Glen Wayne Thomas (1933-2016)

Glen Wayne Thomas was born December 18^th, 1933 , to William and Opal (McManime) Thomas of Missouri Valley, Iowa, one of seven children.  The family moved to Arlington Nebraska, where he graduated from Arlington High School in 1951. 

After graduation he lived in California with his brother Harold and worked for Lockheed Corporation building aircraft.  He served in the United States Army.  He was stationed in the US and served as an army cook during the Korean War.

On November 16, 1956, Wayne married Marian Grant of Fremont Nebraska.

Wayne worked at the Gamble’s Department Store warehouse when he met and married Marian.  Then he took a job at the Warehouse Market Grocery store in Fremont, rising to the position of Store Manager.  In 1977, Wayne moved to Sioux City Iowa as a co-owner of KenWay Distributing company, where he worked until retirement. 

Wayne was baptized and confirmed in the faith at Sinai Lutheran Church in Fremont Nebraska.  Throughout his life, he was an active member of his church, filling in a number of responsibilities including teaching Sunday School and Council Member.  He belonged to various civic organizations such as the Optimist’s club.  He was a 32^nd degree Mason and Worthy Patron of the Eastern Star. 

Wayne was known for his friendliness, his generous spirit, his openness, honesty and hard work.  He had a quick and infectious laugh, and brought a smile to everyone he met.  He was always helpful when needed, and would do anything for anyone.  His last act in this world was weeding in a community rose bed, which was not his job, but something he could do for someone else, which was just the kind of man he was.  He mostly loved spending time with family and friends, especially over a game of cards or cup of coffee or a beer. 

He will be remembered for his occasional antics, for wonderful family vacations and camping trips, for his devotion to the Cubs and his beloved Huskers.  He was the very definition of a good man, and leaves a legacy of decency and integrity that will very much be missed. 

Wayne goes now to join his parents, his brothers Harold and David, and his sisters Jane and Louise. 

He is remembered by his wife of 59 years Marian, his daughter Denise and her husband Kevin Hyde of Omaha, Nebraska, his sons Glen William and his wife Lorie of Omaha Nebraska, and Joel and his wife Dee of Danville Illinois, his sisters Norma and Judy, his grandchildren Amanda (John) Kloke, Justin (Aja) Hyde, Aaron (Maegan) and Zachary Thomas, Glen Wayne II and Grant Thomas, Devin, Destinie and Danessa Thomas, and great-grandchildren Owen and Jackson Kloke. 

Glen Wayne Thomas began his new life in the Lord on Wednesday, August 17^th, 2016, at the age of 83. 

God, the generations rise and pass away before you. You are the strength of those who labor; you are the rest of the blessed dead. We rejoice in the company of your saints. We remember all who have lived in faith, all who have peacefully died, and especially those most dear to us who rest in you.... Give us in time our portion with those who have trusted in you and have worked to do your holy will. To your name, with the Church on earth and the Church in heaven, we ascribe all honor and glory, now and forever.  Amen.

Lost

I know that I’m a bit of an academic. 

I don’t mind.  I think there is a little too much unlearned opinion running the world today, and that the we would all be better served by more knowledge and better reflection.  I abhor the anti-intellectualism that passes for social and political discourse.  I think it is to our detriment.  So spending my summer deep in book and thought and writing has been a wonderful and pleasant indulgence for me. 

Unfortunately, reality has a way of interrupting such exercises.

My sabbatical project has brought me again and again to the concept of, the experience of, exile.  I think that dramatic social change in the world today is creating an experience of exile, a sense of leaving behind what is usual and certain in order to make way for God to do something new.  I have been exploring from various angles the biblical, theological and ecclesiastical implications of these ideas.  And I have missed out, in great part, the very real and personal ones. 

Until something in my own life forced me into that same kind of place so I might learn.  And maybe grow.

We have been dealing with a significant crisis in my family this week, one that is particularly defined by helplessness.  We have faced a challenge that we could not solve, one that, frankly, we should not solve.  We have been forced in a place of waiting and watching, of separation and anxiety, of not knowing what is ahead, fearful to allow ourselves to become victims of our own expectations, only able to hope without even knowing what to hope for.  We have been in exile, far from anything usual or certain. 

I thought I knew how hard this is.  I didn’t. 

There has been a constant groping for signs, for clues, for clear information, but there has been little or none.  There has been a constant turn to prayer, but even then the right words have been elusive.  I have experienced, not for the first or last time, that sense of being totally lost, in a strange and foreign place, with neither direction or expectation.

And here I have been reminded of faith. 

I was raised to believe that faith was all about usual and certain, about indisputable truth and the weight of history and tradition.  We should have known better.  Faith, as it is written, is hope in what is not seen, what is not known, what is uncertain.  Faith is the risky leap into what cannot be proven, what should not be proven.  Faith lives in that dark and uncontrollable place, the Saturday between the terrible Friday that was and the beautiful Sunday we have been promised. 

But that is its power.  Faith matters because it lives in the void, in the lost places, in the fearfulness where religion abandons and where certain and usual cannot be found.  When words and doctrines and clichés fail, faith is all we have left.

And then we have it. 

Faith is not us, it is not ours.   We do not create it, we do not control it.  We cannot summon it like a superhero of yore, we cannot demand it as payment for debt.  It must come to us, unbidden, a thief in the night, catching us unaware and undefended.  It must come from without that it might possess us, transform us, take us.  Hold us.  Save us.

I have found faith here.  I have felt the prayers of far away friends, neighbors, even strangers.  I have found peace where and when the usual allies of words and knowledge departed.  And I hope for you, when your life goes off of the map and into exile, that faith will come to you there and save you too. 

Authority

Us Christians look for revelations in the strangest of places.  We seek truth while we pray in our closets, or from Michael W Smith lyrics, or from obscure passages in Jewish wisdom literature.

And sometimes we miss out on really important things that are right in front of us.

I got revelation just this week, and I got it from the strangest place.  In the middle of a American political party convention.  No, it didn’t come from a politician or a TV commentator or a journalist.  It came from a random delegate.  And it was not meant to be revelatory.  But it was.

After the speeches were over Monday evening, a TV reporter asked a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter and millennial for her reaction to his speech and who she was going to support going forward, especially given the contentious divisions in their party. 

“I believe anything Bernie says.  He is the one politician I have heard that I absolutely believe.”

“Bernie told you tonight to vote for Hillary Clinton.”

“Well, I don’t believe that.”

And there you have it.  Everything you need to know – not about politics – about the social and historical forces pulling apart the church’s mission in this generation.  It may well be the ultimate question for the church going forward (as Phyllis Tickle has noted).  Where is the authority?

The church’s work has always been about authority.  The truth of our doctrine, the veracity of our teachings, the power of our message stem from their authority, depend on authority.  We are not making one argument among others, we are speaking truth, eternal and immutable truth.  And the authority from which we speak must be indisputable.

That authority is not just us!  It comes to us from without, from beyond, from above.  Whether it was the apostles, the Emperor, the pope, the Priest assigning penance or the Pastor preaching the gospel, the denominational leader or the TV celebrity, authority has always been external.  My willingness to submit to that authority is necessarily dependent on my ability to trust it, to understand it, to willingly submit to it.  Which is not always easy or given.  How do I know these authorities are trustworthy?  What if they are wrong?

Even the scriptures themselves are an external authority.  They are words speaking across a span of time and distance and generations and society, but they are external to me.  And so they suffer the same weakness of all external authority.  Trying to read the Bible literally reveals it to be archaic, internally inconsistent, factually wrong.  Trying to read it metaphorically tempts us to reductionism and escapism.  Since the last great reformation the Bible has been upheld as the ultimate authority of faith and doctrine and practice.  Since the last century, the Bible has been an object of criticism and doubt. 

No wonder that this generation has finally reached the end of the authority rope. 

Do not be mistaken – this is not their fault.  It is ours.  We have insisted on blind obedience to authority and they, educated, sophisticated and plugged-in as they are, have noticed that the emperor has no clothes.  We have taken the veracity and dependability our own faith for granted and assumed that everyone else would, too.  And we have been caught off guard when they refused. 

This generation is calling us to a new measure and definition of authority in the church, and even in the world.  They will no longer simply take our word as authority, but now demand that we bring them into the experience of faith, that we give them something actual and incarnate to hold to as their own.  They do not want to be told what to believe.  They do not even want to be told to believe. 

They want to believe for themselves.  They have to believe for themselves. 

Good for them.  Good for us. 

Wrath

Our imagining of God typically leaves out a most significant feature of the God of the Bible, and especially of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.  In the scriptures, Justice is the name of God, not in the human sense of getting what you deserve but in the divine sense of standing with those who have no one to stand with them.  The entire history of Israel is the story of a God who turns the world upside down by standing on the side of the insignificant and the lost, the second sons and the slaves.  As Jesus walks the earth he eats with sinners and tax collectors, blesses the poor and the hungry, interacts with Gentiles and women (even Gentile women!), gathers a collection of disciples from among fishermen and farmers.  He stands directly, even intimately, with those we callously pronounce unfit and undeserving.  God does not look with kindness from afar on the needy, but identifies with them and takes their side even as he curses the arrogance of the wealthy and powerful for their false conceit. 

An interesting parallel has risen in the world today.  There have been strong reactions to the very name of “Black Lives Matter” movement (not just the issue) as if the name implied that other lives do not, and so we see memes on social media, for example, avowing that “All Lives Matter,” or more recently, “Blue Lives Matter,” in recognition of violence perpetrated against law enforcement officers.  People are appalled by the creation of a victimized class, of any sort, that could potentially be raised above others for special treatment or recognition.  But what does this mean for followers of Jesus, who not only acknowledged the victimization of classes of people like the poor and the sick and the outcast, but considered them especially worthy of his blessing and his grace.  It was the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, the persecuted that he blessed in his teachings (Luke 6:20-26), not the rich, not the good, not the happy. 

Doesn’t everyone know this?  Even those whose are rarely present at a church know that Jesus cares for the unfortunate, the small, the disadvantaged.  The true nature of his heart is known within the church and without.  Yet too often the church does not exemplify that same grace for the world, preferring instead a doctrine of accomplishment, a gospel of prosperity.  We have defined the ethic of work as “protestant” now, as if it were the essence of Christianity, and in doing so have disregarded the God who saves without work. 

As the church, we have preached that the only class worthy of God’s grace are believers, adherents to our structure and our doctrine and our practices.  In the eyes of Jesus, grace was made for those who suffer and are oppressed.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician,” Jesus said, “but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Mark 2:17, NRSV)   He was constantly critical of the most “religious” people of his day, at odds with Pharisees and Sadducees alike.  Instead he lavished his time, energy and attention on the unworthy, the disadvantaged, the lost.  His parables celebrated prodigal sons and lost sheep, his work brought him in contact with the outcast and lepers, whom he welcomed. 

We do not proclaim this gospel or practice this kind of justice in the church because, like society, we only value what is earned, what is merited.  Justice and deserving are synonymous in our eyes.  For God, grace and justice are one.  The kingdom is ordered for the sake of that grace, both the kingdom of this world and the one yet to come.  Our work is defined by such grace, that we should be about the business of those particular souls who should, in fact, especially matter, who particularly live in want of grace.  This is difficult and subtle work, impervious to the clarity of dogma and tradition.  This requires us to leave behind the certainty that protects ourselves and enter into the strange, foreign lives of others. 

We would prefer a God who follows simpler rules, and hands out reward and penalty accordingly.

And this has created the most striking feature of our painting of God.  An angry, vengeful God, who distributes not coal but brimstone, not in lumps but as fire that rains down from the heavens, on whatever Sodom or Gomorrah we abhor.  This is the God of divine retribution, and in our self-serving misinterpretation of biblical justice we are emboldened us to dare to prophesy this wrath against others, against outsiders and any convenient scapegoat we can find.  There is coming, we boldly decree, a day of holy judgment, when we will be vindicated for our own believing and everyone will find out, some to their eternal horror, that we were right the whole time.

We love this God because he is the winner we aspire to be.  He is all-powerful and willing to use that power in the service of defeating every enemy.  The notion that God is gracious or merciful, that he sides with the weak or the needy, that he calls us to love our enemies and pray for them, does not fulfill our needs.  But that can be easily disregarded.  Perhaps we could follow the example of Pastor Robert Jeffress, Senior Pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas and adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, who simple dismisses pieces of scripture like the Sermon on the Mount because they are not “given as governing principle.”   And who decides which words of the Bible count are to be taken as “governing principles?”  We do, because it suits our needs to do so.  Those others, who see Jesus as a champion of the poor and downtrodden, well, they must be wrong.  We are certain!

If only they knew God the way that we know God. 

If only we knew God the way we believe we do. 

Idols

While most of the world has left the church, those who have remained have taken church-ness to new heights.  There is a serious intensity and devotion to religion today.  Our certainty is not merely a shelter against the storm of worldliness, it is a weapon that we wield proudly and aggressively.  Christianity is not our faith, it is our brand, our position.  It is our expectation, of ourselves and of others.  The world must teach as we teach, practice as we practice, in schools and places of employment and in the marketplace and in the halls of government.  We are not merely evangelists, we are crusaders, exerting an activist conviction that will broker no rejection.

Perhaps, ironically, this is a lesson we have learned from the world.  It is our love of sports, after all, that shapes our culture, teaching us that life is a game to be won, and to be won at all costs.  Winning isn’t the everything, it’s the only thing.  In the same way that we play at economics and politics, so now we play at religion, certain that we are not called merely to participation in the creation, but to total and complete victory.  By a clever and self-serving interpretation of Genesis, we have defined our place in creation as dominant, ascendant.  We are not the creation’s servants, the world exists to serve us, to worship us.  We are its god.

And in this way, the Christian church itself has become its own idol in the world.  Religion is not merely a path to spirituality, it is the very object of worship and devotion, our tenets and our creeds are the bottom line we serve.  The Bible we read is our Bible, not a living, breathing experience of the vastness of God’s grace throughout history that speaks to us and examines us, but a cold, dead, series of proof texts subject to our own usage and narrow purpose.  Doctrine and dogma are not simply tools for teaching and organization – they are the faith itself.  The church today is the church of our own creation, our best work, we take great pride in it.  And we expect others to worship it, too.

We come to this point, I believe, because our primary theology is about ourselves, our trust in our works, in our decisions, in our choices.  We have defined the church in this most basic, human term:  believing.  I made the choice to believe in this way, and because I made this choice, it is the right choice.  We worship our own works, the regularity of our attendance, our programs, our hymnody, our righteousness, our lifestyle, because we chose them.  Here is the final Americanization of Christianity – the ultimate adoration of the god of human will.

The role of the human will has been a great theological debate of the Christian community from its beginnings.  The question of the right division of labor between grace and human will has both captivated and tortured the church’s greatest thinkers.   Paul taught first that salvation comes “as a gift,” (Romans 3:24, NRSV) that is, entirely from the hand of God, underserved, unearned, regardless of and prior to anything we have done or will do.  But from that beginning the church has sought rather to assert the importance and the necessity of the human contribution to salvation, through good works or sufficient self-recrimination for bad works.  Or, at least, choice.

Free will is our idolatry.  Free will is how we judge the world and thereby keep others at bay.  Free will is the stone and mortar with which the walls of our city are built.  And it is no stronger than that, because it is, in the end, a human construction, only as strong as we are and every bit as weak.  That is why Martin Luther, the great protestant reformer, spoke against this dogmatic supposition of free will: 

For my own part, I frankly confess that even if it were possible, I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive toward salvation. For, on the one hand, I should be unable to stand firm and keep hold of it amid so many adversities and perils and so many assaults of demons, seeing that even one demon is mightier, than all men, and no man at all could be saved …

Instead of upholding its importance, Luther professed, the cross of Christ necessarily revealed the brokenness of the human will, the truth of sin, that left to our own devices and choices we are bound to the wrong work, the wrong inclination.  This is the definition of sin, the self-centered worship of human will and human choice, this is what Christ died for, so that we might recognize our own powerlessness and submit to God’s determination instead.  But such theology has no place in a church bound by certainty.  Religion is, in the end, lived out in humans and in human works.  And so we battle to the death for our own role in God’s work, and in the process constrain his work to the inferior place.  Always.  We say that grace is primary, necessary, chief.  But in the end our words and acts express our belief that grace is helpless without the work of our own hand, our choice, our decision, our will.  God cannot save us, after all, unless we save ourselves.  God cannot save us unless we want to be saved, mean to be saved, act to be saved. 

We say it is all about God.  We act as if it is all about us. 

The world can see this, by the way.  We believe it is our best quality, this willing desire for God, our illustrious religiosity.  The world sees our public confession, our public display.  But it also knows the truth, our private guilt, our not-so-hidden corruption and sin.  The world knows that even as we tout our faith in Jesus we live and act in ways that are contrary to his teachings.  We are prideful, we turn our back on injustice, we stand with polluters and warmongers, the violent and the oppressors.  We sing our love of grace, forgiveness and mercy, and then pronounce judgment and condemnation on all.  The world can see the log in our own eyes even if we cannot, and names it hypocrisy, this worship of our self-made empty religion.  The world knows our bondage, and now awaits our destruction so that it can step in and seek the dawn of a brand new day.

Flags

It is a great holiday.

Not just because it comes in the middle of the summer, when we need a holiday really, really badly.  Not just because of the great barbecue or that you get to blow stuff up (hopefully not yourself!).  Not just because of the great march music or the speeches or the patriotic display.

Independence Day is a great holiday because it celebrates a great thing.  Independence.  The foundation of this nation and the essential component of all human society.  Independence appeals most to us because it is intrinsic to our nature, the characteristic that defines us, that makes us human.  We have the ability to rise above the tyranny of our circumstances and our environment.  We can be more than we seem to be.  We carry within ourselves the aspiration to define ourselves and the will to accomplish our dreams. 

Everything good that has been accomplished by human beings has been a produce of our independence. 

And everything bad.

Injustice, bigotry, violence –these are all products of independence, too, of our need to place self above community, of our willingness to make others suffer for our desires, of our inability to give up immediate satisfaction for long range goals or to sacrifice for greater good.  We ignore corruption and destroy the planet and go to war just because we don’t want anyone else to tell us what to do.  These are the fruits of our worship of independence, our idolatry of self to the exclusion of our corporate burden. 

But what if Independence Day was a celebration of our independence from all of that? 

Perhaps we have misunderstood the real value of freedom.  The real tyranny in life is not dependence but disconnection.  We are only ourselves, and we are our best selves, as we are a part of a larger organism.  We are never fully realized until we realize our role in society, we are never whole until we are part of the greater whole of the community we share. 

We live our lives under the influence of two competing voices.  One calls us to stand apart from the crowd, to be unique and self-sufficient, to protect our privacy at all costs and live with no obligation to another.  Another sings to us a song of belonging, of the absolute magnitude of loving and being loved, of the value of friendship and family, of the power of compassion and giving.  And which one is right?

The first is the voice of sin.  It is the voice that calls us to self-regard and greed, to rampant egoism with no thought of its impact on others.  And history is filled with the wreckage of such pursuit, with the multitudes who have been crushed by the ambitions of few, the wastelands of egregious consumption, the tears of too many who have paid the price of the successes of too few. 

Yes, it promises to lead us to enterprise and fulfillment, but this is a half-truth, a lie of omission.  For we can also find enterprise and fulfillment in relationship with others.  And the truth is that we can only find enterprise and fulfillment in relationship with others.  “It is not good for man to be alone,” is God’s first reflection at our creation.  And this is the truth that determines our destiny.  It is only when we are independent from our own selfish self-interests that we can truly be who we were made to be. 

That is independence worth a great holiday. 

Exits

You refused the call.

Heroic words. A rare treasure in an epic focused on the greed and violence that is human nature at its worst.  That they were spoken by a child and heaped shame on older, seemingly stronger and braver men who should have known better made them all the more poignant.  That they so succinctly bear witness to the shame of our own time makes them all the more important.

You refused the call.

They are words that speak to duty, to obligation, to the undeniable and immutable responsibilities that bind us together.  They are a stark (forgive the pun!) reminder of the allegiance that we share, all of us, to one community, one humanity.  We are not islands unto ourselves.  We are not alone, no matter the distance between us.  In this world that worships at the altar of individuality and choice, they expose of idolatry and our false religion of self above all.

Not that we care.

Is it just our nature, or is it our sin – or both – to be always the ones who refuse the call?  The word of the day this week is exit, as is leaving, as in breakage, as in the pretense of independence, the denial that we are, in fact, always in relationship to others.  The choice ostensibly made to affirm that we are entitled to our own lives, to attend to own needs and to not be dragged down by the rest.  The right to separate ourselves from the harm of others in the world.  As if such a thing could be.   

The immediate consequences of this most recent exit reveals the lie of every attempt at divorce.  We are too interconnected, too intertwined, for any to go it alone.  Our selfish acts have far-reaching consequences.  We fear how others bear us harm.  What of the hurt we do them, intended or not?  We name globalism the enemy, which is like blaming the air for the pollution that we breathe.  Humanity has always been one global shared experience.  Even if we didn’t know it.

No, what is wrong with the world is us – we made it this way; we cannot, we may not, run and hide from it.  If there is so much wrong in humanity that we should not want to be connected to others, then we are responsible to fix it, not to deny it. 

To deny it is to refuse the call.

But still we do.  And as we have felt the early rumblings of this most recent exit, so we shall feel more and more down the road.  The celebration and the pride that brought this about clangs discordantly in the heavens.  The potential for more exits of every shape and size looms over us like a cross on a hill. 

But resurrection dawns in an amazing, grace-filled truth.  There are no real exits.  There is no actual escape from each other for us.  There are no walls high enough, no distances great enough, to overcome what is the very nature of God’s good creation.  Is it not good for us to be alone, he said, and so he made us, one from the other, a whole humanity, one family, from now until the end of time.  We may attempt to our utmost ability to exit from this reality.  We may refuse the call.  It changes nothing. 

We are one.  We will always be one. 

And now we are called to live as one.  Shall we answer the call?

Walls

There is nothing like being away to teach you to see.  Today I was reminded of something that I've actually known for a long time:  I live in a strange place. 

Not that Nebraska is strange in a weird or dangerous way.  It's just that it's not like the rest of the world.  I know what you're saying, the rest of the world is just not like Nebraska.  But statistics tell a different truth:  Nebraskans, such as we are, are in the minority.  Probably what many of us consider to be normal is, in fact, parochial, unusual.  Most of the rest of society is living a different life in a very different world.

Which really matters.

They're has been a lot of talk these days about building walls.  Here, in the midst of this new experience, I cannot help but wonder if I may already be living behind one.

I don't think I have appreciated, for instance, how many middle aged and elderly people I live around.  I have wondered often (it's a question that Pastors ask all the time) where all the young people are.  The answer is that they're here.  They live in the city, in the big city, far from the peace and quiet and boredom where I live my days.  Why?  My life and home and place is wonderful, ideal, I think.  Everyone should want to live where and as I do.

But they don't. 

Hmmm.

No, the seemingly scarce young people are here, and in abundance, omni-present, not as occasional tourists in the world (as I too often experience them in my church) but its denizens, owners of this society, home.  They are active and enthusiastic, bustling to and fro, moving purposefully and persistently toward some expected horizon. 

They are unusual creatures, these young young people.  Like Jane Goodall, I find myself in an observant posture, trying to discern what is happening in their minds and in their lives and even making up stories about them, as if I could invent insight where none was immediately available.  I notice that they are both similar and diverse, sharing common comport and style yet also of every shape, color and conviction.  They are not intimidated by their vastness nor their individuality.  They seem to know how and when to march in concert and behave according to seemingly practical, if unwritten, norms.  They are not fazed by what I find complicated and  opaque.  They get it.  I don’t.

They are often plugged in, physically, ear buds permanently affixed.  Their world, it turns out, is not bound by its physical limitations.  They are in many places and in multiple times, functionally and mentally and spiritually.  This super-power of theirs is marvelous to see. 
But mostly I notice how happy they seem.  That makes me less so.  It would be easy to see their radically different choices, their foreign lifestyle, as threat.  Is this the evolution to come?  I’m not sure I would have a place here.  I’m not sure I would want a place here. 

And that is the real problem.  That I should reach such a summation is exactly the problem.  It may be an interesting question, but it is ultimately an unnecessary one.  A wrong one.  Maybe even a shameful one.  It is an utter reminder not just of the wall that surrounds me but of my attachment to it, of my idolatry to it.  That I cannot relate to or even endure another world beyond the walls which I have defined for myself is as good a definition of sin as I have come to lately. 

And if there is any meaning to repentance, then this must be it.  That I should turn away from the constant butting up against my own walls and find, instead, a doorway, or a bridge, or whatever such thing which might open up the possibility of a connection between worlds, between me and the others, different as they are. 

Now that would be a sight to see. 

The Uncertain Gospel

This week, in the aftermath of yet one more mass killing in our country, a Pastor in Sacramento California shared his own particular experience of sorrow.  “The tragedy,” he said, “is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is I’m kind of upset he didn’t finish the job – because these people are predators. They are abusers."

Them being the homosexuals who frequented the Pulse club.  Them being an abomination before God according to Leviticus and therefore worthy of such a fate (if not worse.)

Evidently this Pastor was sad that he couldn’t shoot them himself. 

Which is more shocking – that a Pastor would speak such words at this time, or that he would speak them at all?  Or is it that these are not merely random words of hatred and anger, but that they are words bred at the heart of the struggle for faith in the church?

After all, Leviticus has been with us for a long time.  We all know what it says.  And we all know what it means, don’t we?

Or have we just been wrong all this time?

Pastor Jimenez’s comments, spoken especially at this time, confront us like a mirror held too closely to the face and call us to self-reflection.  We recoil at the callousness, the selfishness.  We rebuke this thinking – “this is not what we believe!”  We do not wish any part of such an agenda, yet we cannot so easily repudiate the role of these words in our history and in our tradition.  Shall we just deny the sacred writings of the faith?  The Bible is a whole, not a collection of interchangeable and conveniently dismissible parts.  Shall we just flee from the church and leave this struggle behind?  Many, too many, have already made that choice.

No.  We would be just as lost as them.

If only there was another option.

I believe there is, though I confess to not knowing it fully.  I am convinced, however, that it starts with humility, a kind of humility that has become much lacking and greatly absent in the church of this age.  It starts with the almost impossible question:  what if we’re wrong?

I was not trained to ask such a question in my seminary education.  I was not trained to ask such a question in years of Sunday School and Confirmation.  No, I was raised in the certainty of faith, in the surety of the presence of God and the certain work of his holy church.  Faith was definable, knowable, determinative.  The church was a mighty fortress, built on doctrine and dogma, sacred practice and holy Word.  Even the spiritual was concrete.  It was what it seemed to be, what it was said to be, forever and ever, world without end Amen. 

And so it has become our prison. 

The problem for me is that being horrified by this kind of hatred and small-mindedness is not enough.  I am still a product of and a responsible party to the Word of God, the whole of the Scripture, the long tradition of my church and the heart of its people.  I am tied to that, I am anchored to that.  I cannot simply walk away.  I must be set free from it.  Set free by a power much, much greater than I. 

If we are to break from this confinement, if we are to find the path between overly self-righteous loathing and hatred and aimless, meaningless futile wandering, then we must begin not with what we know but with what we do not.  Before we can come to the revelation that comes from God alone, we must put an end to the revelations that come from ourselves.  We must end so that faith – true faith! – can live.

And to fully make that move, we must become uncertain.

I know this to be a risky proposition.  It is much easier to stay where we have always stood (at least where we think we have always stood – that is a different matter entirely).  It is easier to take the short route, the shallow exegesis, the simple answer.  It is easier, but it is not right, for in taking the easy way, the simple way, the known way, we will surely come to the end we deserve.

Pastor Jimenez’s summation of the Orlando massacre was that “they deserve what they got.” 

Will we?