Stop making Christmas into a War

I hear there is a War on Christmas.

It looks like Christmas is winning.

Whenever anybody says to me, “Happy Holidays,” I don’t sneer or take them for a pagan atheistic enemy of all that is good and true. It is not that hard for me to imagine that they mean well. In the same way, I have come to understand, and even appreciate, the thoughtfulness of schools and civic organizations trying to not trample on the feelings of the non-Christian minority in our great nation. That seems kind to me, and good.

And isn’t that what the true meaning of Christmas is supposed to lead to?

If there is a war on Christmas, why is EVERY store on the planet have a Christmas sale? Why is every street corner lit and decorated? Why are Christmas specials taking up space on my TV, and filling up radio stations? Why, if the world is at war against Christmas, have the last six weeks been about nothing else but Christmas?

The world does not hate Christmas. The world loves Christmas, if even for some of the wrong reasons. So why are we trying so hard to hate back?

I am beginning to think that the real war is not against Christmas, but that it is a far more insidious war on the terrible crime of not-being-exactly-like-me. When I hear Christians complaining about the lack of respect given this most wonderful of celebrations, I smell the worst kind of pitiable self-righteousness. An “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” whine that, despite loud protestations, in no way reflects a true understanding of what Christmas is actually about.

Once, as Jesus as his disciples were passing through Capernaum, they spotted a man casting out demons who was not actually a follower of Jesus, neither certified nor vetted nor a part of the “in” crowd. Not doing it in the right way, as it were. But as the disciples railed against him, Jesus stopped them, noting that as long as he was not actively “against” them, he was in fact, “for” them.

And so it is with Christmas still.

Has Christmas become over-commercialized? Over-secularized? Over-Santa-fied? Of course!

Would I rather that everyone knew and worshipped devoutly the child of Bethlehem, the one for whom this day is properly named? No doubt!

But isn’t it amazing, that even among the least religious, church-avoiding of us, there is still a different spirit that flows forth every December, a greater generosity, a warmer personality, a new hopefulness. It is reflected in the most secular of movies, TV shows and Christmas songs – even where Jesus is not known by name, goodwill to mankind abounds. Christmas, it seems, is working, if ever so silently, without fanfare or fame, sowing seeds of a better kingdom to come.

This is not a bad thing.

In recent polls, 90% of Americans report that they believe in God. Two in five say that they attend church services regularly. That is, of course, a lie. Few Americans actually attend church regularly or give or serve or pray or read the bible. If there is a war around religion in this country, we must know that the enemy is not outside the church but inside. It is the hypocritical, pious, slanderous, fear-filled, pettiness of his self-proclaimed followers that poses the greatest danger to the baby King.

But don’t worry – I think he can handle it just fine.

So the next time someone wishes you a “Happy Holiday,” simply respond with a “And Merry Christmas to you,” and go on your way in peace. Do not worry nor fear for Christ or his kingdom, for the angels song is loud enough to make itself heard no matter how they say it.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: Luke 2:10

what I saw on a windy day in Ames

It was a mistake.

During the coin toss, at the start of the Overtime period, the referee asked the player which side of the field they wanted to play. He chose to go against the wind. I think the radio announcer stuttered a little bit then. Against the wind? Into the 20 mile per hour gusts that had disrupted and disturbed the game for the whole day, causing errant passes and strange bounces?

Surely he was mistaken.

Until that final pass, the last ditch attempt, grabbed by that same wind and thrown off course, fluttering into the hands of the opposing team’s player, winning the game for the previously seemingly mistaken player.

So that turned out pretty well after all.

Football may be proof that God is the Lord of all things after all.

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. John 3:8

There is, as it seems to us, a certain randomness to the events of life. Like a strange wind blowing in a football game, there are just too many factors in life beyond our reach, out of our control. For many, that is exactly proof against the existence of any God, for such a divine presence ought to bring a greater order to the creation. Things ought to make sense. There should be no suffering, no wrong, no strangeness, no error. Any God worth his divinity in such thinking would not allow it, but rather bring all things to their proper end by some measure of merit or worth.

There should be no strange winds. But what fun would that be?

In fact, the randomness of life is precisely very proof of the existence of God, found in the knowledge that there are forces that defy control or definition, that will not be subjected to human will or mind. We are merely players in the game, called to give our greatest exertion over forces within our control and our utmost trust in the face of those we cannot.

And to know this:

Somehow, in defiance of logic and physics, God makes from our stumbles, mistakes, faults and brokenness a world and a life. Somehow, though we cannot know how, his Spirit moves through history and time and brings forth the most amazing ends, writes the most wonderful stories, saves us from our greatest foe and delivers us from our own smallness.

God, it seems, laughs even more at our mistakes than he does at the pretension of our plans.

And so the wind blows.

Of Signs

Two adjacent billboards. An treatise on life.

The first, stark white text on dark background. A simple message: The World is Going to End. A citation from the book of Revelations. (chapter one, verse seven) A toll-free phone number, evidently leading to some manner of greater truth possessing the power to assuage the mortal fear struck by the previous message.

I am not brave enough to dial it. Or bored enough.

The second features a lovely young woman, with an enviable figure, clad in the scant attire of a popular eatery’s uniform well-designed to accentuate said figure, with a brief text containing a pun on the word, “cocktail.”

Childhood guilt has kept me from patronizing this particular establishment. Such is life.

Eternal damnation. Sexual titillation.

I cannot help but think sometimes that they got the billboards backwards. Shouldn’t temptation come before condemnation?

The great irony of these seemingly disconnected advertisements is that while they seem completely in opposition, one an appeal to animal lust and the other to religious ecstasy, they are in actuality the same message, the same emotion, the same pitch. They are the same in the way that papal political striving is the same as monastic aesthetic withdrawal. They both assume that life is defined by the same doomed or dooming misery. They both want to know what you’re going to do about it.

And they both want you to know that you should be very afraid.

We call it the lowest common denominator because it Is both low and common, this appeal to fear, this temptation to reptilian instinct. You are being left out, or you will soon be, if you do not … it you will not … Maybe there is something better out there, in the smile of a pretty girl or a glass of alcohol, there is a missing truth that threatens the entire meaning and purpose of your existence, you’re only here for a little while longer, so party!

Or pray.

Which will you choose? “There is nothing better for mortals,” says the writer of Ecclesiastes, “than to eat and to drink and to find enjoyment in their work.” But the Lord also says, “Keep awake!” undoubtedly reminding us that there is peril in our future. It is the classic Lady and the Tiger choice. Or so they tell us.

So which will it be?

Neither. Because we’re better than that.

OK, no we’re not, but we can be. Surely we are mostly small and broken, imprisoned by fear, yet in rare small glimpses, foretastes, whispers, promises, we can be touched by Grace and experience a small bit of a new truth. “Perfect love casts out fear,” says the writer of the Epistle to John. This world’s message of fear can be drowned out in Gospel song, despair replaced by hope, opportunity and service overcoming curvatus in se.

I once was blind, says the old song. As I pass by signs on the side of the this world’s road, I pray to be even blinder.

Do they really think we’re this stupid?

I actually used the word “stupid” in a sermon on Sunday, and it kinda got me started.

I see these commercials on the TV all the time for various medicines, each containing long and frightening lists of assorted side effects and dangerous interactions with other drugs. I watched one the other day where the disclaimer was longer than the pitch itself, containing several frightening symptoms, some of which I had assumed were supposed to be cured by the drug. I was left more interested in avoiding the product than in purchasing it.

And then I hear an ad on the radio explaining to me how Martin Van Buren was a much more successful and important President than Franklin Roosevelt.

Must have been asleep during History class the day they taught that.

I couldn’t help but wonder who the advertisers thought they were fooling. And then it occurred to me that they obviously thought they were fooling lots of people, and probably had done research and testing and had prior experience to convince them that lots of people were out there, just waiting to be fooled.

Well, maybe P. T. Barnum was right after all.

God help us all if this is the end of it.

“See,” said Jesus, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

The subtlety here is almost overwhelming, the interplay between wisdom and innocence, between seeking acumen and avoiding worldliness. But in what may the most challenging question of faith, as in all others, grace provides a way.

There is a dangerous anti-intellectualism in the community of faith, an Amish-like tendency to withdrawal, to avoid the world, to shun modern knowledge, technology. There is a powerful anti-science movement afoot among Christians today, an overblown protective reflex which neither disturbs the facts nor strengthens the witness. It is not avoidable – we live in the world and we must function and work in the world. Just as God sent Christ to be fully incarnate in human life, so we too must be completely and wholly formed and purposeful in the place where we are living. Which means we must be wise, smart enough and savvy enough and informed enough to interact with and connect with and speak to and heal the real world, just as it is. Innocent cannot mean absent.

But also wise.

The far other end of failure is the overt surrender of the faithful to the calculations of the world around them. The world runs on power, so we seek power, the world understands violence, so we preach violence, the world hates, we hate even more. When it becomes impossible to distinguish the voice of faith from the voice of the world, then true stupidity is revealed. We have become what we were called to transform. Christlike wisdom speaks prophetically to the world, it understands the depth of brokenness in its simplest form, it is part of sin which makes it desire all the more to be harmless, inoffensive.

For here is the power of Grace, to make us what we are not. In truth we are neither wise nor innocent, no, we are gullible and malicious. But by grace we are shaped in the form of a cross, that most-worldly instrument of torture and death now transformed into a symbol of life and hope. We do know better, even if we often fall short, we are strengthened against temptation even as it entices us.

Perhaps it seems impossible. But that is the very nature of faith. You just have to be stupid enough to trust in it.

The final victim of 9/11 is you

Now the works of the flesh are obvious… enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions … Galatians 5:19-20

Now, nearly nine years later, comes the final victim of the 9/11 attacks.

It is the soul of America.

The phobia over the building of a Mosque in the neighborhood of the former World Trade site (not a Mosque, not at the World Trade Center site, but whatever) exposes the truly terrifying reality – the terrorists have won.

Do not be fooled: the men who hijacked the airplanes and crashed them into the buildings were not trying to invade New York, to gain a beachhead in lower Manhattan for a later, larger invasion. They are not interested in taking over America – they are only interested in destroying it. This appalling act had only one purpose – to cause the greatest amount of harm and loss of life and so provoke the enemy (that would be us and everyone else) to join them in their cosmic fantasy apocalyptic war. They seek to create hatred, conflict and violence because they feed on hatred, conflict and violence.

I guess they are not getting what they want.

Are we really so foolhardy that we should play into their dark desires, to turn our world and lives into a bloody, never-ending holy war? Are our souls so small and bleak as theirs that we would enjoin the battle on their level?

If we destroy the very last good things of our own – our freedom, our peace – won’t they have won?

Perhaps they have.

Please spare me the commentary about the sacredness of the place. I don’t see protests over the strip club within the same distance of the towers as the proposed Cordoba project. What is sacred in lower Manhattan, what is sacred in any place, is the spirit, the soul of the people who occupy it, the hope, the grace that breathes in the words and actions of those who would be faithful to what is right and true.

The work of lifting up community, of neighborliness, of upholding the best practices of any faith, that is sacred. An opportunity to turn our backs on hatred and violence of every kind, that is sacred. A chance to promote relationships which may further the cause of peace, that is sacred.

I am not surprised that most people oppose the building of the Cordoba Center. I am never surprised by ignorance that is susceptible to fear-mongering, by self-promoting leaders who appeal to the least common denominator of the mob, to bigotry and pettiness that conveniently besmirches a whole people for the acts of a few. After all, aren’t all Mormons bigamists, isn’t every Priest a pedophile, aren’t all old people grouchy and all blonds dim-witted?

Friends, our children are watching us. And all of those long lessons about playing nice, sharing toys, getting along, being good company, are going to waste. We are becoming our own worst enemy, we are allowing our lesser demons full play. We must stop, we must stop now, lest we put the terrorists out of work by accomplishing our destruction by ourselves.

I am not so naïve as to think this is easy. Hatred is less complicated than tolerance, anger is less demanding than love. But we belong to and follow a Savior who is not looking for fainthearted disciples or milquetoast missionaries. His words call us to the higher standard …

I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also … I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Matthew 5:39, 44-45

I pray for the world, for our leaders, for us. Now the battle is joined – not with Islam, but with the devil and with ourselves. May the Good God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep and protect us in these important days.

“Refudiate” the hatred that created Ground Zero in the first place.

There is hubbub brewing over the building of a Mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center tragedy. Should the very enemies who killed thousands of Americans be allowed to erect a religious shrine at the very place of this terrorist attack?

First, it’s not a mosque, but a large (13 story) community center that will include, among other religious places, a Muslim Worship space. Second, it’s two blocks from Ground Zero.

But flagrant lies aside, God has granted us a learnable moment, and now calls us to the possibility to rise above emotion and, yes!, racism, and a step closer to peace.

It is, after all, the extreme intolerance of Jihadism that made 9/11. It was the very notion that some religions, different religions, other religions, are enemies and therefore unworthy that led human beings to fly jet airplanes full of other human beings into buildings to kill many other human beings. It is exactly the delegitimizing of someone else’s beliefs that makes it possible for terrorists to kill others, not soldiers but innocent bystanders, women and children.

How does becoming more like the terrorists overcome their acts?

Is our intolerance not cut from the same cloth? Do we pretend that it will do anything less than continue, perhaps even increase, the worldwide hatred and violence which engulfs our planet like a deepwater oil spill?

Or can we dare the harder way, to make peace?

I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven … Matthew 5:44

There is another way, a way based not on fear but on hope, a path not of devastation but of creation. It is possible to live together as human beings, to allow space for others who are different but still neighbors.

We could build a Mosque at Ground Zero and ask our Muslim brothers and sisters to share our aspiration that what happend there once never happen anywhere again.

Let us be warned of the consequences of our words and acts. If we fail to make a space for moderate Muslims, if we fail to empower and lift up and support “peaceful Muslims,” if we desecrate and demean a whole people based on the acts of a few radicals, then we empower those very elements who would rather destroy us than exist with us. If we cannot be for a peaceful relationship with Islam, then we will surely be locked into a neverending dance of death with it.

No, I think that there must be a Mosque at Ground Zero, if there is to be any hope for the future. I believe that it is our best way forward.

This is one of those rare opportunities where we can be better than we were so our future can be more than our past. Here is a chance to grow a new world for the sake of our children and our grandchildren, one not ruled by our smallness but by the limitless grace that is our gift through our faith in Jesus Christ. This is our time to “refudiate” our hate and fear and be bigger than we really are.

I am sure that the Jesus who called us to love our enemies would lay the first stone for a new Mosque in New York.

What will you do?

Not the Independence Day I will Celebrate

There is a loud and powerful chorus in America today, a refrain that I’m sure has been heard before and will probably and unfortunately, sound again. It is a simple but sad phrase that stains our Independence Day celebrations.

Take our Country Back.

It is the song of the angry and despairing, the hopeless and helpless. It is possible, I suppose that these words are not just political posturing, opportunism, but spoken sincerely, even honestly, from true concern and heartfelt fear.

But these words are wrong. Every single one wrong. Wrong because they are against what America is and should be.

Beginning with back.

Back from what? From rightly, democratically, legitimately elected leadership? Back from anyone who disagrees with my particular viewpoint, stand, position? Validating the rights of opposing ideas to exist and daring to share power with them is exactly the point of open democracy, is it not? America has never been just one place, one thing, one idea. America is built on the very truth of many ideas and the mutual search for the common, the shared, the whole. A different direction cannot be, ipso facto, a wrong direction in America, much less an evil one. It’s just a different one, and no ground for violence, notional or actual.

America is not a favored toy to be fought over in the nursery.

Because it can never be ours.

There is no ours in America. There is a my, a personal patriotism, an ownership of citizenship, duty, responsibility. But there is no ours, no single group of any ilk to which America only belongs, no group or groups with whom it can never be shared. Ours is a great obscenity in a nation of Immigrants, founded by pilgrims unwelcomed and discarded by other nations, ours cannot be claimed by a people carrying the guilt of what was done to the only native peoples who could fairly speak the word ours. What makes this America is precisely the fact that we do not belong here, that we have created a place for all others who do not belong, anywhere, either, who seek with us the freedom to have a home and live a life as best they can.

Which leaves the ugliest word of all. Take.

It is the essential error of human philosophy that we value force above all, that we equate ferocity with strength. In response to threat, apprehension, or loss, there must be force. I cannot have, so I will take. It is the very sin that defines humanity, the very wrong that destroys good everywhere. The loss is not merely to humility or civility, though both are surely destroyed. No, our loss is the loss of Grace, of faith in the larger arc of history and in the God who surely blesses this nation and all it stands for.

For there is not one good thing, of America or of any other thing, that comes from force. What is noble and right comes only by sacrifice, by the gift of self and the hope that it conveys, whether on a green in Lexington or a cross on Calvary or a local polling place. From force comes tyranny, pain and destruction, comes death and end. From giving comes greatness, future, grace.

Those who would take America would destroy her. And that is not the Independence day which I will celebrate this July 4th.

In angry voices today I hear a demand for freedom of a wrong kind, for Independence from the very ideals and responsibilities that define this nation and everything that is good about it. If freedom only means a for-profit-free-for-all or the blind and unworthy pursuit of power at the expense of person or creation, then they have won the day. They have taken America back.

May the God who has so richly blessed this nation grant us freedom from that.

Welcome to the Party

I don’t mean to suggest that all Southern Baptists, or for that matter every Evangelical, is anti-environmental. But it is demonstrably true that these brothers and sisters in Christ, while not shy to speak out on many public issues of religion and morality, have been markedly silent about the devastating pollution of God’s creation.

In fact, some have been surprisingly obstinate to the conversation. Global warming deniers and oil industry sycophants, you know who you are.

Well, at least for the Southern Baptism Conference, no more! No more silence about pollution, no more heads-in-the-sand attitude toward accountability for government and corporations, no more wink-and-nod ignorance about the Biblical and spiritual implications of this problem.

The Deepwater Horizon spill has awakened the beast. I hope.

In a reasonably strong statement this month, the SBC expressed their grief over this tragedy, called on government and corporate interests to work together to resolve it, and acknowledged our common responsibility to God and neighbor in caring for the creation. These words are, I would say, the least that one would expect from any faithful community.

But then hidden within the statement a small, powerful gem of truth, one with the potential to bear an amazing witness to the creating and saving God, a little phrase that could, if taken to heart, change the world:

Our God-given dominion over the creation is not unlimited, as though we were gods and not creatures, so therefore, all persons and all industries are then accountable to higher standards than to profit alone …

Wow. Sin. Now that’s what we need to hear.

Because this is the true tragedy – the Horizon spill is not an accident, not an unforeseeable catastrophe, not a miscalculation of engineering. No, it is the angels of our worse nature brought to bear, the cost of our self-centered, self-serving, greedy-live-only-for-the-moment-and-damn-the-consequences mode of being. Every drop of oil in the Gulf of Mexico today is an incarnation of human wastefulness, intransigence and unwillingness to change.

In the words of the SBC, it happened because we think we are gods and can do whatever we desire to this planet.

And it’s time to be called to the higher standard.

Which brings me to what is missing from their statement, the natural, logical and necessary conclusion to this great simple truth. It is far too simple to decry the problem, cry alas for the suffering, call for repair and rebuilding. To truly understand this moment, to truly appreciate its author, is to call for acts and lives that will justly address it.

The problem is deeper than our addiction to oil. The problem is our willing addiction to oil because it is cheap, easy, and immediately satisfying.

The problem is sin.

Brothers and sisters, you have rightly identified the problem. Now, I pray, come join the path toward the renewal of us all.

to the end

It is a despairing time. Acts of unspeakable planetary despoilment. Racial anger. Corporate greed. Unrepentant corruption in politicians and judges. What does it take to find hope?

A tennis match.

Not just any tennis match. Not a championship match, or a match of champions even, rather two barely noticeable contenders. But the game they played, O, the game they played.

Or should I say games?

For eleven amazing hours, over the course of three days, they were bound together in immortal struggle, neither relenting, neither succumbing, fighting and fighting for that last advantage and victory. It must have seemed as if it could go on forever. But yet they played on, perhaps even knowing that in doing so they were draining themselves of precious resources they might need later.

Under other circumstances, a tennis match might (at most) contain no more than 65 games. The fifth set contained twice that all on its own. How many serves, how many shots, how many near moments? And still they played on.

It was, in part, a throwback approach to tournament that has long since been abandoned in favor of shot clocks, sudden death endings and shoot outs. Our inability to withstand such exquisitely drawn-out anticipation without near satisfaction makes such a show of courage and endurance impossible in this age.

Which is our great loss.

“He who endures to the end,” Jesus said, “shall be saved.”

What if this word is not just a command, but an opportunity, a gift? What if he means us to know that the very act of enduring, of hanging in, of – to put it biblically – remaining, is the very best thing for us, the place of heroism, the fulfillment of created possibility, the awakening of baptismal promise? We seek for ourselves victory, but what if we were created for the long, hard fought, well-played game itself?

Life cannot be won by easy or quick answers, though we would surely prefer it that way. We are mostly crying whiner-babies in the face of difficult challenges, trying desperately to convince ourselves that anger is sufficient to plug the hole in the ocean floor, that merchants and bankers will not bury the world in greed if we just ask them not to, that poverty and hunger will end without sacrifice and health care comes without cost. We have defined freedom to mean that we can have everything we want for free.

Which is just not so.

But one tennis match, one long and enduring tennis match, shows us that there is in this more in this world, a divine spirit that can empower us to be more, that can move us and call us to true and great works. Works that endure. Real works born of real honor that produce real change.

Yes, the match is long and hard. But we need not be champions. We need only be competitors. We need only endure.

Really Big Ten ... Twelve ... Whatever

There has been much talk of late in these parts about affiliation.

The dominant conversation here on my radio and newspaper is about colleges and conference affiliations and the relative values of several different affiliation. There is much gnashing of teeth over the loss of tradition and anticipation of possible futures. It is a reminder of the importance of affiliation, of belonging, of the value of connecting and the importance of seeking out such connections as are most valuable in so many ways.

Which is the problem with affiliations.

They are value-based. Well, what isn’t in this world? It is our essential motivation, our greatest purpose. To value. To find and receive value. To share value, particularly where it returns more value to us. It is the lens, the dogma, the doorway through which we come to affiliate.

What’s in this for me?

Every affiliation, every relationship, every purchase and gift subsists in this narrow category. Every act, every choice, every moment of every day is measured by its value. What did I gain? What did I add?

And this is the source of our every failure. We hope for value that we cannot obtain in this world, we ask for value from those around us that they cannot give, we pretend to add value to the world that we do not have. We have raised this world and each other and our lives to a bar that they cannot pass. We have laid down a standard that cannot be met.

Because we are prisoners of affiliations who do not understand what value is.

The word affiliation does not appear in the Bible. Ever. Anywhere. God is not interested in our affiliations, knowing that we assign them value that does not exist. What matters is not affiliation, not the simple, pragmatic, contractual, careful, casually made and easily broken relationships that we pretend matter.

What matters is love.

Compassion, as Luther translated it, is not an affiliation of value. It is, rather, a gut-wrenching, full body and soul leaping, go all in approach to life and the world around us. It is not a “what could I choose to do?” but a “how could I not?” altitude of existence. It is the fullness of grace, the wholeness of abundant life, the challenge and dare of discipleship.

It is the difference between listening to news about poverty and putting a check in the offering. It is the difference between worrying about pollution and changing the way we use energy. It is the difference between caring about homelessness and picking up a hammer at a Habitat build. It is the difference between a sympathy card and a hug.

And it is what really adds value.

No one has ever been truly changed by an affiliation. Oh, certainly, we’ve shared by, delighted in, been proud of our affiliations, but not changed. It is only profound and intimate places of compassion that have the power to form and move. It is only grace. It is only love.

For what else except grace has the power to move a God of wrath and righteousness to give his own Son to redeem a broken and lost creation? No affiliation of this world or the next can produce such a day.

For we are daily blessed to know a God who does not affiliate with us but loves us, graces us, embraces and sacrifices for us. And perhaps we might, in the midst of our search for affiliation, pause to love as well.

If it might not make much news, it would surely change the world.

The Gospel according to St. Robert

In 1876, embarrassed at his inability to conduct an orderly public meeting, an Army Engineer by the name of Henry Martyn Robert created a set of rules and procedures that we all know as Robert’s Rules of Order.

I have a hard time deciding whether he ought to be remembered a hero or reckoned a scapegoat.

I have no doubt that Robert’s Rules, like every good Parlimentary process, is the skeleton on which good and wise decisions have been assembled. There are, no doubt, many, many episodes where Robert’s Rules constrained conflict unto civility, and even productivity.

Good for Parliaments, Senates and Congresses. A true boon to lawyers everywhere. But a horrible and even dangerous delusion for the rest of us.

The very name gives away its flaw. Robert’s Rules of Order. Of Order. Meant to be particularly useful, acceptable, valuable even, to those moments requiring, capable of, order.

But what of those other places? What of the community of faith?

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 1 Corinthians 1:20

Yes, it was another Synodical gathering this weekend past. In many ways, a reminder of all that is beloved and lovable about the institution of the church, the earnestness, the warmth, the unchanging but ever new stories. But then the gathering becomes a meeting, and we forsake being a church to try to be something else.

Which is that we try to be right.

I don’t mean to be as dismissive of such things as I’m sure I seem. I understand and even trust that the brothers and sisters in Christ who bravely approach the numbered microphones in the hall to speak to the assembly intend good, seek righteousness, believe and mean what they say. What they do not know, what we all dare not say, is that what we seek is not within our grasp.

We wish to be right about God. We wish to be right about God in this life, in this world. We can not. We are not capable in all things, in many things, perhaps even in most things, to be wise, true, right. It is not for to know right – that is the purpose of law, of command. We cannot do right – that is the purpose of Christ.

But more, I believe. When we search for right, we miss the point entirely.

God does not call us to right. He calls us to faith. He calls us, in fact, to foolishness, to weakness, to what must seem undoubtedly wrong. The endless and fruitless search for right turns out to be, in the end, a journey to division, frustration, violence. Death.

Let our search be otherwise. Let it be our search for God.

God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. 1 Corinthians 1:25

Remembering

Sacred places of loved ones
marked by stone
monument
solid, forever
impervious to time
as it should be.
Memories that we will not suffer lost.
Ever.

Marked by flowers
pretty, fragile
fleeting traces of beauty and life
passing through creation moments of joy.
Smiles.
Memories
like humans
drift fragrantly on the wind
only for awhile.

O the Power!
Memories
Strong, lasting, immutable
Fragile
Beauty
living things.

A day
merely a day
but a marker in time
a calling
permanent history
mindful of mortality
we salute you
we give thanks for you
and we remember.

This is why Christians should listen to their politicians

Some people are suggesting that Rand Paul is a racist. If it was only that simple.

Commenting on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a recent interview, Paul noted, “I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant,” Paul said, “but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.”

In the world of “No Government is good government,” business owners must be allowed to discriminate if they choose. Not that we want them to, or like it, or affirm it in any way. But it is the natural outcome of our worship of individual freedom, that we must be willing to tolerate the words and acts of others with whom we disagree for the sake of the greater good. It is not, nor can it ever be, the place of government to tell individuals how to think, what to say, or how to act.

Which is pretty much the problem with the world.

It is assumed, of course, that “market” forces will correct anti-social behaviors, that a business would in time realize that it is unprofitable to discriminate, and change. When I read history it looks to me like slave-owners found racial discrimination rather profitable, but perhaps that’s not what we mean here. Rather, I’m guessing, we are asked to believe that freedom-worshipping people will, by nature of their God-given Free Will, in time, come to do that which is right and best for themselves and society as a whole.

When was the last time that happened?

I have to admit that I love discovering how absolutely right Martin Luther really was. About everything.

The failure of libertarian thinking ought to be self-evident by this point . Where are all the benefits of this great free-will? Where are all the acts of charity and love? Where is the wide-spread prosperity promised by the exercise of an unfettered marketplace?

Mine got buried under a pile of mortgage-based derivatives I guess.

People are not good. No, not even you. Occasionally they do good things, but that does not make them good. No, we never have been, and unless human evolution takes an unimaginable turn in the very near future, we never will truly be. Shall I list megalomaniacs, tyrants, mass-murders and criminals? Shall we peruse the daily news and read of drug wars and pollution, pedophilia and hate crimes? In every age, of every degree, people have been bad. We lie, we cheat, we steal, we speed on the Freeway in rush hour.

We are not good. We are bad.

Under what false assumptions do libertarians believe this will change? If we just give people their freedom, do you really believe they will then be good? No, in societies where there is less restraint, less powerful government, there is more corruption, more oppression and violence, more evil.

Human good will is the ultimate tenet of atheism. If we believe that people are by nature good and will do the right thing left to the acts of their free will, then we need neither God nor Savior. Both of those are, in actuality, a great restriction on human freedom, what with their demands of absolute devotion and total obedience to their superior divine will.

No, Christianity is not Libertarian. It is very likely the opposite of it.

For God at least knows that people need to be told what to do. There is a reason why He gave Moses 631 commandments, starting with the big Ten on Sinai. He knew that left to their freedom the Israelites would soon destroy themselves and each other. And he soon discovered (to His holy chagrin) that the provision of Law did by no means create or empower a good people. It would require a much greater work to finally put the lie of human freedom to death.

It would require a crucifixion.

Jesus, by the way, was a big believer if the work of governance to regulate the behavior of individuals in the community. Read Matthew 18 even once. He says, if your brother sins against you, go to him. If he does not listen, bring a witness. And then two or three. And then bring him before the whole congregation. He does not say, well, sometimes you have to put up with what your brother does because he is, after all, free to choose how he wants to be. No, this is Christian community: to exert the will of the whole and demand change from each of us.

The kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, is wherever people are gathered. Together. Bound to one another in mutual love, respect and desire for the good that transcends individual freedom.

To know the Grace of God is to love his truth more than freedom itself.

If loving Grace is wrong, I don't want to be right ...

The only thing worse than being wrong is being right.

Sister Margaret McBride can probably speak to this issue better than I.

A member of the ethics committee of St Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, she consented along with other Doctors and professionals to allow an abortion because a patient’s life was endangered by continuing the pregnancy.

For that she has received the harshest of penalties – excommunication from her church - because of that choice. Only someone who has “married” themself to the church can fully appreciate what this has cost her.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said that "the direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral." He is absolutely right of course. Sister Margaret did something wrong, and the church is unquestionably right to reprove her.

I myself cannot imagine the horror of facing such a choice – trading a woman’s life for her child’s (assuming that the baby could have been saved, which is not certain). It is an appropriate outcome in such cases, according to Bishop Olmsted, that the mother should die. To which there is also a certain horrible but inescapable logic.

Doing the right thing is not always easy. And this is what should happen in a world ruled by anyt sense of what is right, undeniably, irrevocably, and always right.

Who cannot appreciate the desire, even the need to live in such a world, with clear-cut rules and orders and categories. It is our constant search, our constant debate. And as long as we never face such choices as Sister Margaret, it seems an appropriate and fine way to live.

But then again.

Consider the ranging battles in the church today, the driving desire for the right, to erase wrong, to stand clearly on the side of God and His Word and stem the rising liberal erosion of value, of rightness. Is it not true that the Bible clearly tells us homosexuality is sinful, and if so, are we not obligated to stand firmly against it, in defense of marriage and pulpit? Churches are bleeding members and congregations for the lack of this simple rule: there is no place in the church for tolerating gay and lesbian marriage or ministry. None.

And shouldn’t then this always be our modus operandi? If we are called to the place about right and wrong then we will stand with integrity and power over and against all manner of sinfulness, wherever it is clearly proclaimed by Scripture and Tradition. We shall eradicate our pews of adulterers and fornicators, of liars and cheaters, of the irreligious and the intemperate.

People who forsake the speed limit on the freeway. Students who cheat on tests at school. Employees who take pens or post-it notes home from the office. Pastors who look at their Facebook page during office hours.

Do you know where this ends? I do. With Sister Margaret McBride and her awful, unimaginable, choice. Divorced from the church we love and the God we need.

Though it seems at first blush not to be, the fact is that Bishop Olmsted surely had a choice, too. What he did in excommunicating Sister Margaret was affirm the Law of God, the primacy of righteousness, and the authority of the church. What he did was turn his back of Jesus Christ.

For the sake of being right he forsook grace.

And we live daily in danger of doing so, too.

Someone recently reminded me that there are many, many people in the church who are angry and frustrated, who fear the direction of the church in its unwillingness to stand correctly against things that must be wrong. Someone recently reminded me that to many people this doesn’t seem like their church anymore.

Which it is not. Nor has it ever been. This is the church of Jesus Christ, who rules his kingdom in a very different way.

Being right is a powerful anchor, a steady foundation in the stormy seas of a difficult and confusing world. But like all weights, it is also the force that holds us down, turns us against one another, keeps us from rising above the real powers of sin, death and the devil, restrains us from the very Grace of God. Being right is the power to drown our church, each other, ourselves. Being right is very death.

It was Luther, finally, who reminded us, that the gift of Grace is a more wonderful “daily drowning” in baptism, the collapse of our search for righteousness until all that remains is a healthy dependence of the Grace of God. This God reminds us daily that we do not actually know the difference between right and wrong, not matter how powerfully we assert it, that we are not good, ever, not matter how certain we feel, that we must have a faith which knows only one good, only one God.

Sister Margaret faced a truth that we must face every day, though hopefully in not such a dramatic way. Life is full of choices too large for human beings.

We cannot depend on them. We must only depend on Him.

For our own safety, for the sake of our mortal souls, maybe we should stop trying to be right so much, and be thankful for the God who saves us in spite of them, from them, and through them.

Sister Margaret, our prayers are with you, and our pews are open for you.

If loving Grace is wrong, I don't want to be right ...

The only thing worse than being wrong is being right

Sister Margaret McBride can probably speak to this issue better than I.

A member of the ethics committee of St Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, she consented along with other Doctors and professionals to allow an abortion because a patient’s life was endangered by continuing the pregnancy.

For that she has received the harshest of penalties – excommunication from her church - because of that choice. Only someone who has “married” themself to the church can fully appreciate what this has cost her.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said that "the direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral." He is absolutely right of course. Sister Margaret did something wrong, and the church is unquestionably right to reprove her.

I myself cannot imagine the horror of facing such a choice – trading a woman’s life for her child’s (assuming that the baby could have been saved, which is not certain). It is an appropriate outcome in such cases, according to Bishop Olmsted, that the mother should die. To which there is also a certain horrible but inescapable logic.

Doing the right thing is not always easy. And this is what should happen in a world ruled by anyt sense of what is right, undeniably, irrevocably, and always right.

Who cannot appreciate the desire, even the need to live in such a world, with clear-cut rules and orders and categories. It is our constant search, our constant debate. And as long as we never face such choices as Sister Margaret, it seems an appropriate and fine way to live.

But then again.

Consider the ranging battles in the church today, the driving desire for the right, to erase wrong, to stand clearly on the side of God and His Word and stem the rising liberal erosion of value, of rightness. Is it not true that the Bible clearly tells us homosexuality is sinful, and if so, are we not obligated to stand firmly against it, in defense of marriage and pulpit? Churches are bleeding members and congregations for the lack of this simple rule: there is no place in the church for tolerating gay and lesbian marriage or ministry. None.

And shouldn’t then this always be our modus operandi? If we are called to the place about right and wrong then we will stand with integrity and power over and against all manner of sinfulness, wherever it is clearly proclaimed by Scripture and Tradition. We shall eradicate our pews of adulterers and fornicators, of liars and cheaters, of the irreligious and the intemperate.

People who forsake the speed limit on the freeway. Students who cheat on tests at school. Employees who take pens or post-it notes home from the office. Pastors who look at their Facebook page during office hours.

Do you know where this ends? I do. With Sister Margaret McBride and her awful, unimaginable, choice. Divorced from the church we love and the God we need.

Though it seems at first blush not to be, the fact is that Bishop Olmsted surely had a choice, too. What he did in excommunicating Sister Margaret was affirm the Law of God, the primacy of righteousness, and the authority of the church. What he did was turn his back of Jesus Christ.

For the sake of being right he forsook grace.

And we live daily in danger of doing so, too.

Someone recently reminded me that there are many, many people in the church who are angry and frustrated, who fear the direction of the church in its unwillingness to stand correctly against things that must be wrong. Someone recently reminded me that to many people this doesn’t seem like their church anymore.

Which it is not. Nor has it ever been. This is the church of Jesus Christ, who rules his kingdom in a very different way.

Being right is a powerful anchor, a steady foundation in the stormy seas of a difficult and confusing world. But like all weights, it is also the force that holds us down, turns us against one another, keeps us from rising above the real powers of sin, death and the devil, restrains us from the very Grace of God. Being right is the power to drown our church, each other, ourselves. Being right is very death.

It was Luther, finally, who reminded us, that the gift of Grace is a more wonderful “daily drowning” in baptism, the collapse of our search for righteousness until all that remains is a healthy dependence of the Grace of God. This God reminds us daily that we do not actually know the difference between right and wrong, not matter how powerfully we assert it, that we are not good, ever, not matter how certain we feel, that we must have a faith which knows only one good, only one God.

Sister Margaret faced a truth that we must face every day, though hopefully in not such a dramatic way. Life is full of choices too large for human beings.

We cannot depend on them. We must only depend on Him.

For our own safety, for the sake of our mortal souls, maybe we should stop trying to be right so much, and be thankful for the God who saves us in spite of them, from them, and through them.

Sister Margaret, our prayers are with you, and our pews are open for you.

The new face of book banning in the 21st Century

When I was young, the hard work of removing books from school libraries and curricula was focused mostly on books with an overly developed sexuality, lest they needlessly stir up simmering adolescent hormones. Which was a fairly significant challenge in and of itself.

Classic book burners went after writers with radical social outlooks, agitators, communists all. But that was then and this is now. Having lost the battle against ideas, I guess it’s time to go after the scientists.

A local school district is being pressured by a few parents to remove the dangerous tome The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming and its companion video because it dares to present carbon-pollution-driven global climate change as science, even as scientific fact, when everyone knows “scientists disagree.”

Now, is that “scientists” who disagree, or just oil and coal company lobbyists? And is it truly actual disagreement, or just nit-picking over data and detail? I’m skeptical of the skeptics.

That this protest is being made by the wife of a Congressman who has voted for the oil companies and against clean energy legislation is probably noteworthy, but oversimplifies this conversation.

Then again, when has it ever been simple? What are the forces, not of nature but of human power and corruption, that have always stood against the pursuit of knowledge, that have disputed fact when it challenged institution, that persecuted Copernicus and Galileo, that shunned and still shun Darwin? When has the world ever accepted as truth proven fact when it was difficult or costly so to do? The answer is mostly never, especially when such truth calls out the sin and stupidity and corruption of the powers that rule us and the way we’ve always done things.

Undoubtedly, the real danger of Laurie David’s book is her portrayal of the “big corporations” who are accumulating untold wealth at the expense of the environment. One ought not expect such powerful giants to stand idly by, or not pour their considerable resources into the work of contesting this smear to their reputation. Luckily for them, they own plenty of Congressmen and Congressmen’s wives to aid their cause.

But Ms. Terry is right about one thing. The oil companies are not the enemy here. At least not the only one. We are. It is our dependence on cheap energy, our addiction to the road of least resistance, our unwillingness to change our habits and give up our indulgences that pollutes the earth. Oil is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico because we desire it, we demand it. Tarred beaches and destroyed marine life are the inevitable outcome of the battle for cheap gas in my SUV.

We are willing to bear the consequences of using oil because we are unwilling to do the hard and expensive work of converting to clean energy and changing the way we live. Whatever happens to the environment in the meantime, well, that’s a problem for some other day, some other generation.

All of which points to the greater and even more indisputable truth which has little to do with science. The despoiling of our plant, of God’s planet, is a serious moral failure, a great sin, a human catastrophe. Challenging the science is a great distraction, a way to not face up to the significant crimes we have been and are still committing every day against ourselves and generations to come. We have failed as human creatures, and we are bearing now the cost of our wrongdoing.

It must stop.

Congressman and Mrs. Terry, we should communicate that to 6th graders and 60 year olds in whatever way, by whatever book or video, we can.

Fences

As the Macondo oil spill haunts the gulf coast of America, one man proposes a giant sand bar that would keep the pollution away from shore and protect sensitive environments like wetlands, beaches and casinos. Dredging, I understand, could begin in 10 days.

It may be a workable solution, a good idea. It may help minimize the impact of a significant environmental disaster. And it is the perfect human reaction.

When faced with any calamity, with any hard problem, we build a fence. We build a wall, a border, a defense. It is the predictable and inevitable jerk of the knee final resort to any of the real or scary bogeymen that inhabit the universe. Build a fence.

Crime? Add a security system. Computer predator? Get a network firewall. Immigration problems? Build a border fence. Protect what we have. Protect us. From them.

This is the thinking, the acting, that makes us human. And this is what condemns us to the lives we live.

It was St. Agustine who coined the phrase incurvatus in se – curved in on ourselves – to describe the state of living in sin. Our brokenness is this intransigence for defining life by how the world affects me, hurts me, harms me, scares me. That “how this affects me” is the smallest part of any problem in the world is of no concern. It is, from beginning to end, all we consider, all we see.

Never mind that this is what inflames the madness of our world. Never mind that the denial of our own culpability in the problems that trouble us condemns us to suffer them again and again. Never mind that seeing our own needs and not our own truth is our daily and final death.

No, just build another fence.

Or maybe there is another way.

Faith calls us to a powerful and new vision of life that reaches beyond fences to causes, to the root issues and needs and solutions that make the world out there less threatening, less harmful. Faith turns our attention from self to other, from today to tomorrow, from what is to what might be. Faith sees blessings not as treasures to be protected but gifts to use to transform the world and every life in it.

Faith turns us back to a God who breaks free from the tomb and invites us on the same path.

You see, the problem is that there is no fence high enough or wide enough or strong enough to protect us from all that threatens us. There is no border fence that will keep out every immigrant who want to, who needs to come in. There is no structure that can keep every drop of oil off from coast or wildlife, either this spill or the next one. There is no alarm system that can’t be beaten by a determined thief, no computer software sophisticated enough to keep your identity sacrosanct if someone really wants it.

But there are ways to be safer. There are ways to reduce poverty and corruption in neighboring governments. There are ways to not need more oil. There are ways to create jobs and futures and optimism in American cities. Oh, they are harder, higher, difficult, but there are ways.

There are ways, but they require skills and dreams other than building fences.

They require faith. They require the courage and hopefulness to look outside of our own very small needs and face the larger and more wonderful possibilities of the world around us.

They requires us to know that we are not the world but we are in it.

Shall we seek these ways, or shall we just build another fence?

We are not losing faith in the church. We never had it.

The news is filled with scandal, pain, sin. What does it mean to see the church so lost, priests molesting children, superiors secreting them in their brokenness, passing along suffering in place of healing, corruption abounding? For many, the news about the Roman church is another chapter in the neverending story of human perversion, greed and dishonesty. But an important, perhaps the important story, is muted beneath the hubub about sexual orientation and clerical marriage. Like all things of this world, outrage and disgust conceal the deeper and more important truths, the fine meaning behind acts and events and words that change lives, that changes the world.

For while much will be spoken and written over sinful priests in the church, little will be said about the real captivity of Rome, the imprisonment to a simple but enduring word: Infallibility.

Infallibility is the belief system that multiplies tragedy into catastrophe; turns shortsightedness into blindness. It is the simplest, meanest, most popular and destructive mistake in all of human thinking. It runs the world.

It runs the world away from God.

From its birth, the Roman church has founded itself on such a principle, on the belief that the Lord endowed his disciple Peter with particular powers, ordained in his successors. It is what makes the Roman church the Roman church, the absolute trust in the God-granted authority of its words and deeds, and of the men who speak and make them.

To be infallible is to be trustworthy in classic Catholic theology. It influences and locates the laity of the church, it colors and shapes every doctrine, teaching and act of the priesthood.

It is the church’s great blindness.

Infallibility means that the work of God cannot be done by an ordinary human being, and so contrives to transfer divinity to a place where it can never fully reside. Infallibility is a system built on a lie which produces nothing but wrong.

For the sake of fairness, let us know that infallibility is not the sole provenance of the Roman church. It dwells wherever men place final significance in fixed things. It’s consequence is inanity, cruelty, death. Infallibility confuses the text with the truth, leading people to believe, for example, absurdities like humans living with dinosaurs, as if the Flintstones was a Discovery Channel special and not an after-school cartoon. Infallibility confuses lust with love, destroying families and communities. Infallibility confuses free market principles with greed at all cost, breeding obscene wealth and decadent poverty, loss of justice and economic disaster.

And so it goes. Confusing humans with saints preserves a system that cannot bear the truth, until it casts off victims and coddles criminals.

But the true loss is not merely of the world. It is the loss of faith.

Grace draws its power from very fallibility. It is the real brokenness of this world, the humanness of person and text and shortcoming and even sin that breathes life into God’s promise, the resurrects sinners, that infuses days with joy, that incarnates hope. God does not send grace to remove humanity, but to renew it. Faith calls us to trust solely and completely this one promise, in his promise and not our own, to walk always humbly and fearfully of what we could do, dependent on what he will do.

Grace is a promise that comes to fallible people.

But when Jesus heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

that April 20 could be a New National Holiday

It is not an anniversary worth celebrating.

Waco. Columbine. Oklahoma City. A group calling themselves “Hutaree” is in jail in Michigan, or there would probably be another ignominious name to add to the list this year. A day more of infamy than anything else, and if not for the sorrows of many victims, it would be a day well worth forgetting.

Which is why it is an anniversary worth remembering.

Anger is the most underappreciated of all human phenomenon. St. Paul says “Be angry, but do not sin.” (Ephesians 4:26). Of course, he also thinks that wives should follow their husbands and husbands should love their wives like Christ loves us, so his objectivity is questionable, to say the least. In fact, a few verses later, he suggests that we just “put away … all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving …” (Ephesians 4:31-2). As if he heard what he was actually saying and thought better of it, too.

A prominent TV commentator says that God has called him to stand, “peacefully, quietly, with anger.” With what? Anger? How does that work? It’s far too clever by half, as my Grandpa used to say. Most of the angry people I see are neither peaceful nor quiet. They are everything but. Since when did peaceful and angry decide to not be opposites anymore? I didn’t get that memo. What new dictionary are we reading today? Or is there something else afoot? Should we now declare anger a Godly aspiration? Do we need more anger?

No, we have far too much anger I think.

Anger is a tool. A dangerous tool. Fear is the great motivator for otherwise ignorant masses, and anger is fear with an outward bend, fear in search of a scapegoat, of release. Anger provides the convenience of an enemy, a deception that salves failure with violence, replaces hope with passion, and explodes on the lives of the other for the preservation of the lowest, basest part of me. Manipulated by fear, cast down on my anger, I am Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, I am Tim McVeigh.

In the hands of the devil, anger is the crucifixion of Christ all over again.

But in the hands of another? Oh!

Anger could be a different tool. Anger bent introspectively is humility, self-awareness, perhaps even change. Anger felt in truth, about truth, fashioned by truth, refines, distills and purifies life, it clarifies judgment, propels determination.

And that anger is in much short supply.

Perhaps we could enshrine a National Day of a new anger and ritualize a new truth – that we are the force of destruction and death that we fear most, that we are the enemy of our freedom and well-being. Perhaps a new national holiday of anger could be used to attack the foes that deserve our anger, the poverty, despair, pain and greed that are sucking the life out of our community.

A day of a new anger, directed not at the end of what is so much as driving us to the hard work of what ought to be.

Imagine capturing the energy of all of our hatred and building something instead of blowing it up, nurturing life instead of taking it, finding and taking new paths instead of burying each other on old ones. Picture a righteous anger that is not conceived in falsehood nor which leads not to sin, but a sacrificial anger, a cleansing anger, a fragrant offering of an anger. Imagine if we saw the world as it truly is, as God sees it, a world birthed and renewed and spirited in love. Can we know the distance between what we are doing and what we have been called to do?

Maybe if we were angry enough we could do something about it.

And that would be an anniversary worth celebrating.

Playground Bullies and Nuclear Treaties

“The United States is declaring that we will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.” (President Barack Obama)

And the response?

"It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, "Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want with me." (prominent politician and celebrity)

OK, I get that. I grew up on that schoolyard, I know that inherent violence of this world and the need to stand up for oneself.

It is, in fact, central to the American mythos, this emphasis on strength, on confidence, on self-reliance. The great American dream is to stand up victoriously to the neighborhood bully, to look him in the eye without backing down, to protect our own best interest without flinching.

It is this aspiration which has kept us safe and free for generations.

I can understand it. I can even honor it. I just can’t reconcile it with the teaching of my faith.

“But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Matthew 5:39

It is not, lest we profess our uncertainty, just another one of those things that Jesus uttered out loud. It is not a redactor’s trick, or an invention of the institutional church grown too far from its apostolic roots. It is the very heart and nature of Christ’s teaching, ministry and mission, and that pretenders to expertise in American Christian values do not understand this is our great sin.

Christians are called to be people of peace. Of passive, even non-resistive peace. Of active, sought-out, reconciling-with-enemies peace. Of reaching out, toward, across, down, beyond, peace.

Christians are named to be followers of a Savior who holds not a sword in his hand but the mark of a nail. Of a Savior who asks us not to “conquer” but to “endure.” Of a Savior who called down not armies of angels from his cross but words of forgiveness.

Christians are called to be people of peace as students and heirs of the man of peace, not as a hobby, not as a possibility that may come after every adversary is destroyed, after all other options are exhausted, but people who love peace, hope for peace, seek peace, live peace.

It is a tribute to our ignorance that we do not see how impossible peace is between two peoples who desire either victory or annihilation, not peace. It is a great evil that many of us (often not too secretly) are pleased to see the advance of their hatred. How amazing it is to see even the miniscule reductions of weapons, to hear conversations of any kind reflecting the possibility of less warfare. It should be celebrated, prayed for, not criticized, not scorned.

Oh, how unattainable to live a Christian life in this world! Oh how great our failure to live worthy of our Savior. Thanks be to the God of grace, who practices what he preaches, and offers us not a violent posture but the embrace of compassion, not condemnation for our helplessness, but a Spirit of peace, an opportunity for hopefulness.

Oh to be at Butler now that Spring is here ...

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” Genesis 28:16

When we were little, we were told that the church was “God’s house,” and we believed it wholly and literally. We were quiet and respectful, as one should be in such an awesome place. When we grew up, we came to understand that God’s presence was not confined in space, that he was ultimately ubiquitous, and we believe that we experience his presence wherever we are.

That is rather encouraging to people who refuse to stay in any one place for too long a time.

But maybe we should rethink the subtleties of that notion.

Barry Collier first came to Butler University as basketball coach in 1989. Prior to his arrival, the Bulldogs had won 20 games only twice in 91 years of competition. His eleven year record there was 196-132, including a 90-39 record in his last four years , four straight post-season appearances, and seven first or second place conference finishes. He was named conference Coach of the Year four times.

In 2000, Collier answered the calling to coach at a major conference school and took over as Head Basketball Coach at the University of Nebraska. In six seasons, he amassed a 89-91 record, with two NIT tournaments bids and no post-season victories. While his tenure at Nebraska was marked by strong academic performance and Collier showed himself a man of significant integrity, it was a long way from his on-the-court performance at Butler.

In 2006, he went back.

In this, the fourth season since his return, Butler won 33 games, and went all the way to the Championship, losing only to perennial powerhouse Duke by a single basket at the end of the game.

Coincidence?

Yes, he is the Athletic Director now and not the coach, and sure, maybe Nebraska will never be the basketball haven that Butler University is. But maybe there is a deeper and more interesting question at play here, one that speaks directly to the spiritual issues that ought to guide us in choosing the path for our lives.

We are conditioned to believe that grass is always greener in somewhere else. Doubt and disbelief haunt us with the insinuation that paradise eludes us in some unseen and exotic locale just beyond our current reach. We are much too often stirred by an occasionally useful restlessness which distracts us from appreciating fully the setting where we are. Right now. Our eyes are cast toward some distant horizon and the possibilities that we certainly miss now, but maybe the good news is that THIS is the place where God is home for us, and we would do best to (as they say) bloom where we are planted.

In a world where too often we must “go off” to seek our fortune, perhaps Barry Collier could this morning teach us the joy of loving what we have and living well where we are.

Jacob named the place of his famous dream Beth-el, the place of God.

What do you call the place where you are?

The Hunt

Now dawns the new day
mild sun smiling gently down from cornflower sky,
hint of green on softly sleeping lawn,
distant whiff of blossom coming I imagine.
A day to search
white patent leather shoes racing madly,
gladly,
pink wicker basket trailing dangerously,
stooping
stretching
to look
among the remainder of unraked leaves,
in the cool damp shadow of shrubbery.
Clever dad to hide so them so!
Where are they?

Treasures veiled
Look here! Look here!
It must be here
Pleasure -
Fulfillment -
Hope -
Where? Where?
Scampering as fast as short legs can go in search
in search -
it must be found.

Where is it?
Where is this promise?
Hidden
in dim of darkened heart,
wrapped up in the ghost of broken life, suffering, sorrowing, struggling;
a glint of pearl in faint sun,
a promise
life!
From a tomb, from a cross, from days of anguish and woe,
a morning of joy and giggles and sweetness and dreams

It must be found.

And now a message from our sponsor

It’s a pretty funny world that we live in.

It turns out that the quintessentially all-American slacker-guy character on those clever FreeCreditReport.com commercials isn’t American at all. He is a French Canadian from Quebec by the name of Eric Violette. Complete with French Canadian accent. The ads were not filmed in a suburban basement in Cleveland or a seafood Restaurant in Omaha. They were filmed in Montreal.

Who’d thunk?

It is, of course, the nature of TV to present the world as allusion, as perception, as the shadow of reality either as we hope it would be or fear it actually might. It is why we love it so much, because it sets us free from the hard truths of the real world, grants us escape both from the boredom and the perils of daily life.

Which is why the TV world is starting to invade the real world. Because we know that it’s much more fun, much more thrilling, much more safe, and much more pleasurable than real life. Given the choice between the life I’m living and the one I’m watching on the TV, I’ll take the TV.

And it’s simpler. Easier.

But not this week.

We call this Holy Week, these all powerful, history-shaping events of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. The Triumphal Entry, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion. Events that are beyond historical, more than real. Days that define us no matter how we obfuscate. The Resurrection. Reality that cannot be contained within the stark boundary of what we know. Or even imagine.

Jesus looks down from the cross and mocks our simulated sufferings, our feigned indignations, our imaginary hardships. Our self-pity rings hollow in the face of his wounds, his blood, his death. The cross calls us harshly and directly back to reality, it calls us to put to death every self-deception, every false nuance, every cleverly misspoken word, every outright lie.

Dr. Luther taught us that a right understanding of the cross requires us to “call the thing what it actually is.” (Heidelberg Disputation) So, this week (at least) let us rather call things what they are.

· The phrase “in the crosshairs” is, in fact, a violent metaphor which has no place in constructive public debate and does not belong on the lips of people who aspire to be leaders in this country or any other.

· “No” for the sake of no is obstructionist, regardless of your convictions.

· Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, it is a crime with neither excuse nor exemption. It deserves to be treated as such in every circumstance.

· If the cost of reconciliation is land, continuing to build new settlements is not a commitment to peace.

· "Christian" and "militia" are contradictory, not complimentary, terms.

It is the nature of politicians, human beings all, to not mean what they say. It is the failure of a TV addled generation that we accept it. It is why we do not progress as people – if we say nothing, then to do what we say is to do nothing. But thanks be to God for the gift of grace, for now he does what he says. Love is not word or concept, it is an amazing reality, plainly visible on the cross, daily available in the living and resurrected word.

As He practices what he preaches, so let us strive to do the same. Let us call ourselves what we truly are – debtors to his compassion and hopers for the resurrected life.

A good Holy Week and Happy Easter to all.

Buzzer beaters and legislative compromises

You have to admit, it was a pretty improbable ending.

The outcome seemed, at least by most accounts, a foregone conclusion. The heavy weight of history and tradition, the clear opinion of pundits, odds makers and amateur observers alike made it obvious to all that this was not going to happen. Never.

Even the President didn’t predict it.

But then, the long determined effort, the defiant march forward, the last-minute scramble, and suddenly, for the sake of much toil against a seemingly superior foe, victory! To the consternation of many, the unexpected happens.

And that was just the basketball tournament.

On a side note, that the winning shot was made by the son of an Iranian immigrant with the extraordinary name of Ali Farokhmanesh is an amazing and fun conversation all to itself. Perhaps electing a President with the middle name Hussein had a greater impact on the world than we knew.

Sunday night, after more than a year of debating, cajoling, deal-making, huckstering and occasionally, if rarely, leading, the House of Representatives voted for Health Care Reform in America. It is, to be sure, not the legislation that many people (including this writer) wanted. It is not single payer Health Care. It does not contain the stronger guarantee of coverage for all that a robust Public Option for Health Insurance would have provided.

Perhaps some day in the future we will take another step in that direction. Perhaps our children will finish what we were unable to accomplish.

But it does one important thing - it proudly and clearly signals a new value in our society. No longer will it be the case in America that anyone should go without health care because they can’t afford it.

And it only took some 100 years to get here.

For me, it is a another reminder of the miraculous way that God works. Despite the name-calling, the fear-mongering, the outright lying by politicians and pundits and TV talking heads passing themselves off as journalists, the deed is done. Notwithstanding the worst of human nature, the goal is met. Many obstacles had to be overcome, most of them of our own making, but here we are in a brand new world, resurrected again.

St. Paul says that God’s Word exists in the world as a treasure in “clay jars.” Pedestrian, brittle, broken pottery holding that of greatest value. Politicians actually passing important legislation. It seems that we have proven once again how much God loves to work through the incredible messiness of human activity. Maybe he just loves an underdog as much as the next guy. Because there is nothing like a big upset to turn your bracket upside down and change everything.

Not too long ago it seemed like it was going to take a last minute, long three-pointer to get a Health Care bill passed. And so it did. Thanks, Ali.

In which Glen Beck does something good for the world

Thank God for Glenn Beck!

In the second century, a man named Marcion came to Rome. He was a avid student of Paul, and he noticed that there was a dramatic difference between the wrath-filled, eye-for-an-eye God of the Old Testament, and the merciful, forgiving Jesus Christ of the New Testament. They were, in his eyes, obviously not the same God. And so he collected the first Bible, including 11 epistles and the Gospel of Luke, and proclaimed the new, and superior, deity Jesus Christ as the replacement for the vengeful, smiting God of the Torah.

He did the church a favor. His heresy forced the church to consider carefully its relationship to the Jewish Scriptures, to put its theological house in order and to properly proclaim the amazing story of love that is the whole history of God with his peoples, from the beginning of creation to the empty tomb of Easter. Marcion made the church of Jesus Christ better by being so amazingly ,dramatically wrong.

And now Glenn Beck has done the same.

On a recent radio show, Beck urged his listeners to “run as fast as you can” from any church that preaches social justice. First of all, that’s probably correct. Social justice is a political category. Preachers of the gospel should not preach social justice. They should preach Biblical Justice. Which is a far more worthy of Beck’s fright.

Socialism (which is what he really means) is a political system that provides financial support to the poor through various taxes imposed on the working class and the wealthy. It aims to redistribute society’s wealth, causing the rich to be not-so-rich so that the poor are not-so-poor.

Weenies.

Biblical Justice demands much more. Much more. God complains against those who “rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey …” (Isaiah 10:2). The very existence of the poor is an indictment against the rich; no, against the whole of society. If even one goes without, one orphan, one widow goes uncared for, then all are condemned. Period.

Biblical justice is hard, It is not for the faint of heart.

Biblical justice does not suffer fools, it is not a part-time occupation, it is not for pretenders or do-gooders or theorists. Or radio talk-show hosts.

Biblical justice is not about charity, about generosity, even about love. Those are each good things, but pale in comparison. Even if Bill Gates gives a billion dollars to good causes, he still has four billion to live on, which I’m guessing means he can still live pretty well, much better say, than the average person living in their car. The issue is not how much rich people give to charity or how heavy their tax burden is. No, the issue is the very notion that some people should be rewarded and some should not, that some should have and some should not. In the kingdom of God, ruled by Grace and not by sin, there should be no poor people. There should be no rich people. There should only be God's people.

And God's word declares that we should aspire not to work at the problem, not to advance the cause, but to end poverty. Period. That is the only acceptable “ism” in the eyes of our God.

I don’t imagine that Glenn Beck can get his head around that idea. Then again, no one can. But let us give thanks for his willingness to allow his ignorance and pettiness to be publicly displayed, that a real conversation might be engaged, that discerning people of faith might speak the right Word of God into the darkness that passes for public discourse in America.

Beck has drawn a lot of angry reaction. Perhaps he deserves it, probably he intended it. But let’s allow the dust to settle, and see if instead we can coax some small part of the truth to arise. That is God’s purpose for heretics, after all. For blowhards, idiots, and small-minded fools, too.

May his will be done!

to live an After Life

Is there life after Easter?

It is, I suppose, a question that is particularly concerning to preachers. The gist of the puzzle is the realization that, putting so much energy and attention and time into planning for one great day, for one special holiday, it is much too easy to forget to plan for whatever will come afterwards.

It happens to me every year. Somewhere along the path of Lent the idea will sneak into the edges of my consciousness that Easter will come and then there will be an “after Easter” in which I will need to be prepared to preach, teach, plan, and basically do life some more. Even though my whole focus is on one day, life begets the constant reminder of what comes next.

I wonder if basketball players have the same problem in the tournament season. Every game is win-or-go-home. But if you win, and of course you hope that you do, you have to turn in a matter of days or perhaps hours and play a game which you haven’t thought too much about, what with concentrating on winning the one at hand first.

And how do you do that?

It is something like a life question. Existence comes at us in a series of events, tests, victories, moments, crisis’, each demanding our full attention and desire. And after each one comes yet another and another and another for which, it often turns out, we are scarcely prepared.

We are always looking forward to an Easter of one kind or another. But will we be ready for what comes next?

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10

Faith, it turns out, is not so much as a destination as a launching. We search for the instance of belief, but it is to what follows that we are called. Grace is not a moment, an act, but a flow, a direction. Life is not a test, but an engagement in learning, growing, changing, an irresistible movement, towards, forward, yearning, stretching …

It is our nature to turn time into the finite, to seek an end of it, whether it be our own or someone else’s. This is the nature of our brokenness or perhaps the definition of all of it. That we even imagine a horizon, let alone seek its conquest, is the smallness of spirit that defies the God who made us. We are travelers, pilgrims, journeying along a creation, here for a time but then again here for much time, for pressing on time, for a next experience of time. We are not about things in the singular, we are born to the life eternal, not just for then but to bring its sense and meaning into now.

Abundant life means more than this life, it demands our constant faith and hope in after.

I should probably be getting ready for that.

They call it "joy!" You should try it.

You knew it was going to be something special.

Let me say from the start that I’m not really a hockey fan. And so even though I knew it was going to be a big game, I didn’t watch much of the gold medal match at the Olympics between the US and Canada - only switching over from time to time so I could keep an eye on the score and be able to talk intelligently about the outcome on Monday. That is, until it went to overtime, at which point I put down the remote and settled in to watch what I knew was going to be a great finish.

Let me also say that I was truly rooting for the good ‘ole US to win, what with being a proud American and having heard how really well they had played for the entire tournament and remembering very well how amazing the Miracle on Ice was 30 years ago.

But I wasn’t unhappy with the outcome. Because as soon as I saw Canada score, I knew something great was going to happen, something we hardly ever see, something I wish we could see more often. I knew we were about to see a truly rare experience in human life.

I knew we were about to see joy.

Now, real joy is a extraordinary thing. The average person has occasional bouts of happiness, fits of giggles and even occasional moments of satiety. But joy, real joy, pure joy, well, you don’t see that very often. That sweet release, that complete free assurance that the world is right in its orbit and things are the best they can be, that is a exceptional thing indeed.

I understand. After all, the opposite of joy, whatever we might name it, is far more prevalent on this side of the Kingdom. We experience so much misery, sadness, suffering and sorrow that we become acclimated to it, prepared for it, even expectant of it. We stand in the midst of bliss waiting for the the rain to fall, for the other shoe to drop, for reality to come crashing down on whatever parade has come our way.

We believe in gloom, because it is what we see and experience. Joy, on the other hand, lives among us mostly as myth. Unprepared, we are disqualified in its presence.

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. John 15:11

If only we believed it. If only we could, for even one moment, live by faith and not merely by sight, if we could trust the God of what will be and not the Devil of what is, then we might find one of those elusive moments and experience joy, be captivated and carried away by it, and sing, O Lord, sing. Not unlike those Canadians, who’s rafter-shaking rendition of their National Anthem raised shivers up and down my spine.

No, a hockey game is not forever. Nor is much of what can bring joy in this world, for life, such as it is, will always be waiting. But joy is forever, and sometimes we can taste it and touch it, even briefly, and be transported in Spirit to what will come. A victory, a birth, a sunny day, these are the reminders that the world is more than it seems, and so are we.

Complete the joy!