Community: The Problem of Me

The truth was always there in the Word: this is not about me.

Except that I keep making it about me.

It’s most visible in the way we distort theology. Luther said that the two most important words in the Institution of the Holy Communion are “for you,” but we have twisted it to make ourselves the subject of the sentence and not the object. The common Christian creed, “Jesus died for my sake” is not given to build up my ego. As humans are gifted to do, we have converted the love of God for the whole cosmos into our own personal spiritual nest egg. Get it? Personal.

Behold the mantra of Americanized Christianity! Jesus is my “Personal Savior.” My choice. Jesus exists because I believe he does. Jesus matters because I say he does. I determine the extent and the depth of our relationship; he answers when I call but otherwise keeps out of sight. I may subject myself to a particular teaching or praxis in the same way I might choose Coca-cola over Pepsi – I am perfectly loyal until something better comes along. But in all things I am the consumer, the chooser, the subject of faith.

No one can tell me what to do.

Because I have free will. I make choices everyday about everything, including faith. Reinforced by consumer culture, free will is the great canon of modernity: “I choose, therefore I am,” to paraphrase the foundational philosophy of the age. If it is so in my head, if it is so in my experience, then it must be so in all things. We determine who we are and how we are to be. Who would want it to be any different?

It does seem reasonable. Our days are filled with choices large and small. It is what we do most, if not best. Religion demands choices too, a constant examination of deeds, an awareness of what is good and what is not and a never-ending navigation between the two. We choose to go to church or not, to pray or not, to observe the appointed rites and days or not. We choose what words to say, how to spend our time and energy, what cause to support, how to treat one another. Choices seem to be a good thing – they lend order to the world and purpose to our lives.

Except not all choices are the same.

Choices, like all things human, have limits. They reside within the reach and scope of our own being, and no more. We want to believe that our choices have consequence, even eternal consequence, not just for the moment or for the foreseeable time, but for all time. We walk through life certain of our ability to manipulate others, influence history, and in the end, sway the very mind of God. He is the great heavenly bookkeeper after all, noting our good works and keeping track of our falls. So by definition he is at the mercy of what we choose to do. He may be the God of all things, but I have free will.

In other words, he is the god of nothing.

Free will is the self-indulgence that corrupts faith. Luther’s great debate with the budding humanism of his day remains a primary challenge for the faith community of the twenty-first century. Our faith in free will colors all we think, believe and do. It is not merely a doctrine that beguiles our proclamation, it is foundation of what we believe and profess, independent of scripture or reason or effect. And that is the problem. Suddenly all of the praying and the teaching and the praising and the serving becomes a slave of one thing: me.

Free Will is the great conundrum of religion. We believe in a God who sets strict commandments (which are pretty much impossible to fully keep) yet is powerless to do anything except condemn his creation to eternal punishment. We believe in a Savior who sacrificed everything for us but depends on our devotion to give his death significance or meaning. We throw around titles like “Lord” and “King” as if they were merely abstractions, indulgences. In truth we only truly submit to Masters of our own choosing, limiting their power within the boundaries of our allegiance. Unless we acknowledge God, preferably publicly, unless we choose to proclaim God’s lordship, God has no immediate consequence. God’s love may be unconditional, but salvation is not. We are very glad to have Jesus as our partner in this journey we call life, but in the end we drive the bus.

God loves us, but in and of itself, grace ultimately changes nothing.

And there it is. This is how the assumption of free will runs contrary to faith, to the core reality of what we actually believe. Jesus died for us. Not merely because of us, but the gospel proclaims that his suffering, death and resurrection does a transformative work in us and in the world. The cross is not a metaphor or archetype to persuade us into a particular theological stance or lifestyle choice. It is an act of grace that changes everything. That changes me.

Isn’t that the true reason we hold on to the myth of free will? Deep down we do not want to change. We want to believe in something, we want to be a part of something, but we are looking for a belief system and a lifestyle that affirms our own choices. We want causes that touch our own heart, requirements that fit our schedule, words that are affirming and ministry that is comforting. We believe that religion should be self-sustaining in every sense of the word, and the American Christian Church of the 21^st century has embraced and embodied that idea and made it our national creed. The constant division and re-division of the church into increasingly smaller denominations was not because of theological squabbling. It was the product of millions of free wills asserting themselves over and over against anyone who dared to preach the gospel.

The communion of the saints has not merely been divided. It has been rejected.

Now we come to a moment where the character of our faith is tested. The pandemic and our ongoing social struggle are uncovering our brokenness and now we are called to a different faith. We were not saved from the world for ourselves, we are saved from ourselves for the world. Incurvatus in se, as the great reformer would say. The more we keep turning back in toward ourselves, the more desperately we cling to free will, the farther we are removed from God, Jesus, salvation, purpose. We think ourselves powerful. CoVid-19 and Black Lives Matter have revealed the truth: we are not capable, we are culpable.

That has to change.

So why do we insist on asserting our free will?

Maybe it’s a control thing. Maybe it’s how free will feeds our sense of ego. Despite the façade of humility we present to the world, self-love is the default mode of humanity. Or maybe it’s because we love to win. Religion, like pretty everything else in society, has become a competition. My church is bigger than your church. My righteousness is bigger than your righteousness. My soul is better than your soul.

Mostly I think it’s because we have disdained the demands of God on how we are actually living today, on the world we have made. We worship a God who is in charge of the world to come, not the world as it is right now. Our single-minded imprisonment of religion to matters of life-after-death unshackles us from any obligation to the present. Creatures of free will, we are liberated from anyone who would dare to tell us what to do or when to do it. Religion is the ultimate pyramid scheme – we are all on the lookout for our next great opportunity to procure a proper place in the hereafter. We just have to make the right choice, and everything will be fine.

Except we never make that choice, do we? We establish elaborate systems to define righteousness which are mostly about someone else, about choices that do not actually affect me. We focus morality in the narrowest of terms (usually sex) and ignore the great weight of the Word that decries the lack of justice and peace in the world. We are modern incarnations of the kingdoms who persecuted the prophets, who enjoyed their wealth and comfort and neglected widows, orphans and strangers.

What shall we make of this illusion of choice? What if the Holy Spirit is stirring in 2020, trying to tell us something about ourselves, about our choices? Perhaps if we could let go of the all-consuming desire to choose our way into God’s favor we would have the time and energy to make some choices that would actually change our world and the way we live, that could bring help and wholeness. If we actually believed in the promise of our baptism we could stop worrying about ourselves and love our neighbor. Then we would be truly free.

What would we do then?

What I Learned in the Great 2020 Quarantine

Thing three: What will this make of us?

There is a lot of boredom today. Stuck at home in fear of the pandemic, furloughed from work by economic troubles, caught politically in the struggle between power and justice, we have some time on our hands. At least we have that. While we lament and ruminate about all that we have lost, space is opened for us to imagine what we could gain. This is a perfect time to begin a conversation about spiritual matters, spiritual needs, spiritual questions.

More than politics or religion, this is the conversation that matters.

Near the end of the Gospel of John, after the resurrection and amid the accounts of Jesus’ appearances to the apostles, John indulgences in an editorial digression: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:21 NRSV) John reminds us that the Word not only has meaning, it has purpose. As Luther would later assert, the Word is a living being, a sacramental gift for the transformation of living beings. As we are in Christ and in his Word, we are continually in the throes of baptism, drowning daily, continuously rising to new life. Our inability to progress as persons and as a world is a symptom of our rebellion against the Word brought to life at the font. The pandemic and the violence are not the most significant agents of death at work in the world. They are but a pale shadow of the death that stalks our every breath. We do not surrender ourselves fully to the grace that gives us life. In that, we die every day.

Yet we have been declared redeemed, reckoned faithful, brought from death to life, from lost and worthless to cherished and valued. We have been accorded a living faith. This gift is not given in vain. We are saved by grace to be instruments of grace. We are called to bring light into the world. We are here to complete the mission of Jesus, to transform minds and hearts and live. And we are not fulfilling that calling.

Is it because we do not know how to change?

How do we answer the God’s call to be agents of change? How do we answer the world’s plea to be agents of change? The answer is writ large within this moment. The demise of the familiar is an opportunity to seek the new, to write a new chapter to a story that really, really needs a new plot. After all, Jesus call to “repent” (metanoette) translates quite literally as “to turn in 180 degrees and go in a different direction.” Or, to change, not in knowledge or attitude or feeling, but to turn our back on the past and move forward on a new path.

How do we come to be open to the Spirit’s leading and fulfill the promise in which we were created? The answer is not a testimonial so much as it is a dialog with the world, and it goes like this: Where is God? He lives in us.

Paul’s reproach of the Galatian Christians was borne in his own experience of the overwhelming transformative power of Grace. His arrest by Jesus on the road to Damascus brought him to his knees. It could not be escaped. It could not be resisted – not with much success anyway. It revealed the totality of his own (and the world’s) deceit, without room for excuse or escape. And thusly hollowed out, Paul could know only one conclusion – if there was to be good, it could not originate from him. It could, however, come through him. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” he concludes. (Galatians 2:20 NRSV) I see him shouting this with flailing arms and bulging veins and great bravado. It is a revelation, a triumph! It is a great privilege and the cradle of possibility. Freed from the failures of yesterday, tomorrow could be. Tomorrow must be.

God gives life, and now he calls us to live.

In that announcement, the confession is torn from our lips: our lack of faith has consigned us and our world to death. We believe in corruption, we worship greed, we deny our neighbor, we trust liars. We worship a Christ but refuse to follow Jesus. We revel in pomposity and grandeur and haughtiness that does not model the life or words of the leper-touching, fisher-calling, boundary-crossing, foot-washing man we call Savior. In all we do and say we deny the life that is so freely given us. There is no hope on the path we are now traveling. If the world is to survive this moment – nay, if the world is to be transformed by this moment - we must change. We must really and truly change.

There is an opening in front of us now. Not merely for medical healing from the virus or economic healing from the looming recession. Not just social healing from centuries of systemic racism. There is actual space in us and in the world now for a great transformation of the human spirit. Healing grace can flow through us and into the world in the death of old wrongs and hurts to make way for something new to be born. Let us dare to stop and take an “honest and fearless inventory” (to borrow a phrase) of ourselves, our behaviors and our beliefs, our works and our world, that we might finally emerge from death and become the life of the world.

Let us open our eyes to what God is revealing now.

What I learned during the Great 2020 Quarantine

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Thing two: What shall we make of this?

Is it possible to pass through such a moment without examining our lives, our values, our hopes and expectations? Undoubtedly some will avoid it and be turned inward, clinging to distant memories of past golden ages, out of sync with the rest of the world as time passes them by. Others, whether they like it or not, will be forced by circumstance to face the stark reality of change, and so they will, to the best of their ability (and with no small amount of grief) cope. As it has always been in every significant reformation, those who cannot embrace change will be the genesis of conflict of many kinds, tearing apart families and nations. Some of that can already be seen on the nightly news and perhaps at a dinner table near you.

But there will be some who will discover the rare ability to willingly and purposefully change. They will feel the compelling call of the Spirit blowing through the world. They will hear its voice, sometimes still and small, sometimes fire and thunder, cajoling and coaxing and charging and demanding. They will take a few timid first steps, and then plunge headlong into the battle for the future. They will feel its great burden, they will experience the blessed opportunity to make a difference.

By their faith the rest of us will be changed. The world will change.

And you?

We have spent months waiting in place for all of this to pass, for the jobs to come back and the bars to reopen and the demonstrators to go home. For an end of some kind to come. For it to be over. Like any great tribulation, it is hard to perceive the end of the story while it is still being written. Who can know what the days will bring?

Yet we are not merely hostage to the passage of history. We have been graced with the vision of another kingdom, empowered to reach for it by Word and Spirit. We were not created for misery and self-pity. We were made for hope, for love. For good. We can learn, and we can grow. And if the experience of these few months has not opened our eyes to what is good, or at least to what is not, then we have not been paying attention.

What have we learned during the great 2020 pandemic? First of all we have discovered anew the struggle and glory of what it means to be human.

At the most basic level, we experience this upheaval as strange. We tell ourselves that all of this came from without – without warning, without reason, without purpose, putting us in a complicated and uncomfortable place. Consequently, there have been feeble attempts to assign blame, to impose some pretense of order on the confusion if only to release our guilt and exchange sorrow for anger. We shake our fists at fate. We are angry with God. That’s ok. God can deal with our anger. Yet that too does not satisfy. We are cast upon the inexplicable and the uncontrollable. We do not believe it is in our power to stop such calamity. This is what it means to be human after all. It is our best defense.

But humanness is not our excuse, it is our confession. The constraints of this moment are of our own making, our own preference. We are the authors, if not of the problems then of our incapacity to overcome them. We did not create the virus, but we did not chose to do what was necessary to protect our neighbors and ourselves. We did not own slaves, but we have not repented of racism. We are the benefactors of human slavery and we have not made any meaningful reparation. We are not all violent, but we tolerate, even permit, systems that produce it. We were slow to act when life itself was on the line. We denied the truth of our past and our present. We did not face our faults and turn from them. We did not, will not, hold ourselves or others accountable. We do not all hate, but we do not all love.

How amazing then that God should love and redeem humans!

The gospel proclaims that being human also means that, notwithstanding our failures and despite our limitations, we can be more. We may not be perfect, but we need not be only bad. We are also God’s good creation, recipients of the Holy Spirit and bearers of grace in the world. We spend each day with one foot in this world and the other in the Kingdom of God. We are gifted, we are born of hope.

We can do more.

There is much more to the story of 2020 than virology. There is much more to this story than intolerance or incompetence. The totality of human suffering which we have and will yet endure cannot, should not, be reduced to cold math or organic biology or economic theory. The hardships we are suffering are more than the product of human decisions and human failures, They are the persistent outcome of sin and injustice and greed and corruption.

And isn’t salvation supposed to do something about that?

What I learned during the Great 2020 Quarantine

Thing one: That time when everything fell apart

When we were children in elementary school, the first assignment at the start of the school year was often an essay entitled, “What I did on my summer vacation.” That practice has become obsolete, at least in part because not all of us got to have a summer vacation worth telling about. Summer vacations are not, it turns out, a shared experience in this world. The world is becoming more separated and fragmented, and common experiences are becoming more and more rare.

Until this year.

We are the in the midst of what may turn out to be the most singular experience of our age. The novel Coronavirus CoVid-19. There is not a nation on the planet that hasn’t been touched by this pandemic – that’s why they call it a pandemic after all. It has reached every continent except Antarctica, (wouldn’t you love to be a penguin!) and every realm on all of those lands. From the very beginning it has led every newscast and filled the headline of every newspaper. Even months into its course, it dominates every conversation – no small thing for short modern attention spans. While some have been more deeply and directly impacted than others, all have felt its shadow.

And if that was not enough, the anguished suffering caused by ancient oppression and violence against people of color has burst into the light of day like an erupting volcano. Black Lives Matter protests have broken out in every state of our union and all around the globe. When was the last time all 50 states had anything in common? Our screens are filled with images of police brutality and white militant violence against people of color. The streets are full of loud and angry demonstrations, rioters and looters lurk in the shadows. We are exposed for our hatred and our indifference for the sufferings of our fellow human beings and we are, in turn, suffering for it. There is nothing but bad news for all.

And there seems to be no end in sight.

We are all afraid. To be sure, the subject of that fear, or its intensity, varies as these issues impact us personally. Those who live with what is euphemistically called “underlying conditions” spend their days in fear of a long hospitalization or even death. Some bear fear for loved ones – elderly parents, partners, even children. Workers in low-wage jobs now suddenly deemed “essential” face potential infection every time they go to work. Nurses and doctors place their lives and their family’s lives on the line in their daily battle to save strangers.

Violence and racial bias have uncovered age old fault lines. It is as if the civil war never ended, and subsequent decades of enlightened activism have barely made a dent in our great collective disease. People of color suffer a significantly higher incidence of infection and death from the pandemic. Whites, though now a minority in this country, enjoy and exploit unearned privilege. The scarcity of testing and needed care does not apply the wealthy like it does to everyone else. Militant white supremacist group roam the land, Nazi and Confederate symbology have emerged from the shadows. It is no wonder that interest in apocalyptic themes is on the rise.

If only the end was really near.

Social disorder weigh us down, a dark foreboding presence that constantly inveighs against our mood, our plans, our hopes.

We are not talking about merely theoretical concerns. The struggles of 2020 have bred a myriad of other, more tangible troubles. Loss of job and income. The collapse of businesses and livelihoods built over lifetimes of hard work. There is the trauma of social distancing, added stress on marriages and families. Formerly avoided topics are now inescapable, fomenting hostility between relatives and friends.

And within it all, the unspoken and ultimate panic: what if there is no recovery? Will life ever return to normal? That , in the end, what we all yearn for. A return to the way things were. An opportunity to pass through this moment as if were just a bad dream, without lingering trauma or residual guilt. But that may not come to be. So much of what we had thought defined society and culture and just life in general is under threat, if not already lost. Favorite pastimes have been curtailed. Routines have been turned upside down. Behaviors that powered the economy have been reduced or replaced. Happiness, at least as we thought we knew it, is hard to find.

Fear can be paralyzing. It can turn us in on ourselves, draw us into a metaphorical and literal fetal position. Fear in the hands of the power-hungry can be a tool for motivation and manipulation. But in the hands of the Spirit, fear can be an opportunity, a wake-up call, a truth that opens the door to something new – new people, new lives, new world. Great fear can be the beginning of great change. Everything is in play now.

Including us.

When will we go back to church?

In the ongoing effort to make the Thomas house seasonably well-decorated, the stars and stripes have taken over our home. They can be found on figurines, wall hangings, quilts, among other things.

That’s a good thing! Seasons, traditions, decorations, holidays. These things are great. They shape identity, they deepen our roots, they add color and meaning to life. But symbols are only symbols, and it is way too easy to mistake symbols for what they represent. False devotion to symbols without actual attachment to what those symbols stand for gets us in trouble every time.

So we come to our annual celebration of the birth of this place we call home. Independence Day. The Fourth. We will be surrounded by the symbols of the day - stars and stripes, rocket’s red glare, bombs bursting in sight. Hopefully some good barbeque. All the usual stuff that marks this annual observance. And will all of that makes us more patriotic, or will it just make us feel more patriotic? That is not a question I can answer here.

However, it is a really fun and challenging question when we apply it to church.

Church is full of symbols too – liturgies, hymns, prayers, crosses, vestments. They matter too. They can center us, focus our attention, connect us to something much greater than us and the moment we occupy. But they can just as easily get in the way when become an end in themselves, a barrier that keeps us from getting to the real stuff. And then instead of symbols or tools they become prison walls.

A lesson which we have learned the hard way in 2020.

You can hear it in the language we use. Can’t go to church. The church is closed. There is no worship service today. We have deep, real feelings about this. We feel disconnected, abandoned, alone. Our routines have been disrupted and our spiritual life has disappeared. Our places are blockaded and so is our connection to God and Life and Hope and Joy.

You know that’s wrong, right? You know there is more to church than place, more to worship than liturgy, more to community than coffee. More to hope than … anything.

This is not a new truth. Reformations have been fought over it. The 16^th century reformers tore down statues, burned artwork, smashed stained glass windows – not because they necessarily hated those things, but because those symbols had been held over the heads, used against the faith like weapons. They had been ordered by authorities and culture to worship those things, and finding them empty and meaningless, they determined to break through to the other side. To the real stuff. Maybe we should give that a try for ourselves.

Let’s all say this: 2020 is not the year we lost it all. 2020 is the year we got it all back.

There will be in-person worship again, with all of the vestments and the hymns and the trimmings that we know and cherish. Not for all of us right away, but eventually, God willing, we will have the whole gang back together. As it should be. But as we look forward to that day, let’s be clear and honest. If we think that will be the day when church starts again, we will have missed the whole and entire thing. And we will be less for it.

Church is not over, not closed, not done. And if we think that, even for an instant, then we are what is over, closed, done. If we are unable to worship God outside the walls of our church building, we are over. If we are unable to pray except by following appointed texts, then our hearts are closed. If we cannot sing out loud and well in our living room in our pajamas, then faith is done.

We can’t do that. Especially now. The stressors of life are so immense now, the sickness widespread. The scab has been torn off of old, old wounds, and we are hemorrhaging life profusely. Complex problems that we have worked hard to suppress have broken free upon our hearts and into our world. We are in a dangerous place. We need faith now more than ever. And it must be actual faith, deep faith, true faith. We cannot afford anything less.

So this is my challenge to you. We are making plans now for a return to in-person worship. We have set a target date of August 2^nd, pending a continued reduction of the spread of the virus. Not all will return then. Not all should! But if you have not found the Holy Spirit at work in your life in the last three months because you have not been in the church building, do yourself a favor: DO NOT COME BACK!

We are addicted to symbols. They are a comfort to us because they are easy, accessible. But they keep us from real faith, real questions, real growth. You know, hard stuff. Stuff that we need to do. And if you have not done that yet, if you have not spoken with God and experienced your calling and felt the Spirit without the symbols, then stay where you are. Let time do its magic. Wait on God. Be in the hard place and let it do its work.

You will be the better for it. We all will be.

And then we’ll see you in church.