Spiritual Hiccups - Self Loathing

As the hour of his death draws near, Jesus says that a grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die if it is to bear fruit.  And then he says, "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also."  

You know, there are some words of Jesus I sometimes wish had not made it into the Bible.  Here Jesus calls for hating our lives, and in a different passage, he says we must hate parents and family.  So much for family values.

I don't know if it was because of texts such as these, or if it was because of my own Presbyterian/Reformed tradition's focus on human sinfulness, or if it was simply my own tendencies, but I grew up with a fair amount of existential guilt.  I've always been keenly aware of my many failings, to the point of sometimes being my own worst enemy.  And yet the people drawn to Jesus seem not to act this way.  The followers gathered around Jesus often fail spectacularly.  They frequently are confused and befuddled by Jesus, unable to comprehend what he asks of them.  Yet they almost never seem to be beaten down or depressed.  If anything, the atmosphere around Jesus is most often one of joy, and when he speaks of the future, he talks of parties and banquets.

When I was in seminary, I learned that hyperbole was common in Middle Eastern, Semitic speech, and emphatic statements about hating your own life or your family didn't mean quite what they seem to in English.  They have nothing to do with self loathing, but rather are about what one loves most.  "Hate" means "to love less," and so they are about what animates and motivates.  Jesus is calling me to find my deepest meaning and purpose in life from outside my own small concerns, to discover a much deeper and more meaningful life in a life lived for and toward God and others.

Many years ago I was hiking in a National Park when I passed someone who asked me where I was headed.  When I explained to him the sights and views I was hoping to see, he told me that the trail I was on was quite arduous but there wasn't a lot to see unless I had time to follow it for a couple of days.  I said that I was thinking more in terms of hours, and he pointed me to another trail that yielded spectacular vistas.  My encounter with this helpful stranger led to a wonderful day, and I can't say that it produced any feelings of guilt of self loathing over my initial poor choice of trails.  

And Jesus says, "Follow me.  No, not that way, this one that I am showing you."

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Spiritual Hiccups - Not a Factual Statement

If you are a fan of Stephen Colbert, you likely know all about the fun he has had of late with a statement made by Arizona Senator Jon Pyl.  During the recent debate over the budget that nearly resulted in a government shut-down, funding to Planned Parenthood had become a big sticking point, and Pyl insisted that funding should be cut because abortion was "well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does."  The actual figure turned out to be somewhere around 3%.

When reporters sought some sort of clarification from Pyl's office, they released a statement saying, "His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions."  Colbert had a field day, rattling off all sorts of outlandish statements and remarks followed by, "That was not intended to be a factual statement."  And his Twitter site ran a constant stream of "facts" such as "In 2009, Jon Kyl lost $380,000 wagering on dwarf tossing," followed by the hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement. 

Now I know next to nothing about Jon Pyl, but I feel safe in assuming that he knew his non-factual statement about Planned Parenthood was non-factual when he said it.  It is hard for me to imagine that he put together a Senate floor speech on Planned Parenthood's use of funding for abortions with no idea as to what the numbers were.  And so I'm left to conclude that he knew full well that his "well over 90%" was what most people would call a lie.

And that brings me to the question of why he did it.  Again I don't know, but I feel fairly safe in assuming that he thought his cause important enough that it justified lying.  And on this count he stands in good company with politicians on both sides of the aisle.

I found myself thinking about such things after reading this morning's gospel passage.  John tells us that the chief priests had hatched a plan to kill Lazarus because when Jesus raised him from death it had caused lots of Jews to go over to Jesus.  Lazarus was a problematic and inconvenient "fact,"and so they would simply get rid of that fact.

Presumably these priests were, in part, motivated by deeply-held, religious convictions.  And because Jesus was a threat to these and their religious enterprise, that justified covering up the truth, in this case by eliminating it.  Not so different from the practice of using whatever "facts" are required to make sure things come out in the way I'm convinced that they should.

In John's gospel Jesus talks a lot about "truth."  He says that "the truth will make you free," and that he "came into the world to testify to the truth."  He even says that he is "the truth."  And so I can't help but think that whenever we believe that our cause or ideology justifies massaging and spinning the truth, justifies telling lies and then saying they were "not intended be a factual statement," we have gotten pretty far afield of the life our faith calls us to live. 

It seems ridiculously simple, but perhaps it still needs saying.  Any sort of faith or spirituality connected to Jesus, "the way, and the truth, and the life," surely requires a deep, abiding commitment to being truthful.  And that is meant to be a factual statement.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

For the last decade or so I've used something called The Lectionary Bible.  It is a spiral bound collection of the lectionary readings for each Sunday.  Having it allows me simply to turn the page and see the Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday.  Normally all these readings take up two pages or less, but when you flip to the readings for today, there are more than six.  The readings alone would take longer than my normal sermon.

These readings have  two distinct sections.  There is the "Liturgy of the Palms" which has eleven verses from Matthew describing Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, along with a portion of Psalm 118.  But then comes the "Liturgy of the Passion," and along with a reading from Isaiah, Psalm 31, and a bit from Philippians, it includes the Matthew's entire Passion story.  From Judas agreeing to betray Jesus, to the Last Supper, to the arrest in the garden, the trial, the cross, and finally Jesus' burial, it's all there.

When I was growing up today was just Palm Sunday; no Passion included.  I suppose that somewhere along the way it was decided that jumping from one celebration to another, from "Hosanna" to "He is risen!" left out too much.  It was as though we could get from joy to joy without all that messiness of the betrayal, denial, and the cross.  And so Passion was added to Palms.  I think that's probably a good idea, but I'm still not sure what to do with it all.  The only time (very early in my career as a pastor) that I tried reading nearly all the lectionary texts, it was not well received by my congregation.  So how do we combine Palms and Passion?

In preparing for a class the other day, it dawned on me that I had never actually seen a crucifix when I was growing up.  I had virtually no exposure to Roman Catholicism as a child and youth.  I was Presbyterian through and through, and our cross was empty.  Jesus had died once for all, and then he was raised.  No crucifixes for us. 

And yet Paul proclaims "Christ crucified."  Here God's power and wisdom is most fully seen, says Paul.  Here God is most clearly seen by us, a God who enters into human brokenness and pain and suffering.  We encounter God most fully in this Crucified One.  But how, if we do not linger for a moment at the cross, at the Passion?

I have no plans to suggest any crucifixes for the sanctuary or chapel.  Christ is risen!  And every Sunday is Easter!  But I wonder about getting one for my office, a small reminder that God is often most powerfully present in the midst of pain and suffering, that the cross wasn't a speed bump on the way to Easter, but it is the shape of God's love for the world.  It is the clearest picture I have of God, and perhaps the ultimate depiction of what it means to be created in God's image.

Hosanna in the highest!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord as he journeys on his way to the cross.

Spiritual Hiccups: The Days Are Surely Coming

"The days are surely coming, says the LORD."  Those words accompany the prophet Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, but the notion that God will renew, that a day will come when God sets things right, is common in Scripture.  And the first followers of the risen Jesus were certain that his resurrection meant that those promises of a new day were beginning to unfold.  God's dream, God's new dominion, what Jesus called the "Kingdom of God" had begun to arrive.

The early Church lived in great anticipation of this Kingdom's full flowering.  The Apostle Paul clearly expected Jesus to return during the lifetime of those to whom he wrote.  Nearly 2000 years later, it's rather obvious that Paul was wrong.  The fact that God's timing isn't what people expected doesn't really alter any basic Christian beliefs, but the long delay (from a human point of view) has let to a loss of expectation and anticipation.  And in the absence of this anticipation, those "days are surely coming" promises have tended to get transferred from God's coming Kingdom to the promise of heaven when we die. 

As comforting as this hope of heaven has been for many Christians, it has often caused us to forget that the Bible speaks of a new, redeemed earth.  And it has led to many confusing heaven for the Kingdom.  And for some Christians, the relocation of the Kingdom from earth to heaven has led them to conclude that the faithful needn't be concerned about the environment, social justice, climate change, and so on. 

The notion that God doesn't care about God's own creation, the creation that God called "very good," seems a quite strange one to me.  And I see Emergent Christianity's refocusing on the the Kingdom, God's Dream, as a wonderfully reinvigorating move for the faith.  A shift that focuses less on believing the right things so you get into heaven, and focuses more on living now by the ways of God's coming Kingdom (a shift that helps reveal this coming Kingdom to the world), strikes me as a more faithful response to Jesus' call to follow him.  And it recovers a central tenet of our faith, the hope and promise that "The days are surely coming."

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Spiritual Hiccups - Moral Documents

Today's lectionary readings don't really speak to this, but for some reason I could not stop thinking about budgets and deficits as a read them.  One of the psalms does ask to be taught God's ways, and when the prophets spoke against the rulers and powerful of Jerusalem, their neglect of the poor and of justice was often at the fore.  Still, it would seem a stretch to write a devotion or sermon from any of today's passages that addressed budgets and deficits.  And yet those topics pull at me.

One of the real oddities of American civil religion is a strange combination of saying we are "a Christian nation" while at the same time saying religion is a private thing that should stay out of politics.  But politics is very often about moral issues.  Under what circumstances, if any, should a country go to war?  For those who follow a Savior who spoke of turning the other cheek and praying for enemies, how can this be a question devoid of religious implications?  This week marks the 150th anniversary of the firing on Ft. Sumter to open the Civil War.  Some of my fellow Southerners like to pretend it isn't the case, but this war was rooted in the moral/religious issue of slavery.  And of course a great many laws are are on the books to maintain a certain notion of morality. 

In the last few days the quote "Budgets are moral documents" has popped up with some regularity.  I do not know who said it originally, but it is certainly true.  My personal budget, my city and state's budget, and my country's budget all make statements about what we value most, about what sort of values we will insist on and require the general population to fund.  At one time in history, education was something available only to people with means, but at some point the moral judgment was made that all children need access to education, and means of taxation were devised to pay for it.  It did not matter that you agreed or disagreed with this moral judgment.  You were required to help pay for it. 

Our nation has entered a time when difficult choices will have to be made if we are to begin reducing the national deficit.  And who bears the brunt of those choices will be a moral judgment.  Those we elect will make decisions about who will be the winners and losers, and those decisions will be moral judgments.  Which is the greater moral imperative, for people who make millions to keep every possible cent of it, or for people who have almost nothing to have adequate health care?  What things should a moral and just society insure that everyone has access to, and how should they pay for it?  These are moral questions, and for people who embrace the way of Christ, they are questions that demand faithful and prayerful discernment.

The issues involved in the budget of our country are complex.  Corporate tax rates do impact companies' ability to expand and hire workers.  But of course so do those same companies' decisions to pay CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet another moral judgment.  But despite all this complexity, Christians still follow a Lord who stood firmly in Israel's prophetic tradition, a tradition that over and over condemned the powers that be for helping the rich and ignoring the poor.  We follow a Lord who spent much of his time with the poor and the outcast of his day, who found most of his opponents among the powerful and well off.  And he spoke about our relationship to money and possessions much more frequently that he did about the personal morality issues we religious folks often tend to emphasize. 

Over the next months and years, difficult questions and debates will be engaged.  Decisions will be made and budgets will be crafted.  And they will be moral documents that define what we value most, that state where our deepest loyalties lie.  And I wonder what the judgments of psalmists, prophets, and Jesus will be on those moral documents.

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Spiritual Hiccups - "Come On, Let's Go"

Jesus jumbles his metaphors in today's gospel.  He's the shepherd.  Then he's the gate.  Then he's the good shepherd.  And when Jesus says, "I am the..." he uses a grammatical structure that can't be reproduced in English, one that echoes the "I AM" God speaks to Moses at the burning bush. 

But there is a gentleness to Jesus' good shepherd metaphor that I think is easy to miss.  When I think of a shepherd and a herd of sheep, I envision large group of animals that need to be driven from place to place.  Perhaps a sheepdog is employed to keep them in line, to march them from place to place.  But that is not the image Jesus evokes.

In seminary I had the chance to visit the Middle East, and once while riding on a bus in the countryside not far from Bethlehem, I looked out the window to see a young, Palestinian boy, perhaps 10 or 12, walking down a path without about a dozen sheep following along behind him in a single file line.  I can only assume that this procession began when the boy called to the sheep, "Come on, let's go."  Maybe he whistled or made some sounds like I might make to call the dog.  And they moved toward him, following him as he turned and walked.  They knew him.  They trusted him, and they went when he called.

Jesus speaks of the sheep following him because "they know his voice."  Jesus pictures faith a bit like that scene I saw from a tour bus window.  But I have been told that sheep are not the brightest creatures.  It's not hard to imagine one getting distracted by something along the way and wandering off, or thinking the grass is just fine where they are and munching happily as the herd walks away.  Surely for dumb sheep, it would be easy to ignore the shepherd. 

Jesus calls to us, "Come on, let's go."  The good shepherd knows the way.  But I can be pretty stubborn and pretty stupid sometimes.  Fortunately we learn in a different gospel that this shepherd comes back to find the stubborn, foolish, and disobedient sheep.  Thanks be to God!

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Spiritual Hiccups - Who Do You Think You Are?

The gospel reading today continues the story of Jesus' healing of a man born blind.  The religious authorities are trying to figure our just what has happened.  More to the point, they are trying to prove that nothing happened.  I can't be too hard on them, though.  If I heard that a preacher had just miraculously healed a blind person, I would assume that someone was pulling a fast one.  It was a trick.  The person was probably never blind to begin with.  It was all an act, something Earnest Angley would do.

The religious authorities think the same.  They find the man's parents, hoping they will say the man is not really their son, but to no avail.  Frustrated, they bring the blind man back before them.  Surely there is some explanation for this without it being that Jesus wields divine power.

But the formerly blind man won't cooperate with them.  He not only won't change his story, but he points out the obvious problem with their logic.  How can they insist that Jesus is a sinner when God clearly has granted him the power to heal the blind?  But authorities rarely take well to having their errors pointed out to them, especially be those of lesser stature than themselves.  And in a huff, they throw out the ex-blind man.

When you've worked hard at being good at your religion; when you've studied and gone to school so that you get a good grasp of your faith's teachings and doctrines, it is easy to dismiss the thoughts of those who don't take the faith as seriously as you do.  And if they are so bold as to try to correct you, your insulted ego may not want to take that sitting down.

I've said before, and I'll say it again, I don't for a moment want to get rid of or even to belittle theology and doctrine.  I do not think it possible to be a follower of Jesus without some particular way of following Jesus.  And theology and doctrine have the distinct advantage of having been debated and discussed for many centuries, of being the product of a religious community's best, faithful attempts to define what it means to live a life in Christ.  Nevertheless, we do not worship a doctrine or theology, nor do we serve them.  They are helpful only insomuch as they assist us in faithfully living together as disciples.

So how do I know where my theology -- whether it is finely crafted Church doctrine honed over the centuries or a personal understanding of God that I just happen to have -- helps me live faithfully, and where it gets in the way?  I don't have an easy answer, but I have realized over the years that whenever my ego gets involved, and especially if my ego starts to take offense, I had best be on my guard.

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John Rutter's Requiem - Pt. 1

During worship on April 10, 2011, the Chancel Choir at Boulevard Presbyterian presented Rutter's Requiem under the direction of Jeremy Roberts, accompanied by Mary Ann Stephens and instrumentalists from the OSU School of Music.

Better quality videos can be found on YouTube. 

John Rutter's Requiem - Pt. 2

During worship on April 10, 2011, the Chancel Choir at Boulevard Presbyterian presented Rutter's Requiem under the direction of Jeremy Roberts, accompanied by Mary Ann Stephens and instrumentalists from the OSU School of Music.

Better quality videos can be found on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - Proper Credentials

How do you know when someone is "from God," that what she is doing represents or embodies God in some way?  What are the hallmarks one would expect to see, and what would reveal that the person is actually a fraud? 

Those questions arise when Jesus heals a man blind from birth.  Jesus complicates matters for himself by not simply healing the man.  He also "spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes," and he did all this on the Sabbath.  Now healing someone's blindness is a pretty impressive feat which leads some to conclude that God is clearly at work in Jesus.  And yet, Jesus works on the Sabbath, in violation of God's law, which leads others to conclude that Jesus cannot be from God.

It's pretty hard for most modern day folk to get worked up about whether or not making mud on the Sabbath disqualifies Jesus as a viable candidate for Messiah.  We decided centuries ago that Jesus' opponents misunderstood or misapplied the Law.  They ignored the clear evidence of God at work in Jesus because there seemed to some problem with his paperwork.

My denomination has been fighting over religious credentials for quite some time now.  I've been a Presbyterian pastor for just over 15 years now, and I have never known a time when we weren't debating, arguing, or fighting about whether or not we can ordain people who are in gay/lesbian relationships.  As with Jesus healing on the Sabbath, the issue is often framed in terms of what disqualifies someone from representing God.  Some Presbyterians see the biblical injunctions that speak against homosexual behaviors as clearly disqualifying those who don't abide be such injunctions (though it should be pointed out that such injunctions are scarcely detectible compared to biblical commands to keep the Sabbath).

I wonder how our denomination would react if some gay candidate for ordination starting healing people.  Would we still say that regardless of such miracles, violating God's standards clearly disqualified anyone from being ordained?  I realize that is a rather remarkable, and perhaps unlikely, scenario.  But what about simply seeing clear gifts of the Spirit that empowered someone to proclaim the gospel in ways that drew people to the faith and revitalized a dying congregation? 

How do we know when someone is or isn't from God?

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Sunday Sermon video - Christian Identity: Serving Others

On a Sunday when the choir performed Rutter's Requiem during the 11:15 service, our early, informal service featured a more off-the-cuff sermon.  Based on the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, it is a call to follow Jesus' example of finding deep spiritual meaning in being a servant to others.

Better quality videos available on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - One Wish

Everyone knows what happens if you find a lamp that contains a genie.  You get three wishes.  And I suspect that lots of people have speculated about what they would ask for if they were given those three wishes.  But what if it were simply one wish?  That thought came to me as I read this morning from Psalm 27. 

  One thing I asked of the LORD,  

          that will I seek after:  

     to live in the house of the LORD  

          all the days of my life,  

     to behold the beauty of the LORD,  

          and to inquire in his temple.

One thing, a single thing.  Me, I have a laundry list of things for God.  When Jesus teaches his disciples to prayer, that prayer has a number of petitions: for God's kingdom to arrive on earth, daily bread, and forgiveness.  And so I don't suppose I am restricted to one request.  But if I were, what would it be?

In Jesus' own prayer life, he asks for a number of things himself, but in the end, I think that all of them fit within a single one, that God's will be done.  That prayer encompasses all his others.  I like to think that the same could be said of my prayers, but I know better.  I'm not always willing to trust myself so fully to God. I'd much rather bend God to my way of thinking.  I'd like to convince God to want what I want.

Some of the most difficult times in my faith life come when I think I have done what I should do, what God calls me to do, and things don't turn out the way I had envisioned.  I see the same thing happen in congregations.  They implement some new program or activity because they genuinely feel led to do so.  They, quite naturally, assume that their faithfulness will result in a growth, a more vital congregation, a more vigorous ministry to the community.  But that does not always happen.  Then what?

We live in a world that is success and outcome oriented, and certainly there are times when a lack of congregational vitality or individual achievement is because of our failures to do as we should do.  But faithfulness does not always lead to what our culture tells us is success, which may be why Paul says to us today that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us."  Jesus faithfulness led to the cross, not a success by any earthly measure.

I have no plans to stop praying to God for particular things or outcomes.  My laundry list remains long and includes myself, my family, my congregation, the Church, the needy, the world, and so on.  But I am trying to discover how to be taught and shaped and even blessed by those frequent occasions when my prayers and my attempts at faithfulness do not lead where I had expected.  Who knows, I may learn far more about that "one thing" that I truly need, that is God's deepest desire for me, from "failures" and unexpected outcomes that I ever do when life goes as I want and expect.

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