that was entirely about taking care of the people already within the church. 

This, for the church nerds out there, is called an attractional model of ministry. It's what one of my professors calls the "If you build it, they will come" form of ministry. The idea is that if you have great programs and great preaching and great classes, people will come to church to experience all that. This worked very well for churches in the 50s and 60s, when you could hang a sign on your door that said "All Are Welcome!" and people would come through your doors to see if that was true.

The attractional model of ministry, though, is coming under some scrutiny. For one (obvious) thing, it just isn't working very well anymore. Mainline denominations are struggling, while evangelical churches are seeing their growth slow to a halt. People just aren't pouring through the doors anymore.

But more importantly than that, the attractional model of ministry is built on a theological assumption that the point of church is...well...to get people to church. Church is a sort of refuge, and a place to grow and to learn. 

But what if the point of church is what happens outside of church? This is an idea (if I understand it correctly) called a missional model of ministry. The attractional church tries to draw in; the missional church sends out. Theologically, the missional church sees its goal as participating in the mission dei--that is, the mission or activity of God in the world. 

For me, the missio dei is all about a God of vulnerability and solidarity, acting in the world to overcome alienation, to heal, to reconcile. So if that's a valid understanding, then the church needs to be about participating in the overcoming of alienation, in healing, in reconciling.

So back to my "you-have-a-light-up-my-nose" answer. The understanding of a pastor's job that I communicated to my doctor was all about taking care of the people in a church. It didn't say much about what I do outside of church, or about the church equipping people to go out and participate in God's reconciling work in the world. 

Now, this isn't to say that what goes on inside a church--in a worship service or a classroom--is worthless. Churches can be places of radical hospitality and of spiritual formation. My understanding of worship involves the naming of a God who forms us to be sent out into the world, so I think worship is very important. But it's the sending-out-into-the-world that is the goal. And that sending doesn't primarily ask, "Do you go to church?" It asks, "What is your story? What is your passion? What is your longing? What are your questions and doubts?"

This year, I will help plan worship for 4 separate faith communities. That's a lot of worship. Will I be participating in the missio dei? Will I be equipping others to do so? What might an answer to the question, "What does a pastor do?" look like?

I was having a conversation with my friend Dan recently, and he asked me--half-jokingly--"What do you Christians do, anyway?"

So--what do we Christians do, anyway? Do we mainly gather together on Sunday morning (or evening), and then get together once or twice a week for study and fellowship with each other? Or (and?) do we try to participate in the missio dei? Do we heal? Do we reconcile? Is the church for us? Or are we for the world?

None of these are new questions, I know, but as usual for me they were brought home most strongly by perfectly normal encounters. By a conversation with a friend and a light up my nose. 

Sermon: "Our Whole Story"

This is a sermon that I preached at Crossroads yesterday. It's about telling our stories. I hope you like it, and that you get a chance to tell your story.

The scripture was Mark 6: 6b-13, 30-32.

It started with minutes 2:00-3:00 of this video:

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/become-weaker

In it, Jean Vanier says:

“We need an experience of vulnerability....The danger in our strong civilizations is the last thing we want people to learn is to touch their weakness, their vulnerabilities. You can’t ask people to do a curriculum vitae putting all their weaknesses down. You have to show that I’m better than others...So it’s what will help people become conscious that I need help. That I am fragile. But at the same time I am beautiful.”

                                                         -----------

I did my undergraduate studies at a little place called Washington College. It’s located in Chestertown, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. About 10 minutes away from my alma mater is a place called Betterton Beach. Betterton is on the Chesapeake Bay, and it’s not the most impressive beach ever, but to this day if I visit there it feels like home.

Betterton was the place we would go to get away from school for just a little bit. To escape the stress and the drama of life at a small college. It was a place to recharge. For me, it became a truly spiritual place. Looking out over the sun-sparkled bay, ebbing and flowing, I got a hint of a God who is at once vast and unchanging and at the same time dynamic, ever in motion. I remember laying back in the sand and watching a seemingly endless migration of birds over the bay and marveling at God’s creation. I could forget for a second about papers and strained relationships and emotional struggles and just be. It was sometimes a place of solitude, and at other times a place to build community and strengthen relationships.

Betterton was a place of mini-pilgrimage for me. I would say that it has become a part of my spiritual history, of my story of faith.

---

            If I were to ask you to tell your faith story, what stories would you tell?

            I’m not going to ask you to answer out loud right now, especially not on a moment’s notice, but take a second to think about this:

            What stories would you tell?

            What people would you name?

            What places would you include?

            Take a second to think.

----

            Now I have to say that it’s fun to ask these questions at Crossroads, because I know people here have such different faith experiences. Some of you might have grown up in the church, and many of your faith stories will be church stories. That’s great! Others of you might have grown up Christian by association, or maybe at some point you drifted away from the church, and many of your formative faith stories might not be connected to church at all. That’s great too--those stories need to be shared! And some of you might not be that comfortable with language like “faith” and “church” at all. If that’s the case, I’m so glad you’re here, and I want you to know that your story is valuable. The church--and the world--need your story, too.

            If you think I’m alone in expressing this sentiment, I want to go all seminary student on you and quote one of the most prominent theologians of the 20th century, a German fellow named Jurgen Moltmann. He says that, rightly understood, “[The church] has no need to look sideways in suspicion or jealousy at the saving efficacies of the Spirit outside the church; instead it can recognize them thankfully as signs that the Spirit is greater than the church and that God’s purpose of salvation reaches beyond the church.” Now that’s a lot, and Moltmann isn’t known for writing in the clearest language ever, but I think what he’s saying is important: that the movement of the Spirit is not confined to the church or to church people. This is what we’re getting at when we take the time for God Sightings--looking for God in places other than our one hour of worship together inside this church building.

             John Wesley, who founded the Methodist movement that our community here at Crossroads has inherited, talked about a similar concept. He talked a lot about grace--grace upon grace upon grace--and about “prevenient” or “preventing” grace--the love of God active in our lives before we are even aware of its presence. Christ is at work in the world before we are even able to name God or grace. God is not only at work inside the church.

            This evening I want to talk about telling our stories. Our whole stories. This past several weeks we’ve been talking about finding ourselves in biblical stories, seeing how these stories intersect with our own stories. So this evening I wanted us to look at a biblical story about stories. It’s a bit meta but stick with me:

            Jesus had been traveling and teaching and healing with his disciples for a little while now. Just before the story that we heard Barbara read he’d gone to his hometown, Nazareth, and it hadn’t gone well. He basically got kicked out. Nobody would listen to him. All they could see is the carpenter boy that they grew up with, now pretending to be somebody important. So they ignored him.

            So it’s in this atmosphere of frustration that Jesus calls his disciples together and sends them out to do ministry in the surrounding villages and towns of the Galilee. It’s an odd sort of mission that they’re on. They’re supposed to go out empty handed, relying entirely on the hospitality of strangers--couchsurfing or perhaps networking via distant Facebook friends--telling all that they had seen and heard of Jesus and the coming of God’s kingdom. So the disciples, despite the bad experience in Nazareth, head out into the Galilee and, from what the story tells us, things go well. “They cast out many demons , and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” And then the disciples come back, and the writer of the gospel of Mark tells us that they “told Jesus all that they had done and taught.”

Now if I ever paid any attention to this verse, I think I always assumed that it was describing a sort of bragging session. “Hey Jesus? Guess what? I was in this one village and I cast out 30 demons and cured 10 sick people! I even cured this one guy twice!”
            “Oh yeah Thomas? You think you’re a big deal? I cured 15 people, cast out 40 demons, and put one in a headlock and gave it a noogie for good measure!”

And the whole time Jesus is sort of sitting there passively, nodding and smiling, proud of the superhuman accomplishments of his crusading disciples.

But I was in a Bible study once when I was living in Jerusalem, and somebody pointed out to me that the text says that they told Jesus all that they had done and taught.

All that they had done.

Now, here’s the deal. In the gospel accounts, and particularly in Mark, the disciples are not portrayed as stellar, perfect followers of Christ. The exact opposite, in fact. They are almost Keystone Cops-esque in their failures; constantly misunderstanding or mistrusting what Jesus is telling them. In fact it’s possible that the writer of Mark’s gospel is intentionally portraying the disciples as screwups to invite us, the listeners and readers of the story, into further discipleship--if these goofballs can be disciples, then surely we can follow, too.

So if the disciples in Mark are so perfectly imperfect, then when they gathered to share with Jesus and with each other all that they had done, we have to imagine that there was a significant amount of failure, frustration, and doubt mixed in with the stories of demon-destroying and sickness-healing.

To intensify this, there’s something very particular to the gospel of Mark going on in this passage. I don’t know if you noticed, but the scripture that we heard read was in two parts even though it was one story. We read Mark 6:6-13, and then we skipped to Mark 6:30-32. What happened in between these two passage is the story of the execution of John the Baptist at the hands of King Herod, the most powerful man in the Galilee. Now John the Baptist is the very first character we encounter in the gospel of Mark. He baptizes Jesus, and his arrest marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The disciples would have known John. He was an ally; he was a bit like that guy you call “uncle” even though he isn’t really related to you. And now he’s dead.

This story is inserted in the middle of the story of the disciples’ missionary endeavors. This is something that Mark does quite often--putting one story smack in the middle of another story. There’s even a fancy seminary term for it: we call it “a Markan sandwich.” Sophisticated, right? And the idea of this narrative device is that the story that is inserted helps us interpret and understand the story that brackets it. In this case, we learn that the atmosphere of the disciples’ ministry and their subsequent reporting on it is drenched in fear and uncertainty. Their ministry is being done in the shadow of potential death and defeat. So we can imagine that there was some less-than-triumphal feelings during this report-back-to-Jesus session.

So I have to wonder what the disciples said to Jesus and each other. Sure, they talked about casting out demons and healing and preaching. But do you think some of them also said things like: “Jesus, I have to admit that there were times when I doubted you, and when I doubted myself and my own abilities.” Or things like, “Jesus, in one town I tried to cure people and nothing happened.” Or things like, “Jesus, in one town nobody would welcome me or listen to me and I felt discouraged and afraid.” Do you think they told their whole stories--not just the stories of their successes and their ironclad faith but their whole stories?

Now I asked you what sort of stories you would share if I asked you to share your faith story. And I want us to consider what it would mean for us to tell our whole story. We might have times in our lives when we are riding high on the Spirit. When we feel faithful and successful and good. When we can so easily sing to God the song that we’ve been singing in worship these past two weeks: “You’re always faithful.”

And then there are other times. Times when we doubt. When we hurt. When we struggle. When we ask where God is. Maybe our whole stories would say things like, “God, I’m trying to follow you but I’m afraid. I don’t see you. Where are you, God?” Things like, “I’m struggling with depression or with mental illness and things seem dark and scary.” Things like, “I know I’m called by you but I’m gay and the church discriminates against me.”

Or “I try to take a stand for justice but the odds seem stacked against me.”

Or “I want to learn more about Jesus but Christians seem intolerant and even mean.”

Or “I don’t have a house and I’m hungry, and even when I can find shelter and food there’s nobody who wants to really listen to me.”

Now if you have been thinking some of these things or similar things, I hope you can see that they, too, are part of your story of faith--part of the story that you share with other struggling disciples in the presence of Jesus, who does not judge but who redeems, who gathers all of our hurt and brokenness together and says, “Yes, I am part of this with you. I am present with you, here, in this mess.” 

Remember Jean Vanier? Saying that we never sit down to write our CVs by putting all of our weaknesses down? Many of us have a story that we tell about our lives. I notice it particularly here in DC. We meet someone in this city and what are we trying to find out? Where are you from originally? And what do you do? What sort of position do you have? Of what importance are you? What's your resume? Our faith stories are not a CV or a resume. They are not our DC story. They are stories about deeper meaning. About calling. About doubt. About struggle. About vulnerability. About grace.

---

            I started off telling you a little bit about Betterton Beach, which is part of my own journey of faith and doubt, hope and anxiety. I told you about connecting with God and marveling at the wonder of creation. But friends, Betterton is where I went when I was stressed. When I had lost faith. When I didn't know what I was doing in my life or felt like maybe I should just drop out of school. Betterton was a place of highs, yes, but it was also a place of lows.

            Yesterday I took a little trip to Betterton and I brought back a bunch of smoothed out stones from the bay. They symbolize, to me, little pieces of my own whole story. I want to share them with you. In a few minutes we’re going to gather together, as we do every week, for a simple meal in the graceful presence of Christ. And after you take bread and dip it in grape juice and eat it, I’m going to hand you a rock. I hope that you will take it, and think a little bit about your own faith journey. There’s even a prayer station in back with some notecards if you want to pray about it or meditate on it a bit and scribble some thoughts down. And what I am asking you to do is to take this rock that I’m going to give you, and sometime this week give it to someone else. Hand it to them and say, “Hey. This is just a little symbol of how we share stories with each other.” And share with them a little bit of your story. And then ask them to share a little bit of their story, and to pass the rock on. If that sounds uncomfortable, practice telling your story to each other. Because we need to tell our stories, and we need to listen to the stories that surround us, if we’re ever going to really understand what  it is to be in the presence of Jesus.

            So we gather around a table with our messy stories. And we proclaim a Christ who is broken. And a Christ who is whole.

            The world needs you whole story. Tell it.

Two Recommendations for Life in DC

I have two recommendations for you if you are planning to live in DC. These suggestions are perhaps exportable to other major cities.

The first is to take advantage of every opportunity to hang out with friends when they are in town. So yesterday, I hung out with my good friend Christy and her husband Abel. They were in town visiting folks and checking out DC while en route to Christy's sister's wedding. Christy and I were Mission Interns in the same class--she did awesome work in Nicaragua while I made Excel spreadsheets in Jerusalem. Christy and Abel met in Nicaragua, where he is from, and now they live in Managua. We met up for lunch and chatted about life and work and where other Mission Intern folks are living now. It was great to get see them and get caught up. So that's recommendation number one.

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Here is recommendation number two:

Read the Bible in public.

I've said this many times and will say it again. One of the things I love about the blog medium is that I really don't know who reads this thing. So I have no idea what your faith experience is, whether you'd even use that language, whether you've ever read the Bible, whether you would ever want to, etc. But even if you have no desire to read the Bible, you should get one and pretend to read it in public. You get into the most fascinating conversations.

Before I met up with Christy and Abel, I was in Starbucks reading my little Bible, which one of my profs gave me after I gave my old one away. I was specifically looking for psalms for a few friends who are really kind of pissed off at God right now. Not, "take comfort, everything will be OK" psalms. I'm talking about "What the hell is wrong with you, God?" psalms.

So I'm reading Psalm 74, and this guy comes in who was chilling on the sidewalk outside of Starbucks juggling pool balls, and he sits down at a table next to me, puts some sort of solution into his water bottle, looks at me, and says:

"Is that the King James?"

Oh boy, I thought to myself. This is going to be good.

It was.

After I informed him that I was reading the New Revised Standard Version, he told me this:

"I have a lot of problems with that book. I mean, I never thought I could scream at a book. But I've screamed at that one."

Now, the rest of the conversation was fascinating in its own right. He moved over to my table and we talked about the Greeks, aboriginals, Alexander the Great, intertestamental literature and the apocrypha, layers of text, demons, and, at one point, I told him about the story of Jesus calming dragons in one of the apocryphal gospels. He--his name is Daniel--was pretty pumped about that one.

But what I'm going to carry away from that conversation is this guy telling me that he has screamed at the Bible.

"Yeah," I said to him. "It's a book worth screaming at."

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We ought to scream at our texts.

Like I said, I don't know if you, faithful reader, read the Bible. But whatever you read, do yourself a favor and scream at it. Struggle with it. Argue with it.

The psalmists who I was reading when Daniel started talking to me certainly knew something about screaming at texts. Saying, "Where are you, God?" Saying, "Whatever happened to covenant?" The psalmists. Jacob wrestling with God. Jesus crying out on the cross. We have permission--more than that, we have a responsibility--not to take texts at face value. To talk to them. To get frustrated with them. To scream at them.

Screaming at texts. It's a cure, I think, to fundamentalisms of every kind.

So I thank Daniel for that. Even if he has some weird beliefs about Lucifer.

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So that's recommendation two. Read your Bible in public. You never know who's going to talk to you, and what you're going to learn.

Memorial Day and my father

Tomorrow is Memorial Day.

A few years ago, on Veterans' Day, I went and heard by dad speak at a panel sponsored by Veterans for Peace. He said some pretty powerful stuff. I'm paraphrasing a bit here. One thing he said is that he feels really uncomfortable when people thank him for his military service--he served for two tours in Vietnam--because what he did in Vietnam was to aid and enable an effort to kill a lot of people. Another thing he said is that Veterans' Day is a happy day for him, a day that he celebrates the successes of veterans who have survived against all odds, not only combat but PTSD, trauma, alcoholism, crime, drugs, domestic violence, depression, psychosis, homelessness--so many wolves prowling for the lives of veterans.

But he said something about Memorial Day, too. He said that Memorial Day is a sad say for him, because it's a day that he remembers all his friends and classmates (he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1963) who have died, many of them not in battle but after returning home, driving drunk or committing suicide.

So that is more or less what my dad, who is a veteran, said about Memorial Day. That for him, it is a sad day.

This is not a self-righteous post. Tomorrow, I will eat grill food with some friends, and go hiking with some of  the same friends. I will not spend the day in sackcloth and ashes.

But I will think about those mourning losses, those who are torn apart inside, and those who are still alive but have never recovered and perhaps will never recover from their traumatic experiences.

And I will also stop, if sinfully briefly, to remember those victims of war who have died. Those hundreds of thousands of civilians--and yes, even those who took up arms or who bombed or who destroyed--in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan and in other places around the world that most of us couldn't find on an unlabeled map.

And I will say a prayer for peace.

And I will ask myself what I have done to honor veterans of war and victims of war, and to work for a more peaceful world, a world in which we do not have to add to the list of people who my dad remembers on Memorial Day.

grateful

In August I wasn't sure I could do this.

And in January I moved up to full time and I wasn't sure I could do this all over again.

But I did it friends. I've finished my first year in seminary post-hospital.

I am feeling very grateful to God, and for friends and family and faith communities.

A lot of really, really good people who have lent me a lot of support and love are about to graduate. And I am going to miss all of them very, very much.

But I am so grateful. For them. For new friends. For supportive professors and for jokes and for rain and for  I don't know what else.

Sometimes feelings just come on you like waves. Sometimes, with depression, they don't come at all, as pointed out by the amazing Hyperbole and a Half.

So hell, I'm grateful for being grateful.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Thank you for being blessings. Thank you all. From the bottom of my heart.

A thought about food and paying attention

I was walking out of a restaurant in Chinatown with a friend when a man walking past us caught my eye.

Now, here is the deal, and this is a confession. When people stop me in the streets of DC, I usually assume one of two things. One, they are college students getting paid crap money to try to get my name on their clipboard for UNICEF/Planned Parenthood/HRC. Or two, they are asking for money.

This is not something I am happy with about myself. There are all sorts of other reasons for someone to stop me. To ask for directions, maybe. Or maybe they're a friend I don't recognize saying hi. One time a guy stopped me because I was carrying my guitar and he wanted to tell me about a gig I should try to get. Or maybe someone just wants me to pay attention to what a beautiful day it is.

But I always assume it's about money. So when this man started talking to me outside of the Eat First Chinese Restaurant, I gave my standard response: "I'm sorry, sir, I don't have any cash."

"No, no," he said, and then made a sort of universally recognized gesture to his mouth, "I'm wondering if you have anything to eat?"

He had spotted that I was carrying a bag with leftovers from the restaurant.

"Oh! Yeah. Sure," I said, and handed him the bag. "Uh...it's General Tso's chicken." I shrugged as if to say, 'Not sure you like that.'

"Great, thanks," he said. We parted ways.

So here's the thing. When he stopped me, I wasn't mindful of the fact that I was carrying food. It wasn't until he pointed it out that I thought, "Oh. Right. I have extra food and can easily give it away." Because I'm used to having extra food. It's a normal occurrence in my life. A background noise. To have not only enough, but more than enough.

And there are plenty of people--way, way too many people in this city that it is cliched for me to point out is the capital city of the richest most powerful country on this planet--who not only don't have more than enough, they don't have enough. Food insecurity is rampant in DC.

So I'm grateful for my friends who remind me to be mindful of this. Like Andy and Erica and David and Veronica, who cook food for folks who don't have it down at the St. Luke's Mission Center. Or Rachel, who refuses to let us throw away extra food. Or the AU students who take a Saturday a month to help out at a food bank in Maryland when they could be studying or partying or sleeping in. Or all of my friends who stop and pray before we eat--I'm so bad at that!--so that we can take a few seconds to be grateful and mindful and to remind ourselves that the hands that brought us this food might be numbered with those who don't have enough.

It starts with an awareness. With a prayer.

With paying attention.

Instead of a systematic theology, I have a-systematic theology

So I sat down to write my credo for my systematic theology class and I've ended up with a 15 page christology. My roommate informs me that this is because I have too much Christ in my theology. I informed him that he's a rotten dirty heretic and that he deserves a big slap in the face from St. Nicholas. He also informs me that I superimpose my Christian beliefs on Jewish texts. I threw a shoe at him and insulted his heritage and his physical appearance. It was a good talk.

Ok, only half of that really happened. And my roommate totally gets a point in his column when, toward the end of my christology, I shrug and say something like, "Well, we can't really understand this without understanding the Holy Spirit, and I don't have time for that 'cuz it's finals week and I've frittered away all my writing time playing guitar in a fountain with said roommate."

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that I wanted to share with you how I'm ending my credo, because I think it's fun and I think it helps blow overly-systematized theologies up from the inside out, which is a worthy cause in my opinion. Like Donald Miller says, this isn't math. It's relationship.

Check it out:

"The band mewithoutYou has a song entitled “Four Word Letter, Pt. 2” which ends emphatically with the following lines: “We hunger; though all that we eat brings us no relief, we don’t know quite what else to do. We have all of our beliefs, but we don’t want our beliefs. O God of peace, we want you.” Ultimately, it is not Christology that we crave. It is Christ. It is not theology that we yearn for. It is an encounter with the living God. It is not eschatology that we hope for. It is eschaton.

I once composed a song in critique of rapture theology that contains the line “I don’t know what’s waiting for us when we close our eyes, but I’d bet my life that it’s something that sings.” We do not know what the inbreaking kingdom of Christ will ultimately look like, but we see glimpses, hints of the glory to come.

            

Whatever it looks like, I will take the risk to claim that there will be singing.

And there will be dancing.

And we will feast together at the heavenly banquet."