Note (1/22/10): I'm actually not sure when I wrote this particular paragraph, but found it saved in a draft post that I never published in 2006 during my year in Nebraska. I just picked an arbitrary date in February (since there were no posts for February) and posted it, retroactively.
Monday, February 19, 2007
A brief reflection on liturgical worship
Monday, January 22, 2007
Sermon - Third Sunday After the Epiphany, Year C
Brief note of explanation: If you're not a member of my church.... obviously the "you"s in this sermon are addressed to the people of my congregation... this is written pretty much exactly as I wanted to speak it to them as I was standing in front of them.
1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (click here to read the passage (NRSV version))
Luke 4:14-21 (click here to read the passage (NRSV version))
Last Sunday during the announcements and in the weekly email that went out to the parish on Friday, I gave you a little "homework" in preparation for this Sunday's sermon. In our New Testament reading for this morning, Paul uses the metaphor of the members of the church being "one body in Christ." I asked you to think about your answers to three questions about that metaphor:
1. When you hear someone say, "we are one body in Christ," what does that mean to you? What are your first associations/connotations with that phrase?
2. Who is included in that body?
3. How does who you consider to be included in the body of Christ change how you relate to or are in relationship with them?
I hope you found this to be an interesting and thought-provoking exercise. I used these questions to guide my reflections about this passage, and will share with you my own thoughts in response to them.
First, "When you hear someone say, "we are one body in Christ," what does that mean to you? What are your first associations/connotations with that phrase?
For me, the phrase "we are one body in Christ" connotes first and foremost a sense of community, a community that is bound together by something larger than ourselves. As I reflected on this, I also realized that the phrase connotes to me a sense of being similar in some sense, of having something in common.
The second question was, "Who is included in that body?"
When you hear someone talk about the "body of Christ," who do you think of as being included in that body? Members of Holy Spirit? Fellow Episcopalians? Christians of other denominations?
I found that when I think about who is included in the "body of Christ," my first thought is of my particular worshipping community -- that is, all of you. Upon further reflection, I think about the other churches with which I have formed meaningful connections, in Boston and South Carolina. I also think about the wider "body" of Christians throughout the world who I may have never met or have any connection with and yet to whom I am still connected, through the "mystical body of Christ," as our Eucharistic liturgy says.
And finally, begrudgingly and with great confusion at times, I think of those who call themselves Christians with whom I disagree on various aspects of theology, politics, or ethics, or who see the world entirely differently than I do. It is sometimes hard for me to make sense of the idea that they and I are "one body in Christ" -- especially if, as I mentioned earlier, the notion of being "one in Christ" connotes to me some sense of oneness, of similarity.
I think this is probably a common line of thinking -- that as Christians, we should be similar in some way. And, on some level, this is true -- but the problem comes when we look for this commonality in our opinions, or our worship preferences, or our tastes in music, or even our interpretations of scripture, rather than in our common love of God and desire to follow Christ.
I am currently reading a book with my spiritual director called The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. In the most recent chapter we read, the author, Ronald Rolheiser, writes about the misperceptions people hold about what "church" is supposed to be. One of those misperceptions, he says, is the idea that church is made up of "like-minded individuals, gathering on the basis of mutual compatibility." He says it better than I could, so I quote from him:
"To be in apostolic community, church, is not necessarily to be with others with whom we are emotionally, ideologically, and otherwise compatible. Rather it is to stand, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, precisely with people who are very different from ourselves and, with them, hear a common word, say a common creed, share a common bread, and offer a mutual forgiveness so as, in that way, to bridge our differences and become a common heart. Church is not about a few like-minded persons getting together for mutual support; it is about millions and millions of different kinds of persons transcending their differences so as to become a community beyond temperament, race, ideology, gender, language, and background" (Rolheiser 115).
After explaining a number of other things that church is NOT, Rolheiser finally gets to his main point, his definition of what church IS -- people "gathering around the person of Christ and sharing his Spirit" (Rolheiser 118). And the Gospel passage for today gives us a nice summary of who exactly we are gathering around in the person of Christ - the one who brings good news to the poor, gives sight to the blind, and frees the oppressed.
So, the phrase "one body in Christ" DOES connote similarity -- but our similarity as Christians lies in our turning to Christ as our Savior, not in sharing similar political opinions, similar cultures, similar backgrounds or even similar interpretations of scripture. If we struggle to think about those who are different from us as included in the body of Christ, perhaps it is because we have focused so much on the "oneness" part of the metaphor that it overshadows the centrality of the "Christ" part of the metaphor.
Paul gives us some powerful imagery to illustrate this concept in this morning's New Testament reading: "Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slave or free -- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corin. 12:12-13). Christ is what unites us; the Spirit is what binds us together. Through our baptism, we are inextricably linked to one another, even when we may not FEEL like we are a part of the body.
One of the most powerful aspects of Paul's metaphor of the "body of Christ" is his affirmation that we are still included in the body even when we feel excluded because we are different from the other members of the body. He writes, "If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body" (1 Corin. 12:15).
Over what things have we found ourselves feeling excluded from the body of Christ? What would you fill in to that statement -- "Because I am not _______, I do not belong to the body"? Because I am not "spiritual" enough? Because I am not good at talking with others about my faith? Because I don't live up to my ideals? Because I don't agree with this or that action of the national church? Despite any of our differences that might make us feel that we do not belong, Paul says that our feeling this way does not make us any less a part of the body! If we have been baptized into the body, we ARE a part of the body, in spite of any attempts by ourselves or others to exclude us.
Next, Paul goes on to affirm that the differences within the body of Christ are a part of God's plan: "God arranged the members in the body, each one as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?" (1 Corin. 12:18-19).
In fact, Paul argues that this diversity is ESSENTIAL to the Christian community. By its very DEFINITION, the "body" consists of different "parts." Instead of saying that we are one body in Christ DESPITE our differences (a way of thinking I know I often hold), in this passage Paul argues beautifully that we NEED our differences to truly live out what it means to be the body of Christ.
He writes, "the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you" (1 Corin. 12:21). I cannot say to those Christians who are different from me, "I have no need of you." Their presence is critical to maintaining the integrity of the body of Christ. Otherwise, we are just a community of ears, with no eyes. Or of feet, with no hands. When I am able to have considerate and respectful conversations with people who are different from me, it is often those people who can help me to see and understand things I could never have seen through talking only with people who look, talk, and think like me. As Paul writes, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?" (1 Corin. 12:17) Without engaging with differences, we miss out on experiencing the fullness of God in Christ.
I am a strong advocate of building intentionally diverse Christian communities for precisely this reason. We need all the different parts in order to be a HEALTHY body. Just as a body without an eye is not completely whole and healthy, so too is a Christian community not healthy if it is too homogenous -- in terms of race, class, culture, or ideology. Over the years I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the way churches in our country are segregated along racial, socioeconomic, and ideological lines. While I understand many of the historical and sociological reasons behind this phenomenon, I do not see how there can be any scripturally justifiable reasons for this. We have "white churches" and "black churches" and "conservative churches" and "liberal churches" and "rich churches" and "poor churches," and in all these churches, we read the same scriptures that tell us we are "one body in Christ." To modernize the metaphor, "In the Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- black or white, conservative or liberal" -- so why do we so often live as if this were not so? I feel that we as Christians are not really living the Gospel unless we are living it together, in community.
As you may know, this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, sponsored by the World Council of Churches. Praying for "Christian unity" does not necessarily mean that we are praying for all Christians to become part of ONE denomination or ONE church, or that certain groups should give up their particular styles of worship and methods of scriptural interpretation and adopt those of another group. "Christian unity," as informed by Paul's metaphor of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians, does not mean erasing differences or assuming consensus among all Christians. Rather, it means caring enough to ENGAGE WITH the differences and to learn from one another. Ecumenical dialogue continually reminds us that God is not contained within our particular church, and as we engage with our sisters and brothers of other denominations, we are also strengthened in knowing that we are connected to a wider community of support in the larger body of Christ as we strive to live out the Gospel in our daily lives.
And finally -- I bet you thought I was never going to get to the third question -- how does who you consider to be included in the body of Christ change how you relate to them?
For me, I know there are people with whom I would never be friends or really have much to do with if it weren't for our shared Christian commitment. If I think of someone as being a part of the body of Christ, it makes me think twice before simply dismissing them or not listening carefully to what they have to say, even if we don't always agree. A common identity as Christians in the body of Christ may at times bind people together when nothing else will.
This metaphor also gives us a powerful theological basis for reaching across differences and building community, in some of the ways that I discussed earlier. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in terms of "building the beloved community" -- that is precisely the type of community we should be about building as the body of Christ.
Above all, considering someone as included in the body of Christ gives us a powerful sense of solidarity with them. Paul puts it beautifully in 1 Corinthians: "If one members suffers, all suffer together with it, if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (1 Corin. 12:26). We are one body in Christ with our brothers and sisters who are fleeing genocide in the Sudan. We are one body in Christ with our brothers and sisters who are entangled in the war in Iraq (on either side of the conflict). We are one body in Christ with our brothers and sisters who are rebuilding after the devastating effects of Katrina in on the Gulf Coast. When any member of the body of Christ suffers anywhere in the world, it affects us all.
But our solidarity does not end with the Christian community. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves." We are called to be in solidarity with ALL people, not just Christians. Though we may feel a special connection and solidarity with our fellow Christians throughout the world, may we also be open to finding the presence of Christ even outside of our fold, in places where we least expect it.
In the name of the One who comes to bring good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to free the oppressed, and to bind us all together in the One Body, Amen.
1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (click here to read the passage (NRSV version))
Luke 4:14-21 (click here to read the passage (NRSV version))
Last Sunday during the announcements and in the weekly email that went out to the parish on Friday, I gave you a little "homework" in preparation for this Sunday's sermon. In our New Testament reading for this morning, Paul uses the metaphor of the members of the church being "one body in Christ." I asked you to think about your answers to three questions about that metaphor:
1. When you hear someone say, "we are one body in Christ," what does that mean to you? What are your first associations/connotations with that phrase?
2. Who is included in that body?
3. How does who you consider to be included in the body of Christ change how you relate to or are in relationship with them?
I hope you found this to be an interesting and thought-provoking exercise. I used these questions to guide my reflections about this passage, and will share with you my own thoughts in response to them.
First, "When you hear someone say, "we are one body in Christ," what does that mean to you? What are your first associations/connotations with that phrase?
For me, the phrase "we are one body in Christ" connotes first and foremost a sense of community, a community that is bound together by something larger than ourselves. As I reflected on this, I also realized that the phrase connotes to me a sense of being similar in some sense, of having something in common.
The second question was, "Who is included in that body?"
When you hear someone talk about the "body of Christ," who do you think of as being included in that body? Members of Holy Spirit? Fellow Episcopalians? Christians of other denominations?
I found that when I think about who is included in the "body of Christ," my first thought is of my particular worshipping community -- that is, all of you. Upon further reflection, I think about the other churches with which I have formed meaningful connections, in Boston and South Carolina. I also think about the wider "body" of Christians throughout the world who I may have never met or have any connection with and yet to whom I am still connected, through the "mystical body of Christ," as our Eucharistic liturgy says.
And finally, begrudgingly and with great confusion at times, I think of those who call themselves Christians with whom I disagree on various aspects of theology, politics, or ethics, or who see the world entirely differently than I do. It is sometimes hard for me to make sense of the idea that they and I are "one body in Christ" -- especially if, as I mentioned earlier, the notion of being "one in Christ" connotes to me some sense of oneness, of similarity.
I think this is probably a common line of thinking -- that as Christians, we should be similar in some way. And, on some level, this is true -- but the problem comes when we look for this commonality in our opinions, or our worship preferences, or our tastes in music, or even our interpretations of scripture, rather than in our common love of God and desire to follow Christ.
I am currently reading a book with my spiritual director called The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. In the most recent chapter we read, the author, Ronald Rolheiser, writes about the misperceptions people hold about what "church" is supposed to be. One of those misperceptions, he says, is the idea that church is made up of "like-minded individuals, gathering on the basis of mutual compatibility." He says it better than I could, so I quote from him:
"To be in apostolic community, church, is not necessarily to be with others with whom we are emotionally, ideologically, and otherwise compatible. Rather it is to stand, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, precisely with people who are very different from ourselves and, with them, hear a common word, say a common creed, share a common bread, and offer a mutual forgiveness so as, in that way, to bridge our differences and become a common heart. Church is not about a few like-minded persons getting together for mutual support; it is about millions and millions of different kinds of persons transcending their differences so as to become a community beyond temperament, race, ideology, gender, language, and background" (Rolheiser 115).
After explaining a number of other things that church is NOT, Rolheiser finally gets to his main point, his definition of what church IS -- people "gathering around the person of Christ and sharing his Spirit" (Rolheiser 118). And the Gospel passage for today gives us a nice summary of who exactly we are gathering around in the person of Christ - the one who brings good news to the poor, gives sight to the blind, and frees the oppressed.
So, the phrase "one body in Christ" DOES connote similarity -- but our similarity as Christians lies in our turning to Christ as our Savior, not in sharing similar political opinions, similar cultures, similar backgrounds or even similar interpretations of scripture. If we struggle to think about those who are different from us as included in the body of Christ, perhaps it is because we have focused so much on the "oneness" part of the metaphor that it overshadows the centrality of the "Christ" part of the metaphor.
Paul gives us some powerful imagery to illustrate this concept in this morning's New Testament reading: "Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slave or free -- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corin. 12:12-13). Christ is what unites us; the Spirit is what binds us together. Through our baptism, we are inextricably linked to one another, even when we may not FEEL like we are a part of the body.
One of the most powerful aspects of Paul's metaphor of the "body of Christ" is his affirmation that we are still included in the body even when we feel excluded because we are different from the other members of the body. He writes, "If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body" (1 Corin. 12:15).
Over what things have we found ourselves feeling excluded from the body of Christ? What would you fill in to that statement -- "Because I am not _______, I do not belong to the body"? Because I am not "spiritual" enough? Because I am not good at talking with others about my faith? Because I don't live up to my ideals? Because I don't agree with this or that action of the national church? Despite any of our differences that might make us feel that we do not belong, Paul says that our feeling this way does not make us any less a part of the body! If we have been baptized into the body, we ARE a part of the body, in spite of any attempts by ourselves or others to exclude us.
Next, Paul goes on to affirm that the differences within the body of Christ are a part of God's plan: "God arranged the members in the body, each one as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?" (1 Corin. 12:18-19).
In fact, Paul argues that this diversity is ESSENTIAL to the Christian community. By its very DEFINITION, the "body" consists of different "parts." Instead of saying that we are one body in Christ DESPITE our differences (a way of thinking I know I often hold), in this passage Paul argues beautifully that we NEED our differences to truly live out what it means to be the body of Christ.
He writes, "the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you" (1 Corin. 12:21). I cannot say to those Christians who are different from me, "I have no need of you." Their presence is critical to maintaining the integrity of the body of Christ. Otherwise, we are just a community of ears, with no eyes. Or of feet, with no hands. When I am able to have considerate and respectful conversations with people who are different from me, it is often those people who can help me to see and understand things I could never have seen through talking only with people who look, talk, and think like me. As Paul writes, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?" (1 Corin. 12:17) Without engaging with differences, we miss out on experiencing the fullness of God in Christ.
I am a strong advocate of building intentionally diverse Christian communities for precisely this reason. We need all the different parts in order to be a HEALTHY body. Just as a body without an eye is not completely whole and healthy, so too is a Christian community not healthy if it is too homogenous -- in terms of race, class, culture, or ideology. Over the years I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the way churches in our country are segregated along racial, socioeconomic, and ideological lines. While I understand many of the historical and sociological reasons behind this phenomenon, I do not see how there can be any scripturally justifiable reasons for this. We have "white churches" and "black churches" and "conservative churches" and "liberal churches" and "rich churches" and "poor churches," and in all these churches, we read the same scriptures that tell us we are "one body in Christ." To modernize the metaphor, "In the Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- black or white, conservative or liberal" -- so why do we so often live as if this were not so? I feel that we as Christians are not really living the Gospel unless we are living it together, in community.
As you may know, this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, sponsored by the World Council of Churches. Praying for "Christian unity" does not necessarily mean that we are praying for all Christians to become part of ONE denomination or ONE church, or that certain groups should give up their particular styles of worship and methods of scriptural interpretation and adopt those of another group. "Christian unity," as informed by Paul's metaphor of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians, does not mean erasing differences or assuming consensus among all Christians. Rather, it means caring enough to ENGAGE WITH the differences and to learn from one another. Ecumenical dialogue continually reminds us that God is not contained within our particular church, and as we engage with our sisters and brothers of other denominations, we are also strengthened in knowing that we are connected to a wider community of support in the larger body of Christ as we strive to live out the Gospel in our daily lives.
And finally -- I bet you thought I was never going to get to the third question -- how does who you consider to be included in the body of Christ change how you relate to them?
For me, I know there are people with whom I would never be friends or really have much to do with if it weren't for our shared Christian commitment. If I think of someone as being a part of the body of Christ, it makes me think twice before simply dismissing them or not listening carefully to what they have to say, even if we don't always agree. A common identity as Christians in the body of Christ may at times bind people together when nothing else will.
This metaphor also gives us a powerful theological basis for reaching across differences and building community, in some of the ways that I discussed earlier. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in terms of "building the beloved community" -- that is precisely the type of community we should be about building as the body of Christ.
Above all, considering someone as included in the body of Christ gives us a powerful sense of solidarity with them. Paul puts it beautifully in 1 Corinthians: "If one members suffers, all suffer together with it, if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (1 Corin. 12:26). We are one body in Christ with our brothers and sisters who are fleeing genocide in the Sudan. We are one body in Christ with our brothers and sisters who are entangled in the war in Iraq (on either side of the conflict). We are one body in Christ with our brothers and sisters who are rebuilding after the devastating effects of Katrina in on the Gulf Coast. When any member of the body of Christ suffers anywhere in the world, it affects us all.
But our solidarity does not end with the Christian community. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves." We are called to be in solidarity with ALL people, not just Christians. Though we may feel a special connection and solidarity with our fellow Christians throughout the world, may we also be open to finding the presence of Christ even outside of our fold, in places where we least expect it.
In the name of the One who comes to bring good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to free the oppressed, and to bind us all together in the One Body, Amen.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A recap of my spiritual journey to this point...
I wrote this spiritual autobiography for the discernment commitee at my church in Nebraska... they are trying to help me discern whether I have a calling to any form of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.
My spiritual journey began in earnest when I was a senior in high school, back in South Carolina. I had been raised in the Lutheran Church, but faith was not something real and personal to me until an experience I had at a retreat at a friend's church my senior year of high school. Some may call such an experience a "conversion" experience or a "born-again" experience. Although I tend to shy away from those words, I essentially had an encounter with God where I realized that God could be a very real presence in my life, and after that retreat I began to read the Bible in earnest, which I had never done before. I was enthralled with what I found -- the beauty in the Scriptures, particularly in the parables of the Gospels and the songs of praise in the psalms.
For about a year and a half, I became wrapped up in an Evangelical community, during my late high school years and early college years. I was certain that I had "found Jesus," that I now knew "the Truth," and that my mission was to convert everyone in the world to Christianity. I often felt a huge burden over the fact that I did not "evangelize" others like I should, and I and a friend who was my "accountability partner" in faith would sometimes sob at our meetings over the fact that people were dying and going to hell because we personally hadn't told them about Jesus. I felt an intense burden, like the salvation of the world rested on my shoulders. I would talk about being "on fire for God" and go to praise and worship meetings where we would raise our hands in a darkened room and deeply and passionately sing praises to God, tears running down our faces, eternally grateful for God's salvation of us, such unworthy sinners. Since early childhood, I had struggled with low self-esteem and often felt I was a horrible person or unworthy of love, so this message of God's unconditional love, which I had never heard proclaimed so strongly or emotionally in the Lutheran church I grew up in, pierced through to my very insecure heart and touched me deeply. I was hooked.
Somewhere along the line, though, my neat little black-and-white world began to fall apart. My sister's best friend's father died unexpectedly when I was a sophomore in college, and my faith simply did not provide a sense of comfort to me during this time. When challenged, my all-too-happy façade broke. At the same time, we were studying about the Holocaust in a European history course I was taking, and the horrors of the world began to bear down on me. Where was God in all this? I struggled with the age-old question of theodicy: how could an all-loving, good God allow such horrific suffering? I simply couldn’t get past this for many years. I became a religion major in an attempt to learn more about my faith and to strengthen it, but courses in systematic theology and analytical approaches to the scriptures only shook my foundation in what I thought was absolute fact. Somehow it all stopped making sense.
Wanting clear-cut answers, I became desperate to PROVE that Jesus was the only way, that my faith was the "right" one, and I went on a rampage, reading all that I could, searching for answers, for proof, for reassurance that Christianity was indeed FACT, and not faith. Eventually, I could find no objective proof that satisfied me, so I felt I had no other choice but to reject exclusivist theology - the idea that only Christians can connect with God or will be saved by God.
My spiritual journey began in earnest when I was a senior in high school, back in South Carolina. I had been raised in the Lutheran Church, but faith was not something real and personal to me until an experience I had at a retreat at a friend's church my senior year of high school. Some may call such an experience a "conversion" experience or a "born-again" experience. Although I tend to shy away from those words, I essentially had an encounter with God where I realized that God could be a very real presence in my life, and after that retreat I began to read the Bible in earnest, which I had never done before. I was enthralled with what I found -- the beauty in the Scriptures, particularly in the parables of the Gospels and the songs of praise in the psalms.
For about a year and a half, I became wrapped up in an Evangelical community, during my late high school years and early college years. I was certain that I had "found Jesus," that I now knew "the Truth," and that my mission was to convert everyone in the world to Christianity. I often felt a huge burden over the fact that I did not "evangelize" others like I should, and I and a friend who was my "accountability partner" in faith would sometimes sob at our meetings over the fact that people were dying and going to hell because we personally hadn't told them about Jesus. I felt an intense burden, like the salvation of the world rested on my shoulders. I would talk about being "on fire for God" and go to praise and worship meetings where we would raise our hands in a darkened room and deeply and passionately sing praises to God, tears running down our faces, eternally grateful for God's salvation of us, such unworthy sinners. Since early childhood, I had struggled with low self-esteem and often felt I was a horrible person or unworthy of love, so this message of God's unconditional love, which I had never heard proclaimed so strongly or emotionally in the Lutheran church I grew up in, pierced through to my very insecure heart and touched me deeply. I was hooked.
Somewhere along the line, though, my neat little black-and-white world began to fall apart. My sister's best friend's father died unexpectedly when I was a sophomore in college, and my faith simply did not provide a sense of comfort to me during this time. When challenged, my all-too-happy façade broke. At the same time, we were studying about the Holocaust in a European history course I was taking, and the horrors of the world began to bear down on me. Where was God in all this? I struggled with the age-old question of theodicy: how could an all-loving, good God allow such horrific suffering? I simply couldn’t get past this for many years. I became a religion major in an attempt to learn more about my faith and to strengthen it, but courses in systematic theology and analytical approaches to the scriptures only shook my foundation in what I thought was absolute fact. Somehow it all stopped making sense.
Wanting clear-cut answers, I became desperate to PROVE that Jesus was the only way, that my faith was the "right" one, and I went on a rampage, reading all that I could, searching for answers, for proof, for reassurance that Christianity was indeed FACT, and not faith. Eventually, I could find no objective proof that satisfied me, so I felt I had no other choice but to reject exclusivist theology - the idea that only Christians can connect with God or will be saved by God.
This rejection was extremely painful and traumatizing to me. I constantly wondered if maybe I really WAS being led astray by the devil -- how could I tell what was from God and what was from the devil??? -- and involved painful readjustments of my views of God and Scripture. But, my rejection of exclusivism was only confirmed when I had my first real interfaith encounter a year later, with a Muslim student in an introduction to Islam course I was taking. Outside of class, we talked and shared our faith journeys, and discussed how we related to God and how our faith had sustained us (or in my case, failed me) during times of crisis. I simply could not deny that this young man was also in touch with God, with the divine presence, and no amount of "official, orthodox Christian doctrine" about non-Christians going to hell could convince me otherwise.
Also, I began to develop a sense of calling to reach out to the outcast of society. As I began to come into my own understanding of faith rather than a parroted version of someone else's, I began to feel more and more convinced that standing in a darkened room singing praise songs accompanied by guitar and drums was probably not as pleasing to God as reaching out to love and serve those most in need would be. As I read the Gospel texts, I saw a Jesus who lived among the outcast in society, who did not cavort with the powerful and the wealthy, but with those most despised in the society of his time - the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and - heaven-forbid - even Samaritans. I saw a Jesus who said things like, "It will be easier for a camel to go through the needle of an eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:23). Who asked his followers to sell all that they owned - not 10 percent of their annual income, not five dollars in the collection plate each Sunday - but all that they owned, give to the poor, and come follow him. This, to me, seemed to be the heart of Jesus's message about the kingdom of God - the kingdom of God is at hand, and it will be realized as people come to follow him, serve the poor, love their enemies, and reach out to the stranger, the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the socially stigmatized, and the deserted.
The incongruence between Jesus's calling as I understood it from Scripture and the experience of seeing students wearing ridiculously-priced clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch driving to Sunday worship in their $40,000 SUVs that Daddy bought for them, never encountering or speaking with someone who didn't have tons of money and privilege, began to drive me nuts. (And I should be clear that this incongruence wasn't limited exclusively to the Evangelical communities of which I was a part; it was something I found in pretty much any Christian community I had encountered. Maybe the displays of wealth were more excessive in some churches than others, but nowhere did I see a truly radically inclusive community being lived out, a community like what I envisioned the followers of Jesus and the early Christian community to have been.)
My Evangelical friends surely sensed these changes in me, even if I didn't talk about them openly very much for fear of rejection and criticism from them. I began to feel increasingly out of place in the Evangelical community and eventually left it and found a home in a more liberal Baptist church (which was part of a movement in the South called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an alliance of more moderate Baptists who reject the conservative views of the Southern Baptist Convention). By the time I graduated from college, I had become fairly involved in that Baptist church, but I was still a bit unsettled in my faith. The summer after I graduated from college, I lived at home in Columbia, S.C., and didn't really attend church much for that summer.
Part of the reason that I didn't get to attend church much was that I was doing some research for the Pluralism Project at Harvard (www.pluralism.org) about religious diversity in Columbia, and this research entailed visiting ceremonies of the various religious groups in the area. Since many of them had adapted their religious schedules to fit the American workweek, they often had meetings on Sundays (since that's when all the Christians were doing their religious thing). Thus, I often had a Sikh service or a Hindu ceremony to go to on Sunday morning instead of church. This was perhaps also a good experience for me personally, to sort of "take a break" from involvement in church and immerse myself in other faiths and cultures.
I was very open to seeing the presence of the Divine in these faiths, and I did find it there. I sensed God's presence when I was sitting and listening to hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh holy scriptures) recited in the local gurdwara, or when I watched Muslims bow in reverent prayer, in unison, to the call to prayer in Arabic proclaiming "God is great!" I delighted in the many forms and representations of God in the Hindu tradition, especially enjoying a late-night vigil on the eve of Vishnu (one of the deities)'s birth as the baby Krishna, watching the crowd break into jubilant applause, singing and dancing at the hour of Krishna's birth.
From Muslims, I learned to think about disciplined prayer. From Baha'is, I learned to think about racial reconciliation and unity as a part of the divine mandate. From Buddhists, I learned to think about stillness and centeredness in meditation. From Hindus, I learned to think about what it meant to worship God not just as creator and preserver, but also as destroyer, to own the suffering and dark side of life as part of God's very presence in the world. My questions of theodicy that had tripped me up for so long in struggling with Western Christian theology were simply irrelevant for a worldview that did not posit as its starting point that only good things come from God -- and on some level I found this extremely liberating.
I was particularly drawn to one middle-aged Hindu woman, who I thought simply oozed the presence of the Divine. She spoke of the presence of the Divine Mother in all of us and told stories about visiting prisoners at the local prison, of reaching out to the outcast of society, of living out a sense of calling very similar to what I had discovered in the Christian scriptures but which I still at this point was not living out myself.
Also, I began to develop a sense of calling to reach out to the outcast of society. As I began to come into my own understanding of faith rather than a parroted version of someone else's, I began to feel more and more convinced that standing in a darkened room singing praise songs accompanied by guitar and drums was probably not as pleasing to God as reaching out to love and serve those most in need would be. As I read the Gospel texts, I saw a Jesus who lived among the outcast in society, who did not cavort with the powerful and the wealthy, but with those most despised in the society of his time - the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and - heaven-forbid - even Samaritans. I saw a Jesus who said things like, "It will be easier for a camel to go through the needle of an eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:23). Who asked his followers to sell all that they owned - not 10 percent of their annual income, not five dollars in the collection plate each Sunday - but all that they owned, give to the poor, and come follow him. This, to me, seemed to be the heart of Jesus's message about the kingdom of God - the kingdom of God is at hand, and it will be realized as people come to follow him, serve the poor, love their enemies, and reach out to the stranger, the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the socially stigmatized, and the deserted.
The incongruence between Jesus's calling as I understood it from Scripture and the experience of seeing students wearing ridiculously-priced clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch driving to Sunday worship in their $40,000 SUVs that Daddy bought for them, never encountering or speaking with someone who didn't have tons of money and privilege, began to drive me nuts. (And I should be clear that this incongruence wasn't limited exclusively to the Evangelical communities of which I was a part; it was something I found in pretty much any Christian community I had encountered. Maybe the displays of wealth were more excessive in some churches than others, but nowhere did I see a truly radically inclusive community being lived out, a community like what I envisioned the followers of Jesus and the early Christian community to have been.)
My Evangelical friends surely sensed these changes in me, even if I didn't talk about them openly very much for fear of rejection and criticism from them. I began to feel increasingly out of place in the Evangelical community and eventually left it and found a home in a more liberal Baptist church (which was part of a movement in the South called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an alliance of more moderate Baptists who reject the conservative views of the Southern Baptist Convention). By the time I graduated from college, I had become fairly involved in that Baptist church, but I was still a bit unsettled in my faith. The summer after I graduated from college, I lived at home in Columbia, S.C., and didn't really attend church much for that summer.
Part of the reason that I didn't get to attend church much was that I was doing some research for the Pluralism Project at Harvard (www.pluralism.org) about religious diversity in Columbia, and this research entailed visiting ceremonies of the various religious groups in the area. Since many of them had adapted their religious schedules to fit the American workweek, they often had meetings on Sundays (since that's when all the Christians were doing their religious thing). Thus, I often had a Sikh service or a Hindu ceremony to go to on Sunday morning instead of church. This was perhaps also a good experience for me personally, to sort of "take a break" from involvement in church and immerse myself in other faiths and cultures.
I was very open to seeing the presence of the Divine in these faiths, and I did find it there. I sensed God's presence when I was sitting and listening to hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh holy scriptures) recited in the local gurdwara, or when I watched Muslims bow in reverent prayer, in unison, to the call to prayer in Arabic proclaiming "God is great!" I delighted in the many forms and representations of God in the Hindu tradition, especially enjoying a late-night vigil on the eve of Vishnu (one of the deities)'s birth as the baby Krishna, watching the crowd break into jubilant applause, singing and dancing at the hour of Krishna's birth.
From Muslims, I learned to think about disciplined prayer. From Baha'is, I learned to think about racial reconciliation and unity as a part of the divine mandate. From Buddhists, I learned to think about stillness and centeredness in meditation. From Hindus, I learned to think about what it meant to worship God not just as creator and preserver, but also as destroyer, to own the suffering and dark side of life as part of God's very presence in the world. My questions of theodicy that had tripped me up for so long in struggling with Western Christian theology were simply irrelevant for a worldview that did not posit as its starting point that only good things come from God -- and on some level I found this extremely liberating.
I was particularly drawn to one middle-aged Hindu woman, who I thought simply oozed the presence of the Divine. She spoke of the presence of the Divine Mother in all of us and told stories about visiting prisoners at the local prison, of reaching out to the outcast of society, of living out a sense of calling very similar to what I had discovered in the Christian scriptures but which I still at this point was not living out myself.
She was my contact at the Hindu temple and always welcomed me warmly to their various festivals and events throughout the summer. By the end of August, when I showed up for yet another religious festival (this time for Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of new beginnings and remover of obstacles), she welcomed me with a hug, smiled, and said with a laugh, "Is this your church now?" She was half-joking, but it really made me stop and think. Was the Hindu temple my "church" now? Was the gurdwara? The mosque? The Buddhist meditation hall? I didn't even have a church anymore. What was my church? Sensing my hesitancy to respond, she nodded knowingly and revised her statement: "ONE of the churches," she said. I nodded vigorously. One of the churches. Yes. That was more like it.
By the end of the summer, despite everything I learned about God from these various faiths, I knew that I wanted to actively seek out a church and try to find my place within Christianity when I moved to Boston to start graduate school. Despite all my "interfaith" sensibilities and my ability to see the presence of God in other faiths, there was something there that kept me hanging on to my Christian faith.
I struggled a lot in college with traditional doctrines about Jesus -- was he really "God" in the flesh? Was he really born of a virgin? What if I don't think Jesus was God, but an inspired human teacher? At times my roommate (a fellow religion major) and I would joke that if we were honest with ourselves, we probably should just be Jewish, since we were fine with most everything in Christianity except the claims it made about Jesus... and, well, if you take Jesus out of the equation, it's not really Christianity anymore, now is it?
But ultimately, I came to realize that yes, Jesus was important to me. Despite my inability to "prove" the "factual" nature of any of the truths that the church holds about Jesus, I knew that the story of Jesus, the very simple basic story of his life, death and resurrection, had deeply touched me and moved me in a way that nothing else had in my life, and in a way that no other religion had (from my limited knowledge of them). Although I had rejected just about everything that I used to believe or hold dear during my Evangelical days, I realized that I couldn't reject Jesus.
That realization was a very deep and profound one for me. I realized that I had let my frustrations with and anger towards the Evangelical community I had once been a part of obscure the fact that in those communities I had actually found a very powerful and meaningful encounter with God. I loved those communities for their passion for Christ and for the Gospel, for their contagious sense that they really knew the power of the love of God expressed through Christ Jesus, and yet I disagreed with many of their social and political opinions. My problem was that although I agreed more with the theology of the more moderate "mainline" churches, in many of those types of churches I had visited, people seemed to be simply lackluster in their approach to worship, reciting words and turning pages, but not truly WORSHIPPING God. I felt like slapping everyone upside the head and screaming, "PEOPLE!! Do you know what you're singing about?? Christ is RISEN!!! My GOD, act like you understand what you're saying!!" I was not optimistic about my options as I moved to Boston for graduate school and began my church-hunting process.
But, thanks be to God, within three weeks of arriving in Boston, I found the church that I wound up attending for the three years that I lived in Boston -- St. James's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
St. James became my first true church home, in a way that no other community had ever been. It was everything I was looking for in a church -- racially diverse (I had become increasingly impatient with racially homogenous churches after seeing the racial diversity of the Muslim and Baha'i communities in Columbia during my Pluralism Project research and was determined to find a church that was also racially diverse -- I could write you a book about that particular issue but I'll spare you, for now), social justice-minded (doing a number of outreach ministries to the poor and marginalized), and joyful in worship without being "rock band evangelical."
By the end of the summer, despite everything I learned about God from these various faiths, I knew that I wanted to actively seek out a church and try to find my place within Christianity when I moved to Boston to start graduate school. Despite all my "interfaith" sensibilities and my ability to see the presence of God in other faiths, there was something there that kept me hanging on to my Christian faith.
I struggled a lot in college with traditional doctrines about Jesus -- was he really "God" in the flesh? Was he really born of a virgin? What if I don't think Jesus was God, but an inspired human teacher? At times my roommate (a fellow religion major) and I would joke that if we were honest with ourselves, we probably should just be Jewish, since we were fine with most everything in Christianity except the claims it made about Jesus... and, well, if you take Jesus out of the equation, it's not really Christianity anymore, now is it?
But ultimately, I came to realize that yes, Jesus was important to me. Despite my inability to "prove" the "factual" nature of any of the truths that the church holds about Jesus, I knew that the story of Jesus, the very simple basic story of his life, death and resurrection, had deeply touched me and moved me in a way that nothing else had in my life, and in a way that no other religion had (from my limited knowledge of them). Although I had rejected just about everything that I used to believe or hold dear during my Evangelical days, I realized that I couldn't reject Jesus.
That realization was a very deep and profound one for me. I realized that I had let my frustrations with and anger towards the Evangelical community I had once been a part of obscure the fact that in those communities I had actually found a very powerful and meaningful encounter with God. I loved those communities for their passion for Christ and for the Gospel, for their contagious sense that they really knew the power of the love of God expressed through Christ Jesus, and yet I disagreed with many of their social and political opinions. My problem was that although I agreed more with the theology of the more moderate "mainline" churches, in many of those types of churches I had visited, people seemed to be simply lackluster in their approach to worship, reciting words and turning pages, but not truly WORSHIPPING God. I felt like slapping everyone upside the head and screaming, "PEOPLE!! Do you know what you're singing about?? Christ is RISEN!!! My GOD, act like you understand what you're saying!!" I was not optimistic about my options as I moved to Boston for graduate school and began my church-hunting process.
But, thanks be to God, within three weeks of arriving in Boston, I found the church that I wound up attending for the three years that I lived in Boston -- St. James's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
St. James became my first true church home, in a way that no other community had ever been. It was everything I was looking for in a church -- racially diverse (I had become increasingly impatient with racially homogenous churches after seeing the racial diversity of the Muslim and Baha'i communities in Columbia during my Pluralism Project research and was determined to find a church that was also racially diverse -- I could write you a book about that particular issue but I'll spare you, for now), social justice-minded (doing a number of outreach ministries to the poor and marginalized), and joyful in worship without being "rock band evangelical."
In contrast to the churches in the South, where church was largely a social outing to see and be seen, to keep up with the Joneses (and all their relatives), in "godless," liberal New England, people didn't go to church unless it really MEANT something to them. In the South, people in the churches were mainstream, whereas in the Northeast, people in the churches were a bit countercultural – they were those people on the margins where I felt Jesus himself would have been. I felt that finally, after so many years of drifting and being unsure in my faith, unsure of where I "fit" within Christianity or if there was even a place for me in the faith, I had finally found a community that was the perfect balance between tradition and innovation, between ritual and feeling, and between definitive Christian identity and open-minded and accepting love.
The community at St. James, particularly a young women's small group of which I was a part, challenged me and supported me as I began to finally step out and act on my faith in ways I'd felt called to do for some time but never had the courage to act on. In this stage of my faith, I began to evaluate what really mattered to me and to what kinds of things I wanted to devote my life. I began to take steps to practice what I preached, inspired largely by many people who served as examples to me of living lives of conviction and integrity. I finally acted on my sense of calling to reach out to the poor and marginalized and began to volunteer with an outdoor church ministry to the homeless in Cambridge, an ecumenical ministry of which St. James was a part. My time in Boston was also when I became a vegetarian -- acting on my belief in non-violence and non-cruelty to animals. Interestingly, I found that in beginning to live out the values I held most dear, I found myself less critical and judgmental of others for not living out those same values.
Despite the real ways in which I was challenged and grew spiritually at St. James, by the time I left St. James, I still had a somewhat naïve and limited view both of church and of God. I saw the community of St. James through rose-colored glasses. Everything at St. James was wonderful, everything at St. James was inspiring, everything at St. James was perfect. If at any time I had a problem or issue with something that happened at St. James (which did happen a few times), I felt very comfortable approaching the rector to talk about it and he was always very willing to sit down and talk with me about whatever my concern was. Somehow I managed to stay away from all the arenas of church politics -- the vestry, etc -- and generally avoided hearing any of the unpleasant things that I'm sure did go on there from time to time. Whenever I got some glimmer of the fact that St. James wasn't perfect, like hearing one of my friends at church complain about not liking another church member, I was just entirely horrified ("but EVERYONE at St. James LOVES each other, right?!?!?!?!").
I was thrilled to be a part of that congregation, which I felt exemplified in every way possible what living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ should look like in this human life. I loved that congregation so much that I practically elevated it to a position of idolatry, and a certain arrogance began to creep into my outlook, without my even realizing it -- a self-inflated assurance that only churches like ours were authentically living out the Gospel -- only liberal, gay-rights supporting, pacifist, progressive political activists were truly showing Christ's radically inclusive love for all. In my mind, I began to confuse Jesus with a New England liberal.
I guess that's why God didn't let me stay in Boston to do my discernment internship, as was my original plan. Instead, God brought me to Bellevue, Nebraska, to serve in a church made up almost entirely of military folks!
Church of the Holy Spirit couldn't be more opposite to St. James in a number of ways -- it's much less racially diverse (I had convinced myself that I could never worship in an entirely or mostly white congregation again!), more traditional music and worship than I was used to, ... and this military thing!! During my time in Boston, I had subconsciously received the message that "military" was a bad word. According to the prevailing attitude there, the Iraq war was horrible, the military was horrible, and pretty much everything the American government did was horrible (obviously I'm exaggerating for effect, but this truly was the subconscious message I received). I never heard anyone talking about personally knowing people who were serving in the war. One of the first things I noticed upon arriving at Holy Spirit was the sobering list of "the deployed" that we pray for every week... and at the same time, little to no explicit attention in the prayers for people or countries outside of the United States. This is just one example of how different Holy Spirit seemed to be from St. James. I could almost hear God laughing at me. "You were so sure about the only kinds of places you could find My presence, weren't you?" God seemed to say. "Well, honey, you've got a lot to learn."
And indeed, I did. The first thing I learned is that a warm, inclusive, welcoming spirit is not the exclusive property of New England liberals. I found the same kind of warm and welcoming community at Holy Spirit as I did at St. James. I learned that "military" is not a bad word, and was humbled to realize how much service military people have given our country, with a sense of quiet duty, dignity and honor that I had not seen amongst the pacifist, protester crowd in Boston. I learned that, as always, God is in the business of breaking down my prejudices and stereotypes and showing up in places where I least expect it. I learned that yes, church is not always pretty and nice and happy all the time, but that living with an unrealistic view of church as always happy and wonderful is less spiritually edifying and spiritually healthy than confronting the realities of our brokenness as human beings and continuing to worship together in spite of that fact.
It is hard for me to add a section about my four months in the Resurrection House program to this "autobiography," I guess because it's all still in process; I don't have the benefit of time, distance and perspective on my current state to be able to describe it like I have the other periods in my life. I'm still working through a number of things. I was excited and joyful to feel that I had finally discerned how to listen for God's call, which I believe I did in coming to Nebraska, but I am learning that answering that call will not always bring entirely pleasant experiences, and that some of the most beneficial and important lessons we can learn in life are often the hardest ones. I think I already knew that before I came, but even so, I still have the tendency to want to avoid dealing with more difficult things in life.
The community at St. James, particularly a young women's small group of which I was a part, challenged me and supported me as I began to finally step out and act on my faith in ways I'd felt called to do for some time but never had the courage to act on. In this stage of my faith, I began to evaluate what really mattered to me and to what kinds of things I wanted to devote my life. I began to take steps to practice what I preached, inspired largely by many people who served as examples to me of living lives of conviction and integrity. I finally acted on my sense of calling to reach out to the poor and marginalized and began to volunteer with an outdoor church ministry to the homeless in Cambridge, an ecumenical ministry of which St. James was a part. My time in Boston was also when I became a vegetarian -- acting on my belief in non-violence and non-cruelty to animals. Interestingly, I found that in beginning to live out the values I held most dear, I found myself less critical and judgmental of others for not living out those same values.
Despite the real ways in which I was challenged and grew spiritually at St. James, by the time I left St. James, I still had a somewhat naïve and limited view both of church and of God. I saw the community of St. James through rose-colored glasses. Everything at St. James was wonderful, everything at St. James was inspiring, everything at St. James was perfect. If at any time I had a problem or issue with something that happened at St. James (which did happen a few times), I felt very comfortable approaching the rector to talk about it and he was always very willing to sit down and talk with me about whatever my concern was. Somehow I managed to stay away from all the arenas of church politics -- the vestry, etc -- and generally avoided hearing any of the unpleasant things that I'm sure did go on there from time to time. Whenever I got some glimmer of the fact that St. James wasn't perfect, like hearing one of my friends at church complain about not liking another church member, I was just entirely horrified ("but EVERYONE at St. James LOVES each other, right?!?!?!?!").
I was thrilled to be a part of that congregation, which I felt exemplified in every way possible what living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ should look like in this human life. I loved that congregation so much that I practically elevated it to a position of idolatry, and a certain arrogance began to creep into my outlook, without my even realizing it -- a self-inflated assurance that only churches like ours were authentically living out the Gospel -- only liberal, gay-rights supporting, pacifist, progressive political activists were truly showing Christ's radically inclusive love for all. In my mind, I began to confuse Jesus with a New England liberal.
I guess that's why God didn't let me stay in Boston to do my discernment internship, as was my original plan. Instead, God brought me to Bellevue, Nebraska, to serve in a church made up almost entirely of military folks!
Church of the Holy Spirit couldn't be more opposite to St. James in a number of ways -- it's much less racially diverse (I had convinced myself that I could never worship in an entirely or mostly white congregation again!), more traditional music and worship than I was used to, ... and this military thing!! During my time in Boston, I had subconsciously received the message that "military" was a bad word. According to the prevailing attitude there, the Iraq war was horrible, the military was horrible, and pretty much everything the American government did was horrible (obviously I'm exaggerating for effect, but this truly was the subconscious message I received). I never heard anyone talking about personally knowing people who were serving in the war. One of the first things I noticed upon arriving at Holy Spirit was the sobering list of "the deployed" that we pray for every week... and at the same time, little to no explicit attention in the prayers for people or countries outside of the United States. This is just one example of how different Holy Spirit seemed to be from St. James. I could almost hear God laughing at me. "You were so sure about the only kinds of places you could find My presence, weren't you?" God seemed to say. "Well, honey, you've got a lot to learn."
And indeed, I did. The first thing I learned is that a warm, inclusive, welcoming spirit is not the exclusive property of New England liberals. I found the same kind of warm and welcoming community at Holy Spirit as I did at St. James. I learned that "military" is not a bad word, and was humbled to realize how much service military people have given our country, with a sense of quiet duty, dignity and honor that I had not seen amongst the pacifist, protester crowd in Boston. I learned that, as always, God is in the business of breaking down my prejudices and stereotypes and showing up in places where I least expect it. I learned that yes, church is not always pretty and nice and happy all the time, but that living with an unrealistic view of church as always happy and wonderful is less spiritually edifying and spiritually healthy than confronting the realities of our brokenness as human beings and continuing to worship together in spite of that fact.
It is hard for me to add a section about my four months in the Resurrection House program to this "autobiography," I guess because it's all still in process; I don't have the benefit of time, distance and perspective on my current state to be able to describe it like I have the other periods in my life. I'm still working through a number of things. I was excited and joyful to feel that I had finally discerned how to listen for God's call, which I believe I did in coming to Nebraska, but I am learning that answering that call will not always bring entirely pleasant experiences, and that some of the most beneficial and important lessons we can learn in life are often the hardest ones. I think I already knew that before I came, but even so, I still have the tendency to want to avoid dealing with more difficult things in life.
Sometimes I have felt that life would be a whole lot easier if I just forgot all about this "church" thing and stopped trying to hold myself to such high standards; I could just go sit around and veg out and watch television with the rest of the majority of the American population. "I don't have to do this," I've thought a number of times. "I don't even want to do this! Why am I even here?" But I am thankful for the structure and discipline of being a part of a program to which I have committed -- that commitment keeps me here on those days when I feel most like running away from all the difficult things that I am being forced to deal with in really spending a year in intentional discernment and coming to know myself perhaps better than I would have ever chosen to, if it were entirely up to me! But I keep all this in perspective by knowing that I will be a better person for having struggled with these issues, and by continually being reminded that God's grace is with me through it all.
Since starting this program, I have been wrestling with confronting some of my own attitudes and behaviors -- namely, my propensity to only interact with people I like or to show favoritism in relating more positively to some people than others and to implicitly or explicitly judge those who don't meet my criteria for approval, whatever that means. I am struggling with wondering how much I could really express my most true, most authentic thoughts and beliefs if I pursued ordination, or if I would have to "tow the party line" to be acceptable to the church. On some level I have always felt like a bit of an outsider, a bit of a "fringe" person to the church... someone standing on the edges, still loving the institution but always critical of it, and I wonder if I would lose the ability to do that or be that in being ordained, or if that attitude/role/position would prevent me from being considered seriously as a candidate for ordination in the first place.
I am learning about the gravity of ministry -- that being a minister means not just celebrating in worship on Sunday mornings, but about being present for people at some of life's most difficult and serious moments. I also am learning a great deal about prayer, silence, and listening -- and about the importance of humility and recognizing with thanksgiving that whatever ability we have to minister to others comes through God's grace -- and continually remembering to turn to God in prayer to ask for that grace to enable us to do the work we have been called to do.
Since starting this program, I have been wrestling with confronting some of my own attitudes and behaviors -- namely, my propensity to only interact with people I like or to show favoritism in relating more positively to some people than others and to implicitly or explicitly judge those who don't meet my criteria for approval, whatever that means. I am struggling with wondering how much I could really express my most true, most authentic thoughts and beliefs if I pursued ordination, or if I would have to "tow the party line" to be acceptable to the church. On some level I have always felt like a bit of an outsider, a bit of a "fringe" person to the church... someone standing on the edges, still loving the institution but always critical of it, and I wonder if I would lose the ability to do that or be that in being ordained, or if that attitude/role/position would prevent me from being considered seriously as a candidate for ordination in the first place.
I am learning about the gravity of ministry -- that being a minister means not just celebrating in worship on Sunday mornings, but about being present for people at some of life's most difficult and serious moments. I also am learning a great deal about prayer, silence, and listening -- and about the importance of humility and recognizing with thanksgiving that whatever ability we have to minister to others comes through God's grace -- and continually remembering to turn to God in prayer to ask for that grace to enable us to do the work we have been called to do.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Reflections on my first preaching experience...
I'm still processing my first experience with preaching, on many levels. I really enjoyed the preparation process and I really felt it was spiritually edifying to me to take the time to study a bit more in-depth about the scriptures and really sort of meditate on them throughout the week, letting my thoughts percolate about what I was going to say about them, and allowing the various events of my life to spur reflections on the scripture.
Then, when I actually delivered the sermon, I felt that it went well, and I got pretty much nothing but positive feedback from everyone (with a few comments that I could speak even more slowly or add in pauses to let the statements I was making really sink in). I was slightly nervous at the 8:00 service, but by the second time around at the 10:30 service, I was more completely relaxed and comfortable up there "preaching the Word."
On some level I was unprepared for the level of positive feedback I did get, with some pretty high compliments from several people (someone passed along a comment that someone had said it was the best sermon they'd ever heard! Yipes!!). Having not been trained formally in preaching nor public speaking, I wasn't expecting this kind of affirmation. And it felt good. It really did. Almost too good.
I have always been someone who has thrived upon and thirsted for the approval of others. I was always the good little student, straight As, who cried over her first B+ in third grade. And when I do get that approval, I tend to pride myself on it. I thought very highly of my stellar academic achievement, and did more than my share of patting myself on the back for my A papers, my magna cum laude graduation from college (only several tenths of a point away from a summa cum laude designation... something that bothered me a bit -- that I didn't get the HIGHEST level of awards). When I do well on a paper or a project or a presentation, I get a sense of deep satisfaction at knowing I've done a great job and enjoy basking in the glow of people telling me so. The only problem is, I think these behaviors have very little to do with worshipping God and giving glory to God.
It has always seemed a bit strange to me how in the mainline churches (like the Lutheran church in which I grew up), the tradition is to file out of the church after the service, greeting the pastor with a handshake and complimenting him (or her) on his (or her!) sermon. "Enjoyed your sermon," someone will say. "Great sermon," someone else will say. These kinds of compliments seem spiritually vacuous to me. It sounds and feels more like complimenting someone on their rhetorical skills than anything to do with any communication of the word of God. They may as well be saying, "Nice speech!" After someone delivers a graduation address, people say, "Good job!" After someone gives an enlightening or entertaining presentation, someone says, "I enjoyed your presentation." But "Good job, I enjoyed your SERMON??" I have always been uncomfortable with this language.
First of all, if people have ENJOYED your sermon, have you really communicated anything of significance to them? I guess I see the role of the preacher as spurring people to think more, of prodding them to action, even when those actions may be difficult to take. Of calling people to a higher standard of living and loving than what they are currently displaying. But if a preacher does this, people may not always ENJOY his or her sermons. Now, I'm not saying that preaching should be ALL ABOUT just calling people to behave differently or live their lives to a higher standard -- certainly there is also an equally important element of communicating assurance and hope in the promise of forgiveness and redemption that makes Christianity so very powerful.
Secondly, this kind of praise seems too focused on the person and not focused enough on God. Instead of saying, "God really spoke to me through your sermon," or "I really needed to hear that today," or "this really got me thinking," the praise and credit is given to the person and not to God. Especially for someone as used to basking in the praise of others as I am (especially in matters of writing), I feel like people praising ME for my sermons is a very dangerous thing. It would be all too easy for this praise to go to my head... indeed, for a few moments after the services last Sunday, I beamed and internally stroked my ego -- "Look at me, I gave a great sermon!" I said to myself. "Wow, you really did a good job here today."
What I was forgetting at the time was that any gifts I have for writing and speaking do not come from me, but from God alone. On some level, I have never really understood people's praise and admiration of my writing, since to me it doesn't seem difficult at all. Being an English major seemed an "easy" major choice to me, and I almost felt guilty for taking that choice over something more challenging and difficult like my science major friends. However, a biology major friend of mine once confessed to me her dread of writing English papers and how she thought my major was really more difficult than hers! I couldn't understand what she could mean about writing a paper being difficult for her. Writing has ALWAYS come easily to me; it has never been anything I have had to work for. This alone should be enough to convince me that it is a gift of God and not of me, and yet throughout my life I have prided myself on my writing abilities.
Then, when I actually delivered the sermon, I felt that it went well, and I got pretty much nothing but positive feedback from everyone (with a few comments that I could speak even more slowly or add in pauses to let the statements I was making really sink in). I was slightly nervous at the 8:00 service, but by the second time around at the 10:30 service, I was more completely relaxed and comfortable up there "preaching the Word."
On some level I was unprepared for the level of positive feedback I did get, with some pretty high compliments from several people (someone passed along a comment that someone had said it was the best sermon they'd ever heard! Yipes!!). Having not been trained formally in preaching nor public speaking, I wasn't expecting this kind of affirmation. And it felt good. It really did. Almost too good.
I have always been someone who has thrived upon and thirsted for the approval of others. I was always the good little student, straight As, who cried over her first B+ in third grade. And when I do get that approval, I tend to pride myself on it. I thought very highly of my stellar academic achievement, and did more than my share of patting myself on the back for my A papers, my magna cum laude graduation from college (only several tenths of a point away from a summa cum laude designation... something that bothered me a bit -- that I didn't get the HIGHEST level of awards). When I do well on a paper or a project or a presentation, I get a sense of deep satisfaction at knowing I've done a great job and enjoy basking in the glow of people telling me so. The only problem is, I think these behaviors have very little to do with worshipping God and giving glory to God.
It has always seemed a bit strange to me how in the mainline churches (like the Lutheran church in which I grew up), the tradition is to file out of the church after the service, greeting the pastor with a handshake and complimenting him (or her) on his (or her!) sermon. "Enjoyed your sermon," someone will say. "Great sermon," someone else will say. These kinds of compliments seem spiritually vacuous to me. It sounds and feels more like complimenting someone on their rhetorical skills than anything to do with any communication of the word of God. They may as well be saying, "Nice speech!" After someone delivers a graduation address, people say, "Good job!" After someone gives an enlightening or entertaining presentation, someone says, "I enjoyed your presentation." But "Good job, I enjoyed your SERMON??" I have always been uncomfortable with this language.
First of all, if people have ENJOYED your sermon, have you really communicated anything of significance to them? I guess I see the role of the preacher as spurring people to think more, of prodding them to action, even when those actions may be difficult to take. Of calling people to a higher standard of living and loving than what they are currently displaying. But if a preacher does this, people may not always ENJOY his or her sermons. Now, I'm not saying that preaching should be ALL ABOUT just calling people to behave differently or live their lives to a higher standard -- certainly there is also an equally important element of communicating assurance and hope in the promise of forgiveness and redemption that makes Christianity so very powerful.
Secondly, this kind of praise seems too focused on the person and not focused enough on God. Instead of saying, "God really spoke to me through your sermon," or "I really needed to hear that today," or "this really got me thinking," the praise and credit is given to the person and not to God. Especially for someone as used to basking in the praise of others as I am (especially in matters of writing), I feel like people praising ME for my sermons is a very dangerous thing. It would be all too easy for this praise to go to my head... indeed, for a few moments after the services last Sunday, I beamed and internally stroked my ego -- "Look at me, I gave a great sermon!" I said to myself. "Wow, you really did a good job here today."
What I was forgetting at the time was that any gifts I have for writing and speaking do not come from me, but from God alone. On some level, I have never really understood people's praise and admiration of my writing, since to me it doesn't seem difficult at all. Being an English major seemed an "easy" major choice to me, and I almost felt guilty for taking that choice over something more challenging and difficult like my science major friends. However, a biology major friend of mine once confessed to me her dread of writing English papers and how she thought my major was really more difficult than hers! I couldn't understand what she could mean about writing a paper being difficult for her. Writing has ALWAYS come easily to me; it has never been anything I have had to work for. This alone should be enough to convince me that it is a gift of God and not of me, and yet throughout my life I have prided myself on my writing abilities.
It is those things which come most naturally to us that I feel are most clearly of God and not of us. In essence, then, I am taking credit for something that I can lay no claim of ownership to, since there has been no effort exerted on my part to develop this skill -- and I feel like praise of my abilities in this area would only lead to an inflated ego on my part and a decreased ability to really hear the voice of God.
I feel like preaching should have very little to do with the preacher and everything to do with listening for the Word of God -- whether you're the one giving the sermon or the one sitting in the pews. I may have some knowledge of the historical background of the scriptures that I was able to "teach" to people in my sermon, but I was preaching to myself as much as I was preaching to the congregation when I talked about being joyful in proclaiming Christ as Lord and King and about holding on to the eschatological hope for the ultimate righting of all wrongs. I don't know that information on any kind of REAL level -- I don't feel it in my bones, I don't live my life as if I know it's true -- I needed to hear my own words as much as, if not more so, than many people in the congregation.
I think in the immediate "aftermath" of the sermon, I wasn't as aware of this as I've come to be over the past week or so of reflection, which is why I think I began to feel like somewhat of a fake later on in the week. When I wrote the sermon, I truly felt and believed everything that I said and proclaimed and felt joyful at sharing these truths with the congregation. Several days later, I was sitting in the undercroft watching the altar guild polish the silver for Advent and talk over the tiniest details of liturgics and suddenly feeling like, "What the heck are we DOING??? Sitting in this building and placing all these nice metal pieces in certain orders and dotting our i's and crossing our t's and whatnot and truly believing that somehow these things please God? What does ANY of this have to do with God???"
Suddenly it all felt like a farce to me. I stepped back and observed this seemingly absurd scene -- people parading around in robes, lifting certain pieces of silver at the opportune times, someone standing up and claiming to have some kind of authority to talk about "God's word" to the people -- and all of it within this isolated and insular community. Is this really what serving and worshipping God is about? Going into a building and talking ABOUT God a lot? Where is God in all this?
And then I thought about how just a few days earlier, I was standing there in my robes proclaiming something about joy and redemption and Christ being Lord and King of all, and today I felt like I couldn't be farther from knowing and embodying that truth. How could I ever call myself a preacher, as a deacon or a priest or even as a lay person, I wondered? I'm nothing but a fake! Do I even believe ANY of this stuff?
I think the enormity of the theology I was proclaiming on Sunday suddenly came crashing down on me on Wednesday. I had conflated myself with the words of my sermon and admonished myself when I didn't FEEL those words to be true constantly and without question at all times. I forgot that I was not claiming to speak for MYSELF in the sermon, but "in the name of Christ." That it was not Tracy Wells's ideas I was trying to communicate, but the Word of God as I best understand it through Scripture. And that since these were NOT my words that I was proclaiming, it was fairly natural that I would not feel at all times just hunky-dory about proclaiming them.
I feel like preaching should have very little to do with the preacher and everything to do with listening for the Word of God -- whether you're the one giving the sermon or the one sitting in the pews. I may have some knowledge of the historical background of the scriptures that I was able to "teach" to people in my sermon, but I was preaching to myself as much as I was preaching to the congregation when I talked about being joyful in proclaiming Christ as Lord and King and about holding on to the eschatological hope for the ultimate righting of all wrongs. I don't know that information on any kind of REAL level -- I don't feel it in my bones, I don't live my life as if I know it's true -- I needed to hear my own words as much as, if not more so, than many people in the congregation.
I think in the immediate "aftermath" of the sermon, I wasn't as aware of this as I've come to be over the past week or so of reflection, which is why I think I began to feel like somewhat of a fake later on in the week. When I wrote the sermon, I truly felt and believed everything that I said and proclaimed and felt joyful at sharing these truths with the congregation. Several days later, I was sitting in the undercroft watching the altar guild polish the silver for Advent and talk over the tiniest details of liturgics and suddenly feeling like, "What the heck are we DOING??? Sitting in this building and placing all these nice metal pieces in certain orders and dotting our i's and crossing our t's and whatnot and truly believing that somehow these things please God? What does ANY of this have to do with God???"
Suddenly it all felt like a farce to me. I stepped back and observed this seemingly absurd scene -- people parading around in robes, lifting certain pieces of silver at the opportune times, someone standing up and claiming to have some kind of authority to talk about "God's word" to the people -- and all of it within this isolated and insular community. Is this really what serving and worshipping God is about? Going into a building and talking ABOUT God a lot? Where is God in all this?
And then I thought about how just a few days earlier, I was standing there in my robes proclaiming something about joy and redemption and Christ being Lord and King of all, and today I felt like I couldn't be farther from knowing and embodying that truth. How could I ever call myself a preacher, as a deacon or a priest or even as a lay person, I wondered? I'm nothing but a fake! Do I even believe ANY of this stuff?
I think the enormity of the theology I was proclaiming on Sunday suddenly came crashing down on me on Wednesday. I had conflated myself with the words of my sermon and admonished myself when I didn't FEEL those words to be true constantly and without question at all times. I forgot that I was not claiming to speak for MYSELF in the sermon, but "in the name of Christ." That it was not Tracy Wells's ideas I was trying to communicate, but the Word of God as I best understand it through Scripture. And that since these were NOT my words that I was proclaiming, it was fairly natural that I would not feel at all times just hunky-dory about proclaiming them.
I came to realize that I did not preach my sermon, it preached me -- or rather, God preached through me. I needed to hear the words coming out of my mouth as much as everyone else did.
And this is why I would greatly appreciate it if people wouldn't compliment me on "my sermon" in such a way that gives glory to me rather than to God. If the focus is on me, then I'm just a pretty sorry fake and hypocrite, parroting words that I don't embody and that I'm not even sure I believe at times. But if the focus is on God, then I'm a broken, imperfect earthly vessel that the eternal God nevertheless sometimes chooses to use to express God's truths to God's people. The enormity of that fact is anything BUT arrogance-inducing. It is the greatest humbler I have ever known.
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Silence.
Note (1/22/10): This was first written as part of an early draft of the post, "It's Time to Go Home," and this version was not posted back in 2006, but there was a significant amount of reflection here on silence that I felt it merited its own posting. It was actually written in March, when I was working on "It's Time to Go Home," but I gave it an arbitrary date here and moved it earlier so as to not have too much repetition, if this one were to appear right next to "It's Time to Go Home."
"Now, there are two ways we can do this," he said. "We can be silent all day except for meals, when we can talk, or we can be silent all day, including meals. What do y'all prefer?"
I was horrified. A SILENT day????? I'm supposed to NOT TALK, ALL DAY??? How would this be PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE for me? (Many of you know my reputation for being able to talk a million miles an hour, to a brick wall if it would listen to me.)
"Well, we HAVE to talk at meals," I said anxiously. "I mean, I can't NOT TALK for an ENTIRE DAY!"
So, it was agreed. We would talk at meals.
So, our day of silence started. And I found that after about an hour and a half to two hours, I was finally able to quiet the inccessent internal chatter in my mind (using some techniques I'd learned from Buddhists, actually) and to just BE. By the next afternoon at lunch, I was actually a bit reluctant to have to meet up with the rest of the crowd and talk to them... and by dinnertime, I didn't even want to SEE them.
I soaked up the silence and began to notice the little things that I usually ran past at 100 miles an hour. The wind blowing through the fields of corn, the birds and grasshoppers and the life that teemed throughout the landscape. I sat and watched a sunset over the vast fields and stared at length at a bird perched on a corn stalk. The image was so imprinted in my memory that when I went inside, I was able to recreate that image in a drawing (using the crayons they had provided us as an essential tool of our retreat :o) simply from memory. I wrote in my journal next to the drawing,
"You have to really see things to create art. To observe the details and intricacies of life. To listen to the earth. To be able to create from the mind, and not just mimicking or copying what is before your eyes. Create from memory, not from a photograph or live scene... in order to do this you have to really see."
I think was I was getting at here was how intensely I was present in the moment that I was able to remember the details of that scene in order to draw it; that had I not taken the time to slow down and look and listen and watch, I would have completely missed the fact that the bird was even sitting on the corn stalk in the first place. This idea of being present to the moment is what Buddhists mean when they speak of "mindfulness."
By the end of the retreat, I was sold on silence. I still don't seek it often enough, and my life is still too filled with chatter, literal and figurative, but that retreat taught me the value of simply stopping to be. In a very real way, it changed my life.
I was horrified. A SILENT day????? I'm supposed to NOT TALK, ALL DAY??? How would this be PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE for me? (Many of you know my reputation for being able to talk a million miles an hour, to a brick wall if it would listen to me.)
"Well, we HAVE to talk at meals," I said anxiously. "I mean, I can't NOT TALK for an ENTIRE DAY!"
So, it was agreed. We would talk at meals.
So, our day of silence started. And I found that after about an hour and a half to two hours, I was finally able to quiet the inccessent internal chatter in my mind (using some techniques I'd learned from Buddhists, actually) and to just BE. By the next afternoon at lunch, I was actually a bit reluctant to have to meet up with the rest of the crowd and talk to them... and by dinnertime, I didn't even want to SEE them.
I soaked up the silence and began to notice the little things that I usually ran past at 100 miles an hour. The wind blowing through the fields of corn, the birds and grasshoppers and the life that teemed throughout the landscape. I sat and watched a sunset over the vast fields and stared at length at a bird perched on a corn stalk. The image was so imprinted in my memory that when I went inside, I was able to recreate that image in a drawing (using the crayons they had provided us as an essential tool of our retreat :o) simply from memory. I wrote in my journal next to the drawing,
"You have to really see things to create art. To observe the details and intricacies of life. To listen to the earth. To be able to create from the mind, and not just mimicking or copying what is before your eyes. Create from memory, not from a photograph or live scene... in order to do this you have to really see."
I think was I was getting at here was how intensely I was present in the moment that I was able to remember the details of that scene in order to draw it; that had I not taken the time to slow down and look and listen and watch, I would have completely missed the fact that the bird was even sitting on the corn stalk in the first place. This idea of being present to the moment is what Buddhists mean when they speak of "mindfulness."
By the end of the retreat, I was sold on silence. I still don't seek it often enough, and my life is still too filled with chatter, literal and figurative, but that retreat taught me the value of simply stopping to be. In a very real way, it changed my life.
Monday, October 9, 2006
The power of an attitude
I would have written this post on Thursday evening, if I hadn't been working on finishing my sermon after I got home from my volunteer hours at the homeless shelter downtown. I really should have written it before now, because even now some of the details are already fading from my memory. But I'll try to capture as much as I can, since this event made such an impression on me...
Thursday afternoons are my day to volunteer at one of the homeless shelters downtown. After I leave the church at 2 p.m., I drive into Omaha and head to the Siena Francis House, where I spend the next several hours doing whatever the volunteer coordinator has for me to do, and then help serve the nightly meal at the shelter.
The meal is quite the efficient operation! There are four seatings: 5:00, 5:30, 6:00 and 6:30, and each seating can serve 60 people. Towards the end of the month, each seating is nearly always full. This week, the first Thursday of the month, I noticed there were noticeably less people at the later seatings. I guess those monthly paychecks hadn't run out yet.
This particular Thursday, I had been sitting at the front desk in the day shelter, which is basically a place for people to sit during the day who have nowhere else to go -- homeless people who are either waiting to hear back from possible job opportunities or people who are either unwilling or physically unable to seek employment. Some of the people who are regulars at the day shelter have been there for 15 years or more, some of the staff have told me. The day shelter area was built in response to community complaints of the homeless hanging out in a park near an area mall... so now they sit in their little room with a T.V. down a side street off in a corner of a forgotten section of Omaha... out of sight, out of mind? Perhaps.
One of the things I like about the Siena Francis House is that nearly all the staff members are people in the (drug and alcohol) recovery program that is also housed at the shelter. I sat and chatted with the rest of the front desk staff, who quickly gave me what I gathered was the lowest job on the totem pole -- manning the front door button. This meant it was my job to sit there and press the buzzer to let people in as they came to the front door, freeing up the rest of the front desk staff to run errands and tend to other things. In any case, I did this for about two hours and then headed next door to the larger shelter building to get ready to serve dinner.
As I walked up to the shelter, I said hello to a young man sitting on the steps. He said hello back, and I asked him how he was doing. "TIRED!!" he exclaimed. He told me he had just gotten out of jail that morning, gone straight to work, and now had come here, because he didn't really have anywhere else to go. "I guess this is the place, you know?" he said. He asked me where he was supposed to go, and I pointed him to the shelter's front desk.
"I guess you should talk to people at the desk; I'm not really sure what the intake procedures are around here," I said. "I'm just a volunteer."
He seemed interested, "Oh yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I come here on Thursdays and help out with various things and then help to serve the meal." I told him a little bit about the Resurrection House program and what I was doing, considering ministry and whatnot.
He looked at me with considerable interest. "Oh yeah? That's really great. Yeah! That's really great. You don't find too many people willing to do that kind of thing these days. That's just great. Alright! Yeah!" He nodded and smiled at me. "You're the first person I've met here," he told me.
We exchanged names and handshakes (his name was Fred), and I walked in with him and pointed him to the front desk, thinking that was the last I'd see of him for the evening. I went on to the kitchen and walked back to the back, meeting up with the volunteers for the night, a crew of college and graduate students from nearby Creighton University, and introducing myself and getting to know them a bit as we got our assignments and "postings" for the evening -- who would be spooning the food onto the trays, who would be serving the trays to the tables, and so forth.
Suddenly, before I even knew it, I turned around, and there was Fred!
"I decided to help volunteer," he said.
"Oh, great!" I said. "Good for you!"
"Yeah," he said. "You know, I told God, I said, if I get through this, I'm going to start doing what I know you want me to do. So here I am." He nodded at me, acknowledging silently my earlier comments about working in a church and discerning my "call." He asked me more about the program and about what I did at the church. I told him some of the details of things that I do, and mentioned that I would be preaching on Sunday.
"For real??" he laughed and looked tickled to death. "You're going to be PREACHIN'? Really? Man, I want to see that!! I gotta see that! Where is this church? I'm gon' come!"
He continued to laugh and look generally amused, asking me if I was going to be "hollerin'" or something (I can't remember the exact word he used, but something that connoted a very fired-up, empassioned, call and response kind of preaching.) I laughed and said that no, that wasn't quite the kind of preaching I'd be doing in an Episcopal Church!
Throughout the rest of the evening, he continued to say how much he wanted to come hear me preach. I thought about offering to give him a ride, but then my "safety" filter kicked in -- ok, I just met this guy, I don't know anything about him, and if I come get him it would just be me and him in the car... ok, probably not the best idea. I feel like I can generally get a good sense about people, and he seemed to truly be a genuinely nice guy, but I guess that's what they say about all the ax murderers too, huh?
Thursday afternoons are my day to volunteer at one of the homeless shelters downtown. After I leave the church at 2 p.m., I drive into Omaha and head to the Siena Francis House, where I spend the next several hours doing whatever the volunteer coordinator has for me to do, and then help serve the nightly meal at the shelter.
The meal is quite the efficient operation! There are four seatings: 5:00, 5:30, 6:00 and 6:30, and each seating can serve 60 people. Towards the end of the month, each seating is nearly always full. This week, the first Thursday of the month, I noticed there were noticeably less people at the later seatings. I guess those monthly paychecks hadn't run out yet.
This particular Thursday, I had been sitting at the front desk in the day shelter, which is basically a place for people to sit during the day who have nowhere else to go -- homeless people who are either waiting to hear back from possible job opportunities or people who are either unwilling or physically unable to seek employment. Some of the people who are regulars at the day shelter have been there for 15 years or more, some of the staff have told me. The day shelter area was built in response to community complaints of the homeless hanging out in a park near an area mall... so now they sit in their little room with a T.V. down a side street off in a corner of a forgotten section of Omaha... out of sight, out of mind? Perhaps.
One of the things I like about the Siena Francis House is that nearly all the staff members are people in the (drug and alcohol) recovery program that is also housed at the shelter. I sat and chatted with the rest of the front desk staff, who quickly gave me what I gathered was the lowest job on the totem pole -- manning the front door button. This meant it was my job to sit there and press the buzzer to let people in as they came to the front door, freeing up the rest of the front desk staff to run errands and tend to other things. In any case, I did this for about two hours and then headed next door to the larger shelter building to get ready to serve dinner.
As I walked up to the shelter, I said hello to a young man sitting on the steps. He said hello back, and I asked him how he was doing. "TIRED!!" he exclaimed. He told me he had just gotten out of jail that morning, gone straight to work, and now had come here, because he didn't really have anywhere else to go. "I guess this is the place, you know?" he said. He asked me where he was supposed to go, and I pointed him to the shelter's front desk.
"I guess you should talk to people at the desk; I'm not really sure what the intake procedures are around here," I said. "I'm just a volunteer."
He seemed interested, "Oh yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I come here on Thursdays and help out with various things and then help to serve the meal." I told him a little bit about the Resurrection House program and what I was doing, considering ministry and whatnot.
He looked at me with considerable interest. "Oh yeah? That's really great. Yeah! That's really great. You don't find too many people willing to do that kind of thing these days. That's just great. Alright! Yeah!" He nodded and smiled at me. "You're the first person I've met here," he told me.
We exchanged names and handshakes (his name was Fred), and I walked in with him and pointed him to the front desk, thinking that was the last I'd see of him for the evening. I went on to the kitchen and walked back to the back, meeting up with the volunteers for the night, a crew of college and graduate students from nearby Creighton University, and introducing myself and getting to know them a bit as we got our assignments and "postings" for the evening -- who would be spooning the food onto the trays, who would be serving the trays to the tables, and so forth.
Suddenly, before I even knew it, I turned around, and there was Fred!
"I decided to help volunteer," he said.
"Oh, great!" I said. "Good for you!"
"Yeah," he said. "You know, I told God, I said, if I get through this, I'm going to start doing what I know you want me to do. So here I am." He nodded at me, acknowledging silently my earlier comments about working in a church and discerning my "call." He asked me more about the program and about what I did at the church. I told him some of the details of things that I do, and mentioned that I would be preaching on Sunday.
"For real??" he laughed and looked tickled to death. "You're going to be PREACHIN'? Really? Man, I want to see that!! I gotta see that! Where is this church? I'm gon' come!"
He continued to laugh and look generally amused, asking me if I was going to be "hollerin'" or something (I can't remember the exact word he used, but something that connoted a very fired-up, empassioned, call and response kind of preaching.) I laughed and said that no, that wasn't quite the kind of preaching I'd be doing in an Episcopal Church!
Throughout the rest of the evening, he continued to say how much he wanted to come hear me preach. I thought about offering to give him a ride, but then my "safety" filter kicked in -- ok, I just met this guy, I don't know anything about him, and if I come get him it would just be me and him in the car... ok, probably not the best idea. I feel like I can generally get a good sense about people, and he seemed to truly be a genuinely nice guy, but I guess that's what they say about all the ax murderers too, huh?
He picked up on my hestitation and said that it would be his goal to convince me, after I'd known him a while, that he wasn't a killer. (I never said that was my hestitation, but I guess he figured out why I as a single woman would be wary of going somewhere with him alone. And I hated to have that wariness, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to wind up having something happen to me, either. And he seemed to understand -- "I know, you just met me," he said.) But he said he was going to call the priest at the church and see if someone could come and get him.
In any case, Fred and I wound up standing next to each other in the serving line all evening. He scooped the gravy onto the mashed potatoes, passed the trays to me, and I deposited a nicely drained ladel of peas and carrots. We chatted the whole evening over those pototoes and peas, and I found out that his "fresh out of jail" job was working construction (through some very animated descriptions of his first attempts at jackhammering some asphalt!), and that he apparently had a failed marriage and a kid somewhere (because he mentioned child support). He said he wanted to go see more theater (he mentioned Hairspray, which is in town this week, but was shocked to find out that the tickets would be upwards of $60. "Man, do you know how many hours I'd have to do this *makes jackhammer motions* to be able to pay for that???" he exclaimed.) We talked about the social constraints of being an ordained person -- "Man, if I'd known you were a preacher when I first met you, I would have been like, HMMMM," he said, making a kind of skeptical face. "But I found out you were a nice person BEFORE you said you were gonna be a preacher." He said he hoped I did become a "preacher," because he'd never had a friend as a preacher before. "I could be like, 'look, Mom, this is my friend. She's a preacher!!'" He seemed just delighted and amused by this prospect.
Through the entire evening, I was amazed by the upbeat attitude and friendliness of this man. And for someone who had just worked an entire day in construction, after having just gotten out of jail (and after having told me how tired he was when we first me), to agree to stand up for another two hours on his feet and help serve a meal to others, and to have an incredibly upbeat attitude through the whole thing (heck, he was a happier person than me!), just really made an impression on me. I've served dinner some weeks when the volunteers kind of smile at each other and don't really talk much, but by the end of this evening, due largely to Fred's outgoing personality and friendly laugh and smile, the entire group of volunteers felt like a community.
In any case, Fred and I wound up standing next to each other in the serving line all evening. He scooped the gravy onto the mashed potatoes, passed the trays to me, and I deposited a nicely drained ladel of peas and carrots. We chatted the whole evening over those pototoes and peas, and I found out that his "fresh out of jail" job was working construction (through some very animated descriptions of his first attempts at jackhammering some asphalt!), and that he apparently had a failed marriage and a kid somewhere (because he mentioned child support). He said he wanted to go see more theater (he mentioned Hairspray, which is in town this week, but was shocked to find out that the tickets would be upwards of $60. "Man, do you know how many hours I'd have to do this *makes jackhammer motions* to be able to pay for that???" he exclaimed.) We talked about the social constraints of being an ordained person -- "Man, if I'd known you were a preacher when I first met you, I would have been like, HMMMM," he said, making a kind of skeptical face. "But I found out you were a nice person BEFORE you said you were gonna be a preacher." He said he hoped I did become a "preacher," because he'd never had a friend as a preacher before. "I could be like, 'look, Mom, this is my friend. She's a preacher!!'" He seemed just delighted and amused by this prospect.
Through the entire evening, I was amazed by the upbeat attitude and friendliness of this man. And for someone who had just worked an entire day in construction, after having just gotten out of jail (and after having told me how tired he was when we first me), to agree to stand up for another two hours on his feet and help serve a meal to others, and to have an incredibly upbeat attitude through the whole thing (heck, he was a happier person than me!), just really made an impression on me. I've served dinner some weeks when the volunteers kind of smile at each other and don't really talk much, but by the end of this evening, due largely to Fred's outgoing personality and friendly laugh and smile, the entire group of volunteers felt like a community.
He brought the Creighton students into the conversation with seemingly insensitive and non-P.C. questions about their ethnic origins ("What are you, Asian? Do you speak Asian?") and ribbing a Japanese-American girl relentlessly because she couldn't speak Japanese ("I'm fourth-generation!!!" she kept saying.) I shot right back with asking Fred if he spoke any Swahili or Yoruba or anything -- I mean, he's from AFRICA, right?? Why doesn't he speak any African languages, then? ;o) One of the girls was actually FROM China and did speak Chinese, and so he learned how to say, "How are you?" in Chinese. "Hey man, that's pretty cool!" he laughed.
After all the people had been fed, we volunteers sat down to our own helpings of the fish, potatoes, peas and carrots, and day-old pastries and laughed and joked over dinner like old friends. Other weeks I've been there, I've sat and eaten dinner with other volunteers and not said one word the entire time. But with Fred's magnetic personality, we were all drawn in to the conversation and community.
I came home that night with my spirits truly lifted. I felt like my day had been much better for having met Fred. He had brought a bit of light and life into my world. He radiated a true joy and interest and concern and compassion for people. And given everything he had been through, it was truly inspiring to see. I couldn't help but think that Fred might make a mighty good minister himself! He was certainly the one doing the ministering that particular night.
After all the people had been fed, we volunteers sat down to our own helpings of the fish, potatoes, peas and carrots, and day-old pastries and laughed and joked over dinner like old friends. Other weeks I've been there, I've sat and eaten dinner with other volunteers and not said one word the entire time. But with Fred's magnetic personality, we were all drawn in to the conversation and community.
I came home that night with my spirits truly lifted. I felt like my day had been much better for having met Fred. He had brought a bit of light and life into my world. He radiated a true joy and interest and concern and compassion for people. And given everything he had been through, it was truly inspiring to see. I couldn't help but think that Fred might make a mighty good minister himself! He was certainly the one doing the ministering that particular night.
Sunday, October 8, 2006
Sermon - Proper 22, Year B
Well, this is the sermon that I WOULD have delivered this morning, if I hadn't been too sick to barely stand up :o(
And now, back to bed for me....
~Tracy
-----
Sermon for Oct. 8, 2006
Genesis 2:18-24 Link to text of this passage (NRSV)
Mark 10:2-9 Link to text of this passage (NRSV)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our Redeemer.
The Old Testament reading and the Gospel for this morning are some of the most well-known passages in the Christian scriptures. Even many people who do not attend church regularly are probably familiar with these passages, having heard them recited numerous times at weddings in the Christian tradition: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24)
Some parts of these passages, like the closing line from Mark, are even integrated directly into the wedding service -- after pronouncing a couple husband and wife, the priest or minister often says, "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Mark 10:9)
For centuries, these passages have informed Christians' understandings of the sacredness of marriage. In the Book of Genesis, we read about the origins of marriage and human companionship in the very order of creation, as a part of God's original design for human relationships. And in the Gospels, we see Jesus affirming faithful and lasting marriage as in line with God's intentions for the human experience.
However, these same passages that affirm the goodness of deep and intimate human companionship have been used, in the past and still today, to justify human relationships that are NOT good or life-giving.
The Genesis 2 passage we read today has been used to justify views of women as inferior to men. And though the lectionary for today cuts off the passage from Mark after the "let no one separate" line, in verses 10 and 11 Jesus goes on to elaborate: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." (Mark 10:10-11) Verses like these have been misused in encouraging women (and men) to remain in abusive marriages rather than get a divorce.
Given this history of what I would call the "theologically abuse" interpretation of these scriptures, it is no wonder that some Christians prefer to stay away from them. I will be traveling to Louisville, Ky. next weekend for my college roommate's wedding. On Saturday, she will be marrying a recently-ordained Methodist minister. When they were choosing scripture passages for their ceremony, my friend wanted to use this passage from Genesis 2, but her fiancé refused, saying it was too patriarchal.
How many of you have heard someone say that since the scripture tells us that woman was created to be a "helper" to man, that a woman's role is to wait on her husband hand and foot? Or that since woman was created second, and since she was created FROM the man, that she is therefore inferior to him?
Much of the interpretation about a woman's proper 'role' or 'place' in the scheme of creation as illustrated in Genesis 2 centers on the words used to describe what exactly God is creating for the man when he creates the woman. One of the things I learned in my Hebrew class in college is that sometimes the translation of just ONE or TWO words can make a huge difference in the meaning of a passage. My Hebrew professor used to tell us that his goal in teaching us biblical Hebrew was to get us to a point where we were no longer "slaves to the translation." Having access to the Bible in its original language frees us from the biases inherent in any English approximation of the meaning of the Hebrew words. This is one of those instances. Now, I promise I won't be this tedious every time I preach, but bear with me here on a little word study, because it has such important ramifications for how this passage is used and understood.
In the original Genesis text, written in Hebrew, the phrase used to describe the woman is 'ezer kenegdo. To give you an idea of the variety of ways this phrase can be translated, let's look at several different translations of this phrase:
Our lectionary uses the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which translates that phrase as "a helper as his partner."
King James Version (KJV): "a help meet for him."
New International Version (NIV): "a helper suitable for him."
Contemporary English Version: "a suitable partner for him."
Holman Christian Standard Bible: "a helper who is like him."
Obviously, "a suitable partner for him" has a much different connotation than "a help meet for him." Now, you might wonder, is the Contemporary English version translating the word as "partner" simply to be more "P.C." in the modern world, when text REALLY meant for a woman to be a "helper" to the man? If we look at the original meanings of the Hebrew words, it will help us to understand where these different translations are coming from.
'Ezer is the word often translated as "help" or "helper," but it does not mean a "helper" who is an inferior servant to another. In fact, the only other uses of 'ezer in the Old Testament are in describing the "help" that comes from God or military allies. In the psalms, we often hear things like, "The Lord is my help and my salvation." The Hebrew word for "help" in that context is the same as the word used to describe the woman in Genesis 2. The word 'ezer comes from a root that means to surround, protect, or defend; to "aid" or "help" as an army would "help" a city being sieged by an enemy. It connotes strength and power. The scripture is not referring to a "woman, go get my dinner" kind of "help" here! And isn't it interesting that a word elsewhere associated with God and military power is used to describe the how the woman will relate to the man, given our traditional ideas that a man is the one who "protects" or "defends" a woman?
The second word of the phrase used to describe the woman is kenegdo. This passage is the only place this word appears in the Bible, and its meaning is a bit less clear. It can be translated several different ways: opposite, against, corresponding to, face to face, matching, or counterpart to. As we saw earlier, the King James Version translates this phrase as "I will create a help meet for him." Although "help meet" (which later became "help MATE") has been used as a noun meaning a serving, submissive wife, in this context, "meet" actually describes the KIND of "help" God is going to create for the man.
Here's a case where knowledge of "Rite I" English is going to help you. When we begin the Eucharistic prayer and the priest says, "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God," in the Rite I liturgy, we all respond, "It is meet and right so to do." Do you know what "meet" means there? It means "suitable" or "appropriate" -- it is suitable or appropriate to give thanks to God. In this passage from Genesis, the translators of the King James Version were telling us -- in 16th century British English -- that in the creation of woman, God is creating a "SUITABLE or appropriate help" for the man. In fact, that's just what the New International Version (NIV) says: "I will make a helper suitable for him."
But other scholars say that "suitable" is not really the best translation of the original Hebrew word, kenegdo. Remember, that phrase literally means "face to face," "corresponding to," or "counterpart." As revisions were made in more recent translations, scholars translated the phrase "a helper as his partner" (NRSV) or "a helper who is like him" (Holman Christian Standard Bible), since the Hebrew word connotes a sense of corresponding or matching -- a sense of equality that is more accurately represented in English by our word "partner."
Since the word for help (ezer) was often used to describe the kind of help in which the giver of the help was greater than the one receiving it, as in God helping us, the use of kenegdo is a qualifier -- the woman is to be a help, but a help corresponding to the man, not a help greater than the man, as God helps people, but a human-to-human helper. This word establishes a sense of equality and sameness between the man and the woman -- they are on the same level, the same playing field. One is not higher than the other in the way that God is a higher help to us. Maybe with this understanding of the Hebrew words' meaning, my friend's fiancé might reconsider his labeling of this passage as "too patriarchal" for use in his wedding!
So when Jesus references this passage of scripture in his answer to the Pharisees' question on divorce, he is calling forth all these notions of the sacredness of the healthy and life-giving partnership between men and women that that the original Hebrew scriptures intended.
When Jesus goes on in verses 10 and 11 to say that anyone who divorces someone and marries someone else commits adultery, he is using strong language to drive home his point. This is another instance, just like the passage Father Bob preached on last week where Jesus said to cut off your hand if it causes you to stumble, where we must take this passage of scripture in the context of everything else we know about Jesus. Do you think Jesus would want a woman (or a man) to stay in a relationship that had become physically, emotionally or spiritually abusive? I don't think so! In making this strong statement against divorce, Jesus is not saying that divorce NEVER permissible -- in fact, he acknowledges that the law of Moses does allow for divorce, but he says that this provision was given to people because of their "hardness of heart." Obviously, people are not perfect, and sometimes our hearts ARE hardened and it is impossible for us to work things out with another person. Jesus acknowledges that fact. But this does not mean that this is what God WANTS human relationships to be. Jesus affirms that God's INTENTION for marriage is for "the two to become one" in a long-lasting, healthy and life-giving partnership, and he uses strong language to emphasize that this commitment should be taken seriously.
But the message in these scriptures reaches beyond just issues of marriage and divorce; it also speaks to the way all human beings are to relate to one another. My friend who is getting married next weekend said one of the main reasons she wanted to use the Genesis passage in her ceremony was because of its assertion that "it is not good for man (or any person) to be alone." She said she remembered back when she was a "lonely pre-teen" that it meant a lot to her when she heard someone interpret this passage, saying that "being alone was the first thing God ever condemned." God intends for us to live together in life-giving partnerships, whether marriage or friendships, and to be each other's ezer, each other's help -- each other's strength and power in times of trouble. We can live out the spirit of these scriptures in our relationships with others no matter what our marital status, remembering that God's intention for humanity is that we should live in life-giving community with one another.
Let's close with prayer.
Lord, we thank you for bringing us together in this community as partners in your service. Help us to be an ezer, a help and strength, to one another as we do the work you call us to do in the world, while always seeking also that help that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
And now, back to bed for me....
~Tracy
-----
Sermon for Oct. 8, 2006
Genesis 2:18-24 Link to text of this passage (NRSV)
Mark 10:2-9 Link to text of this passage (NRSV)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our Redeemer.
The Old Testament reading and the Gospel for this morning are some of the most well-known passages in the Christian scriptures. Even many people who do not attend church regularly are probably familiar with these passages, having heard them recited numerous times at weddings in the Christian tradition: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24)
Some parts of these passages, like the closing line from Mark, are even integrated directly into the wedding service -- after pronouncing a couple husband and wife, the priest or minister often says, "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Mark 10:9)
For centuries, these passages have informed Christians' understandings of the sacredness of marriage. In the Book of Genesis, we read about the origins of marriage and human companionship in the very order of creation, as a part of God's original design for human relationships. And in the Gospels, we see Jesus affirming faithful and lasting marriage as in line with God's intentions for the human experience.
However, these same passages that affirm the goodness of deep and intimate human companionship have been used, in the past and still today, to justify human relationships that are NOT good or life-giving.
The Genesis 2 passage we read today has been used to justify views of women as inferior to men. And though the lectionary for today cuts off the passage from Mark after the "let no one separate" line, in verses 10 and 11 Jesus goes on to elaborate: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." (Mark 10:10-11) Verses like these have been misused in encouraging women (and men) to remain in abusive marriages rather than get a divorce.
Given this history of what I would call the "theologically abuse" interpretation of these scriptures, it is no wonder that some Christians prefer to stay away from them. I will be traveling to Louisville, Ky. next weekend for my college roommate's wedding. On Saturday, she will be marrying a recently-ordained Methodist minister. When they were choosing scripture passages for their ceremony, my friend wanted to use this passage from Genesis 2, but her fiancé refused, saying it was too patriarchal.
How many of you have heard someone say that since the scripture tells us that woman was created to be a "helper" to man, that a woman's role is to wait on her husband hand and foot? Or that since woman was created second, and since she was created FROM the man, that she is therefore inferior to him?
Much of the interpretation about a woman's proper 'role' or 'place' in the scheme of creation as illustrated in Genesis 2 centers on the words used to describe what exactly God is creating for the man when he creates the woman. One of the things I learned in my Hebrew class in college is that sometimes the translation of just ONE or TWO words can make a huge difference in the meaning of a passage. My Hebrew professor used to tell us that his goal in teaching us biblical Hebrew was to get us to a point where we were no longer "slaves to the translation." Having access to the Bible in its original language frees us from the biases inherent in any English approximation of the meaning of the Hebrew words. This is one of those instances. Now, I promise I won't be this tedious every time I preach, but bear with me here on a little word study, because it has such important ramifications for how this passage is used and understood.
In the original Genesis text, written in Hebrew, the phrase used to describe the woman is 'ezer kenegdo. To give you an idea of the variety of ways this phrase can be translated, let's look at several different translations of this phrase:
Our lectionary uses the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which translates that phrase as "a helper as his partner."
King James Version (KJV): "a help meet for him."
New International Version (NIV): "a helper suitable for him."
Contemporary English Version: "a suitable partner for him."
Holman Christian Standard Bible: "a helper who is like him."
Obviously, "a suitable partner for him" has a much different connotation than "a help meet for him." Now, you might wonder, is the Contemporary English version translating the word as "partner" simply to be more "P.C." in the modern world, when text REALLY meant for a woman to be a "helper" to the man? If we look at the original meanings of the Hebrew words, it will help us to understand where these different translations are coming from.
'Ezer is the word often translated as "help" or "helper," but it does not mean a "helper" who is an inferior servant to another. In fact, the only other uses of 'ezer in the Old Testament are in describing the "help" that comes from God or military allies. In the psalms, we often hear things like, "The Lord is my help and my salvation." The Hebrew word for "help" in that context is the same as the word used to describe the woman in Genesis 2. The word 'ezer comes from a root that means to surround, protect, or defend; to "aid" or "help" as an army would "help" a city being sieged by an enemy. It connotes strength and power. The scripture is not referring to a "woman, go get my dinner" kind of "help" here! And isn't it interesting that a word elsewhere associated with God and military power is used to describe the how the woman will relate to the man, given our traditional ideas that a man is the one who "protects" or "defends" a woman?
The second word of the phrase used to describe the woman is kenegdo. This passage is the only place this word appears in the Bible, and its meaning is a bit less clear. It can be translated several different ways: opposite, against, corresponding to, face to face, matching, or counterpart to. As we saw earlier, the King James Version translates this phrase as "I will create a help meet for him." Although "help meet" (which later became "help MATE") has been used as a noun meaning a serving, submissive wife, in this context, "meet" actually describes the KIND of "help" God is going to create for the man.
Here's a case where knowledge of "Rite I" English is going to help you. When we begin the Eucharistic prayer and the priest says, "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God," in the Rite I liturgy, we all respond, "It is meet and right so to do." Do you know what "meet" means there? It means "suitable" or "appropriate" -- it is suitable or appropriate to give thanks to God. In this passage from Genesis, the translators of the King James Version were telling us -- in 16th century British English -- that in the creation of woman, God is creating a "SUITABLE or appropriate help" for the man. In fact, that's just what the New International Version (NIV) says: "I will make a helper suitable for him."
But other scholars say that "suitable" is not really the best translation of the original Hebrew word, kenegdo. Remember, that phrase literally means "face to face," "corresponding to," or "counterpart." As revisions were made in more recent translations, scholars translated the phrase "a helper as his partner" (NRSV) or "a helper who is like him" (Holman Christian Standard Bible), since the Hebrew word connotes a sense of corresponding or matching -- a sense of equality that is more accurately represented in English by our word "partner."
Since the word for help (ezer) was often used to describe the kind of help in which the giver of the help was greater than the one receiving it, as in God helping us, the use of kenegdo is a qualifier -- the woman is to be a help, but a help corresponding to the man, not a help greater than the man, as God helps people, but a human-to-human helper. This word establishes a sense of equality and sameness between the man and the woman -- they are on the same level, the same playing field. One is not higher than the other in the way that God is a higher help to us. Maybe with this understanding of the Hebrew words' meaning, my friend's fiancé might reconsider his labeling of this passage as "too patriarchal" for use in his wedding!
So when Jesus references this passage of scripture in his answer to the Pharisees' question on divorce, he is calling forth all these notions of the sacredness of the healthy and life-giving partnership between men and women that that the original Hebrew scriptures intended.
When Jesus goes on in verses 10 and 11 to say that anyone who divorces someone and marries someone else commits adultery, he is using strong language to drive home his point. This is another instance, just like the passage Father Bob preached on last week where Jesus said to cut off your hand if it causes you to stumble, where we must take this passage of scripture in the context of everything else we know about Jesus. Do you think Jesus would want a woman (or a man) to stay in a relationship that had become physically, emotionally or spiritually abusive? I don't think so! In making this strong statement against divorce, Jesus is not saying that divorce NEVER permissible -- in fact, he acknowledges that the law of Moses does allow for divorce, but he says that this provision was given to people because of their "hardness of heart." Obviously, people are not perfect, and sometimes our hearts ARE hardened and it is impossible for us to work things out with another person. Jesus acknowledges that fact. But this does not mean that this is what God WANTS human relationships to be. Jesus affirms that God's INTENTION for marriage is for "the two to become one" in a long-lasting, healthy and life-giving partnership, and he uses strong language to emphasize that this commitment should be taken seriously.
But the message in these scriptures reaches beyond just issues of marriage and divorce; it also speaks to the way all human beings are to relate to one another. My friend who is getting married next weekend said one of the main reasons she wanted to use the Genesis passage in her ceremony was because of its assertion that "it is not good for man (or any person) to be alone." She said she remembered back when she was a "lonely pre-teen" that it meant a lot to her when she heard someone interpret this passage, saying that "being alone was the first thing God ever condemned." God intends for us to live together in life-giving partnerships, whether marriage or friendships, and to be each other's ezer, each other's help -- each other's strength and power in times of trouble. We can live out the spirit of these scriptures in our relationships with others no matter what our marital status, remembering that God's intention for humanity is that we should live in life-giving community with one another.
Let's close with prayer.
Lord, we thank you for bringing us together in this community as partners in your service. Help us to be an ezer, a help and strength, to one another as we do the work you call us to do in the world, while always seeking also that help that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Early thoughts on the possibility of ordination...
Some days I think, "Yeah, I'll probably wind up as a priest." I just get this sneaking suspicion that that's where I'm headed.
I love wearing the robes (oh, excuse me, the alb), love being a part of the liturgy (I literally get teary-eyed sometimes just watching people come forward for communion. I LOVE that. And that's been pretty consistent for the past several years, throughout my time at St. James. It's been a lasting love of the Eucharist, not just a momentary, fleeting moment of being touched or whatever.) I love being involved in the life of the church. I love doing activities and just being there. It was like that at St. James and it feels the same way here (although I must admit it's a little strange not having a life outside of the church -- like, an actual job I have to go to or anything in the 9-5 world.)
But then there are those things I fear would be stumbling blocks for me in my path to ordination:
* My views on other religions. Can I be a non-exclusivist in my theology and be a priest? Does the very fact that I'm asking this question belie the fact that I still think exclusivism is the only "true" Christian perspective?
* My tendency to want to shake things up. Tradition? Whatever. LOL. No, not "whatever," but like... do I give it enough credance to be accepted/taken seriously by the church as a candidate for ordination?
* The "priestly powers" thing. (i.e., that only priests can say the words that consecrate the Eucharist, or that priests can "bless" things.) I just don't buy it. I'm coming more and more to buy the consubstatiation/transubstantiation thing (that is, that the bread and wine actually either become the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist, or that the "real presense" of Christ dwells in the elements after they have been consecrated. That the Eucharist is not merely symbolic, a mere symbol and remembrance of the "last supper," but an actual SACRAMENT, a physical vehicle of God's grace in the world.), but to say that only a priest has the "magic words" or "magic powers" to do this is just... ehh. "Oh, the priest won't be here, so we have to do Morning Prayer instead of the Eucharist." What? AHHH!
* Some of my other theology:
i.e. -- I don't believe Jesus "had to die" on the cross for our sins, to fix some kind of cosmic imbalance or to appease the wrath of God. "Just say no" to substitutionary atonement! But I don't know just quite how I understand his death. As a victory over death -- the resurrection. But the death itself as having salvific power? My money's on the resurrection, not on the death. And why, then, did he have to die that way?? I don't know. I guess this is where I'm glad I'm in a high-church, sacramental place where I can say stuff like, "Oh, it's a mystery." I mean, it's interesting, this need to explain why or how. We do the same thing with the human deaths we encounter in our own lives -- trying to explain why that person was taken from us... when I think we just really have to rest in the uncertainty of not knowing why, but knowing that the powers of death have no hold on us anymore. I mean, we don't have to understand the specific details or significance of Jesus's crucifixion and death to know that he was resurrected. Maybe we should just accept the crucifixion and death as a fact (the suffering and all), just the way lots of crap goes down in the world every day that we don't have explanations for... and yet, somehow even without those explanations, we can still see evidence of and affirm that life triumphs over death, that "even when we're most sure love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway" (to quote from Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.)
I love wearing the robes (oh, excuse me, the alb), love being a part of the liturgy (I literally get teary-eyed sometimes just watching people come forward for communion. I LOVE that. And that's been pretty consistent for the past several years, throughout my time at St. James. It's been a lasting love of the Eucharist, not just a momentary, fleeting moment of being touched or whatever.) I love being involved in the life of the church. I love doing activities and just being there. It was like that at St. James and it feels the same way here (although I must admit it's a little strange not having a life outside of the church -- like, an actual job I have to go to or anything in the 9-5 world.)
But then there are those things I fear would be stumbling blocks for me in my path to ordination:
* My views on other religions. Can I be a non-exclusivist in my theology and be a priest? Does the very fact that I'm asking this question belie the fact that I still think exclusivism is the only "true" Christian perspective?
* My tendency to want to shake things up. Tradition? Whatever. LOL. No, not "whatever," but like... do I give it enough credance to be accepted/taken seriously by the church as a candidate for ordination?
* The "priestly powers" thing. (i.e., that only priests can say the words that consecrate the Eucharist, or that priests can "bless" things.) I just don't buy it. I'm coming more and more to buy the consubstatiation/transubstantiation thing (that is, that the bread and wine actually either become the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist, or that the "real presense" of Christ dwells in the elements after they have been consecrated. That the Eucharist is not merely symbolic, a mere symbol and remembrance of the "last supper," but an actual SACRAMENT, a physical vehicle of God's grace in the world.), but to say that only a priest has the "magic words" or "magic powers" to do this is just... ehh. "Oh, the priest won't be here, so we have to do Morning Prayer instead of the Eucharist." What? AHHH!
* Some of my other theology:
i.e. -- I don't believe Jesus "had to die" on the cross for our sins, to fix some kind of cosmic imbalance or to appease the wrath of God. "Just say no" to substitutionary atonement! But I don't know just quite how I understand his death. As a victory over death -- the resurrection. But the death itself as having salvific power? My money's on the resurrection, not on the death. And why, then, did he have to die that way?? I don't know. I guess this is where I'm glad I'm in a high-church, sacramental place where I can say stuff like, "Oh, it's a mystery." I mean, it's interesting, this need to explain why or how. We do the same thing with the human deaths we encounter in our own lives -- trying to explain why that person was taken from us... when I think we just really have to rest in the uncertainty of not knowing why, but knowing that the powers of death have no hold on us anymore. I mean, we don't have to understand the specific details or significance of Jesus's crucifixion and death to know that he was resurrected. Maybe we should just accept the crucifixion and death as a fact (the suffering and all), just the way lots of crap goes down in the world every day that we don't have explanations for... and yet, somehow even without those explanations, we can still see evidence of and affirm that life triumphs over death, that "even when we're most sure love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway" (to quote from Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.)
Sunday, October 1, 2006
Praise Songs, PowerPoint, and... Episcopal Liturgy????
At the church growth conference in Grand Island in September, there was a lot of discussion about music. All the worship in the weekend was led by a praise band from St. Andrews in Omaha, and most of the songs were songs I had sung in the Evangelical communities in late high school and early college. This was slightly disturbing to me, because one of the main reasons I left those communities was that that style of worship wasn't spiritually edifying to me anymore and because of some of my disagreements with certain theologies many of those groups hold. I came to the Episcopal Church looking for an alternative, for something different, and now it seems that the "praise songs" are creeping in even to the Episcopal Church.
It was very odd to sit in a conference room and listen to a praise band sing in between various parts of the Episcopal liturgy and to see the words to the liturgy projected on PowerPoint screens. The Episcopal liturgy on POWERPOINT??? I'm sorry, there's just some kind of cognitive dissonance there for me! At one point they even had incense going. Incense, priests in vestments... and... PowerPoint??!?!
Not that there's anything WRONG with PowerPoint, of course, it's just the associations I have with it from my past. I also realized that there's nothing really wrong with many of the songs I used to sing during that time period of my life... in many ways the theology found in them isn't objectionable to me, but I DO worry about using ONLY the praise songs from the contemporary Christian radio stations and whatnot (which is where they said they were getting most of their music).
So many of these songs used often in the Evangelical communities are highly individualistic, and focus almost solely on the majesty and grandeur of God, and paint Jesus as entirely divine, with little attention to his humanity (this may not be true of their theology as a whole, but it seems to be true of the songs). While all these things are all well and good, one of the things I really appreciated about the Episcopal Church when I first became involved with it in Boston was its focus on serving the poor and concern with social justice. At St. James, this theology was reflected in much of our music -- which was NOT all traditional Anglican hymns, but was also not contemporary praise songs either.
For an example of what I'm talking about, let's look at two different songs that could be sung in the context of a Christian worship setting. The first, "Prince of Peace," is a common praise hymn in Evangelical circles, and was one of my favorites when I was a part of one of those communities. The second, "God is in the daily struggles," is a hymn written by Pat Michaels, the music director at St. James Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Mass.
Prince of Peace
You are Lord of Lords
You are King of Kings
You are mighty God
Lord of everything
You're Emmanuel
You're the great "I Am"
You're the Prince of Peace
Who is the Lamb
You're the living God
You're my saving grace
You will reign forever
You are Ancient of Days
You are Alpha, Omega, beginning and end
You're my savior, Messiah, redeemer and friend
You're my Prince of Peace
And I will live my life for you
God is in the Daily Struggles
God is in the daily struggles
Of the poor and dispossessed;
Just as in the ancient stories,
signs and wonders still attest:
food and freedom, food and freedom --
God supplies them on their quest.
In the desert-land, as strangers,
powerless as refugees,
fleeing politics of danger
former slaves but newly freed --
bread for bodies, bread for bodies! --
God provided for their need.
Jesus lived among the poorest,
raising hope that all be fed
asking God to nourish wholeness:
"Give us now our daily bread."
Many thousands, many thousands
ate the feast that God had spread.
At the great commission dinner,
that this feeding ministry
might live on in saint and sinner,
Jesus said, "Remember."
(Feed the hungry, feed the hungry.)
"When you eat, remember me."
Still the poor are God's beloved,
still the poor are sign and key
showing Christians what is needful,
what God's realm is meant to be.
Hear the calling, hear the calling,
"Feed me now and set me free."
Now, if the example of these two hymns doesn't show you how strikingly different the theology presented in different songs can be, I don't know what will! The first song is entirely about God as other-worldly, as divine "king on high," and about the speaker's "personal relationship" with God ("my savior, Messiah, redeemer and friend"). It is about proclaiming all the things God (or more specifically, Jesus) is, and affirming Jesus's significance in that person's life. Now, I would argue that if Jesus truly is significant in one's life, that one's life should reflect the kind of scripturally sound calling and ideas represented in the second hymn. The second hymn is set to the tune of a traditional hymn (I can't remember which one right now), but with different words. So it's not exactly a "contemporary praise song," but it does bring a fresh take on a familiar hymn tune. Other songs we sang at St. James weren't even hymn tunes at all, but African praise songs or Asian-influenced music.
My concern, then, is that using these "contemporary praise songs" in Episcopal churches might lead to a theology that looks too much like "Prince of Peace" and not enough like "God is in the daily struggles."
I think it's a mistake to think that just because the megachurches are herding in thousands of people every Sunday that we should just imitate what they're doing. Just because something is drawing in large numbers doesn't mean that there is any value to it. Now, I'm not saying there is NO value in what the megachurches have to offer, but I'm just pointing out an error in logic. Thousands of people might herd into a stadium to go to a Marilyn Manson concert, but does this mean that this is something we should imitate? Drawing in mass numbers of people does not necessarily indicate quality or goodness of an event or program. This is not to compare megachurches to Marilyn Manson concerts (That would be quite laughable!!), but just to say that as Episcopalians (and other "mainline" Christians), we should be wary of just running to follow the herds into what everyone else is doing simply because there are mass numbers of people being drawn into that culture.
Instead of focusing on and worrying about all the people who are attending megachurches (and not OUR churches) every week, we should focus on all the people who do not attend ANY church every week. Many of these people are turned off to Christianity precisely by the type of model offered in the megachurches; not everyone is drawn to that type of "entertainment" Christianity. Some people see it as inauthentic or may have had an experience where they were part of a huge, large church and then when the times got tough (like when they lost a family member or something), no one in the church even knew their name or were there to offer help, because instead of a community, they were just another spectator in the auditorium every week. Again, obviously this is not the case with ALL megachurches, but I have heard these kinds of stories from people and experienced some of these kinds of disillusions myself.
My point is that the megachurch model doesn't work for everyone. Instead of trying to imitate things they're doing, we should focus on how we as the Episcopal Church (and other mainline churches) can offer an alternative, a viable, welcoming and relevant alternative. Whatever you want to call us -- "mainline," "liberal," "progressive," "moderate" -- I think we have something to offer to the wider "catholic church" (lowercase "catholic," meaning the church as a whole, including ALL Christians of all denominations).
It was very odd to sit in a conference room and listen to a praise band sing in between various parts of the Episcopal liturgy and to see the words to the liturgy projected on PowerPoint screens. The Episcopal liturgy on POWERPOINT??? I'm sorry, there's just some kind of cognitive dissonance there for me! At one point they even had incense going. Incense, priests in vestments... and... PowerPoint??!?!
Not that there's anything WRONG with PowerPoint, of course, it's just the associations I have with it from my past. I also realized that there's nothing really wrong with many of the songs I used to sing during that time period of my life... in many ways the theology found in them isn't objectionable to me, but I DO worry about using ONLY the praise songs from the contemporary Christian radio stations and whatnot (which is where they said they were getting most of their music).
So many of these songs used often in the Evangelical communities are highly individualistic, and focus almost solely on the majesty and grandeur of God, and paint Jesus as entirely divine, with little attention to his humanity (this may not be true of their theology as a whole, but it seems to be true of the songs). While all these things are all well and good, one of the things I really appreciated about the Episcopal Church when I first became involved with it in Boston was its focus on serving the poor and concern with social justice. At St. James, this theology was reflected in much of our music -- which was NOT all traditional Anglican hymns, but was also not contemporary praise songs either.
For an example of what I'm talking about, let's look at two different songs that could be sung in the context of a Christian worship setting. The first, "Prince of Peace," is a common praise hymn in Evangelical circles, and was one of my favorites when I was a part of one of those communities. The second, "God is in the daily struggles," is a hymn written by Pat Michaels, the music director at St. James Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Mass.
Prince of Peace
You are Lord of Lords
You are King of Kings
You are mighty God
Lord of everything
You're Emmanuel
You're the great "I Am"
You're the Prince of Peace
Who is the Lamb
You're the living God
You're my saving grace
You will reign forever
You are Ancient of Days
You are Alpha, Omega, beginning and end
You're my savior, Messiah, redeemer and friend
You're my Prince of Peace
And I will live my life for you
God is in the Daily Struggles
God is in the daily struggles
Of the poor and dispossessed;
Just as in the ancient stories,
signs and wonders still attest:
food and freedom, food and freedom --
God supplies them on their quest.
In the desert-land, as strangers,
powerless as refugees,
fleeing politics of danger
former slaves but newly freed --
bread for bodies, bread for bodies! --
God provided for their need.
Jesus lived among the poorest,
raising hope that all be fed
asking God to nourish wholeness:
"Give us now our daily bread."
Many thousands, many thousands
ate the feast that God had spread.
At the great commission dinner,
that this feeding ministry
might live on in saint and sinner,
Jesus said, "Remember."
(Feed the hungry, feed the hungry.)
"When you eat, remember me."
Still the poor are God's beloved,
still the poor are sign and key
showing Christians what is needful,
what God's realm is meant to be.
Hear the calling, hear the calling,
"Feed me now and set me free."
Now, if the example of these two hymns doesn't show you how strikingly different the theology presented in different songs can be, I don't know what will! The first song is entirely about God as other-worldly, as divine "king on high," and about the speaker's "personal relationship" with God ("my savior, Messiah, redeemer and friend"). It is about proclaiming all the things God (or more specifically, Jesus) is, and affirming Jesus's significance in that person's life. Now, I would argue that if Jesus truly is significant in one's life, that one's life should reflect the kind of scripturally sound calling and ideas represented in the second hymn. The second hymn is set to the tune of a traditional hymn (I can't remember which one right now), but with different words. So it's not exactly a "contemporary praise song," but it does bring a fresh take on a familiar hymn tune. Other songs we sang at St. James weren't even hymn tunes at all, but African praise songs or Asian-influenced music.
My concern, then, is that using these "contemporary praise songs" in Episcopal churches might lead to a theology that looks too much like "Prince of Peace" and not enough like "God is in the daily struggles."
I think it's a mistake to think that just because the megachurches are herding in thousands of people every Sunday that we should just imitate what they're doing. Just because something is drawing in large numbers doesn't mean that there is any value to it. Now, I'm not saying there is NO value in what the megachurches have to offer, but I'm just pointing out an error in logic. Thousands of people might herd into a stadium to go to a Marilyn Manson concert, but does this mean that this is something we should imitate? Drawing in mass numbers of people does not necessarily indicate quality or goodness of an event or program. This is not to compare megachurches to Marilyn Manson concerts (That would be quite laughable!!), but just to say that as Episcopalians (and other "mainline" Christians), we should be wary of just running to follow the herds into what everyone else is doing simply because there are mass numbers of people being drawn into that culture.
Instead of focusing on and worrying about all the people who are attending megachurches (and not OUR churches) every week, we should focus on all the people who do not attend ANY church every week. Many of these people are turned off to Christianity precisely by the type of model offered in the megachurches; not everyone is drawn to that type of "entertainment" Christianity. Some people see it as inauthentic or may have had an experience where they were part of a huge, large church and then when the times got tough (like when they lost a family member or something), no one in the church even knew their name or were there to offer help, because instead of a community, they were just another spectator in the auditorium every week. Again, obviously this is not the case with ALL megachurches, but I have heard these kinds of stories from people and experienced some of these kinds of disillusions myself.
My point is that the megachurch model doesn't work for everyone. Instead of trying to imitate things they're doing, we should focus on how we as the Episcopal Church (and other mainline churches) can offer an alternative, a viable, welcoming and relevant alternative. Whatever you want to call us -- "mainline," "liberal," "progressive," "moderate" -- I think we have something to offer to the wider "catholic church" (lowercase "catholic," meaning the church as a whole, including ALL Christians of all denominations).
Worrying too much about the success of the megachurches or trying to imitate them will only stifle our God-given role in the world, I believe, of being a different voice to the faithful. We need to turn our eyes outward to those who are not within the fold and not try to reach out to the same segment that the megachurches have already "cornered the market" on, so to speak. Sure, there are thousands of people attending megachurches every week, but there are even MORE people who are not attending church at all and who are not a part of any kind of meaningful faith community. I think we have a way of being Christian that is different and may offer them a place where they feel they can truly fit in and find an experience of God and God's peace and forgiveness. And isn't that what we're ALL after, mainliners and Evangelicals alike? Do we really want to sacrifice that possibility for outreach by mindlessly mimicing someone else's model?
Church Growth: It's about the PEOPLE!
During the last weekend in September, I went to a "church growth" conference sponsored by the Diocese of Nebraska in a town called Grand Island (it is my personal mission while I'm here to find out why on earth there is a town called "Grand Island" in the middle of NEBRASKA, but that's beside the point).
The event was quite an eye-opener. There were probably only around 15 people of the nearly 200 people at the conference who were under the age of 60. Just looking around the room, it was obvious why the Episcopal Church needs to worry about church growth.
It was very strange to sit in this room and listen to a bunch of older people scratch their heads about what the "young people" want in the church and realize that I was one of those "young people" being objectified and discussed as if I wasn't even there. It was a similar feeling I'd felt in some interfaith conferences where they were SO excited to welcome the "young people," it actually made you feel like there was something STRANGE about you for being a young person involved in this group, when previously you had just been feeling like a normal human involved in something meaningful to you. But now, suddenly, the spotlight was on. "What do YOUNG PEOPLE want?" "Oh, we're so glad to have the YOUNG PEOPLE involved!" There's definitely an element of tokenizing going on there. Maybe these experiences can give me some glimpse into how minorities can sometimes feel tokenized!
In any case, it was also very strange to me, given my Evangelical background, to see a room full of people utterly puzzled over church growth. What a different picture from the evangelical, non-denominational churches I used to attend, which were teeming and bursting at the seams with the under-40 crowd. The focus at those churches was on evangelism -- sometimes a bit TOO much, I thought, but it was never unclear why we were there -- to share the love of God in Christ with our fellow human beings. This was the root and ground of everything that was done in those churches.
By contrast, when our keynote speaker, Charles Fulton, the director of congregational development at the Episcopal Church's headquarters in NYC, asked the group why they wanted their churches to grow, people started offering responses that were very telling:
"To get someone else to take over all these programs I don't want to do anymore."
"Um... it's more fun when more people are around?"
"Because we need more money!"
Not ONE SINGLE PERSON in the room said ANYTHING about sharing the love of God with people as a reason they wanted to grow. NOT ONE.
This was HIGHLY disturbing to me. Now, granted, I didn't say it either (although I was about to), so maybe there were some other people in the audience who felt the same way as I did but just didn't speak up out loud. But these answers, I thought, were very telling about what "the church" as an institution has become bogged down in -- the minutia, the details, the finances.
But somehow, Evangelicals have managed not to fall into this trap. They maintain HUGE buildings and still maintain a strong sense of purpose. Now, they might not have as much of a focus on social outreach as I might think they should, but that's really more a matter of interpretation about HOW to share the love of Christ verses losing sight of the fact that we're even supposed to be sharing the love of Christ at all and not just maintaining some kind of non-profit organization.
This kind of thing is one of the reasons why I left mainline churches in the first place -- because there seemed to be a lack of passion, a lack of feeling, a lack of really UNDERSTANDING the message of the Gospel. Now, I have since found people who really "get it" in mainline churches -- there ARE people who really love Jesus and wish to share God's love with others in mainline churches, believe it or not! (Evangelicals out there -- it really is true, I promise!) But there are also people who go to church just because "that's what you do" or because it's tradition... and these are the type of people I think most easily get bogged down in details and make comments like, "um.. it's more fun when more people are around?" or "We need more money!" when asked about why they want to bring in more people to their church. If you don't have a personal, vibrant faith informing your actions, church IS going to turn into a social club or a non-profit organization.
Now, praise God, Charles Fulton gets it. He immediately struck down their responses, saying that those kinds of responses were exactly the type of attitude one should NOT have if one really wants to grow their church. If you approach someone for their money and their time, they're not going to see right through that. "Welcome to our church -- come join us and we'll make you tired and poor!" Who would want to sign up for that?!
And I would add, my GOD, people. This is as bad as the "friendship evangelism" that always made me uncomfortable amongst the Evangelicals -- making friends with someone for an ulterior motive (just to convert them to Christianity), not out of a genuine desire to know them and respect them for who they were. With some of these mainliners, they're reaching out to people JUST to get their money and make their budget. It's just this type of mindset that makes people like my father suspicious of all organized religion. What about reaching out to people just to show them that an authentic community can exist where they are accepted for who they are, about sharing the message that God accepts them for who they are and loves each individual, unique person? What about ACTUALLY CARING about the PEOPLE instead of seeing them as a number, either as a notch in the "convert belt" or as a dollar sign on the budget?
I nodded vigorously as Fulton talked about approaching people as PEOPLE -- if we show we care about the PERSON, all the rest will follow. If they find a place where they feel they are truly cared for and spiritually fed, they will WANT to give their money. But they're not going to join a church just to give their money away! You have to start with the person and not focus on the monetary aspects. That can't be the focus of your evangelism efforts if you want to be able to authentically share the love of Christ with people.
Fulton called everyone in the room back to our mission as the church in the world -- why do we (the church) exist? he asked us. What is our purpose? What did Jesus die for? "Our ministry is about PEOPLE," he said, "it's not about buildings, it's not about programs, it's not about dioceses, it's not even about the Episcopal Church!" Amen, Charles! Preach it, brother!
It's about sharing the love of God with others. Sounds pretty basic and foundational to Christianity, huh? Disturbing how easily we can lose touch with that purpose.
The event was quite an eye-opener. There were probably only around 15 people of the nearly 200 people at the conference who were under the age of 60. Just looking around the room, it was obvious why the Episcopal Church needs to worry about church growth.
It was very strange to sit in this room and listen to a bunch of older people scratch their heads about what the "young people" want in the church and realize that I was one of those "young people" being objectified and discussed as if I wasn't even there. It was a similar feeling I'd felt in some interfaith conferences where they were SO excited to welcome the "young people," it actually made you feel like there was something STRANGE about you for being a young person involved in this group, when previously you had just been feeling like a normal human involved in something meaningful to you. But now, suddenly, the spotlight was on. "What do YOUNG PEOPLE want?" "Oh, we're so glad to have the YOUNG PEOPLE involved!" There's definitely an element of tokenizing going on there. Maybe these experiences can give me some glimpse into how minorities can sometimes feel tokenized!
In any case, it was also very strange to me, given my Evangelical background, to see a room full of people utterly puzzled over church growth. What a different picture from the evangelical, non-denominational churches I used to attend, which were teeming and bursting at the seams with the under-40 crowd. The focus at those churches was on evangelism -- sometimes a bit TOO much, I thought, but it was never unclear why we were there -- to share the love of God in Christ with our fellow human beings. This was the root and ground of everything that was done in those churches.
By contrast, when our keynote speaker, Charles Fulton, the director of congregational development at the Episcopal Church's headquarters in NYC, asked the group why they wanted their churches to grow, people started offering responses that were very telling:
"To get someone else to take over all these programs I don't want to do anymore."
"Um... it's more fun when more people are around?"
"Because we need more money!"
Not ONE SINGLE PERSON in the room said ANYTHING about sharing the love of God with people as a reason they wanted to grow. NOT ONE.
This was HIGHLY disturbing to me. Now, granted, I didn't say it either (although I was about to), so maybe there were some other people in the audience who felt the same way as I did but just didn't speak up out loud. But these answers, I thought, were very telling about what "the church" as an institution has become bogged down in -- the minutia, the details, the finances.
But somehow, Evangelicals have managed not to fall into this trap. They maintain HUGE buildings and still maintain a strong sense of purpose. Now, they might not have as much of a focus on social outreach as I might think they should, but that's really more a matter of interpretation about HOW to share the love of Christ verses losing sight of the fact that we're even supposed to be sharing the love of Christ at all and not just maintaining some kind of non-profit organization.
This kind of thing is one of the reasons why I left mainline churches in the first place -- because there seemed to be a lack of passion, a lack of feeling, a lack of really UNDERSTANDING the message of the Gospel. Now, I have since found people who really "get it" in mainline churches -- there ARE people who really love Jesus and wish to share God's love with others in mainline churches, believe it or not! (Evangelicals out there -- it really is true, I promise!) But there are also people who go to church just because "that's what you do" or because it's tradition... and these are the type of people I think most easily get bogged down in details and make comments like, "um.. it's more fun when more people are around?" or "We need more money!" when asked about why they want to bring in more people to their church. If you don't have a personal, vibrant faith informing your actions, church IS going to turn into a social club or a non-profit organization.
Now, praise God, Charles Fulton gets it. He immediately struck down their responses, saying that those kinds of responses were exactly the type of attitude one should NOT have if one really wants to grow their church. If you approach someone for their money and their time, they're not going to see right through that. "Welcome to our church -- come join us and we'll make you tired and poor!" Who would want to sign up for that?!
And I would add, my GOD, people. This is as bad as the "friendship evangelism" that always made me uncomfortable amongst the Evangelicals -- making friends with someone for an ulterior motive (just to convert them to Christianity), not out of a genuine desire to know them and respect them for who they were. With some of these mainliners, they're reaching out to people JUST to get their money and make their budget. It's just this type of mindset that makes people like my father suspicious of all organized religion. What about reaching out to people just to show them that an authentic community can exist where they are accepted for who they are, about sharing the message that God accepts them for who they are and loves each individual, unique person? What about ACTUALLY CARING about the PEOPLE instead of seeing them as a number, either as a notch in the "convert belt" or as a dollar sign on the budget?
I nodded vigorously as Fulton talked about approaching people as PEOPLE -- if we show we care about the PERSON, all the rest will follow. If they find a place where they feel they are truly cared for and spiritually fed, they will WANT to give their money. But they're not going to join a church just to give their money away! You have to start with the person and not focus on the monetary aspects. That can't be the focus of your evangelism efforts if you want to be able to authentically share the love of Christ with people.
Fulton called everyone in the room back to our mission as the church in the world -- why do we (the church) exist? he asked us. What is our purpose? What did Jesus die for? "Our ministry is about PEOPLE," he said, "it's not about buildings, it's not about programs, it's not about dioceses, it's not even about the Episcopal Church!" Amen, Charles! Preach it, brother!
It's about sharing the love of God with others. Sounds pretty basic and foundational to Christianity, huh? Disturbing how easily we can lose touch with that purpose.
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