Swing State Blues

I don’t live in a swing state.  I’m thankful for that.

I do live in a media market that borders a contested state, which is bad enough.  I’ve been subjected to more than a bearable share of TV ads, radio commercials, mailers, yard signs, and other political detritus.  I’ve been stunned by the pretension, the slander, the misrepresentation – not just of their opponents position but of their own!  

Yes, I’m thankful that I don’t live in a swing state.

But then again, I’m not.

Most peoptle are amazed and horrified to discover that a very few states, even a very few counties in a very few  states, get to decide the future.  That there are so few places where elections are actually contested.  That, in the end, so few votes really matter.

Not me.  No, I’m amazed and horrified that in the 21^st Century, in the real world there are so many places where there is no battle, where elections are not contested, where most of the people think the same way and believe the same way and vote the same way.

The election results show us to be a closely divided nation.  But the truth is, in most places in this country, we are not divided at all.  Most red states are really, completely red.  Many blue states are deeply blue.  Rural areas are red.  Urban areas are blue.  White people are red.  Everyone else is not. 

This is not a good thing.

If this is a truly divided country, then it will be difficult to heal that division when most of us live so far away from the dividing line, when we are constantly confronted only by people on our own team, when we only converse with people who think like ourselves, when we are not in any real way exposed in some intimate fashion with ideas other than our own.  How can we heal our differences unless we connect to those who are different than us?  Who can admit that they are wrong when all of their neighbors say they are right?

We have entrenched our divisions geographically, racially, sexually.  Anger will replace concession, I fear.  Injury will fuel intransigence.  We will all crawl into our bunkers, load up on canned goods and sharpen our weapons for the next battle. 

And nothing will change. 

Which is, on the other hand, a good thing. 

Even in my despair I know the one thing that truly never changes.  The God who is bigger than our fat, stubborn egos.  That in the midst of our failures, our faults, our stiff necks and our sin, God remains steadfast, merciful, powerful.  That in the midst of what is merely the most recent breakdown of humanity, God’s will is still done, and we are saved.

And that even our worst will become the seed of the future. 

"When pride comes, then comes disgrace; but wisdom is with the humble." (Proverbs 11:2)

The gift of this election is an offered moment to step back and see ourselves for what we are, to confess the smallness of our dispute, to peer into the impending abyss and, horrified and shamed, stop.  Just stop.  Maybe shut our mouths.  Maybe fall to our knees.  Maybe humbled, and, if even by accident, discover the wisdom of our God.

And be covered by his grace and be saved.  From ourselves.  For each other.

I vote for that.

Two simple words

There is a lot of anger in the world today.

All across the Middle East and North Africa particularly, rioting and burning and killing over a video offense against the faith of some, added to a long litany of oppression, occupation and poverty.  Cultures crossed with severity and insecurity have exploded into war and bloodshed. 

This is not new, of course.

And, I wonder, how much anger must lie behind the deliberate creation and promotion of a video designed purely to insult in the greatest way possible an entire religion, a whole people.  How much disconcert over acts of terrorism, how much grief over real and imagined suffering, how much contempt, determination to pain, to rile, to agitate.

Yes, the world is full of anger today.

And, of course, the anger of politician and pundit over responses to such events, to over-soft answer, to imagined apology.  To be weak, to be sorry, to offer aid or comfort to one’s enemies surely is to invite more violence, more terrorism, more death.

Which is not so. 

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. … Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another.”  Ephesians 4:29-32

In an angry world what greater weapon do we possess than our ability to apologize?  Do we truly believe that we can outshout one another, are we only able to match our enemies temper with our own, to meet their violence with our violence, to spill their blood for ours?  How will that change anything for the better?  How will that bring life to worlds caught in a mutual dance of death?

No!  Let us speak clearly that the end to anger is found only in a kind word, a gentle word, an outreached hand, a heartfelt apology.  The exit from this endless cycle of anger will not be found in more anger, we cannot judge the world into submission by our self-righteous sense of superiority.  We cannot change the world by being exactly as it already is.

We need apologies if we are to survive.  We need them because they are true.

Every angry word carries within it a lie, a denial of accountability even in a small way to the world which we have all helped to build.  No problem is truly one-sided, no resentment is completely undeserved, no hand is untainted with the blood of injustice in this world.  Apologies are, by definition, the truest words we utter, even if we are not fully aware of our own culpability.  The cross of Christ reminds us daily of the cost of our culpability.  Our unwillingness, our failure to apologize merely drives the nails in a little deeper. 

To refuse to apologize, to speak against apologies, is the greatest sin of all, and the risk of even greater destruction.  For which we should all be certainly sorry.  

The good, the bad, and the ugly. But mostly the bad and the ugly.

I feel a little sorry for Clint Eastwood today. 

I imagine that he was trying to do something clever, to find a memorable and creative way to make his point.  I’m sure he did not plan on providing a metaphor for everything that’s wrong with our public discourse in this country.

Which he surely did.

Not just a metaphor for our political discourse, though that’s where it is at its worst.  No, he gave us a picure of our entire public discourse, our common conversation about all things important – social, moral, religious. 

Because we spend a lot of time talking to empty chairs.

Not talking to each other.  Not speaking to reality, to things that matter.  Just talking to empty chairs.  Inventing enemies, making up problems, putting words into each other’s mouth that aren’t really there.  Did you hear?  President Obama said ‘you didn’t build that.’  He’s against small business!  He’s anti-American!  He’s dangerous! 

Except that’s not what he said.  That’s just what the empty chair said. 

But who cares?  We’re not interested in what anyone actually said, or meant.  We’d rather just talk to the empty chair.  We mustn’t allow ourselves to be confused with reality, distracted by facts, accountable to any objective source or science or some real person’s experience or feelings.  So we ignore the data, or twist the data, or make up our own data, of just make our assertions without it completely. 

What do empty chairs care about that?

And you know exactly who is to blame for all of this. 

You are.  OK, we all are. 

We are because we have abdicated the responsibilities that come with our place in the community.  We take someone’s word for something because it’s too hard to check on it.  We just pass on a friend’s email blast because we don’t want to get left out, without worrying about what it actually says.  We don’t seek out impartial sources because we are comfortable with the voices we’ve always listened to, because they tell us what we want to hear and it’s too hard to hear what we do not like.  We trust what we hear because it’s from our “team,” as if that was the only important criteria of truth.

We might as well be the empty chair ourselves. 

But we’re not.

No, the empty chair is an entirely different problem in the American discourse.  The empty chair is the voice of our neighbor who has no voice in the conversation, who has no power, who has no one to speak for him.  The empty chair is the person who can’t afford a photo ID, who can’t get time off of work to go and vote, the hungry person who didn’t vote for the person who wants to talk away his food stamps, the sick person who doesn’t understand that his Medicaid is about to be defunded, the woman who is filled with too much pain to tell you what rape really is, the immigrant who is too afraid of being seen in public to tell us what the American dream really is. 

There are lots of empty chairs in our community, people who everyone wants to talk about but no one wants to listen to. 

And who will speak for them? 

It's a long way to where you are going

62-year old Dyana Nyad wants to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys.  That’s 103 miles of open water swimming amid jellyfish, sharks, ocean currents and storms.

I sometimes have to talk myself into walking to the end of the driveway to get the mail. 

It’s a remarkable dream, an amazing expectation, a dramatic reach beyond the limits of human ability.  And I mean beyond.  Like really far beyond. 

Candace Hogan, part of her support team, said as much.  “There will always be a point where a human body can't go any farther.” 

I wonder if anybody really gets that.

Mountain climbers attack the summit of Mt. Everest, knowing that every minute in the so-called “Death Zone” (above 8,000 meters) is killing them.  Literally.  Extreme athletes take on all manner of risks for a new, greater thrill.  NFL players subject their bodies to constant torture, something like the effects of half a dozen car wrecks every game they play, endure long-term physical and mental disability, for the sake of whatever glory comes from a game. 

No, it seems we do not understand.  There is only so far a human body can go.

This is more than an athletic question.  It is a social question, a spiritual question.  We are creatures who aspire, that is what separates us from the rest of the animals, it is what makes us good and prosperous and happy.  Human aspiration makes the world a better place.

Until we forget that even the greatest human aspiration has its limits.  Until we stubbornly and arrogantly run full steam into the wall, the end, the limit of who we are.  Until we take the apple off of the tree and take a great big bite.  Until we forget our place and try to be God. 

How much suffering, how much of the damage we do to ourselves, to our community, to our neighbor, to our planet, is the outcome of aspiration gone wrong?  How many people have we knocked down in our reaching?  How many have we run over in our sprint to the finish?  How many have been buried under the heap of our self-aggrandizement? 

I applaud Ms. Nyad for her courage and determination.  I hope she makes her goal, I pray for her safety. 

But I also hope and pray that we should all learn the peace that comes from accepting our humanness, from understanding the boundaries that come with this life.  I hope and pray that we would be free from the prisons of too much celebrity, too much wealth, too much power, too much vanity, too much certainty, too much self-righteousness. 

I dream that we might all aspire most to cast off our pride and live, separately and together, just well enough.  I pray that we might aspire for the keeping of someone else’s dream, some pedestrian dream of having enough to eat, of having a place to live, of seeing a doctor when they are sick, of having a friend, a shoulder to cry on, a place to belong. 

Because then, I know, discovering that we cannot aspire to heaven, we will bask in the amazing delight of grace, of the gift we did not earn, of the eternity to which we did not aspire, of the goal hard won for us, of the God of Jesus Christ. 

Which is surely the biggest reach of them all. 

These also competed ...

At least these tears are real.

After a steady diet of unreality TV, of contrived drama and scripted emotion, it is startling to witness honest, heartfelt reaction.  Tears of unashamed sorrow for dreams reached for yet unrealized.  Tears of pure incredulity that what was hoped for actually happened.  Moments well-rehearsed that happened in reality.  The plain truth of falling short, undenied.

Moments worthy of tears. 

Which I guess, in too short of order, raises for me the question that always comes at such times of great importance, of singular attention and value:  why isn’t the rest of life this significant?  Or, perhaps more clearly asked, why don’t the people crying over the battles and matches of their daily life garner tears and new stories, too?

Because for every Olympic athlete who’s years of sweat and determination come crashing around them in a fortnight in August, there are thousands, maybe millions of our own neighbors who daily face the realization that all of their best efforts will not feed their children, that seeing a doctor or buying the medicine they need will always be just past their reach, that there will always be others who, thanks at least in part to superior resources, training and equipment, will always occupy the winner’s place while they watch from the sidelines.

And why isn’t that worth a few tears, too?

Real sorrow, true tragedy in our world happens more than once every four years – it happens constantly, everywhere.  And the win-at-any-cost mentality that now dominates our culture blinds us to the many, many, many who get left behind while we bask in the accolades of our own victories.  Yes, it is true that only few deserve the gift of victory, only few can aspire to the top, only few have the gifts and desire and will to get the gold. 

But does that mean that the rest are unworthy of our concern?

It seems to me that it ought to be easily possible to celebrate winners without rebuffing the rest of the field, that just because it is a great thing to win does not require it to be a shame to lose.  I could have sworn that was what the junior high gym teacher was trying to teach us about sportsmanship way back when.  Perhaps it is just our own guilt that makes us so repelled by the least around us, perhaps it is just that we are so blinded by the gold, perhaps it is an extension of our shame, our secret knowledge that we are not, no matter how much we wish we were, worthy of the medal stand ourselves. 

Maybe we need to warp our arms around some losers and cry with them a little.  Perhaps by shedding our pride we will recover a little of our humanity. 

Which could change more in the world than any Olympic contest could ever hope to do.

On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it … 1 Corinthians 12:22-26

Wet

It was really wet in New Orleans.

Given the dryness we had left and the barren wasteland to which we returned, that may be the understatement of the year for me.  In comparison to the arid desert occupied by most of the heartlands right now, New Orleans was awash in water, cups overrunning with God-given, life-causing, world-cleaning rain.

Which is as good of a metaphor for the church as I can probably come up with on my own.

Our church verges on barren wasteland these days, slithering along a wilderness of enmity and over-heated division, the façade of our tradition cracked like the bed of a dried out slough, our Spirit rustling dryly like so much drought stricken corn stalks.  Here and there, amid carefully irrigated plots there are green shoots of good work and community and life, but mostly our gaze is cast over a brown and dying field as we mourn the loss of profit and hope that the insurance will get us by a little while longer.

It could not have been more different in New Orleans. 

There I saw the Spirit as a mighty rushing wave, a church so filled with life and hope and promise that it sank under God’s grace even as the streets filled with his rains.  There were no bows to tradition, no respectful singing of standard hymnody, no desire to save the dying but only a desperate plea to sweep clear what was already dead that God might wash in a new day, a new church, a new faith.

They did not stand and sing, this new church, they danced and screamed and jumped and wept for this new Spirit.  They did not pray to save the church, they prayed to save the lost and the poor and the broken and the oppressed and the forgotten and the lame.  They did not reach out their arms to embrace the long tradition of their elders, they reached out to embrace those who had been shut out by that tradition, the different, the unusual, the new, the needful. 

They looked upon the limits of the church as it is and stretched for the church as it was and always should be.  The church of Jesus as he was and always will be, the friend of the friendless, the welcome of all, the feeder and healer and comforter and raiser of dead.  The man of grace.

And the Spirit rained down hope on them.

It is, theologically speaking, the nature of life as it follows the cross.  All things must die that God may raise them up to new life.  But it is a different thing, in all truth, to see God’s hand at work in real time, to be invited to hand over our dying selves to him and allow new life to soak fully, completely.

It was a great celebration of the church, this irreverent dance on its tomb, a reminder and a promise of what faith is at its best and what it will surely soon be once again, a faith turned away from the preservation of the church for the preservation of the stranger next door.  And the baptizer God, watching the next generation, rowdy, restless, audacious, loud, opened up his heavens and let the water pour down.

Which is why it was really wet in New Orleans.

Preservation Hall is a place dedicated to, well, preserving the great tradition that is New Orleans Jazz.  Having birthed this most American of music forms, for five decades it has kept, taught, played and lived some of the most beautiful and jubilant music in the world.

You would not know it to look at it.

It is a small room in an old building, barely big enough for 40 people, and most of them standing.  The ceiling is bare timber, caked with the grime of years of neglect, the walls crumbling and dingy, the lighting poor, the benches worn and uncushioned, the floor scoured smooth and dark.  A few mis-matched old kitchen chairs stand at the front of the room next to an ageless piano. 

There are no neon lights to announce its presence, no great hallway for its entrance, it does not occupy prime real estate or offer valet parking.  There is no red carpet. 

It is no sight to see.  It doesn’t even have a bathroom.

But, oh the music. 

The musicians saunter into the room for a humble but heartfelt introduction.  They are, in fact, giants of jazz, sitting in spaces previously occupied by great historical figures, humbly clad in white short sleeve shirts and thin black ties.  The rich joy and love they have for this music rings out from every riff and sparkles on each improv.  It is pure music in its most absolute form, devotees filled with the grace and beauty of sound, here for a small time to sing, clap, dance, and be glad for the God who must love us very much to give us such wonderous noise.

It is exactly the opposite of what the church has become.

But it is, I think, what the church may yet emerge to be.

We build for ourselves vast temples to our religion, we play complicated and intricate theological compositions of doctrine, we create powerful and vast empires to wield power and command attention.  We occupy large and public space and blare loudly the symphony of our kingdom building endeavors.  We are grand on the outside.

But dying on the inside.

One wonders if we really love the church anymore.  We are enamored of its power and importance, we lust to create in its image government and society, we strive and work and organize and evangelize and trumpet.  But we do not play.  We do not just sit down and play, in lowly surroundings, with joy and sweat, for the simple loveliness of grace itself, of mutual encouragement, of sharing with strangers, of old melodies made new and personal and distinct, of serving the lost and needy, of lifting up the forgotten and powerless, of the tunes and sounds that make us all one, forever and ever, amen.

In our search for purity we have become anything but.

But I heard it in new ways from new faces these past few days, I hear it now, the old familiar strains of the Jesus we used to know, him of kindness and forgiveness and feeding and healing, I hear it with personality that makes it seem both ageless and new all over.  I saw the joy of cheering faces and felt the tremendous spirit that only come from ones desiring neither fame nor fortune but just a chance to dance to God’s music in their own lives. 

Perhaps we do not love the church anymore.  Maybe we have lost the truth of its music.  But somewhere, in small doorways off beaten paths that tune is well preserved, and not just the music but the joy of playing it, of sharing it, of living it. 

May they play on and well indeed.

Of Bishops, Churches and Me

Sitting at table, eating a box lunch with fellow previously unknown Lutherans from across the state during the annual assembly of the Nebraska Synod the other weekend, the question was asked rather bluntly:

“What does the Bishop get paid, anyway?” 

To tell you the truth, I was a bit startled at first.  In most company, it’s not a very polite question to ask.  But I’ve heard it before, and some would say that it’s a fair question.  The Bishop’s salary is paid by offerings made to the Synod, after all, and just as the members of a congregation are entitled to know what they are paying their Pastor, so representatives of those congregations are allowed to know what they are paying the person who does the job of being the Bishop.

 Who does the job.  Get it?

 When you put it that way, you get right to the heart of the matter.

 The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. 1 Timothy 3:1

 Once upon a time a Bishop wasn’t thought of as a paid “employee” of anyone, but as an office ordained by God to care for his most holy possession, the church.  Once upon a time, we revered the office (if not always the person) of Bishop, its importance, it authority.  Once upon a time, being a Bishop was a noble task. 

Then again, once upon a time being a part of the church was kind of a noble thing, too.

Let us be certain.  The struggles of the church of our time are not simply a matter of divisive politics or theology or Biblical interpretation or hymnals or contemporary worship or even sexuality.  Rather, the problem is our relationship to the church, our love for it, our respect for it, our reverence for it.  Or lack thereof.  We are not THE CHURCH anymore, whether that’s our congregation or the great national body we offer our allegiance to.  We are a club, a mutual and temporary voluntary association which we like and care about and revere so long so it serves our needs, so long as it fits our schedule, so long as we like the people there, so long as it’s not too much trouble. 

The thing about clubs, of course, is that because we join them by choice, they have no true hold over us.  As long as we’re happy, we’re in, we’re engaged, we’re involved.  But when the good times end, so do we.  And when the rules are altered or the membership changes, we can be shown the door pretty easily, too. 

But the Bible has a different language for the church.  THE CHURCH is the bride of Christ, the one specially and particularly chosen to receive the gift of his love.  And, as in ancient times when weddings were arranged and couplings served a greater purpose than personal lust, God brings Christ and his church together for a most important calling, for the building of community and service to the world.  The Bible sees the church as an everlasting covenant, a relationship built to endure good times and bad, poverty and wealth, sickness and health, forever and ever.  Amen.

 Yes, even good times AND bad.   

So should we simply abandon the church because we have a disagreement with it?  In a world where leaving marriage is more commonplace than entering it, it’s no surprise how easily we make that choice.  But this is neither how nor why God gave us the gift of being his church, his holy bride.  He desires that we live fully and eternally in this most sacred of relationships.  How we treat his church is how we treat him. 

No, let us instead be related to the church even as Christ himself takes her as his bride.  Let us be faithful in all things, let us overlook her faults as Christ forebears our sinfulness, let us take her as she is just as Christ accepts us for ourselves, let us cling to her in love and hope. 

Let us renew our vows and once again be married to the church. 

Who will speak for us?

Sometimes people say the smartest things:

The American Left has no coherent or compelling moral vision to justify its policy aims. It frequently can’t articulate why it is it believes what it does.  (Conor P. Williams, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen)

It shouldn’t have to be that way.

While the hijacking of American Christianity by a narrow, one-sided political agenda is surely bemoan-able, the blame lies equally at the feet of those who have, for the sake of self-promotion, advanced that cause, as well as those, who in their indolence and fear have stood by and allowed it to happen.  A true, biblical church with a strong prophetic voice should resound across the entire political spectrum, not just one side.  And there is a deep and important word which should be shouted loudly and plainly from the progressive side of the aisle. 

The Biblical call to care for the poor and advocate for the powerless is constant, demanding.  Love and care for Gods’ creation is the song of the Psalmists.  Jesus called his followers to practice peace in place of retaliation, to shun affluence and wealth, to put the needs of others ahead of themselves, he fed those who were hungry and healed those who were sick.  He reached across social, political and ethnic boundaries.  He associated with those who were shut out by polite society. 

There is a strong Christian, moral vision to propel a more progressive politic in this country.  There is a spiritual vacuum in our common conversation dying for lack of a Christian presence, a Christian voice.  There is a religious dimension to our civic life which reaches far beyond the limited issues of abortion and homosexuality. 

Once upon a time, we had such great voices, even from humble places like Nebraska.  George W. Norris.  William Jennings Bryan.  Bryan’s battle against Darwinism was not merely a small-minded fear of science, but moved by a Christian progressivism which grieved for a world led to “the merciless law of hate by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” 

Turns out he may have been right.  How amazing, that this man so often scorned as the very symbol of narrow-minded religiosity, may have been the last great voice of the true Christian cause in public life? 

That is the great mystery of faith and politics, that tolerance of differences has led to tolerance of rapaciousness, that allowing others to believe as they choose has opened the door to allowing others to starve and die for lack of food and medical care.  It is a great human crime that a political philosophy which endeavors most to reject any kind of religious tyranny has, perhaps inadvertently, ushered in a new kind of despotism, one of injustice and poverty. 

This is our failure, to recognize that even in a diverse world there are still moral absolutes.  That even those who reject the labels of religion are subject to the laws of humanity, that everyone, regardless of creed, is absolutely required to live among others in peace and love.

And that those who are Christians have the greatest responsibility of all. 

For regardless of how much we despise the taint that others have brought upon our faith, maybe even because of that, we are called to proclaim loudly and clearly the Biblical demands of peace and justice, of care for those in need, of standing with the downtrodden and left out.  We are not called to a conversation about the viability of government, we are called to move forward the work that our Lord puts before us.  In the presence of crowds of hungry people, Jesus did not invite his disciples to a debate about what they could do, he simply said, “You!  Get them something to eat!” 

They failed, of course.  Will we?

We need to stop talking about the viability of Social Security, and start talking about the viability of a community that turns its back on the care of those who can no longer provide for themselves.  We need to stop asking if we can afford to provide food stamps and medical care and child care and help for the disabled and education for our children and start asking if we can afford to fail this most sacred calling. 

We need to speak what is right.  Because if we don’t, who will? 

Now more than ever, we need leaders who will speak that word, make that challenge, who will refuse to let right be defined by what someone else does and start asking about what we are all doing for all of us. 

Will it happen?  I believe so, for thus it was promised: 

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet,who shall speak to them everything that I command. Deuteronomy 18:18

Please, God, send your prophet now. 

Given for who?

In 1974, the Catholic Church said, “Man may never obey a law which is in itself immoral.” 

Acting on that teaching, in 2004 Vatican officials encouraged US Catholic Bishops and Priests to refuse Holy Communion to then Presidential candidate John Kerry for his refusal to support anti-abortion legislation. 

This week, commenting on Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget proposals, the US Conference of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church said that because the budget disproportionately cuts programs that “serve poor and vulnerable people,” it does not meet “moral criteria.”

Will Roman Catholic Bishops and Priests now assume their sacred duty to excommunicate the author of this immoral budget (also Catholic) or any of its supporters? 

I doubt it. 

This is, of course, the problem you get into when the church dabbles in politics.

You find yourself in bed with politicians who are willing to stand with you on certain issues which are morally significant, like abortion and homosexuality, only to watch them take abominable positions on a whole host of others issues like social and economic justice, war and torture, the death penalty, care for the creation.  You look across the aisle and find the rest of the church on the other side, in the same predicament, married to politicians who constantly let them down, and you realize that you’ve become pawns in someone else’s game of divide and conquer.

And you want to speak, but this act of hypocrisy has silenced the prophets.  Ignorant, partly at your own hand, your flock has turned their back on much of the Scriptures, only to support political positions that crucify Jesus over and over again.  And the worst part, the absolute worst part, is that the throng of outsiders watching this farce sees, knows, how indefensible and untenable your place in the world has become.  And they hate you for it. 

And then it really hits you.

This is not a political failure.  This is a spiritual one. 

Because this is the problem that you get into when the church refuses to preach grace. 

Convinced that our worldly works and human actions determine our place in heaven, saying but not trusting fully the truth that it is the work of Christ alone which saves us, the church has confined itself to the role of Worldly Moral Police, following the winding path to a place from which it can no longer speak truth to anyone.  The work of politics is, after all, the consummate human endeavor, awash in violence and greed and self-indulgence and bigotry, a veritable cornucopia of sin.  It is most surely no place for the church of Jesus Christ.

Most assuredly, yes, the political world is desperately in need of the church’s voice, of our most prophetic word, of our critical eye and our spiritual guidance.  But the church cannot speak to the problem when the church is the problem.  The church cannot free those in prison when it has put itself into the same chains.  The church must always, constantly and powerfully distinguish itself from the world it if is to help the world at all.

The church must be grace.

Grace, after all, is not that which comes from within.  No, grace is the word that comes from without, the voice of God spoken from beyond us, the voice come from salvation to those trapped in sin.  The voice of grace is not a voice of this world, it is a voice of a God come into the world, come to lead his pilgrim people to the next world. 

A church sold out to the politics of this world cannot be grace, cannot speak grace, cannot save. 

Is this the time when the church divorces itself from its unholy marriage to worldly politics?

Unfortunately, I doubt that, too. 

A New Bible Translation for the New Century

Pastor Rick Warren has made the most important discovery in the history of the church.

For which we will probably all be in his debt forever.  Maybe literally.

It turns out that we were all wrong in our traditional reading of the Bible, particularly those passages regarding God’s view of earthly wealth and the rich.  Way wrong.  In fact, Warren teaches us, God does not despise wealth, does not think it is a bad thing to be horribly rich, nor is at all interested in justice after all.

Jesus did not tell the rich young ruler to give away all his wealth to the poor.  The poor do not need his money, they need jobs, so he should hang on it all of it.  That he went away sad was probably a result of misunderstanding the Savior’s words.

In Jesus’ parable, it turns out that the beggar Lazarus was not carted off to heaven by Jesus but sent out looking for work, and the rich man, in his purple robes eating his sumptuous feast was probably not punished by eternal fire for his affluence, after all.

And the whole sheep and goats thing in Matthew 25?  Jesus is not really so much commanding us to feed, clothe, house or tend to the hungry, poor or sick, but just to find them employment.  Isaiah’s rebuke of Isreal for “grinding the face of poor” is actually a call to give them more jobs at the local mill.  And the jubilee instructions in Deuteronomy are mostly a redaction error of some kind.

Feed the hungry crowds?  Heal the sick?  Nice idea, but not the problem of the wealthy.  They have enough to worry about, what with their incomes rising by a factor of some 300% over the last 3 decades.  Somebody has to count up all of that loot. 

No, Warren teaches us, Jesus doesn’t think it’s bad to be wealthy. 

And as the most famous Pastor in America, he’s probably right.  Besides, being a millionaire hundreds of times over himself, who else besides Warren knows the true heart of the wealthy?  Perhaps building a big bank account is the true driver of purpose? 

Or not. 

The iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me, those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches?  Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life, there is no price one can give to God for it.  (Psalm 49:5-7)

At least Pastor Warren knew that the Bible speaks of the poor thousands of times.  Perhaps he should also consider the hundreds of times that the Bible mentions the rich.  There he will note an absence of praise for wealth, a lack of virtue associated with worldly treasure, a disdain and judgment for those who accumulate and hold fortune, for no other reason than that they are rich.  No, Pastor Warren, you are wrong to the point of shaming the good name of Pastor’s everywhere. 

I cannot imagine what should motivate such an obviously erroneous and dishonest comment on his part.  But if one wonders why agnosticism and atheism are the new growing pastime in America, why millions are fleeing the church, they need look no further.

We have sold our souls to the gods of the human economy.  Lord have mercy on us. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Lots

How often the words astronomical and odds go together!

Last week Americans spent $1.5 billion for a 1 in 176 million chance to win the Mega Millions lottery, a prize worth about 1/5^th of that.  And every ticket buyer knew, when they were honest, that they were not really going to win, that the odds were not in anyone’s favor, that they were more likely to be killed by terrorist or struck by lightning – twice! – than win the lottery.

But the prize, so amazing, so life-changing, well, you have to take your chance.  On even the most remote possibility, you have to cast your lot.

Like the soldiers at the cross, just to name one example. 

Yes, the soldiers, who, having nailed Jesus to the cross, now awaiting the certainty of his death, consider the worldly belongings that be left behind, and not wanting to destroy his tunic for it was well made and valuable, determined to leave it’s appointment to fate, and so they cast their lots there at the foot of the cross.  Since we cannot decide it, since we do not want to destroy it, let God decide what will happen to his tunic.

Let God decide what will happen to his Son.

Let God decide.

Good Friday is the great lottery of our salvation, our last, against-all-odds shot at eternity.  The odds of such broken creatures as us finding a place in the Father’s kingdom are astronomical.  The odds of such mortal creatures as us living beyond the grave are astronomical.  The odds of such suffering and grieving people as us finding comfort and hope are astronomical. 

But in the face of this darkness, in the vaguest possibility of life, both in this world and the next, for the extravagant gift that is at stake here, we must cast our lots, we must take our chance, we must hang our faith on the risk that he knows what he is saying, means what he promises, that his claim to be The One is, in fact, real, ours. 

And since we can do nothing else, let God decide. 

Because we can do nothing except sin and hurt and die, except watch and hope and pray, then let us cast our lots and let God decide.

And not fear.  Because the game is rigged anyway. 

In your favor. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Find

It’s always in the last place you look, they say.

Ha ha.

Of course it’s in the last place you look – why would you keep on looking after you’ve found it?  That would be kind of ridiculous, after all.  It’s not like looking is all that fun, not like it’s a common pastime or amusement for anyone who isn’t a treasure hunter by profession (and I’m not sure that the looking is their favorite part of the job, either!)

No, the problem is not the last place you look.  It’s the many, many, way too many places you have to look before you get to the last place.  It’s the profusion of frustrating, disappointing, unhelpful stops along the way that gets to you.  The trials of errors, the inane and silly places that you look which could never be the place but you have to look somewhere after all.  The mounting tension, the sense of failure, the self-doubt and personal questioning, the anger and the grief and the spectacle of it all.

The looking. 

No one likes the looking, only the finding.  And since not finding is not an option, since losing is, well, losing, we subject ourselves to endless torture in the constant and daily quest to find.

Poor us. 

Poor Pilate.  Having searched Jesus endlessly, up and down and back again, for some sign, some understanding, some knowledge about who he is and what he did and why the Jewish authorities are so determined to have him dead, he finds nothing.  “I find no case against him,” he confesses to the crowd.  He holds him up to the mob for closer inspection.  “Behold the man,” he dares them.  Find what you are looking for yourself.  Tell me what you see.  But he cannot get free from the ultimate game of seek, no more than we can now. 

For we are creatures searching, seeking, questing.  We know in the very depths of our souls that we are missing, something, someone, and we are turning over every rock and opening every door in fretful haste, hoping, examining, judging every corner of life.  To find.  Something.  To discover what we miss, to fill up the emptiness, to have, to possess, what we know we want, need.  Searching every nook and cranny, trying out every possibility, sublime and useless even, looking, overlooking, trying and discarding, rummaging through our lives like overloaded closets full of inadequate junk. 

To find.  Perhaps even to find him.

But we never do.  That is the great irony of this story, the great mystery of faith, that we look but never perceive, that we listen but never understand.  Like Pilate, we wonder what truth is, even when it slouches, beaten, right in front of us.  Behold the man, we say, hopeful that someone will tell us what we behold, but the answer escapes us even as the words fall from our lips.

For we cannot see.  We cannot find. 

We can only be shown.  We can only be found.

That is the nature of faith, the meaning of this story, the purpose of this death.  Having the Savior in our hands we can only kill him.  Having salvation in our hands, we can only lose it.  Grace is not for the taking, not for the finding, only for the giving, only for pouring out on the helpless heads of the lost and abandoned.  We can only be baptized, in the end.  We can only be fed. 

I find that I cannot find.  I believe that I cannot believe.  This is the badge of honor of faith, that on another Good Friday, our search would be nailed to a cross and ended forever, that our self-seeking pursuit of righteousness is lost, dead, forever. 

That we would not find, but stay lost.

For it only the lost who can be found. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Will

Will he or won’t he? 

It is the verb of uncertainty, the tension of the future, of what unseen things lie ahead, of what may or might or can or should or, well, will, be.  Whenever what will be comes to be.  

It is the verb of strain, of power, by which we mean willpower, the fortitude of humanity in the face of temptation, of trial, of distraction and dislocation.  It is the tenuous cling to a hoped-for-reality in the face of an actual one.  It is the tenacity to get through what is hard to get through.  At minimum the possibility of survival in the face of certain defeat.  The hopefullness of the human spirit.

But it is actually neither of these.

It is God.  For God is will. 

Thy will be done.  Four simple words that encompass the entirety of a night at Gethsemane, a whole prayer, a whole prayer-life.  Thy will be done.  A death prayer, an urging of defeat and destruction, a plea for an end, an out.  Not my will, but thy will be done.  A radical calling for a drastic moment, a profound hope for an extreme truth, this substitution of will.

Not a wish, not a desire, but so much more than that.  Not what God wants, but what God is, for no God named I Am can be reduced to want or chance, no such God is limited by expectation or possibility.  Thy will be done is the closing of the door on all such idiocy and idolatry, on the artifice that anything but God’s will would be done anyway.  

It is not the prayer that re-writes the future.  It is the prayer which etches the formerly determined future indelibly on hearts and souls and into history and in, with and under the present reality which cannot overcome it.  Thy will be done is the writ of surrender to the truth that Thy will is already done, even now swelling up through the surface of all the uncertainties and weaknesses which pretend to be will. 

For His will is His Grace, his pre-creation decision to be a God of love and salvation, to be God for us and of us and with us.  And in the darkness of the Garden is played out the very nature of God and the Universe and me in one simple word.  Will.  As in may what has been done now be done anew.  Again.  Always.

And may I be there to see it.  If you will. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Meal

In every civilized society, it is an established convention; that the condemned are given, as a final act of humanity, a last meal.

One last act of compassion before the barbarity ensues. 

It has become a matter of myth and movie, this one last meal.  What extravagant, remarkable selection would one choose knowing that they would never again eat, never again taste, never again feel pleasure, never again associate with anything of this world, never again breathe … 

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”  (Luke 22:15-16) 

He knows, of course – how could he not?  He knows full well that this is his last meal. He knows the pain and distress that await him in the next hours.  He knows that at his side recline his betrayer and his denier, his chosen few who will not watch with him through the night but in the morning scatter in fear and alarm.  He comes now to his final request, his last meal, a time which he has long forseen and expected. 

And his last request?  His final taste of this world?  No, it will not be filled with fine foods and the best wine, it will not offer him one last comfort before the end, it will be for them, for others present and others yet to come.  His last moment, his last meal, will embody all that he has come to be, it will be the climax and the genesis of his mission, it will be a meal not for his own good, but for those he served. 

And it will be the best meal of all. 

What does that word mean to us?  A meal, a time of being filled, of needs met and wants indulged, at its minimum what we must have and at its best what we most desire.  But what do we truly need and what is our greatest joy?  Not the filling of our stomachs, but of our hearts, not the needs of our bodies but of our souls, that is the last word of our lives, that is what defines and completes us, that is what ought to be our last moment. 

Not what we do for ourselves, but for our neighbor.   

The brokenness of this world is surely captured in its penurious graspings, it our lusting for self-satisfaction like we’re never going to eat again.  That is the measure of our sin, that our mortality turns us ever toward our worldly wants.  But this last meal, to which we return every seven days, reminds us that the ultimate word for us is his word, that we are more than entrails and appetites, that all we have is created to be corporeal so we will not be too attached to it.   

We are, not unlike he is, most free from the prison of this world when we turn to the needs of our neighbors.  We are most fed when we feed, we are best served when we serve, we are ever loved when we love.   

May your next meal be as good as your last.