Coming from North Carolina and growing up a Presbyterian there, I am very familiar with a beautiful place in the mountains known as Montreat. There is a Presbyterian college there, but I and many others know it primarily as a mountain retreat center - hence the name. This time of year there are youth conferences going on there, and I saw on facebook that this week's conference had 1089 youth in attendance. Youth groups come from all over the country to the six weeks of conferences, and it is an incredible experience.
Considering that it is a youth conference, open only to high school ages, any participant 's tenure is fairly brief. Certainly people who came as youth come back as counselors and such, but there is a steady stream of new youth attending for the first time each year. And so you might think that there would be no way for any traditions to become entrenched the way that sometimes happens in local congregations, but you would be wrong.
I was at the conference some years ago when there was a great deal of upset over the expulsion of the song "Star Trekking" from the morning "energizers." It seems the powers that be had decided that one of the verses, "We come in peace; shoot to kill," was inappropriate. Many youth were outraged, and in a compromise, conference leaders allowed the song to be done at an outdoor event later in the week.
Traditions are sometimes thought of as the purview of old fogies, but traditions and rituals are effective ways of binding people together. There is a reason that fraternities, sports teams, sororities, and clubs have joining rituals.
I think it is important to remember how powerful rituals are we we hear Jesus speaking to the Pharisees in today's gospel. Many of the rituals used by these Pharisees helped them maintain their Jewish identity in a world that was not always very accommodating to them. And if you've ever attended a Friday night Shabbat meal in a Jewish home, you may have encountered some of the ritual washing Jesus speaks against. But it may have seemed a wonderful ritual to you.
We all need rituals. The early Christian Church, as it became more and more Gentile and abandoned its old, Jewish rituals, had to replace them with new rituals. Rituals of Baptism and the Lord's Supper were first. The bringing of bread and wine for the Supper eventually evolved into a ritual of offerings in worship. And even the most avant-guard, contemporary mega-church has a slew of rituals in place.
The issue - and I think this is Jesus' real concern - is whether or not our rituals help or hinder our life with God. Rituals that bind us together as community are helpful, except when they also work to exclude people who aren't like us. Rituals that help us maintain a distinct identity can be extremely helpful, as long that identity is Christ-like.
There can be a temptation when trying to renew or revitalize a congregation simply to throw out rituals without considering their purpose. I suppose this is a natural reaction to an opposite tendency to hang on to rituals long after they've outlived their usefulness. But rather than thinking of rituals and traditions as good or bad per se, we might do well to consider how ours contribute to or detract from "building up the body" and helping people to grow in their walk with Jesus.
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Reading the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), you get the impression that Jesus' reputation as a healer was what really drew in the crowds. You can see that in today's gospel. When Jesus shows up - fresh from walking on the water - people immediately recognize him. "And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed."
It's a dramatic picture of folks clamoring just to get near Jesus, wanting nothing more than to touch him in hopes of being healed. Yet though Jesus makes his initial splash with these rather indiscriminate healings, we Christians seem to be know mostly for what we believe. And we fight mostly about what to believe. Some Christians are even sure that some other Christians aren't "saved" because they haven't gotten the formula quite right.
Yet in our gospel reading, folks who do nothing more than touch the fringe of Jesus' cloak are "saved." The term "saved" has taken on all sorts of religious meaning in the Church. But the Greek word that gets translated "saved" is the same word used to speak of those sick folks who touched Jesus and "were healed." In some gospel accounts where Jesus heals people he tells them, "Your faith has healed you," or "has made you well." Although in my copy of Luke Jesus tells a blind man whose sight he has just restored, "Your faith has saved you." But these distinctions are only in the English translation. In the original Greek, it's all the same word.
It seems that Jesus was a lot freer with his healing, with his salvation, that we in the Church sometimes want to be. Don't get me wrong. Jesus does call us to live and act in certain ways, to believe certain things. But he still runs around healing/saving folks at the drop of a hat. What's up with that?
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I've always been envious (and also a bit suspicious) of those who seem to have a very clear sense of what God wants them to do, of God's will for them. I say that because I often struggle to understand what God intends for me. Even with help and advice from a Spiritual Director, I often feel quite in the dark.
That makes today's reading in Acts especially interesting to me. In it we see Paul, who seems to have a direct line to God if anyone ever did, have one and perhaps two false starts as he seeks to travel about sharing the good news about Jesus. He is forbidden to go to Asia; exactly how is not said. And when he tries to go to Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus stops him. Once again we don't hear exactly how this works. Finally, Paul has a vision (a dream perhaps?) of a man calling him to come over the Macedonia.
I am especially intrigued by the account of what follows. "When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them." Now perhaps I'm making something out of nothing here, but after this vision, Paul and his buddies are described as "being convinced that God had called us..." Being convinced doesn't sound like absolute certainty to me. It sounds like they would try to go to Macedonia, but if prevented, they would then conclude that they had misunderstood.
In my own faith life, I would like to have more certainty. A burning bush in the back yard would be nice; perhaps an angel or two coming to the office and laying out a vision for the congregation. But it doesn't seem to work that way. We are required to do our best to understand what God's call is and then act on it, realizing that God may redirect us when we've gotten our instructions mixed up.
For the life of me, I wouldn't do it this way if I was God, but I have to assume that God's methods are better than mine. And based on my reading of today's scripture, it seems that we need to be both bold and humble when it comes to answering God's call. We do need to act, to move, to step out based on what may often be a rather vague set of instructions and directions. Waiting for God to send us Mapquest directions that say, "Go 1 mile south, turn left, talk to the person..." will likely mean waiting a long time, maybe forever. But at the same time, we can't be arrogant when we think we have discerned God's will. We may head out on that journey only to prevented by the Spirit.
I once was told by someone in strategic planning that one of the most difficult steps for some groups is to stop planning and start doing. Maybe that's what's going on in Acts. We have to move forward while the destination is still a bit fuzzy, and trust that God will provide the mid-course corrections along the way.
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There's an old saying that "there are no atheists in foxholes." I doubt that is completely true, but being in dire circumstances certainly does cause many to turn toward God. I think this is because dire circumstances can have a way of forcing us to acknowledge what limited creatures we actually are.
My own theological tradition has long held that we humans are prone to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. And the American ethos sometimes seems to encourage this. We celebrate the self-made man or woman and rugged individualism. We encourage the idea that everyone should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But in a foxhole, facing cancer, at the tragic death of a loved one, and in countless other situations, we come face to face with the truth that much is out of our control, that we are not nearly so powerful or substantial as we had thought.
The Psalms are filled with the prayers of those who realized that they cannot make it without help. Psalm 57 begins, "Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by." Such psalms are not only cries of desperation, but they are theological statements insisting that we are dependent on God.
Anne Lamott has said that her two primary prayers are "Help me, help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." Her prayers seem to echo this notion of dependence on God, perhaps the "Thank you" even more so. It can be easy, once the storm is over, to reconstruct the illusion of self-sufficiency and control, and forget the "Thank you."
I wonder if women aren't better at both these prayers than men. The male ego can be a real barrier to faith. The old joke about men not stopping for directions has some truth to it. We don't like to admit we need help, which makes it hard to say, "Thanks."
"Help me, help me, help me. Thank you, thank you, thank you." I think I'm going to borrow Anne Lamott's prayers and make them my own.
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I don't know why it struck me today, but with my mind freer to wander than usual for a Sunday morning, I found myself thinking about summer and worship attendance. I assume that most anyone who attends worship regularly has noticed that attendance drops off in the summer. There are some obvious reasons, of course. More people take vacations in the summer. Some folks take extended vacations, and so the pool of members and others who attend any congregation is diminished.
I don't have any hard data to back me up on this, but I am of the opinion that vacations, summer camps, and the like do not account for the total decline of those in worship. There is another factor, folks who "take summer off" from worship. In a pattern that somewhat mirrors schools, they take a summer vacation from church.
Now I'm not wanting to impugn these folks in any way. My interest in noting such vacations from church is not to chastise or cajole anyone. Rather I am wondering what it is about the way we do church, the way we conduct worship or education, or the way we envision ourselves that creates a church from which some folks need a break.
I written before that I don't think it's possible to have church without institutions. Practicing faith with no sort of structures usually ends up being terribly vacuous. But at the same time, religious institutions can become impersonal, and worse, they can lose focus on relationship with God and be more about the institution itself. And if doing church becomes mostly about institutional loyalty, maybe it should be no surprise that folks need a break now and then.
"My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God." Psalm 84 seems to speak of something other than institutional loyalty. And I wonder what practices of faith and worship might enliven our congregations so that when folks get back in town from a vacation or trip, they couldn't wait to get back to worship.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgments are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.
For some reason, these lines from Psalm 36 caught my eye this morning, specifically the part about Yahweh saving "humans and animals alike." This isn't the only place where the Bible speaks of God's concern for the earth's creatures. According to Jesus, not a single sparrow falls to the ground "apart from your Father." And in what it my personal favorite, the book of Jonah ends with God rebuking Jonah and arguing for animals. In the very last verse of the book God says, "And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"
"...And also many animals?" What an odd way to end. Or maybe it only seems odd because people of faith tend to focus on souls and heaven to the point that we've forgotten about God's love for creation, for bodies and such. The Apostle Paul speaks of creation itself awaiting its redemption. And obviously God thought creation was a good thing when God created it.
I've been reading a wonderful book by Barbara Brown Taylor entitled An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. It has some interesting chapter titles such as "The Practice of Wearing Skin - Incarnation" and "The Practice of Walking the Earth - Groundedness." In these and other chapters she notes how often we miss the sacred, miss God, because we are so unaccustomed to looking for God in the created, messiness of earthly, fleshy life.
"You save humans and animals alike, O LORD." If this is true, as the psalmist insists, then surely God is present and at work in the garden, in the backyard, in the day to day living of our lives. Surely God is more present than we often realize because we forget that God is not contained in the "houses" we build for that purpose.
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I've always been fascinated by the image of Jesus asleep on a cushion in the stern of a boat as a storm threatens to swamp it. (Mark's version of this event is the gospel reading for today.) I visited the Sea of Galilea once as part of a seminary trip. They had recently discovered a fishing boat from Roman times buried in the mud of the lake and were in the process of restoring it. It wasn't very big, and it's somewhat difficult to imagine anyone being able to sleep in it as a gale raged. When I was young I could sleep through phone calls and thunderstorms, but sleeping while waves crashed over the sides of the boat? That's mind boggling.
Yet Jesus seems surprised, perhaps even irritated, that the disciples awoke him. He acts as if his sleeping through the storm was no big deal. What were they worried about anyhow?
I don't need a storm to get the worry motor revving. I can get worked up and cry out for help over all sorts of things that might happen. Will the church be able to meet its budget? Will our congregation figure out how to reach out to the different sort of residents who are moving into this area? Why haven't we been able to find a new music director? The list goes on and on. And Jesus is asleep on the cushion, or so it seems much of the time.
My denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), has just released its latest membership statistics, and they are depressing. Our numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate. And there is much worrying and hand wringing over the future of the Church. "Wake up, Jesus! Don't you care that we are perishing?"
I don't think that God's plans require that any particular congregation or denomination do well or even survive. But surely God has things under control. If not, God wouldn't be God. And so Jesus' words from that boat come to us. "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" And I take that to mean that Jesus wants us to stop worrying, trust in God, and concentrate on living faithful lives. God will take care of the rest.
I'm trying to take that to heart.
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As a pastor I've had conversations with people whom seem to think that being a believer should somehow insulate them from the troubles of the world. And when things go badly, they feel God has abandoned them or that they've done something wrong so that God doesn't help them. Such feelings are natural, I suppose. I've certainly had my share of times when I thought God needed to step or I might throw up my hands and walk away.
But even a cursory reading of the Bible will reveal numerous instances of the righteous suffering, of people of deep faith being persecuted or dealing with terrible troubles. It's hard to come away from Scripture convinced that faith will protect one from all misfortune. And yet the same reading of the Bible will also reveal some pretty animated "discussions" with God about suffering and injustice. The psalms, especially, are filled with voices calling on God to act, at times demanding that God act. These voices insist that God's reputation is at stake, that a failure to do something will injure God.
There seems to be a more dynamic relationship at work here than I sometimes witness among we church members. There is often a formality and deference in our approach to God that makes it nearly impossible for us to shake our fist at God or demand that God do something.
Today's morning psalm, Ps. 123, is not as bold as some, but it nonetheless demands that God respond.
To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until he has mercy upon us.
Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.
I would never suggest that if we enter into the correct sort of prayer pose, all our wishes will be granted. But I wonder about our difficulty is coming before God like the psalmist, saying that we will gaze toward God with pleading eyes until God does justice and mercy. Maybe that's what Jesus was talking about when he said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness."
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Love that embraces the most wayward and irresponsible; such is the love Jesus describes in his Parable of the Prodigal Son and his Brother, Luke 15:11-32. It's a beautiful parable. At least it would be if not for the problems presented by the good, responsible, older brother.
In today's reading from Acts, the "rejection" of the gospel by some Jews spurs Paul to carry the good news to the Gentiles, "and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers." This isn't one of the primary texts for formulating a doctrine of predestination, but it certainly is compatible with such a doctrine. People became believers, not because the figured things out, not because it made sense to them, but because they had been "destined for eternal life."
Personally, I am glad that the Bible doesn't develop this idea at great length, a reticence that might have served my own denomination's theologians well at times. Presbyterians didn't come up with predestination. Calvin borrowed it from Augustine and we share the doctrine with Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and others. But we emphasized it more and became known for it. We've backed away from it some in more recent years. It's still on the books, but we don't talk about it a lot. After all, it seems so... un-American.
We Americans are big on notions of merit, of people getting what they deserve, of people getting ahead on effort and not status. What business does God have destining anyone for good or bad?
Someone once noted that no one would be inclined to embrace a doctrine of predestination without believing she was one of the chosen ones. But be that as it may, I wonder why it is that so many of us are more comfortable leaving things in human hands rather than simply trusting God. Most all Protestants want to talk about God's unmerited grace, about being "saved" as a gift and not by our own merit. So why does the idea of predestination bother us so? (It's important to distinguish between predestination and determinism. Predestination - formally known as the Doctrine of Election - is not about every event in one's life being preset. It is concerned almost exclusively with salvation.)
Part of being human is not knowing everything. Faith seeks understanding, but faith also knows that God is incomprehensible to humans in many ways. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Yahweh. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9) So while I will seek to understand God and live as God calls me to live, I'm pretty comfortable leaving ultimate questions of judgment, of who's in and who's out, up to God. After all, the God we meet in Jesus is not only just, but loving, caring, merciful, and forgiving.
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Love that embraces the most wayward and irresponsible; such is the love Jesus describes in his Parable of the Prodigal Son and his Brother, Luke 15:11-32. It's a beautiful parable. At least it would be if not for the problems presented by the good, responsible, older brother.
There is a lot of conflict between Jesus and religious authorities in the gospels. It shows up in today's reading from Mark in the form of a Sabbath controversy. Over the years, Christians have tended to picture these authorities as evil folks in black hats, as cartoon bad guys. But that seems highly unlikely. No doubt they had mixed motives, as do religious leaders in every age. Some of them were concerned with preserving the status and privilege they had. And some worried about religious movements that might get out of control and lead to conflict with the powerful Romans. But along with such concerns, there were genuine religious concerns that God's laws be upheld. The Pharisees, especially, were a reform movement that wanted people to embrace the Law in day to day living, compared to what they saw as overly ritualized Temple Judaism.
My childhood was spent in North and South Carolina, when the Bible belt was a much stronger cultural force than it is today. And if you wanted a lot of folks in the neighborhood to look at you and shake their heads, all you had to do was cut the grass on a Sunday afternoon. Even though Sunday isn't the Sabbath, the culture had built in all sorts of safeguards to assure that the Christian Sabbath was not violated. And if you go back a bit further in the history of this country, you will find Sabbath enforcement that rivaled anything Jesus encountered.
Sometimes in these musings, I find myself sounding like one of those folks that hates organized religion. I'm not. I think that faith without a community that teaches and embodies the practices of the faith is a pretty nebulous and vacuous thing. But as much as I think the institutional Church is an absolute necessity, it, like all things human, has its dark side. The notion that Christians or the Church are somehow immune to the influences that made the religious authorities oppose Jesus, is a dangerous one, for it frees us from examining ourselves to see where we may be opposing God.
Now no genuine Christian would intentionally set out to oppose God, but then again, no genuine Jew of Jesus' day would have either. And Jesus himself notes how easy is can be to miss him in one of his parables. There people both good and bad say, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison?"
Lord, don't let my religious certainties cause me to miss you or reject you.
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