"We" are Building Flowerbeds

“Hey, my sweetheart, why don't we get the back flower beds finished today?" So while my long-suffering husband graciously begins the heavy work, (I'm a GREAT supervisor), I start dreaming about the beautiful flowers and shrubs I will someday plant. Yes, "we" are building flower beds and slowly transforming the landscape of the parsonage where I live all the time and he lives some of the time when he is able to get free from his own church responsibilities. Parsonage: a place where the parson lives. The "parson" is a somewhat old fashioned word for a clergy person, a pastor of a church. Both of us feel strongly that even though we, as pastors, will never own the places we live, we still have a responsibility to hand them back in better shape than we found them because we are stewards of these houses. So, "we" build flower beds. My husband is indeed a long-suffering man, full of grace and kindness.

Handing something back in better shape than we received it is the basic responsibility of a steward. Human beings are stewards of this created world--we have a responsibility to God to care for creation. A good steward returns to the owner the property in better shape, not worse. Better--not poisoned, not trashed, not desecrated.

This is hard work--being a steward, and not always particularly rewarding. We're going to hand to someone else the fruits of our labor. As far as my husband and I are concerned, this reality is that we don't own this parsonage and never will. This home has been entrusted to me as the pastor of this church, and goes in time to the next pastor. But this is also a good picture of our responsibilities as stewards of the world at large. We don't own the world--all of creation is ultimately in the hands of God. It has been entrusted to us as temporary stewards and will be handed on to our children and grandchildren. What will we hand on to them?

I remember well the first parsonage I ever lived in. I drove up to a house with one of the worst looking yards I had seen. Mostly weeds, a few bedraggled shrubs, tires tracks digging gouges in the yard where a wayward car had missed a turn and skated over the front yard, a west facing patio in the back with no covering, no protection from the blistering summer sun. Five years later, we left a yard full of good grass, flower beds so rich with organic material that they'd grow anything, and a patio covered with green vines that provided protection from the sun on all but the worst days of summer. Did it stay that way?

No--without loving attention, weeds will take over. And they did at that parsonage.

Yes, there is sadness there--so much creative energy down the drain. Makes me wonder how much sadness God must feel when we make choices that leave our world in worse shape for those following us. And then it makes we wonder how much joy God must feel when we choose to be good and faithful stewards to this world and leave it in better shape for those following us. Personally, I'd live to be one who increases joy, not sadness. What about you?

The Silent Treatment

When my Beloved and I first married, I told him that one of the things I most appreciated about him was his willingness to honor my silences. Those were the times when I was very much enjoying just being with him, but had no need to make conversation. The silence itself became communication. It indicated comfort, peace, awareness of one another without the need to know interior thoughts or keep the space between us filled with words and chatter.

This goes both ways, of course. As I wish my silences to be honored, I get to honor his. Naturally, that becomes the more complex task. Because when he chooses silence, my gut reaction is “I’m getting the silent treatment.”

Yes, the “silent treatment.” Does anyone not know what that is? It’s that time when someone whom we consider significant in our lives (parent, spouse, child, friend) turns the cold shoulder to us and will not speak or communicate for a period of time. Often that period of time extends until the one on the receiving end of the silence changes behavior in some way or another. That kind of silence is the classic power play—used to manipulate another into changing something or there will be no restoration of communication and connection.

Since all of us need to feel connection with those significant people, the silent treatment can be a way to promote change, but it is not an especially effective way. The change that results is generally given grudgingly, with the “I promise not to do that again” made with fingers crossed behind our backs. Even worse, the anguish experienced in the silent treatment means we may lose our ability to savor silence, whether it comes from God or from those around us.

Noise assaults us everywhere. Sirens, talk radio, road noise, IPOD’s blaring in headpieces, screaming fans at athletic contests, phones ringing without ceasing, people yelling at one another. Not all sounds are bad, of course. I find few more pleasant that that of a toddler’s joyful belly laugh, or a piece of exquisite music exquisitely played, or that of my Beloved calling to me or the voice of one of my friends or relatives on the phone. But even those pleasant sounds can overwhelm us when we chose not to find periods of real silence.

In silence we find the place to do necessary self-examination. When God seems silent, we have the opportunity to discover the real depth of our faith. In silence, we can find the joy of being alone without being lonely. Only those who know the joy in being alone can offer themselves freely to others in companionship, for then companionship becomes a gift, rather than a demand to fill the void of loneliness. In silence, we may actually hear the still, small voice of our God calling us to a place of love and repentance and re-connection. In silence, we may discover with each other a communion that makes verbal communication look crass and cheap in comparison. In silence, we may truly learn to honor one another the way we wish to be honored. In silence, our salvation may come upon us and make us whole.

Daddy's Closet, Sabbath Rest

It’s been over a year since my father died, and my sister and I made multiple attempts to come to my mother’s house so we could go through his clothes and give them away but were never up to the task.

We finally made it this past week and made reasonably quick work of what we needed to do. My dad has been quite the clotheshorse in his day, and still had some nice suits hanging in the back of his closet. As we were going through his things, I was struck again by the contrasts in his life. He had always taken good care of his clothes. Until dementia got to him in the end, everything was always carefully hung up or folded. Good use of shoe trees meant that his shoes tended to last a long time. But the piles of paper that plagued him . . . oh my.

After we finished my father’s closet, my mother invited us to consider tackling what we had privately called her “Fibber McGee” closet. For those too young to know, “Fibber McGee and Molly” was the name of a famous radio show from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. The “closet” was a running gag about an overstuffed closet they periodically opened and then, after being buried by a cascade of stuff, decided that they needed to “clean out one day.”’ Of course, that day never arrived.

For us, the long awaited day had arrived. Bravely, my sister and I ventured in. Bags of clothes long meant to be given away were placed in the garage sale stack. Unidentifiable and broken things headed for the trash. A bag of old photographs now sits on my desk, waiting until I can go through them and see what might be worth keeping. Nothing too hard—we were working rapidly and efficiently.

And then I found stacks and stacks of notebooks, mostly 8 ½ by 5 inches in size, many blank, but others with notes that my mother had made over the years. Lists of things to do, ideas for the Sunday School news column she has written weekly for 40 years now, detailed planning for the house she and my dad built 25 years ago, drafts of letters that she was writing

Paperwork, as some of you know, is my family nemesis. All of us struggle with keeping it under control, deciding what to toss and what to keep. Genetically, I figure I have no hope since both my mother and dad had the same tendencies. And so I opened these notebooks with these snippets of my family’s life, and was immediately mesmerized. Nothing earth-shaking, just bits of memories flooding my brain from the words on the page.

It was with great reluctance that I sent some of those notebooks to the recycling pile, knowing I’ve lost some memories here. But there is no way I can go through all those. And I, who have in one form or another saved the thousands and thousands of pages I’ve written over the years, must realized that no one is going to go through all that as well.

However, I also know that those memories have made me what I am today. It is those memories that drive me to say, “We must bring the children to church so they will have memories of being in a place where they experience the real love of God.” I know how many activities are pulling at each family today. I have a pretty decent understanding of the challenges parents face when saying “yes” to one place and “no” to another. But I have an ongoing concern when the “no” keeps being church for children. There will never again be such a good time to teach them of the power of God’s love and the place to receive the grace and forgiveness that we all need. These kinds of memories leave an inheritance for generations, and I fear they are about to be lost for many. How God must weep over this loss of shared memory. When we gave up resting on the seventh day, we gave up a lot more than any of us realized. It is very sad.

You Can’t Have It Both Ways

“Did you hear about . . .” so began the phone conversation where my husband informed me about the arrest of a clergy person in suburb east of Dallas. No, I had not heard. I had been experiencing a challenging work day and had not turned listened to the news on the radio nor had I read the morning paper thoroughly.

When I did find the news reports, my insides began to churn. A young clergyman had been arrested for trafficking in child pornography over the Internet. He apparently admitted that he was the person behind the screen name used for the deed. It is possible we’ve seen just the surface of a life lived with one foot in the world of grace and hope and the other wallowing in horrific and disgusting activities. Just the beginning of the inevitable exposure of yet another person who thought he or she could live a double life and get away with it.

You, and I, really, really can’t have it both ways. We cannot live and work in positions of trust and be systematically betraying that trust in our shadow lives. People have tried this from the beginning of recorded history. It might work for a while, perhaps even years. But at some point, the light will overcome the darkness and all will be exposed.

It’s the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome: the good doctor by day, serving, learning, experimenting; the nasty destroyer at night, using the cover of darkness to release the cruel and debased side of his personality. He was eventually destroyed, as are all who try to live such a decided double life and never reach the point of sorrow and repentance because of it.

All of us have a shadow side, the parts of us we’d rather not come to light. Some, like the clergy man mentioned above, choose to indulge their shadow side. They become destroyers, and are especially destructive to those who trust them most fully. Others seek awareness of their shadow sides. They discover that by facing it and courageously bringing it into a position of accountability to others, it is possible to live in the light. They become healers. It is a hard battle—only the foolish and ignorant suggest any easy path to wholeness. But we’ve all go the choice to make.

The most famous example of someone who gave into his shadow side from the Bible was King David. This gifted and wonderful king decided he could wantonly take another woman, have her husband killed when a pregnancy resulted, and just get away with it. After all, he was powerful and had done much, much good for the nation. Surely people would overlook this one little crossing of the moral line.

But God does not, nor ultimately can we ourselves. Those choosing to hold onto the double life enter a vicious downward cycle of self-hatred and self-indulgence, expending massive amounts of energy covering their tracks, all while trying so maintain exterior respectability and trustworthiness. The drain on the soul increases with each episode. Lying replaces truth, in time eventually shoving truth out completely. The double life kills, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But it always kills. That is its nature.

We really can’t have it both ways. We can seek wholeness and singleness. Those are other words for heaven, living in the light of the saving grace of our Lord. Or we can continue in duplicity and brokenness. Those are other words for hell, which is separation from our God, from our own souls and from those whom we say we love. We really, really can’t have it both ways.

Two Skunks in the Room

“If there had been two skunks in the room . . . .”

I was talking with my pastor-husband about my sermon on this past Sunday. I described it as one so bad that even I couldn't listen to it again and had refused to post it on the church website. I have a faithful following of all of five people who download my sermons weekly and didn't want to inflict this one on them. My beloved husband reminded me of our drive back to Krum Saturday night through the smell of skunk and suggested this description , “If there had been two skunks in the room to perfume the air, I'm sure my sermon stank more.”

OK, we all get a strike out every once in a while. Or actually, we get them pretty often. Saturday night, we had watched the SMU Mustangs take a terrible beating at the hands of the TCU Horned Frogs. By the beginning of the third quarter, most of the SMU students in attendance had already left the stadium. We managed to stay until early in the fourth quarter, and then we jumped ship as well. What had been almost a sell-out crowd at the beginning of the game had shrunk to a handful of SMU loyalists and a fair number of exuberant TCU fans.

So what did the Mustang team do on Monday? Did they all quit? Did they declare the glass half-empty and then see no place for hope or improvement? After all, they lost. We could even say they “failed.” Or, did they see the glass as half full? Did they show up at practice, watch the game films in all their painful honesty, evaluate their mistakes, and then get back to work? I'm guessing they went back to work.

We live in a world that shuns failure. We see it as the worst thing that can happen rather than something that may open up to us a whole new world of possibilities. We think we should avoid failure at all costs, and see success as the only thing that counts.

But in the Kingdom of Heaven, we've already all failed. The Bible makes this quite clear: we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Everyone one of us. Then we learn three words that transform failure into something very different: grace, forgiveness and reconciliation. By appreciating grace, receiving and giving forgiveness, and engaging in processes that lead to reconciliation, success is birthed through failure. By taking those three words fully into our lives, ordinary people do extraordinary things. Ordinary people, you and me: we are the ones who do these extraordinary things: we love our enemies, we do good to those who harm us, we forgive those who hurt us, we turn the other cheek, we go the second mile.

I work hard at my sermons. People who attend worship deserve to hear the best that I can offer. Sometimes I do manage the home run—and sometimes, despite determined efforts, much time, disciplined study and prep time, it just doesn't come together. I strike out. A failure. Either an opportunity to wallow in failure or to celebrate grace.

Each of us has significant failures in our lives. Each of of us has blown it multiple times. That's the nature of life in a broken world. The real issue is not the failure itself. It is what we will do with the failure. Will we beat ourselves up and label ourselves “failed”? Or will we get back in the game again, by the means of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation?

The invitation from God says, “Try the kingdom of heaven way. Here, and only here, does the half-empty glass turn into the place of promise and possibility.”

The Wedding Planner

In the last week, two different people approached me about the possibility of serving as the pastor who would officiate at their wedding ceremonies.  Neither were members of my church, but that is where the commonality ended.

Like many other clergy, I will not perform a wedding without fairly extensive pre-marital counseling.  I might not be able to talk someone out of a marriage that I think is unwise, but I can at least offer some tools to help the couple work through the inevitable problems that will arise.  A wedding also involves making sure the bride and groom get the kind of ceremony they want, writing the wedding message, orchestrating the rehearsal, performing the ceremony itself and often attending the reception.  On occasion, it also means cleaning up the church afterward to make sure it is ready for church services the next day.  I estimate that all this takes between 20 and 30 hours of my time.  Weddings also mean working on Saturdays, and generally Friday evenings as well because of the rehearsal, so they cut into the few precious hours I have with my husband.  So, while I'm delighted to serve church members this way, I have to think it over before agreeing to do a wedding for those outside this church. 

The first request came from a couple who sit in front of my husband and me at the SMU football games we attend each year.  We've both had those seats for three years now, and enjoy exchanging pleasantries with each other, but never learned each other's names.  The bride-to-be approached me by email with great respect, telling me how much they especially enjoy my husband's good voice when singing the SMU Alma Mater, knew that what she was asking was an imposition, and told me that she would consider it a great honor if I would perform the ceremony, scheduled in December at the chapel on the SMU campus.

The second request came from someone who had found the church on the Internet, told me that she was looking for a church where she could be married late in October and asked to use the church and for me to perform the ceremony.  She gave the impression that this was her last choice, and that she was pretty desperate.

In both cases, I emailed back explaining my policy of not doing marriages without premarital counseling and offered dates when these sessions might take place.  The young woman from SMU immediately agreed to the suggested schedule and offered graceful thanks for my willingness to do this.  The second person said that the times I was available were inconvenient to her and asked me to meet on weekends, effectively meaning that I would give up multiple days off in order to make sure her wedding took place at minimal inconvenience to her.  There were no words of thanks, no particular respect given to the many years of training and education necessary for me to be in the position of being able to perform a wedding ceremony, and no understanding at all that her schedule was not the only one that mattered here.

I found the differences in these two requests to be intriguing, and perhaps insightful as to why our prayers to God may often go unanswered.  How often do I go to God demanding that God perform on my time schedule?  How often do I insist that God give me what I want when I want it?  How oblivious am I to the fact that getting what I want when I want it might be detrimental to the well-being of others?  I believe God's love for us is so powerful that it pleases God to give good gifts to us.  Could it be that God's pleasure in giving good gifts increases when we chose by our words and actions to give honor and praise to God?  Could it be that God gets tired of our demandingness and might appreciate a little gratefulness?  It makes sense to me.

The rest of the story here--I will be doing the wedding for the couple from SMU.  But after a few emails back and forth with the other bride-to-be, I chose to decline to perform the ceremony.  I most sincerely hope she found a place and a pastor, but I decided not to re-arrange much of my life for her.  I made this decision sadly.  Let's hope we can all learn something from this.

The Mysterious Movement of the Spirit

This past Sunday, we who were in worship got to experience a moment of mystery and joy together. After learning that the children in the orphanage in the Republic of Congo where Brittany Burrows is serving as a Volunteer in Mission for a year had no mosquito nets, no sheets on their beds, and little food, Charles Willison decided to scrap his planned children's message.

The Spirit moved him and he responded.

He gave each of the children a quarter and then offered them several options for the use of that quarter. They could certainly keep it and buy something for themselves. Or put it in a piggy bank. Or perhaps they could see if anyone in the congregation would be willing to take that quarter in exchange for a $10 bill or a check for $10 in order to purchase one of the 30 mosquito nets needed by the orphanage.

Charles asked for those in the congregation who might be willing to make such an exchange to raise their hands. He then sent the children out to hand over their quarters and pick up the money and checks.

I wish you could have seen what I saw. Hands up all over the place. People quickly reaching for their checkbooks and looking to see if they might have the cash on them to make the exchange. The children busily ran back and forth, exchanging their quarters for the pieces of paper, each representing the hope of health for an impoverished child across the ocean. The children ran out of quarters, and many gave up their exchanged quarters so others could participate in this magical moment. Joy filled the air as it became clear that Brittany would be able to buy the nets she needed.

That money was set aside to be counted separately from the general offering and from the communion offering. About an hour after the service was over, our faithful counters gave us the results: over $1000 was given! I immediately emailed Brittany and told how much had been raised and told her to buy the nets. She wrote in response:

Oh my goodness that is so wonderful!! This is huge news, these kids have never had mosquito nets and the rainy season is about to get here so malarial mosquitoes will be swarming. This is a miracle! I haven't looked into prices yet, but I think we might even be able to buy sheets for them with that money, maybe some other things too, at least food. Wow ...I am overjoyed. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures so they can see what their money did.

Thank you, you wonderful congregation. God nudged and you responded. Lives have been saved and children across the world have been blessed. We'll never know the fullness of this blessing, but just imagine that one of those children who will now be spared the devastation of malaria might someday be the one who finds a way to feed thousands or a way to cure cancer or becomes a politician who fights for justice and righteousness. We'll never know . . . but God does.

Thank you.

“A Better Life?”

“We want a better life for our children.” I wonder how many times this phrase has been spoken by the various political candidates as the presidential race goes into hyper-speed. Each time, I also wonder what that means. I know I have said the same thing—I too want a better life for my children. Or at least I say I do. But what is it that I want to be better?

If it means a safer, more physically comfortable one, one without major life challenges, or without experiences or want or hunger or thirst or poverty or risk-taking or failure, we are setting ourselves and our children up for disaster. It is those very challenges that develop character and create better people.

You may have heard about the nine-year-old New Haven, Connecticut baseball player, Jericho Scott, who was recently told he had to leave his league team because he pitched too well. Rationale from the parents on the teams that inevitably lost when they played Scott’s team went something like this, “He’s too good. Our children get discouraged when they have to play against someone that good.” By the way, it was couched in terms of safety—he might hit one of the children with his 40 mph fastball. Note: he has yet to hit a child with a wild pitch. But, of course he might.

Oh my, how sad. So what happens when these children face other obstacles in life where they are outmatched? Do mommy and daddy insist that those other obstacles just disappear so their little one never has to be discouraged? Probably—all in the name of giving their children a better life. Such a scenario guarantees weak, unchallenged, unmotivated children who do not know how to keep trying, or how to get up again after failure and learn something from it.

Many bad things might happen, just as this talented youngster might someday throw a wild pitch and end up bruising the batter. Do we create a better life for our children by protecting them from the things that might happen or do we create a better life for them by equipping them with wisdom and education and experiences that will give them the resources to face life’s complications? Of course, this is not always an “either/or” situation. There are things we need to protect them from in order to be good parents and grandparents and caregivers. I would suggest, however, that to protect them from failure, from feeling bad, from losing to someone better or more skilled, from being hungry or thirsty on occasion, from wanting something and not getting it, from knowing that all living things must die for the world to go on, will end up with a group of young people with almost no internal equipment to face their lives.

No matter how much we wish to deny it, we live in a world that seems full of random events. Hurricanes will form during hurricane season—and some of the will land in populated areas. Tornadoes, floods, volcanic eruptions, even meteor strikes, cannot be controlled or avoided. They happen. If nothing else, wild weather always reminds us that our hope of controlling the world—or making a perfect life for our children—is simply an illusion. Instructions found in the Bible about rearing our children insist that the best gift we give our children is the gift of wisdom. In this way, the ‘better world” is one in which they use that wisdom to face their hurricanes—or better pitchers—and become stronger and more capable in the process.

Lies or Truths?

There is a form of literature called “hagiography.” Somewhat like a biography, it is the telling of the story of a person’s life that deliberately accentuates his or her sainthood, or special gift of goodness and closeness to God. That kind of writing idealizes a person. No one can tell the full story of someone in a biography, but the hagiography intentionally picks and usually exaggerates the supernatural connection and decisions and accomplishments that seem beyond those that most normal humans can do.

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article for the Denton Record Chronicle musing on the song, “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” Today, I believe that in addition to our love, people will also know we are Christians by our willingness to tell the truth about ourselves. In other words, we as Christians must stop being our own hagiographers.

I write this because of my disgust over a recent YouTube segment. I will not reveal the details except to say that someone I knew was being introduced by a well-known TV evangelist. The evangelist said things about this individual which cast the person in a glowing, holy light of special insight into and heroic obedience to the will of God. Implication: “you, too, can be blessed this way if you will make the same decisions.” But it was, at best, a highly sanitized stretch of the reality. At worst, it was a pack of lies. I don’t know if the speaker didn’t know the truth, or if the individual had presented this version of life in this new setting. I do know that this was hagiography at its best—or at its worst, as the case may be.

It’s hard work to live as a Christian. It takes discipline and practice and repetition and intentionality to consistently live in the holy light of God and to speak truth. We all battle the human tendency to hide and blame others and be irresponsible and to stretch the truth so we look better. The entrance into the Christian world of grace and intimacy with God brings with it the understanding that since we have been reconciled to God, then we must also reconcile with the world around us. That kind of reconciliation demands that we forgive as we have been forgiven, that we love our enemies, serve others with generosity and lay down our lives for those who don’t deserve it. Not one easy thing to do among that list, and every single person fails repeatedly in the process of learning to be a mature and integrated Christian. It is grace, not our performance, that keeps us going. It is grace that gives us the courage to pick ourselves up yet once more, dust ourselves off, know that God still loves us, and head out again to offer bold righteousness and transforming love to the world around us.

When we write our own hagiographies and set ourselves up as models of Christian living and say, “See, it’s so easy. Do what I do and you will get all these blessings,” then we have done a terrible disservice to the community around us. By our lies, we set people up to be disappointed with God.

I admit that this tirade is clearly aimed at those who preach the “prosperity gospel,” particularly the TV preachers. They parade behind unimaginable riches, gleaned from the nearly empty checkbooks of the vulnerable people they prey upon. With perfect hair and teeth glaringly white, clothed in expensively tailored clothes, having traveled in comfort in private jets, they say, “Send me more money and you, too, can live like this. Because if you are not, God is not blessing you.” And it is all a lie.

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Well, let us get free from those who would prey upon the vulnerable. Let us get free from those who write their own hagiographies and then preach riches as blessings. Let us get free to love.

Homework and Grace

School has started and we’ve all seen much buzz about the Dallas Independent School District’s new grading policy. My first reaction, like so many others, was simply one of horror. It looked like school administrators were removing any incentive for students to complete homework on time—or even bother to turn it in--or study for tests the first time around, knowing they could take them later without grade penalty or other repercussions.

Later, however, I took the time to read the whole thing, not just the snippets announced on the news or printed in the paper. Reading the whole report much more clearly shows the intent: let’s find a way to help our students learn the material and pass their courses. Let’s make sure that parents know what is happening. Let’s offer the second chance that every one has needed from time to time and see if this will help keep young people in school until they have mastered the basics of education.

The school district is trying to implement what is basic to the Christian world, what I’ve often called “the do-over.” It’s the “do-over” that shows us the grace of God. It is the nature of the good news, announced by the angels on the night of Jesus’ birth: a savior has come and this savior reconnects a broken world and broken people with an unbroken and holy God. In the Incarnation, i.e., the act of God taking on human form, the impossible becomes possible. In the Incarnation, the ultimate “do-over” takes place. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus give the ultimate second chance. And I don’t know one single human being that has not needed a lot of second chances.

However, most of us will ask at some point: when do we stop giving those second chances? Especially when the pattern seems to be set: no preparation, no forethought, no mindfulness, no consequences, and continued failure, be it academic or moral. Again, when I first heard of this policy, my immediate thought: no employer will ever again want to hire a graduate from the Dallas ISD. I myself am a proud DISD graduate, so this is not a pleasant thought.

Who would want to hire someone who always assumes that someone else is going to clean up his or her messes? Who wants an employee who has never taken real responsibility for personal failure and expects the system to always smooth the path in front without ever having learned the lessons from the past? Nobody—nor is this what the new homework/test policy advocates. But is this what the church teaches with its emphasis on the grace of God and the endless forgiveness promised by the good news of Jesus Christ? Is that what we get: a free “bye” on responsibility because we live in a world of grace?

I can just hear the Apostle Paul yelling out, “May it never be!” For the first century Christians asked the same question: If grace is so free, and if grace grows even more when we sin irresponsibly, then let’s sin with abandon!!!!! No, for then one has only seen just the surface of a grace-filled life. Real grace offers much more than that. It offers not only the second chance, but also the opportunity to grow through that. Real grace is only understood when we face squarely the messes we have made and then do two things: First, we acknowledge the sorrow of the wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness—which is freely given by God. Second, while walking with a light and free step in the midst of that forgiveness, we receive the consequences and discover growth opportunities through them.

In other words, we grow up. There are times when it looks like much of the world has forgotten that childhood is not supposed to last forever. But more on that another time. In the meantime, let’s just all do our homework and study for our tests. If we mess up, let’s hope that the second chance does appear, and receive it gratefully when offered. And then be sure and give that second chance to everyone else. That could change your life.

Church At It's Best

Why bother with church? Why take the time to get involved in something that seems to have little practical value, takes up time, requests your contributions, and asks you to offer worship and praise and adoration to a Supreme Being whom you cannot see or touch and who often seems confusing and invisible?

Well, I can think of dozens of reasons for all people to engage in the discipline of good faith development, but there is one that has particularly struck me this summer. As I wrote several weeks earlier, it has been a summer of sorrow for me as I’ve both presided over and attended many funerals, as well as hearing about severe illnesses of good friends. After I wrote that column, another beloved member of our congregation died. I found myself unable to stop my own tears of grief for days and days afterward. It just seemed too much loss.

In the middle of that sadness, I also saw the church at its best. The loving community moved forward to show the hope of the kingdom of heaven in support, action, prayer, worship and comfort. As we mourned our loss together, that outpouring of love and service also pulled back the curtain just a bit so that we could see more clearly what it really is like to live in the unfathomable loving presence of our God.

There are three major transition times in people’s lives when the tendency is strongest to turn to a place of worship: birth, marriage and death. Shortly after a child is born, many parents, whether regular church-goers or not, will seek either to have the child baptized or dedicated, depending upon the church tradition. At the time of marriage, many people, whether regular church-goers or not, will seek out a church and pastor for the ceremony, recognizing that marriage vows really are sacred and need to be celebrated in a place of worship. At the time of death, many families, whether regular church-goers or not, will turn to a pastor or request the funeral home to provide one in order to have a place to make sense of their loss and find hope for the life to come.

But church at its best happens when, at the time of life’s transitions, the church community is already in place. The word “family” takes on a whole new meaning. People you have served with and worshipped with and eaten with and sometimes even argued with then come forth to stand with you, offer hugs and meals, extra care and multitudes of prayers on your behalf. Church at its best means that many arms are extended to hold you up when you lose the strength to do that for yourself. Church at its best means that a call to begin a prayer chain will within hours create large circles of comfort and help, even from those whom you barely know, simply because you do worship together. Church at its best means you will later give that same gift to others when the transition moments of their lives take their breaths away as well.

Church at its best is better than anyplace else because it is the doorway to the place of true grace. Church at its best happens when people bring both their own best and their own worst into the community and experience together the transformation of grace offered through Jesus Christ. Church at its best happens when we bother with church.

The Holy Meal

I recently heard about a movie named “Kids” where, according to the reviewer, “a band of teen-agers forages for sex, drugs, and booze on New York City streets.” Daily, the kids drank and smoked, and grabbed the always available fast food. The young people portrayed in this movie were apparently not an underprivileged group. Money was freely available. What they didn’t have, and what particularly troubled the reviewer, was the experience of regularly sitting down to a family meal. Meals were the ordered on the whim without concern for others. Each person ate in isolation. Without manners or grace, they shoved the grease-laden food almost furtively down their throats. This disturbing picture is becoming way, way too common.

Residents of this fast food nation of ours are rapidly discarding the convention of the family meal. Food is grabbed on the go, gobbled down in the car, eaten hurriedly at sports events, or mindlessly in front of the TV, and prepared so that no one has to encounter unfamiliar food or something disliked. The family meal is on its way out.

The family meal: that time when everyone present in a given household, and not necessarily related, sits down in quietness and intentional conversation, eats what has been prepared with gratefulness and good appetite, and shares what is there, whether it be plenty or scarce.

The family meal: the place where sharing and consideration of others become visible graces. Food is served out of common dishes, passed from person to person. One person taking too much means someone sitting right next to them may go without. It is where table manners are caught by loving example and gentle correction.

The family meal: the ideal time to celebrate our humanness, learning from and listening to one another, rather than acting like wild animals, grabbing first what is available and slinking away when satisfied.

The family meal: perhaps one of the most civilizing forces in society, is being discarded in the name of convenience and busyness. I’ve heard stories of people being denied employment simply by the observance of a lack of table manners. Weight gain plagues most of us because food, instead of being savored and really tasted at a given time and place and in the company of others, is poured unthinkingly down our throats in ever expanding quantities.

Much religious observance centers on the meal. In Christianity, the family meal has been codified in what is called the Mass, the Eucharist, the Service of Holy Communion, or The Lord’s Table, depending on the tradition. No matter the name, each can be called “the holy meal.” In each case, no matter what the tradition, the meal is communal. It is never to be consumed alone. There must always be at least two in attendance. No matter how small a morsel of bread, or how tiny the drop of liquid (wine or grape juice, again depending on the tradition), those morsels are partaken thoughtfully and gratefully in the presence of others.
This is the place we intentionally encounter the living presence of God. It is not to be entered into lightly. Again, different traditions do this differently, but in the United Methodist Church, the invitation to partake is extended to all. We say, “Come . . . come to this table that has been set for you. Lay down the many things distracting you for a bit. Come, savor the love of God and the grace given to you. Come, partake, receive.”
Ideally, the family meal should reflect the holy meal. Come, lay down the distractions. Come, savor the love that prepared the food, whether it be simple bread and water, or a feast fit for royalty. Come, eat with others and listen to their hearts while offering your own.

The re-engagement of that one act alone could turn our society around. Let’s give it a try.

The Courage to be Light

I learned earlier this week about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s death and offered prayers of gratefulness that such a man of courage and integrity could emerge from the corrupt regime of the former Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror. Solzhenitsyn fought in WWII as a Soviet Officer, and was held in high regard by his fellow officers. However, he, as did thousands and perhaps millions of others, landed in one of the many prison camps set up by Stalin.

Solzhenitsyn, unlike so many others, managed to survive, and wrote extensively of his experience. Knowing that anything he actually wrote in the camps would be taken from him—and that years would be added onto his sentences—he would write and then memorize what he wrote before he destroyed it. Using something similar to a set of rosary beads, he memorized over 10,000 lines of poetry which he was then able to reproduce after gaining his freedom.

All that was courageous enough, but the real courage came when he continued to speak out against the repressive government and continued to publish his revealing words despite threats of further imprisonment. He spent many years in exile in the US, but eventually returned to his beloved Russia and lived the rest of his life there.

I have long admired him and have read and re-read many of his works. His Russian Orthodox Christian underpinnings informed his writings. His passion for righteousness in the face of injustice permeated all he wrote. His flawed characters—and some of those were certainly autobiographical—struggled mightily with their own integrity and the price of remaining honest. How much easier to compromise with those in power and perhaps gain an extra crust of bread or a more cushy job in the camps! Only a little informing on one’s cell mates and perhaps a warmer blanket to keep out the Siberian cold might be his! Oh yes, only a little thing—just to be more comfortable.

Again, Solzhenitsyn survived. Most didn’t. The ones who did were the ones more likely to compromise their souls for a bit more food or warmth. This man decided his integrity was worth more than such things, and he was lucky to come through it alive.

His life and death speak to us as they echo the call of Jesus to those who would be his disciples. This high calling demands much and promises little comfort. Yet it also promises formation of character in a way that our lives become powerful messages of hope. That kind of character only comes through challenge and hardship. Those who choose to face those challenges with that kind of courage show us the way of Jesus. Not all will be as famous as Solzhenitsyn, but all can follow that path, and emerge, as did he, as a light that leads those around to the holy light of God.

In the Midst of Sorrow

“In the midst of life, we are in death; from whom can we seek help?” Those are the words that begin a Service of Committal, the time after death when the loved one is either buried or cremated. “In the midst of life, we are in death.”

How true those words are, first written in a ninth century prayer book. So where does our help come from? The service goes on to read, “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.” It is so often at times of death that people do turn to the name of the Lord, the creator of all, the Holy One who holds together the entire universe.

I’m not sure what it is about the month of July, but it seems to be a time when many do die, especially the elderly. I have spent much of the last few weeks at the bedside of the dying, comforting the families, preparing and attending funeral services. In conversation with several clergy friends, I find that they, also, have an unusually heavy load of funerals right now. In the last two weeks, I have lost two friends whom I had been privileged to know in these last few years, a high school classmate of my brother, and my mother just phoned with the news of yet another death of someone I had known since early childhood.

And late last week, I found that a friend whom I’ve known as soul mate has developed a particularly virulent and fast-acting form of leukemia. She was in New York City when it was discovered, was immediately put into a hospital there and is now undergoing heavy, heavy blasts of chemotherapy.

I long to be at her bedside, but cannot leave here right now, so I’ve been calling her daily. In today’s conversation, she said, “I am just beginning to understand that I probably won’t make it through this.” Yes, in the midst of life, we are in death.

Our help? It is in the name of the Lord. The worship service goes on to say, “God, who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your moral bodies also through the Spirit that dwells in you.”

This is the hope that Christianity offers to the world that cannot be found elsewhere: Christ was indeed raised from the dead. In that act, death lost its sting. Because there is a resurrection, because our mortal bodies will indeed put on immortality, death has lost its victory.

Does it hurt when we have to say these final good-byes to those whom we love? Oh my—the pain is so great that sometimes I wonder how we bear it. But we, who call upon Jesus as Lord, do above all have hope. And so in our final prayer at the graveside we say, “Gracious God, we thank you for those we love but see no more. Receive into your arms your servant and grant that increasing in knowledge and love of you, they may go from strength to strength in service to your heavenly kingdom though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

May all who find themselves in sorrow discover anew the words of hope.

Still Drugging Our Children

A few months ago, I wrote about my concern that normal teen-aged rebellion is now being considered a mental illness to be treated with drugs that would make youth more compliant. In a recent news release, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that children as young as eight start routinely being given cholesterol-lowering drugs, and that babies as young as one year old be switched over to lowfat milk. By the way, they also note this: “The academy has long recommended against reduced-fat milk for children up to age 2 because saturated fats are needed for brain development.” However, these wise pediatricians have apparently decided that brain development is far less important than weight issues.

These recommendations come “from recent research showing that cholesterol-fighting drugs are generally safe for children.”

Kudos to the American Academy of Pediatrics—by all means, let us grow up a nation of skinny teens and adults whose brains stay at a childlike level so they’ll happily accept whatever expensive drug therapy next devised by the ever-hungry-for-profits pharmaceutical companies. By all means, let us routinely give “generally safe” drugs to our children while having no idea what the long-term impact of such drugs would be. Great idea! Why worry about proper food and good exercise when we can just give a pill instead?

Yes, I’m being sarcastic.

And yes, childhood obesity is a problem and seems to be getting worse. And yes, we are a nation of overweight people who live with the consequences of those extra pounds. My son, who currently lives in France and has spent much of the past five years in South American and Australia, was here in the States for a visit recently. His comment to me, “Wow, Americans really are big aren’t they?” The years away give him a different set of eyes.

Here, as always, I am reminded again of the wisdom contained in the Bible. Wisdom that reminds us that gluttony and greed—the need for more and more, well past the satisfying of necessary and important needs—sets us up for unhappiness and failure. When unrestrained gluttony and greed are mixed with laziness and the desire for a quick fix, i.e. an easy to swallow pill rather than the hard work of changed habits, then we’ve left behind the wisdom of God’s word to us. We’ve exchanged wisdom for foolishness, and we all pay the price.

Right now, it looks like the ones getting most hurt are our children. It’s time to stop this craziness.

Afflict the Comfortable

“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That phrase often serves as a succinct job description for those who serve as church pastors. The “comfort the afflicted” part is easy to understand. But the “afflict the comfortable” part carries complex implications. One of which is that most pastors could easily be considered “comfortable” so any affliction we think we are to put upon others should rightly land in our own laps as well.
While the Bible abounds with words of great comfort—Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” being a well-known example—it also abounds with words of admonition and challenge. If we want the words of comfort, we must also receive the words of admonition. And that’s where things get a little sticky.

Some of the most pointed words remind us that we don’t get a “bye” where suffering is concerned if we really want to be followers of Jesus. He told his followers, “The student is not greater than the teacher.” Now, I suspect that a lot of students like to THINK they are greater than their teachers, but they are not. The point: if Jesus could not escape suffering and being called evil and being hated, the students, i.e., those who follow Jesus, shouldn’t expect to find it much easier.

So why did so many people hate Jesus? Because, among other things, Jesus unmasked their hypocrisy, their pretend lives, the times they had taken the easy path of compromise with the pressures of the world around them rather than the hard path of standing up and saying, “No, this is not right. I will not go that direction.” Every culture, every time, every people group presents temptations to give us, to do things that seem to make life easier, to compromise the basics of living as full humans as God created us. In the first century, the temptations were to just get along with the ruling class so their taxes would not get higher and their burdens greater. So what if “getting along” meant a little cheating, a little lying, a little mistreatment of certain people, a little winking at those who just pretended to be religious in order to gain favor and position. What difference would it make if their comfort levels could be increased?

Oh yes, what difference would it make? According to Jesus, it means the difference between life and death, between living in the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of hell. And people really, really didn’t like those words. They are just too hard—and the best way to stop them is to get rid of the person who is bringing them.
As I look around the world today, those similar compromises are all around us. The ones that concern me the most are the compromises we’ve made where children are concerned. It seems that we’ve permitted the media to make decisions about the moral base that our children will build their lives upon—and that, in my opinion, is a very, very shaky base. The hyper-sexualization, the glorification of violence, lack of respect for intellectual attainment, nearly complete disregard for the necessity of building healthy spiritual lives for our children and youth.

Oh yes, we are comfortable. And we may be destroying the next generation in our comfort.

The Gospel of Flowers

I was doing a bit of housecleaning and realized that I needed to discard some flowers that had passed their prime. This lovely grouping had been given to me by some special friends on the day of my long-awaited ordination, June 10, 2008. I had been enjoying them daily each morning as I sat at my dining table and enjoyed breakfast. But, as happens for all live things, decay was setting in. Time for them to land in the compost pile; there to more fully decompose and eventually give life to something else.

This action prompted me to reflect a moment on my ordination. I have often said that I worked for ten years to get to this point, but it is really much, much longer. Really since my first discovery of a life alive to God when I was a student at Rice University—and that is MANY more than ten years ago. There, in the gentle embrace of a small Baptist church, I experienced powerful, redemptive love. We Rice students were their life, their ministry. They gave themselves away for us. They fed us, drove us places, kept us overnight, offered their wisdom and friendship and time and energy for us. All who came through that ministry were touched for life; some of us went into the life of vocational Christian ministry.

About 15 years ago, I contacted that church to let them know the power of their ministry in my life. With great graciousness, they invited me into their pulpit, and I was able to see familiar faces and again sense the power of their love. Just a small, obscure Baptist church, knowing their call: care for those Rice students. They had no idea how all this would turn out. They just knew what they were supposed to do at that point in their lives.

Surely it must have been frustrating to them. I so well remember the choir director working vainly to teach me to sing harmony. I never did catch on, despite multiple private lessons. And our Sunday School teacher, a man of enormous learning (he himself had a Ph.D. in chemistry from Rice University), wondering if he could ever pound into our heads even the basics of Christian faith and how to integrate our faith into our academic and personal lives.

Work with university students is so transient—we come, we learn what we can, we graduate, we move away. Never are we contributing members; never can we support the church financially, or with many acts of service. Barely surviving academically, still highly immature socially and emotionally, living financially precarious lives, we turn to them for comfort and support. Just a bunch of takers, really.

Yet for those fellow “takers” that I have remained in contact with, I notice that we have all eventually turned into a bunch of givers. We are living out the pattern set for us—serve where we are planted, give all we’ve got, don’t worry about ensuring the outcome, but know this is the path of real joy. Very much like those flowers now in the compost pile: give away the joy of their color and brightness, represent the love of my friends, and then die in a way to bring even more nourishment and life to others.

The gospel of flowers. The gospel of Jesus.

My Treasures, His Junk

By the time this article comes out, I will have changed residences.  In the last several weeks, the Krum United Methodist Church has sold the parsonage, the house where the pastor lives, and purchased another one. So, it is time to pack up and move.

For a United Methodist pastor, the act of moving is not unusual.  We have a strong heritage of itinerant ministry, where the pastors go where and when most needed for the good of the larger connection.  John Wesley, that great and visionary man of God, began this practice in order to make sure that  rapidly growing churches had pastors. These were churches full of people who had discovered that the observance of certain methods (it is from these “methods” that the word “Methodist” emerged) of spiritual discipline and practice brought them to a much greater experience of the transformational love of God and a willingness to  bring that transformation to the world around them.  Pastors serving under John Wesley's leadership moved frequently, and did so willingly in order to most effectively serve God and the community of Christians.

Because my husband and I are both United Methodist clergy, we've been particularly prone to moves, and have become pretty good at the packing/unpacking process.  Nonetheless, the same issues surface with each move.  Simply put, here is the oft-repeated scenario:

Christy:  “My beloved, since we are moving again, don't you think this would be a good time to sort out some of your stuff and get rid of things you don't want or use any more?”

The Beloved Spouse:  “No.”

Christy:  “But my sweet one, this is such a good time to go through your things, and toss out all those unnecessary things.”

The Beloved Spouse:  “What unnecessary things?”

Christy:  “Oh my adorable one, you know—all that junk that you have—the papers and stray nails and odd tools and old magazines and all those empty boxes you collect.”

The Beloved Spouse:  “And your junk?”

Christy: “What junk?”

The Beloved Spouse: “Your books and your paintings and all those pots you save just in case you need one for another plant . . .”

Christy, (interrupting):  “My precious one, please, wait just a minute—those things aren't junk—those are beautiful and valuable.”

The Beloved Spouse:  “My stuff is beautiful and valuable to me.”

Christy:  “C'mon—it's just junk.”

The Beloved Spouse:  “Not to me.”

OK, by this point in the conversation, I'm beginning again to catch the picture.  The two of us have very different opinions as to what constitutes “junk.”  It's all in the point of view—my things are treasures, his things are junk.  Except they aren't junk to him.  Nor do my things look like treasures to him.

So, as I often do, I must return to the basic command in the Bible about how to relate to other people:  “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  I suspect that “husband” and “wife” are included in the term, “neighbor.”  Love my husband as I love myself.  Love my wife as I love myself.  Since I want to make room for my treasures, that means I need to make sure there is room for my husband's junk . . . sorry, for my husband's treasures.  

This is about living the Christian life in the trenches.  While I love the luminous moments of inspiring worship and connection with God, those moments must be informed by the day-to-day interactions of generous, open-handed living.  Those are the things that bring us into the space known as “the kingdom of heaven.”  Jesus often told his followers, “the kingdom of heaven is all about you.”  We find it when we really do love our neighbors as ourselves.

Time to go pack my husband's junk . . . I mean “treasures!”

Cooperation: Two Way Traffic to Life

Why doesn’t God_______? You fill in the blank—you’ve probably asked the same question. Why doesn’t God heal the sick and stop the tragedies and right the wrongs and turn back evil and make everything nice? Yes, why doesn’t God?

Well, that question isn’t going to be answered in one short column. There are libraries full of books trying to answer that question as people wrestle with the whole issue of evil and nastiness and horror and general yuckiness in a world that is declared “good” by a God who is also declared “Good.”

My own take on it is that God could easily make everything good again, but we’d just mess it up again because people really don’t want to be all that good themselves. There is one point in the Bible where Jesus tells his followers to get busy and get out there and heal the sick and raise the dead and cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. All those things surely sound like turning the world good again. But right after Jesus tells them to get going, he also tells them that some people really aren’t going to be happy about being cleansed and healed and alive and demon-free and are not going to offer any welcome to those coming for such tasks.

Why? Because getting healed and cleansed and being alive and demon free are not one way actions that come only from God to us. We have to cooperate in getting healed and being clean and staying alive and demon free. It’s a two-way street here—traffic has got to flow both ways for it to work.

This spring when I was in France, my son and I wanted to drive into the center of a very old town. To get there we had to pass over a small bridge and go inside what were the original city walls, built to hold off invaders. The street through the city was very, very narrow, and traffic could only flow one way at a time, yet there were entrances on both sides of the town. So the street was always one way, but it changed directions every few minutes. It was the only way it could work. It meant long waits as the stop light on one side of town let in a series of cars. Those cars had to get through the town and out the other side before that light could turn green and let in a few going the other way. A bit cumbersome for this normally rapid moving American, but it worked. Everyone cooperated with the need for two way traffic in a one-way town. Cooperation—it means things go both ways.

I really can’t see any difference between the need for traffic cooperation and the need to cooperate with the Spirit of God. We’re constantly being offered healing, cleansing, life and freedom from our demons. But to be healed means actually receiving the healing—and then living like well people. To be cleansed means getting bathed, and then getting bathed again and again and again, because we all get dirty all the time. To be made alive means leaving behind the things that lead to death and intentionally living in the light the holy call to be fully human. To be free of our demons means we no longer show hospitality to the things which destroy us and those around us, but say “no” to those destructive forces.

It takes two of us, but many just start and stop with “Why doesn’t God ...” and never get to “why don’t I . . .” and then never see that God is doing those things—we’re just not cooperating.

Promiscuous Love

The Bible simply abounds with stories about people who really seem unlovable that God just decides to love anyway. One writer has described this as “God’s promiscuous love,” i.e., a love that seems to show no discernment and gets scattered anywhere, to such a point that it almost seems immoral. I mean, some of those people really, really don’t deserve to be loved.

Well, at least I don’t think they deserve to be loved. Here are a few I can think of quickly off the top of my head.

I’ll start with Cain—he killed his brother and then lied about it. But God just spares him and makes sure that no one else can take retribution on him and sends him on his way. Now, how about Abraham? Twice, this fellow, traveling with the beautiful wife, arrives in a foreign country and is afraid that someone is going to kill him because his wife is so beautiful and the inhabitants will want her for themselves. What does he do? He tells people that she’s his sister, lets her be taken into a different household and be subject to the whims of other men, and is left sitting pretty and safe. What a jerk.

Lot is another great one. This guy is Abe’s nephew, and ends up living in a place that is pretty degraded morally. He has a couple of visitors one night, and the people in the town want to hurt his guests and violate them sexually. Lots offers his unmarried daughters instead to the townsmen so they can violate his daughters instead. He may win the prize for jerkdom.

Now, to be fair, there are also some women who really have no business receiving God’s love. There’s this story about a woman who is considered ritually impure and anything she touches is also considered dirty and impure. She rashly pushes her way through a crowd to touch Jesus’ clothes. Stupid woman—who is she to be so selfish as to want to make Jesus dirty? Why didn’t she just fade into the background like she should have? But Jesus insisted on healing her. Made no sense to anyone around him then.

All this makes me wonder what Jesus would do today with people who have made a total mess of their lives by stupid decisions and immoral behavior and lack of proper respect for the right way to do things. I have this strange sense that God loves them, too. Promiscuous love—that’s what God is about.