Just One More Thing...

Foolish Christianity (before Lent Begins)

2012-02-06T21:26:00.005-06:00

Think about Jesus’ most distinctive teachings. What does he teach that is undeniably unique? Isn’t there something humorous, playful, ironic, joyous in what he teaches?

if someone strikes you, turn the other cheek.
if someone forces you to go a mile with them, go two.
if someone compels you to give up your shirt, offer your jacket as well.
love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you and bless them.

All of those were in the Sermon on the Mount, and they sounded as foolish then as they do now. Only a foolish, little person would believe and practice such things! Only a fool for Christ would try to live them out! But there’s more!

give your life away for God’s sake, then you will gain it.
the greatest among you is the servant of all.
find the greatest freedom in obedience.
discover that Christ is to be found in the poor, in “the least of these.”
trust that your redemption comes from a man who died in a state execution.

I read recently about a fellow who went on a college class trip into New York City. He saw his first Street Preacher working the sidewalks. The Preacher had on a sandwich message board. One side read, “I am a fool for Christ.” The other side said, “Who are you a fool for?” I guess that’s the point. We are always going to spend our time being a fool for somebody. What’s your choice? The gospel calls us to be “Fools for Christ.” We could try it out. But what would it be like?

We could fight against all our Midwestern Reasonableness and do something foolish for Christ. We could try to:

forgive someone who doesn’t even ask for forgiveness.
be kind to someone who doesn’t really deserve it.
stop being just nice and tolerant and start being deeply compassionate.
love our enemy, instead of fighting fire with fire.
resolve to let someone “begin again” in our affections, in spite of all the ways they have disappointed or betrayed us.
give to someone who cannot repay us.
pray for someone’s healing or their deeper spiritual conversion to God and neighbor, against all the odds that we can see.
give thanks for the foolishness of the little man, Jesus.

On the public radio program, “Speaking of Faith,” Krista Tippett interviewed the FBI whistle-blower from Minneapolis, Colleen Rowley. Now, if there was ever a foolish person, Colleen Rowley was one. There she was with a perfectly safe and stable career with the FBI, and she chose to jeopardize all of that by challenging her bosses about their performance in analyzing clues that came to them before the 9/11 terrorism incident. In fact, Rowley voluntarily took a cut in grade and pay because her own colleagues refused to work with her. Colleen talked about what motivated her to challenge the quality of the work done by the FBI, in spite of the personal risks she was taking. She concluded her remarks by referring to a statement that has become important to her. It is based on the “Ten Paradoxical Commandments,” written by Kent Keith. It’s a strangely foolish statement, yet it seems to capture the attitude we need to have if we are to even begin to be the fools for Christ that Paul imagined in 1 Corinthians. There are several versions of it, but here is one for you to consider:

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

Foolish, foolish advice, but it is the wisdom of God. It is the way of the little man whom we often call “Lord and Savior.”

At the Threshold of Light

2011-12-26T12:12:00.005-06:00

A close friend died on December 22, just past the winter solstice--as the longest night's darkness turns toward increasing light. The date would have meant something to him. He was a practicing Buddhist, and he saw his death as a threshold to something further, some new illumination that was now pending and opening to him.

When his family contacted his friends, they asked that all would pray for white Light to guide Andy. When they contacted us later, it was to let us know when he died. At the time I was hiking a trail near Lutsen, and the thought that was repeating itself in my mind as I stepped along the trail was just a question, "How would Andy's soul find me here if he were dying now?" Somehow he did come to find me on the day that light begins to increase.

In a rather different way, the Christ child has also come to find us, all of us--as the longest darkness recedes and gives way to increasing light. "He was the true light that enlightens everyone, coming into the world" (John 1:9). We ask ourselves, how will he find us; well, he knows us. He loves us, and he comes to find us wherever we are. He is a true friend.

"The Word Became Flesh" and the Body Became Wise

2011-12-12T14:07:00.004-06:00

A Jewish poet remarked that we must “unscroll the Torah of our bodies.” The poet meant, I think, that our living bodies are continuous discoveries and marvels for us; only gradually opening, only revealing little by little, the beauty, the truth and the wisdom donated to us by God through the gift of our personal bodily being.

People say they don’t like their bodies. Too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too wide, too narrow. Paagh! What a blunder! What a mistake! What incomprehension! For this third week in Advent, reflecting upon the ways “the Word became flesh”, we recognize the incredible persistence with which the human body seeks healing and life and meaning. This human body, in its wisdom and perhaps in its homesickness for the divine, hungrily and accurately reaches for the image and healing of the enfleshed Wisdom of God.

Look at Mark 5. A woman with a 12-year chronic illness hears about Jesus. She sees him in her town. She follows him. In the middle of a crowd of people, she inches up to him, closer and closer. As he slows to talk with others, she drops to her knees and humbly, invisibly, out of the depths of her suffering body, reaches out toward his body, toward only the hem of his clothing, as toward healing, toward light, toward life, toward incarnate love. The cure comes. At the same time, Jesus notices communication: he receives a pleading touch; he gives a restorative energy.

It was a cure by incarnation: the incarnation of divine compassion in Jesus, and the incarnation of human yearning, suffering and need in the woman.

In Christian terms, the wisdom or Logos of God, having accepted human life with its limitations and sorrows, will impart the easing and the ending of human suffering. The human body recognizes in the Christ, in his life and in “his wounds”, our hope and our healing. The exilic Isaiah says, and the early Christian community heard, that the Suffering body, the wise Servant, was “pierced for our transgressions…by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5, NIV). By his divine Wisdom and compassion, we recognize our own potential to impart ease or to end the suffering of others.

Conversion

2011-10-25T14:22:00.007-05:00

We visited the town of Pollenzo, Italy a couple of weeks ago. There are remnants of a Roman town underlying everything there. We did not realize how these ruins still shaped the city until we learned that the "circle" of homes at the center of town actually rested upon the old foundations of a 10,000 seat colliseum. Mysteriously, the enclosed arena of one era's violent and brutal entertainments, gladiator fights and so on, had now become the flower beds and fruit trees of another epoch. The "conversion" of the arena into peaceful gardens may be a sign of true hope.

The Mystery of Orange

2011-09-28T10:31:00.005-05:00

“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” --John Calvin

When the sun set the other evening, there was a precious, short time when it shone between the cold cloud-line and the treed-horizon. The sun made the most of its single moment that day, setting as a thin, bright orange wall of color between grey clouds and darkening trees. As my wife and I walked, we became burnished, and every plant, sign, and house shone with the influence of the sunset. We were glorified by the incident of nature's timing.

Later, I think, how surprising that I cannot find "orange" in the NRSV translation of the Bible. Something of beauty, truth and goodness exceed our Scripture's expressions. As John Calvin once wrote, “Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding...the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.” The mystery of Orange--and of much, much else from God will be unknown to us. Thank heaven!

The Beginning of Love: Listening

2011-09-27T13:43:00.004-05:00

One of the greatest treasures of life is the person who understands you. I opened a phone conversation the other day with the confidence-building words, "Please let me be neurotic for a minute." My friend was completely open to that, listened for the requisite time needed, then brought me back to the normal planet we usually inhabit. Some day, I will do the same for my friend. I know this. We have been through it before. My turn, your turn. It's like the old house rule: "Only one person gets to be crazy at a time." Another way to put it: you'll get your turn. I'll get mine. It will be all right. Bonhoeffer wrote, "The beginning of love for the (brothers and sisters) is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him.”

Do No Harm

2010-09-02T15:18:00.003-05:00

On a recent road-trip to Kentucky my son, Nate, and I visited a Civil War site, the Mill Springs Battlefield, where Nate’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, George Hendricks, fought with the 10th Indiana Infantry. Some of what went on there involved hand-to-hand fighting. One story that came from that battlefield was told by a Union private who remembered long after the battle that as his company pursued their retreating enemy with bayonets fixed, he came across a Rebel soldier hiding behind a tree. He clubbed the man down with the butt of his rifle. His enemy looked at him and begged, “Don’t kill me.” The Union soldier told this enemy, “It is too late for talk.”

The story struck home. In many ways our public speech, societal and international relations are embattled, fearful and disturbed. We may feel pressured and anxious to get control over this. It’s common to say, for example, of our politics today that we “take no prisoners”. The problem with that is that it ends discussion and the prospect of reconciliation or agreement while it is actually not too late to achieve them. A Christian is called to something different from anxious provocation; a Christian is at least called to refrain from making things worse. John Wesley’s first simple rule is, “Do no harm…Avoid evil…” And Jesus counsels, “Love your enemies…Pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44).

Harming others can certainly tempt us. As Henri Nouwen wrote, “When we have been deeply hurt by another person, it is nearly impossible not to have hostile thoughts, feelings of anger or hatred, and even a desire to take revenge.... Still, whenever we move beyond our wounded selves and claim our God-given selves, we give life not just to ourselves but also to the ones who have offended us.”

There is time for talk—and for mercy; it is never too late. What if we practiced Wesley’s rule, and Jesus’ sacred directives, to set aside the metaphorical bayonets of hostility in our stressful conflicts? A brief pause in the brutality of the Crusades occurred in August 1219, when St. Francis of Assisi called directly on Al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, and spent several days in discussion with him, attempting to restore peace. I understand he also appealed to the Pope to do the same. As far as I know, neither of these discussions reduced the hostilities of that Crusade, but I don’t think that matters as much as his decision to keep praying for his enemy and to keep seeking paths of reconciliation. Francis showed us a Christian’s way, even in conflicted situations, when he prayed, Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace…

It's Large Out There

2010-08-31T13:17:00.003-05:00

One son has returned from seven months in Australia. He doesn't always talk a lot about things. So far, I have learned from him that Australia is a large place.

Don't Tread on Me

2010-03-26T11:13:00.003-05:00

At least since our War in Iraq began, the pre-emptive strike seems to have become an important form of social communication, our new modus operandi. Every day, I drive past a home in my community that displays a flag with the old message: "Don't tread on me." I think to myself, Well, who was planning to do that?

I heard this week that a large 2nd Amendment Rally is planned in D.C. They will shout and make great noises: Don't tread on me. Well, again, Who has been talking lately about taking guns from gun-owners? Still, these folks will gather, shake their fists, show their guns, and try to intimidate someone for some reason.

It is odd. We fear something now, the imposition of another's "tread". But there isn't really much treading going on by the people the pre-emptive types fear. God knows, we have been tread upon, but it wasn't by Big Government, or tax and spend Liberals, nor even as much by terrorist lunatics, as by our own unexamined and unchallenged greed, expressed on Wall Street. The unlimited and relatively unregulated pursuit of private wealth came closer to destroying our country than anything else ever has. No war, storm, earthquake or civil unrest ever threatened us more than our own hunger to be more and more financially secure.

Where is a Scriptural word for this fearful, raging society, about declining one's rights in favor of the neighbors' good? Sharing one's goods? Seeking harmony? I distrust the new interest in pre-emptive threats, and irrational accusations that go with it. It inspires nothing but dread in me.

Kindness, respectful address, and some degree of trust do not rule in the media, nor in public discourse, and this could some day mean that they do not rule in our towns and neighborhoods.

The Sound of God

2010-03-22T08:45:00.002-05:00

It's about 4 a.m. My wife and I have been spending two or three days in some friends' place on Lake Superior near Lutsen. Half-awake, and half-asleep, I listen to the Shhhhh...Shhhhh...Shhhh...of gentle waves breaking on the shoreline. For some reason, I turn to my wife and say, "That is the sound of God." Then I return to sleep.

A few hours later, I remember just enough of this dreaming moment to wonder what I meant. I think it comes to this, God's presence is in some ways like "white noise" that we barely notice most of the time. Yet that voice is calming, reassuring, beautiful, continually present and comforting. What some people experience as the absence of God may instead be the quiet sound of divine Presence. We do not recognize God's voice because we do not listen in silence to silence.

Breakfast

2010-03-07T09:21:00.003-06:00

As I went walking a country highway this morning, I found a group of eight or ten robins breakfasting in grass just exposed by melting snow. I watched these birds for a little while, but they did not invite me to join them. I have no ill feeling toward them over this. I do trust in God that my morning meal will also be provided--at another table.

Matthew 6:26: Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Some Days Just Hurt

2010-03-04T14:01:00.003-06:00

Some days just hurt.

We come to tears.

Why do we try to escape this? We always want to have "happy" days, happy smiles and Happy Meals. We are so offended if this does not work out for us today. We are distraught over how things went, how we were treated, what people must think of us.

Why?

Benedictine monks are counseled in the Rule of Benedict: "Daily in one's prayers, with tears and sighs....confess one's past sins to God, and....amend them for the future."

Maybe it would be better if we knew this about every day. This will be, or must be, true every day whether we quite know it or not. We suffer or cause suffering. We come to tears of woundedness or confession. We pray to forgive or to be forgiven. We heal. Maybe we smile again.

Some days just hurt.

Don't let this surprise you very much. Even welcome it.

While we see through the immediate glistening light of salty tears, the hurting heart just begins to begin again. By grace, we are made to hurt and also to heal.

Amen.

So You Want to Be a District Superintendent!

2010-02-03T15:09:00.005-06:00

Half-awake in the night, it occurred to me that probably there are a lot of young people out there aspiring to become a United Methodist district superintendent (D.S.). The Lutherans call the same people "bishops"; for this reason alone, I sometimes wish I'd been born a Lutheran.

Sure, a few kids want to be cowboys or cowgirls, doctors, lawyers and teachers, but the great bulk of young adults want to be superintendents. And rock musicians. There is just no getting around this. So it seems helpful to fill such folks in on the best and worst aspects of superintending.

Best parts
Bringing order to chaos
Asking the right question
Generous and hospitable Christian community
Strengthening the pastoral leadership in every church
Watching a pastor and congregation get really excited about ministry
Attending worship that is authentic, imaginative and Spirited
Doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God
Glorifying God in every place

Worst parts
Bringing chaos to disorder
Providing the wrong answer
Carrying the unhappiness or dysfunction of a church around in your guts
Nagging some pastors to get reports in ("the dog ate my Table 2 report!!")
Driving a whole lot of miles in the leased car
Having no real home-church during your tenure
Attending worship that is lackluster, exhausted and "obligatory"
(blah, blah, we sing in unending, merciless verses...)
Hoping to God that God is being glorified somewhere!

And now, youngster, let me show you how to rock out on that steel guitar!

"Your Own Personal...Denomination"

2010-01-27T14:17:00.005-06:00

In 1989, Martin Gore wrote "Personal Jesus". People hear that song in different ways. The way I heard it sung first by a gravel-voiced local guy was as an ironic challenge: everybody makes Jesus over into a personal servant of their own needs and narcissisms, personally answerable to them, and them alone--"on-call 24/7."

Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

The recent heartaches and splintering in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, largely residing here in Minnesota, over whether some congregations could or should ordain and hire gay or lesbian/homosexual pastors, tastes of the same dark irony. The fights have put me in the mood to start "my own personal denomination," just as a lot of others seem to think they should. Let us all indulge in spiritual Balkanization.

Anyone who wanted to join my own personal denomination would agree--with me. Whatever I think will be the way it should be. Whatever I ask for shall be granted. I will happily commingle my preferences with divine inspiration. Like the "Sheila-ism" first reported by sociologists of a couple of decades ago, where "Sheila" just picked and chose from a variety of belief systems whatever she wanted for her own "personal faith", our own personal denominations could do the same thing, allowing either a conservative, progressive or "other" God-and-Jesus to authorize it. We could excommunicate anyone who didn't agree with me/we. It would all be so much more convenient than needing to pray with, reason with, relate to, and differ from, real sisters and brothers.

Snorkel Worship

2010-01-23T20:42:00.002-06:00

Snorkel Worship

Let all things their Creator bless…

For years now, our congregations have been sorting out whether they should worship God in traditional worship and music (which once was innovative and controversial), in contemporary styles (which will soon enough be “traditional” or discarded), and so forth. Whatever the merits of those disputes, I count myself among those blessed by the varied expressions of praise of God. I love the morning worship with the monks at St. John’s Abbey, organs and United Methodist liturgies, and all the drums, guitars, saxophones, cellos, keyboards and harmonicas out there. I just don’t care so much what the sound is, so long as it is joyously made and is offered to bless God’s holy name!

Now (too late have I loved Thee), I’ve also been introduced to the bubbling, near silence of what I’d call “Snorkel Worship”. While vacationing on a sailboat near Tortolla Island in the Caribbean, I had my first exposure to snorkeling on coral reefs. It was like entering a new world of beauty that was glorifying God! This worship service has been going on for millennia, for ages! Here were communities of yellow-striped, blue, green, and silvery fish, playing the instruments of their God-donated natures! Here were octopi, dolphins, sea turtles, wispy jellyfish, rays, groupers, more and more! All played their instruments and sang their hymns with wonderful un-selfconscious freedom. They were their praise; their praise was their being! None doubted the worth or the beauty of what all offered, each in their own way.

My guide on my first snorkeling adventure was a woman, Ann (the Holy Spirit?), who swam near my wife, Mary Lynn, and our companions, and every so often, Ann would simply and silently point at some new beauty until we could actually see and recognize it in the reef. It was all lovely and stirring. Glory, glory, glory from creature to Creator.

Experiencing this, I wondered how we could ever think that “worship” could be contained in a 55-minute hour? Or how be better composed by Isaac Watts than by the silvery flashes of an endless stream of little fish? How could there be better or lesser praises?

Apparently, when you participate in Snorkel Worship, you just show up and glorify and bless by being.

Dave and the Day

2009-11-12T10:11:00.005-06:00

"So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart." --Psalm 90:12

At the last church I served there was this guy named Dave. You could like him; you could love him. A whole lot of people did--and still do. He was an honest man, generous with his time, open-hearted and purposeful, customarily wise and gentle. When we added a new wing to the church and remodeled, he was the realistic guy (with an engineering sort of mind), recently retired, who noticed that we might need a little more attention to building management when we added a third more new space to the facilities. No one else wanted to notice that, I guess. Anyway, he remarked about it, and then he offered to be our new volunteer building manager for the church. We accepted, and so began a new adventure for me and for the church. It lasted for several years.

Every couple of days, Dave would show up in my office in the morning in an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt from one of his kids' colleges. He always had a grin on, and always had a mug of hot coffee that he held across his front. And he'd always step in to see me with his opening greeting--a long, drawn-out, Scandinavian "Sooooo...." That was to get my attention. Then he always followed with the phrase, "Coupla things, Chief...." And then he would fill me in on all the important matters at hand with the building, the custodial staff, the church men who were volunteering on this or that, the most recent projects, and so on. It was the most unpretentious and effective briefing I ever got. "Here's what's going on. Here's what I'm planning. Here's what you need to know. Now, I gotta go get some more coffee and get to work." And off he'd go to do what needed to be done that day.

Dave was such an excellent man. He wanted to use his day well. So... first, you tell the Chief what you're gonna do, then you do it.

Dave always focused on "the day." I think it was an unconscious theme of his. He used "the day" the best he could--whether it was for grandkids, the roughly 150 foster children he and Peg cared for, remodeling projects, lakeside trailer repairs, mission projects in other parts of the country, or just one more day's work at the church. He didn't mind chatting, but he wasn't going to let his projects go unfinished--unless he felt like it.

Dave often completed an analysis of some topic with a favorite phrase, "At the end of the day...." That was his way of wrapping up the "coupla things" he'd been telling you about. He also adopted the practice of a Benedictine monk from St. John's Abbey I mentioned once in a sermon. The monk concluded every message or conversation with this thought, "Have a gentle day." That appealed to Dave, I guess, because forever after, that was also his personal sign-off.

When we learned that Dave was dying from a cancer that was trying to strangle him, and that he was only going to have a very limited number of days to go on, we had a sort of "last supper" with him on a summer evening. We had to speak in the usual cheerful code that people use when they are hoping for the best and fearing the worst. Dave was more honest than any of the rest of us. At the end of the day, just about sunset, he and I happened to step out on the back-porch together. He was quiet. He looked around as if appreciating everything about the day. I asked him, "So how are you really doing?" And he answered honestly: he was afraid, anxious--and yet loved--and he intended to savor every moment of every day until he really came to the end of the day. He said the most important things were family and relationships, and he wanted to make even his last days count, especially with those he loved.

Then we went back in the house--called in to supper, where we broke bread, sipped wine, and shared at the family table. It was a good day.

Have a gentle day, Dave. Now and always. Amen.

...And the Wisdom to Know the Difference

2009-11-06T19:14:00.004-06:00

Reinhold Niebuhr is credited with this prayer, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

My wife's colleague at work wisely remarks that there are days when she sorts priorities by deciding what will: (a) keep the company from closing, (b) assure no one gets killed, and (c)prevent a lawsuit. After attending to those priorties, nothing else seems quite so desperately important or urgent. She breathes better and does her work more calmly.

Ministry could stand a touch more of that sort of common sense reality-check. Anxiously trying to do everything and please everyone pretty well takes the fun out of serving. "Strive first for the kingdom of God...and all these (other) things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today" (Matthew 6:33, 34).

Brushes with Plainness

2009-11-01T08:23:00.005-06:00

Have you ever talked with your friends about your "brushes with greatness"? An old friend of mine relishes telling a story about his unexpected meeting with the comedian, George Burns, at an airport. Someone else we almost know knew Sarah Palin before she was Sarah Palin. The joke on which these conversations are founded is that celebrities are fleeting events in our lives, and greatness is just passing through on a flight to somewhere else. How should we feel about those of us who remain behind? What are we, chopped liver?

I've had my own brushes with greatness--and obscurity. During the Summer of Love and, as it happened, also of Woodstock, 1969, a friend and I hitchhiked, not to San Francisco or to the Woodstock farm, but to Galveston, Texas and back. We missed the big media events altogether. I was under the thrall of Glenn Campbell's song by that name at the time, and so I did not personally hear Jimi Hendrix solo on The Star-Spangled Banner. However, I have not been materially hurt by missing this experience; my maturation and insights are probably not much different than they would have been had I worn flowers in my hair that summer.

Remember how James and John begged Jesus for prominent places near him when he came into his power, and everybody else got ticked off! The others also secretly had it in mind that they themselves might be great in his kingdom! This can happen in all kinds of business, artistic, academic, domestic, leisure or religious contexts. We wonder, will I be noticed for my greatness? Jesus helpfully tells all such wondering souls, "Greatness is found in serving."

This afternoon, many Christians will share in a celebration of the historic "full communion" of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church on All Saints' Sunday, 2009, at the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. This is a "greatness" time of Christian union and communion. Bishops Sally Dyck and Mark Hanson (ELCA) and other Christian leaders will be preaching and leading us in the sacraments. If you look for me there, practicing my greatness, you may find me serving grape juice in the balcony.

So it can happen that we learn by one means or another that life's most important events are seldom widely reported, and that Christian life is almost always about plain tasks and assignments faithfully performed. Let us now praise divine ordinariness, the secret to servanthood. The more often we appreciate our "brushes with plainness," the more content we find ourselves--and the closer to God in Christ.

Training Films for Heart-Guided Christians

2009-10-26T16:30:00.005-05:00

One of our gifted, younger pastors wrote to me today. We're trading ideas on training films to help Christians and churches recover passion for their ministries. This pastor wrote, "What seems to be missing in so many...churches is a real sense of passion--about life, about God, about neighbors....and while ministry plans and strategies are good, without passion we are going through the motions." Then he wondered aloud, how much deconstructing of the "going through the motions" will be necessary before churches can find a new, authentic passion again.

So, for starters, without regard to film ratings or age, here are some ideas that aren't Sister Act, or Mel Gibson's botched The Passion of the Christ. I'd recommend parts of Zorba the Greek; it's unfamiliar to most, but outstanding. More recently, the animated film Up had a lot to offer. When I left the theatre, I said, every church council should see this film together! Then each council could ask, "Like the character, Carl, what do we need to off-load from our house in order to find a new adventure--or to go heroically to the rescue?" Robert Duvall's The Apostle is superb, as was a much earlier film of his, Tender Mercies.

So those are the early entries for the Top Ten Movies EVERY Church Should Use to Convert Their Hearts to Passionate Ministry. What else would you recommend? I am sorry but we cannot accept recommendations from movies where Moses or Jesus, and everybody else, speaks the Queen's English. Also, no Amaldovar films. If you don't know who that is, count yourself lucky.

With Jesus or Without?

2009-10-22T13:52:00.002-05:00

Every time I get a new cup of latte from Burly's place in Cannon Falls or the Blue Monday in Northfield, they don't check my ID, but there are still a lot of questions asked: vente or grande? flavoring or no flavoring? Skim or whole? Here or to-go? Whipped cream or not? I have learned how to answer these questions. One of these days, I'll be asked if I lived with Jesus or without. God, I hope I know the answer to that question, too.

Only on a Bet

2009-10-21T19:48:00.002-05:00

They did it. Not me. A couple of months ago, my wife and some so-called friends of mine started a "stretch challenge" for the four of us. We were each to try something new, out of our comfort zones. Someone committed to trying yoga. Someone else committed to being "spontaneous" with his kids (committed to being spontaneous?). Well, anyway... There was also a most non-United Methodist aspect to this. Again, not my fault. They did it. They agreed that the Loser in this challenge event, the person who did not try their challenge, would owe everyone else a fine dinner at the end of three months for the challenge.

My stretch challenge was to accept a professional back-rub. My wife insists it is "a full-body massage", but I know a back-rub when I see one. This one just extends further in all directions.

Already you see I have competed, or complied; I'm not sure which. I went to the local back-rub artist, at the local Massage and Healing Center, aka "back-rub place". I had to remove my boots and some other stuff, then lie down in a small room where they displayed the Buddha and played the sound of ocean waves. Then the expert back-rubber did. It lasted an hour, kind of.

This is part one. I am obligated to complete two more similar parts in order to fulfill the Challenge and be saved from buying dinner for everybody else. They think this is a Challenge for me because I have body-image concerns dating back to childhood. I think it's just that nobody else ever offered a thorough back-rub.

So, anyway... today I am sophisticated, calmed, de-toxified, and soothed. It's amazing what a good back-rub will do for a guy!

Kings and Plutocrats

2009-10-20T10:03:00.004-05:00

Went reluctantly to see Michael Moore's latest populist film, Capitalism: A Love Story . It actually proved to be pretty provocative.

Among Moore's usual confused segments and cheap shots were disturbing glimpses of a United States that is not in much danger of becoming socialist or fascist, as the Right and the Left respectively fear, but plutocratic--a country governed not by democratic voting processes, but by the undue influence of the extremely wealthy. Moore's statistics and narratives on shifts in tax policies of the last 25-30 years show a clear trend that has led to the decline of the buffering zone of a strong middle-class, the increase of the poor or working poor, and astounding concentrations of wealth among a very few persons. Moore appeals for a return to a fairer, more just land. He says, hauntingly, at the end of the film, "I will not live in a country like this, and I am not leaving."

Coincidentally, the three-year lectionary focuses this week on the texts in 1 Samuel 8-10 where the Prophet warns Israel not to take a king because a king will use up their sons, their daughters, and their fields and vineyards, "but the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, 'No! but we are determined to have a king over us..." (1 Samuel 8:19). Samuel was trying to say, "You won't really want to live in a country like that... " On behalf of God, the prophet gave fair warning about kings and plutocrats. They bear watching. Moore seems to think that, all too often, if you follow the trail backwards from uninsured families, foreclosures, and down-sizings, you will find unfair tax laws, deceptively complex investment instruments and dishonest balance sheets among the planet's largest corporations.

God-Borne

2009-10-16T17:13:00.003-05:00

The latest "news" via e-mail reminds me of the illnesses and struggles of many friends and their families. An old friend called this afternoon to tell me his long-time partner had died a few months ago; he said it was lonely now. Another extraordinary fellow, a great-souled brother in one of the churches, is dying of cancer. Another is fighting off a cancer. I am reminded that one comes to a stage in life where one's near age-cohorts begin to take the blows of mortality on thier shields; the ranks thin. Among the Greeks, soldiers often served effectively well into their old age; they were mentally tough and strong enough to carry on.

I have been fortunate so far. My armor has not rusted badly. My wounds have not been traumatic, though they have surprised me. Hair gets thinner; it grays. Bodies get larger in the wrong places. Mental functions may slow. There is soreness in joints that one never exerienced before. I am not disturbed by illness at all, yet the possibility this could happen to me and my friends seems strangely more certain and inevitable.

So what? Well, for those of us who assumed when we were young that we were immortal, these things come as a shock. Boomers are doubly distressed; we were to be the fair-haired and irresponsible generation all our days. Now it seems likely we won't last forever after all. Since we cannot, nor can other generations, rely solely upon our good looks and good luck for life and health and world peace, what shall we think and believe to sustain us on the path we're walking?

Not everyone thinks this way, but I do. I listen closely to Paul when he says, "I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us....For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:18, 37-39).

When my friend called to say his beloved had died, he also said, "You and I, we once were children; now, we must be grown men." So we grow older, but we also grow up. What great deeds are yet to be accomplished, though we limp as we march? What can be done next to offer the glmpses of the reign of God for which human beings yearn? Don't all of us still have more time in our enlistments to speak kindly, share generously, trust completely in God, pursue justice, and walk humbly? Like Don Quixote, we ride! Not because we are romantics, but because some of us believe we are God-born, God-borne and God-bound.

Mutual Encouragement in Every Event

2009-10-15T08:18:00.005-05:00

Count it all joy, brothers and sisters...(James 1:2)

We watched an old movie the other night, Zorba the Greek. It's one of my favorites, starring Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn (as Zorba). Almost no one I know remembers this excellent movie, or has read the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. This is unfortunate.

The story is one of two very different men, one younger and the other older, one an intellectual and the other a man of the earth, one intellectual and disembodied--and the other with a wild mind and a passionate body. In the course of the story, they develop an intense friendship, suffer and delight together in many of life's events, and ultimately influence one another deeply. The younger man is most changed, for he is enabled to embrace life as it presents itself--with an open heart, equally willing to rejoice and to ache. In a culminating moment of dramatic failure and the literal collapse of their great, shared business venture, the young man finally asks Zorba to teach him to dance an individual's wild, personal dance on the beach--at the very place of their economic calamity.

Zorba says, "A man needs a little madness, or else....Or else, he never dares cut the rope and be free!"

How many of us lapse into "never daring" to be impassioned in our relationships, our tasks, our ministries, or our witness for the generous Christ? How important is it to us that the brothers and sisters in our churches give one another mutual instruction and encouragement for life-embracing joy, teaching one another to dance with passion, and to become the great-souled persons we are called to be?

Winter's Glancing Blow and Frizzly Breath

2009-10-14T13:11:00.004-05:00

The past few days have brought winter's glancing blow and frizzly breath to October--cold winds, some snow. Most of us are just annoyed. Like the President's Nobel Peace Prize; whatever else may be said about it, it is premature. It has come too soon. We had counted on a few more weeks of Indian Summer!

In a small way, the early arrival of winter reminds us of our personal limitations, of our national set-backs, and of our global anxieties. The daily lections from Obadiah this week say, "You say in your heart, 'Who will bring me down to the ground?' Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down, says the Lord" (Obadiah vv.3-4). We had collectively hoped for a worldwide and continuing Indian Summer, but snow has fallen too soon! We have been brought back "down to the ground". The earth itself groans and labors to feed her billions. The poisons of a few decades of prosperity are filtering into our waters. The economy, whether it is recovering or busted flat, is an immense fable few of us truly understand. Wise and humble leadership seems rare, and nationalism or "cause-ism" rampant.

We hope that all of this is just a warning, a glancing blow of winter, an instructive thump of threat. It might be. The sun might shine again, even tomorrow. But, it's also possible, as a Poet says, that "Winter is icumen in, lhude sing goddam." We sing the many verses of that song now because cold times have hurried toward us. They are the times we probably thought other generations would need to face, but they have come to us now. What will we do when history twitters us by name and writes us just one word, which we fear: "Calamity"? Whether that true Winter has come or not, now is the time to find a way through its snows bv a holy path of respectful prayers, christly deeds, innovative risks and lives given to the common good.