Dysfunctional Family Torn Asunder

If you have been reading the Daily Lectionary lately, you've been following the Apostle Paul as he journeys to Jerusalem where his presence provokes a riot, he is arrested, and, while under arrest, narrowly avoids a plot to kill him.  "The Jews" are the ones plotting against Paul, and on first glance, these Jews would seem to be those same Jews who opposed Jesus.  But it is more likely that these "Jews" are in fact Jewish Christians, Christians who were upset that Paul was baptizing Gentiles without requiring them to be circumcised or to adopt Jewish dietary restrictions and so on.

At the time of Paul's arrest, the Christian movement still existed within Judaism. But as Gentiles began to join the movement, a huge conflict broke out over how Jewish these converts had to be. The book of Acts reports this conflict, though in much more subdued tones than Paul's own words in his letters. But Paul hopes to mend the rift that had developed between his Gentile Christianity and the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, heading there with an offering to assist the Jerusalem Church. But Paul is clearly not confident of success. He seems to know that his trip will not end well. And indeed, there is no report of the Jerusalem leaders ever receiving Paul or his offering. In that sense, his trip is a failure, but while Paul's Christianity lost out in his lifetime, it became the norm not too long after his death.  (Paul Achtemeier wrote a wonderful little book on Paul and Acts that covers this: The Quest for Unity in the New Testament Church.)

It is somewhat sobering to think that only 30 years or so after Jesus' death, fights within the Christian community had already turned so bitter that people thought it necessary or justified to kill members of the "other side."  But Christians killing other Christians over faith differences has been commonplace in history, along with Christians killing non-Christians and non-Christians killing Christians. And it continues right up to this moment. It is much less common in America, especially nowadays, but that does not mean our divisions are any less bitter.

My current congregation hosted an Episcopal congregation for over five years after they were ejected from their property when the pastor led the church to break away from the denomination and join an African Anglican union that was more to their conservative tastes. A long and bitter legal battle ensued with the Episcopal diocese finally prevailing, allowing the congregation hosted here to return home. I can only guess at the amount of money and energy expended on the long battle.

My own denomination has fought over issues of gay and lesbian ordination for decades. The divide over the issue was often extremely bitter, so much so that those on the left distrusted anything proposed by those on the right and vice versa. It looked remarkably similar to the partisan political divide in our nation where if it comes from the other side, our side's against it.

Lost in all this is any real sense of a unity in Christ. We say that in our baptisms we are joined to Christ, made his brothers and sisters. And so we are brothers and sisters to all those other Christians who disagree with us.  But our loyalties to positions seem to have superseded our family loyalty.  Brothers and sisters are now our enemies, our opponents. And when we get really riled up, we sound like political partisans who insist their opponents want to "destroy America."

My congregation's experience of hosting that Episcopal congregation included many practical and logistical difficulties to overcome, but it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. And we now have a much closer relationship with the Episcopal congregation than was historically the case. A small victory for Christian unity.  But we are both progressive, liberal congregations with no great theological gulf separating us.

We are now entertaining a request from a local, Russian language congregation to hold worship and classes here. Because they are happy to worship in the afternoon, the practical and logistical challenges are considerably less than they were with the Episcopalians. However, they are not liberal or progressive, far from it. They aren't ordaining women, much less gays, and their theology might be described as something along conservative, evangelical, Southern Baptist lines.

Can they worship here, or does their theology make them unwelcome? They are our brothers and sisters, but we have some significant disagreements.  Are our disagreements and differences sufficient to undo the family bonds? A question that biological families sometimes wrestle with.

I have considered myself a liberal or progressive for all of my adult life. I have been a longtime member and supporter of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, a group that has worked toward the full inclusion and ordination of those in the LGBT community.  But I have always been somewhat uncomfortable identifying myself primarily by such things. And that discomfort has only grow in recent years.

I am not a liberal or progressive who happens to be a Christian.  I am a follower of Jesus who happens to be a liberal or progressive. And I fear that the Christian right and left do grave damage to the Church universal, that vast family of all the baptized, when our primary identity comes from our place left or right, our denomination, our style of worship, or anything else other than Christ.

There was an article in the local paper yesterday about Protestants no longer comprising a majority in the United States, something no one would have predicted 50 years ago. Meanwhile, we Presbyterians have created yet another denomination, splitting again, largely over the issue of gay ordination.

God sure has one dysfunctional family.

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Two Miracles and God's Compassion

Two miracles; and what a contrast. In the first, a centurion comes to Jesus, seeking healing for one of his slaves.  In this story the focus in on the man's faith.  He comes to Jesus and asks for his help.  Jesus is astounded at the man's great faith, and grants the centurion's request. Presumably the healing and the man's faith are related.

But then comes another miracle, this one more impressive than the last. Jesus raises a man from death.  But this time there is no request for help and no demonstration of great faith. Jesus sees a widow whose son has died. He is filled with compassion, and he acts, going so far as to violate purity laws by touching the funeral bier. (Luke tells the story in a way that points us to 1 Kings 17, where another widow's son is raised.)

In Jesus' time, in a day before social safety nets, widows and orphans were among the most vulnerable.  The frequent admonitions in the Bible to care for the widow and orphan are a call to care for society's most vulnerable.  And a widow without a son was in a most precarious position. In a time when women did not have legal status as persons, being widowed and without a son left her totally defenseless, and she might well be reduced to begging.

Jesus sees the situation and he springs into action. There are no questions about her faith or worthiness. There are no questions at all, but rather two commands. "Do not weep... Young man, I say to you, rise!" after which "Jesus gave him to his mother."

If Jesus is indeed a window onto God's heart (and that would seem to be a most fundamental Christian notion), then it seems that God is moved more by God's own compassion than by our faith. That is not to make light of faith, but I have heard too often that God didn't heal someone because people didn't pray enough or didn't have enough faith. Yet in this story, deep compassion leads Jesus to raise the dead. And of course Jesus goes to the cross, not because of anyone's great faith, but because of God's great compassion.

There are times when I cannot understand why God's compassion does not seem more evident. I have no good answer for why God does not intervene when children are being slaughtered or entire villages are wiped out in ethnic cleansing. Nor do I know why God permits horrible personal suffering that leads people to take their own lives.  But if Jesus is my guide, I can only trust that God's compassion is at work in some way I cannot discern. Children are not being slaughtered because someone prayed the wrong prayer or had faith that failed to soar like the centurion's.

And me, as a part of the body of Christ, what about my compassion? At this moment, I'm thinking less about large scale compassion for the poor, the prisoner, etc. Instead I'm thinking about how hard it sometimes is for me to feel compassion for those who irritate me or make life hard for me.  Very often, I don't see people's hurts or brokenness if they inconvenience me very much. And people who actually make my job difficult may get no compassion at all.

On one occasion Jesus says that he comes to serve, and whoever wants to be great must first be a servant to all. A servant tends to the needs of others. Not a job many aspire to, and being a servant to all sounds impossible. I suppose it is, unless one is moved by compassion and love.

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Love, Security, and Freedom

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? "Every time I hear Jesus say this, it cuts me to the quick. I say, "Jesus is Lord" without much hesitation.  It is one of the most basic Christian affirmations, and it means many things at the same time.  Jesus is master, boss, due great honor, the ultimate authority, and more. And thanks to the peculiar Jewish use of the word "lord" as a substitute for the divine name, it also means Jesus is God.

So if I easily say "Jesus is Lord," why do I find it so difficult to act like it?  Clearly Jesus anticipates this problem, and in Matthew's gospel he addresses it even more bluntly. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." (I hope this statement is at least partly hyperbole on Jesus' part.) Jesus couldn't be more clear about the need to do as he says, and I embrace him as Lord.  So why is it so hard to actually live as he commands?

I like to think that Jesus is sometimes less than clear about what he wants me to do. And certainly there are times when it's difficult to know just what a disciple is to do in the face of complex situations. Clearly Jesus wants me to be for the poor, but exactly what policies and programs would be most helpful is not always clear.

However, I think my biggest problem with following Jesus is fear. If I did what Jesus says, even most of the time, lots of "bad" things might happen.  People might not like me. Worse, they might tell other people not to like me, that I was a troublemaker or stupid or misguided. And I want people to think well of me. Following Jesus also might cause me to invest myself and my possessions in things other than myself. But if I did that, I might not have enough. And I'm afraid of not having enough. I'm afraid of being insecure. And if I don't look out for myself, who's going to do so?

There's a famous line from 1 John that says "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."  I have known a few people who seemed to have no fear, and it gave them a remarkable freedom. (I'm not talking about the bravado that comes from the "immortality of youth" or from not realizing the risks involved.) These people could take a difficult stand without worrying about what it might cost them. They could be generous beyond what might seem prudent. They could take great risks that might not pan out and did not seemed crushed if things went poorly.

I once thought that such people were simply braver than me. They were better able to screw up their courage and do difficult things. They were more accomplished at fighting their fears. I no longer think that. Rather I think their remarkable freedom to do difficult things comes from being remarkably secure. They are not much worried about what others will think or say. They are not greatly concerned about not having enough.  And with most of them, this is a matter of feeling secure in God's love. God loves them even if no one else does. God cares for them and will provide for them. The resurrection assures them that finally, nothing is stronger than God's love, the love in which they rest.

One of the great pitfalls in my faith life is a desire to makes sense of and understand everything. That makes me good at theology but not always very good at knowing God. Too often, I know about rather than know.

I suppose that with enough scientific study and research and analysis, it might be possible to explain the things that happen to someone when they fall in love. It might even be possible to predict whether or not two people could fall in love and under what circumstances. But even if all this were possible, I don't think knowing it would be anything like actually falling in love.

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you?" Jesus, help me know you and your love.  Help me really know, so that I can be secure and free.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non Preaching Sunday

Two Sundays in a row without preaching.  Feels odd.  I hope I remember how come next Sunday.  Of course I can't totally doze off today. We have a congregational meeting today to elect a nominating committee, the group charged with finding those whom God is calling to be the deacons and elders who lead this church.  Presumably this will be a rather perfunctory meeting, but one never knows.

I don't know that today's gospel speaks directly to calling and electing leaders in a congregation, but it is interesting to think about a kingdom belonging to little children beside the question of who leads the church. "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."

Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom.  We forget that in the church sometimes, focusing more on heaven than the Kingdom. But the Kingdom is not a synonym for heaven. So what does it mean to say the Kingdom, God's new day, God's new dominion or realm,belongs to children, and we must receive it as children to enter?

It's worth remembering that Jesus lived in a very different time and culture than we do.  In Jesus' day, children did not enjoy the status they do in our culture. Children had no rights, were property of their father, and, to a perhaps even greater degree than women, were not thought of as full persons. Until they came of age, they really did not matter. "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." 

The Kingdom belongs to the nobodies, the invisible, the unimportant.  And Jesus seems to think that those of us who are somebodies, who are prominent and important, will have difficulty with this kingdom. Nobodies received the Kingdom easily, but others must become like nobodies in some way.

I'm not sure how to make a smooth segue from nobodies receiving the Kingdom to the question of who leads the church, but is seems to me that the two things should be related in some way.  If the church is to continue the work of Jesus, which must surely mean continuing to proclaim the kingdom, then it stands to reason that we must know something about receiving the Kingdom as nobodies.

 The manner of electing elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church has changed since I was a child, but I still remember those elections when ballots were handed out and people circled the people they wanted to elect. (Today our nominating committee brings back a slate with the same number of people as offices to be filled.)  In a reasonably large church, this was something of a popularity contest, and the nobodies almost never got elected. In fact, the people I remember as elders and deacons from my childhood didn't seem at all like nobodies to me. They were prominent, important, impressive, and so on. 

Now obviously a church does want leaders with real strengths and abilities, people God has given gifts of discernment and leadership.  But I can't help wondering about how these impressive leaders should relate to a Kingdom that belongs to nobodies.

What Shapes and Forms Us

One of the trends in my faith tradition has the term spiritual or "Christian formation" supplanting the term "Christian Education."  Directors of Christian Education (DCEs), once common in larger Presbyterian churches, are becoming scarcer while Directors of Christian Formation are seen more regularly.

Religion, like other fields, is often captive to trends, and so churches reorganize and restructure and revision just like other organizations.  And we rename committees and positions without it really changing anything that happens. But I don't think the idea of spiritual formation is simply a passing fad. No doubt there are congregations who rename a DCE as a DCF with no accompanying change in practices. But the name change more often reflects real changes in how churches do what they used to call Christian Education.

In the 1950s, for better or worse, many people expected that participation in the larger culture would form people both as citizens and as people of faith. The idea that America was a Christian nation, however far that was from actual truth, implied that one could learn the habits and practices of being a Christian via active participation in our society.  Practices of sabbath keeping, regular patterns of worship, and shared moral standards were encouraged and enforced by cultural and governmental forces.

In such an environment, church congregations were one player among many in forming Christians, and they could focus on activities such as holding worship and teaching the finer points of the faith (and their version of it) to members. To that end, Sunday School (which itself had begun as social program to educate poor children who couldn't attend regular school) was seen as a classroom much like the ones students attended Monday-Friday.  There were "text books" and various things that needed to be taught. (An unfortunate and unintended side affect of this specialized religious instruction was that religious education came to be seen as the work of experts rather than a primary tasks of parents.)

But over the last half century or so, the cultural components where a "Christian nation" formed people in faith have pretty much disappeared. The culture no longer encourages and enforces sabbath keeping or regular worship. Instead it actively works against these, creating all manner of enticements designed to draw people away from worship or treat Sabbath like any other day. Faithful participation in a religious community has gone from expected to downright counter-cultural.

In this changed landscape, many of those old Sunday School models make very little sense.  Forty five minutes a week in a classroom on a less than regular basis is not likely to profoundly change how people live their lives without some other supporting structures.  If the Christian life is indeed counter-cultural, Sunday School alone doesn't stand much of a chance against all the forces aligned against it.

In short, faith communities are faced with the problem of how to shape and form people for lives that exist in some tension with the community around them.  And while those who want to put prayer or God back into the schools recognize this problem and likely have the best of intentions, the fact is there is no going back. We are not going to get the culture to do this work for us. The culture has too much invested in Sunday soccer, endless childhood enrichment, 24-7 efficiency and productivity, economics based on consumerism, and so on to ever fully buy into a way of life that insists on sabbath rest, on life more focused on others than self, on life lived toward God and not much worried about acquiring more.

In such a setting, the need to form people for faithful lives becomes more and more the issue. Teaching people the Bible and theology is still a big piece, but learning the basic rhythms and practice of a faithful life become critical. We still need to teach beliefs, but we also need to learn ways and habits. We need to help people be formed in ways that allow them to follow Jesus, not simply believe in him.

When I began writing this, I had no thoughts of discussing DCEs or Christian Education. I was reflecting on why Jesus had so much difficulty with the good, religious people of his day. I was thinking about formation from that standpoint, wondering about how Jesus' opponents had been religiously shaped in such a way that they saw him as a threat. This notion of formation made me think of Christian formation and led to the long tangent that has delivered me here. 

But at the end of that tangent, I find myself still reflecting on how those scribes and Pharisees got off track somewhere in their religious formation. And I'm wondering what that means as we in the church face the huge challenge of forming people for Christ in our time.  What does it mean to form and shape people to be like Jesus, someone who adhered to his faith tradition and taught as a rabbi in it, who learned the Scriptures and kept the Sabbath, and yet never let his faith tradition keep him from helping and caring for others.

The Apostle Paul seems to capture this pattern in his famous piece on love from 1 Corinthians 13. Too often relegated to weddings, Paul's soaring words remind us that faith and knowledge and power and abilities are all rendered meaningless without love. And of course Paul is not speaking of romantic love, but of a love that always sees the other as one deserving my care, help, etc. Jesus embodies what Paul describes. Jesus is formed through and through by and for love. Jesus taught and followed the rules, but he never succumbed to what so often happens to good people who have knowledge. Jesus never viewed those without knowledge or outside the rules as somehow undeserving. Rather he sought them out, feeling especially compelled to love and care for them.

How does one teach this? How does a class fill someone with such deep love and compassion that she would cross cultural boundaries and break religious convention to reach out to an outsider? How are we to form people by and for love?

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Is It Worship?

O sing to the LORD a new song;
   sing to the LORD, all the earth. 
Sing to the LORD, bless his name;
   tell of his salvation from day to day. 
Declare his glory among the nations,
   his marvelous works among all the peoples. 
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
   he is to be revered above all gods.  (from Ps. 96)

Both this morning's psalms call us to praise and worship God. These psalms don't ask anything of God. They sing about God, brag on God, and tell about the wonderful things God has done. They seem to have no ulterior motive, expecting nothing in return for their worship and praise. They are - to borrow the title from Marva Dawn's book on worship - A Royal "Waste" of Time.

A colleague of mine, James Kim, had a blog post yesterday with this title: "Connecting with God Is Not the Same Thing as Worshiping God." He's correct; it's not. Pastor Kim is contrasting Sunday worship with things that we do outside church to connect with God. But I worry that this connecting with God vs. worshiping God dynamic exists within Sunday worship itself.

In its most basic form, worship is the sort of activity found in today's psalms. But we ask that thing we call a "worship service" to do a great deal, perhaps way too much. The name "worship service" implies that we serve God with our worship  But we expect to be served as well, sometimes so much so that our serving God gets lost.

I'm not suggesting that worship should be nothing more than songs of praise and adoration. We do need to hear God's word speak to us in worship. We do need to be nourished at the Lord's Table. But if we understand worship primarily as something directed at us for our benefit, if we don't have a significant sense of offering ourselves to God in worship, then I fear that we've turned worship into one more consumer item that's supposed to make our lives better. And at that point, we may well have turned God into a consumer item. This consumer-item God does not inspire wonder and awe trembling, but exists solely to make our lives better, happier, more spiritual, more meaningful, etc.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
   let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it.
   Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy.

The God of the psalmist is so wonderful and awe inspiring that even creation itself cannot stop from joining in the worship and praise. Is that the God we "worship?"

What I Really Need

"Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" - he said to the one who was paralyzed - "I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home." (Luke 5:23-24)

I've always been bothered by this passage. Companions bring a paralyzed man to Jesus, and his response is to say, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." My problem is not that Jesus says this, but that this is apparently all he plans to say.  Perhaps I'm reading the passage too literally, but Jesus does say that he heals the man so that people will know he can forgive sin. This seems to say that the man needed forgiveness more than he needed to be healed of his paralysis.

It's interesting to contemplate the idea that I need forgiveness more than any of the other things I think I need.  My experience as a pastor is that lots of Presbyterians would just as soon not have a prayer of confession in the worship service.  We know we're not perfect, but we're not that bad.  It's not something we need to be overly concerned with.

I wonder if mechanical understandings of forgiveness sometimes accentuate this. We're sinners; Jesus died; we believe; it's all okay now. We get it. No need to go over it and over it.

True, we know the formula, but have we really experienced God's forgiveness? Have we truly felt what it is like to restored, to have a broken relationship healed, to have God make amends for the hurt we have caused, to experience a whole new quality of life?

One of the most basic Christian affirmations is that Jesus is Lord and Savior.  But I really don't want a Lord.  I want to be in charge of my own life. And I'm not all that sure I need saving. I'm a bit like a raging alcoholic who manages to fool family, friends, and himself into believing that he has it all under control.  There is no deep and serious problem. I don't really need any help.

We humans seem to have remarkable abilities to delude ourselves. So I wonder, what is it that I really need?

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For God Alone

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
  from God comes my salvation.  Ps. 62:1

A question I've gotten from a few folks in my new call goes like this. "So James, what is your vision for our church?"  I confess to being a bit uncomfortable with the question, but I don't think that's a matter of shirking my leadership responsibilities. I'm not at all averse to pointing out things we need to do or pushing for certain things, but I don't think a congregation's vision is supposed to come from me.

One of the things I enjoy about the lectio divina practice of reading Scripture is the way it can open you to hearing a word that you would never get from traditional Bible study. It is important to study the Bible and to explore the meaning of a passage after considering its context, to whom it is addressed, the type of literature, and so on. But hearing God speak is not simply a matter of understanding the Bible, and lectio divina lets us listen in a different way.  This spiritual practice, where a passage is read simply listening for a word or phrase that seems to stand out, is a wonderful way to become more open to God in a manner that is not academic or about what I know.

For God alone...  That grabbed me this morning. And as I reflected on why that might be, I don't think it had much to do with the psalm's looking to God for rescue or security. I heard this as a word for that question of vision. For God alone we wait, hoping to hear clearly.  For God alone we become still and silent, anticipating that God does have plans for us, that God has a calling for us.

I'm not suggesting that our knowledge and understanding don't matter.  If we know our Bibles at all we surely have some idea of the kind of things God expects from us. But what is there that is peculiar to us, to our current moment and particular context? What calling is God placing on us right now?

For God alone my soul waits in silence, longing to hear.

"So James, what is your vision for our church?" True vision is from God, but in the meantime, I have what might be a provisional vision.  May all of us in this congregation become more attentive, waiting for God alone, so that together we may hear God's call.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non Preaching Sunday

It's my first "Youth Sunday" in my new call. That's just one in a string of firsts that greet all new pastors.  Next comes my first Stewardship season, followed closely by my first Advent and Christmas, and so on. One of the reasons it takes a pastor a while to get acclimated is the need to go through a string of firsts that takes at least a year.

Today's first doesn't ask much of me, other than to step aside. As much as I love preaching, a Sunday off when I'm not away on vacation is something of a gift, and so I am happy to accommodate. But as I step aside, and middle and high schoolers take center stage, I find myself reflecting on Kierkegaard's critique of worship as drama.

We Protestants speak of a "priesthood of all believers," meaning that there are no special people needed to act a conduits for divine access.  We all have direct access to God in Jesus, and we all can share God's presence with others. And so it makes prefect sense that people other than pastors would lead worship, would seek to draw others into God's presence.  Indeed, the only reasons that Presbyterians require ordained pastors (or commissioned lay pastors) to preside over baptisms and the Lord's Supper is because they have special training to explain and interpret the meaning of such events. Other than this training, their presence confers no special aura to the moment.

And yet, worship in most churches remains a show of which pastors are lead players along with choirs and others. It is a show folks come to watch.  This is what infuriated Kierkegaard all those years ago, this notion of a drama on stage with the congregation as audience.  He insisted that the only audience for worship was God, and all of us involved are the actors presenting the drama to God.

The Youth Sunday that will unfold later this morning at least has the advantage that people who ordinarily would be part of the "audience" now become the lead actors.  Perhaps in that process, a greater sense of worship as shared offering to God can be glimpsed. If nothing else, perhaps the youth can have a better sense of worship as their offering to God.

But I suspect that for many worshipers, the old patterns are hard to break. The actors on the stage are different this week, but for the most part, the audience remains the same (other than friends, grandparents, etc. in the audience who came especially for this service).  And expectations likely remain the same.  Everyone realizes that worship will look a bit different today, but it will be something done by those on the stage, other than those few moments of congregational speaking of singing.

This is not a critique of congregations on my part, and I don't think of Kierkegaard's part either. I'm inclined to think that whatever sense people have of going to a show has been cultivated by those of us who are the presumed actors. We're the ones who have done worship all these years in a way to focus all attention on us. We Presbyterians speak of the Word being the central part of worship.  In old worship orders this Word functioned as grand finale. In more current orders of worship, the Word is at the center of the service with parts flowing toward or away from it.  But of course the major element of the Word is sermon. There is a long, rich, theological history in our tradition focused on the the Word and its place in worship.  But practically speaking, we pastors oversee a worship tradition in which sermon, if not in fact pastor, is the star of the show.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what a good, viable alternative to this is. And there are no doubt many people in the "audience" who feel very engaged in worship, who feel that their singing, attention, etc. are gifts they offer to God whose presence is quite real to them. But I worry that they are more exception than rule.  And I feel that we need to do more to help others worship on Sunday morning rather than serve as audience.

I'd love to hear from people who think I'm off base, who have ideas that might help, or whatever.  How do we do worship so that it becomes an event in which we all participate, an event where God's presence is palpable, and we offer out best to God?

Offensive Good News

Any pastor who adopts Jesus' preaching style in today's gospel will have a short tenure in his or her congregation. In Luke's version of the visit to Nazareth's synagogue, Jesus goes out of his way to offend the hometown crowd.  He has no sooner claimed to be the fulfillment of prophecy, the one who comes "to bring good news to the poor... to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor," than he reminds the crowd of those times God's saving power was offered to Gentiles and not to Israel.

It's worth noting that when this Nazareth story is told by Matthew and Mark, Jesus offers no such offense.  The people take offense, but not because Jesus rubbed their face in how God sometimes ignores Israel and helped others. They simply couldn't believe that a local boy, whose family they knew, could be Messiah.

Luke almost certainly had Mark's version of this story when he wrote his gospel, yet for some reason he felt the need to retell events so that Jesus goes out of his way to give offense. In Luke, they chase Jesus out of town not because they can't accept a Messiah with an unimpressive pedigree, but because Jesus tries to offend them. If Matthew and Mark say that God's salvation is offensive because of the surprising way it is manifest, Luke insists that God's salvation is intrinsically offensive to some, most especially to those who think they have advantages.

It's hard to miss this offense when you read Luke's gospel. A pregnant Mary sings of God scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, and sending the rich away empty. In Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount, there are accompanying woes to to go with the blessings or beatitudes. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep."

I'm not exactly sure how literally we are to understand these woes, but Luke clearly sees the salvation Jesus brings as something other than a rising tide that lifts all boats. Luke has Jesus engaged in class warfare, lifting up the poor and lowly and oppressed, but dragging down the rich and powerful and well connected and religiously comfortable.  If you're not on the bottom, how could you not be offended?

Over the years, many have wondered about what happens to the gospel when it moves into the arena of wealth and power. When Christianity was embraced by the emperor Constantine, and over the centuries populated with Christian kings and presidents and factory owners and billionaires, what happens to the good news Jesus proclaims?

I have little doubt that this gospel has remained a powerful force that benefits the world, but there is also little doubt that it nonetheless gets corrupted in the process. Most of the time the gospel's offensive, scandalous nature has been greatly diminished, but it is still there, nagging at us now and then. But we must admit that at times, its offensiveness has been obliterated, and in such times, faith can become an instrument of oppression and hate.

For most of my life, I have lived in a church populated by people who are middle class and above.  I may have encountered the poor via church, volunteering at the homeless shelter or when they came to the church run food pantry or clothing closet.  But for the most part they were people the church helped, not part of the church. In such a church, if Jesus doesn't make us just a little nervous, if he doesn't scare us just a bit, I wonder if we're still proclaiming his good news.

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I Need a Better Religion

I have to admit that I've always had something of a love-hate relationship with religion.  I suppose that requires some sort of definition of "religion." I think that most people are religious in some way. They have an impulse to connect to something beyond themselves. And any way of doing such connecting, barring one that is done in complete isolation, ends up requiring some element of organization or institution. But of course we humans can muck up most anything, and so the religions we practice are a mixed bag. They do help people draw near to God, and they do help people become more like they "should" be. But of course religion also makes people feel superior to others and sometimes makes them feel justified in hating and even killing others. Like I said, a mixed bag.

The churches I've been connected to have not been much into hating, and you have to go a long way back in history to find killings. (John Calvin does take a pretty big hit to his reputation on this one.) But we do proof text from the Bible to support our agendas, agendas that often have little connection to faith. And the fact that Jesus slams the devil for his proof-texting in today's gospel doesn't much dissuade us on that practice.

But my biggest struggle with religion arises in the salvation area.  By salvation I'm not really talking about admittance to heaven.  I'm referring to more concrete examples like those in today's psalm.  "Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion; and to you shall vows be performed, O you who answer prayer!.. By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation."  Here the reference is likely to the past rescue from slavery in Egypt as well as present rescue from enemies, drought, etc.  God saves, and the stories of Jesus healing or stilling a storm are there to say that Jesus has that same saving power.

Now here's where my struggle comes in. I regularly come in contact with religious folks who occupy two very different poles regarding God's saving power. On the one hand there are those who regularly post trite platitudes on Facebook that sound naively unaware of anyone ever suffering unjustly or faithfully trying to love and serve God but receiving only heartache for that effort. And then there are folks at the other extreme who seem to think God powerless over the concrete difficulties of life, providing little more than a cosmic shoulder to cry on.

Granted, these are extremes. There are many people somewhere in between these two poles, but I suspect most of us tend one way or the other. I tend toward the second pole, in part because I'm bothered by the first. A lot of people that I know tend this way for the same reason. A loved one has cancer and a "religious" friend says, "If you pray and really have faith, God will heal him."  And we recoil at such notions, as does the book of Job.  But in the process, our God sometimes becomes impotent except as a divine mental health counselor.

I get frustrated because I feel like I have to choose between the two poles. I must either embrace a saving God who always fixes things for the truly faithful.  This of course requires ignoring a lot of evidence to the contrary and is so a very unsophisticated choice. I'm no simpleton, but when I rush to the other pole, I end up with a God who looks little like what my faith proclaims, a mighty God who is sovereign, even over history, and who, in Jesus, is moving the world and history toward something new and wonderful.

I could never be a "fundamentalist" sort of Christian.  Nearly everything about me makes that impossible. But the liberal Christianity I inhabit sometimes seems to have gone too far the other way. By that I do not mean too far left on social or political issues. Rather I mean too far away from an active, powerful God, ending up in a place where God becomes more philosophy than being.

Maybe I'm must weird on this.  I don't know. I do tend to over-think things.  But I still wonder if the rapidly declining rates of religious participation in our country aren't a bit related to the unsatisfactory nature of both these poles.

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I'm Not That Desperate

Imagine that you've been a little disconnected from church or whatever your faith community is (if you even need to imagine). Now imagine that you're feeling inspired.  You want to reconnect. You want to recommit yourself to your faith practices.  And so you head out to worship, feeling very good.  You even get there early and relaxed.  The service starts, and the preacher looks straight at you and says, "What are you doing here, you vermin? What brought you out?  Your little religious stirrings don't impress God at all." Now perhaps the preacher isn't speaking just to you, but it feels like it.

If that happened to me, I rather doubt I'd ever go back.  I probably would leave right then and there. But in today's gospel reading, those people who are listening to John have not left after he called them a brood of vipers. After he had trashed them, they begged him to tell them what they must do.  And in today's reading, they think he might be the Messiah.  Wow, those folks must have been pretty desperate to hang around after John had treated them so roughly and rudely.  We'd never stand for such.

I've been thinking a lot lately about competency and the ability to hear God. I'm still wrestling with this, but it seems to me that highly competent people have more trouble being open to God's voice. By definition, highly competent people are able to get things done. They trust their own abilities, and they aren't prone to feelings of desperation, at least not on a regular basis. 

Spiritually, a lot of we competent sorts don't desperately need God. We may very well need God, but not in some huge, dramatic way.  We need God only a little bit.  We need some help, but not all that much.  We're able to manage for the most part, and we're not desperate enough to hang around if a religious experience doesn't nod approvingly at our willingness to be religious. We don't need God badly enough to put up with much.

As a Presbyterian pastor, that is a pastor who had to learn Greek and Hebrew and get a Master's degree in Divinity, I am filled with religious competency.  And I wonder if that isn't the worst kind, at least when it comes to hearing God. 

I wonder if when Jesus says we must deny ourselves in order to follow him, part of that is denying our competencies.  I don't mean to deny their existence, but rather to let go of the notion that they get us very far in terms of relationship with God or understanding what really matters.

When I think about my own faith, surely one of the biggest sources of frustration for me comes from how difficult it is to hear God with any real clarity. It happens, but it is rare and often fleeting. And I wonder... Might my own competencies - or at least my trust in them - be getting in the way?

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